Disclaimer: I own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.

Repair ship Akashi was having a very frustrating day. First she tried to stay up all night to fix Tenryuu's trashed equipment, only to fall asleep at her work station. Instead of waking her like she'd asked them to, her repair fairies seemed content to let her sleep until Ooyodo walked in this morning! How unprofessional can you be getting woken up by your boss?! And when she confronted them about it, they just grinned back at her. Bastards.

Two more hours of work had finally seen Tenryuu's rig able to at least stay in one piece, so Akashi decided to take a break and look at that weird rig from the kanmusu they found yesterday. She tried to pick it up to carry it into the workshop only to remember the hard way it took her, Ooyodo, and the battleship Nagato working together to get it onto the cart yesterday. If only she had remembered that before her efforts made the rig fall off the damn cart. Seeing no squadron of battleships available to help move the thing, Akashi had no choice but bring her tools to analyze it by the door. Because she loved nothing more than sitting on concrete to do her work.

Resigning herself to the back pain she knew was in her future, Akashi fetched her tools and set to work. Not even ten minutes later five separate drill bits—each one more than capable of cutting through a battleship's armor plate—had snapped in her hands and she wasn't sure she'd even made a dent in the damn thing. She was about to give in to the temptation to throw her arms up and put "Fucking Magic" on her report when she spotted what looked like hanger doors on the side of the rig.

Two crow bars and the assistance of four heavy cruisers later, Akashi finally had the hanger doors propped open only to run into her latest stumbling block: a group of grey-clad fairies who had formed a line to prevent Akashi from looking into anything past the hanger doors.

"I just want to see what makes this tick, alright? I won't do anything permanent, and I need to know how to fix this in case anything happens to it." The fairies were unmoved. When Akashi reached in to try and move them out of the way, the fairies linked arms. All they needed to do now was start singing "We Shall Overcome" and the image would be complete.

Just as Akashi's tired brain started to contemplate leaning in with her drill in an attempt to scare the fairies off, another fairy jumped in front of the line, this one wearing all black with an oversized helmet covering its face, carrying what looked like an oddly shaped boombox on its shoulder. Alright, that's fucking adorable, Akashi thought, but then the fairy pointed the boombox at the repair cruiser. What the… A small whining sound reached her ears.

"Eep!" Akashi jerked back just before a thin beam of red light stabbed through the air her head had occupied moments before. The cruiser looked behind her, taking in the still-smoking hole the light had punched through the roof of the building behind her before continuing on into the heavens. She whirled back around as she heard a whine building again, the boombox pointed straight at her.

"Hey! What the fuck do you think you're doing?" The kanmusu from yesterday appeared next to her. "Yes, you! What the hell are you doing taking the Splaser out for a spin? That thing's locked away for a reason." The kanmusu held out her hand to the fairy, which made the visor on its helmet see-through only to show it glaring back defiantly. "I'm going to put it back in the armory where it belongs—No you can't have it 'for safe keeping'! Give it here!" The kanmusu held her arm out imperiously, and the fairy slowly, reluctantly, placed the boombox in her palm before stalking away.

"Fucking Neanderthals sometimes, I swear," the kanmusu muttered, before turning back to Akashi. "Name's Harvest. Sorry about that: my troops can have an extreme definition of 'defending the ship' sometimes, but can I ask you just what you're doing with my hanger propped open?"

Harvest transitioned from friendly to conciliatory to wary suspicion so fast Akashi needed a moment for her brain to catch up. "Akashi," she replied, placing her hand on her own chest. "I'm Yokosuka's designated repair vessel; any rigs or equipment that need to be repaired or replaced come to me. As for what I'm doing," she gestured down to the rig, "I need to see what makes this equipment tick, so that I can make repairs for you if it ever gets damaged."

"Is that why you tried to drill into my reactor casing?" Harvest pointed at scratch marks on the armor.

"I wanted to take a sample, but whatever you have there—" Akashi's eyes widened. "Did you say 'reactor'?"

Harvest smiled nervously and rubbed the back of her neck. "It's run on a fusion reactor, and…well, you found where it is."

Akashi stared dumbly at the rig for a good second or two. "I was about to say whatever you have armoring this here is out of this world, but now I'm rather glad that it is…"

"'Out of this world,'" Harvest smirked. "You have no idea how right you are, but regarding the other stuff," she tapped the CnC portion of her equipment. "Cope, you online?"

"Of course." Akashi jumped as a voice floated out of the rig. "I am present as always. What do you need?"

"This is Copeland," Harvest introduced. "He's my AI and helps run the place. He's a dumb AI so he can't carry on a conversation or anything like that, but he'll help you with whatever you need."

"Is this wise, Commander?" the voice questioned, seemingly unconcerned over being called 'dumb'. "I can name several ONI General Orders that do not authorize this action…"

"ONI can go shove a Super MAC up their ass. Do as she says, Copeland." By now Akashi had given up hope for staying caught up with the conversation and was just along for the ride. "And for the record, please don't allow ODSTs into the armory again. That stuff is locked away for good reason." Harvest turned and started walking away, patting Akashi on the back as she went. "Have fun," she quipped, then she turned the corner and was gone.

Akashi stared at the corner for a couple seconds longer, then turned back towards the rig she apparently had to talk to. Some days she really wished she could just sleep through. "Okay, so, Cope," she started slowly, aware enough to not try to pronounce 'L's. "Tell me about…" she gestured in the general direction of the whole rig. "This."

"Sorry about the wait," Harvest said as she stepped out into the bay. "Got a call from my equipment that someone was trying to break into it. Had to go save your repair ship from some over-eager crew members."

Nagato had no idea where to start with that statement. After a moment of deliberation over which part to ask after, she settled on, "Your…equipment can talk to you?"

"Of course," Harvest nodded. "All UNSC starships are equipped with either 'smart' or 'dumb' AIs to help run the ship. We'd hardly be able to function without them."

Nagato raised an eyebrow. All kanmusu bases arranged movie nights for their ships; it was a good stress-relief and morale raiser. But that also meant she'd seen some of the fears humans had over computers running rampant. It seemed Yorktown had the same thought. "You aren't afraid of these AIs turning on you or anything?" she asked.

Harvest shrugged. "Dumb AIs, like the one I have, are pretty stable. Smart AIs only last about seven years or so before they start to go bad. But that really hasn't been too much of a problem."

"How come?"

"It requires a ship last seven years without being destroyed."

Nagato had no idea what to say to something like that. A glance at Yorktown showed her the American ship was just as flummoxed. After a couple of attempts, Nagato decided to just change the subject. "So you're a spaceship; are you capable of flying in atmosphere?"

"Are you asking if I can fly above and provide fire support?" Nagato and Yorktown both nodded. Harvest smiled. "That's what I was built to do. We Stalwart and Charon light frigates were made to provide what we called 'ortillery'—orbital artillery—to support troops fighting on the ground."

"Does that mean that you carry ground troops as well?" Yorktown asked.

"We certainly can, and typically going to a warzone I would," Harvest replied. Nagato and Yorktown shared a look; if this was how ships looked five hundred years in the future; what would ground troops look like? But Harvest's next statement took the wind out of those sails. "Unfortunately my…last battle was during a retreat from a warzone. I left almost all the ground troops I carried there. No tanks, no Marines. Just my contingent of ODST's."

"And those are?"

"Their full name is Orbital Drop Shock Troopers—like the name suggests, they're meant to be dropped from orbit and cause havoc, like paratroopers. Unfortunately the drop pods are single-use; I can use them, but then I'd have to replenish the pods before I can deploy them again."

And that would use up even more supplies, Harvest left that unsaid, but Nagato got the unspoken message anyway. Back at the office, Harvest had confessed how much—or rather, how little—her gigantic meals had resupplied her. It was becoming more and more clear that Harvest's weapons, though incredibly powerful and able to turn the tide of any battle, were incredibly resource-intensive.

On the other hand, it didn't seem as though she consumed many resources by just moving; maybe she can just stop somewhere with supplies to spare—the United States, for example—and top off between missions. "Can you show us how you fly?"

"There are specialized chemical thrusters I use in atmosphere," Harvest responded. "My main engines are connected to my reactor; using them leaves a trail of radiation—fine in outer space, but not the best above a planet." Nagato felt her face grow pale at the prospect that this small ship was powered by a nuclear reactor, but Harvest continued unbothered. "My atmospheric thrusters are basically rockets. They won't work underwater, but I should be able to jump up enough to fire them." The frigate looked up and smiled. "You might want to stand back."

The two capital ships well understood the hint and moved away. Harvest, a confident grin adorning her face, jumped about a foot above the surface of the ocean.

And then it seemed like rockets fired all over her body.

As a ship, Nagato would learn over the coming weeks, Harvest's rockets were fixed to her hull; as they never moved relative to the hull, it was easy to know which thrusters to fire to do what maneuver. As a kanmusu on the other hand, her human body meant the rockets direction was no longer fixed, but moved relative to her body as Harvest moved her arms and legs. This also meant that, as Newton's laws made clear, when Harvest fired a thruster on a limb, that limb would try to move with that thruster, forcing her to try to keep it steady so it would move her instead.

What this meant for the first demonstration was that Harvest shot into the sky before entering several uncontrolled spins, her scream coming to an abrupt halt after about five seconds of flight when Harvest performed a rocket-assisted belly flop on the ocean surface.

It took another couple of seconds before Nagato's brain caught up to what she had just witnessed. Looking to her right she beheld Yorktown bent over, her arms gripping her sides, her shoulders shuddering as she tried to hold in her laughter. Sniffing in disdain at the American, Nagato slowly approached the still-incommunicado form of the poor girl lying face down on the ocean surface. "Harvest?" she asked cautiously. "Are you alright?"

Harvest turned her—very red—face to Nagato. "I think," she said painfully, "I need…some practice."

"'Practice' basically sums up her activity during the past month or so," Yorktown summarized. "She's better able to get into orbit when she has her equipment on—I guess her AI helps or something—but then she's having trouble keeping it."

"Would that explain her sudden descent into the Mediterranean a couple weeks ago?" Saratoga looked far more relaxed than the last time Yorktown spoke to her, sitting in a chair with a steaming cup of coffee. When Yorktown nodded, Saratoga continued, "She scared the hell out of the Europeans with that stunt. They were not happy we were keeping the fact we found a future spaceship girl from them, and all the intel types back home weren't happy that we had to tell them."

"I'm sure she didn't put you in that spot on purpose," Yorktown replied. "A couple days ago she tried to land in the port of Singapore and put a hole in the harbor master station when she missed. The British are escorting her back as we speak." Saratoga closed her eyes and groaned. "One of the Japanese cruisers here, the traffic cone one that does all the singing and games on the internet, called it 'Kanmusu Space Program'." Yorktown spread her hands. "I don't get the reference."

Saratoga's shrug said she didn't get it either. "According to Hornet, anyway, she's doing alright for a crash course in orbital mechanics, so there's that."

"How the hell does Horny know orbital mechanics?"

Saratoga gave Yorktown a Look. "Not your sister, the other one."

"Oh, Hornext?" Yorktown thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess CV-12 was involved with the space program, so that makes sense."

Saratoga pinched the bridge of her nose. "What is it with you and nicknames? You know your sister always turns red when you call her 'Horny' and CV-12 hates you claiming she's anyone's replacement."

"What does anyone have against nicknames? They're fun! I'm fine with everyone calling me 'York'; if they have a problem with it they need thicker skin." Yorktown paused and grinned. "Unless you prefer to call me 'Yorky' again."

Saratoga blushed. "I thought I made it clear never to speak of that again," she ground out.

"Why? It was cute! Unless you're embarrassed you'd let your hair down far enough to call me that…"

Saratoga's blush spread, and she dived into the only solace she could find: work. "Are the Japanese ready for the upcoming operation? I'd hoped to talk to Nagato before it kicks off."

As much as Yorktown wanted to continue ribbing her friend, she knew work took precedence. "Nagato had to go south to take Harvest from Prince of Wales, but she says the Japanese will be ready." Recognizing the need for a faster convoy route to Japan, and hoping to take out the source of Abyssal threat in the northern Pacific, Nagato and Saratoga planned a joint pincer attack against the Abyssal base in the Aleutians. Nagato had made clear the Japanese lacked the power to take it on their own, and though Saratoga had promised to clear up some forces from the United States most of the American fleet had to remain in garrison around Pearl Harbor. The difference would have to be made up by their new spaceship girl. Tenryuu said Harvest was plenty powerful, and Nagato believed her cruiser, but this would be the first major combat test for the UNSC frigate.

"In lieu of her continued difficulties with orbital stuff, Harvest is going to be sailing with the Japanese fleet for this battle. She says she's been stocking up on her missiles, point-defense guns, and that fuck-off cannon of hers," Yorktown continued. "She says she's as ready as she'll ever be."

"Good," Saratoga said. She took a sip and went on, "Our contingent just sailed this morning. They'll be continuing to Japan after the base is destroyed; ONI took us up on having a ship girl front for them."

"Alright," Yorktown nodded. "Who did you finally decide to send?"

Saratoga returned a smile a shark would be proud to sport. "A couple of carriers who should be very familiar to you. You know your sister was so disappointed that you could only spare an email to send to her, that she jumped on the ONI request with both feet. You'll have so much fun in Japan together."

Oh shit oh fuck oh doom on her. "Wha—wait, Sara, you can't—"

Saratoga waved her fingers. "Ta ta, my dear Yorky~" Before Yorktown could reply the screen changed to black, the white letters "Signal Lost" the only clue the screen was still on.

"Well, fuck."