Innovator Class: Although distinction is not made in normally made in normal everyday life, there are three classes of Innovator, all of them exhibit complete biological immortality and some sort of psychic abilities. Class C innovators show some level of precognition, combined with increased situational awareness. They have a limited ability to project their emotions. Class B innovators have increased precognitive abilities and have a fully developed ability to telepathically communicate with other Class B and Class A innovators. Class A innovators are extremely rare, the full extent their abilities are still unknown. In addition to all the abilities of the Class B and Class C innovators, they are capable of learning computer programs by simply reading code and memorizing it. They have been known to have telekinesis, some being able to influence phenomena throughout the universe, and are capable of hacking into programs and other secure material at close proximity, given that it is digital. Their cognitive analysis abilities are as powerful as ten normal humans working together, making them significant tactical and strategic assets. Class A innovators are identified by their scleras turning black and their irises turning blood red in one or both eyes. Their extra abilities do not manifest until an extreme life or death situation. Possibly many Class A innovators as civilians that are not aware of their abilities.
Logbook of Earth Naval Intelligence Services Commander, known as "Steel Angel"
Zuikaku couldn't stand it. I was only 0600 at the time and she was literally the only one awake in the room. she quietly got out of bed and went out the door to go to the restroom. she found it quite frustrating that her sister, Shoukaku was not rescued with the rest of the fleet, and that she was the one that was rescued instead.
She felt cheated.
On her way to the restroom down the hall, she passed by an open door that led to a small recreation room. Inside, it was a well-lit, green plastered room with some couches to the left side and a bookcase stocked with novels and magazines, a medium sized projector screen sat on the wall opposite of the door and a projector was positioned over the center of the room. In the middle of the room, there was a pool table, and it had a single person sitting on it with her back to Zuikaku. The person in question was wearing the same officer's uniform that "Admiral Konata" from the night before. She had long, flowing white hair, and a medium thickness red headband running through the top of her hair. The long pole she was holding was around her back, as she leaned backwards over the table to hit the cue ball, which was in an awkward position, to sink the black 8 ball. The thin figure expertly snapped the thin cue ball and had it reverse its direction as the cue ball tapped the 8 ball several inches into the corner hole.
The figure turned back around, revealing her face. She had large, warm yellow eyes, thin eyebrows, and relatively pale skin. Her lips curled into a soft smile as she looked up and noticed Zuikaku.
"Good morning, who might you be?" she says to Zuikaku in Japanese, her voice radiating with gentle warmth.
Taken aback for a moment, Zuikaku has a double take, it was Shoukaku. Zuikaku was unsure of what to do.
"Shoukaku-neesan?, I thought you were not rescued with the rest of the fleet? They lied to me right?" Zuikaku blurts out, naturally responding in Japanese.
The other person's face suddenly turns to one of confusion, seeming to have trouble recognizing the exact words that Zuikaku just said.
"I don't know of a person named Shoukaku, but that is the name of my command flagship, Fleet Carrier Shoukaku of the Fifth Reconnaissance Fleet." She responds softly, her voice welcoming and soft, "I read the reports before I came here this morning, I wasn't given photos of you girls, but I can guess that you are Zuikaku, are you not?"
Zuikaku stares back in disbelief, the person in front of her was Shoukaku, her ship sister, but why does she not know her? They were always together, until the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
"Oh, I'm Shiina Unryuu, nice to meet you," the girl says as she reaches under the table to retrieve an officer's cap. It is made of black cloth, with a single gold sakura flower on the middle of the cap. "I'll further introduce myself at the meeting after breakfast," she said with a small tip of her cap as she walked out of the door and down the corridor.
"And why are you now just enlisting yourself as an officer on the ship? Don't you have school to finish? And what about mom, she was already worried enough about me joining the military, she would go crazy if she found out that you just enlisted yourself in the military too," Jean shouted over his shoulders to Nancy, who was dressed in a black and grey junior officer's uniform and an ensign's emblem on her arm.
"It's fine, we have another couple of months of break before school resumes, if not, I could always attend class via webcam or have my homework emailed back to the school with the Warp Net."
"Don't dodge the question, you know why Mom doesn't want you to join the military, not after she found out what happened to people that were captured, they were basically reduced to animals after their return to home."
As this is happening, Mutsu, who had spent the night at Jean's house, looks back and forth and simply smiles at the exchange.
What really happened the previous night was that Nancy was handed a draft order, an officer's commision, and a uniform personally by the empress as soon as she left the room full of the ship girls…..to her delight and to Jean's chagrin.
Mutsu turned to Jean, "You know, why are you so angry with her joining the Navy? She seems quite enthusiastic," she said with a puzzled tone.
"It's something with Mom and Dad and Uncle Will, who was killed in the Second Solar wars in a rather gruesome way, something with a slow, radiation filled death."
They fall silent again as they approach the asteroid starbase and now begin to notice that it is not normal. On top of the Gunther Lutjens sitting at its berth at the starport, He noticed a large, grey wedge shaped ship, nearly four times as long and twice as tall as the Gunther Lutjens, there was a single large character in katakana: "シ" Indicating that it was one of the newer Japanese carriers, the Shoukaku, as beautiful as the name of the ship was, the ship itself was butt-ugly. It looked rough and hewn together in comparison to the sleek ships of Mars and the simple-but-ingenious construction of the Earth ships. For a Zimmerit ship, it was unusual to see a capitol ship without a large contingent of destroyers and cruisers in tow.
"So new Japan is involved in this too, I would assume so, 'cuz all of you girls are all named after Japanese ships from World War Two," Jean said under his breath so that neither of the other two could hear him.
"So what's for breakfast?" Nancy piped up as they were exiting the transport, "I'm rather hungry and you wouldn't let us eat at home, I demand to know."
"Dang, when did you become such a prima donna, with your command of the tankery team and finally demands of your current captain. I'll have you put in the bring as soon as we're on the ship," Jean retorts with a sarcastic tone.
Again, like the night before, the station is uncharacteristically empty, thanks to Empress Jessica's executive orders. They make their way back to the sme lobby, but this time, instead of being put under surgical fluorescent lighting, large amounts of sunlight filter through the ships in the starport into the windows, giving the hallway a mellow glow, almost as if they were three students walking in a skywalk across a large metropolis during sunset. At the end of the hallway, all the chairs had been cleared out and replaced by several round tables and a simple buffet line for food. It was rather empty and ghostly, as there was no one in the room yet, save for the three of them. That was when two people walked in, one of them was Shevonne, the other, the one with the thong from last night looking like a younger version of herself, helping to carry food trays to the buffet table. Shevonne waved to them and beckoned for them to follow her back into the nearby kitchens.
Upon entering the kitchens, they noted that aside from some boilers full of coffee and hot water. There were also the assorted sugar, cream, and other things neatly arranged on several baskets. It came up to a simple breakfast, typically french, as most of the trays had unsweetened pastries and small jars of jam were laid out on the buffet table with the rest of the food, hardly a breakfast befitting an Empress.
Five minutes later, the breakfast was all set up and all of the kanmusu and the officers already present on the station were called into the room. Breakfast commenced with alot of people making a mad rush for the pastries. Shevonne was constantly telling people off for crowding the table.
There were several extra people present, most notably another Zimmerit Admiral, in the form of a thin girl with white hair.
10 minutes later, Jean and nancy found themselves sitting around a table with Minerva and several of the ship girls, Akagi, Suzuya, and Samidare.
Akagi, being identified as a Fleet carrier, is significantly larger in nearly every aspect in comparison to the small destroyers, she wore a miko uniform and had a red skirt. there was a small plate of waist armor that appeared like a flight deck strapped to the front of her waist. She had long brown hair and soft eyes that shone with gluttony. She was quite obviously the glutton, she had more food on her plate than the rest of the people on the table combined.
Suzuya, Heavy Cruiser, going with size and age proportions of real ships, she looked as if she was a junior in high school, with a brown "girl's school" uniform complete with the orange ruffled tie around her neck, thigh-high brown socks, and maryjane shoes. Her elbow-length hair was a light sky blue and was allowed to flow freely behind her ears. Her eyes shone in a dull yellow of innovator ability usage without the associated glow.
Samidare, a destroyer, looked no older than a high school freshman or eighth grader, she had a slightly oblong melon-shaped head with large oval shaped eyes, in each of the eyes, there was what seemed like a jewel of aquamarine. She wore a sleeveless white serafuku with black trim and and a loose, non pleated white skirt. What was most notable about her appearance though, was that she had a single long ponytail that went from her head to her ankles, heck, the ponytail was curved and was probably longer than she was tall. The hair was on a gradient from a deep sea blue near her head and faded into a soft, bluish off-white.
"Damn girl, you eat a whole bunch. Care to share how you eat so much?" Nancy asks Akagi as she snarfs down her fourth Danish Pastry.
"Hmmmm…? Di du day domethin'?" She responds as she looks up from her rather messy plate. at Nancy, who chuckles from the comical look of Akagi with an open mouth with a half eaten croissant and a large glass of black coffee in the other.
Meanwhile, Jean was looking incessantly at the other officers that were present, including the commanders from the Zimmerit Federation and the Earth Republic. He was rather skeptical about working with them, especially since the Zimmerit Federation was an enemy of Mars not too long ago.
Suddenly, an enlisted person rushed into the room with a hurried look and a communique from fleet headquarters on the planet. After nearly overturning several tables on his way in, he slammed the paper into Jessica's hand and quickly left after a quick salute, saying that he had things to take care of that were of utmost importance, enough to forgo the usual respect procedures.
"So girls, how quickly can you deploy, from, say, now?" Jessica suddenly said as she rose from her seat and firmly said over the chatter, which immediately stopped. "Meridiani Bay is under attack, apparently from a force claiming to be the Abyssal Fleet, we are actually the closest force to them and I would like you to defend the place in a show of your abilities."
At that moment, all of the chatter in the room died down, as not only did she say the statement out loud, but she also projected the thought to each mind in the room. All of the Martian Officers Quickly got out of their seats and exited the room, leaving the fleet girls to quickly finish their meal.
As Jean, Minerva, Jessica, Nancy, and a number of other officers took their seats in a nearby meeting room, another extra person walked into the room, leaning over and whispering something to Jessica. She nodded and turned back out to the rest of the people in the room.
"7th Task Force leaders Commodore Minerva Zabi, Captain Jean Maxim, and Lieutenant Antionelle Passio will deploy directly to the water surface along with the Fleet Girls", she said after a moment of consideration. "This will be an initial test for them, may they prevail, launch will be in 10 minutes in orbital drop pods.
11 minutes later
High above the ionosphere of Mars and beginning final descent of re-entry, 30 orbital drop pods lined up in formation to directly deploy as soon as they touched down. Nagato was in on of the rearguard pods, given her position as a battleship and her role of indirect fire support. She was actually quite apprehensive, given that she has never been in zero gravity, nor has she been in the tiny confines of a Single Operative Orbital Drop Insertion Vehicle. The back of her head was flooding with fear and uncertainty at the aggressive way that they were being deployed to the ground with no training at all.
Suddenly, as they began to enter the stratosphere, the viewport in front of her face started to glow red-hot and the violent shaking started with her head being tossed around in whichever direction. She knew from her short briefing earlier that there was a 2 minute window of there were no possible radio communications as she was entering the atmosphere. Slowly, but surely, each agonizing second ticked by as the violent shaking continued, but something was wrong, very wrong. Below her, she could see the pods in front of her maneuvering hard and trying to dodge shots that burst into clouds of flak. two of the pods in front of her burst, revealing the now dead Shioi from explosive decompression and the burning corpse of Inazuma, who had sprung a leak from a shrapnel hit that slowly increased the temperature of the vehicle until her body has burst into flame from the heat.
"EVASIVE MANEUVERS, REPEAT, EVASIVE MANEUVERS," came Minerva's voice over the radio, shouting, but calm and collected in the face of enemy fire.
Mesmerized from the action around her, Minerva's shouting brought Nagato back to her senses, and finally, she started to scatter like the rest of the task force after a blunt piece of shrapnel hit her pod and failed to penetrate. While maneuvering, she saw the chaos that the flak of still unknown source was instilling on the task force.
When suddenly, Mutsu's pod, which was in front of her, suddenly exploded.
Parts of her appendages and her headband hit Nagato's viewport, causing her to shudder and her blood to run cold. The fear that was at the back of her mind suddenly flooded the rest of her mind, quickly overrunning her thoughts of combat and how to best defeat the Abyssal, fleet below her. The fear took up much of her mind, all the way down to the last several miles, when the pod's retros started firing to prevent her from being flattened to a pancake, although it wasn't far off from it, the landing speed was in the vicinity of 200 miles per hour.
The flak died down momentarily as they hit the water, below the firing arc of the light angle anti-aircraft guns in the distance. Nagato's pod hit the water and sprung open, she instinctively decompressed her large array of 41 cm naval guns as she stepped out of the floating and smoking pod onto the deep blue water. She turned around to see all of the 27 surviving pods floating around her with the battered fleet girls and the person called 'Captain Maxim' stepping out of his pod.
Frantically counting the number of pods on the water, Jean spits into his radio, "Alright Command and Control, what the shit was that flak all about, we shouldn't have any flak guns firing from the ground that are able to target, much less hit anything that is coming down in re-entry."
Surveying the scene around him. Many of the fleet girls are visibly shaken, but some of the more stoic ones are helping to calm the relatively shell-shocked ones.
"Alright ladies, let's go, the enemy is that way, we will have medics try to collect what is left of the bodies", Jean says rather coldly, "we have an ocean to defend."
They assemble into 3 nine-ship lines and begin cruising towards the coast, with Jean, Minerva, and Antionelle leading the way.
"Nagato, stay back and bombard the enemy as we approach the AO, your primary objective is to keep the enemy units back and protect the carriers along with the rest of the battleships. Antionelle will direct your fire, she is a sniper after all."
Jean, who was a close combat specialist, was sailing at the front of his respective line with the destroyers, who were also close combat specialists, with their fearsome torpedoes and high speed.
Minerva, a special ops veteran, naturally lead a strike force of light and heavy cruisers, offering flexibility as a support force that would go between supporting destroyers with covering fire and using their awesome anti-air abilities to down enemy bombers.
"Sir," Nagato speaks up, " my sensors are now able to identify the ship composition of the enemy fleet. From the formation layout and the ship composition, it is a carrier task force."
"What do you recommend we do then, you seem to be their natural leader anyways", Jean lazily lofts back at her.
" I recommend holding distance and using battleship advantage we have to pummel the fleet first before sending close combat people to wipe up the -"
"That tactic would be sound if you were conducting the battle of Jutland, but we are 300 years past that, Mademoiselle," Jean says to cut her off.
Broadcasting over quantum brainwaves, which he knew fleet girls were capable of (more mentally taxing, but more secure connection and he was not sure if they had built-in radios anyway) at least receiving. His eyes glowing the trademark dirty yellow of quantum brainwave use.
Attention personnel, we will be splitting into the groups that we are currently already divided into. Battleships and Carriers are to provide shelling and air cover respectively, carriers, launch all fighters to protect fleet, no need to waste time using torpedo bombers and dive bombers on a larger force that will swat them out of the sky. Cruisers will be following Minerva in first to try to lure in the escorts before annihilating them. Destroyers will take advantage of the opening to cut the carriers down with torps. Battleships are to pick off larger escort ships at opportunity, understood?
"YES SIR", came the chorus from behind.
The smoke in the distance was getting more defined now, with burning buildings in the nearby harbor city. Tone sent out a recon plane, showing the exact locations of enemy fleet which was sending wave after wave of bombers to terrorize the city, several Ri-class heavy cruisers were approaching the jetties, apparently trying to get into the city directly to search for something. To Jean's knowledge, the small non-military police force that was present had nothing to counter the approaching fleet.
Upon confirmation of the enemy carriers, which numbered over 8, Akagi, Zuikaku, Taihou, and Soryuu launched all their Zero fighters to meet the wall of Abyssal torpedo and dive bomber squadrons approaching. The destroyers, biding their time for the cruisers to lure away the escorts, form a second ring around the first ring of battleships, which in turn was surrounding the carriers. Akizuki's Choujuusenchihou-chan turrets pointed up at the incoming aircraft, which were nearest to her, and immediately cut down several with bursts of fragmentation shell fire. In response, the droves of abyssal dive bombers pelted her repeatedly, knowing that she was the lynchpin in the impressive anti-aircraft defense, guided by the sophisticated gun director radars on Akizuki and Antionelle, who was also being focus fired along with the carriers, who were providing the bulk of the air support, cutting down the majority of the attacking planes.
In the chaos, Akizuki had her left turret blown clean off by a 500 kg armor piercing bomb. Losing one of her anti aircraft turrets allowed a large number of planes to break through her still impressive flak wall to attack the battleships and carriers behind her, which were vulnerable to the large number of torpedoes that were now being launched, Bismarck had her left foot blown clean off and was bleeding profusely, having being taken out in a similar manner to her World War 2 counterpart, and being immobilized. Her guns still blazing, had taken out the whole squadron of torpedo bombers that had ravaged her. She was not going down this time in the same way. Jean was busily using the flight abilities that his Infantry suit was built with to swipe large amounts of the abyssal planes out of the sky with his plasma broadsword and cover the fleet girls as they were clambering to dodge the continuous streams of abyssal bombs and torpedoes. Many of the fleet girls were able to escape unscathed, especially if their battle abilities, like Murakumo or Akatsuki, were not as potent when in comparison to the other ones like Akizuki or Bismarck.
Meanwhile, Minerva and the cruisers were sneaking out behind the sea stacks bordering the outside of the harbor.
"There don't seem to be anything other than those 4 Ri-class cruisers at the moment on the jetty or within detection range," Agano reports to Minerva.
"In that case, use the sea stacks and the large waves to hide your presence as we approach. Do all of you have some sort of jump-boosting ability that lets you jump several meters into the air to launch onto the jetty to assassinate the cruisers? I would also prefer to capture one for interrogation," Minerva orders.
"Yes, and Yes Ma'am", was the chorus of replies. As they ready themselves behind either side of the large boulders that line the jetty, They launch themselves up and over the edge of the jetty and immediately kill 3 of the cruisers, one via beheading with a plasma saber from Minerva, one being bludgeoned into pieces from the shots of numerous 203 mm shells, and one being blinded then quartered by the agano class cruisers. By the time the last one turns around and sees what has happened, her eyes had already been shot out by Noshiro, who was closest to her. The rest pile on top of her and pin her down.
Minerva walks up to the cruisers face, which is mangled by six 155 mm rounds hitting it in the most vulnerable of places and is profusely bleeding out, evidently, the Heavy Cruiser will bleed out within a few minutes, so Minerva works quickly to extract information.
"How did you get the information to this site?" she first asks, "and what
"Our grand admiral of course, the all knowing one," The cruiser spits back. "You'll never know what his grand plans for the universe are for and even if you do find-"
Tired of the Ri's monologuing, Minerva shoves her index and middle fingers into the eyes of the cruiser and simply hacks into her visual memories via the optical nerve endings. After she saw what she wanted, she put the cruiser out of her misery with a single plasma bolt to the head.
"Let's go, this does not sound good for us, we need to take out the rest of the escorts," she said to her team, which consisted of the complete Agano class, Tone class, Maya, Choukai, and herself. They jumped off the jetty and sped towards the battle zone to punch a hole in the defenses of the destroyers. Minerva fried the brains of the rest of the other three cruisers with a quick stab from her beam saber to prevent reactivation.
"Damn, there was no end to those guys, anyone cared to count how many we have killed in the air defense op?" Jean says in an almost sarcastic manner to no one in particular after the end of the brutal air assault that seriously hurt many of the destroyers and some of the capital ships, "anyhow, I think those carriers are finally out of planes to launch at us for the time being. We need to start taking out those capital ships."
"Antionelle," he orders, "have the carriers and the battleships start hosing down the place with their big guns. Use your sniper to take out the carriers one by one if you can, Battle ships should herd the bigger ships into a small area so we can saturate the area with torpedoes."
Jean starts to lead the destroyers on their torpedo run, in classic manner, in a straight line at the enemy before dropping the torpedoes and turning tail. out here in the open water, the torpedoes have an easy run up to the large ships, but the abyssal destroyers, who were focused on screening the carriers from the battleships' shelling fall into disarray as a large amount of torpedoes unleashed by no less than eight destroyers head into the fray to break apart the formations. The effect of the combined torpedo and shelling attack is spectacular, with many of the destroyers running into shellfire trying to dodge the torpedoes and vice versa.
A small portal opens near the carriers as they begin their retreat, one of them is gunned down, her hat completely removed before she was able to reach the portal, which promptly disappears, along with the rest of the destroyers, which simply vanish into thin air.
Noting this, Jean says over open radio, "how the fuck do wormhole appear out of nowhere to spirit away the capital ships and then take the destroyers with them."
Antionelle responds, " and how did they arrive in the first place, there was no indication of ships arriving on the surface having any of these strange quantum signatures, and also, they would have to have sailed for some time to get here if they landed anywhere other than the spot we landed at."
Their conversation ends as they begin to assign some members of the force to tow the immobilized members of the fleet to the docks, some 30 kilometers away.
Jean Takes note of the wailing of some of the members of the fleet, especially the destroyer Akatsuki, who had lost a friend, Inazuma, during the treacherous drop into the atmosphere.
He shuddered at the thought of if they had tried to all go down in a transport instead of drop pods, one strike from that murderous flak would have taken them all out.
Bismarck had to be towed by 4 destroyers on account of her lost left foot. Teruzuki had apparently become a paraplegic with stumps left for her two arms, she thankfully did not bleed out due to Antionelle using a beam tomahawk to cauterize the wounds.
"I asked for adventure in joining the military after the war, not this bullshit," Jean muttered to himself, shaking his head.
Shrugging off the fact that the original plan had gone to waste knowing the information from the cruiser leader that she unceremoniously hack the brain of, she led the cruisers of the fleet into the now-evacuated city towards the address that she extracted from the cruiser. The building was derelict, but had the distinct markings of recent activity, ranging from freshly flaked paint down to exposed metal on the rails of the door where the wheels of the warehouse recently rolled. The nine of them, having already packed their equipment away, had to resort to Minerva shooting the lock out ( none of the ship girls had side arms yet) for them to open the door. Inside the apparently empty warehouse, Minerva walked up to an old seemingly analog factory crane controller and ripped off the covering, to reveal a small LCD screen underneath the 'battery cover'. the LCD screen asked for a fingerprint.
Instead of showing her fingerprint which would lock her out (her hunch anyways, knowing how tight these things would get in security), she tapped the wires directly, using her Class A Innovator powers to hack the device, her left eye momentarily going red and black. The panel in the middle of the floor opened outwards and up came a platform with a large white spherical something, probably a capsule, that opened with a large hiss and release of glowing bright red gasses.
Inside, was a girl, rather tall and skinny, with a single side ponytail and much longer sweeping snow-white hair. She was dormant, and scantily clad, much like the Ri class cruisers that they had encountered earlier. Her skin was so white and pale that one would almost think that she was simply covered in white paint. Her skin and features were accentuated by the broken top of the black serafuku that barely covered her medium-large breasts and the broken skirt that barely covered her genitals.
Yahagi called out to Minerva, who was on a platform overlooking the warehouse floor.
"Ma'am, this is clearly an abyssal ship and the nameplate here reads 'Abyssal Aircraft Carrier Princess'"
"I'll call in a transport to take her back to our ship, and we can analyze her there out of the prying eyes of the admiralty. They honestly are not to be trusted."
A/N: So people, what a long break it has been. I ran into serious writer's block in the beginning of May withe start of AP/IB testing and have finally broken that block after a nearly 4 month break. I hope that I can bring the next chapter out to you guys soon.
I also plan to start some one shots of this universe to help to do some exposition outside of this story, it just seems too cumbersome to condense every last thing into one story, or is it? Please tell me in the comments.
Again, please leave your input and ideas for how to improve, I have loosely based this on a combination of the Gundam multiverse, Kancolle, Star Trek, and Halo, so please give me ideas on how to incorporate these ideas into the story.
Thanks for reading guys! :D