A/N:
Been some time since I last wrote a one-shot.
I was asked to write a noire-style first person narrative. It ended up as something...slightly different.
I've found that I have a lot of fun formulating alternate histories. Not revisionist history, but alternate histories, exploring the what-ifs and if-thats that can happen. Being a history major in college is mostly to blame for that.
Because I had forsaken Shoukaku in place of Maya in the fifth story, I put her in the previous one.
-Akyuu no Joshu
"Admiral! Admiral! Oh, um gottes willen, you aren't paying attention!"
Bismarck, the German transfer battleship, smacks her Admiral on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.
"Ah...oh, shit, sorry...dozed off..." the Admiral says hastily, readjusting his naval officer's hat on his head and sitting back up in his chair. "Sorry, I...had a bit of a rough night yesterday, what'd I miss?"
Bismarck, narrowing her pure blue eyes at her Admiral, puts her firm hands on her wide hips.
"Don't tell me you were fooling around with Eugen again? Gottverdammte, just marry her already if she's distracting you so much!"
"No, wait, listen, Bisko, you don't - ow!"
Bismarck throws her rolled-up newspaper at the Admiral, and it smacks him end-first against his forehead.
"Call me 'Bisko' one more time, Admiral! I dare you! I dare you, arschgeige!" Bismarck yells, her cheeks flushing terribly. "I hate it when people call me that! It's your fault this entire naval district has come to call me nothing but 'Bisko, Bisko, Bisko'! Bisko this, Bisko that! Der schwanz!"
"Erm, Bismarck-sama, I don't understand German, so please, don't constantly be throwing German insults at me, I won't understand them..."
Bismarck stands straight again, suddenly pleased with hearing a suitable honorific for her name.
"Then from the beginning of my report before you dozed off," Bismarck, reinvigorated, starts her report again. "We need more Type 3 shells, Instant Repair Buckets, Bauxite, and Steel. Akagi and Kaga are still docking, Sendai is still screaming 'Yasen, Yasen' in the light cruiser dormitories, Jun'you is still in bed due to a hangover from yesterday's drinking party, Tenryuu is still taking care of the Sixth Destroyer Division, Yuubari is requesting more scrap metal to produce experimental weapons, the submarines have returned from their 9003rd sortie to Orel Sea, Kongou is having withdrawal symptoms from the lack of black tea supplies, Aoba has been reprimanded on 52 accounts of paparazzi photo-taking, Atago has been practicing splitting watermelons with her - "
"OKAY, STOP!" the Admiral yells out, flailing his arms out in front. "Bismarck, you - you didn't need to tell me all that! I just want the important bits!"
Bismarck narrows her eyes again at her Admiral.
"Was sagen sie da? Was I not reporting to you the important aspects of this base?"
"Yeah, but - no, no, you weren't! That's all crap I always hear! Like, what's different for today? Like, did the girls find a new ship girl out there? Or maybe a new LSC construction or new prototype weapon development? That's the kind of stuff you need to report to me as a secretary ship!"
Bismarck pulls on a face of disappointment.
"Are you saying that I didn't do my job correctly?" Bismarck says disdainfully. "That's not possible, I always get my work done properly!"
"No, no..." the Admiral shakes his head and buries his face into his hands tiredly, "it's not that you're doing your job wrong, you're just not telling me things that I want to know! Everything you've told me so far, I don't really care about!"
Bismarck, hit by the Admiral's words, takes a small step backwards.
"Y-You don't..." Bismarck stutters, feeling insulted by the Admiral's choice of words, "you don't...care about my work...?"
The Admiral takes his face off his hands, realizing that his words weren't phrased properly.
"No! No, not that! I didn't mean it that way! It's not that I don't care about what you're doing for me, it's that there can be improvements that you can make to make your reports more informative. That's what I'm trying to say."
"Oh...was vom Teufel, you scared me!" Bismarck sighs with relief. "Then...then what should I do to improve?"
"Like I said..." the Admiral sighs, adjusting his tie, "don't report what everyone already knows. Anything that's mundane or doesn't have very pressing relevance can be ignored. Things like new ship girl constructions or discoveries, new resource shipments found from sorties and expeditions, battle reports, things like that. If you think you'll have trouble, just ask Kongou for help."
"Kongou? That British bloede kuh? Why should I go to her for consultation regarding this position?" Bismarck asks with very apparent disgust in her voice.
"Because she was my previous secretary ship, that's why. And I know you two don't have the best of relationships, and I know Kongou's kinda in a bad mood right now since we don't have any black tea at base at the moment, but still, try to work something out - "
Then, the doors to the Admiral's office burst open.
"Admiral! Admiral, a new communique from Tokyo headquarters has arrived!" a cheerful, bouncy voice fills the Admiral's ears sweetly, and in dashes Prinz Eugen, the German Admiral Hipper-Class heavy cruiser whom the Admiral has recently acquired. She dashes past Bismarck, who quickly steps out of her way in reflex and places a piece of paper in front of the Admiral on his desk. "Look, look! My kanji isn't too great right now, but it says something about a new German ship girl we can get soon!"
"H-Hey, Eugen, where are your manners? I was speaking with the Admiral first!" Bismarck says indignantly. Hearing Bismarck's voice, Prinz Eugen suddenly spins around, her blonde locks spinning with her, and squeals at the sight of her beloved battleship sister.
"Schwesterherz!" Prinz Eugen squeals, instantly burying her face into Bismarck's ample battleship-class ballast tanks. "Er, I should say, Onee-sama, as the Japanese would say. How are you doing this morning? Oh, oh! Did you get the news?" Prinz Eugen spins back around, grabs the communique off the Admiral's desk, and nearly shoves the paper into Bismarck's face with excitement. "We're supposedly due for another German ship girl! A submarine this time! Isn't that wunderbar?"
"Ja, ja, but my dear Eugen, you see, the Admiral is instructing me in the ways of the secretary ship position, so I would like it if you did not barge in like this without prior announcement..."
Prinz Eugen gasps, putting both her hands over her mouth and taking a step back.
"Oh nein! I'm - I'm so sorry, schwesterherz! I was - I was simply carried away by the sudden news...please, g-go ahead..."
Flailing nervously, Prinz Eugen steps aside to let her beloved battleship sister-at-arms continue to speak with the Admiral.
"E-Ein..." Bismarck stutters nervously, having forgotten where her conversation with the Admiral had been cut off at. "Where...what we were talking about again...?"
The Admiral shrugs. "Beats me, I forgot too. Eugen, hand me that communique, I didn't see it in full detail just yet. I am interested in another submarine to help the Orel Sea squadron..."
Prinz Eugen bounces forward eagerly as always to hand him the paper, and Bismarck, having remembered where she'd left off, pats the bottom of her fist against her palm.
"Right! Um, Admiral, we left off at why I should go see Kongou for consultation about the position of secretary ship."
"Oh yeah..." the Admiral scans the communique without glancing up at Bismarck, "so, go talk to her if you want to improve your work on being secretary ship."
"And I said that I refuse to do so! Kongou is an ignorant verdammt Arschlöcher! And you know this, Admiral!"
"While I have no idea what you just called Kongou, Bismarck, I'll just assume you called her some insult, so I say to you, bullshit. Get along for God's sake, why don't you. Half the time whenever I want to sortie you with the rest of the battleships, I can't because I know you two'll come back both heavily damaged 'cause one of you thought it was funny to friendly fire each other in the middle of combat and make me have to waste time and resources getting the both of you back up to par. And honestly, I'm a bit annoyed by that. I'm not annoyed by a lot of things. I can let lots of things slide." The Admiral sighs and looks up at Bismarck from Prinz Eugen's communique. "But your relationship with Kongou has got to improve. This isn't just a request. It's an order."
Bismarck frowns angrily, clenching her hands.
"Don't make it sound as though this is all my fault, Admiral!" Bismarck whines. "Alright, I shall admit my shortcomings and my less-than-admirable deeds done for the sake of rivalry. But Kongou has had her own fair share of - "
The Admiral raises his hand.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I was going to say that I was going to go talk to Kongou as well once we get some black tea to sate her frickin' addiction," the Admiral sighs again. "And even though I did tell you this, I'm confident that you can amend your relationship with Kongou. I mean, everyone in the fleet gets along just fine with the rest of your German comrades, and vice versa. You get along just fine with just about everyone else, too. And yes, yes, I get that there's this whole Germany-Britain thing going on. But just leave that aside for once, will you? I'm sure you can do it."
The Admiral then turns to Prinz Eugen.
"Eugen, according to this communique, the timeframe during which we can acquire U-511 starts very soon - this late afternoon, in fact. We're gonna give her a proper German welcome. Have Lebe and Max prepare for a sortie, along with Destroyer Division 6 and the Yasen Baka - she'll come in handy if you girls get caught up in a night battle along the way."
Prinz Eugen snaps to a salute.
"Jawohl!"
"Also, I'm told that we also received quite a few shipments of Kinderbier - hopefully I said that right, but feel free to share them with the rest of the fleet. It's non-alcoholic, right?"
Nodding eagerly, easily excited by this piece of news, Prinz Eugen starts bouncing up and down at the mention of Kinderbier.
"Ja, ja! It's, um, it's 'kid's beer' in Japanese! I think! And yes, it's not alcoholic! None at all!"
"Good, good...I don't want something like yesterday to end up happening again, where all of you nearly drank yourselves silly at dinner for no reason..."
"W-Waaaaahh, A-Admiral, d-d-don't mention that, I'm really soorrryyyyyy...!"
Prinz Eugen immediately dashes over to the Admiral's side and starts slapping him on the shoulder to get him to shut up.
"Eugen, that was because you thought you could handle alcohol like us schlachtschiffe can," Bismarck sighs, raising a hand matter-of-factly with the other hand on her hip. "I'm fine with you calling me schwesterherz and all, but please don't forget you are only a heavy cruiser."
Prinz Eugen pouts back at Bismarck. "Admiral, please do something about my schwesterherz, she's clearly starting to bully me," Eugen says with puckered lips, pointing over at Bismarck.
"Wh-Wha - !? I wasn't even - "
"Very well!" the Admiral suddenly jumps up from his chair and glares straight at Bismarck's eyes. "Bismarck!"
"Y-Yes?!" Bismarck, surprised by her Admiral making sudden movements, which is extremely rare, takes an instinctive step back, her eyes fixated by the intense stare of her Admiral.
"In accordance with my fondness for the German Heavy Cruiser by the name of Prinz Eugen and her holy, untainted torpedo bulges - "
"Du verdammter perverser! What the hell are you even saying!?"
" - I must administer the proper punishment for your mistreatment of Purin-chan."
"W-Who are you calling 'Purin-chan'!? I'm not a pudding, you know!"
"Says the girl who told me to eat her up while drink yesterday, I don't wanna hear it from you! Anyway! Bismarck, I shall now announce your punishment!"
"THIS IS INJUSTICE! CLEAR ABUSE OF ADMIRALTY AND MILITARY POWER! I SHALL DISPATCH THE LOCAL MILITARY POLICE TO - "
"Your punishment is to give Purin-chan a hug!" the Admiral declares, very, very anti-climatically. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen both stare at their Admiral with blank faces.
"...was?" Bismarck asks, as her brain has blown a fuse trying to follow the Admiral's train of thought.
But Prinz Eugen is all for it.
"Hurraaaaaaaaaa! I get to hug Schwesterherz!" Prinz Eugen cries, and without letting Bismarck react, she engages in a high-speed collision with her battleship sister and sinks her to the ground with her.
"E-Eugen!? Hey - hey, get off! You do this every day and night to me anyway! Eugen! Eugeeeeeennnnn! ! ! !"
Bismarck looks up at the Admiral, who is sitting back down in his chair, having picked up his pen and begun writing on Eugen's communique.
"A-Admiral! Assist me, verdammt! Your - your precious German battleship is sinking! She is being sunk, I say!"
The Admiral glances down at them on the floor of his office.
"If that's how you're sinking, I don't mind seeing how far you two sink," the Admiral says with an evil grin.
"ADMIRAAAAAAAALLLL! ! ! !"