A/N:
I admit to knowing absolutely no German or having any knowledge of it, and I will freely admit to have Googled many German phrases. I apologize if I have done the German language an incredible disservice with the last entry.
-Akyuu no Joshu
"Les' buuuuuuuuurn!"
Out on the training waters of Yokosuka Naval Station, CL-46, or the U.S.S. Phoenix, splits the water in half on her all-terrain boots, laughing murderously while skiing towards the buoys on which the practice targets are installed. She takes a glance over her left shoulder, over the heavy machinery that supports her 6-inch multi-purpose perdition turrets, as her creamy vanilla hair flies in the high-speed winds behind her like a flag on the mast of a ship.
"C'mon, Hibiki! Show me that'cher title ain't jus' for show!" Phoenix encourages with a loud, boisterous, and confident call. "Everything I taught you these last two days - let's see what'cha got!"
Hibiki, the destroyer with the same name as their American guest counterpart, reaches up to her cap and yanks it down over her her face, only leaving the lower half of her face visible, but the flames of anticipation that have been stoked within her eyes cannot be contained simply by being obscured by the visor of a cap.
"Well then...let's do this."
The small, delicate hands of the Japanese destroyer simmer quickly into flames, instead of bursting into flames as do Phoenix's own hands. In addition, the flames are no longer red on the hands of Hibiki, but white in the color of snow.
"Your guns ready for this?" Phoenix calls again as the two ship girls approach the first target of their training course. Hibiki nods in confirmation, and Phoenix sets her eyes back on the target buoy. "Just like we practiced! Here we go!"
There are a total of sixty-four target buoys set up for the pair of phoenixes in the training waters. Phoenix initiates first, and her first 6-inch barrel blasts away first in a fiery report of smoldering cannon smoke to score a perfect hit, disintegrating the tall target buoy floating about in the small waves of the Yokosuka Naval Station pier. Hibiki, having doubled up on 12.7cm twin mount cannons for this practice course, immediately follows up Phoenix's first shot and fires at the second target, and Hibiki's first cannon barrel emits a flaming white pillar of gunpowder exhaust. Leaving behind a white contour line that streaks across the harbor's waters and mingling with Phoenix's red trajectory smoke, Hibiki's first shot crushes the second target in a fist of snowy fire.
Phoenix's 6-inch turrets track each of her assigned target buoys, belching round after round like an organ gun as she and Hibiki glide deftly around the destroyed buoys to advance and reach the next sets of targets. Hibiki's 12.7cm guns also behave similarly, and in this fashion, by alternating precise and accurate artillery fire, the two seaborne phoenixes set the first ten target buoy ablaze and leave nothing but ashes.
After expending all their first loaded shots, because the two ship girls are breezing through the course so speedily, neither Phoenix's weapons nor Hibiki's are able to reload quickly enough to destroy the next sets of targets. So instead, Phoenix whips out her M2-A1 Flamethrower from her belt holster and surges even faster towards her next targets.
"Awwwwww yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Screaming with fiery delight, Phoenix sets both her targets and her own passionate red eyes ablaze with infernal excitement. The muzzle of her weapon easily lives up to its name, throwing plumes of fire like a water hose all over her targets, and Phoenix screams uncontrollably with inflamed satisfaction of a pyromaniac doing what she does best, wielding her steel thrower of flames with one arm and dousing everything with fire. But she doesn't let her crazed desire to watch the world burn impede the progress that she and Hibiki are making and instead continues to run through the course, setting all the targets she can reach on fire quickly to move on to the next.
When Phoenix first enters her pyromaniacal rampage, Hibiki, meanwhile, dashes ahead of Phoenix, heading for a cluster of targets that Phoenix has indicated beforehand. She puts herself within melee range of the targets, and Hibiki lashes out with her hands, and like sharp, fiery talons, her small hands that have been set ablaze with white phoenix fire smash the targets into pieces, and the fire that catches them in the air from her hands immolates them to dust and ash, reducing the targets to nanoparticles even before the pieces can hit the water. With her white hands slashing like the claws of a phoenix at all the targets she can reach, Hibiki puts up a mesmerizing light show of white on blue under the sunny blue morning sky, tearing through her targets with an ice-cold composure that clashes with the fiery maniacal passion of her fellow Phoenix.
And like this, the two ship girls alternate attacks, firing their cannon barrels when they have reloaded and destroying the targets by hand if needed, and the target buoys are erased faster than the falling of dominoes in a domino track. The final target buoy, because of the rocking of the waves, is at a hard angle for Phoenix to shoot without making more ordinance calculations, so Phoenix points her guns at Hibiki instead.
"Hibiki! Catch!"
Hibiki glances at Phoenix, and as soon as she sees Phoenix angling her guns at her, Hibiki grabs the heavy anchor that is hanging behind her on her own belt. Normally, this anchor weighs enough to help keep her in place while out at sea, but with her newly awakened phoenix power, Hibiki hardly feels its weight. As Phoenix catapults a 6-inch shell at her, Hibiki raises her anchor with two hands and swings, crunching the shell just at the perfect angle to deflect it towards the last target, which disappears in one final explosion of leaded phoenix fire that vaporizes everything it touches - target, buoy, water, air, and all.
A distant ringing of a shrill bell from the naval station signals the end of the training course, and Hibiki, breathing laboriously but steadily from the effort, wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve as she still grips the shaft of her anchor.
"Hibikiiiiii, that was amaziiiiinnnnnggg!"
Phoenix gives Hibiki no time for rest, pummeling into her at full ramming speed to catch the destroyer in her arms. Caught totally unawares by this, Hibiki shrieks in surprise as her head smushes into Phoenix's leather-jacketed bosom, thus escaping the possibility of incurring heavy damage due to ramming. Phoenix seems to be blissfully unaware of this, however, as she proceeds straight from a big face-smothering hug with her chest to spinning the poor destroyer 'round and 'round by her hands. The white fire that is still burning on Hibiki's hands don't seem to be hurting Phoenix's hands at all, though.
"That was exactly twenty-three seconds! It's the base's record!" Phoenix cheers loudly, laughing happily. "See? I told'ja I'd turn you into a fine phoenix! Let's fuckin' go, lad!"
Hibiki tries to say something, but the constant spinning is disorienting her too much for her to speak properly, so by the time Phoenix finally stops and puts Hibiki back down on the water, Hibiki nearly capsizes onto her side from the dizziness. Phoenix helps her upright and sails back with her to the pier, where Hibiki's fellow class destroyers jump off the pier onto the water to go greet Hibiki and congratulate her.
"That was so cool, Hibiki-chan!" Ikazuchi bursts out, squeezing Hibiki in her own arms too. "All that training you did with Phoenix-san paid off!"
"Y-You even got the base record! Commander said so!" Inazuma also adds. "You did really well, Hibiki-chan!"
"It's only proper for a lady like me to congratulate her younger sister," Akatsuki says, approaching Hibiki with crossed arms but reaching out to pat Hibiki's head. "S-So it's only natural for me to do this!"
While the Sixth Destroyer Division is showering Hibiki with a flood of praise, Admiral Nishimura beckons to Phoenix to dock, so Phoenix climbs onto the pier and heads to the Admiral, her guns and flamethrower still trailing murky smoke as she walks. As usual, Yamashirou, Shigure, and Michishio, the three members of the Nishimura Fleet who still do not fully trust in their new American comrade-at-arms, closely flank their Admiral.
"Excellent work, Phoenix. I'm sure you probably already know this by now, but you just broke the record for that course," Admiral Nishimura gives Phoenix a congratulatory grin. "Very well done, both you and Hibiki."
Phoenix pops a big, victorious grin of her own and flashes the victory hand gesture. "Thanks, ya. I knew we could pull it off together." However, at the sight of the three Japanese ship girls surrounding their Admiral, Phoenix pouts a bit. "Y'all still don't like me? I mean, sheesh, I know we have our rivalries, but come on, ain't this takin' it a bit too far? Why can't we all jus' be friends, yeah?"
"Well, seeing you laughin' your butt off out there while torching those target buoys, I don't know if anyone would even want to be friends with someone like you," Michishio growls at Phoenix.
"On top of which, you Americans sure seem to love living in the present, don't you?" Yamashirou also berates Phoenix. "You always love to put the past behind you so easily without much of a second thought! I would like to remind you that this is not how things are here! We do not flippantly cast aside our pasts in pursuit of immediate niceties just so we can 'be friends'! We cannot be allies with you, much less 'friends' with you, even if we may no longer necessarily be enemies!"
The Admiral tries to stop Yamashirou mid-sentence, but Yamashirou refuses to be silenced. Phoenix, for her own part, simply sneers at Yamashirou condescendingly.
"Oh ho? Still salty 'bout how I was the one who ended up sinkin' you back then, huh?" Phoenix leers at Yamashirou with brutal verbal jabs. "Then if history's so important to you, why don't'cha come at me, gal? Think you can beat me this time 'round? Huh? C'mon, bitch, let's see it! One on one, you and me, right now! Let's go! Come at me!"
"Girls, girls! That's enough!" Admiral Nishimura, fed up with their constant bickering every time they meet, pries the ship girls apart before they can lay their hands on one another. "How many times has this been now? For God's sake, we're all part of the same fleet now, for now, anyway, so start acting like it! Every time you two talk, for the past two days, it always devolves into some kind of fight! Honestly, I don't want to have to decommission either of you on grounds of insubordination! Am I clear?"
Phoenix puckers up her lips, more bummed out at a missed opportunity for a fight than ashamed, and she disengages from the potential conflict, backing up with her hands behind her head. Yamashirou obeys her Admiral, glaring at the American ship girl with a fierce hate in her eyes.
"Phoenix-san," Shigure says quietly, gazing down at Phoenix's feet as she speaks, "while we are honored to have you here as a guest comrade, I would like to ask you to refrain from speaking such threatening words to any one of us, joking or not. I think...it is best for everyone involved."
Phoenix glances down at Shigure.
"That sounds like a challenge more 'n anythin', but whatever. Yeah, I get it already, don't fight anyone here..." Phoenix rolls her eyes casually. "But seriously, I do want a friendly fight sometime, a spar or anything. We've been doin' nothin' but training runs this whole time! Back at San Diego Port, I used to go 1v3 against Maury, Shaw, and Mahan all the time! Just training ain't gonna be enough, where's the real fightin' at? That's what I wanna know!"
"You'll receive your first assignment soon enough," Admiral Nishimura reassures Phoenix. "We're due for a fleet expedition into Abyssal waters, anyway. So just wait until then and try not to cause any fights here."
Phoenix turns on her heel, still with her hands behind her head. "Sure, sure..."
Hibiki and her ship sisters, by this time, have come ashore onto the pier, and Hibiki trots up to Phoenix. Forgetting her whole conversation with the Admiral and the other ship girls, Phoenix gives Hibiki a big smile and swoops her up in her arms.
"Ooooh, you're growin' up so fast, ain't'cha, lil' birdie?" Phoenix coos, pinching Hibiki's cheek lightly and shaking it, and instead of being annoyed as she usually becomes when someone else does it to her, Hibiki giggles in amusement as Phoenix walks back to base with the other Akatsuki-Class destroyers in tow.
Admiral Nishimura turns to Shigure, Yamashirou, and Michishio.
"Look, I know Phoenix isn't the best American ship girl we could've gotten, but it's not like I'm asking you to specifically make up for what happened during the war and be BFF's or something," he scolds. "But the least you can do is to try not to stir up any trouble. I'm looking at you specifically, Yamashirou." The battleship simply crosses her arms and looks away, refusing to listen. "It's not like Phoenix was supposed to be deployed here indefinitely; with due time she will return back to her home port. We didn't have any trouble when the British ship girls came to visit on military excursion; why can't you give Phoenix the same treatment?"
"You can't compare the British to the Americans, so don't even try," Michishio sputters angrily. "At least the British girls were nice and polite. Phoenix always acts like she's got something to prove. I can't stand her."
The Admiral just shrugs. "And so what if she does? You girls were the same way, too, when I received you all under my command. In fact, Phoenix gave Hibiki powers that we didn't even know she could have, didn't she? She gets along so well with Hibiki and the others, why can't the rest of you do the same?"
Yamashirou clicks her tongue loudly and obnoxiously. "What I want to know is how she even knew Hibiki could do something like that. None of us knew that Hibiki could manipulate fire - that's the first time anyone's heard of a Japanese ship girl being able to use physical powers outside of her conventional weaponry. I bet Phoenix and the American ship girls know something about us that we don't."
"Yamashirou-san, Phoenix has stated that the American ship girls are better built than us," Shigure reminds the battleship. "The American fleet was produced more recently, so it is possible that they carry weapons systems that we do not."
"Doesn't mean that they're stronger," Yamashirou snaps back.
"Well, we'll see with our first assignment with Phoenix," the Admiral says, turning to head back to his office. "For all this talk, you girls better not disappoint."