Yamashirou is standing in front of Admiral Nishimura on the morning of Phoenix's third day at the Yokosuka Naval Station with her hand on her face.
"Again, sir?" she asks in a bleary tone.
The Admiral sets down his communique on his desk as his secretary Shigure hands him another freshly faxed notice from the Navy Headquarters in Tokyo.
"Yep, you heard me right. Another American destroyer by the name of Johnston - the U.S.S. Johnston." The Admiral runs his hand through his black hair that reaches down to the back of his neck, a bit longer than standard military protocol, but given his rank, he can get away with minor things like hair length. "Don't sweat it, I've made sure that this next guest of ours isn't as hot-headed as Phoenix is...given your history with her..."
"Our history does not matter! What matters is why we are receiving yet another foreign ship girl in our base! Have them reconsider this, please! I was not constructed to fight with our former enemies, especially one that turned out to be the one who sank me in the last war!"
Yamashirou's admiral gives her a funny look.
"Didn't you just say that your history doesn't matter? So why does that bother you?"
"N-Never mind that, just - ugh, whatever!"
Fusou, coming into Admiral Nishimura's office with a platter of tea and Yuudachi close behind in tow with another tray of rice crackers and mizu youkan, sets her cargo down on the front of her admiral's desk.
"Oh? What is the matter, Yamashirou?" Fusou asks with a bit of concern, noticing that her ship sister appears to be somewhat agitated, which usually means that she's heard some news that she doesn't like.
"Ask the Admiral, Fusou-nee-sama!" Yamshirou snaps, but much less harshly. "He must be the one to tell you everything!"
"Well, it's not as dramatic as Yamashirou's making it sound," Nishimura grins a bit, picking up the communique that he's set down to show Fusou. "Shigure just gave me a new communique from HQ, regarding our base's acceptance of another American ship girl."
Fusou looks a bit surprised, but her demeanor demonstrates no partiality towards the matter.
"How unusual. Two guest ship girls in a space of only a few days. Who is our new guest? And how long will be she staying with us?"
"U.S.S. Johnston. She'll be staying here as long as Phoenix will, until our grand naval review for the Emperor." The Admiral looks up at the clock. "And looks like it's time for your late afternoon practice. Let's start heading out, yeah?" Nishimura, standing up, picks up a cube of grape mizu youkan and pops it in his mouth, enjoying the soft grape flavor and the silky, gelatinous texture of the Japanese dessert.
"But it's really late. When's she supposed to get here, poi? And who's gonna receive her?" Yuudachi asks, also wolfing down some youkan as Shigure wipes Yuudachi's mouth with a napkin.
Nishimura taps the side of his desk.
"I sent the Sixth Destroyer Division and Phoenix out there to go get her. Speaking of which, it's really late, I sent them out like three hours ago...why are they so late?"
"Awwww, just where the heck is she!?" Akatsuki cries, growing heavily impatient, but understandably so. She and her ship sisters of the Sixth Destroyer Division, with their recent addition of their American guest light cruiser Phoenix, have been waiting at the rendezvous point in the middle of the ocean, roughly fifty kilometers from base, for the arrival of their new guest ship girl for nearly an hour and a half when they have been told they don't need to wait for longer than half an hour. "She's late, late, late! It's rude to make a lady like me wait for so darn long! What's with this new girl, huh!?"
"It's also rude for a lady to show her impatience, Akatsuki. She will come," Hibiki advises quietly, and Akatsuki shuts up immediately, pouting to herself because she feels like Hibiki's words have just slapped her across the face.
"No, but like, real talk, where is Johnston, that bitch? She's usually super punctual 'n spartan..." Phoenix mutters, not a fan of standing around and doing nothing for an hour and a half. Her metal flame tails are swinging about in boredom, bursting into flames every once in a while to amuse themselves.
"Um, Phoenix-san..." Inazuma glides over to Phoenix, "can you tell us about...about Johnston-san? I'd like to know...a little bit more about her so that, um, when we meet her..."
"You can be friends with her right away?" Phoenix finishes Inazuma's sentence for her, much to Inazuma's chagrin.
"H-H-Haaaawawawa...I got figured out, nanodesu..." Inazuma blushes and puts her face into her hands.
"Man, Inazuma, you're just so easy to read, is all, don't worry 'bout it," Phoenix, laughing, pats Inazuma's head. "But Johnston...let's see, she's...to be honest, I don't really like her too much..."
Inazuma looks up in distress. "Aw...why don't you like her, Phoenix-san?"
"'Cause she's so strict all the time!" Phoenix pouts too, just like the destroyers. Apparently, spending three days hanging out with Hibiki and her ship sisters has caused Phoenix to pick up some of their more childish tendencies, too. "She's always protocol this, protocol that. She always hounds on everyone else whenever she sees that something's outta line. Even if the most minor and irrelevant thing in the world, she'll still call you out on it. It's so annoying...always about the rules, follow the rules, rules this, rules that..."
"But there's gotta be something good you can say about her, right?" Ikazuchi chimes in. "She's gotta have a fun side to her, right?"
"I wouldn't say she's got a 'fun' side to her, necessarily..." Phoenix twists her lips. "And if she's even got one, she's sure as hell never shown it. But I will say that she takes her work seriously. She's not the kinda person you can just...make friends with, but instead she's the kinda person you want with you in a fight. 'Cause if there's anythin' she takes more seriously than anything, it's fighting. It's all about the job, it's all about the mission. Give her a single 5-inch turret and tell her to patrol the entire Pacific Ocean, and she'll do it."
"A true comrade, then," Hibiki remarks quietly.
"Yeah...I suppose. I don't like her myself, but I've fought with her a couple times before we got transferred here. Lemme tell ya, it's a real treat. She just gets things done. I don't know how else to say it. Well, she can get too caught up in the fight, and sometimes she can get off her rocker, but for the most part..."
"So she's a lady, just like me, by the sounds of it!" Akatsuki concludes with eagerness.
"Er...we're all ladies here, aren't we...?" Phoenix looks at Akatsuki oddly.
"Uh, yeah, um, but, but, I mean, as in, ladies! You know, lady!"
Akatsuki tries to perform a curtsy, but she places her feet improperly and loses her balance, almost falling backwards onto her butt on the water, if it isn't for Phoenix grabbing Akatsuki by her turret barrel and lifting her up.
"Hey, hey, careful with that, you didn't do it right," Phoenix says. "Here, here, lemme show you."
Gaping in amazement, Akatsuki is supremely surprised when Phoenix, the last person she's expecting to know how to curtsy, curtsies expertly. Her ship sisters, too, are also taken back by the sight of someone like Phoenix curtsying.
"Wh-Where'd you learn that!?" Akatsuki cries, feeling both impressed and extremely jealous. "Teach me, teach me!"
Phoenix just chuckles a bit awkwardly, feeling slightly out of place with four destroyers looking up at her with wonder, one of which is visibly emitting sparkles from her face. "We, uh, we sortied to England once to meet the Royal Girls, Britain's ship girls, in other words, and for the sake 'a politeness, we all got taught how to do that and some other stuff..." Phoenix trails off as she turns around to look behind her.
"Phoenix-san?" Inazuma, growing worried at Phoenix's odd behavior, asks timidly. "I-Is something wrong...?"
"She's here, I think..." Phoenix mutters as her guns clink and clank with soft metallic crunches to ready a volley just in case. "...but somethin' feels off...girls, prime yer guns, might be an ambush here..."
"Hawawawa..."
Amidst Inazuma's whimpers of fright, the Sixth Destroyer Division nervously readies their weaponry, and Hibiki sets her hands on white fire as well, putting a hand on her anchor in case of a close-quarters melee fight. Phoenix peers into the distance.
"Oh, never mind, false alarm, false alarm," Phoenix grins, sighing with relief. "It's just Johnston; she's here, finally. Hey, Johnston, hurry it up, we've been waitin' all day for ya!"
A small, dark silhouette is gradually getting larger and larger as it approaches the rendezvous point. But after a few minutes, when the silhouette gets large enough, Phoenix and the destroyers can clearly see that the shadow in the distance is too big for just one ship girl. Johnston, for sure, is not alone.
"My bad...I've made you four wait a long time, didn't I? I'll make it up to you some day. Ran into a few things on my way here..." Phoenix's low voice plays in their ears via long-range transmission.
U.S.S. Johnston soon regroups with Phoenix and the Sixth Destroyer Division, who stare in mute confusion at their new guest ship girl. Five feet seven inches, or roughly 170 cm, Johnston has tanned skin, like that of a Native American, short light brown hair, and navy blue eyes. She wears an American-style sailor uniform, white shirt with a black tied collar, a short blue pleated skirt, biker spats, and black knee-high socks under her military combat boots. Her equipment gearbox, hooked onto her steel utility belt, sports two 5-inch (12.7cm) double-barrel turrets, one on each side, and two depth charge barrels jutting out to the sides as well. Her 21-inch (53cm) quintuple torpedo launchers are strapped to her upper legs, and a white dixie cup hat, adorned with a World-War II style service ribbon, sits on her hair, an eagle quill stuck over her left ear.
In her right hand is a very modernized and very bloody war hatchet. With its handle made of the same material used to manufacture military bayonet handles, the war hatchet has a serrated head made of carbon steel honed so sharply that even a whiff would split skin, engraved with Cherokee letters. All around her metal utility belt, smaller throwing tomahawks are strapped in, made of the same carbon steel and similarly produced, with only an empty space in the middle of the front of her utility belt, reserved for her war hatchet. And because Johnston wears no gloves, her hands are filled with abrasions and look leathery from using her melee weapons so frequently.
In her left hand, Johnston is dragging the limp body of a Battleship Symbiotic Hime, who is barely breathing.
"Well, damn, you get ambushed?" Phoenix asks in English, looking up and down Johnston's figure, and everywhere she sees, there's blood.
"By this one, a pack of destroyers, and a few light cruisers. They tracked my signal - they were probably out patrolling or something," Johnston replies with a hint of a Cherokee accent. "Bad timing on my part. But hey, what can you do..."
Johnston glances at the frightened destroyers, who are crowding around Phoenix because of the vicious image she's putting out.
"Ah...my bad, you girls. Things went a little bit...off," Johnston explains in fluent Japanese, the language having been pre-programmed in her main processing unit's data caches before her voyage across the Pacific Ocean. She looks back at Phoenix. "Show the way?"
"Sure...but I'm not sure how you're gonna explain yourself to the Admiral there. And for sure the other Japanese girls're gonna look at'cha real funny when we get there," Phoenix warns.
"I'm guessing they looked at you funny when you came here a few days ago?"
"Yeah, totally."
"I figured, you're a bit of a hothead."
"You're the last person I wanna hear that from, asshole! And you're still wearing that lame quill?"
"Sure, why not? It's not against regulation."
"Oh, bullshit! And why'd you bring that bitch with you all the way here? Jus' dump her already!"
"I figured the Japanese Navy would want a live prisoner from the Abyssal forces. I hear giving gifts is very important in Japanese culture."
"Who the hell gives a gift like that!?"