Mighty Eagle, Calm Nest

by xT-Zealot

With Enterprise suffering from a crisis of identity brought on by her battles with the Crimson Axis and visions of a dark reality, Belfast has chosen to take some liberties to bring Eagle Union's ace to London to try and restore her humanity that had been smothered by duty. Meanwhile, the overseers of this timeline consider its continued worth and what they can extract from it.

6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: To provide some perspective, when I first posted this chapter it was shortly after the release of the Northern Overture event.

masspao: Los capítulos que estoy publicando aquí son los que tomé de Ao3 y revisé minuciosamente con correcciones gramaticales y otras ediciones (de hecho, estoy un poco sorprendido y avergonzado por la cantidad de pequeños errores que encuentro y corrijo). Eventualmente, una vez que haya publicado todos estos capítulos corregidos aquí, actualizaré la copia de Ao3 con todos estos capítulos a la vez.

The chapters I'm posting here are those I've taken from Ao3 and went through thoroughly with grammatical corrections and other edits (I'm actually a little shocked and embarassed as to how many small errors I'm encountering and correcting). Eventually, once I've posted all these corrected chapters here, I'll update the Ao3 copy with all these chapters at once.

---

In another time…

In another world…

.

.

.

With the night sky that they fell from and the flames of war that they dove towards, the bombers were like descending wraiths. The intense firelight played across their fuselages, their forms distorting from the fluctuations of light and shadow as they came buzzing.

And what rose to oppose them were the heads of hydras, their long necks twisting towards the threats. While the dual-barreled turrets that crowned them were brought to bear, it was from their maws that fire leapt out, their jagged teeth opening and disgorging orbs of destructive power.

They cut through the night, their intensity illuminating the formation of dive bombers. One hit, catching one of the phantoms in a wing and ripping it off, transforming its dive into an uncontrollable spiral that took it out of the formation and towards the waters. Meanwhile, the other three pulled up and came on a path towards the spitting monsters. Rather than with the bombs they carried, they responded to the assault with their less brilliant but much more numerous tracers.

Prinz Eugen propelled herself to the side, the barrage that the fearsome heads of her rigging were unleashing being cut off as she sought to dodge the incoming fire. The storm of tracers filled the air where she just was, the bombers buzzing past moments later, but just as she intended to strike at their backs, their tail guns opened up on her as the planes scattered, creating separate angles of fire that had her snarling as the rounds struck and ricocheted off her armor, none penetrating. Not yet.

Using bombers as fighters, what is this?

Iron Blood's weakness had always been the absence of a significant carrier presence within their navy. Yet it was a weakness they strove to overcome through might, cunning, and metal. Their grasp of metallurgy like no other had formed the armored hulls that were second to none, granting their warships platforms most unyielding against anything but the most devastating of strikes while at the same time providing a base for the most powerful of guns that would return the favor twice as hard. That combination alone had made Iron Blood shipgirls and production models fearsome in their own right, able to weather and fight on with damage that would sink any other vessel not of their faction.

Then there were their submarines. While their enemies strove for dominance of the skies, the underwater predators obtained supremacy beneath the waves. Acting as scalpels, they would infiltrate the formations of their opposition, and with one pair of torpedoes could send them in disarray. Such precision strikes along with the surprise and terror of such unseen attackers could work by themselves or act as preparation for the hammer strike that would come with the deadly onslaught of their surface fleets.

Since the implementation of Siren technology that augmented their formidable arsenals with energy weapons, shields, and flight, they had become the formidable force that necessitated Azur Lane to confront them with their entire alliance of factions that yet remain. And still here they were, defiant.

But defiance could only last so long, and strength had to give out eventually if applied for too long.

Prinz Eugen could feel that keenly, the rounds that pitted her armor adding to the growing collection of scars that adorned her rigging. Her guns, though appearing so wicked, labored to function. As those elongated necks craned to track the bombers, she could sense every gear that had come out of alignment and squealed against each other to work, sending quakes that were loosening the bolts that held the plating together.

If only Graf Zeppelin was still around. However, she had been sunk when they had been repulsed from the Royal Isles, acting as the rear guard so that the rest of Iron Blood and Northern Parliament could perform their tactical withdrawal to live and fight in the counterattack that they knew would follow. It was these planes and their star-crested wings that had overwhelmed her, much as they threatened to do to Eugen.

It was not just her weapons that were suffering, she herself struggling to make out and select proper targets through the bright and deadly rain being fired at her, the sources twisting and spinning in the air to dizzy her. Her vision was wavering, her concentration slipping, with her not only trying to fight back but to keep herself aloft in her position in the air, refusing to cede the skies entirely to these pests.

The fighters were already firing at her unguarded rear the moment she realized the trap she was being led into.

She couldn't properly defend or counterattack. When she swung towards the assault, she did so with one serpentine gun deck coming up as a desperate shield. A relentless fifty-caliber assault assailed it, bits of armor flying from it as if it were in the process of shedding. The teeth of its jaws shattered, the hundreds of heavy bullets puncturing the gun turrets to disable them. When the fighters finished their pass, the only thing keeping it attached to Eugen's rigging were the skeletal girders of its interior structure.

Then the final part of the trap was sprung.

A weight came crashing upon Eugen from above and finally she was brought down, plummeting towards the ocean. She struck the surface, dipping into the waters before her gear's stabilizers kicked in, bringing her to a halt and then springing her back above, the compensating forces leaving her stunned.

Her assailant used the opportunity to bring a boot down to her chest, pinning her against the water and leaving her gasping as air exploded from her lungs. The jaws of her remaining gun platform attempted to turn and protect its mistress, but a second boot came down right behind the head to similarly trap it, leaving its long neck to contort in a futile effort to free itself against such impossible pressure that refused to budge.

Such strength, Eugen thought, gasping as her hands grasped but had no chance of dislodging the foot pressing so hard that the act of breathing was nearly impossible.

Gold suddenly shone in her face, blindingly so. She squinted, needing time for her vision to clear and center itself so that she could see the source of light: the sharp, fluctuating tip of an arrow that was pointed at her, the glowing lance resting against the notch of a bow.

And the golden eyes that peered down the length, as radiant and fixed to Eugen as the deadly projectile was.

"H-how…?" Eugen gasped, fighting to the last as her grip and rigging tried to save her. But even with the motivation that came upon seeing those eyes and her fate that they expressed, they could not prevent what was about to come. "This power…why do you have it?"

Unblinking, unfeeling, but full of purpose most terrible that for the last few seconds of her life, Prinz Eugen would know what it meant to look upon the face of inevitability. Even when their enemies had come, even with the knowledge of the situation, even as all that they had struggled for was being dismantled right in front of them, it would be those eyes and the words spoken to her that would make it clear as to what had come for all of them.

"This is the end," her killer quietly declared.

The foot rose from her chest and the arrow was loosed.

The breath that Eugen took in that moment was stalled when she felt it penetrate. There was the sharp stab of pain followed by a strange numbness of feeling, hearing, seeing. Time stopped, the Iron Blood woman staring at the shaft that was plunged into her chest but feeling like she was looking at it from somewhere else, out from the present, where she could tell herself that this wasn't happening. That this couldn't be happening.

Then the lance flared and she was brought back when her trapped breath was used as fuel for her screams.

White-hot agony consumed her. Flooding through every blood vessel, along every nerve, blazing anguish circulated and devoured every trace of what made up her being. Swift but thorough, Eugen felt she was being incinerated to the very cell and yet she was still screaming even as the overwhelming energy was spilling out from her eyes and mouth and even the gouges and rents in her rigging as it searched to destroy everything.

Ultimately it reached enough to come upon the source of her existence: the core that granted her sentience, humanity, and all the virtues and vices along with it. It was the cubed miracle that granted her and her kind all the choices and possibilities thereof that they were free to make and pursue exactly like their makers.

Even if those choices were to lead to her erasure, as it was that happened when the energy rushed forth to engulf and disintegrate it.

---

Prinz Eugen stopped screaming.

Enterprise removed her foot from the heavy cruiser's rigging, the savage head having been thrashing mightily to no avail, mirroring its mistress's torment until it, too, came to a dead rest. The carrier felt nothing, not during the moments before and when she made the kill, or how she was witnessing the aftermath with Eugen's head lolling limply to the side, mouth slack and eyes lifeless white landscapes, the irises and pupils gone. Air bubbles rose and popped to the water's surface around the body, the beginning signs of seawater filling her gear and what would have her sinking to her final grave.

Three left, was the sole thought that Enterprise had when she turned away from Eugen, her next targets waiting for her.

Her vision wavered and rippled, akin to seeing the world through a lens of disturbed liquid. It did extraordinary things with the light coming from the burning hulks of a nearby pair of production destroyers, the yellow and orange of the consuming fires, fed by their black oily blood, being warped to color everything with a hellish tint.

It made the nearby shipgirls stick out in what would otherwise be the dead of night, their silhouettes being wreathed in the infernal highlights, letting Enterprise see them clearly – the two that stood above the waters and the one that slunk below. How bright they were.

She would snuff them out.

Z23 had her forward gun up and pointed at her but wasn't making a move to fire. It was shaking, the small destroyer too much in shock as she stared at the sinking form of Eugen. A hand slapped her hard upon the back, getting her to yelp.

"Stand strong, малютка!" a voice bellowed. "We are in the presence of a truly dangerous foe! A joyous occasion for us to fight and improve ourselves against!"

It was the tall and imposing form of a battleship that came to challenge Enterprise, her eagerness shared in her bestial rigging, the heads – their mass and the cannons they sported twice the size of Eugen's – appearing ready to snap at the carrier if it weren't for the chains that restrained them like crude bridles.

The differences didn't end there, their dark iron skin layered with frost that lengthened into icicles on their already sharp chins. Blue otherworldly power seeped out from their maws like a dangerous, frozen mist, barely held back. Unlike the riggings of other Iron Blood warships that retained a mechanical nature with the visible bolts and screws to show how their armor was sealed together, these appeared to possess the rough hides of some sort of primal beasts that had been unearthed from the frozen north.

Or from the Siren strongholds that the Northern Parliament had been fighting against within their self-isolation. Veiling themselves in secrecy in the Bering Sea, never requesting assistance from their compatriots in Azur Lane save for the supplies that they were given to maintain their efforts of conquering their invaders. Conquering, and then pillaging and taming the spoils that they claimed.

Although one would have to question who the master was really. Gangut, the lead ship of her class, stood with pride and possessed of a fervor that had her eagerly accepting of the challenge that was before her, but behind the dirty snow of her hair, seeping from her eyes, were wisps of the same otherworldly power that filled the innards of her gear.

Beneath its influence, where a thirsty grin for battle and advancement was located, Enterprise wondered just what other sinful gains had been procured to inspire such a resemblance to a Siren within the Parliament woman.

She had already known what would happen if she encountered the battleship as soon as she heard of the chances of her bolstering this sector of Iron Blood's interior defense line. Northern Parliament had made its choice, and seeing how far one of its members had fallen just made it easier for her to know who she would sink next.

The triple-barreled guns had already rotated by then for the broadside that Gangut was setting up with her arms crossed, the image she presented being someone who expected to be entertained by a show about to be performed for her sole pleasure. If she was disappointed when Enterprise remained where she was, she didn't show it save for how her grin split her face even further right before she fired the first shot.

Though Northern Parliament ships and their guns were considered outdated, the combustion needed to launch even one seven-hundred-pound shell from the twelve-inch guns to such destructive velocity must be similarly ferocious, but what should be a roar of explosive power was muted to Enterprise's ears, and the speed of the launched projectile was just as reduced. What should've taken it but a split second to reach her instead became several, enough for her to track the rotating band of the smooth body as it made its revolutions, the pointed nose of the fuse on a direct course to impact against her where the packed charge would be triggered once it did. Enterprise witnessed the distance disappear between it and her, the shell about to touch her-

And then passing several feet to her right, her hair and coat fluttering but that was all that happened other than the water geysering harmlessly at a distance behind her.

Gangut's face fell, trying to decide whether or not it was she or her fire control system that had been deceived. Enterprise didn't wait for her to come to a conclusion, suddenly speeding straight towards her.

The carrier's approach reinvigorated the battleship, Gangut nearly laughing with excitement as she barked, "Come on, come on!" Her calls were joined by the booming of her turrets firing in succession, a steady barrage being launched with a shell dispersion that would accomplish what her accuracy had failed to do.

Z23 had recovered enough to participate, splitting from Gangut's side to provide additional support from another angle. The dual barrels of her fifteen-centimeter gun protruded out from the mouth of her rigging to target Enterprise. They aimed for a spot in the carrier's path, the Iron Blood destroyer's eye narrowing as she centered her shot with thoughts of avenging her senior – only for her to be beset with confusion and then outright shock that was shared with the frantic movements of her arm as she tried to reacquire a target that she suddenly lost and was unable to follow.

In time with each thunderous report of Gangut's guns, Enterprise's position shifted – an instantaneous albeit minor change that wasted little movement, applying only enough to have a shell flying past her, immediately followed by the other. The limits of the machinery and the flesh of an ordinary shipgirl made those movements untraceable, the carrier in one position and then managing to be in another during the breaks in between the deadly projectiles being sent her way.

Throughout the deadly dance, Enterprise's expression and her golden gaze remained fixed upon the battleship.

Gangut's evolved to the point of being deranged, her mouth exposing teeth and nearly reaching her eyes that were brimming with a maniacal zeal at Enterprise's performance.

The final barrel of her turrets spat noise and fire, leaving them spent and needing to reload.

"Not yet!" she howled.

The chains around her rigging snapped, flying free as the mouths hanging at her sides opened, the blue power in them intensifying as they swelled in time with the light at her eyes. Like mythic leviathans, the heads breathed a stream of fire and lightning at Enterprise, enveloping her and the entire area in blazing, electrifying illumination that swept left and right so as to leave the Eagle champion nothing but its calamitous embrace.

Gangut was laughing even before the onslaught died out, and it became all that anyone would hear as there was no trace of Enterprise to be found.

She was then silenced by a powerful blow to her back, her cackles cut off as she was sent forward. A moment later, with her still in mid-flight, golden arrows pierced her from behind, black and red vital fluid from her rigging and her body spurting out as the tips poked out from her front, remaining embedded in her.

Life and light quickly started to die out, Gangut staring at nothing, feeling nothing. "отлич-"

The arrows flashed and then detonated explosively, sending debris everywhere.

Something warm and wet splashed upon Enterprise's one cheek while another, more solid piece of Gangut's remains bounced against her shoulder, leaving a second morbid blemish on her skin. She didn't react, not even to wipe off what was clinging to her face, red-black trails sliding down the side of her neck. Two left.

Torpedoes streaked towards her from behind, white bubble trails revealing the general direction of where the submarine that launched them had come from but it doing no good as Enterprise was turned away from them. With one followed closely by the other, they reached and detonated beneath her feet in quick succession, columns of water blasting upwards.

Meters away, a periscope that had viewed the progress of the underwater munitions lowered. U-47 breached the surface immediately after, her shark-like rigging coming to a floating rest, refusing to be manipulated into bobbing motions by the ocean's thrashing whims so that the shipgirl could get a clear view of the results of her attack. With her scarf and its pattern of skeletal teeth wrapped around the lower half of her face, there was only the movement of her eyes and brows that signed away her feelings.

First there was the luster of assured victory that her reds possessed when they no longer saw Enterprise standing where her torpedoes had exploded. Then, the confused lowering of her brows and the turning of her head when she didn't see any sign of the carrier at all. They shot up in surprise when she 'pinged' a contact, U-47 tilting her chin up to where it was coming from.

Which, finally, led her to the wide-eyed horror that she experienced when she found Enterprise hovering high above her, unharmed, and fixing her with the golden pinpoints that might as well belong to spotlights with how dangerously visible the submarine was beneath their light.

U-47 flung herself upon her rigging, frantically grabbing the handlebars and forcing it into a desperate crash dive. Submerging and the safety that the escape would provide was all that mattered, so she didn't see how Enterprise was already drawing the string of her bow, an arrow being conjured and directed towards the fleeing submarine.

Nor did she see Enterprise wait to fire, leaving the little submarine with a belief that she had attained refuge when she plunged into the depths.

Then Enterprise released her arrow.

The single lance split during its downward trajectory, one turning into four. U-47 was no longer visible, but what Enterprise could see was the lively aura that let her make out her position. When the arrows dove after her, they did so with perfect coverage, taking all four cardinal points around her at the perfect depth to cut off the escape she thought she had. And then they exploded.

The combined detonations exceeded the power of any torpedo or depth charge, the hydraulic shock and the pressure waves that were the result sweeping over where Enterprise knew the submarine to be. She couldn't see in detail but made out enough when the outline of U-47 tumbled and was torn apart, her aura splitting into pieces and its brightness quenched by the waters she had believed to have been saved by.

Enterprise lowered her bow. One.

Z23 had since fallen to her knees, the violent upheaval of seawater that signaled another of her comrades becoming a victim to this slaughter too much for her to take. She knelt there, shaking, eyes brimming with tears.

Enterprise slowly rotated towards her.

The young destroyer detected the pure intensity that became locked onto her, her small body being gripped with such terror of the end that she had witnessed delivered so quickly, with such viciousness, to so many of her allies in such a short amount of time and was now turning towards her. Though it left her stricken, it also commanded a powerful persuasion that had her unwillingly turning to look at it face-to-face.

What she saw, empty of mercy, and her death that was viewed with cold certainty, broke her. Tears spilled down her paling cheeks, her head slowly shaking, her begging, "Nein…"

Enterprise stared, all that Z23 got being a buzzing of returning planes.

Z23's eyes went wide, the last plea rejected and hearing for herself how her life was about to come to an end. The terror, however, transformed from an immobilizing force to a driving one. She couldn't fight, but she didn't want to surrender either.

As true to her humanity as she ever could be, all she wanted was to live!

"Nein!" Tears flinging from her chin, Z23 scrambled to her feet and fled as fast as she could. "Nein!"

Two Wildcats and one Dauntless flew past Enterprise, giving chase.

Panic fire met the aircraft, but it was useless, the destroyer's vision too blurred, her aim too frantic, her priority only to run. The planes remained steady, gaining on her, until the lead fighter was able to fire, a string of bullets tearing a path through the water that steadily caught up to her.

Z23 still had a mind to evade, turning to port to avoid the stream of fire – which put her right in line with the strafing run of the second fighter.

She cried out in terrified pain as the rounds thudded against her rigging, her one arm reflexively covering the back of her head and using the armor of her main gun to protect it, knocking off her cap in the process. The force of the tiny collisions and her own panic had her tripping and falling, water splashing as she rolled uncontrollably and came to a halt.

The Wildcats broke away, leaving behind the Dauntless that came down on her with its bomb-laden wings.

Z23 curled into a ball as the payload was released, her wail being cut off when the munitions blew up.

Enterprise's unfeeling gaze persisted, the destroyer's demise empty of any kind of impact as the tower of water rose and fell, her mask unbroken. That was until emotion did break through; a crack of surprise forming when the blast dispersed and she saw two figures, one cradling the other, clearing the area.

Another enemy? Frowning, she flew towards them.

The new arrival wasn't making a move to retreat or attack, instead coming to a stop and waiting for Enterprise. It didn't sway her, the carrier approaching with the predominant thought that the unknown shipgirl was an enemy and one who she would sink no matter who she turned out to be.

But that had been with the prediction that she would be with Iron Blood or Northern Parliament. Getting neither left Enterprise to instead land and blankly stare ahead as she saw for herself the sight that awaited her.

Seeing Enterprise, Z23 emitted a pathetic cry and threw her arms tight around the neck of her rescuer who had scooped her up from the grasp of death at the last second, burrowing her face into her shoulder as she shook with muffled weeping. In response, a hand rubbed her back.

"Shhh…" her savior gently hushed, resting the side of her head against the destroyer's. "It's all right. On my honor, I won't let anything happen to you."

The promise and the scene in front of her made no sense to Enterprise and her vision began clearing, the menacing gold of her eyes receding to their lavenders so that she could be sure about what was going on.

Cradling Z23 was a much taller cruiser, her rigging consisting of four triple-barreled six-inch guns as the main armaments with six torpedo tubes mounted below. She was not an enemy – not to Enterprise, but should be to the Iron Blood destroyer she was holding. Much like how the Sakura Empire had been the main enemy of Eagle Union, there was one faction within Azur Lane that had primarily battled Iron Blood and suffered much at their hands: the Royal Navy.

There was no mistaking her allegiance, her bodice, lengthy skirt, and collection of frills as white as her hair belonging to none other than a member of the Maid Corps, the odd chained collar around her neck a symbol of her servitude.

"That destroyer is an enemy," Enterprise said, feeling like she needed to remind this maid of that fact.

To her continued incredulity, the cruiser partially turned in a way that put her between Z23 and Enterprise. "One who cannot fight anymore," she replied, the soft and comforting treatment she had been giving to one sharpening as she addressed the other.

Enterprise took a step forward. "She's still functional."

Z23 peeked from where she was hiding, showcasing her unrelenting fright.

"She's still alive, you mean." The maid curled an arm around the smaller shipgirl, the metal that encased her forearm a shield she was donating to her.

"She's still a threat."

Her eyes widened. "How can you say that? She's surrendered!"

Z23 nodded fervently to confirm, tucking back against her.

Enterprise thought of the shipgirls of the Sakura Empire and how many of them had surrendered. She took another step forward. "Even if she does, I don't accept it."

The cruiser tensed, her skirt almost hiding how one leg was sliding back defensively. "Then she is in my custody now."

Enterprise stared silently at the assertion that was being made. Her foot rose to take another step.

The maid loosened her arm from Z23, just enough to show the shells that were clenched between tight fingers like throwing knives. "Upon my authority as head of the Maid Corps, I declare this Iron Blood girl to be within my custody. The Royal Family and no other may challenge that." Her face hardened into a glare. "Including you."

Enterprise had halted in mid-step, her dispassionate lavenders meeting with the threatening blues of the maid.

Is she an enemy now?

Her boot fell back down without crossing the intended distance. "This sector had been assigned to me. I did not request assistance."

The shells that the maid had presented flipped around, vanishing within her palm while she became stuck on a point at Enterprise's cheek. "Yes, you did quite fine without them."

It hadn't been meant as a compliment, but Enterprise ignored it. "Then why are you here?"

"To save whoever I could." The cruiser looked past Enterprise, searching for something but coming away with nothing – only the thick smoke of the dying fires that were expending the last of the spilled fuel and flotsam. Her hand touched the back of Z23's head. "Even if it was just one."

Her objective served to confuse Enterprise, making the carrier wonder if she really had forgotten who her enemies were supposed to be. "There were only Iron Blood and Northern Parliament vessels here. There was no one to save – just another battle with enemies to sink."

The maid returned to her. "This was no battle," she spoke, the description that Enterprise had used an affront to her.

The Eagle girl didn't see how it wasn't, her next statement describing the typical results of one. "The enemies have been defeated and an opening to the main objective has been cleared." Her feet glided back in reverse. "I will now go pursue the main objective."

"Mai-? Miss, wait!"

Enterprise ignored her, turning around and heading out to pass through the gap that she had created in the Iron Blood defense. In the distance, there was the line of a coast and, upon it, her destination. She centered on it, on the silhouette that was reaching to the blackened heavens, and what she saw as where she would need to administer the blow that would bring an end to Iron Blood.

"You need to wait!"

Enterprise looked to her starboard, finding the maid gliding through the waters alongside her. Z23 remained in her arms, the destroyer not wishing to be here – not near Enterprise – but too afraid to say anything, choosing to remain entrusting herself to the Royal Navy cruiser.

"I said I don't need assistance," Enterprise said.

"The forward defense line is showing signs of faltering. We are trying to raise Iron Blood's High Command. They must see that this is a lost cause by now."

"The Crimson Axis's cause had always been that," Enterprise returned bluntly. "It hasn't stopped them before, and while time is used to talk, more of our comrades will perish. I'm putting an end to this."

"It's not just our own we should be trying to save," the maid insisted. "Eagle Union, Royal Navy, Iron Blood, Northern Parliament – each and every single life should be cherished. Too many have been wasted in this war already."

The flesh around Enterprise's eyes tightened. "The one that Iron Blood and Sakura Empire started, and what Northern Parliament is extending through their participation. The ones who've been wasting lives are them."

"So you'll condemn them all? There's no elegance in that."

"There is no elegance in war."

The maid put on a burst of speed, one that sent a wave splashing in her wake, getting Enterprise to slow before bringing her to a complete and sudden halt when she found her path blocked, both by the cruiser and the look she possessed.

"No," she said quietly with utmost severity. "War without elegance isn't war. What it becomes is exactly what you nearly did."

Enterprise was at a momentary loss, unable to think of how to handle this oddity of a shipgirl who was barring her path. The course of action that had become instinctive to her at this point – fight and sink – were suggested but she deemed them as invalid, leaving her with…nothing.

Which gave time for the maid to get suspicious. "What do you even mean by your main objective?"

Enterprise had been aware that she may've said too much but had cared little. It was only with the cruiser directly asking her that she chose to maintain her silence rather than answer. She started to drift to the side, intending to move around the cruiser and continue.

Enterprise had her orders, and she would follow them.

Her avenue was blocked yet again when the Royal Navy girl altered her position to match her.

"This sector wasn't even planned to be assaulted yet," the shipgirl said – half to Enterprise and half to herself. "The main flotilla and supporting elements are still engaged in pacifying the outer ring, which is why it was strange when we detected signs of a battle going on back here. Wales wanted me to infiltrate and investigate, so she couldn't have known anything but what you're saying…"

Enterprise still wasn't saying anything and was left looking at the maid when she swiveled around to peer at where she had been going. Seconds had ticked by when there came a gasp, the signal that she had figured out what was going on, and a quiet, horrifying deduction that dawned on her face became centered on Enterprise as she searched the carrier's for confirmation or, better yet, denial of what she was thinking.

Enterprise impassively stared back, but that was apparently more than enough.

"An assassination…" the maid whispered, aghast. "That's what this is, isn't it? That's why you of all people are here."

She clearly knew, so Enterprise didn't see a reason to further corroborate on it. "The Royal Navy had tried to sink her twice," she instead pointed out against her incredulity.

The cruiser shook her head. "No…no, no…not like this. Sinking was an option, one that she chose and we granted her. And what happened with Tirpitz…"

Z23 was quietly listening but hadn't understood what was being discussed. Upon hearing 'Tirpitz', her eyes went wide as saucers, so great was her realization that she forgot about her fear of Enterprise when she turned them on her.

"Her Majesty would never condone this," the cruiser muttered. She still had her gaze on Enterprise, but she sounded more like she was giving voice to her own thoughts that were trying to make sense of the situation. "Did Washington…? No, I can't see her liking this at all." She tightened with accusation. "This came directly from your headquarters in Eagle Union, didn't it?"

Enterprise wasn't going to answer, having a partial mind to keep some measure of confidentiality. This included not straightening out the details of how it had been the Admiralty of the Royal Navy that had presented the proposition and what Eagle Union had accepted.

She did, however, repeat what had been agreed on by both parties. "She's a threat that needs to be destroyed."

"And you're going to do it? Alone? It had taken nearly the entire Royal Navy to corner and sink her, and she came back."

"I'm the only one who can," Enterprise stated, leaving it at that. Another line that had been given to her along with her assignment.

The maid's brows knitted together, trying to think of what to say. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Especially with that power of yours."

That proved to break through Enterprise's blank countenance, a measure of puzzlement coming to her. "You want me to disobey an order?" One that only she could carry out?

"What I want," the maid stressed, "is for you to consider what is being asked of you. What you're being told to do…its wrong. We cannot just destroy indiscriminately. We are humanity's will given form, and with that is a great responsibility of how we fight for humankind in their place. To be so careless in that will not only disgrace ourselves but also lead them and this world we live for into decadence."

The maid's words were…strange to her. They didn't make sense but there was something familiar about them.

"There are enemies…that need to be sunk," Enterprise tried again, lost on what else she should say. Lost on what else she should be doing.

The tight lines of the maid's features loosened, gaze flicking along the carrier's flat countenance. It dropped, the maid becoming distracted with a search through a pocket of her skirt.

Enterprise wasn't expecting the warmth of sympathy that she saw when it returned, or the handkerchief that came to her cheek.

"I know of you, Miss Enterprise," the maid stated, care in her words and in the task of cleaning her face. "From having seen you myself and what my subordinates in the Pacific Fleet have reported."

"Your subordinates…?" Royal Navy Pacific Fleet…Maid Corps… The connection lagged in being made, as did the reminder of the casualties, distracted as she was by the soft touch. "…I'm sorry."

The apology was as stalled, and when Enterprise verbalized it, it came off as clumsy to her. Nearly automatic, without meaning, but there was a fragment of effort that tried to come through to give the honesty that the carrier could barely feel. A remnant of what had once been but no longer.

The maid gave off the distinct impression that she was able to see it, no matter how miniscule, with how closely she peered at Enterprise. "Yes," she quietly said. "You are."

Her response and the belief behind it touched that remnant and inspired a sense of…nostalgia? Wistfulness? A remembrance that did not get far by the time it encountered the frayed ends, leaving it bereft of what it was trying to recall. It did get Enterprise to remain where she was, the embroidered cloth of the handkerchief finishing her cheek and going down to her neck and shoulder.

"It is not a unique tale," the cruiser added. "Not to me, nor to you. There isn't anyone who hasn't lost something important to them. Such is the world we are living in and our place in it. But even as the things we love are destroyed, preserving what life we can still save will become an antidote to cure it."

The handkerchief, a filthy rag of congealed blood and oil, pulled away, leaving Enterprise clean.

"What you're doing right now is no antidote," she asserted. "It's poison. Letting it circulate any further will not only destroy you but anything you touch. This can't be what you were meant for or what you want."

The maid was pulling at those severed ends, Enterprise again perceiving how something that had sunk into the deep was trying to be drawn to the surface.

But it was a futile endeavor, the connection having since split, and what had been detached having sunk too far, where darkness and the crushing pressure of the depths would keep it forever gone.

"What I want is for this conflict to end," Enterprise replied.

The maid shook her head. "It won't end the way you think it will. If you are even thinking about it at all."

What Enterprise was thinking of was the rest of the assault going on. Standing here with this maid, she could make out the distant blasts of shells being fired. Explosions igniting. At the end of each line of the song being played, who knew which other shipgirl was being injured or sunk.

Enterprise moved off to the side. "I have to go."

"Wait. Please."

What was it that the maid was seeing that was causing her to make such a face that the carrier witnessed when she slid back into her path? The kind one made when viewing something terrible that was about to occur, with a desperate need to prevent it?

It was a look that Enterprise couldn't understand. She would go, she would fight, and she would complete her objective. There was absolutely nothing for this cruiser to be afraid of for her.

"There won't be anything for you to salvage if you go through with this," the maid nonetheless pleaded.

What Enterprise was able to relate better to was the Iron Blood destroyer who she was protecting. Her face was still frightened, so stained with tears, but now there was something else breeding when Enterprise chanced to glance at her. Beneath them was the festering progress of anger and hatred.

Enterprise soaked it in as she had done with the others with no reaction, like how that handkerchief had been soiled with the mess that had been made.

And like both, they would be discarded once their jobs were done, with neither having any qualms about it when they took all that was unclean with them.

"No, there won't," Enterprise agreed. Putting acceleration to full, she sailed around the maid and took off.

"Miss Enterprise!"

The carrier ignored the call of the nameless maid, leaving her behind as she sailed unerringly ahead.

Her name was something that she would never know, even when they would later meet again, in these war-stricken waters.

---

The upswell of towers and massive edifices, linked together by solid walls, was the ultimate monument to the impervious will and dominance of Iron Blood. The citadel stood imperiously upon the bank, the reach of its peaks as long as its shadow, disclosing to anyone who had to crane their heads to get the full scope of it and still come up short of how the lengths of its ambition was not restricted to the worldly limits and the challenges thereof as attested by the winding rows of the docks and the flanking submarine pens.

Nothing incited those aspirations more than the Sirens. When the seas were ripped from the grasp of humanity, as empires were reduced or erased, and populations were either starved or annihilated, one dynasty would remain standing against what could only be described as the wrath of gods.

Against the foreign beings that wielded such manipulations over time and space, they endured. Against their countless numbers and the fire and brimstone of their arsenals, they survived. Against the downfall of civilizations that came with the advances of these alien foes, they lived.

Thus came the notion that they were chosen. Through great sacrifices that awashed the continents in blood, through the tempered strength of perseverance, and the iron hands exerted to keep the mobs from falling into self-destructing frenzies, those who remained had become worthy, and it was their fortitude that would give the defined shape of their champions who would become a match against the very harbingers of the apocalypse.

Such was how Iron Blood was born, worthy of not just survival but contestation of the world that they had nearly been swept clean of, theirs by right.

Soon, however, came a different manner of foes: allies who were at first believed to be fellow chosen and those who Iron Blood fought alongside with, only for those same allies to reveal their true colors when the faction exerted their rightful authority. When the banners of iron crosses and their crimson lines were raised over the lands that had fallen into anarchy, those comrades called foul and ordered them removed. The efforts that Iron Blood had taken in the annexation of those territories and the disciplining of its populations were viewed as tyrannical crimes that they alone were guilty of, with reparations needed to be made. The strength that they had tirelessly forged into being was considered as a threat to a balance of power that those others had established, any objections to the limitations imposed nothing more than warmongering.

And the technology that they had claimed from the defeated Sirens were deemed as forbidden arts, their delving of it sinful.

So it was that Iron Blood found new challenges to its existence in the form of deception woven within those 'peaceful' debates. Such trickery, its leaders and populace understood, was in fact a new form of warfare that was being used to undermine their position of power and place them in humiliating subjugation to this 'alliance'.

Rather than let themselves be led on this new route full of treachery, they had chosen to bring everyone out in the open in an honest war where intentions would be made plain and a final contest for the world would be won with the unrestricted power, cunning, and technology that would unveil which path mankind should take and who would lead them on it.

Enterprise being at Iron Blood's doorstep was a testimony to how the faction was on its way to ceding its privilege to that destiny according to its own rules.

She leapt out from the oceans, leaving the distant thunder of the fleet engagements behind for the quiet and ominous docks that she set foot on. They were empty now, every last bit of Iron Blood might either having been expended or was about to be. Even then the bastion remained imposing. No matter if it lost every single one of its warriors, the walls alone stood as if to last for an eternity.

Or for however long it could withstand a siege from the combined guns of Azur Lane's fleets, if it ended up coming to that.

A screech came from above as Enterprise was beginning to make her crossing. She raised her head for a moment, unafraid as she knew who it was, before lifting her arm to create the perch for the descending talons to seize.

The feathered form of Grim was no longer as smooth or clean as it once was. Ash and smoke had dyed the dark brown coat to a more permanent black, with individual feathers ruffled haphazardly, giving a semi-image of him in the process of molting but the worn, dirty plumage was not being renewed. The white of his head and tail had been grayed, while the yellow keratin of his beak and talons had been coated with a slick red-black stain that was awfully reminiscent to the one that had been upon Enterprise's face earlier.

He shimmied further up his mistress's arm, gaining a position where he could better witness the latest phase of this conflict that would be coming to an end. With the eagle at her shoulder, Enterprise ventured forth.

A wide staircase awaited her at the end and what she ascended with little effort, the clearing of the final step bringing her to a castle-like iron door, a visible split showing where it should separate and let the carrier in if it had been inclined to do so. Since it wasn't, and she not seeing any kind of access panel to signal her want for entry, Enterprise brought her bow in front of her, bruised fingers curling around the string in preparation to break in.

Gears groaned loudly, followed by the metal creaking as the wide doors slid apart.

Grim dipped and spread his wings in a threatening posture, stained beak parting and hissing. Enterprise had already pulled back the bowstring, an arrow morphing from her power and one that she aimed straight ahead.

The submarine who had been behind the door was already dwarfed by the cavernous entryway, and Enterprise's own height and rigging made her presence even more insignificant as she was without hers. Her attire – scant as it was with submarines, nothing less than a swimsuit and short jacket – made it clear that she was without weapons. Being unarmed did not influence lenience in how Enterprise addressed her or mercy behind what she planned to do next.

What encouraged a peculiarity that had Enterprise staying her hand was when the submarine crossed an arm over her child's chest and bowed her head, the light blue of twin tails coming to hang at either side of her face. A moment later she lifted it back up, revealing the pink eyes that bravely strived to maintain contact with Enterprise's even as her tiny form shook with the barest of not-quite-restrained tremors of fear.

To her credit, her voice was steady albeit lacking in volume. "My lord is expecting you. I will take you to her."

Her courage was tested further when the arrow remained pointed at a spot right between her eyes. It staying there had her arm pressing tighter against her chest, fear encroaching on her features but what she tried to prevail over by raising her stance higher and straighter even as the shakes became more violent as a result. Her eyes closed in expectation of what would come, and her fingers wrapped around a medal hanging from her neck: an iron cross with oak leaves. With its comforting weight and her shaking but enduring persistence, she did not move from her spot.

The arrow dispersed as Enterprise returned the string to rest. She passed on a signal to Grim who similarly relaxed and bleated something.

The submarine opened one eye, soon followed by the other. The threat to her life being removed had her sagging with such relief that she almost folded in on herself. Remembering her place, she restraightened and, with a rotation that was more sloppy than sharp, marched forward with heels that stomped rather than clicked on the granite flooring. The echoes resounded far within the empty hall and were soon joined by Enterprise's footfalls when she followed.

Sparing the Iron Blood vessel proved to be the wise decision, she becoming a navigator through a tangle of corridors that Enterprise would've been lost in. The wide and colorless halls did little to provide a sense of direction, the carrier herself having little in a way of awareness as to how far they were going in the citadel or if they were really climbing up to what she assumed to be its heart. Occasionally, she and her guide would pass alcoves that housed artwork that illustrated the perceived might of Iron Blood: military parades of uniformed soldiers or shipgirls and examples of their technological prototypes that could shape the future such as their flying bombs or their other takes on the jet propulsion of the Sirens.

With the images of the proud shipgirls in particular, Enterprise thought of what this citadel must've been like with their presences here. The perfectly synchronized stomping of boot heels, the clamor of chants and mantras, and the cheers of anticipated victories and conquests that would ring out and be amplified within these halls, making them rich and powerful to match their delusions of grandeur.

But that was all it was in the end; deluded ideals that had transformed this citadel into a mausoleum with how quiet and dead it was with the pair of shipgirls who traversed through it.

The blue-haired submarine did her best when they approached another set of double doors that were not as immense or solid as the entrance gates. She placed her tiny hands upon them, and her body thrust itself against them, intending to fling them open in a grandiose fashion. Instead, she managed to achieve a parting that amounted to a miniscule incision of open space before they paused. She grunted cutely with exertion, chubby cheeks tightening until, eventually, the doors parted. After a couple gasps of breath and a swipe of the sweat at her brow, she led Enterprise through the open portal.

What was on the other side was a grand throne room.

If not for the huge pillars that flanked either side of the pathway that went straight from the door to the other side, the idea could be entertained of how a full-sized battleship may very well be able to fit in it, given how wide and long the room was. Instead, with the banners that adorned each one of those pillars and the empty spaces both between and around them, the imagination would have to be downgraded to an indoor marshaling ground. Like the rest of the citadel, Enterprise had to fill in what led up to the present emptiness: the shipgirls who had consolidated here, under the flags of their fatherland and to the sight of the observing subjects who labored so arduously on their construction.

By that and the command of their lord would they about-face and advance through the doors that Enterprise had entered through, mobilizing out into the world to bring it to heel.

What they found instead was their own destruction, leaving behind that mad lord who had guided them to such ruination alone on her throne, elevated high on the platform where she was able to best deliver such insane rhetoric that revolted against basic sanity but had enslaved them all anyway.

Despite all that, the submarine remained under her thrall, evidenced by how she knelt so readily in her presence, bowing her head. Next to her, Enterprise glared upwards.

For all the tales that surrounded her, she looked almost dead. She was sagging to one side within her throne, body nearly ready to tip and fall over if not for her chin resting precariously on a supportive palm, on the verge of slipping or the support of the limb giving out. The standard she possessed was as gravely tilted, the red, white, and black flag limp and unmoving. The pole was grasped in a hand just as weak, its own weight about to pry itself free from the digits that held it.

The shipgirl's rigging mirrored her half-dead state. Upon either arm of the throne, the fearsome heads rested, iron jaws slack with gaps of missing teeth. The barrels of her guns were low in that same rest.

Of her face, Enterprise couldn't make out, her features shrouded in darkness beneath her black officer's cap. Something did stir, the barest of shifts being made as her chin tilted to address the visitors, her palm steadying with what little it had left.

"U-556…" It was the design of the chamber that let her weak call drift down towards them.

The submarine dipped her chin further. "My lord."

She did not immediately follow up her call, and with how still she was Enterprise wondered if it had been her dying breath. Then, movement in the form of the hand she leaned on removing itself from beneath her chin so that it could extend towards the tiny figure, fingers stretching beneath the shredded white of the glove they were sheathed in. Her head remained canted, but it did not fall.

"My Parzival…" she breathed. "So loyally, so faithfully have you served me… True to the oath you had sworn to me…I live solely due to your efforts…and rewarded you as appropriately…as I could…"

U-556 nodded, her clutching of the medal hanging from her neck empowered by the frail praise. "You have, my lord!"

"I will hereby…issue a new decree… A new…oath…solely to you do I…entrust…"

The submarine jolted up, confusion swimming across her face but more than inclined to accept, whatever it may be. "Anything."

"I want you…to live…"

There was no reining in the girl's bewilderment this time. "My lord?"

"No matter what may come this night…you are to live... Become my living legacy...and the blood and iron that had made us… Warriors come and go…but witnesses are needed…to enshrine their stories…such is the name I have given you… Do you accept…my most honored knight…?"

Having been geared to accept anything that would be asked of her, even an order that would've asked the opposite of what was being placed on her now, the submarine visibly faltered, mouth hanging as she stared up at her liege, knowing of the implications that were linked to the request.

"It is…most demanding…" came the feeble understanding. "And…most cruel… Even I…who had lost a sister…cannot truly comprehend…the loss of yours…"

The bowing of U-556's head was not out of respect, but a deep sorrow that was transmitted by shaking shoulders.

"My little submarine…that is what makes you…worthy…like no other… Least of all…me… Our doctrine…forged with blooded iron…shall be borne in your hands…similarly shaped…"

The Iron Blood submarine was silent.

"If you desire it…you may go…to your sister… There will be no blame…from me…from anyone… No…shame…"

With a trembling lip, U-556 shook her head. "No. I accept…Lord Bismarck."

The hand that the throned shipgirl had kept outstretched fell into her lap. "Whether it be over sea or land…gallop free…my Parzival… I am certain…that your tales will be most…wondrous…"

Recognizing the dismissal and the finality of it, the submarine elevated to her feet. She did not voice anything else, merely accomplishing one last bow before spinning to make her leave. Enterprise visually tracked her when the diminutive girl passed her, seeing how the submarine was still clutching the cross and its oak leaves in a shaking grip. She was not as concerned with the carrier seeing what she was hiding from Bismarck: the tears that were now dripping from her chin and what she wiped at, achieving little when the twin streams kept flowing, unabated.

Enterprise refaced her target and made a short shrug with one shoulder. Taking the hint, Grim took off, flapping his disheveled wings that sent him to the shadows of the high ceiling of the throne room. A pair of dirty feathers were left behind when he disappeared, floating down and coming to a rest on the floor at the same time U-556 sealed the double doors behind her.

With their respective legacies having taken their leave, the two champions of opposing factions were left to confront each other.

"This all started with you," Enterprise finally spoke. "It's going to end with you."

Bismarck did not move or speak, reestablishing the possibility that she had finally passed on with her immortality assured. But that canted head tilted to imperfect straightness and leaned forward. "Will it...now...?"

Beneath a great weight, Bismarck fought to rise. Her support – part standard, part staff, part weapon, and now part cane – trembled but stayed upright so as to bring her to the same. The heavy stooping of her form was the best she was going to get, and with a very tentative step she began descending down the platform. The heads and turrets of her rigging slid from the arms of the throne, sagging behind her, but she was impossibly unaffected.

A bolt came free and clinked down, clearing the steps in seconds while Bismarck was still trying to conquer the next one.

"Even after my sinking had been so…overly embellished…it did not end…did it?"

Enterprise frowned. It was the first time ever that she was seeing Bismarck in person, the distance between the northern Atlantic and the Pacific having made a crossing of paths unlikely and, after the events that took place in the Denmark Strait, should've made it impossible.

Even so, to her, Bismarck was the one responsible for leading the world to this point.

It was their human superiors and their governments that ultimately decided when and where war was to be conducted, but with shipgirls being the extensions of their beliefs and their voices that were carried to the seas that they could no longer venture, Bismarck had exceeded that role with the most passion. Here from this palace, she incited her comrades with such fervor which she then directed personally in her sorties.

When she sank after striking a devastating blow against the Royal Navy, she became a martyr.

When she came back from the dead, she became something even worse.

With her elevated position as some kind of icon and being a shipgirl – the central focus of this conflict between the benefits and dangers of Siren technology -, Enterprise could only guess as to how far the repercussions of the cult of personality surrounding her went with her renewed ravings. There was no doubt in her mind as to how the other factions must've seen it: the puppet government that had been left behind in the Vichya Dominion, Sardegna that wanted an empire in more than just name, Northern Parliament that had its treasure troves of Siren tech…

…And the Sakura Empire with its wretched faith that the very last member had taken with them to the abyss.

The remnants of what had once been part of Enterprise were fomented by what should be making this meeting more personal. Yorktown, Hammann, Hornet…them and every other Eagle Union shipgirl who were sunk afterwards by the fanaticized Sakura ships.

"This time," she said with a scarcity of the animosity that should be directed to the face of the prime instigator, "you won't be coming back, and Iron Blood will fall with you."

"Just as the hounds…of the Royal Navy believed…? So eager…they had been…to reacquire my trail…that they led themselves…to my sister instead…"

Enterprise had been informed of that much. The Royal Navy's desire to remove the shame of not only their loss in the Denmark Strait but their failure in their vengeance of the sinking of Hood had made Bismarck such a high value target. When they had caught wind of a battleship sailing to the Iron Blood home port under escort, they intercepted it with a force that rivaled the hunting party that first sunk Bismarck.

Who they found instead was Tirpitz, thought to have been remaining moored up north in Norway to assault the arctic convoys between Royal Navy and Northern Parliament. Theories abound as to what her reassignment meant and, ironically, one of the likely ones was that she may've been planned to conduct operations in Bismarck's name. Suffice to say, Iron Blood propaganda didn't waste time in spinning her sinking to add to the growing myth of Bismarck, substantial as it was already becoming.

With hindsight in play, Tirpitz's reassignment may've also been a sign of other things to come, such as Iron Blood's relationship to the Northern Parliament.

Bismarck's grueling descent came to an end. The purpose of her standard switched from assisting in the completion of a journey to raising her higher, something it did just enough so that the iron bird embedded in her black cap could be at an even standing with the one centered on Enterprise's white one.

But even with her attempts to bring herself to Enterprise's level, the carrier still couldn't make out her face. That had less to do with any lingering shadows than it did with the messy tangles of hair that hung in front of the battleship. A few of the lengths were the healthy yellow of wheat, but the rest had withered, leading to streaks of aging gray on the ageless shipgirl.

Somewhere between them, there was the glint of metal to the left side of Bismarck's shrouded features.

Tattered as it was, her heavy cape concealed much as well, but the tears that Enterprise could see on the sleeves of her uniform exposed raised and braided flesh of scars that crisscrossed on one forearm. The skin of her thigh beneath her torn skirt and leggings had become a collective of severe burns.

"But here you are now…oh specter of war…" The bottom of her standard dragged against the ground as she brought it outwards, her one arm lifting out to the other side and extending fingers that were unusually gnarled and shaking. "From the smoke and ashes…of your brethren…have you come… To the Pacific where you reaped such vengeance…and then further to the east…where you took your haunts to the island strongholds…of the Sakura Empire…"

Strength appeared to be returning to the impaired battleship. As she spoke, the volume of her voice rose with increasing decibels, the vibrations coursing through her depleted state curbing. The breaths she needed for the act of speaking became less so.

"Across the Indian to the Atlantic did your journey next take you… Our azure lanes do you dye in crimson…and the sandy bottoms do you bury in iron… Yes, here you are…"

Straightening out her body and her arms, Bismarck did appear to be ready to embrace Enterprise when she said, "And I, for one, welcome you… Our Grey Ghost… Our savior…"

Enterprise did not walk into it, stoically staring at Bismarck with little emotion or action. "I am not here to save you."

"Oh, but you are…"

"I am here to kill you."

"Yes…!" came the sharp exhale. "Yes…of course you are...!" Though she remained leaning against her standard, the extension of her chest was of plain expectation. "So the maestros of this great drama desire…! Go ahead, Enterprise… Reach in, rip out my core…and hold it right in front of my eyes when you crush it…! With your own hands…bring forth the climax of this act...and let the next one begin…! All that we have sacrificed for…let me bear witness to the final workings to our world's legacy…!"

She's deranged. All the more reason for Enterprise to put an arrow through that chest and be done with it. The act came to mind, and her arm tensed with the idea of going through with it, but she hesitated.

It would not be…satisfying.

A curious thought to have with how Enterprise had given little else to the numerous others she had destroyed. Whether they were fighting with all they had or desperately fleeing, she had cut them down with no mercy. Enemies all, and ones who naturally had to be sunk whenever she came across them. She had lost count of those she sent to the bottom around the same time she stopped caring about how she was performing such a thing.

They had all been a means to an end, and the end was standing right in front of her. She was aware that it wouldn't technically be over, such as there now being Northern Parliament that would have to be defeated when she was through here, but, to her, Bismarck was the final nail in the coffin to the original ideals and instigations of what had become the Crimson Axis.

The start of this worldwide madness and its following escalations had indeed been due to Bismarck, and once she was gone it really would be the end. Having such closure and knowing that she was on the verge of obtaining it should be motivating Enterprise to go ahead and be done with it. All the deaths, all the destruction, and the senselessness of it all…

Bismarck's head tilted. "Hesitation…?" Her stance became unstuck from its readiness. "This should not be… Have you not awakened…? Have you not…transcended…?"

Justification. That's what was making Enterprise hesitate. There was no sign of it, much like how Zuikaku hadn't been able to discern as to why her home port was burning around her while her sister sank beneath her. The true reason for the Sakura Empire's actions that led them to war with Azur Lane and their erasure had died with the First Carrier Division. When it had been Zuikaku's turn, she had died ignorant.

The faction as a whole, along with Iron Blood, had claimed to have rebelled for the sake of humanity. But why had they thought that? Where was that motive or thought that had driven them to such fanatical lengths?

If Enterprise killed Bismarck now, she would be killing the only means of acquiring such answers. For a carrier who considered herself to have nothing left, she wanted at least that much. She doubted it would give her peace, but she wanted…something to take with her, for when her time would eventually come.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

There was the tap of Bismarck's standard as it returned to better prop the shipgirl up, now that it had registered that she was not getting what she wanted either. Without that release, the burdens of her body and mind weighed back down on her. An intermittent, breathy hitch came from her, Enterprise barely able to translate it as a chuckle.

"When you want to fool the world…tell the truth…"

Enterprise stared at her flatly. The quote did not seem to belong to Bismarck, her tone of someone speaking from a memorization, but the carrier did not recognize it.

The next set did belong to her. "I will tell you the greatest truth of all… This world is not ours…Enterprise… Never has…never will…"

Enterprise's retort came with doubt. "This was something you told your comrades, I bet."

"I told them exactly what I will tell you now… We must ascend to become more than what humanity…what we are now…"

"With Siren technology?"

"Their technology is but part of it… I have looked upon the visages of our overseers…and quaked in their shadows as they gifted me with enlightenment…" An inkling of strength came to Bismarck's grip around her standard. "Such power they had…how insignificant we are…but what terrified me was of something beyond them…something greater…"

Similarly, a modicum of curiosity came to Enterprise. "Another threat, you mean? One greater than the Sirens?"

"An…existence greater than the Sirens… One that makes ours…insignificant doesn't cover it… Contestation against it is not even laughable… None of us have a chance…me and all of Iron Blood least of all… But you, Enterprise…you do…"

Enterprise watched her cautiously. She did not trust Bismarck, but she couldn't find it in her to ignore information that was at least relevant to their true enemy and the one that they were supposed to be fighting against and what they would be fighting again once this infighting was finished. "How?"

Bismarck leaned heavily against the pole, but the action was to get closer to the carrier. "They call you the Key to evolution…and I believe it… You are the ultimate culmination of what mankind desires… You standing here now proves it to me… This war…this world…is all for you…"

"Was this how you convinced Northern Parliament to join you in defeat, as well?" Enterprise asked, still with heavy skepticism.

"Sovetsky Soyuz had already...discovered the truth...herself..." Bismarck touched her chest. "Our forms…" A jaw of her rigging groaned. "Our technology…" Her crooked fingers became a deformed fist. "Our power… They are all due to the whims of the Sirens…"

She dropped it, but the way her appendage opened and fingers trailed down her uniform was to give emphasis to herself. "From the very beginning they infused us with their omnipotence… The power of gods to be combined with the collective consciousness of mortals… Why…? Because such beings of immortal power also have limits…perfected evolution leaving them peaked, and their infinite knowledge shackling them to them… But the flaws of humanity and their foolish ambitiousness to be more than what they obviously are undermine those concepts...leaving them with great potential…

"Play upon those flaws…inspire them…present them an unfathomable enemy…delude them into believing they can conquer it…and by some grand miracle they will…no matter if it takes a million or billions of tries…they will… Such is our hope…and theirs…"

Bismarck extended a hand out to the immovable Enterprise. "This has all been for you, Enterprise… Whether it be the Sirens, the Crimson Axis, or the world itself…with each new challenge you will conquer…you will grow stronger…evolve…and then…ascend… Only then, shall we be free…"

She trailed off there, leaving Enterprise with nothing but her hand and her revelations.

This was the explanation that she had wanted the day that Yorktown was pulled from her arms and into that of the seas? Enterprise wondered. The knowledge she had never come upon even as she scoured the oceans, annihilating anything and anyone that couldn't provide it because they didn't have it? All those shipgirls, murdered and leaving the rest murderers, without knowing why? This was the answer?

Enterprise closed her eyes, letting what she had just been told settle and stick, before she opened them back up towards Bismarck. "Absolutely ridiculous."

The battleship's startlement was something the carrier could detect, even when hidden.

"I hadn't expected anything sensible from you to begin with," Enterprise said. "Nothing that you could've said would've ever been able to justify plunging the world into chaos as you've done. But what you just told me is nothing but insanity. How many people have died because of this?"

"Would you rather have your sisters…" started Bismarck, something slow and dangerous coming, "…and mine…to have died for nothing?"

Enterprise clenched her jaw, starting to remember what anger felt like. "They did die for nothing." She brandished her bow. "Being here and seeing you, that proves it to me. I will destroy you, end this madness, and we will fight the Sirens without you as it should've been without their power or tricks. We will not be used as you and yours were by them!"

She was halfway to directing her bow at the battleship when Bismarck's one shoulder heaved to the side, turning her away from Enterprise. The Eagle Union ace believed she was attempting to flee, but the snarl that she had seen before Bismarck turned said otherwise before the battleship came to another rest against her flag, the air she gave off being how she was too disgusted to look at the carrier.

"No…"

The pole sluggishly tapped against the floor.

"No…no…"

The pride of Iron Blood was rising higher, her shoulders lifting out of the stoop they had been in, and the tempo of the metal pole striking against the floor did so with growing speed and strength.

"No…no, no, no, no!" Her breathless voice became a high-pitched shriek. "This will not do, Enterprise!"

She was about to whirl around, Enterprise bringing her bow up to meet an attack, but a section of Bismarck's cape and something beneath that tore wetly. It had the battleship gasping, putting her in a stumble, and her standard came slamming back down to keep her from falling.

"This will not…do," she said with a different kind of breathlessness. One plagued with pain.

A liquid started dripping on the floor at her feet. Steady, with one crimson droplet followed by another.

Enterprise stared at the battleship's partly turned back, trying to locate where and what had just happened. She couldn't see the source of the spilling ichor, but what she did notice was Bismarck's cape. While the ends were hanging loosely around her, the main portion had been stretched tightly between her back and rigging. Enterprise couldn't understand it, but a longer look had her noticing how close her gear was against her body. Practically flush with it, with bulges and other knotted lumps and protrusions extending out from where the rig met with her back, cables and wires connecting.

The realization of what she was seeing startled her more than what she saw at Bismarck's face when the battleship reoriented towards her, the curtains of premature gray parting. "I cannot have you remain a fool any longer," she growled, her speech and posture regaining a sense of what had once been normal.

Crimson orbs illuminated her features.

"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches, but by iron and blood!"

Enterprise gasped, pedaling back when the battleship's rigging went through its own resurrection, the cracked heads lifting, the jaws with their broken teeth opening wide, and the crimson power that filled their maws before it came blasting out.

The massive beam of light traveled the length of the throne room in an instant, liquefying, boiling, and vaporizing the doors and the surrounding walls just as quickly.

That must be the power that sunk Hood.

Enterprise's own eyes were aglow with their ominous light, her senses warping to their keen perception. She had avoided the attack and was still in midtwist when she was able to inspect the damage, but it had been close. She had felt the intense heat, and the powerful current of its passing had flung off her cap, leaving her hair free. It had been faster and far more powerful than what Gangut had been able to do.

There had never been a question of what had to be done. The human leadership of Azur Lane had unanimously deemed the Iron Blood battleship known as Bismarck to be a threat, one too great to be left alive. Between her influence, her power, and her mania, the best course of action was to send their own champion to make sure that she would meet her demise during the final push. There would be no surrender, no mercy, and no compromise.

Enterprise had let herself be distracted from that for too long. The battle officially joined, she focused on Bismarck and moved, coming meters to the side of the battleship with the untraceable speed that had her dodging cannon shots earlier. Her bow came up, an arrow already in place when she pulled back the string and launched it.

From her point of view, Bismarck was still facing the direction of her attack, the edges of the hole she created steaming with heat. The arrow was on a direct path to the center of her starboard guns, about to hit, when Bismarck moved away, the arrow flying through air-

-and the battleship suddenly right in front of Enterprise, her standard above her head and coming down towards the carrier's.

Enterprise intercepted the pole with her bow, holding it lengthwise above her head. The collision shook her arms. She's as strong as me?

No, stronger. Rather than pull back and readdress, Bismarck pressed down on Enterprise. The carrier's legs buckled against the force, the ace being brought down to a knee.

"So, you have been Awakened!"

Leering from above their locked weapons was the face of Bismarck, her cap having also gone off somewhere so that Enterprise could see the mutilation that had been done to her. Her right eye was glowing crimson from an intact socket, while the other was a glass lens that was part of a metal plate that had been bolted to her face. Burn scars marred her cheek beneath the covering, the glint of pins embedded within the broken cheekbone, and though the armor had been beginning to curve around her head, it stopped short of the cartilage of her left ear that had been horribly misshapened and almost burnt away. Shrapnel pockmarked the skin around her temple, leaving the hairless patch that her headwear had been covering.

The wounds were not affecting her in any way, considering how Bismarck was able to keep Enterprise struggling in her compromising position even when she removed one hand from her standard, fingers that had been broken and incorrectly reset coming closer to Enterprise's face. "But this is wrong. The color…the intensity…"

It had to be the contorted appearance of her digits that made it look like she was about to pluck Enterprise's eyes out.

The carrier angled her bow, one end nearly striking the incoming appendage away while the other dropped enough for the standard to slide away, giving her the chance to leap back and create distance between them.

Bismarck didn't pursue, the sharp point of her standard left where it struck, her form bent, arm still reaching for where Enterprise had been. "I see the problem…and the solution."

Instead of her, it was the heads of her gun platforms that orientated towards Enterprise. Bismarck tremored, and Enterprise made out that same sound again: something other than fabric being ripped. Blood continued dripping to the floor around Bismarck, the droplets falling in increasing succession, and rivulets started running down her arms, legs, and around her neck.

Enterprise had been able to see the cause. Though Bismarck had survived, she had suffered a great deal of damage when the Royal Navy had hunted her down – to her body and her rigging. Beneath the devastating salvos of the battleships and the bombs of the planes, they had both been broken.

Any other shipgirl should've met their end, no questions asked. A combination of Iron Blood's unique approach of metallurgy with Siren contribution, the immense power she possessed, her own insane resolve, and the intervention of a submarine had her defying the odds and being towed to port.

There was no way of knowing how much of it had been done by the Royal Navy guns, the heat of the flames of ignited oil, the pressure of the watery depths, or the doctors and engineers who had devoted so much into salvaging her, but the end result was her rigging being grafted to her body. She should be in pain most agonizing, any excessive movements made by her or her gear doubtlessly tearing the skin of her back and whatever else her human construction had been melded together with iron.

The gun turrets creakily pivoted towards Enterprise regardless, the carrier dropping back behind a pillar when they fired.

The first shell flew by her and the pillar, so fast that she could barely track it. It was enough for her to spot the shell wrapped in some kind of coat of crimson energy, her theorizing in a split second that it had something to do with the projectile's speed and the power she could detect when it flew by her. She had already known she wasn't going to be safe behind the pillar, but seeing it already had her moving even faster by the time Bismarck's next shots came for her.

They penetrated through the pillar, Iron Blood's preference for armor piercing having them going cleanly through the stone. Such overpenetration shouldn't have left behind much in the way of damage, but right after the munitions passed through the surface cracked and then blew outwards, flinging out debris as if they had been struck by high explosives.

If Enterprise took a direct hit from one of those, she was a goner.

The same results occurred when she went behind the next pillar, shells piercing through and then massive chunks of the pillar were pulverized into rubble large and small that were launched everywhere, cratering the face of the third pillar with fissures forming. It held, but Enterprise was preparing to move in case a second barrage was going to follow.

What she got instead was Bismarck intercepting her, the battleship in her path and swinging high to take her head, eyes at full blaze with smile wide and maniacal.

Enterprise's feet slid to a stop that was going to come too late, so she arched herself backwards, the sharp point that tipped the standard and its flag passing over her face. The quick action saved her there but left her open for when Bismarck pivoted on her heel with the momentum of her attack, raising the other and striking Enterprise full in the chest. The hit took the carrier off the floor, flipping her back.

It was a pain she was almost unfamiliar with, but the carrier retained enough sense to assert control over a landing, her feet clumsily coming down and digging in even as she slid a few added feet. Her palm came up to the center of her chest, feeling like it had nearly caved in as she gasped, her torso bent slightly forward.

Bismarck was at her side again, performing a second attempt to take off her head with the standard coming down towards the back of her neck.

Enterprise quickly stepped back, the standard once more slicing too close to her face. It smacked against the ground, cracking it, and Enterprise's foot followed, trapping it and keeping Bismarck in place for when she brought up her bow and fired an arrow at point blank range.

Bismarck released her weapon, angling away so that the lance streaked by. It evolved into a spin, she retrieving her standard with her other hand, ripping it out from beneath Enterprise's foot, and putting the carrier ace in a stumble for when she completed her revolution, bringing the pole up diagonally towards Enterprise's side. The Eagle girl tilted her bow to defend against it, the standard colliding, and once more she was sent high into the air regardless from the sheer amount of strength and momentum that was behind it, nearly bending her bow in the process.

But it was intact, and Enterprise had anticipated this. Even as she was flying up, she aimed down, conjuring and firing an arrow.

Bismarck's heavy blow had put her off balance, and when Enterprise's arrow split into additional projectiles there was no chance for her to evade. They impacted around her and detonated, waves of fire and pressure overlapping and consuming her.

Enterprise returned to the ground away from the cloud of dust, nearly submitting to a knee. She prevailed, pain radiating from the blow at her chest when she breathed, and her arms shaking from the powerful shocks that they had been put through guarding against Bismarck's hits.

"How was it, I wonder, after you obtained this power?"

That was the inquiry that replaced the dust cloud when it scattered, leaving behind Bismarck with no visible damage save for what she already had. What was apparent was a ghastly aura of red and black that pulsed around her before dissipating.

"Had you ever had to struggle again? Had you ever truly struggled against your myriad of foes, if your vaunted feats during the Siren War are to be believed? You are supposed to be the one with the most potential, but how can you reach it when you lack the driving force needed to inspire such growth?"

A shield, Enterprise thought, ignoring Bismarck's speech in favor of deducing why her attacks did not work. Has to be. It did not settle the feeling that she had become unused to but was being reminded of after so long: unease.

Bismarck did not twist but rolled her head around towards Enterprise. Blood-stained hair obscured her, the crimson of her human and mechanical eye piercing out between the wilted strands that they highlighted. A cold shiver went down Enterprise's spine.

"No, I can see. You never have. Or it has been far too long since you did. Being gifted that power had closed you off to the most pure - the most real - of emotions that can only be found in conquest. In its violence. That is what mankind sought in their exploration of the seas: the greatest of adventures that they yearn to fulfill them and is thus the key to our advancement."

The battleship spread her arms out from her sides, her sleeves slick and gloves painted red. "Even with this power, I had been hunted, cornered, and overwhelmed by the Royal Navy – their numbers and skill too much to bear and my own control too weak. The fear, the dread, the pain, and the futility of my struggles that became the inevitable silence when I finally sank, I remember it clearly. Even right now, as what remains of my shell is being ripped to pieces by my own doing, I feel it."

A wide, horrible grin full of teeth split across her face, reaching those two infernal pits. "Transcendent joy."

Enterprise took a step back, a numbingly cold sensation coming over her face, her heart, as she beheld such a macabre visage and the insanity behind it – all aimed at her.

With her head remaining cocked in that appalling way, and armed with that gruesome smile, Bismarck began to approach Enterprise, dragging her standard behind her so that its point was scraping and skipping along the cracked floor.

"My parting gift will be to remind you of it, Enterprise."

Enterprise blinked and that was a mistake, the moment of blindness being enough that the nightmarish shipgirl needed to appear in front of her and resume their battle.

Their arena had already put Enterprise at a disadvantage with her unable to use her planes in such an enclosed space. She had known that when she had entered the citadel, hadn't considered it a problem, but overconfidence, its risks, and its penalties were something else that was made all too clear to her again. Out at sea, she would've possessed the greater advantage.

As it was, Enterprise was fighting for her life. The shells of Bismarck's salvos streaking by, the disturbance that their velocities and the power they were wreathed in leaving behind a constant reminder of how only one needed to land before she was done for, in this room that was becoming more devoid of cover, leaving her to evade with speed and skill alone. In-between, she responded with her arrows, the missiles just as deadly, but would either further crater and destroy the room or fail to break through Bismarck's own shield, the battleship able to come speeding out, unharmed, to engage at close range.

In melee, her spear remained striking with the strength reminiscent of a hammer, Enterprise avoiding it or bringing her bow into play to defend. When the two struck, the impacts once more shook her, the powerful shocks traveling up and down her limbs as they beat against her bow that threatened to potentially break with each strike.

It was during one such instance that Bismarck came thrusting with the tip of her spear to impale Enterprise through the stomach. The carrier barely managed to sidestep, twisting her vital area away from it. She was too slow to do anything else, and Bismarck was proving too strong, too fast, that she was able to transition her thrust into a swing that connected with her intended target, cracking across Enterprise's middle.

The Eagle ace was flung back, hitting against a decimated pillar with the back of her skull thudding against it. Stars exploded with her field of vision, blinding her, but the barest of movement she could detect, as well as pure instinct, had her swinging up her bow in desperation, catching and diverting the spear up so that it stabbed into the pillar instead of her chest, the edge cutting a line across the top of her shoulder.

A savage kick struck her in the side, pain lancing up along her ribs when one nearly gave against the blow that launched her away.

Enterprise hit and then started sliding along the floor, a metal screeching issuing from her flight deck as it came with her, the friction sending out a shower of sparks behind her. Instead of waiting to come to a stop on her own, the carrier scrambled, found purchase, and pushed off from it, taking to the air and nearly colliding with the ceiling, coming just short of it.

She had trouble finding and grabbing her bowstring, the motion she had performed a million times she was now clumsily trying to execute. She was distracted by how her side stabbed like a knife with each gasping breath, her thoughts jumbled from the blow she had taken to the head, her arms aching, and the insistent demand that she needed to use her position to go back on the offensive. Her blurred vision didn't help, it only clearing when Enterprise had managed to draw an arrow and was in the midst of searching for Bismarck.

The battleship already had her cannons aimed up at her.

Enterprise's ability to process the situation and plan her actions accordingly was being overloaded. Attack or cancel, which way to dodge, and she was too close to the ceiling and had to get away or else she would be caught by rubble-

She was moving when the fifteen-inch guns of the main batteries lit up with their brilliant flashes. She canceled her attack, going at an angled dive to starboard to pull away from the ceiling and get out of Bismarck's arc of fire. There were the disturbing waves of the accelerated shells going by, the peppering of stone at her back, but she avoided taking significant damage-

A crimson light flared from below.

She cut her acceleration, a full stop that her Wildcats could never achieve but what was critical in saving her life when the deadly beam scythed through the space in front of her, drawing a vast channel in the ceiling. Enterprise reflexively held an arm against her face, protecting it from the blistering heat and blinding luminous-

Then came Bismarck's secondaries.

The shells burst apart the ceiling directly above Enterprise, initiating an avalanche of debris.

A high-velocity stone smacked against her temple, causing it to bleed, with a larger one hitting her high in the back, spiraling her, and leading her right to Bismarck who had leapt up into the air to reach her and bat her out of the sky. Enterprise put her flight deck between her and the coming blow, the pole of the standard battering it, leaving an indent with cracks spreading along the center of it, and hurtling the carrier towards the ground that rushed to meet her.

She didn't know how long she had been out. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds as she was roused by the remaining fragments of raining debris that bounced against her prone position on the floor. Somehow, she managed to retain possession of her bow, finding it in her hand when she moved and shifted her weight onto her forearms. Dazed, she couldn't think of anything else other than how she had to get up.

"You should be able to destroy me on a whim."

It all came back to Enterprise right before a boot caught and rolled her onto her back, the harness of her rigging pressing uncomfortably against the middle of her spine.

"Fleets would be gone in an instant, continents torn asunder, and realities undone. That is what you are capable of. And in order to get you there…"

The carrier's vision swam, but two red guiding lights became a focus that restored equilibrium.

"We need to bring this to its climax!"

Enterprise made out the pointed end of the standard right before Bismarck brought it down to plant it in her throat. Adrenaline and the absolute fear of the end that it represented got her to act, her hands jolting up and grabbing it, halting its descent feet above its target.

She was able to keep it in place for a moment before it resumed lowering at a much slower pace but drawing nearer all the same.

"Come on, Enterprise!" Bismarck encouraged madly. "Overpower me! It must be you who claims victory! It cannot be me!"

Enterprise couldn't even follow the step, the spear-like tip gradually coming down even as she pushed back with all her might.

She was trapped, with no way out. Bismarck had a foot on either side of her for perfect positioning and entrapment. To Enterprise's right and left, the heads of the battleship's rigging watched as she struggled, a jaw occasionally snapping in anticipation.

Her power had faded, her senses and strength returned to their norm. She felt, heard, and saw everything as it was: her aching and failing muscles, the sharp point that was drawing ever closer because of it, Bismarck's madness, the warm and wet blood of the Iron Blood shipgirl that dripped on Enterprise's face, one drop giving her the taste of copper at her lips, and the Siren-shaped rigging that watched as their true enemies have done and may be doing so right now.

She wasn't ready to die yet. Enterprise had come to view her own death as an outcome for when she had brought the war to a conclusion she could be content with and leave behind, her primary duty accomplished. This was not the conclusion she wanted; to perish here to the one most responsible, with there being lingering battles afterwards that would need to be attended to by others in her stead.

This couldn't be her end. Not now.

Was this what Bismarck had gone through during the end of that hunt? The Sakura Empire shipgirls who had been sunk at their island garrisons and home port? The ones of Iron Blood?

"Destroy me!" Bismarck hollered. "Fight and slay whoever you must! Purge everyone from the face of this false world if you must!" One boot gained a proper foothold on the pole, tensing to supply the last amount of leverage needed to drive the standard home. "Then, once you are done, save us!"

A shrill cry suddenly came from above, wings folding around Bismarck's head and talons slashing down.

Bismarck stumbled back with a noise of shock, the standard being thrown away as she blindly fought back against her attacker.

Enterprise laid there, she herself stunned. Then she rolled over, grabbed her bow, and got to her knees.

Grim circled around the battleship, flapping out of reach of a thrashing limb before plunging to inflict another slash of his talons or peck of his beak. The attacks and the buffeting of his wings disoriented and outraged Bismarck. That was until he was eventually struck, being caught on a backswing that sent him rolling through the air. One wing flapped hard, trying to right him, but how the other had gone limp foiled any effort, the eagle smacking and then skipping twice on the floor before lying still.

"No!" Enterprise cried out in horror, each impact a terrible blow to what felt like her very soul.

The eagle was Yorktown's will that she had left for Enterprise. Her legacy that she had entrusted to her. As long as he was alive, Yorktown wasn't truly gone. A part of her remained, one that Enterprise kept close with the security that she hadn't failed her sister. That she wouldn't be forgotten.

For Bismarck to attack him…

Blood dripped into her eyes, hers or the battleship's it didn't matter as the red coloring stuck to her vision. It blinded her with a haze that consumed the world, replacing it with a realm of crimson. It did not leave her deaf, Enterprise hearing Bismarck's curse that guided her to the clouded silhouette. With vengeful purpose, she brought up her bow, taking and drawing the string as far as it would go, driven by the emotional storm that rumbled within her and what she used to give shape to the arrow that she summoned.

Her bow bent in a way that it wasn't supposed to, Enterprise able to make out the cracks that expanded with the stress she was putting on it. She would only have one shot.

Bismarck noticed and was captivated by the projectile. However, it was not the usual radiance that drew her to it. Instead of the gold of the carrier's previous arrows, this one was of a dull, foreboding red.

The same red that was currently burning within Enterprise's eyes.

The mad grin had reaffixed itself to Bismarck when she saw it. Around the battleship, the air wavered again, the shield of pulsing red and black reforming around her in preparation.

Enterprise loosed the arrow, her bow shattering with the launch.

The crimson missile struck true, the aura around Bismarck shuddering but holding. But the arrow did not explode or disappear. Instead, it broke apart, dividing into pieces that split along several avenues of the shield, slashing like the winds of a typhoon. They split the shield, stripping it away, but the forces behind it weren't done as Bismarck suddenly screamed.

Her rigging flexed. Put under tremendous stress, the loosened plates started peeling back. The barrels of her guns bent and snapped clean off, the turrets themselves crushed inwards. Her platforms contorted, the beasts forever silent when their maws compressed together, rendering them mute and inert. Black and red ichor erupted from new wounds, smearing the floor beneath Bismarck when she was thrown back.

Now! Enterprise lifted her arm, her flight deck coming beneath it. Blue electricity danced across the damaged flattop, bringing doubt to it being in working condition until one brilliant streak leapt from the deck, flew towards Bismarck, and transformed into a full-sized Wildcat that slammed into her.

The plane's belly squealed and warped against the floor, half of one wing being taken when it clipped a pillar and put the aircraft in a brutal rotation, its propeller breaking free and spinning elsewhere. Against the platform that held Bismarck's throne, the fuselage crumpled, obliterating it and the authority the seat represented when it caved, joining the wreck of twisted metal to bury its lord.

Finally, the chorus of battle was brought to an end, the only thing coming to Enterprise's ears being her labored breathing within the devastated throne room.

She still had the broken handle of her bow, useless to her, but what remained in her possession anyway when she staggered to her feet. Her main priority became Grim, she limping her way to where he had fallen, and her heart sinking when she found him motionless. As she was fearing the worst, a wing unfurled, and a plaintive cry came from his beak. With overwhelming relief, Enterprise bent down and got an arm beneath him, lifting him up so that she could cradle him against her chest.

Second on her priorities list was Bismarck.

Her plane had broken apart into its basic components, the cubes that disintegrated into particles. When they disappeared, they left behind Bismarck.

The shipgirl was in no position to fight, weighed down by the wreck that was her rigging. It had become dislodged from her body, the connecting cables and wires at her back exposed, bonded to the ravaged pieces of sinew…muscles…veins… She lay in a puddle of blood and oil, the glass lens of her left eye having gone dark. Her right was open, but it was unblinking, unseeing, blue, and she just had to be dead.

Then her lips parted.

"Oh…" she whispered, staring sightlessly ahead. "You have come for me…Hood…"

Enterprise followed her gaze, trying to see what Bismarck was seeing, but couldn't find any sign of the deceased battlecruiser.

"I wept…for you…" she went on, robbed of everything now save for petering regrets. "To have struck…a cowardly blow…and to leave you to sink…alone…when I did not…I grieved… Great burdens…of great namesakes…were we given…to pursue… You beneath…your crown…and me upon…my throne… What I did…unforgivable…" A tear, one not of blood or oil, trailed down her marred cheek.

"But…I have ensured…our legacy… Our…immortality… You…here…forgive…me…?"

A pendant had slipped from the collar of Bismarck's uniform. From a gold chain was an untarnished aquamarine, pure and beautiful, and a direct contrast to a battleship of blood and iron. Within the flawless gemstone, there was a crow with an anchor held up with one of its legs.

And above that was a name: Hood.

"My…enemy…" Bismarck breathed her last, the remaining speck of life disappearing with it. "My…friend…"

Enterprise left the Iron Blood woman where she lay, exiting through the melted doorway.

The silent halls of the citadel were deafening to the carrier during the return journey to the outside, the wide halls having become impossibly cramped. Even as she left the battleground of the throne room behind her, the enormity of what had occurred followed her, the empty bastion anything but. Somehow, she managed to make it outside, standing on top of the steps that gave her a view of the barren docks.

It was dark and silent. The engagements of the fleets had ceased, fires had been smothered, and the waters once again sweeping the stage clean in preparation for the next show that would begin.

Enterprise would normally feel just as empty. Devoid of any sort of emotion, as it had been when Eagle Union made its final triumph over the Sakura Empire…only for the carrier to see how the next act had already been written in this play that would go on and on…

Here it was no different. Iron Blood may be finished but now there was Northern Parliament. How long would that take? How many would fight and die when the scene changed to the arctic north? How long would the fires of war burn this time?

And if Northern Parliament fell, who would be next? Would they finally wipe out Sardegna? Vichya? Is Dragon Empery harboring its own intentions now? Iris Libre?

…Royal Navy?

Enterprise used to just drift, aimless, as ghostly as her own name. She didn't want to think, didn't want to feel, and the stoppage of the fighting wasn't so much a wish as it was the only thing that she could think of for her to do. It was why she would go to the next battle when it appeared, her skills and powers a means to bring it all to an end. Nothing more to it.

But now…?

Enterprise hurt. Her body bruised and bleeding, her rigging damaged, her uniform torn and stained. Nearly beaten, but here she stood.

And she felt…fulfilled.

The night sky suddenly began splitting. Violet tears ripped it open, expanding and forming into portals. And out from those portals came the Sirens.

Jutting out first were the bows of the mass production ships, their red lights and sharp chins thrusting forward on their paths of invasion. From the double-decked carriers to the battleships, their keels landed, waves being sent outwards to disturb the seas again. Remaining hovering above them, with their rigs of perverted sea life, were the humanoid types that fanned out.

Another battle. Another stage. Another drama orchestrated by the whims of the elusive masters.

Enterprise had to fight.

She wanted to fight.

Blue flames became wreathed around her rigging. From the broken handle of her bow they leapt, the conflagrations raging outwards until they suddenly receded, their wild outlines taming, smoothing, thinning, and then solidifying. When they dispersed, the flames flickering and then dying, what was left behind was a newly forged bow. Similar repairs occurred on her flight deck, the dents to the hull and fissures scattered along the flattop being done away with, restoring it.

There was a sizzling. Red vapors drifted from her human body, the blood steaming and then evaporating entirely. The edges of the one cut at her head became a hot, angry orange but Enterprise didn't feel any heat or pain when it began closing, the very human skin looking like it was being welded back together, and when it calmed there was just new, healthy flesh. Her aches disappeared; the bruises being hammered out as easily as the dents of her gear.

Grim shifted and then rose, an accelerated healing process having occurred with him as well. When he jumped out of Enterprise's arm, retaking his position at her shoulder, it was to give a challenging cry.

Rearmed and ready, Enterprise knew where she had to go next for her spot on the naval stage.

"Let's go," she whispered, the lavenders of her eyes flickering to crimson, a corner of her mouth twitching to give an expression that matched this pull that had her going forward, descending down into the darkness.

---

Within a location outside time and space, upon a pedestal surrounded by monitors, was a crystalline fragment. Pyramidal in shape, but the base was unlike its three smooth faces, craggy where the fragment had been broken off from something that had been far greater.

It lay there on one of its sides, the clear exterior giving an unobstructed view of its empty interior.

A glassy rattling then occurred, the fragment vibrating, agitated. Like oozing blood filling its vessel, abyssal black and violet poured into it. It brimmed with excess, but rather than spill out onto the pedestal, it seeped through the glass walls, creating a pulsing malevolent aura around it.

Under its own power did the fragment straighten, its point of convergence sticking up, and it managed to raise an inch from the surface of its pedestal where it came into a hover.

When it managed to stay there, a tentacle wound around it, removing it from its place. When the tentacle unwound, it was to deposit the fragment upon a shiny, gray palm.

"You are still fighting, after all," Observer noted, visibly entertained by the show. "Just as predicted."