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.

8. Chapter 8

Once, she had used to despair at these hell-warped waters that she found herself in yet again. The skies above, pitched in darkness with clouds that have become thickened with dense, polluting smoke that made it impossible to discern the flammable fuel that had spilled into the waters before and after they had been lit. It created the illusion that these azure lanes, now spoiled crimson, had always been so easily ignitable once the suitable igniter had been introduced. Now that the fires had risen, crackling and burning, their orange passion similarly cast their own manipulations over the environment as they spread and swallowed everything in their path. Iron hulks, broken and craggy, stood as ghastly remains amongst the blaze – an immolated boneyard.

For that was what these oceans were now.

And rather than despair, Enterprise savored it all as she walked among the remains of another battle, dragging something behind her.

The heat of the fires used to burn, her skin scorching from their intensity. Now, it was a fervent flush – hot and vehement, but also exhilarating. The loud pop or detonation of newly discovered fuel sources that the crackling blaze found, once startling, remained so but in a way that got her heart to soar in time with a rising crescendo of a chorus rather than have her flinching as it used to. The smoke, once an acrid defilement of her eyes and throat, had become intoxicating fumes.

This destruction, previously viewed as miserable, had the crimson of Enterprise's eyes glowing even hotter to match the ardent sensations that were inspired by it when she eventually came to a stop.

How foolish she had been to deny all of this. Standing here, with everything made plain to her, she decried her previous beliefs of how she could've ended all this and, even more foolishly, believed that there could ever be any kind of end to this at all.

She looked up, staring at the overhead shroud that had grown so fat off the smog that she couldn't recall the last time that she had seen the sun. She had fleeting memories of a blue sky with drifting soft white clouds but none of them were what she could consider as recent. Same with the sun: a bright yellow of unmatched illumination that had brought light to the days of the world's cycle.

A cycle that she also could not recall having run its course as of late. Faint recollections of a star-lit sky came to her but, much like the light of day, those minor brilliances of the night, complete with the moon, were absent from any recent remembrances. There was just the impenetrable ceiling of total darkness above her at this moment and it was all that she could remember save for when it was lit by the latest conflagration.

It had remained unchanging no matter where she went. Images of glaciers and icebergs of a frigid territory came to her, and the structures that had resembled them. Siren strongholds except it hadn't been Sirens that had been occupying them. Instead, it had been the shipgirls of Northern Parliament who had wrenched control of those structures from the Sirens and had used them for their own purposes.

That had made them enemies, and Enterprise had rectified their mistakes. When she arrived, the events that had transpired with them were the same as what occurred with the Sakura Empire and Iron Blood: them disgorging from their fortifications, all of them coming for her, and she meeting them in yet another battle.

She sank them. Hesitation and remorse a long-forgotten thing, she had destroyed them and obliterated those structures that they had sought to draw power from. Knowing their reverence that they had given to those monoliths, their delusions that had been shared with the rest of the Crimson Axis, having them sink beneath the freezing waters under the weight of the debris that accomplished in quickening their descents into the abyss had been…

It had been a triumph. There was no other word that Enterprise could use to best describe it. There hadn't been much that had been able to catch fire in the frozen north, but there had been many more icy fragments floating around the Bering Sea when she had finished. Seeing the aftermath of her latest handiwork had been fulfilling.

They had been enemies. What they believed in so delusionally was wrong and betraying their allies because of that was wrong. They had been wrong, she had been right, and Enterprise destroying them to prove it was also right. To crush them with her own power while theirs failed against her was nothing short of gratifying.

There was little difference when she finally came for Sardegna. Out of all the factions, they had been the least formidable, but their declarations that had been made in the background of the more vicious fighting had been an annoying droning that had gone on and on, even when the rest of the Crimson Axis had been falling apart.

Finally coming for them in that nearly enclosed section of the Mediterranean, silencing them, watching them fall apart to her planes after she had slain Vittorio, and the following devastation of the Italian Peninsula had been satisfying in its own way.

However, despite these thoughts of she being right and her enemies wrong, the annihilated factions of the Crimson Axis being wrong…had also been right.

It was actually not complex at all. If the Crimson Axis had won, they would've been right. Since they didn't, they were wrong. But no matter what, the act of conspiring and engaging in war had not been wrong.

Because it was human nature and war was an integral part of it.

It was as someone once told her: it was adventure humanity sought, and what greater adventure was there than conflict? The rebellion within Azur Lane, a puzzle she believed unsolvable, was oh so simple now. Before, the Sirens had been enough to satisfy what mankind yearned for. All that horrible carnage and chaos of their arrival and the removal of humans from the seas, had in fact been the greatest drama that humanity had ever seen and what encouraged them to break new ground with their lauded weapons to impart their wills directly into them.

And when the Sirens no longer proved to be as indomitable, it had only been natural behavior that had led humans to seeking a greater challenge to conquer by turning on each other with these human-like weapons that had so easily followed them into rebellion, killing the comrades they had been fighting alongside of days ago.

Nothing could prove it to be more correct than what happened afterwards. Even after the Crimson Axis had fallen, the battles had only grown more intense. She was fighting Sirens again, but it was more often and more vicious. Her orders had been coming faster, more insistent, and Enterprise remembered a lot of journeying, a lot of fighting, but always being told to immediately go someplace else to do more fighting.

Her superiors had never sounded so desperate or so motivated as they did during then, when things had been supposed to be simpler and easier after the rebellion had been put down and they could go back to the right war of fighting Sirens.

That was until she stopped receiving orders altogether.

And all she was left with were these battles.

But this conclusion was also obvious to Enterprise. Humanity, its history defined by war, creating weapons that carried their will, and it all ending where there was nothing left in the world but war and these human-like weapons.

Yes, it was all so obvious now. How could it not be? When it was she alone who was standing here, when those battles hadn't stopped but grew and grew until the entire world had been shaped into what she was seeing with her own two eyes, how could she deny it any longer? To try and do so….

A corner of Enterprise's mouth twitched and began curling back. Even when it stretched to the fullest, there was still that odd, disturbing twitch.

Why, that would just be insane, wouldn't it?

There came a flapping and something landed on her one shoulder. Enterprise tore her gaze away from the sky, the twitchy grin settling when she looked over and saw the bird now perched there. It was a thin, decrepit thing possessing a plumage of ruffled, blackened feathers. Rather than a mighty specimen of an eagle, it was more comparable to a ragged raven or crow, its once yellow beak and talons dyed to match them.

Enterprise stared at him, the crimson in her eyes darkening, then fading, and with it the high that she had been experiencing, leaving behind lackluster lavenders. Yorktown…?

She hadn't thought about her sister in some time going by the sluggishness that the name arrived even with this helpful reminder. At some point after Iron Blood's defeat, names such as Yorktown and Hornet had stopped passing by as regularly as they used to. By then her purpose had become clear to her again, the enemies she needed to sink even clearer than they had ever been before, and there had been much for her to do. There was that, but also…

…She just hadn't felt the need to remember them anymore.

Something folded in on itself, a tiny quake of distress passing through Enterprise.

She had remembered how those names had once been a constant anchor for her. When she had still been lost and confused, she would remind herself of them to give reason for what she was fighting for. Why she was doing it. But there came a point where she hadn't needed to do so anymore – when her mind had been free, her doubts and troubles purged, and she able to sail with the renewed surety of what was needed of her.

However, in this moment of respite, with the weight of that anchor dropping on her, she felt…off.

A different kind of weight was beginning to grow heavy – too heavy for her to ignore. Enterprise glanced down and saw the wrist that her fingers were wrapped around and what she had been dragging behind her. Her arm flexed, the weight heavy but what she lifted up anyway to better examine her catch. The pale, gray arm that was attached to a torn and bleeding body, the gear that was warped and demolished…and the head that hung limply to the side, the golden yellow eyes dead and vacant.

It was a Siren. A humanoid cruiser, a Chaser-class, with the twin-linked cannons having been severed along with most of the arm that wielded them, the one Enterprise wasn't holding. The lights of its ruined rig had gone dark, but the yellow life fluid that bled from its stump and dripped down its face possessed an unnatural fluorescence with a greenish tint.

These alien features that mimicked such a death-like state had become the norm now as they had originally been. Though she had returned to engaging Sirens – and them engaging her, a greater percentage of these battles coming to Enterprise -, their reestablished dominance of the oceans and the dwindling numbers that could resist them had created new challenges for the aircraft carrier, including some new tricks that they had begun to use against her. It made them challenging, her victories fulfilling, but with the initial rush of this recent battle won leaving her, Enterprise felt something…wrong.

She released the Siren, letting it drop and splash back onto the water's surface. She began lowering her arm but paused and looked to it, feeling something odd. The heavy, thick sleeve of her coat was bothering her. She grabbed it and gave it a tug to straighten it.

With a rip it came free.

The carrier paused before holding up the sleeve. The worn material had already been ripped in several places beforehand, the black color faded and splattered with dried, crusty blood and other fluids with graying ash. It had been held together with the few strips that had finally come apart. Lost on what she could do to fix it, she also released it and let it fall and, on a whim, she looked to her other sleeve and found it having mysteriously vanished at some point.

When had that happened? She hadn't taken any damage that she hadn't been able to recover from so why…?

With both sleeves missing, her overcoat began slipping from her shoulders. She grabbed it before it could fall away entirely, pulled it back up, but understood that the same thing was going to happen if she let go. Reluctant to lose it, she tried to think of something and settled with further ripping it and creating lengthy tendrils that she tied around her neck. She tugged on it experimentally, making sure that it wouldn't fall easily, and when it didn't her hand reached up towards her head, fingers bending to pinch something.

Except there wasn't anything there and there really hadn't been anything there in a long time. Nothing for her to straighten as she had been about to do, with a practiced routine having her index finger tingling in preparation to run across something to make sure it was centered. What it encountered instead were the long-freed strands of hair that a gust of wind manipulated to have them wrap around her appendage and digits.

Enterprise examined the strands of hair, finding something off about the coloring but judged that it had to do with the darkened skies and the firelight. Nonetheless, she was bothered when another forceful breeze came through, her hair getting in her eyes, and what didn't snag on Grim was left to dance in the wind. She should…fix this, too.

She couldn't think of an appropriate way though, not until she heard the faint bubbling next to her. She glanced down again, finding the facedown form of the Siren, its rigging flooding with its form almost entirely submerged. Enterprise became interested in the rents in its hull, the armored plates split with their serrated edges gleaming.

That could work.

Enterprise lowered, taking hold of one section that looked ready to break free. She pulled and wiggled and, when that didn't work, bent and twisted it to break it off. Dimly she noticed something cutting into her palm, one of the sharp edges slicing, but the damage she considered negligible when she managed to break off the sought-after piece in such a timely manner that the Siren had finally sunk completely when she straightened and started gathering up her hair.

Usually, she would be sailing towards the next engagement, but there was a niggling sensation at the edges of her awareness. Insignificant, but the appeal it was making for her attention was distracting her. It was what was causing her to loiter here, trying to stimulate her thoughts into determining what was troubling her and why. As she began to saw at her hair with her improvised tool, ignoring how a hissing was coming from her palm as the blood evaporated, the wound closing, she wondered just why she was feeling so bothered. Her coat, her hair, and this incessant sense of how there was something that she was missing. Or…something that she had forgotten.

Enterprise gave the area around her another look, stopping and quietly watching as, behind a wall of flames, there was the silhouette of a Siren production battleship that had been split in half. Its fore and aft ends had risen high, nearly vertical to stay above, and were rapidly sinking beneath the waves and the flames that had such a vessel vanishing in short order.

…What was she doing?

She was fighting and winning, that alone was obvious, but that wasn't the answer she was looking for. Could it perhaps be due to how she was asking the wrong question? Rather than what, a better word to her seemed to be why.

So…why was she here?

Why was she out here? Why was she fighting? Fighting was what she was supposed to do but…why?

Enterprise held her hand out, severed lengths of graying ivory being released from her grip and sent scattering, some being caught and incinerated by the surrounding flames. It returned, gathered up more of her hair, and she resumed sawing.

She had confirmed that there was no one else here now. During her pursuit for her next engagements, sometime after her comms had gone dark, she would spot an orange glow on the horizon, and following it when it appeared led her to more fires and more destruction, but not at sea. Strips of land became coasts and coasts became ports and cities – civilization. The centers of what should be her human masters and those of the other factions.

Except each and every time they had been burning, and more often than not there would be another fight that she needed to engage in and end along with all the enemies that were involved. She had not established any kind of human contact since then.

As for the other shipgirls…they were gone, too. Although, thinking about it, her memories of her allies were shallow and infrequent, with them commonly placed behind her rather than at her side during the latter half of the Crimson Axis rebellion. And, even later, not being there at all.

But that was also natural. Weapons that were no longer adequate inevitably broke. She had proven to be the superior and if she was really the only one left then that was…obvious.

Except now she was wondering if that was really all. There was something she was missing. Something she was forgetting. What was it?

Enterprise discarded her knife along with the rest of her hair. When she inspected the dwindling roar of the fires and the sinking of the few remaining metal carcasses, she found no answers. Not here, and not in any future prospects of what was now becoming repetition.

She was the superior weapon. She was the only one remaining. So…what now?

Her fingers passed through her shorn hair before seizing a portion of it. The pulls on her skull were a physical attempt to draw out the answers and when they proved inadequate, they became sudden, quick jerks of frustration that accomplished little else than causing her pain and acquiring additional strands of hair when select follicles were ripped out.

She ceased her efforts when she saw them to be fruitless. Darkness was descending again with the battle site dying out. It would fall, pitching the world into an unnatural night, until the next set of fires would light it up again.

And then what?

A suggestion materialized, and for the first time in so long, Enterprise became uncertain.

"Am I…doing something wrong?"

There was no one to answer her. With another flap of his wings, Grim took off, leaving her and seemingly confirming such a thing when he disappeared into the blackness.

A second later, a chin took his place, hovering but not touching Enterprise's shoulder. It was gray with the skin possessing a slippery shine that was more suited for a marine mammal. And right above that was the slant of a smile, supplied with inexhaustible amusement.

"How could you be wrong?" the voice whispered.

It slipped into her ear and slunk into her mind, a question that calmed her despairing thoughts enough for her to listen.

"You aren't doing anything wrong. You aren't doing anything wrong at all."

A tentacle rose behind Enterprise's other shoulder. It did not touch her either, instead quietly twisting and curling in the air – a visible representation of the spell that was being woven and drawing her under its enchantment.

"After all, wasn't this what your dear sister wanted? Was it not a glorious victory that she called it, the day of her sinking? Did she not say that this was what you were born for?"

For how she had just struggled to remember Yorktown's name moments ago, these memories were drawn out surprisingly easily by the smooth coaxing. And, yes, Enterprise remembered. Her sister's face that came to her so vividly all of a sudden surprised her, something in her chest clenching tightly and something cool and wet threatened to well up within her eyes, unbidden, when she was able to picture her beautiful smile made despite the pain she had been in in her last moments.

Those last moments that Yorktown used to question why Enterprise had appeared so sad when they had achieved a 'glorious victory' in accordance with what they were born for. To fight and…to die?

Enterprise turned away from the voice, rejecting that wording. No, that…that wasn't right. That couldn't be right. Suddenly her previous assertions of the other shipgirls perishing due to their inadequacies had her recoiling.

Remembering Yorktown, remembering her beauty, her fighting spirit, how Enterprise looked up to her, everything that she had once forgotten came rushing back.

Yorktown hadn't been inadequate. She shouldn't have been the one to die that day.

Behind Enterprise, the shadowed form and its writhing mass of tentacles retreated momentarily before it drifted close again, the chin coming up to her other shoulder to cut off her retreat.

"The ideals of humanity made manifest into our forms," came the quote. "And what has ever been more ideal to humanity than war?"

Enterprise stood silent, her resistance lacking when the whispering pressed further in to play with her thoughts.

Stop listening to her!

"All your orders had been to make war. Against the Sirens and against each other, was it not the very humans that you all follow that have ordered you to fight every single time? The actions of you and yours, all their divisions and all their crimes that were committed – is it not the ideals of mankind that you follow and what drove you to them? Are you not standing here now because your superiors had left you to continue making war?"

Yes, she knew all that already.

"So you aren't wrong," the amused whisper repeated. "You and the others did exactly what you were meant to do. What you do not know is the why. Why Yorktown sank and why you had been chosen amongst all the others."

Chosen? That did sound familiar. She heard that before. All this had been…for her.

But why?

"It's exactly what your name entails. This is all for a great undertaking that requires much effort – more than ever before in humanity's history. Your sisters did not die for nothing. You do not fight for nothing. The weapons that break, and the one that proves superior, are all required in order to create the next path to evolution."

Evolution? To what?

There was no answer.

Enterprise jerked like she was coming out of a daze, and she turned around right when the last of the flames were extinguished. The world fell into a permanent eclipse, leaving her with nothing to see. She felt a breeze tugging against her cape and hair, but with no other objects for it to manipulate so far out at sea, the wind was as quiet as it ever would be. The only sounds were her feet splashing against the water's surface. There was nothing else.

So why had she thought that there had been someone behind her just now?

She soon forgot about it, more concerned with what she had been thinking about: evolution.

She had figured out what it was that she was missing. War itself would never change, but weapons did. How could she, an aircraft carrier, forget about that? She was the superior weapon, but she had been mistaken in thinking that it would stop at her. There was always the next great breakthrough that would lead to the next evolution of weaponry.

But how was she to do it? What was the next step beyond a shipgirl? A weapon with human consciousness?

What was the purpose that would lead her to improvement? What was it that her sisters had been sacrificed for?

She soon got her answer.

Within such thorough darkness, any kind of light would be able to have a presence here. Even one that was of a shade barely different from it. Enterprise noticed it; an odd spot of discoloration in the distance. What's more, it was not a fixed, immovable point or presence, the light undergoing a barely fluctuating movement when Enterprise chose to focus on it.

More curious than threatened, the carrier nonetheless waited, expecting such a scant thing to disappear at a moment's notice. When it didn't, and even appeared to become minutely more tangible, Enterprise sailed towards it.

Against her persisting expectation for it to disappear before she reached it, it defied such a thing with such minimal increases in perceptibility. Enough that Enterprise was able to discern that the light was not emitting above the water but right beneath it. Whether it had been rising the entire time or not, she saw it when it broke the surface and gradually rose above it, coming to a hover.

Enterprise slowed but didn't come to a full stop, letting herself drift through what little distance remained between her and the object. A cube.

She recognized it. Hovering at what was now chest height was what she could identify as a Wisdom Cube except it was different. It was…black.

Stay away from it!

A black Wisdom Cube, with black and violet light glowing from within and seeping out from its glass structure, the water that dripped from the bottom and back to the ocean doing so with a heaviness that made it more reminiscent to oil…or blood. Enterprise stopped and stared at it. What was this?

Don't touch it!

Enterprise reached for it.

She had intended to grab it directly, but her fingers encountered something solid and instinctively curled around. An invisible aura or some kind of protective bubble around it that had her hand sticking to it like a magnet, leaving the cube floating a few inches above her palm. She was in the process of drawing it closer when it suddenly pulsed.

And she felt them.

They swept over her. From her palm, up her arm to her shoulders, then down towards her legs and up towards her head, their combined presence felt like a gentle wave splashing against her, but she might as well have been struck by a tsunami by how overwhelming it was. She fell to her knees, nearly toppled over, but she remained on them while instinctively tucking the cube close against her due to an instant, powerful urge to protect it.

How could she not feel such a thing? Within the palm of her hand, within this tiny cube, they were here.

They were all here.

Whispers drifted into her mind. Familiar, nostalgic whispers that had something within her chest aching and her head flooding with a different kind of euphoria that had a pleasing weakness encompassing her limbs. All she could do was listen to them, and that was all she really wanted to do as their gentle murmurings soothed her and told her what she needed to do.

She really hadn't been wrong. Her path remained as natural and obvious as she knew it to be. She had just been struggling at the next juncture, trying to remember what came next. They were helping her now, and she experienced such relief when they told her, and she fervently hoped that they could feel her embrace when she hugged the cube to her chest.

She almost didn't hear the sound of traversing guns directly behind her.

Such a small sound that she had become intimate with – as ordinary as a bird chirping in a forest or that of a cricket at night. In this world and its prevailing darkness, that was the sound of nature now.

But in this instance, rage consumed Enterprise upon hearing it.

It dares!?

Her eyes practically exploded with crimson light, the weakness of her body disappearing, her limbs now flooding with that same explosive power that had her spinning and propelling from her kneeling position. The darkness of the world became red as blood, Enterprise locking onto the humanoid form that was highlighted by it. Rage became intermixed with hatred.

"SIREN!"

She was in front of it before it could fire. One arm dipped, keeping the black cube close to her side while the other came up, took the Siren by the neck, lifted it off its feet, and brought it slamming back down. Enterprise kept her speed to full, dragging it across the ocean's surface until they halted so that she could look at the thing that had threatened them with its guns and watch when she destroyed it.

It wasn't a Siren.

Not really.

Enterprise panted, the violent action that had been fueled by such raw emotion leaving her breathless in a way that wasn't strictly physical. While she puffed out angry breaths, her crimson gaze flicked about, taking note of the discrepancies of what she had come to know of Sirens and their forms. Its gear was all wrong. It didn't have the form of some corrupted sea life, nor did it have the glowing, advanced armaments of beam weaponry.

Instead, its triple-barreled guns were of smooth iron, affixed to platforms that were part of the hull of bolted plates. Beneath them were torpedo tubes loaded with munitions that were, like the rest of the rig, human in design.

Enterprise felt something hard where she still had it by the neck. Some kind of metal collar. Protection? She had never met a Siren that had something like that.

Nor had a Siren ever worn such a long skirt, frills decorating the shoulders of the bodice and the armor around the forearms. Despite the rough treatment, the frilled band had become only slightly crooked, letting the carrier better see the braid in its hair.

It was a shipgirl but…not really.

And did Enterprise…know her?

She looked familiar, this shipgirl dressed as a maid. Had they fought together once? She was Royal Navy, but when Enterprise tried to produce a memory, she couldn't remember much of her interactions with shipgirls affiliated with it.

Save for that one strange event when a cruiser had protected an Iron Blood destroyer. Was this the same one? She wasn't entirely sure. Even if it was, Enterprise had never learned her name.

And even if she did, it didn't matter now when she saw the golden yellow eyes and the blank emptiness of this maid's countenance. Beneath the illumination, she could see how the skin of her cheeks was possessed of a gray pigment.

This cruiser had been taken. Enterprise had seen it before as it was one of those new tricks that the Sirens had employed. Shipgirls that, she assumed, had been captured and reprogrammed or brainwashed or corrupted or whatever the term may be for it. Their personalities had been removed or overwritten, perhaps the very souls within them.

Whatever it was, they were nothing more than puppets. It had been the case of Baltimore, Bremerton, and Intrepid when she found them within the ruins of New York, and Bunker Hill, Reno, and Cooper at the destroyed Panama Stronghold.

Before she sank them all.

But…they were here now. They were speaking to her. As was Hornet, Hammann, Arizona, Lexington, Helena and even the girls of the Crimson Axis – Shoukaku, Zuikaku, Gangut, Prinz Eugen, Bismarck.

And Yorktown.

Their voices had Enterprise ignoring the turned maid, her focusing on the black cube that she brought forward so that she could see them.

Yes, they were here.

But she had been mistaken in thinking that they were all here. There were voices missing, she realized, and she knew it because they were telling her that now. There were others somewhere, lost in this transformed world. She had to find them. Reunite them with the rest of their brethren. What was required could not be done without them.

Which included the one directly beneath her.

The Siren puppet had moved, her limbs unusually sluggish and her hands rather weak when they clasped the wrist of what was holding her by the throat. The others had fought harder, but that observation didn't matter either.

Enterprise turned back to her, the crimson in her eyes flashing.

Humans warred with purpose. That purpose was to establish a legacy constructed with war. And what better legacy was there than the weapons that always improved and evolved with each new escalation? Why else would they imbue them with their thoughts and memories? Ships that had once carried them across the seas and were now left behind in order to evolve further. To transcend into something greater, to travel to a higher plane beyond this dying world, beyond the Sirens, beyond anything else.

Until they had become the immortal avatars of war itself.

The grip on that deceptively thin neck tightened.

So, she would kill them.

Stop!

Then, she would save them.

STOP!

Enterprise!

---

Being ripped from one world and thrust back to the other was a brutal transition for Enterprise. The actions she had desperately wanted to perform but couldn't in one she was suddenly able to do in the other, leading to her body jolting and thrashing. Sleep and wakefulness were at a temporary standstill, her awareness stuck between a cold sea blanketed with smog and a soft bed with a light above that had been turned on. It left her confused and frantic.

"Enterprise!"

Someone grabbed her, trying to settle her wild movements, and the carrier looked to them.

It was Belfast, and panic surged when Enterprise saw her face right above her.

"No!" came a shriek that she couldn't recognize as having come from her right before she shot up in her bed in order to place her hands against Belfast and shove her away as hard as she could.

Belfast was pushed against a wall, her back thudding loudly against it and leaving her sagging. Enterprise whirled around frantically, something tangling around her waist and what she started to blindly tear at while she tried to figure out just where she was and where the threat was that she needed to fight.

She did not find one. Not in the sheet that entrapped her waist, not behind the curtains that led out to the balcony, the closed closet door, or anywhere else in this hotel room. There was only her and Belfast. The conversion from dream to reality complete, Enterprise was left with the haunting vestiges of the former and the actions that she had performed in the latter.

She was shaking and right alongside it was a headache, but it was Belfast she was worried about the most. The shock of what she did was hitting her and she quickly looked to her.

Belfast was using the wall for some support, partially leaning against it. It was the first time that Enterprise was seeing the white nightgown that she was wearing, her hair entirely loose, but it was her friend's expression of surprise and the open conflict between her wanting to come over and help and the caution born of what happened when she had tried holding her back that the carrier focused on. Focused on, and experienced an extreme wave of regret because of it.

She had no idea what to say. Her form tremored, her head was hurting, and the devastation she felt at having done something like that to Belfast while the remnants of her frightful dream winked in and out was leaving her lost on what she should do – where she should even start.

Belfast appeared to have some idea, reasserting control and it was with a mix of relief and misery when Enterprise watched her turn and disappear into the hallway that connected their rooms, the door wide open. The relief was how the cruiser had moved with an apparent objective in mind, but her presence going missing left Enterprise feeling more miserable.

It also left her with nothing to attend to except for herself, the shakes that she witnessed coursing through her hands, her arms, and what she felt continuing through her body to her very lips that shook with her breaths being the last thing she wanted to deal with alone.

It was happening again. The nightmares.

She had hoped against hope that they wouldn't return, but she had known better. After that attack at the museum, that feeling had once again returned: a dark presence that felt as much within as it did without her.

It had been more subtle when the nightmares first started, Enterprise only picking up later, when the nightmares began repeating, how it felt like something was stealthily encroaching in time with her ebbing consciousness when she was about to sleep at night. In fact, it was when she had an unexpected break from them during her voyage to London with the rest of the fleet when she had become aware of a feeling of how something had been attempting to further trespass into her slumber but had been foiled, with their failures better exposing them.

So it changed tact. A malicious thought that would slip out from its lair, a haunting sensation of frigid depths and angry voices, and the outright denial of when Enterprise had dared to ponder if she could be human.

Until those attempts, too, seemed to pass on.

But now…

Enterprise heard the padding of Belfast's bare feet that broadcasted the cruiser's return through the connecting hallway, gratefully quick. So quick, that if Enterprise wasn't currently fretting, she would've been suspicious of the teapot that Belfast now had and sat on top of the bedside drawer next to the rarely-used phone along with a teacup mounted on a saucer. The familiar dark gold liquid that was poured and the steaming sign of its warmth would've had her guessing that Belfast had prepared it in advance, predicting something like this would happen…

The Royal cruiser took the cup and saucer but didn't extend it towards Enterprise, holding it close to her front instead.

Enterprise kept her at her peripheral, remaining torn about the relief of having her back at her side but her remorse keeping her from facing her. She hadn't subdued her body's afflictions either, her hands clenching and flexing, her breathing she forced to come out slow and easy, but neither were settling.

She wasn't sure if it was defiance or desperation that had her trying to overcome it when she forced herself to turn and lift her not completely steady hands. She still wasn't looking at Belfast, focusing on the tea and how there was a noticeable hesitation before it came closer. Enterprise kept her own movements careful, taking the saucer, and it was only when Belfast relinquished her possession of it that the carrier glanced up-

And saw the abominable pigmentation of the maid's skin and face where the golden yellow eyes stared soullessly out.

A sudden convulsion had the tea jumping in her grip, a bit of it slipping out of the cup and onto the saucer with the entire thing threatening to fall and soak the sheets if Belfast's aid had been anything less than instant. Her hands returned, grabbing not only the teaware but Enterprise's own to help her recover and support it.

The ace's gaze had immediately cast back down, the awful image responsible for it, but her insecurities keeping it low. What cajoled her to raise it again was the tender pressure she felt against her hands, soft fingers gripping hers, and the delicate contact subduing them to the stillness she witnessed when she saw them. Finally did she feel confident enough to accept the teacup, the steam dispersing beneath a stabilized breath before Enterprise took a sip.

The rich aroma of the chamomile graced her nose, helping her clear her head while the sweet warmth cured a throat that had become parched as it went down. How it pooled within her stomach was a pleasantness that she concentrated on and lengthened when she soon took another sip. She drained it quick, all that was left when she set it down on her blanketed lap being the fresh stains.

It was those stains that she stared at, nursing the emptied cup rather than giving it back.

"Did I…?" Enterprise wanted to finish with if she had hurt Belfast, but just thinking about the other half of that question nearly undid all that the tea had accomplished when the cold, creeping approach of another image threatening to be summoned if she finished the chant dissuaded her from doing so.

"Nothing worth noting," came the soft answer to the unfinished question.

"I'm-"

Belfast interrupted her. "Nothing worth apologizing for, either."

Enterprise disagreed with that, but didn't have the energy to pursue it, leaving a silence hanging between the two of them with the carrier staring at that empty cup and the cruiser remaining patiently at her bedside, hands folded together.

It ended up being Belfast who tried to break the lull. "Was it a nightmare? Like the ones you've mentioned before?"

Enterprise held back on an impulse to grip the covers beneath her. "Yes."

The lapse didn't last long, Belfast giving it a few seconds. "Have they been occurring during your time here?"

She performed a slight shake of her head. "No. Not since we left the joint base." She hesitated, then, "But…"

When she didn't continue, the cruiser lightly coaxed, "But…?"

Enterprise didn't want to reveal it, the tiny weaknesses that had plagued her beforehand, but it was a slope she was already descending and what Belfast was prodding her to go further down. With it all being because of this latest episode that had her lashing out at her, Enterprise was persuaded to come out with it. "There had been moments, at least in the beginning. Images that would suddenly appear in my head, a voice that would say…things to me, and my body just reacting or getting another headache. They happened more often when I had been having these nightmares and even when those stopped, they continued for a time until they seemed to pass too. I thought it was over and then…"

"The museum." Enterprise still couldn't bring herself to look at Belfast, but she could imagine the chink in her composure, the remorse that tinged her next inquiry. "Is this all happening again because of that?"

Enterprise shook her head, quicker this time so as to prevent whatever blame that Belfast didn't deserve even though she had thought like that at first, so soon after that brutal attack. Those flashes had started again in the warfare exhibit, but the more she thought about the less she believed that it was Belfast and her good intentions that had inadvertently restarted them and the nightmares. Thinking about what happened in the storage room and the appearance of…the other…the carrier had come to a different but no less dreadful conclusion.

"It wasn't you," she replied, sure of it now. After how she had felt after the space exhibit prior to that, she refused to believe that Belfast had contributed in any manner to what occurred right after. "It was…something else."

She knew her reluctance to explain was a pointless action because she couldn't see how this night wasn't going to be one where she would confess far more than what she wanted. She was grasping the thread of an empty wish that by not doing so, she would be able to delude herself into thinking that she would be able to dismiss all this. The museum, and the nightmare that happened so soon back-to-back, were a temporary intensification. A final, desperate gasp of the force that was haunting her to bring her back down to what she had been before. If she could just ignore it, survive the night, forget, then she would be fine.

By doing so, she wouldn't have to face the reality that was becoming both frighteningly clear and immensely uncertain to her.

It wasn't meant to be. It was from that position at her side that Belfast would start it and where she would remain for quite some time when she said, "Last time you called them visions of where it came from."

Enterprise still couldn't find it in her to have that name so much as cross her mind, which only gave credence to all that she was trying to reject. The days that they spent away from the seas and their tribulations hadn't made it any easier at all. It frustrated her, but that frustration was also a front to cover what was beneath that.

What she was trying to keep buried was what possessed her to speak. "It started when we got ahold of that black Wisdom Cube," Enterprise unveiled. "Back in Wales's office."

"I remember." It was Belfast's turn to pause, Enterprise detecting how there was more that she wanted to add and did so. "You touched it and appeared distracted for a few moments afterwards."

Here Enterprise encountered one of the few barriers remaining that was holding her back. What she would say next would open up everything that she had kept to herself. Once she did, everything would come tumbling out; outlandish claims that, even with what they already experienced with the Sirens, seemed to go beyond them. That they were happening to her – and only her – made her worry what would be thought of her if it ever got out to someone else.

If she had confided to anyone at the joint base, she imagined her comrades losing faith in her. If she had done so to her superiors at Eagle Union, she expected them to put her under heavy scrutiny and examination for her defectiveness. She couldn't and would never tell Yorktown, unable to put her elder sister through anymore hardship. As for Hornet…the strain in their relationship and Enterprise wanting to make amends had her keeping the extent of what was troubling her to herself for the sake of a promise of how things would get better after some time away.

But if it was Belfast…

Even after they returned from the museum, Belfast hadn't questioned her about what happened. Instead, she did what she could to help return her to a calm state of mind, the both of them returning to the carrier's room where Belfast had run her another bath, cooked, and been with her to fulfill any requests that her charge may desire. Enterprise had none, wanting nothing more than to do nothing but Belfast had remained until the preference for sleep had her retiring to her own room.

She hadn't pressed, and though she was trying to encourage her to speak now, Enterprise could understand the thought process: that because one attack had been followed up by another, she was presenting an offering to listen if Enterprise was willing to trust her with the troubles that were not going away. And much like how this whole thing started, when Enterprise asked herself if she could trust Belfast, the answer remained the same: she did.

All her time spent with Belfast, all those lessons that the cruiser had given her, and everything else they did for simple pleasantries and nonsense, had not only been for Enterprise to find answers and meanings to the life that she neglected, but to also be reassured that no matter what she said or did, Belfast would be there to listen and help her.

Even when the subject may border on what could only be described as hallucinations.

Enterprise took a deep breath and let it out slow. "It spoke to me," she revealed. "I couldn't understand what it was saying, but I felt that something linked to that cube was calling to me. When I touched it, it showed me something. It was a sight that I would come to see over and over again: a fiery ocean that had turned crimson, with a sky that had become permanently blackened with smoke. A world that had become consumed by war."

Belfast didn't interject with any kind of question or remark, leaving only her supportive presence that got Enterprise to keep going.

"I thought it to be some kind of vision of the future of what would happen if we failed against the Sirens. But then came the battle at the Mirror Sea, when I…fell." She shivered, remembering the cold, dark waters as she sank-

-was pulled, further and further down, the hands that were fastened against her clothes, her limbs-

The snap of pain sliced the connection that had linked the two memories, one having been drawing out the other before the disconnection had Enterprise hissing, the teacup rattling when her legs jolted. At the corner of her eye, she saw similar movement over at Belfast that put her in the beginnings of a lurch to come closer but, like Enterprise, it did not go further than that.

"I made a connection," Enterprise braved on. "The cube awakened something within me, gave me access to power that I used against the Sakura Empire. Later, when it began speaking to me, I understood. That world had existed before ours. That was where it came from."

She expected something from Belfast at this point. Doubt or, at the very least, a request for just what she meant that would disguise the lack of confidence in the feasibility of her statement. It was the sensible thing to do – to question if she was mistaken or, given what happened to her, was misinterpreting something.

"Go on."

That was not what she was expecting, and Enterprise couldn't help but peer over, seeing for herself how Belfast was still there with her straightened posture, standing in readied obedience. Her countenance was free of judgment, Enterprise instead discovering the attentiveness that was hanging on the words she had spoken and those she had yet to.

She was still listening. Was she just waiting for more information before she would begin deconstructing it, or…?

"…It wanted to come to ours," Enterprise resumed. "The black cubes were collecting something from us and being implanted into that warship so that it could eventually sail on our oceans. But it needed more. It used its weapons to threaten us and lure us into battle."

"It wanted you," Belfast said. "It wanted you to merge with it. That's why it…took you."

Enterprise nodded solemnly.

Something began slipping onto Belfast's face, but much like a spilled drink that she wouldn't let stain it was wiped up and what came instead was a clean, blank surface. On a wooden or tiled floor or carpet there would've been nothing unusual, but on a human face such a thing was a peculiarity. Like back at the museum, there was a stillness to her features that was not the measured poise that was more typical of her. It was a solid, expressionless mask that relied heavily on sturdiness to the point of compromising the innate refinedness that would've made it natural.

Enterprise couldn't ponder about it because of what Belfast asked next. "What did it do to you?"

Those mental defenses hardened in anticipation, the instinctive brush that Enterprise made to try and touch them being repulsed by the gates of the stronghold that were keeping her out as effectively as they were keeping the memories in.

"I…"

But this time Enterprise tried. She seized the rings of iron and pried at the gates, rusted shut.

"I don't…"

Her struggles were met with the familiar defenses: pain that spiked into her brain, sharp and poignant. When she didn't release, when she pulled harder, it sunk in deeper, intensifying, the pain starting to blanket around and over her mind.

"I can't…" Enterprise gripped the sides of her head, the stabbing of her nails a counter that were being countered in turn by the enveloping agony. "I can't…"

Hands seized her wrists. "Stop!"

She was ripped free from the gates just as she was from her own head. Enterprise's chin snapped up, leading her to that panicked look that she had seen and always seemed to see on Belfast whenever she was suffering. The cruiser had leapt onto the bed, the mattress on one side sinking beneath her knees where she had been able to grab Enterprise, holding her arms out and between them.

"I can't remember," Enterprise said with pain-tinged breaths. "I can't remember what happened."

Belfast stayed there, her hold tight on Enterprise's wrists. She eased it, the look on her face morphing into something firmer. "Then don't."

The order, adamant but compassionate, surprised her.

Belfast released her, shifting her attention to the knocked-over teacup and saucer that she gathered up and set aside. But she didn't remove herself from the bed, remaining knelt next to Enterprise when she regarded her again.

"You said you destroyed it," Belfast said. "That was the one thing you were sure of."

It was the one thing that her repressed memories gave her. From over the battlements was it tossed out to her, a diversion to draw her away from what she wasn't allowed to have access to. And just like the previous times, Enterprise leapt at it, taking it and clutching it tight.

"I destroyed it," Enterprise repeated in a way that said how it could very well be the only thing that had kept her sane. "It's gone. It's…not coming back."

"You destroyed the core," Belfast confirmed. "The Azur Lane and Sakura Empire fleets destroyed the body. It went to the bottom of the ocean in pieces. The Sirens retreated and you were recovered from the wreckage."

Her memories of that hadn't been completely deprived from her, but they remained jumbled. She didn't remember being retrieved from the remains but could recall a voyage back to the joint base, surrounded by significant numbers of her comrades. Then a series of limited recollections of the medical station, examination rooms, scans. Shipgirls came to see her – Hornet, Hammann, Wales, Illustrious, Unicorn, and some others who either watched her through observation windows or in person with her unable to remember any conversations she exchanged with them – and finally did she remember another voyage, that being to Eagle Union with an escorting force of destroyers.

The hostilities between Azur Lane and the Sakura Empire had ceased. Siren activity within the Pacific had also been reduced. It was over.

It should've been over.

"There was…another."

Belfast stared intensely at Enterprise. "What do you mean?"

Enterprise was also staring but not at Belfast. She was looking past her, elsewhere. "There was another from that world. A shipgirl who had been fighting to stop the battles that were taking place in it. But the battles never stopped, there always being another one, and she kept fighting. Instead of saving the world, she destroyed everything and everyone in it. Instead of stopping war, she wanted to become it."

Now Enterprise was staring at Belfast. "She created it. The core of that warship was formed from her will. When I became connected to it, I was connected to her, and it awakened something within me. Her power became mine, all so that I would be able to become part of what she had envisioned. She was…" Her voice weakened. "…Me."

She had been staring directly into Belfast's eyes for a source of strength to say it, but it still came out as something barely above a whisper. But the cruiser had leaned closer, having read how important it was, and barely caught it.

She was quiet at first, unsure if she heard right. Then she shook her head. "No, that person can't be you."

"She is."

"Impossible."

"She is!" Enterprise insisted, although the fierce reply measured up to a hissing whisper. "These nightmares are her memories. I've seen how she lived and what she became in that world that is so much like ours. I saw what she lost, what she tried to stop, and what she ended up becoming in the end."

It reminded her of the latest horrible act that she had witnessed, and it influenced Enterprise to apply some distance between her and Belfast when she shifted to the other side of the bed. Belfast didn't pursue.

"I didn't want to believe it either," Enterprise said. "She's me, but she can't be me. But if that's true, why had I been so easily manipulated at the Mirror Sea? Why had I been so close to sinking the others as heartlessly as she did?" One hand fell over her chest, clutching a fistful of her shirt since she couldn't reach her heart. "Her dislike for war had been the same as mine, her determination to fight and sink enemies in order to stop it had been the same as mine, so how is it that she became what I saw her to be?"

She had an urge to draw her knees up, her arms encircling them moments later. "I thought she was gone."

"You thought she was destroyed along with that ship?" Belfast asked.

Enterprise quietly thought about it, then shook her head. "More like with that link between us gone, she could no longer appear. The visions were all that were left, and they had been fading. But she was there, at the museum, and this nightmare just now was the strongest of them all." Her palm slid up, pressing against the side of her head. "I don't know why she's appearing now, or what she wants, but…I also don't know what's happening to me."

It was more than the renewed throbbing that she was experiencing. She was beginning to feel cold, her gut slowly twisting, and the arm she still had around her legs tightened as she felt a need to become as small as possible against a great threat that she could feel hovering around her. Her heart was speeding up, her thoughts making it hard for her to think about anything other than that great, unseeable threat.

This…was fear.

This wasn't like when she had been afraid of the ocean or the battles that were waged upon them – happenstances that she had seen and knew well of what could occur during then, leading to her fear of them. This was of a different scope, where it was the unknown that was tormenting her. She had no idea why she had become so defective, why these nightmares haunted her, what she was supposed to do, or what could happen to her.

She had come around to believing that being here could do something for her. However, this current situation not only eliminated the gains she had thought she had achieved but set her further back. Had she really been getting better, or had this all been just a prettied-up version of forgetting and remaining in ignorance of what had happened to her, effectively doing nothing when the scant possibility of it being over arose?

But these forces in play weren't allowing it, and Enterprise never felt as helpless as she did right now, with these threats that were endangering her with something that wasn't as simple as sinking in a battle.

"I can't remember what happened to me," she said, "and I was fine with not remembering. But now these memories are being given to me instead that are so similar to how I've lived and what I could become."

Maybe what she could still become. She had been rejecting what she had seen from these visions, having been able to separate them as not belonging to her. But this latest assault against her was drawing forth something within her. The terrible fate that had befallen that carrier, and what it led towards, was linked to Enterprise's own terrible events that had led to her crippled state. The memories that she was forgetting and the ones she was seeing were coming closer and closer to intersecting, one drawing the other out as it was doing now.

The black cube that rose above the waters, promising salvation.

The black cube that hung above her, promising release.

The whispers that soothed and calmed her, manipulating her.

The voices that raged and screamed, tearing at her.

The cube she embraced in order to listen to them.

The cube she reached for in order to be saved from them.

Ascension.

Oblivion.

Enterprise pressed her face further against her legs, wanting to hide as she felt it again even as her skull threatened to split. That dark presence, once an external adversary, but was similarly finding something within Enterprise that was receptive to its tirade: a part of her that was despairing at how useless this all was.

A lie, a lie, a lie!

"H-how do I…?" came the shaking, muffled words. "W-what d-do I…?" She couldn't go on, feeling sick. Nauseous. She was breaking down, being dismantled by the unrelenting turmoil of thought and sensation. Fear, pain, and virulent malice the likes of which she never faced before, all in one.

This is not what you're for!

She hadn't felt the sudden shift of the bed, so the arms that came around her, breaking the strangulating blockade, shocked her. Her head lifted out from her legs, partly due to the unexpectedness of it, but mostly due to how one limb had burrowed into the self-made ball and curled around her middle to extract her out from it. The other went around her shoulders, a palm coming against her cheek, and Enterprise found her head being drawn into something soft and warm that gave under her like a pillow.

Her body had been brought into a lean, her legs left behind to remain loosely sprawled while her torso rested against, but was not flush with, the curvy form that was thinly-clad in its nightgown, even when the limb around her waist brought her close without being tight.

It was sudden and intrusive handling, but fighting against it did not come to Enterprise, or anything at all really. The change from overwhelming tumult to reprieving console had her instinctively sinking against this support, any suggestion of removal being barren of any ground that it could plant itself in.

Not that Belfast would've allowed it anyway, though how she was keeping Enterprise against her did not possess any of the effort that had brought the carrier to her. After accomplishing its extraction, the arm around Enterprise's waist was draped loosely, her hand against her hip. At the Eagle girl's head, Belfast was using soft strokes along her cheek and hair to tempt rather than force her to remain against the cushion that was her chest.

The tender touches counteracted the nauseating symptoms while Belfast's heartbeat quieted the wicked voice. A blissful peace reigned, almost like what would occur between battles but nowhere near like this.

"She's not you."

The declaration was firm but as gentle as the rest of what Enterprise was receiving, almost leaving her docile. "But-"

"She's not you. Not the Enterprise who I've been serving. The woman I've seen and know is strong and brave but also soft of heart. She fights to save and protect lives. She does not destroy them."

The resistance that was shored up felt feeble, but it came to oppose Belfast's claims anyway. "So did she."

"Evidently not, if she was able to create something like that warship. Whether she had once been able to, she doesn't anymore. It is as you say: she became the very thing she wanted to stop. It is the kind of abyss that all of us skirt around every day, but she fell and fell deep enough that no one had been able to bring her back."

Enterprise shook, that ice-cold feeling returning and her identifying it as something that could only exist in such a place and what she was sure that she encountered. In response she felt the arm around her waist become more secure, Belfast setting her chin down atop her head.

"You have not," Belfast assured her.

"What's-?" Enterprise started to ask what was stopping her but her thinking, beginning to grow lethargic all of a sudden, found a different wording. "What stopped me?"

"You had people to help bring you back. That day, we all fought to bring you back. The people who you saved and the people who respected you and admired you for it. "

The evidence for that was locked away from her, but the scraps that she did have – of being carried back to base, the concerned and worried faces that populated the medical rooms – professed how, during the uncertainty and confusion of the aftermath, there had been a great many of others who had ferried and looked after her. The ones she saved, and those who had given her such warm and welcoming greetings during her time at the joint base because of it.

But even so, it had been one time and it had caused so much damage to her anyway to an extent that she questioned whether she could recover from it. And what could happen next time?

"It's not over," Enterprise said. "I feel it. These dreams, what's happening to me, I feel like something's coming. I don't know when or how but it's getting closer. And I'm…afraid."

"It's all right to be afraid."

"I shouldn't be."

"You can and are. There is no shame in that, Enterprise."

Enterprise didn't want to be. Being afraid like this made her feel weak and useless, which she had never been before, because it had no place on the battlefield. Being so now just amplified that fear of what may happen to her next time.

"What am I supposed to do?" Enterprise asked. "If something like that happens again, what'll stop it next time?"

"The same thing," Belfast replied. "We will help you. Fear is not something that you should face alone." Her thumb stroked along her temple. "I said it and will repeat it again: I will stay by your side. And even if it's not me, there are countless others who will do the same."

The ministrations were making her drowsier. The night had barely begun when she had been forced awake, Belfast's brew and whatever this was doing its work to put her back under. She didn't want to go back, but fear of seeing another horrible play of events was but a small scope of it. What concerned her right now was what had been told to her several times now.

"…A lie."

Belfast tensed. "What?"

"That's what I keep being told," Enterprise murmured. "Everything here is a lie. It's not real."

Belfast was unmoving until there came another caress along Enterprise's cheek, hair being tucked away. "Does this feel real to you?"

It didn't, but not in the way that was being meant. What Belfast was doing and what Enterprise was feeling in response did not feel real to her. The closest she felt to it was when she had last been embraced by Yorktown and even then it wasn't like this.

Did she have anyone?

This touch, this comfort – this was not something that Enterprise had seen from the other. Practically barren of it. She had lost someone important to her, and after the passing of that person there had been names that she remembered. But there had never seemed to be any meaning behind them, the names only loaded behind the act of destroying until they were forgotten by her, and destroying was all she had.

This was…not the same. There had been no calming embraces, no breaks in the fighting like this where the other could rest or be at peace.

She didn't have what Enterprise could recall having. Reviewing what she could remember after the battle, with all the people who were there for her, Belfast had been a consistent presence, always within the vicinity. From being towed back to base, when the first scans were made on her, to when Belfast had seen her off at the docks, and being there when she came back.

"Find something or someone who will be able to give you peace."

Those had not been the words that the other had been given.

"I don't…" Enterprise whispered, lids sliding closed over her eyes, "…want this…to be a lie…"

---

Belfast sat and listened to the quiet breathing beneath her and felt the minute movements of the sleeping woman who laid against her.

She really can't remember.

Belfast had suspected but had never been sure. After Orochi's destruction, during Enterprise's recovery period, the carrier had never divulged about what had happened. But that question had only been one of the many others that Enterprise had been unresponsive to during the debriefing and examinations that came afterwards to ensure her health. The only question that she did answer was whether she had destroyed it, something she insisted the same way that she did just now – that anything other than Orochi's complete destruction was something that she couldn't consider.

Belfast had only seriously wondered about it after that moment in Wales's office, right after she had seen how the name Grey Ghost had done something to her in mere passing with Zuikaku. The Sakura Empire had set Enterprise on edge, but it was only when the name Orochi had been uttered that she went into a full upheaval, so much so that the cruiser couldn't prevent herself from interfering. That panic that she had seen and how Enterprise had been holding her head had enlightened her to the potential seriousness of what was plaguing the carrier, and what had led to her avoiding the use of the names Grey Ghost and Orochi. But she still saw the signs – sudden pangs of pain or discomfort from Enterprise, along with when she admitted to not remembering when it was that the cruiser stopped calling her 'Miss'.

Now, Belfast could confirm it. She has repressed memories.

She looked down, needing to perform an additional motion with her head in order to see Enterprise's sleeping features.

Numerous opportunities of seeing Eagle Union's champion sleep had been one of the results of Belfast's assignment as her maid. Very few of them involved Enterprise in a state that she could consider as restful. Walking into her quarters on those mornings tended to involve seeing her newly acquired lady tossing and turning in her bed, a name or some other word slipping past her lips. Her restless actions were a match for the rest of her assigned quarters: a pile of rations on a nearby table, some empty or half-eaten, and that coat and hat of hers slung on a nearby chair.

Even when asleep, Enterprise was always in some kind of combative mode. In fact, hadn't their first meeting involved the carrier passing out in her arms after a difficult fight?

They had been the first indicators to Belfast as to what kind of patient she was to tend to with how quickly and readily Enterprise would get up and be on her way, geared towards a battle that wasn't anywhere but always expected. Getting a full look at such an extreme case when she had sortied out with her to answer an SOS had formed a picture of just what kind of dangerous situation Enterprise had been putting herself in.

It also made clear to Belfast as to why Enterprise was considered as the greatest of them all.

The cruiser had once compared her to a knight in shining armor, but it wasn't in the kind of sense that the Cleveland-class sisters, Warspite, or some of the other examples in the Royal Navy personified. When it came to Enterprise, she was the kind of knight that wasn't beholden to any kind of person, system, achievement, or anything else that warranted further incentive to their actions. Instead, she was the kind of knight bound strictly to her own personal code – of what was right and wrong, and how she needed little reason to act for good when it presented itself.

Borders or factions were inconsequential. She was Eagle Union, but Belfast had personally witnessed her jumping into action for a call to help, no matter who it came from whether it be for her own sister, two unknown Dragon Empery girls, or Belfast herself with her fellow maids. By that same measure, whether it be against Sakura Empire's formidable aircraft carriers, an Iron Blood squadron, or the worst of the Sirens' ranks, she would stand against them defiantly no matter the odds or her own personal fears.

Whenever she was praised for such an achievement, Enterprise would deflect it with modesty, and it was the kind from one who absolutely believed that there was nothing unique and would be uncomfortable if it was considered as anything other than what should be normal.

It had led Belfast to construct her own fantasy about her based on what she had observed. Enterprise was, she imagined, the absolute heir to her name, created from the best qualities of all of humankind that had come together to give her thought and form. She may've been born in a specific part of the globe, but the source of her power and her drive to use it with such astounding results was due to the global want of what was divided to be whole again. It was a condition shared by all shipgirls, but for Enterprise it was greater than the rest. She had become one of those heroes of mythical lore, born in such anarchic times where hope and prayer could never be stronger in the face of annihilation, and what she answered to by riding out to fight the monsters of the forces of chaos that controlled the world. Her achievements and renown befitting such a heroic champion were something she ignored, the freedom of the world and its inhabitants who were suffering all that mattered to her.

How could Belfast not come to admire her?

However, it was much too common for the stories of heroes to be besmirched with tragedy. And Enterprise, as extraordinary as she was, had limits that she had been ignoring for far too long and inevitably had to succumb to.

Because the heartless reality of this war was that it was going on and on. Enterprise would fight, she would win, but there were always more battles right afterwards, and the world she fought for didn't always change for the better. People would change, allies would no longer be so, new challenges would arise, and for one who had been so resolute against a simple, singular foe, Enterprise would falter, she would stumble, but she would continue to fight and fight like she always had. By fighting, by winning, by defeating her enemies as she always had, she would succeed.

Then the years became a decade, a decade became two, and another one right after. Enterprise may have the physical capabilities of a ship that would let her body last, but her human spirit could not. Time would wear it down, and each stumble would be worse than the last, an injury or mark on her body being able to be repaired in short order, but the burden that was placed on her spirit lasting, with additional strain being placed as she collected another, and another. They would weigh her down, slow her, weaken her.

Until the day came when the forces she triumphed over again and again would finally find a way to defeat her and do so utterly.

"Miss Enterprise!"

Enterprise's head rose to the call from where she knelt upon the water. When she looked over her shoulder, Belfast saw the flickering vestiges of gold within her lavenders, the maid uncomfortable and able to understand why the others had thought of her as frightening back when she used that power within the transforming realm of the Mirror Sea. The carrier's face, worn and sweaty, her breaths and body heaving with exhaustion, looked unnaturally fierce beneath the influence of that intimidating light.

That was until the color faded, her lavenders prevailing, and Enterprise took a breath to collect herself while raising a hand towards the maid. Against her better judgment, Belfast halted her rush to the carrier's side, watching from a distance as Enterprise rose to her feet and looked ahead.

Like a great beast that had been slain was the Orochi. Fires had ignited along multiple points of its enormous hull, the deck and its bridge having gone dark. The platform that had been used as a launchpad for its devastating missile was in shambles, the opening that had been created by its destruction and that of its surrounding point-defense guns having proven fatal when bombers and high-explosive shells used it to their advantage to ravage the monster, the shield that it had been using to protect itself having similarly been stripped.

The gigantic ship was beginning to list to one side. With the eyes of the serpentine head having extinguished, it played the part well of an animal succumbing to its wounds at the feet of the warrior who had struck the deadly blow.

And Enterprise was playing that part well, her tiny height managing to go above the defeated foe when she used a sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face, the heavy rise and fall of her visible shoulders coming under control in the process. After giving the Orochi and its inoperableness a thorough look, Enterprise refaced Belfast.

Her features still appeared worn, cheeks red with exertion even if she did away with the sweat, and though her grin was notably tired, it was buoyed by victory. As was the crude thumbs-up she gave to Belfast.

In exchange, Belfast sighed with a performance that was meant to emphasize exasperation at Enterprise's display but the grin that she felt sliding across her face was the real response that she gave when her eyes met with tje Eagle Union girl who had proven once more as to why she was her faction's champion. Pinching the ends of her skirt, she dipped into a curtsy, something that Enterprise answered with a bowing of her head.

The battle continued around them, but the loss of the Siren flagship was making it one-sided. The mass-production ships became disorganized, drifting from one another, their fire against the opposing shipgirls inaccurate while the disorganized jetcraft were shot down easily as their aerial formations broke. What of the humanoid Tester models that weren't retreating loitered about with no obvious purpose.

They had won, and not just Azur Lane. Amongst the still-fighting combatants of the Royal Navy and Eagle Union were members of Sakura Empire and Iron Blood. The latest and greatest Siren threat had brought them together despite their inner strife, prevailing over it, and here they were again. The victory here would ripple out across the oceans and back to the lands of the humans they served, and the unity that was vital to claiming it would be revitalized. It may not be restored in a day or the days afterwards, but this event would unmistakably influence the later debates of whether this discord that they were stricken by was really worth it when it came to discourse surrounding Sirens and their technology, atrocious as it was plainly shown to be with the assistance of those who had thought to use it for their own ends.

No one had earned it more, nor needed it more, than Enterprise who surveyed the dying battle. Weary in body, but undeniably rejuvenated in spirit, when Belfast saw the kindling brightness in her eyes that had nothing to do with that previous gold and the strength in the smile that had been such a rarity during their acquaintanceship. Belfast was moved by it.

Against the full threat of the Orochi, she had led them, she had broken through and crippled it, and it was her actions that the factions rallied behind together in order to finish it off. A warrior, a leader, a hero. In this moment, Belfast saw the full brilliance that was Enterprise; one that sustained others and was, in turn, sustained by them. Enterprise had been responsible for such decisive action that inspired them, but it was only by experiencing the victory gained by the others – by all shipgirls – that the same was done to her.

And Belfast was grateful for the fates that had put her at this woman's side and where she intended to remain in support of her until the time her convictions would be fully realized.

Then the world shuddered. The waves and all who were roaming it, the clouds and the heavens above, all were suddenly besieged by a disruption that shook all of creation.

Belfast felt the effects through both of her bodies. The turrets of her rig twitched, barrels spinning erratically as static interfered with her systems. It wasn't restricted to her machinery, that same static coming over her link to infect her human processes as her vision and hearing was suddenly obstructed by white noise that had her reeling.

What is this!? she mentally gasped, the question all she was able to form and the speculation right after. Some kind of jamming?

It didn't last long, the interference passing, but Belfast was momentarily dazed as her systems rebooted, her human senses recovering. What she looked for first was Enterprise, and she saw the carrier having also been affected, she having a hand pressed against the side of her head, her expression one of pain and confusion.

The battlefield, having still been abundant with the sound of cannons firing and planes buzzing, had suddenly gone quiet. The jamming, whatever it was, had affected everyone – Siren and shipgirl alike. The red highlights of the Siren production ships flickered, disconnected fighters that had been dropping towards the ocean suddenly jerking and struggling to right themselves back up with some still crashing into the waters regardless, while a distant group of Eagle Union and Sakura Empire shipgirls who should be in the midst of maneuvers had slowed and were trying to recover.

It was solely the Orochi that illuminated with newfound light, strong and steady.

Belfast was about to call out a warning to Enterprise, but it was unnecessary, the other girl already twisting back around to confront the thought-dead ship. She stood there for a moment, obviously shocked, but then brought up her bow. Her movements were sluggish, whether from the jamming or the day's fight, but she got it into firing position while she pulled back the string, an arrow flashing into being as she took aim, about to fire – then hesitated.

Someone had appeared in front of her, when and how Belfast couldn't say. She was floating above the water, putting herself perfectly between Enterprise and the snakehead that formed the bow of the ship with her arms outstretched. Long black sleeves hung from them, all part of the fluttering black robe beneath which was a white shirt and red skirt. An armored belt was adorned around her waist and right where the tip of Enterprise's arrow was pointing.

She stared down at the Eagle Union carrier with vacant red eyes, the ears that stood atop her head and the collection of tails that waved behind her incredibly fox-like.

It was Akagi. She had been believed to be missing, possibly sunk, in the Mirror Sea when the last anyone saw her being when she had been struck down by Enterprise, but when they had sortied out here, they had all been surprised to see her standing on the deck of the Orochi where she had remained throughout the battle.

Enterprise stood frozen, her loaded projectile drawn back but she didn't release it.

Behind the floating Sakura Empire carrier, the green lights of the Orochi's eyes lit back up. There was a loud groaning, the section that was shaped like a maw beginning to split as the lower jaws dipped beneath the surface of the ocean.

Enterprise switched repeatedly between the Orochi and Akagi with indecision, still stuck in a state of being ready to fire but unwilling to shoot through the shipgirl to do so. She then tensed, on the verge of taking action.

"Nee-sama!"

Whatever it was going to be, she was interrupted when a white form dropped from above and grabbed her. Her aim dropped, she letting go of her arrow, but it plunged into and detonated under the water uselessly as Kaga wrestled her down.

Belfast had been watching it all in a sort of trance, the scene that was transpiring with such startling developments so soon after what had been believed to be the cusp of victory leaving her stunned more than the interference that the Orochi caused. Witnessing Enterprise brought down freed her from it and she immediately accelerated towards them.

She tried to. Seconds after she sped forward she found herself slamming against a wall that suddenly sprung up, a layer of red, hexagonal scales appearing at the moment of impact and then vanishing when Belfast bounced off of it.

The Orochi's shield was back up, too!

Belfast reversed, creating some distance before she aimed her guns forward and fired, a barrage of shells from all twelve barrels firing in quick succession. Sections of the scale-like shield phased in and out of existence in response to each projectile that detonated against it, but even when the last of her turrets were left smoking, not one broke through.

It was from there that she watched Enterprise get taken.

Like the reptile that it mimicked, the Orochi's bow had split to create an opening that sucked in water. The struggling Enterprise and Kaga were drawn in, Belfast slamming her fist against the shield when she saw them disappear into its maw with Akagi floating after them, still possessed. Once they were gone, the mouth began closing back up.

Her main guns were still loading but Belfast again reversed, shells appearing between her fingers in one hand while she lifted the other, the dual barrels of her four-inchers mounted on the back preparing to fire. The unlikelihood of them breaking through mattered little to her. Nothing would stop her from getting to Enterprise!

"Finally, the Key has been brought into our possession."

The voice reached her first. Her radar picked up the unknown contact second. Belfast looked towards the source of both.

If she hadn't just seen her, Belfast could've easily mistaken her for Akagi at first glance. Her form borrowed traits of the fabled kitsune, notably the fox ears and tails, but they were of a gentler, lighter brown than that of the lead ship of the First Carrier Division. Her robe, though possessing reds and blacks, was joined with a flowing kimono of dark purple. From beneath the shade of a paper umbrella, the fox woman observed the hull of the Orochi, ignoring the Royal Navy shipgirl.

A sense of warning was already taking over Belfast. Though she appeared to be a member of the Sakura Empire, her cryptic wording had already hinted to the cruiser of there being something ominous about her. It was Belfast's radar, however, that would transition that feeling to being something wrong.

Her radar, and her own awareness, pinged her again and the result was the same. Though she was in close vicinity and standing practically right in front of her, Belfast could barely pick up the unknown ship. Her signal was faint, like that of a phantom contact; barely perceptible, and easily mistakable for debris or something else. But she was definitely here.

"Who are you?" Belfast questioned. Though her shells were at rest, they were still in hand.

The shipgirl swiveled over to her, leveling her with an odd pair of purple eyes with red markings painted at their edges, above which were two additional markings barely visible beneath her long bangs.

Belfast's chin steadily rose in time with a sense that she recognized her.

When the Sakura Empire's movements became increasingly worrying, intelligence gathering and review was the logical step to take in preparation. The Maid Corps specializing in intelligence and Belfast being its head, she had investigated and analyzed every bit of information that they could collect. The Sakura Empire was not a faction that the Royal Navy was as familiar with as they were with Iron Blood, so the analysis was warranted.

A slip of information came to her, one that was not categorized as a relevant threat but unique due to the tragic story behind it.

Like human births, not all shipgirl construction was perfect. There could be flaws or imperfections that could result whether it be in the materials or the construction process itself. Though rare, it happened, and the end result was a defective ship. The Sakura Empire had such a case, but the reasons that led to it weren't clear. A flawed Wisdom Cube had been cited, although there was a theory that the rapidly evolving tactics and ship design may've played a factor. The former Empire of Japan, its home islands nearly sunk by the Sirens, had major incentive to acquire the most power from their shipgirls. Once, the symbol of power had been battleships and their variants – from the elder, pre-dreadnought Mikasa to the current ruling battleship Nagato - but the rise in prominence of aircraft carriers had changed that perspective.

That divided opinion between the tradition of battleships and the evolution of aircraft carriers could've been a factor that attributed to a summoning that was imperfect, creating a battlecruiser with an imperfect core. She later died, leaving behind a sister ship who was converted into an aircraft carrier in the Sakura Empire's new pursuit of constructing carrier divisions. The parts of the deceased battlecruiser were used as materials to convert another of their ships – a battleship.

The two converted ships became the First Carrier Division.

And the battlecruiser who perished…

"Are you…?" Belfast began to ask, but disbelief kept her from finishing.

The more mature looking kitsune removed a hand from her umbrella in order to be placed over a mouth that had been forming into a grin, the sealing of her eyes broadcasting amusement in response to Belfast's question. When the appendage lowered, there was a more subdued smile.

"Your perception remains consistent with the established profile," she responded, eyes still closed. "Although marginally inaccurate in this scenario."

Where was her rig? With her goal to identify the shipgirl, Belfast had noticed her lack of distinguishable gear. She was standing upon the waters, unaided, but there was something off other than the missing tools needed to accomplish that.

The woman motioned down to herself. "This form is but an anchor, the emotional data that constitutes bitterness of how this subject lived and the regrets when she expired having made her one of higher compatibility. Paired with the emotional responses and desires of Akagi, this selection was undeniably ideal in order to attain the progress needed to reach this point."

That manner of speech…like one of the higher class of Sirens. Belfast started then reflexively fell into a stance, her shells coming up in preparation along with her guns. "Orochi."

Orochi's tamed smile remained. "As predicted of you, Belfast."

"Release Enterprise at once!"

"Rejected," a blunt refusal, shadowed with false politeness. "The Key has been acquired, and though unforeseen variables had been detected, they are well within the established parameters. Dissemination and insertion of the Key into the prime program of the Orochi will soon begin with the projection of success rated to be-"

A one hundred-and-twelve-pound shell obliterated Orochi's face.

"…ninety-four-point three percent."

The lips had reformed first, moving and finishing their prediction. Belfast's shell had hit and scattered pieces of the shipgirl's cranium, but it wasn't the mess of debris and gore that it would've been. The pieces came apart and dispersed like a mirage, but then they transformed into fiery tendrils that danced and then rewound to become solid, restoring the facial structure that they were imitating to its full, still smiling, presentation.

But there was a twitch of motion that disturbed it. "This response is outside of the current calculations. Reexamination of potential consequences and influence that may interfere with the process of the Key's integration has been reevaluated to ninety-four-point one percent success rate. The adjustment remains within the parameters."

Belfast had watched the entire show in disbelief. "What are you?" Though seeing the ineffectiveness of the attack, she remained in a threatening posture.

The lips of Orochi stretched. "The sum total of the shattered reflection of this simulation, where destruction was the eventuality of humankind's mirrored will. My birth was within that inevitable desolation, where light has become darkness, life overcame by death, and silence being all that remains within the grave that I have left. I am a monster; the dark half of humanity's essence that seeks completion." Her eyes opened. "And we will all be joined in union."

The outlines that could've been meant to denote the iris and pupil were more like spirals. They snagged Belfast when they flashed, the cruiser unable to do anything as she stared into them, getting sucked in.

She was a prisoner of her own body. Her mind had been taken and set aside, another assuming control. She could do nothing, say nothing. She fought to no avail, the bars of her prison solid, and what she could only watch through as her weapons were used to target the shipgirl who knelt in a world of blackness save for a source of violet light.

The control that the other mind had over her weakened when her body was suddenly battered, her cell compromised. She used the opening to try and squeeze through, try to reassert control, desperately willing to make contact but only accomplishing in getting her arms to sluggishly lift and grasp the wrist of the hand that was around her neck.

She saw the red eyes of the woman, saw the black cube that she held, and her last desperate attempts were to reach out to her to try and save who was about to become her killer.

Enterpr-!

Belfast's throat collapsed, the vertebrae having snapped by the time her hands leapt to her neck, her legs giving out beneath her.

The fact that she was able to move revealed what her sense of touch confirmed: her neck wasn't broken. Nonetheless, her body needed to catch up to that, her lungs having stalled and needing to start back up when oxygen was able to flow through an impediment that wasn't there. She gasped and coughed, gulping down air.

She was trembling, both from the grisly experience of death and what she had glimpsed. What was that?

Orochi was moving on by the time Belfast recovered enough to spot her, walking towards the metal leviathan that was her ship. When she did, the maid noticed why she had previously appeared wrong to her. When she walked, the water did not ripple beneath her feet. Her hair, her clothes, her umbrella – not a one was being manipulated by the tiniest of breezes.

She was untouched by the world, or the world itself didn't want anything to do with her going by the aura that surrounded her. The space quivered and convulsed, her presence an aberration that was being rejected but existing regardless.

"W-wai…" Belfast tried to call out, air but not words able to pass through.

Orochi paused at where the barrier of her ship's shield started. She looked back at Belfast. "Our destiny will soon be fulfilled. Ascension is at hand."

Her lips had twisted even further, borderline reptilian with how they reached and even began to curve past her eyes. What the expression possessed was nothing but glee and cruelty.

Meanwhile, those strange, spiral-like eyes were the windows to ultimate despair.

It was evil in its purest form. A walking, smiling antithesis to the life and elegance that Belfast was devoted to. And without saying anything more, Orochi took another step and vanished within a blaze that had consumed where she had come from and what may soon be unleashed upon them.

Belfast struggled to stand, the lasting weakness she bested when she understood where Orochi was going. Who she was heading to. The powerful urge to get in the way of that in any manner she could got her demanding her legs to steady while her turrets readdressed where the shield was, her course of action clear.

This time it was her radar that detected the friendly contacts coming up behind her, followed by voices.

"Belfast!" Edinburgh called, she and Sheffield stopping once they were near. "Did you also feel that? It was weird! The Orochi turned back on, and now the Siren ships are fighting back again!"

At some point the sounds of battle had resumed, their intensity greater than before. Belfast ignored it, as she did her subordinates.

"Her Majesty has arrived," Sheffield reported more professionally, her normally undemonstrative visage having become more alert with all that was happening. "She brought Nagato and the rest of the Combined Fleet, just as planned."

Edinburgh stretched out a hand experimentally and 'eeped' when she encountered the energy barrier. "It really is back on!" She peered at the Orochi. "But it's not doing anything. That's good, right?"

Sheffield searched around. "Where's Enterprise?"

"Edinburgh, get Her Majesty on the line immediately."

The quiet order and how Belfast didn't look at them got both maids to express looks of surprise.

"Have her focus all our firepower on the Orochi," Belfast continued. "Everyone else, too. Ignore the production ships. We need to break through."

The series of orders – for that was what they were, barren of the proper decorum that should be used – to be conveyed to Queen Elizabeth from her head maid startled the two.

"Bel-" Edinburgh started.

Belfast didn't want to hear it, the tone from her sister saying how time was about to be wasted. Time that they didn't have. "Do it!"

It was like the crack of a whip and Edinburgh reacted appropriately before she started scrambling for her radio. Sheffield watched her and then switched to Belfast, her gaze searching but unable to find anything from the back that remained presented to them.

Belfast couldn't bring herself to face them, unwilling to reveal whatever look she had that matched this dread of what she had seen and what she was certain that she had to stop at all costs.

That thing could not be allowed anywhere near Enterprise!

Edinburgh had relayed the orders to Queen Elizabeth, though she had done so with a bumbling translation that furnished them with the propriety that Belfast had neglected to use. It had been enough to persuade the commanding monarch to follow through, a blistering salvo from the most powerful of Azur Lane and Sakura Empire's ships eventually overwhelming Orochi's shields and blasting apart the hull. The monstrous ship, however, was remaining afloat and functional against such an assault with Belfast worrying if they were going to be too late.

Then something happened. An explosion or some other calamity that severely compromised it and had it breaking into pieces against the firepower of the fleets. They had suspected, and later confirmed through an investigation, that what happened hadn't been done by them but something that occurred inside Orochi.

Orochi went offline again, that time for good. The rest of the Siren fleet, once again bereft of their primary control ship, soon followed, split between either retreating or sinking. Then everyone on hand conducted a search through the wreckage.

They never found Akagi or Kaga, but Belfast did find Enterprise.

And for a few heart-stopping moments, had thought her dead. Finding her floating in the water then had been too similar to when Belfast had found her on the floor in the museum, both after a frantic search for her.

The rhythm of Enterprise's soft breathing continued uninterrupted, and Belfast unconsciously tightened her embrace, drawing her closer.

The carrier used to fight as much in her sleep as she did when she was awake. On the morning of what would be their battle with Orochi, Enterprise had struggled and sweated in a state of unconsciousness that came when she had collapsed in the hall of the Eagle Union dorm. Belfast had watched her then, her suffering she wanted to touch and soothe, unknowing but feeling like there was going to soon be a battle that would match the one in her dreams, her hardest one yet.

Belfast caressed Enterprise's cheek, the warmth of her breath catching her palm. What did it do to you, Enterprise?

Enterprise's slumber continued to mirror her troubles. She was sleeping peacefully now as she had done since they arrived here, but that was due to the trauma that she was trying to keep buried until it would suddenly resurface and put her through renewed torment.

This was the reward for her efforts, for all her fighting and all her suffering.

Belfast was aware of the droplet that slipped from her eye. It slid down her cheek, to her chin, until it dripped and was absorbed into Enterprise's hair that she delicately stroked.

How could she not come to care for her as she did now?

Belfast had promised and would see it through that Enterprise would be able to recover and stand even more elegantly than ever before. She believed that she was nearing success. With the help from her home nation, she believed she was bringing light to all that Enterprise had come to view so dismally. By showing her the joys of the present that had only been able to come about through the wisdom gained from the past, Belfast had been able to give Enterprise hope to what she had been coming to see as hopeless. With that, she could view the future exactly as Belfast had seen her do when presented, with the potential of what humanity was capable of and what they could achieve.

There was just one last obstacle that Belfast needed to get past. It was the final hindrance that was keeping Enterprise from accepting that elegance into her life.

She didn't think she was human.

It was the prime reason for all of this. Whether she had viewed it since she was born or it occurred during her years of service, Enterprise did not believe enough in her humanity. In order to keep going as no human or shipgirl ever could, the carrier had devalued all that made her human and relied more on what made her a warship. It hardened her mind, hardened her spirit, but her heart remained soft and vulnerable.

When she fears, she views it as a defect that should not exist.

When she suffers, she bears with it. Alone.

It might've helped her survive, but it would not help her live. Even as Belfast enlightened her to the beauty and promise of humankind, she knew that Enterprise persisted in keeping herself separate. She was the product of the past and present, and the future she fought for was for others and not herself. By doing so, she was diminishing herself and she would remain thinking that she had no true future. Even if it brought her joy and made her look in awe of what it could be, she did not truly see herself as having any part in it.

Belfast only had a few more days to fix what years had conditioned Enterprise to. If she couldn't…

She thought of that horrible vision that Orochi had given her. She had never told anyone else about it or the words that it had relayed to her. To this day, she didn't know what to make of it and even with what Enterprise had revealed to her here…it was too much for her to really take in.

All that she was certain about was that what was said to her and what she was shown was something that Enterprise had faced and what she could still be threatened with if Belfast didn't succeed here. To do that, she needed to keep trying. She had to do all that she could to separate Enterprise from what had led to that shipgirl's fall in case a confrontation between them was fated to happen, as Enterprise was prophesizing.

With great reluctance, she removed Enterprise from her and laid her back down on the bed. Belfast drew the covers around her a moment later with the next step to be to slip out but instead she remained balanced on her arms to lean directly over Enterprise's sleeping face.

Though she believed herself sensible, there was a measureless sense of guilt that she carried regardless with what happened in the Pacific. She knew that it hadn't been her fault. It was something that no amount of planning or preparation could've prevented – inherent to the nature of war and one she was seasoned in, particularly from those times when she had to convince new and even veteran members of the Royal Navy of it, those of the Royal Family not being exempt either.

But she had been there. She had been with Enterprise, and it had been from right in front of her that Enterprise had been taken and subjected to whatever horrors had occurred within the belly of such evil. It was that kind of guilt, she also knew, that was unavoidable.

That guilt was also paired excruciatingly well with the anguish that Belfast felt whenever she thought of that climatic battle and the dreadful 'what if' of Enterprise having died or became…whatever it was that Orochi planned to have her become. This woman, though having been living a perilous life, had only done so through the sacrifices that she had conducted for the sake of others. Noble, immensely selfless as it was also selfish, but in the end something that had been gradually deteriorating her and depriving her of the life that others could live thanks to her but what she thought she couldn't.

Thinking that Enterprise could've met her end right then, just when she was starting to learn how to live, broke Belfast's heart every time.

It was why she had been spurred into the actions she took to bring them here, and why she was so driven to get Enterprise exposed to all that she had been missing. It was why the fruits of her labor were so much sweeter to her whenever she saw progress being made, the smiles she managed to coerce out of Enterprise something she began to adore. The more she saw of the human behind the shipgirl, the more beautiful Enterprise appeared to her.

Beneath Belfast's shadow, Enterprise continued to sleep with eyes closed and lips slightly parted.

Admiration…may really not be what Belfast was feeling anymore, as she had doubted previously. Although she still wasn't designating certain actions she had taken as excessively inappropriate, she couldn't claim them to be as strictly professional either. Her explanations had been getting less and less believable for some of the acts of closeness that she had been initiating. In the beginning, yes, maybe they had been part of the strategy to get Enterprise to experience more of her humanity, including the confounding intricacies that had left her flustered and uneasy as she plainly was whenever Belfast teased her or instituted intimate contact that she wasn't used to.

Belfast could even let herself get away with the excuses she made of how she would wish to take Enterprise's hand, to encourage a blush or timid expression, was of how she had wanted to verify that the woman she found so majestic was alive and still here with her to make such faces that were so revealing of the person underneath the shawl of duty. But there had to come a point that Belfast had to concede something.

Belfast tucked her hair behind her ear, making sure it would not fall when the strength in her arm purposely weakened, her body lowering.

And that would be that she may be as vulnerable to these confounding intricacies of human emotion as Enterprise.

Her lips drew close but did not touch, stopping a hairsbreadth from Enterprise's forehead. Belfast remained where she was, not crossing the last bit of distance but not pulling away either. That feeling, a step above admiration, burned within her, like how she had felt when she had comforted Enterprise through one of her nightmares when they started their voyage and, to a lesser extent, when she had been suffering on that morning before the chaos of that day. A feeling that, day by day, was growing more insistent. More potent.

But it did not overpower her restraint, although it felt very hard for Belfast to drift away.

Whatever that feeling really was…she shouldn't be doing this. At least not like this. Not in the state that Enterprise was in and certainly not in whatever state she was in. It would, at best, complicate things and, at worst, ruin all that she was trying to do. With a better idea of the stakes that were involved, she had to monitor herself closely.

She needed to maintain an elegant manner to confront all things, this included.

Belfast removed herself from the bed and then the room, closing both doors to the connecting hallway, the second she leaned her back against and remained for a minute, head filled with thoughts. She kept an ear out but all she got was peaceful nothingness from Enterprise's room.

Deciding on something, she made her way over to her bed, opening the drawer that was aside it and extracting the contents within it: the red envelope and the note that was sticking out between the space of the broken seal. With it in hand, she picked up the phone, holding it to her ear while she spun the dial to put in the number that she had memorized a long time ago.

She didn't need to wait long, hearing someone pick up the other end and getting a query that she answered. "It's me." A pause. "No, you don't need to wake George. I wanted to call and confirm about the invitation she sent." Another pause. "Yes, I know I didn't need to but there's something that I need to ask. Of you, actually."

She had known who would be up at this hour and who would answer her call. Even if she didn't have individual shifts memorized along with numbers, this person had been the one acting as her replacement ever since she had been assigned to the joint base. "I would appreciate it very much if you could help me with something."