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.

13. Chapter 13

King George V had remained poised at the forward position at her deck with her sword at her side and the quad barrels of her front fourteen-inch Mark VII gun behind her as her ship joined with the rest of the defense fleet.

From there, she had a perfect view of the formations that consisted of the fleet that was gathered here, at the boundary between Thames and the North Sea. It made her heart swell, her chest inflating, and the fingers of her hand that was upon her sword stroked the smooth hilt, wishing to seize it and draw it so that she may feel its weight in her palm. She resisted the temptation, assuring herself she would only need to wait a little longer. For now, she satisfied herself with her surveying of what consisted of the forces that she would be commanding for this upcoming battle.

It had to be towards the end of the Battle of the Atlantic that George last beheld such a number of vessels in one place: dozens of cruisers and destroyers, a line of battleships, and multiple fleet carriers. Some of the shipgirls like George – namely the battleships and carriers – were standing on the decks of their ship bodies while others were either gliding in the waters or stationed on those same decks where they would either be using their firepower to defend the larger ships or leap from them once the battle was joined. Such an impressive force, ready to meet their enemies in battle.

The King George V-class of battleships had been a part of the influx of modernized warships, with all the lessons and research acquired from the war with the Sirens, that had augmented the naval strength of the Royal Navy to an extent where they had been in a position to throw their weight behind the assault that would break the Sirens and their control over the seas with their then close allies of Iron Blood, Vichya, and Sardegna to bring it back into the rightful hands of humanity. As the lead ship of such a formidable class of warship, it had been George who had been granted the honor by Queen Elizabeth to command and flex the new might of their nation as her second. The achievements that George and her sisters acquired during such a pivotal time would secure their place in the growing court of the Royal Family with the establishment of the Royal Knights, with George as the official Knight Commander.

When George was born, it was with a longing for battle. Beautiful, wonderful battle where the thrill of combat could be found to the fullest against worthy opponents. Hazy memories of such intense contestation and of the sweet victories thereof had been what defined her purpose, and one that had been graciously provided for with the benevolence of Her Majesty. The fleets that she had led as the flagship, the great victories that had been obtained from a foe such as the Sirens, and what mankind had been able to achieve because of it with George having an honored station right alongside them – there had been nothing that George could've asked for more of out of this world.

She had been completely satisfied with what her life had become, from her birth to now.

A Royal Maid in full battle gear addressed George with a respectful curtsy. Compared to the battleship, the cruiser's armaments were rather quaint, the plentiful but less fearsome four-inch Mk XVIs meant more for anti-air than ship-to-ship combat. The twin-gun turrets and the hull of the anti-aircraft cruiser, so much smaller than the more heavily armed and armored warships, were more like decorations to the long sleeves and skirt of her fuller maid uniform instead of a separate weapons platform.

"The last of our patrols have fallen back successfully," the maid reported. "The fleet is in position with the vanguards waiting for your direction, Knight Commander."

George nodded, pleased. "Thank you, Curlew. A magnificent view, isn't it?"

When Curlew rose back up, she took her own look at the assembled vessels. A long look that, despite her more presentable visage, still managed to become cracked with the upraised turn at one corner of her lip. Her head dipped both in acknowledgement and in respect to the assembled war machines. "Yes, it is."

George was sure that Curlew could appreciate the sight as much as she could. She and her sisters were of the Ceres subclass of the old C-class light cruisers; all who survived hardened veterans by the time George had been constructed. They had seen plenty of the darker days of the Siren War but had also been there to witness when the Royal Navy grew to what it was now. Though the passing of the years had made the original designs they were built from nearly obsolete, many of them had gone through retrofits and rebuilds with the Ceres subclass becoming specialized for anti-air operations.

Curlew had fit into her new role in life with ease – both as a warship and as a maid along with her sister ship, Curacoa. Though the other sibling tended to express it better than her sterner sister, both were immensely proud with what has become of them and the nation after such hardship. George was certain of that.

"Our estimate?" George asked.

Though her lips had smoothed again, Curlew kept sight of their forces for a little longer before producing an antique pocket watch from her skirt, only looking away when she brought it up to read the glass-encased face. "Estimated time until the Sirens reach our maximum range is seven minutes."

There had been plenty of time for their forces to meet at their chosen rally point and form their lines. As George had complimented to Riley, their base commander had selected the most appropriate location and disposition of their vessels, with George constructing her battle plans from it soon after.

All their forces had consolidated within the Thames Estuary, where the river widened and transitioned into the North Sea. The location was close enough where they could use the terrain to their advantage to have the massive Siren fleet funnel into their guns, but far enough out where they could break out and react to any change of tactics by the Sirens – such as if they decided to raid elsewhere on the Isles. In her heart, George would rather take them in the open seas, but her head cautioned that with the numbers the Sirens had now with who knew how ever many else could warp in later, it was better to fight in a more contained, controllable space.

Human cities and towns this far out of the estuary had been wiped out and/or abandoned decades ago, when the Sirens had enjoyed day and night trips into London. Places like the Isle of Sheppey and Southend were dotted with radar stations and forward outposts with their early warning systems, both to monitor the North Sea and their own cargo traffic to and from London, with defense emplacements that could add their fire if the Sirens got close enough. It wasn't Long Island, but it would do.

Just as it did for General Suetonious. George was referring to the Roman general and his famous victory against Queen Boudica. To counter her rebellion of a quarter million from the allied tribes of the Britons with his ten thousand legionnaires, Suetonious had chosen a narrow gorge with a forest at the rear to prevent flanking attacks and ambushes, leaving the Britons with no choice but to commit to a frontal assault. When they did, the better equipped Romans blunted it with their shields and pila before cutting down their tightly packed ranks with their swords and cavalry. Nearly a hundred thousand dead, with the Romans only losing four hundred to secure their rule over Britain.

George intended to follow by example. Their carriers would be at their rear, shielded by the battleships with their AA-guns that would be supplemented by cruisers like Curlew. While the battleships performed long range shelling, the carriers would be free to direct their fighter and bomber wings against the Siren ships. Both tasks were made easier with them atop their ship bodies, the battleships able to fully focus on the calculations of their fire control systems to adjust and line their massive guns for such destructive shots, while the carriers could do the same with their squadrons – both to gain air superiority, and to rearm and refuel them so as to maintain that superiority. George relished this rare opportunity to put the full strength of their warships to use in such a pitched battle.

Which would leave their vanguards – destroyers, cruisers, and battleships that weren't part of the backline – with the exhilarating task to wade in at the frontlines. Like the legionnaires of old, with the aid of their aerial cavalry and high-explosive missiles, their formations would smash into softened advances of the Sirens, taking out the commanding humanoids and destroying the fleets that would be in disarray. Then the process would repeat with each wave of Sirens until they were annihilated.

War really didn't change, but it was a fact that gave George reason to celebrate this twist of fate that had been administered by God's intervention, where war could remain so humanized to be worthy of His helping hand.

George reached over, touching her radio that was hidden beneath the feathered shoulder of her cape to broadcast her order to the fleet. "All carriers, begin launching your aircraft on their assigned intercept courses. Battleships of the backline, make ready to fire. Once we launch our salvos, all vanguard groups are to make with all speed to engage the Siren fleets. We've got London at our backs, so don't let them get so much as a glimpse of it! Blind them instead with the light of our bombs and deafen them with the roar of our cannons!"

It wasn't much of a speech, but she didn't believe it was anything less than stirring. Every shipgirl here knew what was at stake when it came to a foe like the Sirens – they fought and lived through enough - and no eloquent speech such as those recorded by the ancient scholars was necessary. The reminder of just how close they were to the heart of their reason for being was more than enough, as was the reference to the only rightful retribution that could be the answer for the Sirens daring to desecrate it.

This would not solely be for the girls of the Royal Navy. Their Eagle Union allies who would join them for this engagement would feel the same. Even if London was not of their nation, they had to see what they held dear in it regardless, whether it be a human nation that had accommodated them as readily as their own, or when they saw their comrades in the Royal Navy who felt as they would if their own home was under the threat of such an intolerable violation.

George certainly couldn't make out a difference when the carriers launched their aircraft, Wildcats rising to the skies in the company of Seafires, flying over the vanguards that were a mix of the ornate gowns and uniforms of the Royals with the carefree diversity of Eagle Union that included the small grouping of Sakura destroyers. All together they were waiting, all together they would fight, and the signal for it would not be delivered by the guns of George's ship alone, as when she exerted her control over her ship, the full complement of her guns traversing to come about to the approach of the Sirens, it was joined by those of the other battleships that made up the backline.

The one she had a clear view of flew the colors of Eagle Union, the Knight Commander admiring the turn of the larger caliber main guns of a renown South Dakota battleship, all three turrets aligning with her four – the nine barrels to her ten. It was the platinum hair of the commanding shipgirl that matched the distinctiveness of her firepower, catching George's eye next.

Their ships were close enough that she could see it when the figure that was Massachusetts made a move in response to the gaze on her, as if she had been able to sense it. A moment passed, and then George's radio buzzed. "Do you require something of me, Knight Commander?"

With but a thought, George was able to do as her Eagle counterpart had done: her radio switching from a fleet-wide frequency to a tighter, private line to share with her. "The participation of you and your sisters of Eagle Union is more than enough, noble Massachusetts, but I'm anticipating a demonstration of the fearsome prowess that had been regaled to me with your deeds in Casablanca."

She was met with silence, and then came a response of such tenacity that was able to overpower the minor distortions attributed to radio communication for George to hear it. "If there are enough Sirens, you may see it."

George chuckled quietly, too quietly for it to be transmitted, but what had been passed was plenty. Behind the battleship that appeared so quiet and yet dressed so provocatively to draw so many eyes to her, there was quite the fighting spirit that was worthy of the tales of the warrior who had fought so fiercely in that joint operation. One that George felt she could relate to.

Ah, but that's the point, isn't it? War never changes, but that is not necessarily a terrible thing.

What brought these factions together in this fight, and the many others before this, was the same for those ancient Britons and their Roman conquerors. Everyone here had something they believed to be right, and it was right enough for them to stake their lives in it. There were very few ways that could elicit such truth to an individual's nature as warfare, where a single voice could elevate an oppressed people with their hundreds of thousands, while at the same time the iron will of another could harden the few thousands of soldiers that would prevail against such odds.

The acceptability of the circumstances of the past would be left in debates, with the morality and immorality of the deeds and the results exalted or vilified according the fickle standards of the ages – the one called 'the present' most of all -, but in those moments where the battles had commenced and the warriors clashed, there was nothing but the purity in the simplicity that comes from the heart of battle, where there is nothing but the individual and those at their sides against the others that were opposed to them, and what both parties may discover about themselves and each other through their beliefs that had brought them there.

Such tests of integrity had been what forged the great nations of today and the ties of identity of their citizens, uniting such expanses of territory and people under their chosen banners whether it be the Germanic states of Iron Blood, the islands of the Sakura Empire, the colonies of Eagle Union, or the Isles of the Royal Navy. If there was one thing that George could thank the Sirens for it was how they had been the perfect threat for mankind to make that final step of uniting those banners together, where their ideals would strengthen them into such a great whole when they were able to fight together in spite of them, and witness for themselves how their hearts could beat as fervently as any war drum no matter who they were or where their allegiances lied when it came to fighting for what they believed in.

It had been what created the greatness of Azur Lane, this current union of Eagle, Royal, and Sakura a reminder of what else George had been so fortunate to be graced with upon her birth, and it was with this demonstration that she intended to remind everyone of that grandeur.

So, you better be watching, Iron Blood! The thought got the Knight Commander to draw her sword, the blade slashing at the air in front of her before she pointed the tip towards the skies.

Amongst the formations of planes that were flying off into battle, George could barely make out the black coattails that was the banner of one particular knight who was riding her iron steed so courageously. With her blade and the eye that was aimed down its length, George followed the valorous charge of this most inspiring figure of their time.

She hoped that Enterprise could finally see the glory behind their struggles, and that she would shoot down plenty for it!

Now directing her sword above her head, George faced down the coming approach of their enemies, her sight provided by her eyes being joined with that of her ship's guns. The ranges that she was making with the guesses based on her experiences became confirmed by the calculations of her fire control systems.

And her desire to meet this battle with the full force of her beliefs was supplemented by the many who had imparted so much into both of these existences of hers, her heart beating for thousands, and the sound of her cannons to be their battle cry.

This is what would see humanity triumphing in this war, and what would see them to their future with God's grace.

"All ships, make ready!" George announced. Then, with a downward slash of her sword, she ordered, "Fire!"

---

They flew through the air, hundreds strong – a mix of fighters and bombers, with the collective whirling of propellers creating a buzzing cadence that could be heard throughout the entire estuary.

Many of them were of Royal Navy design: Sea Hurricanes and Seafires, sleek and maneuverable, and the best that the nation's carriers had in terms of fighter aircraft. Further back behind the screen of fighters was a more motley assortment when it came to its bomber craft: the fatter B-24 Skuas with their larger cockpits and mounted tailguns, the even larger Barracudas with their high-placed wings and tail stabilizers, and for persistent designs were the Swordfish and Albacores – biplanes that remained in service with no real modern alternatives, with aircraft like the Skuas being little better.

While the Royal Navy had been the European nation to be so far ahead in terms of adopting aircraft carriers into their fleets, they were not quite the fearsome force that Eagle Union and Sakura Empire's carrier divisions were notably known for. It had nothing to do with the carriers themselves, they garnering a reputation for their durability due to their armored decks such as with the Illustrious line, but instead the aircraft they carried. Between the Sirens and their alliance-turned-hostility with Iron Blood, the Royal Navy had remained favorable to the battleships and their variants as their primary force for the shorter-range operations in the North Sea and their colonies in Europe, leading to neglectful development of effective airplanes for their carriers. Though that thinking had since been corrected, the Royal Navy hadn't been able to equip all their carriers with the most efficient sea planes, supply not quite keeping up with demand, even to bring the Hurricanes and Seafires to the numbers that were wanted.

One solution had been to be lent planes from their Eagle Union ally as demonstrated by the additional Wildcats that were not of the squadron under Enterprise's control. Being at the front of the air fleet upon the back of her own Wildcat, it was through the view of her Dauntlesses that Enterprise would be able to see Avenger torpedo bombers flying with them in the rear formations.

A participant to their aerial complements that got her attention, however, was one squadron of planes that stood out with their unique design: bent wings with long noses tipped with enlarged propellers while the cockpits were positioned further aft. They were also of Eagle Union origin, Enterprise having seen them before but had never flown or witnessed them in direct action herself: Corsairs.

They belonged to a new wave of carrier-based plane designs that were to be introduced by Eagle Union that included an upgraded version of the Wildcat – the Hellcat -, but as far as Enterprise knew they and others like the Helldivers were going to fill the air wings of their latest line of carriers – the Essex-class – before trickling down to the older Yorktowns. Enterprise didn't mind, too attached to the proven faithfulness of her Wildcats and Dauntlesses to want to replace them with newer craft, no matter what the performance reports may say about them.

She had once caught whispers of what could've been dissent surrounding the Corsairs and Hellcats and wondered if whichever carrier who was fielding this squadron was doing so for testing purposes while fulfilling the Royal Navy's request for better performing aircraft. If so, the coming engagement was undoubtedly going to put them to that test.

That would include me, too.

Enterprise remained vigilant for anything that could tip her off to complications to her condition, whether it be the performance of her fighters or her own mental state. However, there had been nothing to be deemed as worrying when she had launched them or when they had fallen into their separate formations where they remained steady, staying in line with the Royal Navy.

Instead, what persisted was that same impression that she had gotten when she had been reunited with her ship body and its planes: that everything was somehow better than it had ever been before.

The multiple cockpit views provided by her numerous craft were unquestionably sharp, Enterprise able to see and keep track of them easily. Commands to waggle their wings or dip their noses were followed without hesitation, their performances discreet so as not to attract undue attention from her allies but made in perfect unison. When it came to functionality, there was nothing she could determine as being off from her machines.

As for herself…

Enterprise had closed her eyes, both to better sight through her planes and to feel the rushing wind that blew across her face and skin. She had a hand atop her cap, keeping it in place, while her hair and coat thrashed wildly behind her.

Her feet were secured to the fuselage of her Wildcat, her rig a weight that ensured her stability. Yet she felt…light. Almost like she was ready to float off from the back of her plane.

To her surprise, she didn't find the idea to be a bad one. Something about the way the wind whipped along her face as it did to her Wildcat's airframe, its roar loud but overcome by that of the propellers of the surrounding Royal Navy squadrons…there was a sort of restlessness that she was experiencing that was unhappy with her straight and narrow flightpath. Suddenly lacking in judgment, Enterprise's plane began to swing towards starboard, which instigated in a move that then had Enterprise swinging port, something building within her, which was then let loose when she went starboard again, this time in a roll that Enterprise rode through along with the rush of elation that coursed through her human body at performing it.

She blinked her eyes open, surprised at herself when her Wildcat straightened. She glanced around, feeling guilty, but oddly satisfied with what she had done regardless. I hope no one saw that.

The lead plane of a flight of Seafires to her starboard drifted closer, as did one of the Corsairs that she had been inspecting at her port. They both waggled their wings in a clear signal.

Enterprise sighed as they rejoined their groups. They saw. At least the controlling carriers hadn't said anything over comms which were obediently quiet. That would change when they became engaged.

She had never done something like that before. However, she didn't regret it, and was trying to keep herself from performing any other showy and unnecessary maneuvers. And though it had been embarrassing to have been caught, the display of camaraderie from her allies had been gratifying.

It strengthened how she felt at being surrounded as she was, her planes but a fraction of this aerial force that was crowded around her. She was just one out of many, and though the rest of the Royal Navy carriers were at the backline, Enterprise felt their presences emanating from their aircraft: how the Corsairs and Seafires belonged to separate carriers, as did the Hurricanes above and the other Wildcats below. Like her, these fighters were parts of them that made it so that, despite the miles that were growing between them, they were nonetheless at the front here with Enterprise.

The Eagle carrier was reassured by them, inspiring confidence, and with those feelings there was how she experienced a sense of belonging that came with flying with them rather than how she usually did this: namely, flying ahead and leaving them behind so that she could take the most amount of enemies on her own.

Before, she had only felt this way with Hornet and Yorktown. She and her sisters had once been inseparable, sortieing enough together that Enterprise could identify which plane belonged to which sister in the way they moved and their individual presence. With that and their sisterly bond, they had established such a reliance for each other. When fate had broken that bond, Enterprise's belief of how she would never be able to reobtain it had been what drove her into throwing herself at her enemies, alone.

Yorktown and Hornet weren't here, and neither was Belfast, but she did not feel alone. Not only that…

…Was she really experiencing delight at being able to fly like this? Into battle?

"Siren fighters spotted," Illustrious suddenly announced over the radio.

They were specks in the distance, kilometers away, but as they sped towards each other and the distance decreased rapidly, those dots became thin black dashes that clouded the skies in front of them. After a couple more seconds, Enterprise could make out those missiles that were carried underneath and the protruding fins that broke their otherwise knife-like silhouettes.

That was what Enterprise compared the Siren jetcraft to, ever since her first foray against them. The decades had not changed that, their thin frames and sharp lines like daggers that sliced through the air effortlessly in front of them with the propulsion of their twin jet engines. Even with the weight of their munitions, they were unbelievably fast. Then there were the weapons themselves: the missiles that could be launched with even faster speed and homing accuracy once they acquired their targets, and the belly cannons beneath the angular cockpits.

Their speed and their weapons had been what made them such terrors of the skies in the early phases of the Siren War. While humanity's aspirations to take to the heavens had been nothing but fantasies that were beginning to make their way to the drawing boards, the Sirens had pre-emptively dominated the skies as they did the seas with these jets that made for such versatile fighter-bombers. For the longest time there had been nothing to challenge them, and the ruthless lessons they had administered to mankind in the ways of air superiority resulted in mass destruction caused by their raids that had been virtually unopposed.

For a time, these jets were feared as much as the humanoid types, but it was that fear that would eventually lead to the supremacy of humanity's own aircraft carriers even though initial designs and desperate implementation of air defenses and interceptors to combat them fell miserably short. Other than the enormous technological gap, there would always remain a fatal flaw that was inherent to any attempt that humanity made in their quest to create a plane of their own that could challenge them: the pilots that had to be human beings, vulnerable to the aerodynamic forces of flight.

Even with the introduction of shipgirls, aircraft carriers to match those of the Sirens remained a ways off and required immense trials and sacrifices. But the persistence of humanity would be reflected in the very first carriers: Houshou, Hermes, Bearn, and Langley. With the tactics and techniques that would be developed by these carriers and the improving designs of their nations' aircraft, they would be succeeded by the generation after them that would acquire such renown thanks to them.

Nonetheless, while Enterprise's Wildcats were leagues above the introductory biplanes, and her connection to them while being immune to G-forces would let her bring the most out of them in a way that no human pilot would ever be able to achieve, there remained shortcomings that needed to be overcome.

But while the human body was such a limiting weakness, the mind and intuition were a limitless strength.

In preparation for the coming head-to-head, the Azur Lane fighters had made use of their numbers to form two advance waves. The first wave, to which Enterprise belonged to, would exchange fire with the jets. Once they passed each other, the first wave would break and loop around to reengage them. Here, the Siren jetcraft and their ability to turn on an aerial dime gave them a decisive advantage that would normally allow them to get on the tails of the airplanes that needed to perform lengthier loops.

Except the second wave was meant to counter that by giving their computing systems additional considerations. Chase after the fighters of the first wave that had passed them or engage the second wave that became the next obvious threat that needed to be responded to?

For how advanced the Sirens were with their technology, they had been immediately noted to have an extreme deficiency in being able to react against even these elementary battle tactics, with any kind of complication needing valuable seconds wasted in recalculations for appropriate responses that were also strikingly simplistic.

Their weapons were still more than capable of shooting their planes out of the sky though, and the coming head-to-head pass was a dangerous way to start a battle and rack up casualties. Standing to her full height while remaining perfectly balanced, Enterprise intended to limit the ones on their side as much as she could as she brought up her bow.

This was her own personal advantage, one that even Yorktown or Hornet hadn't been able to acquire. Carriers, no matter their nation, could be split like the Shoukaku sisters: one who would primarily battle by hanging back with her planes in support, while the other would engage in direct combat on the frontlines. Most carriers fell into the latter category, but not only was Enterprise of a more uncommon frontline carrier fighter, but her natural talent and accumulation of skill and experience made her a rather phenomenal specimen who could win fights in such direct action while also able to maintain adept control over her planes, something that the younger Zuikaku sacrificed to better wield and power her blade.

Enterprise knew that being such an exception was due in part to her single-mindedness when it came to battle. While she was aware of the folly of her methods, this one result from it, at least, was something she could be thankful for.

Enterprise pulled the string of her bow, energy flowing from her fingers. She immediately noted how easy it was to draw out her power, with it soon coalescing into the projectile that grew with the movement until it became the full-length arrow at the apex of her draw. While her eye sighted down it, her vision also peered through the gunsights of her Wildcats.

Her aim was unshakable, her stance strong while she stood atop her plane, her link to it and the rest without strain. She did not feel any debilitating weaknesses or even unease. Instead, she was determined to use her steady hand and senses to shoot down as many of these Siren jets as she could. That was the idea that she had many times before, with the reasoning of how destroying these enemies would protect her comrades.

But she hadn't had the conviction as she did now. Whether she had never truly had it, or she did and was remembering it now, her resolve bolstered at the recognition of the airplanes of her comrades flying right beside her, rushing into these guns together. The tension of her bowstring did not feel as pressing with the soft cotton gloves that were cushioning her fingers, given to her as a gift by one of them.

And elsewhere, Belfast was…

Enterprise's eyes narrowed – and for a second their lavender shade gleamed with a different color. Lighter, brighter.

She would shoot them down.

Her arrow suddenly expanded to nearly twice its width, its radiance almost as much.

Her eyes widened, the gleam within them vanishing. What!?

She fired without thinking, the launch creating a small shockwave that she registered but did not shake her or her plane.

Her arrow was splitting as soon as it left her bow. Then the split arrows did it again. And again. Their numbers and distribution like a sheet of rain, their paths shot unerringly to their targets: the Siren jet fighters.

Fast as lightning, the pointed tips pierced through cockpits and fuselages, the sheer number of the bolts and their coverage pelting an individual jet twice, maybe three times, skewering and shredding them into pieces as they assailed such a broad section of the Siren fighter screen. They began popping off like fireworks that blanketed an expanse of the sky with fire, smoke, and shrapnel – what had to be whole squadrons being expended to create such a light show.

Enterprise had remained frozen solid, her bow still raised and her arm still back as she stared with shock.

She had done that? The power that had surged within her so unexpectedly in that moment right before she fired, yet the speed, accuracy, and sheer ferocity of that storm of projectiles that had caused such an assailment of the enemy forces had been what she had intended, albeit several times in scale of what she had envisioned, or what was her norm.

The Siren craft were just as dumbstruck, the sudden loss of over two dozen of their number creating visible hesitation as they confirmed the losses and reformulated their approaches. After seconds of delay, they concluded that the breach in their screen needed to be corrected, the survivors immediately adjusting to fill it. Though moving with tight, mechanical movements, there was no getting around the chaotic sense that came with needing to make such a significant adjustment.

Meanwhile, the Azur Lane fighters accelerated at the unexpected but very obvious opening, the Sirens having yet to finish mending it by the time the two forces engaged.

Enterprise was able to collect herself in time for the air to be filled with the massive exchange of tracer fire. She put her Wildcats through juking maneuvers, something that – if a human was piloting – would involve them manipulating the flight sticks and stomping their feet down on the rudder pedals. For a carrier like Enterprise, it was the reverse; her direct manipulation of the ailerons, flaps, and rudders getting the sticks and pedals to move in response. The same went for her machine guns. When the gunsights of her Wildcats swept over their targets, it was a flex of her link rather than press of the triggers that sent the bullets flying.

Though the designs of the Siren jets were threatening, they were as light as they appeared – including their armor. The fifty-caliber rounds could easily penetrate them, as Enterprise witnessed when the Wildcat she was riding on riddled the cockpit of a Siren fighter full of holes. While the design of the cockpit didn't appear to be meant for a pilot, it was the location for some kind of control unit that served the same purpose. Hitting it not only made the Siren vessel inoperable, but also blew the lid off it as the hardware inside exploded. The jet plummeted out of the sky, its engines going dark while its ruptured cockpit was wrapped in blazing illumination on the way down until something else cooked off and the flames consumed it whole.

The outgoing rapid-fire of machine guns were matched by the incoming cannon fire, slower but heavier. Many of the Siren jets met their demise in a fashion like Enterprise's first kill, their construction of delicate – and volatile – equipment fueled by their power sources commonly leading to detonations that turned them into fireballs. This contrasted with the Azur Lane fighters, their more rugged design and materials leading to ends that sent smoking planes down into uncontrollable death spirals upon taking too much damage, as was the fate of one of her Wildcats. Cannon rounds ripped apart the engine, the glass canopy shattering under the assault, and Enterprise experienced the 'death' of her plane – the sudden loss of control as her viewpoint dropped towards the North Sea, smoke billowing from the engine compartment before it then winked out of her awareness.

A few missiles were launched, Siren fighters choosing to expend munitions typically meant for warships to take down a fighter. One of the Seafires to Enterprise's starboard took a direct hit from one, the blast that blew it to pieces also buffeting the carrier and her plane.

By the time she straightened herself out, the Siren jetcraft had completed their pass through the first wave of Azur Lane fighters, most now addressing the second wave while a few spun around to chase members of the first. With her surviving Wildcats, Enterprise pulled up, going skyward as the rest of the Royal Navy planes scattered and looped around to reengage.

Enterprise glanced back at her rear and saw that she picked up a tail, a Siren jet rising after her. She brought up her bow, calmly taking aim even as a plume of smoke was suddenly issued beneath its one wing, a missile launching and streaking towards Enterprise.

Wait… She tilted her head a degree further to the side, getting just the right sight angle while her fingers remained tense on her bowstring for the extra second she deemed necessary before letting it go.

Her arrow struck the missile, entering through the warhead and exiting out through the thrusters. A split second later, the missile detonated harmlessly while a second explosion followed soon after; the Siren jet that Enterprise's arrow had gone on to destroy after taking out its missile.

Enterprise relaxed her stance and took a moment to examine her bow. She could safely say that the hits and explosive kills had proven that her aim had returned to its peak, but the ease of those kills and whatever it was that had happened before… She was, as has become increasingly plain to her, more than just back to normal. But what was the explanation for that?

She was intending to ride out the climb, deliberating, until she noticed another nearby jet, this one pursuing a pair of Hurricanes. She took aim with her bow again, leading her target as she compensated for the speed and distance – adjustments that were second nature to her. She loosed it a moment later, the angle leading her to strike the target dead center between its cockpit and engines where an explosion soon initiated that separated it into multiple pieces.

"My thanks, Enterprise!"

Enterprise was surprised by the voice coming from her radio, one she did not recognize. She touched where it was nestled beneath her shirt collar. "This is…?"

"Centaur! I intend to learn a lot from you this battle!"

Enterprise's finger remained at her radio as she tried to link a face to the name and getting to what she thought was the right one: an incredibly slender carrier, with blonde hair and long ears that would be something of a fairy tale, especially with the bow she used like Enterprise. The Eagle carrier thought to make a response but didn't know what would be appropriate, so her finger eventually left her collar.

She felt a little ashamed of leaving the comment unanswered, especially with how she felt about receiving another bit of camaraderie from an ally – one she barely knew but who felt obligated to give it so earnestly. But they were in the middle of a battle, and as her Wildcats reached a high enough altitude, Enterprise had to refocus as she and her planes dove back into the thick of it.

The Sirens had already exchanged fire with the second wave of interceptors and were now breaking apart to pursue with their impossible turns. As planned, the first wave of Azur Lane fighters had come back around to engage, the head-to-head passes morphing into an enormous furball of speeding and maneuvering fighters that had to navigate through it with rolls and hard turns, trying to get shots at the opposing craft, tracers filling the spaces in between, as dangerous to any wandering planes as they were to the intended targets.

Enterprise's Wildcats made a lethal run from above, whichever gunsight that became locked onto a black dagger-like craft being the one that fired as soon as it did. Through them, she saw the sparks of hits playing along the fuselages of her targets before her planes passed them, she then confirming with her own eyes if they resulted in kills when the Siren jets either exploded or went spinning out of control. Some just flashed past through the guns of her fighters, undamaged, a couple which Enterprise corrected by firing an arrow after them.

At the end of the run, her planes split away from each other, better mixing into the chaotic fighting. Here, there came a true demonstration of the differences between a Siren jet led by the cold calculations of its controller and a fighter plane of a shipgirl driven by the instinct and will that had been imparted to them.

To this day, when it came strictly to performance Siren jetcraft retained an edge. They were all around faster and more agile than any plane that could be fielded by the human nations. While a shipgirl's ability to put her planes through maneuvers that a human would have no hope of executing without blacking out would make up for it, a jet would still be able to outperform them.

However, that speed and agility was all that the Sirens had, relying solely on those superior characteristics to overwhelm the opposition. Chase them down, shoot them down, and repeat. In the beginning, that had been plenty. But the times changed, and they had not.

A jet that tried to take down one of Enterprise's Wildcats soon after they separated ended up being nothing more than a sacrifice. Not to the inferior performance of the carrier's plane, but to the superior handling. As the jet positioned itself aft of it, lining up the adequate shot that would disable it, whether it be the tail or wings that its database recognized to be the weak points, the Wildcat suddenly broke hard to port. The jet needed but a moment to register the maneuver, and then moved to pursue, only for the Wildcat to orientate on its starboard wing and cut back the other way, and then it performed a roll back to port again. The more skillful maneuvering had the jet struggling to recognize and follow it to stay on the Wildcat.

What its computer failed to take in to account in time was how such tight turns combined with the Wildcat's deceleration created by its roll cut its speed by such an amount that the jet ended up overshooting it, its superior speed having been turned against it. By the time it recognized the empty space in front of it where the Wildcat should be and figured out where it actually was – right behind it -, it was too late. The Wildcat had evened itself out, the rudder sweeping its nose – and its guns – to the jet as it was beginning to get clear and fired.

The enemy projectiles chewed into one of its engines, it sputtering for a second before meeting catastrophic failure by blowing up. The wing partially disintegrated, the damage to it and the loss of one of its propulsion units sending the jet spinning. Its computer was suddenly besieged by information: the damage it had undertaken and what it meant, the rapid speed of its descent, and how it could stabilize itself from its spin that was further deteriorating its compromised airframe because of the violent forces in play.

What would be so obvious for a human, it wasted seconds calculating to that same conclusion: there was nothing it could do. All it could do was die, something it did when it crashed into the ocean and seawater flooded it, what systems that survived shorting out as the salt-heavy waters terminated all remaining function, leaving nothing but the wreck that would sink beneath the waves its crash generated and be no more.

Such scenes of the inferiority of computer-driven logic were repeated throughout the air battle. Seafires, each with a pursuing jet, turned into each other's paths. One crossed over in front of the other, with the second holding its fire until its ally was replaced with an enemy. Then it fired, shooting down the jet fighter out from the rear of its comrade.

The surviving Siren tail recognized the loss, but it still pursued the other Seafire regardless, ignoring how its target wove back into the path of the first Seafire, stupidly being led into the same course of destruction that it met when it, too, was shot down.

A shipgirl only needed a few engagements to familiarize themselves with the mechanical movements of these jets. After a decade, they had memorized every single attack pattern that was programmed into them and had several ways to counter each one – whether it be of their own development or the tactics that were universally taught and shared. Once that occurred, these jets ceased being recognized as advanced fighter craft and became reduced to drones. Measly, brainless drones.

With her coarser language, Hornet always enjoyed describing them as, "Too damn stupid."

Predictable had been enough for Enterprise. A predictable enemy meant an easier one to destroy, and that had been all she cared about. However, as she was reintroduced to her and humanity's one true enemy, there was something else she experienced at seeing the utter lack of flair in their maneuvers. The emptiness of their dumb handling.

There was no elegance to these drones, and Enterprise was offended by that when she could see the stylistic ingenuity of her Royal Navy comrades. Both in how they flew their planes, and what she heard over her radio which had become abuzz with chatter as soon as the furball had come underway.

"I could use some assistance," Illustrious reported in. "North of the main engagement."

"I-I'm coming, Illustrious!" Unicorn jumped. "I have planes nearby!"

"Formidable, you have incoming at your three o'clock," Centaur informed. "Your wing-pair to the south."

"I see them," responded the third Illustrious ship.

"If you break into their approach, I'll intercept them."

"I understand. I'll leave those poxi- er…enemies to you. Breaking now."

"Victorious, join me to the northeast!" another carrier came. "A flight coming in, and I'm ready to unveil my trap card!"

"Sounds like a moment for my new darlings to shine!"

The Royal Navy carriers were left entirely free to coordinate their planes from the backline. Being able to keep track of their squadrons, establish such a wide view of the battle with them, and have them respond to a new change to the situation, no matter how sudden, was as vital as the individual skill of their aircraft. But it was not just what they could do with their squadrons but what they could achieve by communicating with each other, their planes mixing and dancing together.

While Enterprise's planes dove and flew through the battle, seeking enemies, she would still be able to make out the acrobatic loops and spins of Seafires with Wildcats, Hurricanes with Corsairs, with incendiary tracers being fired, and then Siren jets would be going down in flames while the Azur Lane fighters would be maneuvering over or around them, continuing with their showy, unbroken flightpaths as they bared down on another set of drones that were so leaden in comparison.

The recollection that came to Enterprise from those displays did not cause pain, even though it was so closely related to what would regularly do so: Orochi. In the skies above that monstrous ship and its guard, Sakura Empire Zeros and Suiseis had flown with these planes, as did the flight-capable cruisers of Iron Blood like Eugen and Hipper. Testers and jetcraft alike were eliminated, and in the openings the bombers of the unified factions had decimated the mass production ships.

They had been winning then, together, and had still been able to win when all was said and done. Enterprise had seen it, had felt something then, but like so much else it had been shrouded by what happened to her so shortly after.

"Aaah, above!" Victorious cried, more agitated than panicked. "A kilometer high! So annoying!"

Enterprise followed the guidance just in time to see a smoking Corsair fall from the skirmish that now had two of its kin tangling with double the number of Siren jets. The surviving Corsairs desperately juked and spun, just barely keeping out of the streams of cannon fire that whizzed by them, all four jets locked onto the task of shooting them down.

Enterprise directed a pair of her Wildcats up while she aimed with her bow. The jets were as evasive as the prey that they were chasing down, making it difficult for an accurate shot. Enterprise made a guess about where one was going to swing around and fired into the predicted path.

Rather than a straight and narrow projectile, her arrow became a segmented, scattered assault of machine gun rounds. The dispersal of the shots within the selected area succeeded in assailing the underside of the jet, the sharp turn it had been making to stick with the Corsairs devolving into a chaotic tumble before the skittering, unstable power it was wreathed in triggered an explosion that it became engulfed in, vanishing from sight. The shockwave swept over the dogfighting fighters, leaving the rest on the Siren side to be ripped apart by Enterprise's Wildcats.

"You're clear, Victorious," Enterprise said through her radio.

"Wooo," Victorious sighed, her relief expressed through a Corsair that spun once in thanks. "Thanks for the save! I've been taking quite a liking to these beauties! Best thing to come out of Eagle Union yet!"

"Is that so…?" Enterprise had been about to leave it at that and send her two Wildcats away, but she hesitated. A thought occurred, one that her planes were already following through on as they fell in with the Corsairs before she said, "I…would like to get a better look at their capabilities. I'm on your wing."

Victorious's laugh bubbled through the comms. "I get it! With me flying, you can't help but be entranced!"

"Well…I do owe you."

Enterprise could mentally picture the happy but knowing grin that Victorious had. "Hehe, I see, I see! Keep those planes close and be amazed, then – if you can keep up!"

Rather than answer, Enterprise chose to accept her challenge by having her Wildcats follow the sudden bank that the Corsairs made towards the center of the fighting, both craft speeding back together. While maintaining a portion of her attention to those two planes, Enterprise scanned through the rest, looking to see where her focus was most needed.

Yet even with those priorities, Enterprise noticed something. A kind of curling of her mouth that pushed against her cheeks. It was a repeat offender, having occurred often in the past couple days, but what was very odd to her was how it was happening now, in the middle of this fighting.

Was she…smiling?

"Incoming from the southeast," Ark Royal suddenly reported. "They'll have a shot on our bombers."

"On it," Enterprise replied and turned in that direction – where she was met by some familiar Hurricanes.

"Please let me join you, Enterprise!" Centaur requested.

Enterprise turned to look at the cockpit of one of the Hurricanes. It was empty, but Enterprise nodded towards it anyway for the chance of Centaur looking through it and seeing it. "We'll take them together then."

While she advanced with Centaur and her pair of Wildcats flew with Victorious's Corsairs, she kept tabs on what was left of her squadron. They bounced up and down, side to side, before then rolling onto wings and banking hard whether it be in attack runs or to answer a call from the other carriers. Any Sirens that crossed their flight paths caught bursts of machine gun fire while they flashed by or stuck to the wings of friendly fighters where they would fall upon their next victims together.

They were flying like they never had before. Their speed, their maneuvering, their response times, and the ruthlessness behind their felling of the Siren jets was of such that Enterprise couldn't rate to anything else – even with her sisters. They were just so fast, so light. They were the extension of what Enterprise felt as she and Centaur made their interceptions, as she and Victorious swooped down upon another set of targets, as another pair raced to assist Hermes.

She was light. She was fast. The ease of her movements and her crystal clear focus was what her planes needed to perform as such, but how they danced as elegantly as their Royal Navy counterparts, how they could navigate so easily and in such concert with them, was due to the same thing that Enterprise had experienced in that ballroom when her heart had been reopened, her soul free to reach out and touch that of the others. This sense of belonging…

The Wildcat she was riding on pulled up again, the latest assault made with Centaur finished and more Sirens having fallen. Enterprise remained on her Wildcat until she let her feet slip from the fuselage and she fell away from it.

She was falling straight down, her arms at her sides and legs together, bow tight against her so that she was at maximum speed. Her eyes were closed, uncaring of this descent, only wishing to remain submerged in this sense of freedom that she felt, much like she was in danger of doing with the waters of the North Sea that she plummeted towards. The freedom of her mind, her heart, her soul.

This state that could only be achieved by having found the true meaning of what she had been meant for. Her final acceptance of her dual existences and what both were meant for and what they could do now that she had returned to the battlefield but had not forgotten why it was she did so, instead affirming it with her synchronization to her comrades – fellow ships, but fellow humans as well.

And she was smiling at that.

Her eyes were gleaming again when she opened them, lasting longer, but she unknowing of it. It was gone again when she spread her arms and bent her body, catching enough of the wind to flip herself right side up, her legs twisting to put her feet under her just in time for her to land upon another fuselage.

Leading the charge, her Dauntlesses flew through the openings made by their fighters, the Skuas, Albacores, Swordfish, Avengers, and Barracudas close behind.

With the majority of the Siren jetcraft embroiled with the Azur Lane fighter planes, the bomber squadrons had gone around the massive dogfight in separate columns before rejoining as they made a direct line for their true targets: the Siren naval fleets.

With the narrowing entrance of the estuary, the ships packed the waters as their jets had done to the skies. However, there was something much more menacing when it came to these vessels and their black shapes with their savage jaggedness. At night they were akin to the prowling monsters that much of the world feared them to be, and the light of day better exposed them as the horrid invaders that they were as their hulls split the blue waters, their orange-red patterns that glowed eerily reminiscent to eyes of creatures from another world, the ones that outlined their prows like maws, closed for now, but eager to rip and tear as their weapons would easily do once unleashed.

Technologically advanced they may be, but the metallic aesthetics of their machinery were of such vile vulgarity that one could not help but find their sailings upon the Earth's seas to be an act of depravity, made worse by the ruin they would cause the further inland they came.

Enterprise swore that she would not let that happen.

A force of Siren mass production battleships was charging ahead with support vessels. While still possessing a mix of energy and kinetic-based weaponry, the most destructive of their arsenals were their main batteries, the triple laser turrets lobbing steady, unbroken streams of violet energy blasts. With the larger banks of capacitors stored on their most powerful warships, the blasts that could result at such a rate and with such power were frightening to behold and had led to entire cities being annihilated by these weapons.

But the volleys of the Azur Lane battleships of the backline were more than ready to respond. Water splashed around the charging force of the Siren formation, ranging shots that gauged and honed their accuracy for the next volley that saw the smaller vessels crumpling and blowing apart. One mass production battleship was struck right on the nose, one of those forward batteries being silenced for a split-second before blossoming spectacularly when those capacitors were struck and detonated, wreaking havoc.

The bombers divided on their approaches, each section intending to deliver equal retribution through the full expanse of the Siren fleets, with flights of Avengers moving to drop torpedoes into the path of that battleship formation. Accompanying Enterprise on her chosen flightpath were the Barracudas that she could now recognize as belonging to Victorious and the Swordfish that had come from the flight deck of Ark Royal.

Enterprise touched her radio. "Have the Swordfish hang back along with what Barracudas are armed with torpedoes. Wait until we initiate our dive bombing before starting torpedo runs. That'll give them easier openings."

She got two confirmations, the Swordfish trailing further behind along with a third of the Barracudas.

"Hmmmm…I think I see our targets," Victorious hummed.

"I do, too," Enterprise replied.

Destroyer, cruiser, and battleship Siren designs never strayed far from the rough triangular shape that they all shared, the only real difference being their size and armaments - something that wasn't unlike to human designs. The battleships and heavy cruisers differentiated by how one had more guns and armor and a larger command island that housed the bridge while heavy cruisers possessed aft elevators that jetcraft used to be ferried out from their hangar belowdecks.

But like how human aircraft carriers were so distinctive with their flattop decks, Siren carriers stood out with their two flight decks, coupled together by the island. Two of them were at the center of one formation, with a trio of heavy cruisers. Additional jets were already launching from the five vessels, elevators sinking to retrieve more. There was an absence of battleships, with the immediate surrounding ships being smaller destroyers and light cruisers that were meant for protection. Unlike the battle group from earlier, this formation was content to hang back.

A main hub for their fighter-bombers, Enterprise suspected. Command and control operations for a sizeable amount of their air force must be concentrated there.

Which meant that an overseeing humanoid type was very likely to be found somewhere in the vicinity.

"The carriers are the primary targets," Enterprise said, "but we should harry the heavy cruisers as well, so that the torpedo bombers can have a better shot in case we miss."

"What do you mean 'if we miss'?" Victorious asked, offended.

"I may want a shot at them, too," Ark Royal interjected.

"There's plenty of smaller ships, you destroyer-con!"

"Don't you dare insinuate that I would be remotely satisfied with these abominations!"

Enterprise thought that she would find such banter as unprofessional discord that could get in the way of their objective. To her surprise, she found herself propping up a tiny smirk while calmly saying, "I'll take the northern approach, Victorious from the south. Ark Royal, watch how they evade and make your best judgments."

"Roger!" both Royal carriers answered.

Flak shells came flying up from Siren ships, bursting apart to send out metal fragments meant to shred aircraft. At their current height, Enterprise's Dauntlesses weren't in any significant danger, with her able to look down at her targets between the black clouds left behind by the flak. In the distance, she could see Victorious's Barracudas setting up for their own bombing runs.

Together, they dove towards the warships.

Her Dauntlesses split into the flights that were assigned to the northernmost ships, dropping from thousands of feet in the air straight down. Like the flexing of a muscle, Enterprise felt their dive flaps engage, slowing them to better keep them on target and to prevent the stress from such steep dives from potentially tearing them apart. This was most important for when they would have to pull out at the end once they dropped their payloads.

Four thousand feet.

There would be an instrument for that, but Enterprise had gotten such a feel for it that it would be unnecessary. She had done this hundreds of times. Maybe even a thousand. She was doing the exact same thing as she had done each time.

Three thousand.

So were the Sirens. As the Dauntlesses came in, the Siren anti-air cannons better concentrated on their approaches. At these speeds, one semi-accurate detonation of flak would be enough to compromise her Dauntlesses, with the high speeds of the dive doing the rest of the work. Easier said than done, even for Sirens, as the angle of attacks of Enterprise's bombers and their swift descents made tracking them difficult, the traversing cannons struggling to keep up the closer they came.

To Enterprise's surprise, it was actually easier for her to keep track of the incoming fire, the slight evasive movements she was able to have her Dauntless perform even at these speeds enough to have the flak detonating no less than several meters from them. Her deft handling had them weaving as best as they could between the artificial clouds.

Even if she had done it so many times, didn't this feel a little too easy, especially with how long it's been?

At around two thousand feet was when they came in range of the point defense lasers. Faster, more accurate, and deadlier all around. One of the opening shots scored a hit, the main body of a Dauntless vaporizing, its tumbling wings the only remains. Enterprise hadn't had any time to register the hit, only sensing its immediate death. But she kept diving, her focus unblinking even with the filthy air of the detonating flak and the high-energy particles of the lasers.

A couple hundred more feet and she sent the signal for her Dauntlesses to drop their bombs and break.

They had approached from the north, meaning that they had been lining starboard of the targeted carrier and heavy cruiser where their wider, horizontal profiles were easier and bigger targets. With their targeting reticles, Enterprise had her Dauntlesses aim lower with the knowledge that her bombs tended to land higher up because of the nature of their near-vertical dives. A decision, much like everything else about Enterprise, that was forged with past experience and paid off greatly in the present.

The art of dive bombing eliminated any other interferences, the munitions that would be used falling in a near straight line, where the speed of the diving aircraft would be transferred to the bombs and then increased with the reliable and ever-present force of gravity. When they hit, the explosive materials that made up these hundred to thousand-pound bombs were left to their destructive work.

The heavy cruiser didn't stand a chance, its role of protecting the carriers overriding any type of self-preservation as well as any notion of evasive maneuvers. Reliable Siren prioritization at its finest. Its fat body was too good of a target, bombs landing and explosives blossoming all along it, destroying turrets and damaging the bridge.

But the most accurate and luckiest of bombs were the ones that struck the flight deck. One exploded upon making contact, taking with it a jet that had been in the process of its vertical takeoff. The second, however, punched through the deck and detonated inside the hangar, where the fuel and munitions would be stored. The entire aft section plumped up before blowing outwards, vomiting fire and detonating with such force that it lifted the entire end up out of the water, forcing the front of the ship to almost dip underwater.

The aft end crashed back down, but rather than even itself out it began sinking as water immediately started flooding in through the ravaged hull. With that damage it would sink in minutes, but the lights that went dark and the guns that went silent said enough about the ship already being dead.

The carrier was a different story. It had begun turning when the bombers had been coming in, and though it wasn't saved from all the bombs Enterprise was disheartened when one that would've struck the command island instead fell just off the stern. Another bomb fell right in the space between the double decks, the following detonation doing, at most, a shakeup of the bulkheads.

The rest were hits, lighting up the topside of the starboard flight deck with a series of detonations with a couple striking the port deck. None of them, however, were as lucky to penetrate and set off any internal storages that could've broken either one.

Then came additional explosions that further mangled the starboard deck, these ones lower, coming from beneath the waterline that sent up geysers of seawater along with debris. Those hadn't come from bombs but torpedoes, a flight of Swordfish buzzing away from the struck carrier.

"Good hits, Ark Royal," Enterprise complimented. As per instruction, the Royal carrier had used the opening of the sinking cruiser to good effect, even taking into account the carrier's evasive actions.

"Not good enough."

Enterprise had to reluctantly agree. The carrier had slowed, beginning to list to one side, but then miniature explosions suddenly blew along one section – the one that had taken damage from Ark Royal's torpedoes. They weren't secondary explosions, but explosive bolts that forced the ravaged section of the mass production carrier to break away from the main body, sacrificing it and whatever compartments that were flooded to maintain equilibrium.

The double-decked carriers were the biggest targets, but they were also the most resilient. Despite the attack, the port flight deck was relatively intact, and though the starboard flight deck suffered more damage, as long as one of its elevators was still working and the fires that were burning were brought under control, jets would be able to complete the slower but still viable vertical takeoffs. Such was the benefit of such an armored deck.

"Heavy cruiser sunk, Victorious," Enterprise reported. "Scored hits on the carrier but it's still operational."

"My cruiser's still afloat, but it's out of the fight. Did damage to the carrier, but ditto on its status. Must've damaged its steering because it's drifting."

Enterprise did a quick inspection, immediately spotting the floating conflagration that was Victorious's targeted cruiser, being left behind by the rest of the flotilla. The mass production carrier was also burning and pulling away from its sister ship. The other carrier wasn't looking to rejoin it, moving on ahead under the cover of the surviving heavy cruiser.

"Either of you spot any humanoid types?" she asked.

"Not here," Victorious replied.

"Haven't seen any either," Ark Royal also said.

Enterprise frowned. She was sure there was one somewhere, not just because of the concentration of ships but also how they were moving. Although the drifting carrier was being left to do so, a small guard of the lighter cruisers and destroyers followed to provide a modicum of defense. The last heavy cruiser was positioning itself closer to Enterprise's carrier to do the same thing. That denoted there being an intelligent being somewhere overseeing this formation.

But none of them had spotted it, so they had to work with what they had. "How are your bombers, Victorious?"

"Lost a couple on the run, but still got plenty!"

"Are you commencing another?"

"Trying to, but a few of those jet fighters that took off are in the way! There must be something really wrong with the carrier because these are exceptionally annoying at wanting to keep me away from it! They're not really chasing, just staying close to it."

Victorious must've done more damage to it than just its steering. Emergency bolts that hadn't gone off to cut off flooding? Fires threatening something essential? Either could easily go from bad to catastrophic if another bombing run was to come so soon.

Either way, it was a situation they had to capitalize on. But Barracudas were slow, and without tailguns like Enterprise's Dauntlesses they would be sitting ducks to the speedier and more maneuverable jetcraft.

Enterprise lifted her arm, her flight deck coming beneath it and pointing towards the skies where Victorious was flying. Golden lights flashed out from it, turning into Wildcats as soon as they cleared her deck that began flying in Victorious's direction.

"I have fighters on the way," she informed her. "They'll break through for you."

"What about you?"

Victorious's concerns weren't without merit. No matter how good her current state was or how skilled she was as a frontline fighter, Enterprise had limits. A portion of her awareness was still guiding her Wildcats at the main dogfight and although they were winning, between her Dauntlesses and sending out additional fighters – even if just a couple – somewhere else, her attention was going to grow thin.

"I can handle it," Enterprise assured. "Get that carrier as soon as you can."

Victorious didn't sound happy. "Oh, fine! I'll take it out and be right there, so don't do anything rash!"

Enterprise was slightly taken aback by her tone, but then there came a quirk of a smile.

Should she be considering Victorious as a friend now?

Her Dauntlesses had been circling back around, preparing for another run at the wounded carrier. She had intended to come in from the same direction, where she expected the defenses to be lighter now after what her bombs had done, but there came a snag when the heavy cruiser happened to slide into a position to cover that window of opportunity.

Enterprise silently cursed. There definitely had to be a humanoid type somewhere.

"Keep going, Enterprise! It's my turn!"

The Eagle carrier blinked. "Ark Royal?"

"Forget about me already? I'd rather you not underestimate me!"

The guns of the heavy cruiser were firing, but not up towards Enterprise's dive bombers. Instead, it was the line of Swordfish that were coming in low, distracting them. That avenue of attack carried greater risks, the biplanes charging straight into the flak and laser fire of the cruiser. Heavier guns fired into the water in front of the torpedo bombers, spouting geysers of water that had the potential of slapping them out of the air.

But they were coming in low. Very low. There had to be barely more than a dozen feet between them and the water, but such guidance succeeded in keeping them from not only crashing into the waves but putting them in a spot where the cruiser's guns couldn't depress any lower to target them the closer they came. When they came close enough, they scattered, small splashes occurring in the waters as torpedoes landed. Enterprise was too high to see their line of travel but didn't need to worry about it when they struck the heavy cruiser's side. Like with the one previously, the mass production ship made little change to its course, more expendable than the possibility of the torpedoes going by and hitting the carrier. The vessel was rocked by the impacts before beginning to list, the holes made in its hull letting the water in, its speed slowing significantly as it fell behind the carrier.

Enterprise may need to improve her opinion of Ark Royal as well, and her Swordfish.

While the heavy cruiser dealt with the damage, Enterprise's Dauntlesses began zeroing in on the carrier. Only a few of them still carried bombs, but that was fine. They would do what damage they could. What Enterprise had in mind after they dropped…

Anti-air rose towards her dive bombers again, both from the carrier and the cruiser. But the carrier's defensive armaments had lightened, just as she expected, and the cruiser needing to handle a list had its aim horribly thrown off. The Dauntlesses flew in and dropped their bombs, but rather than pull out of their dives, the bombers suddenly broke apart, scattering not into debris but glittering cubes.

The cubes that had once been bombers were absorbed into Enterprise's rigging where they would be refueled and rearmed, while the ace herself fell towards the enemy carrier.

The fiery explosions of the second assault had barely begun to disperse when Enterprise passed through the smoke, the heat of the lingering flames licking at her. She was unfazed, and soon enough she landed on her hands and knee upon a flight deck that was still recovering from violent shakes.

She didn't consider this to be rash. This was just normal. And with less aircraft, she could free up more of her concentration this way.

With a short but present grin, Enterprise pushed off from the carrier's flight deck, taking off in a sprint down the length of it.

Point defense lasers situated at either side of the flight deck began traversing towards the unwanted boarder. Her bow having never left her hand, Enterprise aimed at the one on the right.

They were turning rather slowly to her, Enterprise thinking that the damage from her bombs may be a factor. She fired an arrow and took out the right one before it could fire. The one to her left finished its turn and fired, the deadly beam producing blistering heat in the air immediately around it but what Enterprise barely felt as she leapt to the side, not breaking her run or the motion to draw and fire her bow again, her arrow catching the hot barrel of the laser and destroying it.

The production carrier had still been fulfilling its duties, a jet having been brought up to the flight deck. It powered on its engines and launched itself at the shipgirl.

Whether it had really intended to collide with Enterprise or not, it failed either way. Enterprise took an added step to the left, dropped to a knee, and extended her bow upwards. The wing cleared her head, but the upper limb of her bow caught and tore down the width of it. Half the wing fell away, leaving the jet to suddenly veer off over the edge of the flight deck and immediately crash into the side of the adjacent one.

Enterprise was already running again.

The far elevator had been dropping back down to retrieve another jet until it realized the very real danger this presented. It halted and then began to rise back up to seal what was a glaring opening.

It was too slow. Enterprise sprung up, flipping over it while her bow came up, sighting down it in mid-flip, putting her upside down. The space between the rising elevator and the deck was small, but Enterprise got enough of a peek.

Time drew to a crawl, Enterprise thinking of it as another instance brought on by the intensity of battle, where a split second could become minutes or hours to one's viewpoint. In that elongated timeframe, Enterprise saw the jets that were parked inside and the assembled materials: missiles and odd glowing containers that had to be some fuel or whatever power sources that Sirens used being ferried along conveyor belts with small cranes lifting to load them onto their fighters. A fully automated process, with the materials they carried all very important and all very explosive.

So intent on them and her shot that Enterprise failed to notice that her eyes were gleaming again, and in that fraction of time her loaded arrow flickered, the golden color shifting into a different tint before she released it.

She didn't notice the curve her arrow made either when it slipped through the tiny clearance, going deeper into the internal hangar than she had intended. Her only priority was to create some distance, dropping her knees in a very low crouch to gather the suitable power necessary to spring back and off the flight deck.

The entire deck heaved, buckled, and then broke in half as the massive explosion ripped through it.

The following shockwave hit Enterprise, but she braced against it, riding it out as it served to send her further away from the doomed carrier. Her feet hit the water, the momentum still driving her back but what she continued to use to create more distance, her only concern being to make sure she remained on her feet.

There was no way of coming back from that kind of damage where a carrier found half of its flight deck blown clean off and sinking, leaving behind the other half to survive without it. Having two did nothing, especially as the explosion had been large enough to warp and tear holes into the hull of the already damaged starboard deck. The carrier listed horribly to one side, soon to drag the other side with it into the deep.

Her reverse movement slowing to a halt, Enterprise watched the results of her efforts as the Siren carrier began sinking. The curvature of her features was that of a satisfied grin, the triumphant feeling that she felt rising when she thought of reporting this to her comrades.

This was something she thought to never feel again: this elated sense of victory that was convincing her to take a moment to appreciate this moment, even though the larger battle was far from over. But this achievement made within it, done not with her efforts alone but with that of her comrades, warranted it.

Was she enjoying this? Fighting? Destroying?

No, she was fighting but it was not strictly to destroy. It was to protect and defend what was important, with the comrades who she was fighting with. This victory was attained by and contributed to that.

That was what was making her feel alive, even here on the battlefield.

The energy beams that came streaming in from her left sought to change that.

Enterprise spotted the light at the corner of her vision and was already reversing, her back arching so that the dual beams passed right in front of her. She felt the heat this time but had reacted fast enough that it didn't even singe her clothes.

She had been right. There had been a humanoid type around. And she had found it.

It appeared to be reclining on the bed that was extended from its rigging, its legs bent relaxingly, almost as if it had been intending to spend its time soaking in the sun and sea air. The wide, cruel smirk that was spread across its features, topped by its incandescent eyes of golden yellow, made plain its true intentions.

Siren gear was fashioned from the most obscure and exotic of known sea life, much of which Enterprise didn't know the names of even after all this time. This Siren's rigging was one of them, the carrier only able to guess that its rounded mass was alike to some type of mollusk which was perfectly suited as a platform to carry the arsenal of beam cannons and torpedo tubes, all glowing with that same eerie luminesce. Save for the air of menace that such designs could give off due to that obscurity, it also performed perfectly in making the Sirens appear that much more alien.

Putting a human-like construct at the head of it did nothing, what weak imitations that was its body's shape and the small ornament in its hair losing out to the graying pigmentation of its skin and visible texture that was dissimilar to human flesh but similar to an aquatic creature, like a dolphin or whale. The eyes, oh so bright, couldn't hide the odd reflection that made them out to be optical devices inserted into the hollows of its failure of an imitation that was its face, where the emotions it displayed – though sadistic – felt entirely fake.

Down to its lounging posture were its emulations ruined by how its arms were socketed into its gear through the mechanical sleeves that they were entombed in, as were its legs though they were allowed freedom of what limited movement they had. Freedom of the most essential kind – thought -, however, proved to be non-existent, as when the cannons aimed at Enterprise, all the human-like parody did was remain perfectly still until the weapons reacquired the Eagle Union carrier, and then its smirk stretched further in response to it, like that was the proper thing to do in accordance to its mimicry.

These reprehensible models of the human form were but marionettes, enslaved to controlling programs of their rigs that followed the commands filtered down from the overarching network that they were connected to. What the ultimate purpose that they served through that network was something that humanity could only deduce from the decades of actions that these units carried out that contributed to one thing: the utter eradication of mankind.

Thus did they earn the name Sirens: monsters of such perverse form whose carnage was to the bidding of such an enigmatic administrator.

Enterprise had always found these humanoid types to be the worst that the Sirens had to offer, but something about coming across this Navigator-class heavy cruiser initiated a strong sense of disgust that grew when she thought of this empty, smirking face highlighted by the fires of chaos that it would cause if it got past her and continued on to the human civilization that she and her comrades were defending.

With all that she was, Enterprise was not going to let that happen, her fingers curling tightly around her bow.

The barrels of the Navigator's beam cannons warmed with the gathering of violet energies for another attack.

Enterprise suddenly faltered. Wait.

It fired.

Enterprise was already angling away, her one shoulder dropping, a deadly flash of a laser capable of burning through inches of armored hull plating flying over it as the ace accelerated hard to the side, avoiding the brilliant salvo before reversing hard.

Something was off.

Still in full reverse, Enterprise began zigzagging as the Navigator pursued, its expression unchanging but its weapons tracking her. While its side-mounted beam cannons recharged, its lighter secondaries that were overhead opened up, firing shells that sent columns of water splashing in front of and around Enterprise as she kept up with evasive maneuverings. Some of the watery pillars broke their lines of sight of each other briefly, but Enterprise could see the Navigator's main batteries warming again.

Like the jet fighters, Enterprise had fought humanoid types so much that she had come to know their movements and attack patterns so well, the serpentine path she was cutting through the waves a natural response to the Navigator's heavy attack. This included memorization of the firing times of its secondaries and the recharge rate of the main batteries having her abruptly cutting to a new direction in order to avoid them, the energy beams of its second assault streaking by as they missed their marks.

She knew them so well which was why she could tell…

This Navigator was slow.

Enterprise wasn't so much counting as she was feeling the seconds that should be needed between the Navigator's salvos. Should be, but Enterprise noticed the discrepancy that was not synching up with what she knew to be. Its cannons were going through an additional second to recharge, and there was something off in the booming of its secondaries which were not the relentless filler that they were intended to be. It was with the Navigator's third onslaught of its batteries that Enterprise realized that it wasn't their rate of fire, as the actual projectiles – whether solid or energy-based -, were also slow, the violent splashing of the water as they made impact not lining up with the reports of the guns either.

Enterprise was going to include its speed, watching it drift in and out of sight between the watery pillars that were raised by its failed attacks in a slower than normal pace but that was when she noticed an additional thing: the rise and fall of the water that was being blasted, while normal in display, nonetheless felt oddly dragged out.

It wasn't the Navigator that was off, it was Enterprise.

Violet energies again coalesced at the ends of the Siren's batteries. Making hard to starboard, Enterprise raised her bow and fired a quick shot. It proved to be quicker than even she intended, the Navigator's cannons still glowing by the time her arrow struck and exploded. The Navigator sailed through the following cloud, the blue hexagonal pattern of an energy shield shimmering in front of it as it continued after Enterprise. If Enterprise didn't know any better, seeing the Siren's unbroken smile once the shield vanished would've seemed as if it was mocking the lack of damage made to its body as it continued after the carrier, the beam cannons firing again

This Navigator had shielding modules installed into its rig, protecting it, but Enterprise got what she wanted from her attack. She had felt it with her planes, but she could feel and see for herself as to what was happening to her body and its perception of the world, especially in the middle of a closer battle with a foe that was supposed to be of a much more dangerous type. She had felt the same on her bombing runs with the Siren ships, when she boarded the carrier, feeling that its defenses had been just as slow and how she had been able to make that shot into its internal hangar with such vividness.

This wasn't about being faster. The overall synergy between her body and her gear had improved to such an extent that it was creating effects that Enterprise was having trouble acquainting herself with.

"Enterprise, is that the humanoid?" Ark Royal suddenly came over comms.

Her voice reminded Enterprise of the greater battle going on. While she dodged and swerved, and the Navigator chased her, around them the other ships of the Siren fleet were firing into the air at the planes of her Royal Navy comrades. With the bigger capital ships gone, bombs and torpedoes had been turned on them, some of them now burning and sinking.

"Affirmative," Enterprise had time to confirm. "A Navigator, and it has shields."

"I'll send help right away!"

"No." Enterprise ducked under another energy beam. "It'll be difficult to hit with your torpedoes and will put your Swordfish in range of its guns. See to Victorious."

"Forget about me!" Victorious called. "I thought I said not to do anything rash!"

"It's not a problem. I'll take care of it."

Victorious was saying something else but Enterprise detected the contacts in the water right before she saw the long, thin silhouettes speeding towards her. Torpedoes, the Navigator having dropped them at a point during its barrage. Enterprise hadn't forgotten that it had them and had even been thinking that it was about time that it would make use of them. She leapt high into the air, drawing her bow, and fired a flurry of arrows into the line of torpedoes. A split second after being shot beneath the water's surface, her arrows prematurely detonated the torpedoes, great columns of water blasting upwards as Enterprise landed back down.

She was planning to go on the attack, already drifting towards a position to launch one once the water settled, until she noticed something else now.

She could see where the Navigator was. Behind the curtain of seawater, she could make out an outline that was of the same rounded shape as its gear. A bright, luminescent tracing that shone through like an aura.

Enterprise was reflexively loading another arrow and had it aimed at the outline by the time the wall dropped and she could see for herself that the Navigator was exactly where it had appeared to be. The Siren was busy acquiring her again by the time Enterprise fired another rain of bolts. The energy shield shimmered into life again, weathering through the multiple impacts, but Enterprise witnessed it when it began to flicker, the blue tint flaring yellow.

Rather than resume her retreat, Enterprise accelerated towards it.

Its guns were seeking her out, Enterprise timing the accumulation of the needed energies as they glowed hot and then moved right before they fired, the energy beams slicing through the air to no avail as she dodged one and then glided into the space it cleared to avoid another. Its movements and its shots really were slow, and Enterprise fired one arrow, then another.

The first arrow struck the shield, detonating, the now yellow barrier glowing orange, then red when the second hit, growing dull and weak, with sparks igniting at two separate compartments that housed its shielding modules. It had a physical effect on the Siren, Enterprise making out when the Navigator's movements flinched, its weakening shield not quite able to cancel out the pressure wave of the hit, getting it to shudder.

But the Siren's expression didn't flinch, and the overhead secondaries fired at Enterprise.

Enterprise jumped high again, leaving the shells to their useless splashing while she sailed over the Navigator's head. She fired a third arrow before she landed away from it.

Her projectile morphed into a fatter thousand-pound bomb. The shield arose to guard, but the barrier – pulsing weakly – didn't hold for an instant before it failed, the bomb crossing the protective threshold before exploding.

That did damage. When the worst of the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the secondary batteries, them and an entire third of the Navigator's rig having been blown to ruin, the smooth sloping of its shell-like appearance now topping to a gaping wound with warped and shattered plating at the edges, exposing jagged girders that jutted out like splintered bone.

The location of the bomb's collision had also put it right behind the Navigator's head. Enterprise couldn't make out much through the smoke billowing from the damage of its rig and its now overloaded shielding modules, but she saw how much of its pale silver-gray hair had been incinerated, the melted layer that was its skin exposing some kind of casing that could be considered as the Siren's skull, the cracks highlighted by the fluorescent fluids that bubbled and leaked out, drenching what patches of hair were left while painting wet trails down its back.

But the heavy cruiser rotated around regardless, and beneath the ragged mess of strands that had fallen over its face, its lips remained twisted in that same diabolical smile.

There was a sluggishness to its remaining weapons as they traversed, the damage having apparently effected its fire control system. Enterprise tensed regardless as they came her way.

Armor-piercing shells then suddenly came from the Navigator's starboard, impacting against the beam cannons on that side. They sparked, sputtered, and then blew when their power cells were compromised, the heavy cruiser quaking mightily.

Enterprise immediately looked to where the fire had come from to see Cleveland racing along to get another angle, her six-inchers firing again while she called, "Monty!"

There was a figure that was visible before disappearing behind the Navigator, then the entire aft section of its hull began taking on additional fire, chunks of armor being chipped away by the steady stream of the 'super heavy' AP projectiles. Meanwhile, Cleveland's second assault further expanded the gaping hole that was forming where the Siren's guns used to be. Shells even struck its upraised knee, bruising and distorting the shape of the limb, its fluorescent blood spurting as the warping bone structure split open its faux skin. The Navigator's head jerked from another hit, bits of debris, fluids, and other sickening matter flying from one side.

Uncaring of the damage, the Navigator refaced Cleveland, appearing gleeful at her approach even as its entire rigging was being violently dismantled all around it, a section at the top of its skull now cratered and fragmented. It struggled to redirect what remaining beam cannons and torpedo tubes it had left towards her.

Enterprise had stood in confusion at the sudden intervention, but soon recovered at the threat to her friend. She pointed her bow up and fired, the arrow transforming into a Dauntless that quickly turned, dove, and dropped its payload right on top of the distracted Navigator.

The hundreds of pounds of explosives it was loaded with all landed on target, a mushrooming cloud immediately taking the heavy cruiser from sight and Enterprise knew the moment of its demise when it ballooned further in response to a delayed detonation that occurred within the center of it, the damage having struck right to the Navigator's core that blew it to a cataclysmic end.

One down, Enterprise thought to herself. Dismissing her bomber, she turned in time for Cleveland to sail up towards her. "What are you doing here?"

Cleveland stopped and stared at the carrier as if she had grown an additional head. "What do you mean what am I doing here? We're part of the vanguard!"

Vanguard…?

Explosions suddenly ripped through the smaller ships of the Siren fleet. The loss of the flagship was already having a noticeable effect on the fleet, the remaining mass production ships falling in disarray. Without a higher coordinator, their formation began to deteriorate, the vessels drifting away from each other, which was made worse when there came this sudden bombardment. Not from the distant backline but of closer, more accurate fire.

"Come on, then!" Nevada suddenly exclaimed, the loudest of the Azur Lane shipgirls that suddenly came charging in, both in voice and in the reports of her massive batteries. Her array of double and triple turrets firing together in a broadside utterly obliterated a light cruiser, its hull cracking open like an egg while its deck sent out flaming fragments that had once been its gun platforms and bridge.

While her aim had been for the cruiser, her path was putting her on a collision course with a destroyer. Nevada smacked her fists together, bent her shoulder and that section of her rigging towards it, and went through its hull, breaking free out the other side, fire and debris disgorging from the newly created hole. The battleship spun around and brought her now reloaded cannons to bear, the destroyer faring even worse than the cruiser as it was practically blown out of the water.

Following her lead came the rest of the vanguard that consisted of Eagle Union ships. Darting around and covering the battleship's flanks were Thatcher and Maury, launching strings of torpedoes that distributed hull-rupturing decimation to their targeted groups, their forward guns blasting to expand on the damage as much as they could. Further back, Pennsylvania was providing support fire at longer ranges, her aim more methodical as she targeted what warships that had yet to be stricken by her fellow Eagle Union girls, her shells destroying the disorganized Siren vessels as easily as Nevada.

Though the remaining Siren ships were practically helpless, the threat of another flagship coming to collect and assimilate them into another fleet warranted their elimination with the extreme prejudice that was being carried out, the members working their way through the survivors with such devastating thoroughness with the weapons of their respective classes.

Cleveland bent forward to better stare accusingly up at Enterprise while another Siren destroyer was blown apart behind her. "What, did you forget that you aren't the only one out here again?"

"Er…" Enterprise tried and failed to respond, becoming sheepish.

It had still been too easy to descend back into her habits, her focus having tunneled once she had left the company of others to take on a threat by herself. Engrossed in her duel with the Navigator, where she had also been trying to get a handle on her evolved battle sense, she had in fact forgotten about the vanguard groups.

Cleveland smacked her palm against her forehead. "Come on, Enterprise! You and the other carriers were meant to soften them up and then work together with us to destroy them, but here we find you smack dab in the middle of the Siren fleet with their carriers and their flagship!"

"I wanted to eliminate the main threats once they were identified," Enterprise explained.

The Eagle cruiser crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her. "Which you should've done with us! I thought we were friends!"

Montpelier glided over to Cleveland's side where she adopted her sister's crossed-arm posture. She didn't say anything, letting her own glare do the same with Cleveland's.

Enterprise's mouth worked but couldn't find anything to say against what was being fielded against her. Feeling chastised by those looks that she was receiving, and remembering how Victorious had been as scolding, Enterprise's head receded a bit. "Sorry. I got ahead of myself." When they remained unmoved, she tried, "…Thanks for your help."

The two knights shared a glance with each other.

"She admitted it," Cleveland said.

Montpelier nodded, a corner of her lip rising. "She thanked us, too."

The lead ship switched back to Enterprise, her severe expression breaking with a grin. "She really has been learning."

More embarrassed than chastised now, it was Enterprise's turn to try and be disciplinary. "We still have enemies left that we should sink."

"Oh, not anymore," Nevada corrected when she suddenly joined up with them with a triumphant grin. "Without their flagship, they couldn't remotely put up a fight."

"We ran circles around them!" Maury declared, she and Thatcher linking with them.

"The targets have been eliminated," Pennsylvania was the last to report. Her stern features centered on Enterprise, but there was a hint of what could be satisfaction at their results. "Where to next?"

Enterprise saw for herself the ruined hulks of what had once been a Siren fleet burning and sinking around them. It was but a conclusion to the opening act, the blunting of the tip of a spear, with Enterprise knowing that the battle was far from over as she remembered just how many Siren vessels would be coming to replace these destroyed forward elements. There would be plenty more to fight. Plenty more to sink.

A phantom sensation of the resolve-grinding burden that she had lived with faintly resurfaced, trying to find its purchase on her with the help of such a familiar and unchanging sight. It couldn't find one when Enterprise refocused on her Eagle Union comrades.

She may be here again with the battles, how they were conducted and what they resulted in remaining unchanged, but she had changed.

She touched her radio. "Victorious, what's the status of the rest of the battle?"

"Oh, now you're asking!" she huffed. "We're all clear here, but some of our girls are getting held up elsewhere. Rodney's group is dealing with a Smasher-class Siren. They're making progress, but a lot of our bombers have flown back to rearm. Um…there's another fleet that's being shared joint command between Scavengers that shouldn't be a problem, but Ajax has detected what could be a Lurker and is requesting antisubmarine support to hunt it."

Antisubmarine? Enterprise considered the two destroyers. "Thatcher, Maury?"

"I've never sunk a submarine before," Thatcher said. "But the Beavers and I practice antisubmarine operations all the time!" She made a big grin. "I'll get it and tell them all about it!"

"Not if I get it first!" Maury jumped and took off.

"Hey, no fair!"

"…Do they even know where they're going?" Pennsylvania asked, watching the two destroyers go with concern.

"I don't think they do," Enterprise sighed. "Which is why I'm going to ask if you could make sure they get there."

Pennsylvania grimaced but saw the wisdom to it. "I'll make sure they do."

"Monty," Cleveland said when the battleship went to give chase. "Help her out for me?"

Montpelier perked up at her sister ship asking for her help and nodded with devoted purpose. "I won't let you down."

"So, are you saying we get the good stuff?" Nevada asked, cracking her knuckles in anticipation.

Enterprise answered the question with her reply to the Royal carrier. "Victorious, I've sent a group to help out with the Lurker. I'm on my way to assist with the Smasher."

"Not alone, right?" Victorious interrogated.

Enterprise grinned a little while sailing towards Rodney's position, Cleveland and Nevada falling in with her. "I've got Cleveland and Nevada with me. We'll engage it."

"Right, cool, you do that. Exactly that."

"We'll show them how Eagle Union gets it done," Nevada boasted, the upcoming challenge exciting her. "That Rodney's one of the Big Seven, isn't she?"

"Which means if she's having trouble, that Smasher must be something else," Cleveland said with an air of caution.

"We'll be able to handle it," Enterprise replied. "That and whatever comes after it." She noticed movement and when she looked over it was to see Cleveland having drifted closer, squinting up at Enterprise. "What?"

Cleveland produced another grin while chuckling to herself. "Just getting a better look at this new Enterprise. Much less annoying and way cooler without that reckless loner bit."

Enterprise's cheeks reddened which became redder when she checked over at Nevada and saw the battleship giving her a thumbs-up with an expression that matched Cleveland's. The carrier faced forward and kept her gaze ahead, unwilling to look at either of them again until it was necessary.

This was what she needed to do, and their company made her certain of it even as she was sailing from one engagement zone to the next. The rhythm of conflict still unbroken, and even as they fought Enterprise remained keenly aware of what her and George had entertained about the Sirens having an ulterior motive behind even this massive attack, which made her think of what was going on at Devonport and her praying that Belfast was safe.

A part of her desperately wanted to be there but, as always, Belfast had been right. This was where she could do what she was best at, and not solely by how she could fight the Sirens herself, but how she could fight with her comrades – truly fight with them. Her skills, her experience that she had accumulated but had felt no pride in – no worth –, but what she could now feel with her actions and directions that felt so easy, natural, and fulfilling.

At last, for this fight she was sailing to and the ones that would come later, Enterprise could feel pride. Feel worth. And that was all the validation she needed after so, so long.

---

George stared across the space between them, her quizzical frown undeterred by the discord of the command room. "When I asked for your expertise, I hadn't meant for you to go this far."

Belfast was just as undaunted. "You sought my counsel on who would be best to send on this mission."

"Yes, but you didn't have to volunteer yourself. I could send Newcastle instead, or Curlew, given that Curacoa will be going."

"With all due respect to Newcastle, keeping up with the squadron may be too strenuous for her where speed is needed," Belfast coolly responded. "And while Curlew meets the qualifications as a second, operationally she would leave the team imbalanced in case they do run into danger. I would be better suited."

"Because the team had been formed with the idea of you acting as the second," George mused, as if the revelation was just coming to her.

Belfast knew better, sure that George had known of her intentions long before now, but she continued to play the part regardless. "I chose the members best qualified while making the least amount of sacrifices to our main defense forces. Curlew's support would be best used here. Hood and I will make for smooth command, and our response efficient with the members chosen. It is the best composition to be made given the situation."

The situation was what Belfast was using now with her last line, intending to convince George to accept without any inquisitive questioning that would be as time wasting as they would be uncomfortable.

It worked better than she predicted, but not as she expected when George suddenly became upfront. "What about Enterprise?"

Being confronted with her charge's name so suddenly when she had been doing her best to avoid it had Belfast's muscles go rigid upon hearing it. She thought of when she had touched Enterprise's arm just a minute ago, assuring her that she would return to her shortly, and now she was doing this…

"We both have to do what we do best," she replied, her forward thinking and meticulous planning already logging it as something she would use when she would have to tell Enterprise about this.

George's brows became pursed. "But weren't you two…?"

"My assignment to Enterprise had been meant exactly for this," Belfast interjected before George could go further. "I have seen it myself: elegance has come to grace her heart again, and with it her reason for fighting. All that is left is for her to confront her battles again."

"Then shouldn't it be better for you to be there with her for that?"

It was becoming so useful here as it had been lately, her reflex that neutralized any unwanted influence from showing on her facial expression, her life and its refinements that had been so focused on the core of her being to serve for the sake of others making it second nature. Yet it also made it plain to her as to how much harder it was becoming for her to do so, with how many times it was happening; a sudden longing coming out from the depths of her soul, baited by the enticing justification – an excuse – that would let her indulge in a vice that would require to think of her duty as coming second, with the first being of someone who she could stay with if there were others who could take her place instead.

"No," Belfast replied as she drove the knife into that part of herself, stabbing deep and then wrenching it across to ruthlessly fell it and send it back to its proper place. Not one shred of its agony slipped onto her features. "There's no need. There will be others who will be able to accompany her for this." Maintaining unflinching eye contact with the Knight Commander, she said, "I am not necessary to be there when I can serve better elsewhere."

It was not necessary for her to be with Enterprise.

And George, with all her confident, easy, and charismatic flair couldn't help but frown as if recognizing something that was deeply amiss. "Bel…"

"George." Belfast gestured towards the tactical map. "We have no time. By your leave, shall I pursue with this team?"

The frown remained, George not even glancing at the tactical map but not needing to. Then she nodded. "Go rendezvous with Hood. I'll radio her a message about there being a new assignment but will leave the details to you."

Feeling inexplicitly weighed down, Belfast nonetheless performed her usual bow as impeccably as ever. "Knight Commander."

---

They had managed to leave the estuary before the Siren fleet would've cut them off but it had been close, the investigating cruiser squadron passing the last of the retreating Royal Navy patrols that were falling back to regroup with the defense forces while the black silhouettes of the Siren fleets had been populating the horizon in greater numbers.

While keeping a wary eye on those silhouettes, Belfast got a proper feel of the adjustments made to her rigging in case she would have to make use of it sooner than she expected.

Other than the upgrades to her systems, the refit had extended to her armaments. Her gun platforms had been extended, the turrets becoming more spaced out, with the placement meant to create greater shell dispersal. Her torpedo launchers had also been swapped out, replaced with five hundred thirty-three-millimeter quintuple torpedo mounts. Belfast was not personally a fan of the added weight and distribution but knew that they had merits as they would better combat the shielded and durable Iron Blood vessels – the enemies that the Royal Navy had been expecting to engage more of with the Sakura Empire threat having ended.

Belfast tried to gauge what Sheffield thought of the changes and saw the other cruiser admiring her handheld secondary turrets. She spun them on her fingers before snapping them up, and Belfast spotted what she thought to be a contraction at one corner of her mouth that was just shy of a grin.

So she approves, Belfast decided, although Sheffield was probably happy with just having her weapons in her hands again. She went through the rest of their group.

Although each member of the squadron had sufficient anti-air capabilities, Curacoa was meant to boost them further. Her class having traded torpedoes for additional AA mounts, Belfast had selected her to fill in the role of their group, believing that with her alone they would be able to contend with any possible air threats while not taking too much away from the support that would be better for the defense of London.

It also left Belfast to prioritize ships that would lean more towards direct combat, as had been the case for her, Sheffield, and Sirius.

Although officially a Royal Maid, it was a well-circulated view among the Royal Navy of how Sirius was instead a Maid Knight. Not unjustified as other than the large two-handed sword that was currently at her back, locked to her rigging, which she wielded with skill that could rival any of the Knights, her proficiency when it came to maidly duties in general was…left wanting despite all of Belfast's best efforts to train her. Instead of cooking and housekeeping, Sirius's duties specialized in security, often acting less as a servant and more as a bodyguard to Royal Navy dignitaries.

The position wasn't just for her to best apply her skillset but also to curb certain…tendencies of her personality. During Belfast's tutoring, there were a few too many instances during her failures where Sirius would all but demand punishment, something that the head maid had not thought much of at first, thinking that it and her self-deprecating attitude were not unexpected of a new disciple. However, it wasn't after that much time had passed before Sirius's insistence for being properly 'disciplined' for her shortcomings had Belfast catching on to the ulterior – and vulgar – motives.

At the very least she was not as bad as her lead sister, Dido, who's penchant – really a craving - for attention and recognition had been what had caused Belfast to not consider her as a candidate for this team. Belfast trusted that Sirius would keep her mind on the mission, although the sister ships had more than once made Belfast consider applying dress codes for the Royal Maid uniforms with how tight and how short their tops and skirt lengths were with their tempting figures. Even when sailing at their current speed, the ends of her skirt flitted in the wind the same way that her just as short hair did, although instead of the peeks of her ears they were shy of improperly teasing the same with her unmentionables.

Their final member was a Royal Knight, but that had not been her position originally.

"Did we pick up any pursuit?" Hood asked from the center of their formation, looking back to the rear.

"Got nothing," came the short, too-easy response.

Belfast turned to the speaker who caught the movement and the reproachful look that the head maid was sending her.

"Er, nothing yet," she soon corrected, coerced into giving a more informative response. "The Sirens don't seem to be giving us any notice at all. They're all making a beeline to London."

"Good news for us, at least," Hood responded, not giving any hint if she had been as unsatisfied with the first report as Belfast had been. "Keep an eye out for a little longer, then send them ahead of us once we reach the Channel."

"Yep, yep, will do so!"

A shipgirl possessing the appearance of a child, with short blonde hair and emerald eyes, the cruiser at their rear was the black sheep of the Town-class family of light cruisers: Southampton. Once a Royal Maid, she had traded in the bodice and apron for the crimson uniform and golden tassels of the Knights shortly before Belfast had become the head of the Maid Corps, and sometimes Belfast wondered if her promotion had any influence over Southampton's departure.

Southampton took after Newcastle with her disposition but to a more unfavorable degree. While Newcastle enjoyed her moments of peace, she always remained an excellent maid even after her retirement, never slacking from what she remained capable of doing. Southampton did slack off, even if it meant shifting her work to the other maids. One of her most distinct memories of Southampton when Belfast had been a regular maid was asking if she ever thought about actually giving a hundred percent of her effort to her work.

Southampton claimed she did, right before she went on to say that no one can give a hundred percent effort all the time, and that any who did even once would always be expected to do so, and if there was ever a day they would give a hundred and ten, they would be expected to do a hundred and ten all the time. So as a compromise, she would give seventy with a possible eighty if that good day ever happened.

Already unimpressed with her work ethics, Belfast didn't believe that Southampton had ever given seventy or eighty percent effort for the whole time she had known her, instead handing twenty of it off to someone else. As head maid, Belfast had intended to use her authority to enact some of that discipline as one of her first acts, hence why Southampton's leaving felt so suspiciously timed. The change to the Knights hadn't appeared to instill any either, it still being a common trend for Belfast to find Southampton in her latest comfy spot drinking tea and listening to music in the Royal Palace, out of the way from the usual patrol routes of the maids, with a knight needing to ask if any of them had seen her for a meeting she missed or a report she had yet to turn in.

Nonetheless, she was a shipgirl who had a longer service record than Belfast, and while Newcastle had delayed a retrofit and settled on retirement, Southampton had gone through enough refits to remain capable of answering to the Knights each time she was called. Having kept tabs on her and the battles she participated in, with George having nothing but praise for her combat prowess when Belfast selected her for the team, Belfast had to concede that while Southampton was a slacker, her laziness may really just be her resting so that she could put her hundred percent effort to where it really mattered.

That was what Belfast had counted on when she chose her anyway, on the off chance something did end up happening with their investigation. Plus, a cruiser with a couple Walrus reconnaissance biplanes in her hangar made her a valuable scout as was the case here, with Southampton having deployed them and currently using them to monitor the movements of the Sirens, making sure that they weren't acquiring unwanted pursuers.

None seemed to be following them, the Siren ships shrinking and then disappearing behind them. However, it wasn't long before they picked up the sounds of battle that was initiated soon after: the distant echo of cannon fire of what had to be an opening barrage. Later there came the deeper, calamity-based boom of explosions that could be heard even after adding a few more kilometers of distance.

The noise had an effect on the group whose members were moving away from the threat to their home port rather than towards it. They were all well-trained and seasoned Royal Navy shipgirls, and though they had their quirks, Belfast didn't doubt their qualifications to see the importance of their current mission. Still, she couldn't expect them to be unphased when their home was under attack by such a massive Siren force that was so rare to see.

That was the case for Curacoa who asked, "Do you think they'll be able to handle it?"

"George has never failed before," Hood was quick to assure. "As rather extraordinary as this attack seems to be, the Sirens have chosen a rather dubious time to do so, given how strong our forces currently are."

"Which includes a bunch of those Eagle Union children," the cruiser mused. As one of the oldest of the Royal Navy shipgirls, Curacoa had come to develop a more nurturing attitude towards the generations that came after her, with her referring to the most recent as 'children'. This, as it was known, was not limited to Royal Navy when she said, "I heard they're quite strong."

"I can attest to that. I had seen firsthand their capabilities, and they are more than worthy of their reputations."

"I overheard stories of the South Dakota-class from our joint operations in Africa," Sirius volunteered to the discussion. "They're supposed to be the strongest on their side of the oceans."

Belfast wished that she could've been led into the distracting conversation to keep their minds off the engagement that was going on but found the pull too weak. Even as she sailed ahead with the rest of them towards an objective that was of such troubling prospects, her attention began to drift, falling behind, until there was no mistaking the destination of its changing course: miles behind them. And as the distance increased more and more, so did her dismay.

Stop it, she told herself, which succeeded in doing the opposite of what she wanted. By validating its existence, the strife within her escalated. The bristling of her skin, the weight she was dragging increasing even if her speed remained matched with the other ships, and the unrelenting pull that was being made within her chest as it was doing with her thoughts.

It was not long ago that Belfast had been put in a predicament of worrying about those close to her, that being Sheffield and Edinburgh when their infiltration of the Sakura Empire home port had ended up with them being surrounded at an uninhabited island where Sakura shipgirls, Siren mass production ships, and an Iron Blood hunting party had all been searching for them in the ruins of a once island city while an Azur Lane rescue force struggled to break through the blockade. But she had managed to keep an air of calm, so much so that Enterprise had commented about it when they had been racing to assist them.

What she was feeling was far worse than that, and Belfast found it irrational of her.

She had been assuming that she would be getting through the worst of it now, with them having left the estuary. Too late for her to turn around, reverse her course, return. That rationale of how she would be able to do so in order to fulfill the assignment that Queen Elizabeth had been the one to give her from the very start and what King George had recommended for her to do could not be used in such an appalling way to convince her with the assurance that, as a maid, she could not deny their orders and a return would just be her following them. She would be free of criticism.

That thinking was unacceptable to her then as it was when it had tempted her back at the command room with George. To use Her Majesty and her second in that way for what she knew to be her own selfish desires, it was of such offense and anger towards herself that Belfast could put to the torch such horrifying temptations. She had pushed through, had broken out with the rest, and now there was no way for her to return, a fact that she was currently gloating over towards her despicable thinking, now reduced to ash and cooling cinders.

But even as the echo of battle drifted out of earshot, something was managing to rise from them, infecting and spreading with such virulence that she was experiencing the symptoms again, with her treatment option of distance doing little to counteract it. Worse yet, the most telltale symptom of her condition had become more severe: her thoughts that were occupied by another.

With such cruel vividness, it attacked her with the touch of the soft cheek that her hand had caressed, and the yearning of how Belfast wished she could've conveyed more to allay the unwillingness that she had seen in such lovely lavender eyes. In so doing, however, Belfast had become momentarily ensnared by the want that she had seen in those same eyes, how it was focused so entirely on her, and what it influenced being a desire for the cruiser to reciprocate it in a way that her words could not.

Then came what she had thought to do as a result and how close she came to actually doing it. As much as she sought to condemn it for how improper it was, her lips would nonetheless tingle with the deed that she had prevented, and her fortitude would erode when she questioned if not going through with such a profane act had been some sort of mistake.

This is getting worse.

She had been so confident that she could handle this. How long had she done this? How many shipgirls had come under her care? Their pain, their anguish, and with it a great need for comfort? There had been several, many of whom she had eventually seen off, and when they would meet again, they were but fellow subjects serving their queen. A few have perished, and she would feel sorrow, but with each passing it was with the wish that they had been able to do so without regret, having been able to find satisfaction with their lives, and she would resume her duties to the Royal Family and those who next needed her support.

They had all been strong and had all been beautiful in their own way, but none of them had been Enterprise, the one who she had come to love, and that made all the difference.

It also made the last few days so impossibly difficult. Throughout the entire time she had suffered from the paradoxical view of how happy she was to see Enterprise's free and unburdened spirit while at the same time being inflicted with such pain of when Enterprise would look at her, smile at her, praise her, and each time Belfast would have to tell herself: don't.

Don't reciprocate. Don't pursue. Don't say what she wanted, only what was appropriate. Don't get in her charge's way but remain at her side. Don't overstep. Don't interfere.

Maybe that was why Belfast had chosen to do this, even if it had meant lying to Enterprise and herself because it had just been getting too hard to follow her own instructions. Saying that Enterprise needed to face her battles again, and to do so with her comrades, was so that Belfast could relieve herself of the position of being so close to her, and yet forcing herself to be so unbearably far.

Instead of relief, what Belfast felt was even greater turmoil.

"And then there's that Enterprise girl that everyone keeps talking about," Southampton mentioned.

Belfast's head nearly snapped as quickly towards the conversation as her attention but at least there she was able to stop herself as she had done numerous times already: that instinctive seizing of such inappropriate action. So effective at containing herself – her feelings, her actions – but with increasingly greater strain as it became so obvious while she listened in.

"Oh, I've heard so much about her from our girls!" Curacoa said, obviously intrigued. "The Grey Ghost!"

Don't say that name.

The appropriate reasoning that was quick to come for Belfast's silent demand was how much that name had troubled Enterprise so obviously she wouldn't want Curacoa to mention it. But was it enough to justify the heat behind it? The offence? Belfast wanted to say it was, but her need to remind herself that Curacoa wouldn't know and was thus blameless told her just how much her sense of what was and wasn't appropriate when it came to Enterprise had become put in a state of such flux.

"You had gotten in a spot of trouble during an infiltration, Sheffy, from what I learned," Curacoa said, "and that she had assisted in getting you out of it."

"She did," Sheffield replied plainly, both to the tale and her nickname. "Both Edinburgh and I."

"I heard she frightened off an Iron Blood squadron with but a glance!"

Sheffield mulled over the claim. "…Not inaccurate."

"She had become quite the talk around the Royal Palace. I saw her at the banquet but…" Curacoa's gaze wandered.

Belfast experienced the electric jolt that went through her when their eyes met, her already imagining the coy smile that soon blossomed on the elder shipgirl. Likewise, she predicted rightly when Curacoa began drifting closer to her. Belfast willed her mask to remain in place, but behind it she felt the dread with what she knew was coming.

"So you've been quiet, Belfast," Curacoa noted.

Belfast did not shy away from her. "Merely focusing on the mission." Something, she knew, she was failing at doing.

"Are you now?"

Her control hadn't deteriorated so far that she managed to keep her features neutral, the slight tilt she made to her head meant to be convincingly natural. "Are you implying something, Curacoa?"

Rather than answer the question being posed, Curacoa's grin grew before she said, "You know, you two made quite the impression at the banquet – you and Enterprise."

Belfast was quickly beginning to regret her decision of choosing Curacoa instead of Curlew. She had thought Curlew would be better to support George in managing the defenses of London while Curacoa's disposition would do better at fulfilling the support role of their smaller group.

In so doing though, she had overlooked the unexpected second edge of the sword that came with such a temperament on par with a nursemaid who delighted in opportunities of seeing the children they looked after growing up. This included Belfast – a superior, but also a junior who Curacoa had become so proud of.

Belfast did her best to stare at the increasingly glowing face without straying. "It was a momentous occasion for her, and I saw fit for it to be one that she will be sure to remember."

"I would say that you succeeded, but not just for Enterprise!"

"Meaning?"

Curacoa clicked her tongue at her. "Don't be so evasive! We were all watching! Every trip back to the kitchen was an opportunity for us to share information! Not to mention when you two suddenly disappeared after such a romantic dance!"

Over Curacoa's shoulder, Belfast happened to catch the turn of Sirius's head, her taking an interest. Sheffield used more discretion, but Belfast could feel the eye that peered at her from beneath the veil of her bangs.

They were maids, after all, as well as intelligence agents. Gossip was what they thrived on. Though Belfast had been the subject of it before, it wasn't often, and even less when it came to such entanglements that were being implied here.

And she had never been as irritated by them as she was in this instance, something she could feel needling at her steady expression. "Nothing of what you may be entertaining," she replied, managing to not make it sound like the warning she wanted it to be. She was less successful when she intercepted Sirius's stare, watching her when she added, "Or what others might be."

Sirius wisely broke away but Curacoa came closer, her tone conspiratorial and her smile of an ecstatic senior while she brushed aside her flowing rosy brown hair. "Come now, Belfast," she prompted. "You can tell me."

"There is nothing to tell. It was an exciting but trying night for her, so we retired early."

"Just as what Newcastle said to us," Curacoa returned. "Practically word for word, as it so happens." She dropped to a whisper. "Leaving us to wonder where it was you two retired to, and so promptly, and what has been going on for the entire week where so few of us have seen you."

Belfast's nose flared with the same heat that burst in her eyes, enough for Curacoa to realize that she had erred right before Hood's voice came from the back. "Curacoa, see if you can raise Devonport or any nearby installations. Failing that, George said that they would be trying to send additional elements and flights as soon as they were able to. We may get lucky there."

Curacoa stared at Belfast with the realization someone made when they understood that their search for what they imagined to be a delightfully rare occasion was less delightful and much more complicated. Belfast could read the apology that Curacoa was trying to formulate but instead chose to follow Hood's order, giving the head maid space. "I'll get right on it."

Belfast experienced her own regret as well as a different but familiar kind of anger, with this one directed at herself.

"Belfast, some consultation, please."

"Right away," she answered to Hood, subdued as she dropped back towards her.

"Sheffield, Sirius, keep to our front. Southampton-"

"Yep, yep, eye in the sky."

Belfast felt the shame scorching within her as their formation adjusted – all due to her, she knew – and what could be for the first time in her life she became bothered of her skill for her face to purge it from its exterior even when such an emotion ate away at everything else, leaving her drained enough to have her shoulders slumping.

The weakness did not solely stem from shame or the added weight to her rigging. She became acute to a greater debilitation that it was but a portion of, with her feeling not just shame but confusion, frustration, helplessness – all of which created such weariness that Belfast felt overwhelmed and suddenly she wasn't in the waters leading to the English Channel anymore but somewhere dark and unknown, lost and with no control.

It lasted until she was at Hood's side and then something within her took over, one that reset her shoulders while reality reformed around her, propping her back up to resume her duty, just in time.

"Are you well, Belfast?" Hood asked. "You do appear unusually distracted."

With Hood's crisp orders, the other cruisers were in no position to eavesdrop and would know the folly of trying. A courtesy, and one that Belfast was again shamed by as she addressed Hood. "I am well. The situation that we're in is leaving me with various things to contemplate, given how long it's been since we faced a Siren incursion this significant."

Hood nodded with a slight rueful smile. "A long time, which does raise a bunch of concerns in of itself. Even you cannot remain infallible."

It was not an insult, but Belfast nonetheless felt the comment sting. No, she was not infallible, but she should at least be keeping up the appearance of it. For morale, for her station. To fail at it and to be drawn into this private discussion was yet another lapse that she berated herself for but one that she would bear if it meant getting through it swiftly so that she could focus on the mission and not-

"Would one of those concerns happen to be about Enterprise, I wonder?"

A more intense electrifying bite sent shocks up and down Belfast's body, ones that she somehow managed to suppress to a slight jolt of her eyes while the sudden inhale she made was sharp in silent, her lips just stilled. But such intense energy was short-lived and what replaced it was a depressing gloom that coincided with a dull ache that the cruiser felt in her chest.

All of that, of course, were once again shrouded by the composure that she brought up against Hood. "She is one, I admit," she replied calmly, even as the ache grew when she remembered how she turned her back on Enterprise, leaving her behind, and not once looking back no matter how much she wanted to.

I should've turned around. I should've said something else. It had been a shock to her, this whole thing, and I should've-

It had been a shock to the both of them and Belfast became suspicious if her list of 'should'ves' was really for Enterprise's sake and not for her own. Anything else that she could've done then that would help make what she was feeling now less painful. Less maddening.

"Understandable," Hood continued. "After all, our resupply run had become as much of a maintenance period for her as it was for our cruisers, in no small part to your input."

Belfast didn't know how to respond to that, or really how to gauge what it was that Hood was working her way to, and all she could do was stare at the battlecruiser silently.

"It may be a bit late to say it but when you were making your requests and I spoke up, it wasn't anything against them."

Oh, Belfast thought, partially relieved. Is that what this is?

Though Hood had been more of a critical voice to her appeal that started this whole thing when she brought it before Queen Elizabeth, Belfast had never gone as far to say that she had been an opponent of it. She had, like Warspite, been concerned about the integrity of their council and their customs and Belfast had known in advance that her appeals were testing the limits of those boundaries – a head maid requesting such reassignments and arrangements for a supply operation that had transformed into something much more because of them. Given those boundaries also infringed on the authority of Eagle Union, any objection was more than justified and Belfast had never held anything against Hood for it. Likewise, when everything was said and done, Hood hadn't said or signaled any disapproval to it after the matter had been settled, going by what interactions that she and Belfast had afterwards.

So was Hood just using this to clean any air that had become dirtied between them?

"I know," Belfast replied with understanding. "They were selfish requests and your concerns were well-founded." She made a small shrug. "But…circumstances."

Hood gave a quiet, polite laugh. "Right, circumstances. They are hardly ever favorable."

Of that Belfast was coming to know very well.

"So how is she?" Hood then asked. "If you are here, then would it be safe to assume that all is well with her, too?"

The reminder of their separation incentivized that ache further but Belfast's façade remained impenetrable, even to that. "Far better than she had been before," she replied and presented a smile that was outwardly satisfied but internally weak. "Maybe even better than she ever was, but only time will tell."

"Quite a test that she has then, with this battle." The observation was spoken as easily as Hood's smile until she then said, "Seems quite unlike you to not be there to see the rest of your task through."

Hood's eyes - bright, warm, and kind – nonetheless possessed something keen and unfathomable as they viewed Belfast. It was what foes and even allies alike should never underestimate when it came to the shipgirls of the Royal Navy. The adherence to their rich elegance and their espousing of it that the less experienced would call 'flaunting' could hide much and lead to careless missteps that could prove to be someone's undoing further down the line – whether in conversation or in a duel. The charismatic George, the benevolent Queen Elizabeth, the maternal Illustrious, and Belfast herself, as she had demonstrated numerous times with Enterprise – there was always something more than what they presented.

But anyone with even minor familiarity of British political history would know that for every grand monarch that was raised and celebrated on such an extravagant throne, there was an entire litany of plots, deceptions, and intricacies that contributed to their rise and, if they faltered to do the same to their opposition, could work very well to their fall. That bit of history was inherited in at least some small parts by the shipgirls who were meant to embody it and could be expressed even in good intentions, the members of the Royal Family most of all.

At the very least, Belfast knew that Hood's intentions were good, but she sought to pivot away from them anyway. "The circumstances aren't ideal but they're unavoidable. What's left for Enterprise can be provided by others. This investigation is more pressing."

She does not need me.

"How politic," Hood commented but that keen attention softened. "But assuring. I am happy for her – truly, I am."

"As am I."

Hood hummed something but the approaching buzzing at their rear proved louder. Belfast glanced back, spotting the Walrus biplanes catching up to them, soon to fly overheard, where their reconnaissance would now be focused to the English Channel that the squadron was now entering. It wouldn't take long, such aircraft that would soon be able to tell them what was going on at their destination. They would either find something that would confirm their suspicions or nothing at all.

And if it was nothing, maybe Belfast could-

Stop. Focus.

"It was quite a night, that banquet," Hood then said unexpectedly.

Belfast took the slow movement she used to face her again as time for consideration of where Hood was going now. "I'm sorry we hadn't been able to see the whole night through."

"Don't be. Seeing you and Enterprise together like that was what made it for me." Hood's expression became clouded over with wistfulness. "I found it rather nostalgic. It reminded me of some of those better times. Hamburg, for instance."

It took a second, but Belfast suspected where she knew this was going, even if she didn't fully know why.

Hamburg, a German city-state that became folded into the greater empire that would later become Iron Blood. During the Siren War, its ports had been used to station warships during the reclamation and security of the North Sea, but its most vital role and fortunes came later, when trade had been renewed between the European powers and, later, the rest of the world. Even early on, the growth and renewed prosperity of the city had been the subject of admiration, enough to go on and rival even Berlin.

Iron Blood having demonstrated plenty of their military might, they had thus decided to use the city to demonstrate their growing economic capabilities. When the North Sea was declared secured and the pact between it and the Royal Navy had been sealed, they chose to celebrate the occasion by hosting a few dignitaries of their allies within the city. The Royal Navy accepted but made sure to show the best they had to offer in their answering procession. Naturally, Hood was in attendance.

There had been a banquet there, too, and a dance. Having been acting as Hood's attendant at the time, it was from at her side that Belfast had witnessed how the honor of her first dance – and quite a few afterwards – had gone to a certain Iron Blood battleship who's own acclaim had required her to be there as well, to the not-so-well-hidden pleasure of both parties.

"A flattering but unfair comparison, if I may say," Belfast replied gently. "Especially to you and Bismarck."

"Is that so?" Hood brought a hand up to her chest. The spot she touched, mistakable for over her heart, was in fact just a little higher, and though Belfast couldn't see it she knew what Hood was feeling for, hidden beneath her coat: a pendant of a beautiful aquamarine – a trinket that she had been born with and what Hood would reach for as she did now, a habit that Belfast had seen many times. The cloud over the battlecruiser's eyes thickened.

Before King George, before Rodney and Nelson, there had been Hood. The Mighty Hood, the first and only of the Admiral-class battlecruisers, and the pride of the Royal Navy. If Warspite was the first knight of Queen Elizabeth's court, then Hood was the first lady. Together, the three had been the pillars of honor, etiquette, and glory – the virtues of what made up the elegance that saw the British Empire survive and rise again as the Royal Navy. While Warspite brought glory with her blade and Elizabeth her honorable rule, Hood personified the noble etiquette in her strength and her grace.

During her apprenticeship to become a Royal Maid, Belfast had the honor of having Hood as the first lady she had ever served. It had created a special kind of friendship between them, with special insight of each other. With it, Belfast had been able to see how there were burdens behind someone so venerated hidden within the depths of what she presented, especially during those times when shipgirls had been seen as the desperate weapons needed to fight the Sirens, their humanity yet to be recognized as readily as they were now. She had wanted to make Hood the first of those who she would be able to provide relief for.

As she would soon learn, that honor had already gone to someone else.

Belfast had not been there to see it herself, but Hood would later tell her the story of how she and Bismarck met. The fight had already been turning in the North Sea, the Sirens about to lose what control they had left, and that had been enough for the Royal Navy and Iron Blood rivalry to ensue. Hood would bashfully admit that she got caught up in it and, in a rather unsightly display, she may've gloated a bit to an Iron Blood destroyer she had saved from the guns of an Oceana.

She had still been young enough – and foolish enough – to make the mistake of not checking that the Oceana was really destroyed, which she would learn from when the Siren ship made a shot towards her back.

Before Hood knew it, she was suddenly being pulled under the protection of a battleship who took the shot, her armor deflecting it with moderate damage before she subsequently blew the Oceana to pieces. Just as quickly as she been pulled into her protection, Hood was then roughly shoved out of it, too disoriented to keep track of what was going on, and suddenly finding herself being scathingly berated by the ship who had just saved her.

Bismarck had been so furious at her carelessness that she probably hadn't even noticed the damage she had taken. After letting loose with a tirade that was as blistering as any of her salvos, Bismarck snatched up the destroyer that Hood had saved and sailed off, leaving a very stunned and mute battlecruiser behind to stare after her.

They had known of each other beforehand, but that had been their first direct meeting, and it would lead to Belfast's very first errand that she would run for Hood: that being to extend an invitation to Bismarck for a rendezvous where Hood wished to properly thank her.

Belfast considered her time with them to have been the most valuable. The cold, rude, and aggressive Bismarck with the prim, proper, and patient Hood. The two prides of their nations of such opposing makes sitting down with each other, and where Belfast would see Bismarck's thawing demeanor and Hood's loosening conduct as their shared sips of tea became tentative sharing of apologies and compliments, then individual stories and likes and dislikes, which would even result in occasional gifts. Belfast remembered Bismarck's wide-eyed wonder when Hood had presented her an antique blade of the Knights Templar and Hood's horror when Bismarck had brought samples of 'tapioca beer' – a rather unappetizing concoction that had apparently been a side-effect of the budding Iron Blood-Sakura Empire negotiations. The battlecruiser had been more appreciative of the poems that Bismarck fancied, something that the battleship had been embarrassed with and would make blushing requests of Belfast to deliver a printed copy to Hood on her behalf or leave it behind on Hood's ship without a word after their teatime before Hood had sat her down in their next meeting and read them aloud with Bismarck hiding her face beneath her cap the whole time.

Seeing them together and their advancing relationship that had culminated in Hamburg when Bismarck had been so quick to ask for Hood's hand before anyone else could, and what Hood gave with no hesitation and sole exclusivity, had substantiated all that Belfast had been born with and would drive her to her duties with utmost perfection. The humanity of shipgirls, the elegance of their existences, the happiness that they could acquire in this world, and her dedication to making sure she would see each and every one of their ideals through, whether they be Royal Navy or not.

Because as it was Hood and Bismarck that let her see such a miracle so soon after her birth, it was also those two that let her see the tragedy that followed afterwards.

"Bismarck and I…" Hood started, fingers pinching the impression of the pendant, "…I never told you what happened in our last meeting."

"I never asked either," Belfast replied. "It was not my place, and you don't have any obligation to tell me now."

Hood hadn't even requested her to set it up. Shortly after Azur Lane's judgement of Iron Blood, Hood had sent the communique herself and sailed off with barely a warning. Left behind, all Belfast could do was cover for her absence as best as she could until her return.

And return she did, with the look that Belfast had seen on her face when she disembarked saying all that had happened.

"No…lately I've been thinking that I should," Hood said. "And though these circumstances are far from ideal, I think its best that I do so now, just in case."

Belfast wanted to ask why she thought so but saw that Hood's gaze and consciousness were both somewhere far away, deep in the past, and for several seconds she remained that way as she kept pace with the squadron, waiting for when the buzzing of the Walruses had passed them and were now fading away as they flew ahead. Then, describing a scene to those who were blind to it, she said, "I knew she would be furious, and I was right. It didn't take long before she began hollering at how unjust the ruling had been, how unfair the proceedings had been, how exaggerated and damning Vichya's case had been to paint Iron Blood as it did, and how the rest of Azur Lane agreed to it with little resistance before delivering such harsh terms."

Being of the blind, Belfast dared not speak, instead only listening.

"There was truth to her words," Hood recited. "I may've even felt some of what she did, with what had been said during then, and knew that Bismarck was nothing like that. We talked about it before – the things that were going on in the Balkans and their experimentation with Siren technology. She did not feel like she ever had to hide any of it from me because she was not looking for power for power's sake, only the strength to secure her nation and her people and rid the world of the Sirens so that we could all be free. She regretted some of what happened, she knew and was worried of what could happen with that technology, how dangerous it could be, and how she would volunteer herself anyway when the time came so that anything that could happen would happen to her and not…anyone else…"

Hood paused for a long moment, then continued. "I believed her then, I still do, but I had ignored it all at such a crucial point. All I could see was the same thing that everyone else wanted to see: that what Iron Blood was doing was too dangerous, that they had to be stopped, and I wanted Bismarck to see that and accept it. We went at it for some time, not getting anywhere, just going around in circles until Bismarck suddenly calmed down and asked me if I really believed it and thought that Iron Blood should submit to Azur Lane's demands." She closed her eyes, unwilling to watch anymore, but her lips moved anyway.

"I thought I was getting through to her, I thought I was convincing her, so I said yes. Without thinking I had said that she and shipgirls like her who fought and sacrificed so hard and so much as anyone else had for their nation had to for the good of everyone else." She shook her head. "I knew I had made a terrible mistake as soon as I saw that betrayal on her face, but it was too late. In her eyes, I had been someone who she trusted, who she had shown weakness to, who, through that entire argument of ours, had been looking to me for strength, only for me to deny her that."

She refused to let go of her pendant, so Hood had to make use of her other hand to rub at her eyes. Whether there had been anything else that she sought to alleviate other than the burden that reliving the experience was weighing upon her lids, Belfast couldn't see it when Hood dropped her hand after she was done. "So she cursed me, cursed Azur Lane, and demanded I get off her ship. We've never seen or spoken to each other since."

It was a scene that Belfast imagined in multiple variations, with each one close to what the actual turned out to be, but her heart went out to Hood anyway. "You were afraid for her."

Hood shrugged. "Maybe I was, but that wasn't what I was arguing for. I was arguing for the Royal Navy because once that ruling came in, when that divide was made, I kept to their side. My side, and it drove Bismarck fully to hers. When it came down to it, that was all I saw: keeping to the status quo."

The status quo. Belfast had mentioned it and its outdating relevance to Enterprise but didn't know if the carrier had come to understand what she meant by it, even with her change. The entire thing with Iron Blood and Azur Lane, Bismarck and Hood, had been such a glaring example of it to her whenever she thought of it. Though referred to as a petty joke, the rivalry that had led to Hood and Bismarck's meeting, seeming so silly when they had been fighting together against the Sirens, was of the same vein of what led to such an upsetting division when the human leaders saw each other as not the growing allies that should remain united and mature together, but potential threats seeking to one up the other as soon as someone disturbed the balance that they wanted to maintain for their own advantage.

Belfast had silently lamented it many times. It was such a repetitive, integral part of human history both in the empires of old and of today, but she had thought that things could change with the introduction of the Sirens and of shipgirls. She still wanted to believe it, thinking that the civil conflict with the Crimson Axis would show the futile and pointless infighting that could create such tragic tales, and that was why she remained working as hard as she did, trying to impart her lessons to those like Enterprise. She didn't want it to be proven to be such naïve thinking all along.

"When Iron Blood invaded the Vichya Dominion, I used it to cover my betrayal of Bismarck by thinking of how she betrayed Azur Lane – betrayed me," Hood added. "When the order came for my deployment as the flagship for the strike force against the Vichya fleet in Mers-el, I accepted it. Her Majesty hadn't liked it, but the Admiralty ordered it, so I followed it just like I always did. I gave those Vichya girls the ultimatum, they made their choice, and that was what I told myself when I ordered the assault and sank them."

It was another of those follies born from the Royal Navy's fears of how Iron Blood's naval forces may be bolstered by that of the conquered Vichya's, leading to the hasty attack. It ended up serving as the opening to the greater African operations that would be the focus of much of the Eagle Union-Royal Navy joint task forces to assault those Vichya-Iron Blood holdings, but Mers-el-Kebir would be a lasting consequence. It had been a stain to the Royal Navy's honor, and when Iris Libre had announced its existence so shortly after the assault, it became one that Belfast did not expect them to ever be able to remove when it was thought of how many of those Vichya shipgirls would be alive now – both then and afterwards.

It had devastated Hood. Belfast had become the head maid by then, her duties having kept her away from Hood when she sailed for her mission, but she had been at the Royal Palace for her return.

It had been a difficult night, both for her and Hood. The days after would be almost as bad but it was the night when Belfast had watched over her, ignoring Hood's order to leave her be, that was the most heartbreaking when the once valorous icon of the Royal Navy's virtues who had helped set such a precedent for shipgirls and human society had collapsed under the weight of her sin while asking through her tears if it was better for them to only be thoughtless weapons.

When she had seen that, heard that, Belfast had wanted to know but could only imagine what Bismarck may've been thinking when she received the news of the attack and learned who had been at the head of it. Or if she even knew at all.

"You can't take all the blame for yourself, Hood," Belfast admonished.

The mass of Hood's cannons seemed to get larger, more intimidating, powerful, but that was because the one who wielded them became weaker, shrinking as they wrestled with a weight that was several times greater than the gun platforms and their turrets, with no sort of strength provided by some science-defying cube able to get her to prevail over it. "So you said that night," Hood said with a sad grin. "And the ones afterwards. And what everyone else keeps saying to me every time its mentioned." She sighed and then made a motion akin to hoisting herself up out of her gloom to fill in the spot amidst her rigging, finally releasing her grip on her pendant as she did so. "But in no small part these regrets were of my own making, I've since accepted that, and have to live with them for however long that'll be."

"Hopefully still a long time yet."

Hood's grin started carrying a trace of cheer. "Whether that's how it'll be or not neither of us can say, which is why I intend to make the most out of these regrets. Right now, I want to do so with you."

"Me?"

"You're very fond of Enterprise, aren't you? Maybe even love her."

Belfast stifled her gasp but knew her eyes had gone too wide for her to stop.

Hood faintly laughed in a chiding way. "You think you know us all so perfectly, Belfast." She nodded in concession. "And you probably do, but in exchange wouldn't it be fair if we were able to know something about you? Me, Her Majesty, Wales, George, Illustrious, Newcastle – the list goes on. We all suspect it, if not know."

As she got control of herself, the immediate question Belfast wanted to ask was how this had gotten as widespread as Hood claimed but the battlecruiser had already answered it: she was too perfect. Those of the Royal Family would know her habits best, her procedures, her conduct, and so it was only natural that they would notice when she would break from them so obviously as she herself knew she had been doing. Illustrious's question that Belfast pretended not to hear in the gardens, Wales's willingness – almost eagerness - to accommodate her with the arrangements she was requesting, Newcastle's, George's meddling, Curacoa just now, and it would be sheer arrogance on her part if she believed that she could get anything by Queen Elizabeth.

No, they all knew, and Belfast had probably known that already – the same way she had known that she had loved Enterprise for far longer than when she finally accepted it. She just really had been arrogant, thinking that she could hide it, when her actions had been so blatant.

The restraints that had been binding her and winding tighter and tighter as the days went on momentarily laxed, creating a reprieve that she knew she wanted but didn't know just how desperate she had been for it until it came. At the same time, Belfast happened to notice a section of the cliffs that they were passing – one that, past the edge, she could see the familiar tops of a lighthouse and a large oak tree.

"What I've come to miss with Bismarck – what we once had – I have been able to see again with you and Enterprise," Hood said.

Even after the tree and the lighthouse slid out from her vision and were replaced by another section of the cliffs, Belfast still stared. Her face felt stiff, but the rest of her felt so empty and numb, with her cruising on autopilot. It left her powerless against the urge to speak and reveal what she had been keeping so tightly sealed.

"I don't know what to do," she admitted, her voice just as rebellious. "She told me how she wasn't afraid anymore, and she looks so happy and free now. I don't want to get in her way, but I…" She trailed off, then sighed. "I don't know…"

"What the proper etiquette is?" Hood offered.

Was she really so legible? "I don't want to make a mistake. Not with Enterprise – never with Enterprise. They're going to want her back, Hood, as you cautioned from the start. This can't continue, and when that happens…"

Belfast let the wind take the rest of her sentence, leaving her wordless with her internal fretting. Out of her supervision and out of her control, she wouldn't be able to exercise her impeccable management. To tell Enterprise she loved her, to burden her with something that neither of them understood, right before they could very well be on opposite sides of the world where such a predicament would be forced completely out of her direct oversight frightened her. This unpredictable moment they were experiencing currently with the Sirens was succeeding in amplifying that fright.

"You're afraid for her," Hood observed, turning the maid's words around on her.

"As much as I am for myself," Belfast confessed, now that she could see how else her want for perfection was turning against her. Turning her upon herself.

"There was a point where I fantasized that the time between Bismarck and I would never end," Hood remarked with sad humor. "Such an unreasonable belief, as it turned out, and I had been unprepared when that time came to correct me on that. It seems that even being the wiser head isn't making it easier for you."

Belfast met Hood's empathetic smile. "It isn't."

"Which means you are as much in danger of doing what I had done." Hood's mouth became set with warning, her gaze fixed and unblinking. "So I'll caution you here, too. What I had thought needed to be done, what I thought was safe and sure and right, had required me to discard everything that Bismarck and I had been through and what it meant for us. If you do the same, you may find that everything you had done for Enterprise here will be all for naught."

Belfast felt the warning slip through her anxieties and make contact with the core of her fears. To her disbelief, what she had been suffering through so far paled in comparison to what she felt in response. Something that, in no point in her life, she had ever experienced before: such a great potential for failure because of a certainty that she was absolutely incapable of measuring up to what she needed to be to solve this crisis.

She wanted to plead with Hood for advice, beg for the knowledge that she so thoroughly lacked on and could not achieve on her own if that was what it would take, but that was when Southampton called for their attention. "Hey, Hood, I see something."

They had known in advance that the Royal Navy had been broadcasting throughout the Isles to put all cargo traffic on hold and that any ships should seek shelter at the nearest port. From their exit of the estuary to their entering of the Channel, the lane had been clear of all ship traffic, with the only ships they had spotted since being the occasional smaller vessels that had chosen to weigh anchor close to land.

So Southampton spotting a ship racing down the English Channel, away from the direction of Devonport, was unusual.

The ship being a shipgirl made it alarming.

She was alone, and though Southampton directed one of her planes to monitor her, it wasn't really necessary as the cruiser squadron soon spotted and met with the shipgirl in short order.

"Hood!"

The cry – loud, frantic, afraid – was matched by the destroyer's ramming into the battlecruiser, forcing Hood to stop and brace for when the small ship collided into her, arms immediately clinging to her, a face burrowing into her middle.

Belfast recognized the reddish-pink hair of the shipgirl and its transition to the blonde shade at the ends of her long twin tails. She was Echo of the E-class destroyers. As sweet as the tooth she possessed, Belfast knew how Edinburgh liked her, her sister greatly appreciating the admiration that the destroyer had for her specifically. Whenever they were stationed at the same area, it was only a matter of time before Echo would locate and ask for her, often with a request for Edinburgh to teach her how to make chocolates or other confections to satisfy her love of sugar. Edinburgh would oblige her each time, secretly reveling at those chances to be so reliable to someone.

When they had left with Her Majesty to the Azur Lane Joint Base, Belfast had known where Echo had been assigned to at the time: Devonport.

Echo extracted her face out from Hood so that she could look up at her with blurry eyes of a darker pink. "It's terrible!"

Hood gently patted her head, but her expression had become resolute. "Report, Echo. What's going on? We've been trying to contact Devonport to no avail."

The calm demonstration was enough to rally Echo, the destroyer separating from Hood, creating some space, and she wiped at her face with her arm. It made her more presentable to the commanding shipgirl, but her report came out in a frightened blurt. "Devonport is under attack!"

Belfast witnessed the shock that went across their group that had become huddled around Echo and knew she felt the same at having their worst fears confirmed. She made a quick scan of the smaller girl, noting the scoring on her gear that could only come from energy weapons.

Hood noticed it too but did not set upon Echo with haste. "Start from the beginning," she instructed. "The last exchange with Devonport was how they were contacting their patrols to see if they detected Siren activity."

"We couldn't get in touch with them," Echo immediately replied, shaking and twitching in clear distress, but keeping herself together. "We knew what was going on with London, so our commander had immediately ordered groups to be sent out. I went out with Sussex and a few others, and we only just left the inlet when the fog came in."

Hood's brows became pinched. "A fog?"

"A fog!" she insisted. "A thick and weird one! It came in so fast that we were caught up in it, and all of a sudden we were able to talk with our patrols which were being attacked by Sirens! A whole fleet closing in! We tried to report back to Devonport, but we couldn't talk to anyone – not until the base got caught up in the fog, too!"

Belfast took in the report and deciphered the implications. A fog that had masked the approach of a Siren fleet, with contact having been lost with the Royal Navy patrols that had already been in it until Echo and the others also entered it.

A jamming mist? she questioned. One that could cut off communications between those who were inside and those who weren't?

For more shocking potential, it was a mist that was large enough to blanket the entirety of Devonport and cut it off from the rest of the Royal Isles?

Echo soon proved her suspicions right. "Our communications to Devonport were a bit scrambled, but we made out how they couldn't contact Gateway or the other bases! The Sirens were penning us in, but before they could Sussex wanted to make a path down the Channel so that one of us could try and escape. So we did and…" Echo gulped, shuddered, and blurted out, "She told me to run! I didn't know it was going to be me, and I didn't want to, but she said I had to and the Sirens were closing in and…and…"

Hood knelt down to the destroyer's height so that she could slowly take Echo by the shoulders, steadying them. "It's okay, Echo," Hood assured her kindly. "Sussex figured out how important it was to get someone out to report what was going on before it was too late and she wanted you to do it."

Echo stared at Hood, her eyes becoming glassy again. "I was afraid," she quietly said. "I didn't know if I was going the right way or if I was going to be able to get out. I was so happy when I escaped and could see where I was."

Belfast detected her guilt at feeling that way, and once again so did Hood. "You did the right thing, Echo. You're going to save a lot more of us by doing this than you would've if you stayed. We'll take it from here."

Echo jerked. "W-wait!" she stuttered. "There's another thing! The Siren flagship, we saw it! We couldn't be sure of the exact type because of the fog, but it was an elite-ranking model! It had to be!"

Hood considered the latest bit of intelligence before nodding. "Alright, thank you, Echo. Keep going down the Channel until you've made your way to the first city you come across. It shouldn't be far. Start broadcasting to our military channels and make sure to tell everyone you can about what's going on. This is all vital information."

Echo stood there, the usually good-natured destroyer stricken with indecision as she made glances back the way she came.

Hood looked her square in the eye to stop them. "It's okay, Echo. Run. You're allowed to."

She stood up, releasing her, but Echo remained stationary until she appeared to gather up her courage and reinitiate her journey down the English Channel.

She hadn't looked back or slowed one bit before Southampton offered up her latest update. "So…she said a fog, right?"

Belfast saw that her fellow Town-class was better respecting the gravity of the situation, her juvenile features presenting a semblance of her true age and experience. They were also partially vacant, the cruiser devoting a noticeable amount of her focus to her plane that had to have come within sight of the topic of discussion.

"Let's proceed," Hood ordered.

Only a short distance later, they came across the mist.

It was white, dense, and eerie, nearly filling out the Channel. The edges did not extend out in wispy trails as what a more natural phenomenon would do, Belfast perceiving how wrong the fog was to her when its thickness was accompanied by how unnaturally smooth the overall gathering was. When they approached and then stopped right at the boundary, that was exactly what it appeared to be. Within the hazy makeup of the mist, Belfast could barely make out how it lazily swirled and coalesced into such a visual obstacle that no amount of squinting could penetrate. Yet despite such movement and how the Channel's coastal breezes were in play this day, the fog did not move or stretch.

It was remaining in place like a barrier. A sight and communication-dampening barrier with little doubt as to who could be behind it.

"It's not quite coast-to-coast," Southampton reported, gathering what visual information she could from her planes. "But it keeps going further west, out of the Channel and into the Atlantic."

"It must've originated there, either during or right before the Sirens warped in," Sirius theorized. "Then it moved in along with the fleet. That's my best guess."

Curacoa looked to their security expert worriedly. "Would it really allow them to get a big enough fleet in to threaten Devonport? It's one of our most important bases!"

Though not as unexpressive as Sheffield, Sirius's stoicism was enough where someone who wasn't familiar with her would have to look carefully to see the dimming of her countenance as she considered the question. "Our forces had been shuffled constantly in response to the Sakura Empire's hostilities. Between assigning personnel to the joint base in the Pacific, maintaining our front in the North Sea, the security of our colonies in Africa, and making sure our supply convoys to the Northern Parliament remained uninterrupted, we pulled at our reserves from Devonport. Our returning forces were supposed to remedy that after we took stock of everything after the resupply."

Sirius appeared to size up the obstacle before them. "If what Miss Echo says is true, this could bypass our early warning systems and impair our defenses – natural and otherwise. If the Sirens are committing even one elite-ranked model to their forces, then it's safe to say that the fleet is formidable and not being able to report the threat to our nearby bases that would send the appropriate reinforcements in an expedient manner can make things very worrying."

"And right now we're all remaining focused on London," Belfast added.

"Curacoa, anything?" Hood asked.

Curacoa touched her radio and then released it, shaking her head. "Nothing."

Belfast sent out a ping but it was lost to the void. "No response on radar, either."

"Southampton?"

"Dropping one in."

Belfast watched Southampton's focus closely while she listened to the buzz of one of her Walrus planes, using the rising volume to track its descent towards the fog.

Then the sound was suddenly cut off. There was no warning – it was there one moment, then not. It was gone, and Southampton started with that same suddenness, her eyes going wide.

"Wha-!?" she gasped, blinking, her eyes clear of any secondary viewpoints. "It's gone! I just suddenly lost my connection to it."

Hood frowned at the results and readdressed the foggy barrier. "A very disturbing thing the Sirens seem to have here." Her jaw clenched with determination. "No choice, then."

They all knew what she meant. Sheffield racked the slides of her handguns while Sirius reached back to grip the hilt of her sword. While Southampton's remaining Walrus was drawn back into the hangar of her rigging, she produced her own additional weapon: an emerald-topped cane, the body of which was oddly thin, like a needle, tipped to a sharp point. Curacoa's turrets rotated into ready position while Belfast's shells slipped from her palm so that they could be clenched between her fingers.

Until Echo could spread her message to the rest of the Royal Navy, they were the only force in a position to aid such an important base of theirs. They had an idea of what to expect, but they were contending with a mysterious new weapon with terrible applications. The scope of the Siren forces were just as uncertain to them, as was their overall goal for these twin assaults.

But the potential consequences would be disastrous. Losing Devonport would mean losing not only Plymouth, but the security of the English Channel, the Royal Isles, and a disruption of their operations throughout the world. In the worst possible case, what the Royal Navy had strived so hard to achieve with their allies in Azur Lane, and what they were attempting to hold onto despite the rebellion of the Crimson Axis, could fall into utter chaos that they may never recover from.

That was just the start of how dire the stakes could be, but even when Hood issued the order to enter, when Belfast sailed with the rest into the unknown, she couldn't help but think of her when she was enshrouded by the fog.

She couldn't help but think of Enterprise.