Trinitite sighed, remembering to avoid leaning against the flimsy rebar cage next to her. Glancing away from the other member of her team, the Wo-Class inspected Sern and Alton's work, dully watching them adjust a bar into place, before looking beyond them. In the center of the floor, the rest of Austin's crew were shouting commands to each other, crowding around the slowly-forming structure in the center of the floor.
"You know…" The Abyssal hesitated, looking back towards her partner. "I can take over if you need me to."
The human took a moment to respond, grunting as he threw his weight into the rebar bender's lever. They'd only been at this for a few hours, and it already looked like Tirto was overstressing his boilers. His keel heaved as he sucked in air, and mysterious condensation coated his dark skin, giving it a wet sheen the abyssal couldn't simply attribute to the sparse rain.
"Next column, maybe." He sighed, raising the lever and removing the properly-formed length of rebar. "An old man like me needs his exercise, or he'll fall apart."
"Oh." Trinitite replied, her mind failing to make full sense of the statement. Accepting her end of the rebar length, the Abyssal let loose an almost incredulous "Really?"
She couldn't help herself. She needed clarification. Unless humans had a very different definition of exercises, there was no way you could maintain your machinery by running it as hard as he was. Were humans that dependent on the skills of their crew, and needed to make sure they were constantly at maximum readiness?
"When you get older…" Tirto started, raising his end of the rebar length to the column's skeleton. "You won't be able to get muscle mass easily. You'll need to work hard to keep your strength. I don't want to spend the rest of my life on a porch, after all."
"Ah, okay." The Wo-class replied, focusing on the level she was holding to the rebar as a tactic to mask her lack of comprehension. The Jellyfish Princess was older then she was, which meant she couldn't quite match Trinitite in some categories such as aircraft capacity, but Trinitite still didn't understand how that correlated with having to work more. Sure, an exercise was important to hone the skills of you and your crew, but improving the power and reliability of your machinery? "Move it up a bit."
...Come to think of it, humans probably didn't even have a crew, did they? Trinitite never saw a seagull or a fish with a crew, and while it might have just been an insult, she'd heard that humans were technically animals even before the battle of Bikini. In hindsight, the fact that a human was made of meat and blood should have been so obvious that Trinitite should have guessed it a long time ago. In fact, some of the ships she'd known had probably guessed as much when she'd known them, like Hypocenter.
Had she really thought that a steel hull like her mother in the old days or that oversized destroyer that had tried to sink Trinitite had their crew of humans, who had their own crews? Would the crews of the crews also have their own crews? How far down could that have gone?
The answer was, of course, that she hadn't believed that, because she hadn't even considered the issue until now. Stupid, stupid Wo!
"Elizabeth?" Tirto's thick accent towed Trinitite's floundering mind back into reality. "Are you alright?"
"Oh! Uh, sorry." Trinitite answered, too shaken by the revelation to think of a good excuse. "Up a bit more."
They continued work on the pillar, conversation between the two dwindling as Tirto labored at the lever, picking back up when they adjusted it and tied it into place. The abyssal continued to dwell on the latest revelation, not paying too much attention to watching the human work.
She guessed she'd been a bit too hard on herself. Humans did look a lot more like her then a sea bird did, after all, at least when she couldn't manifest her hull. It was probably something she should have asked Mother about, back when she was available to answer questions, but for now 'how does a human work' should fit pretty well into her research list.
The length of rebar secured, Trinitite's arms fell back to her side, part of the Wo-Class wishing she had her rigging's cane or that walking stick in her hold out, so her hands would have something to do while she waited on Tirto.
What was that sheen from, anyways? The only phenomena she could think of would be condensation, but she wasn't sure how much sense that made. Sure, it was about as humid as it could be, given the temperature, but Trinitite never heard of something cooling down as it worked. Maybe his weird animal biology had a refrigeration system that dumped heat into the ground? Was that what blood was for? It never seemed that cold in fish, birds, and that creature she'd had after making landfall, but then again, humans were a different type of animal.
Having finished bending the rebar into its proper shape, Tirto rose and the pair repeated the process of tying it into place.
"So." Tirto spoke up again, as he secured his end of the rebar to the column. "You're from the Marshall Islands, yes?"
She nodded, checking the level she was holding to the rebar one more time before returning it to her hold.
"That's correct." She confirmed, trying to prevent a guarded tone from creeping into her voice. If Sern had shared his suspicions with the rest of the group, Tirto might try to confirm Trinitite's story even if he didn't believe his coworker's suspicions. That could be a problem. Trinitite didn't know enough about how humans lived to invent a good story.
"What was it like?"
Trinitite blinked. That was a little more… open ended then she expected, but she supposed that was fortunate. As Tirto scooped up another length of rebar and threaded it into the bender, the abyssal focused on remembering her home.
"It was… nice." Part of the Carrier wished she could think of a less… lame way to begin, but Trinitite wasn't sure how else to discuss her home. "The sun got a bit too much at times, but otherwise our island was…" The abyssal struggled to find an appropriate word, "Peaceful."
That was true most of the time, at least.
Tirto grunted in acknowledgement as he again threw his weight under the bender's lever.
"I don't know the Marshalls that well," the human started, flipping the rebar and feeding the other side of the length into the bender, "but what island were you on?"
Trinitite winced, glad her partner was busy measuring out where to situate the rebar length in the bender. This was probably the weakest part of her story.
"I don't remember." She lied. "Mother had the island to herself, and we never really left, so we just called it 'The Island.'"
"A private island?" Tirto asked. He'd been ready to pull the bender's lever again, but paused, giving Trinitite a surprised look. "What did your mother do?"
The human didn't seem incredulous, just surprised. She guessed that with so many humans, ones with their own islands before the war must have been rare, but since there apparently was a name for it, it couldn't have been that uncommon.
"I don't know." The Wo-class answered. "She never talked much about her past."
Trinitite wasn't sure if Tirto asked how Jellyfish had gotten the material to trade for the land, or how she'd managed to conquer it, but the vague answer should be good enough.
"Huh." Tirto replied, his eyes unfocusing as he thought over Trinitite's excuse. With a grunt, he abruptly turned to his work, bending the other end of the rebar length into shape.
"Your family…" He started, handing Trinitite her end of the rebar. He waited to finish the thought until she'd gotten her end secured to the pillar. "...are they alright?"
Trinitite froze, the image of Hypocenter's unseeing eyes replacing that of the level.
"...I'm sorry." Her partner spoke up, dispelling the image.
Letting out a breath, Trinitite shook her head, focusing back on her work.
"Down a bit." She started, shaking her head. "It's fine. My mother might still be alive, at least."
"Is this good?" Tirto asked, waving his head towards his end of the rebar. At Trinitite's nod, he started to tie it on.
This column finished, Trinitite stepped away, scooping up the rebar bender and tape measure before Trito could object. Tirto might indeed need that exercise, but unless Trinitite handled the hard work for the rest of the day, they weren't going to meet Austin's goal. There was no way she was going to fail her commander's expectations, no matter how optimistic they were. Initially, the pair made their way to the skeletal beginnings of the next column in silence, but after about a quarter of a minute Tirto spoke up again.
"It's almost worse when you don't know, isn't it?"
The Wo-class stopped, pondering Tirto's statement. One one hand, the knowledge that the rest of her fleet, from her dearest sisters to the most distant submarines had been sunk while she'd been spared by chance had been a weight in her mind ever since she left for the United States, but she'd always tried to distract herself from thinking about it. What was done was done, after all, and while she'd allowed herself some time to greve, often there were more important things to do.
On the other, she had no idea who exactly she was going to meet, once she finally found Saratoga. Throughout her mission so far, a part of her was always reminding her that all of this pain, effort, and risk might be for naught. What if this shipgirl that Jellyfish had become didn't remember anything, with Jellyfish being practically dead? What if she did remember Trinitite, but like her other colleagues in the Navy, hated her? What if, no matter what Trinitite said or did, the human's... conversion wasn't reversible? What if it was, but there was no hope a lone carrier with no support like herself could get to her?
Trinitite shook her head abruptly, trying to deal with the wetness gathering around her rangefinders without damaging her foundation.
"It is worse, Tirto."
"I can… relate." Tirto started, accepting Trinitite's level as she started with the rebar bender. "I have family on Java, if they're still alive."
"You do?" Trinitite asked, more surprise leaking into the voice then she'd intended. It was known that humans lurked in the jungles of many larger islands, but while Trinitite occasionally heard horror stories of groups jumping lone abyssals who'd strayed too far into the wilderness or watched them from just inside the treeline, it had never seemed like a major concern to Princesses she'd visited. There were rumors that the Central Princess was having serious problems with humans and a few ships in her island's jungle, but Jellyfish hadn't agreed to any missions to Central Princess's abode, so Trinitite never figured out how they'd posed any threat to the installation.
The closest she'd gotten to seeing one in person before her self-appointed mission was during that strange convoy into the African Port Princess's territory, where they'd been invited to a ceremony where some captured Humans would be 'released for judgement.' Normally curiosity would get the better of her, but by that point that installation's weirdness had disturbed her enough that Trinitite hadn't wanted to do anything more than stay in her temporary dorm while it transpired. Hypocenter had been the only abyssal from another fleet to take up the Installation on her offer, and her sister had refused to talk about what she'd seen once she returned.
"Huh." She continued, threading the first length into the bender. "Who are they?"
"Well…" Tirto answered, leaning on his knees. "There's my daughter, and my grandchildren."
Grandchildren? Something told Trinitite it would be better for her crew to transcribe the rest of this conversation, instead of just terms she didn't recognize.
"Oh." She acknowledged. As she dropped the lever on the bender, smoothly finishing a side of the rebar length, she added: "I hope they're okay."
To her surprise, Trinitite meant it. It was another stupid thing, but she hadn't really connected the humans she'd heard about lurking in the jungle with those she was working with now. They just… acted so differently then what she'd heard. Knowing one of her coworkers, the one that seemed the nicest so far, had some of their fleet still trapped in the warzone… Trinitite was conflicted. On one hand, hoping they were okay might have been considered a horrible betrayal by the princesses on Java, but what could a handful of humans do? Better for everyone if they managed to escape here, then force abyssals to waste munitions on them, right?
"That's all you can do, right?" Tirto said, watching Trinitite flip the length of rebar around and prepare the other end of the length. "I'm too old to fight, after all."
"I guess." Trinitite tempered, distracted by another thought. How had he managed to leave Java, anyways? Any human airfields on java had either been washed out by the rains or hosted only craters, and it wasn't like there was any human shipping in the area. "How'd you manage to get out?"
There was silence, as Trinitite finished bending the other end of the rebar length. Finished, she stood, getting a look at her coworker.
Tirto wasn't looking at her. He wasn't looking at anything, really. His exact thoughts were hidden to The Abyssal, the human's dark face was stiff, pained, she realized. Trinitite was a warship, created for the purpose of combat, but still she knew how terrible it could get when things weren't going your way. A human, with no obvious armament and much less strength, was never going to have a battle with abyssals 'going their way.' She hadn't paid much attention to how the abyssals before her time had secured their territory, but she couldn't have imagined it would have been pleasant for the humans who'd already been living there.
"Uh… sorry." She provided, although the words felt hollow.
"That's fine." He nodded, accepting his end of the length of rebar. "I'll tell you later, alright?"
"You don't have to." Trinitite replied, but Tirto shook his head.
"It helps, talking about it." He said, although he couldn't have been sincere. "Maybe after lunch."
"Alright." The abyssal relented, holding her end of the rebar in place while he started to secure his.
At least she wouldn't have to talk about her cover story anymore.
This was going to be half a chapter, but it ballooned to the point where it was large enough to be on its own. Just as well, the other half was going to be a lot more lighthearted and they probably wouldn't have fit well together.
I think I've said this before, but a unique challenge to this story is it rests heavily on pretty normal supporting characters, meaning I gotta put a lot more work into making them memorable. I can't be a good judge of how well I do until maybe a few years after I'm finished, but I'll do my best!