Saratoga released a controlled breath, her rangefinders searching the forest below for the forms she'd memorized only minutes earlier. She was looking for movement in general, yes, but if one of those 'Shilkas' or 'Tunguskas' she'd just read about showed up she'd have to let her sister know immediately. The chin-mounted machine gun she controlled could suppress infantry, and the TOW missiles could theoretically take one out if she knew how to use them, but as the pilot of the cobra attack helicopter, Lexington was probably the only one who could give them any real chance of survival.

God, modern combat was terrifying. There were plenty of ways for a pilot to die quickly in her time, but the list seemed so much longer circa… fifty years later?

"What year is this supposed to be?" She asked.

"'Eighty… six, I think." Her sister drawled. "Galveston based this on a book to make the mission, but I haven't read it yet."

"I see." Saratoga acknowledged, looking over her shoulder to see the distant armor column. The two aircraft carriers were serving as air support for the rest of the fleet- no, mechanized platoon, as they drove towards a town to relieve a German- West German force that had been trapped there. To make matters more confusing, they weren't actually German, but Japanese, a handful of JMSDF ships playing the Germans tasked with keeping the town in NATO hands until the english-speaking players could rescue them.

She shook her head, the insanity of the situation she was in hitting her once again. Saratoga was sitting in her quarters in Japan, using a computer advanced enough to create a passable facsimile of the real world. In this 'game,' she could act as a regular human in a war that was simultaneously fantastically advanced by her standards and quaintly archaic by those of the world around her. Aiding her in fighting this odd war were ships from multiple navies, many of which were former mortal enemies, who were currently sitting at their own computers all over the world.

What were the next 70 years going to look like?

"So… We haven't spoken in a while." Lexington spoke again, "How's the training going?"

"Oh, it's going great!" Saratoga smiled. "I was nervous about a lot of things coming here, but they're mostly passed now."

"That's great to know you've settled in, Sis." Lex commented, the cobra hugging the treeline a little tighter as she pushed it into a wide turn. "I'd rather you'd stayed here in the states, but I understand the… risk, here."

Her spirits fell a little at the reminder. She had no idea how things were going in the hunt for Trinitite, but the fact she hadn't gotten any updates since Murray returned to the US wasn't promising.

"You got briefed on that?" She asked, although she immediately realized she shouldn't have been surprised.

"Yeah." She replied. "They figured there was a risk I could get involved."

"Oh." Saratoga replied weakly, suddenly worried for her sister's safety. If Trinitite learned she was on the wrong side of the Pacific ocean, then contacting Lexington in some way seemed possible. "I'm sorry about that."

"Why would you be?" Her sister asked, "You didn't do anything…"

"Yeah…" she trailed off, knowing she didn't really agree. If she was talking to anyone else, she would have left it at that, but…

She sighed, trying to piece her doubt into words. That saying hadn't sat right with her ever since she'd finished her report on Trinitite's service, but properly articulating why without sounding like she was trying to incriminate herself and all the other former princesses was something she hadn't figured out yet. Still, her sister definitely picked up on the doubt in her agreement, and deserved an explanation for it. The former Jellyfish Princess might as well give her forming argument a try now.

"You see, people keep telling me that Jellyfish was a completely different person from me, but the more I think about it, the less I think that's true."

The moment of silence was filled by the cobra's rotors.

"What do you mean?"

There wasn't a hint of skepticism in Lexington's question. Encouraged, the carrier continued.

"When Hiyou got transfer orders to the Yokosuka District, her sister took leave to visit and host a party."

"You went to one of Junyou's parties?" Lexington's tone suggested she'd heard of them before. Were they that famous? Infamous?

"I hadn't heard the horror stories until I got there." Saratoga admitted.

The giggle that echoed in Saratoga's headset was remarkably clear.

"Niiiice!" she congratulated. "I'd love to see what my sister's like when she's loosened up."

That wasn't the response she wanted to hear. Sighing, Saratoga gave the disappointing news.

"It was terrifying." She reported. She hated to let Lex down like that, and perhaps the nameship would do a better job of keeping another drinking spree from going that way again, but...

"What do you mean?" She asked. The attack helicopter suddenly banked away from the battlefield, giving them a little more time to talk. "Did something happen?"

"Well, I didn't mind the alcohol at first." She said, struggling to dredge up the clouded memories. "After the eighth drink, though, a lot of bourbon hit at once. I suddenly realized I was drunk, which I guess was my goal, but…" Wards were failing the carrier. How could she describe the shock her alcohol-addled mind had felt at her revelation? "I realized I was saying stuff, doing things I wouldn't have done a few drinks ago."

"...Yeah?" Lady Lex was too polite to directly state the obvious question in her voice.

"Okay, that's what alcohol does," Saratoga tempered, "but all I could think about at the time was… then."

"Then?" Her sister asked, before realization abruptly dawned. "...oh. It's like that?"

"Kind of?" She tempered, still unsure she was explaining herself properly. "I mean, my attitude was completely different. Booze wasn't going to make me go abyssal, but the idea…"

She hadn't been very much fun after she'd realized how the Alcohol was affecting her. While the rest of the fleet had enjoyed their night talking and enjoying party games together, she'd grabbed some coffee and sat in a corner until most of the others had passed out.

"I don't know if I'm explaining it very well." Saratoga admitted.

"No, no, I think I get it." Lexington reassured her. The helicopter banked again, and they were heading back towards the planned battle. "You're saying Abyssal corruption is less like some demon or dark copy is possessing you, but more like a drug or some kind of mania?"

"Yeah, something like that." She tempered. Reducing abyssal corruption to something as impersonal as a particularly nasty drug trip didn't seem correct either, but it felt a lot closer to the truth. "What I'm trying to get to, Lex, is that while I wasn't... sound at the time, I still raised Trinitite, Hypocenter, Firestorm, and all the others."

A part of her realized that this wasn't a particularly secure channel to be dropping the Wo-Class's name in, but they were virtually alone… nobody was going to hear them, right?

"So you still feel responsible for her."

"Yeah." Saratoga confirmed. "I know, Zuikaku disagrees with me, but-"

"But she's not here, right?"

"Exactly." Saratoga continued, adding a bit of speculation. "She's coping with the damage she did under its influence, but I feel like there's still damage the Jellyfish Princess could do via… via her. Sure, I'm being useful here, but if something happens over there while I still had a chance to prevent it…"

"What could you do over here that everyone isn't already doing?" Lexington asked. "You're not a US Marshall."

"I mean-" Saratoga paused. Her options were pretty limited. "Between her finding me or she snapping in the middle of a crowd, I know which option I'd pick."

She couldn't imagine what kind of stress Trinitite was going through right now. Plenty of summoned shipgirls had caused incidents by being careless, forgetting their strength, or simply getting caught up in an unfortunate situation, and they both had a background with humans and hours of training to help them act more human. Jellyfish had given her none of that.

"You wouldn't be opposed to meeting her, then?"

"I-" Saratoga's thoughts stopped as she floundered for an answer. It was a question she'd put more than one sleepless night into pondering, but still, she could only mutter an "I don't know."

What would she say to Trin? Saratoga probably knew Trinitite better than any other person on the planet, but the situation was so outside the abyssal's mode of operation Saratoga had know idea about even basic things, like what the Wo wanted from her.

At the end of the day, she probably wouldn't have an answer unless it actually happened.

The battleship sighed, adjusting her keel to sink deeper into her office chair. The bottle in her hand had grown light a bit faster then she'd expected it to, but that was fine. She had plenty more in her hold, and unlike her western colleagues, she fought better with a bit of vodka in her crew, so if a situation emerged from Svalbard she would still be fine.

Besides, it kept those memories away. She'd be drinking anyways, but it was nice the vodka had that as an added bonus.

Gangut hummed a half-remembered tune to herself, trying to get into the headspace of the character she was playing. Her free hand nudged a computer mouse, angling the MG3 on the screen to point further down the road. Her role in the little play she'd volunteered to join was that of a west german machine gunner, defending the town from soviet forces. The fact she would be 'killing' russians would have horrified a handful of her fleetmates, despite the fact that it was just a game, but that was fine.

They weren't the only ones feeling a bit too sensitive, of course. Galveston herself had approached her earlier, apologetically asking for help in making a soviet-centric operation later.

Why people cared so much about what just amounted to window dressing for shipgirls to trade scuttlebutt and acclimate to technology was beyond her.

"Do we know they'll be coming down this street?" Sendai asked, Gangut's headset giving her the illusion of the cruiser being behind her. A flick of the mouse revealed her avatar, the German Soldier covered in rough ghillie suit. Unlike the other members of the fire-team, the self-proclaimed shinobi was huddled in the back of the room, the massive silencer on the end of her weapon bobbing as she continuously adjusted her position.

"Kirishima thinks they'll be pushing down this road." Naka tempered, her avatar pivoting to look at her sister. The light cruiser's oversized backpack obscured a large portion of Gangut's screen, filled with more ammunition for the Russian battleship's ammo-hungry gun. "I believe in her, but if she miscalculated moving somewhere when the shooting starts won't be hard."

"We're here." Kiso murmured. The way she continuously slung her launcher onto her shoulder, only to sling it back to hold a magically appearing rifle probably looked better on her screen, but to the Russian it just looked silly. "Galveston will direct plenty of fools into our sights."

"Until then…" Sendai added, her normally-confident voice tinted with hesitation. "Gangut, Sis, I'm sorry to bring this up, but can I get you two's opinion on something?"

Gangut suppressed a sigh, feeling tension settle into her keel. Yes, she guessed she was encouraging the topic by joining a fireteam with another former abyssal princess, but Naka was the ship she knew the best out of the 14 in the 'West German' fleet! Did they have to bring this up?

"...go ahead." Naka replied, her response sharing a level of trepidation that Gangut shared. Maybe answering her question would uncover an important memory, or something.

"Well, I'll understand if you can't tell me everything, but these rumors are starting to eat away at me, you know?" Sendai clarified. "Do the abyssals have a nuke?"

The battleship jerked in shock, coughing as some of her vodka went down an air intake and ignited.

"I'm sorry?" She asked, incredulous. Her grasp of Japanese wasn't as solid as some of the other languages she knew- perhaps she'd simply misheard.

"You know, the nuke the abyssals made!" The Japanese cruiser clarified, as if everyone had heard about it already. "It's what Saratoga and the Americans have been really cagey about."

"They've been acting 'cagey?'" Gangut repeated, surprised. Yes, the ongoing war in Norway and the rest of the arctic took the majority of her time, but if there was something as big as abyssal WMDs she was sure she could have heard about it.

Then again, suspicions between nations these days were all too common. Japan and the Americans had been strong allies for the majority of a century, but to some ships in the JMSDF, they had been hated gaijin only months ago. It would make sense for the former IJN ships to start worrying about American conspiracies where, for once, they weren't doing anything.

"Of course they have!" Sendai replied. "Well, Saratoga and the Americans who keep contacting her are. She's been talking with all kinds of spooks, and apparently seems… anxious about something she's unwilling to talk about." She almost seemed giddy, as if she was merely discussing a cool movie she'd seen, rather than an existential threat. "She's definitely hiding something!"

"Yeah, but it's not because she made a nuke." Kiso's expressionless avatar made a pretty good imitation of a knowing shake of her head as she proclaimed: "You know how hard it would be for Jellyfish to find uranium and refine it? She sent a team of submarines out to steal a nuke, obviously!"

At this stage, Gangut found she had to suppress a chuckle. Like all rumors, whatever kernel of truth there was had clearly been buried under a mountain of noise. Saratoga was here, correct? Perhaps she needed to track the former Jellyfish Princess down after the mission ended. They'd been introduced earlier, but that hadn't been anything more than a simple greeting.

"How do you explain the second battle at Bikini, then?" Sendai shot back, her rifle focused on anything but the window now. "NASA fire satellites caught the island burning and everything!"

"You don't need a nuke to explain that." Kiso scoffed. "There was plenty of fuel and ammunition to fight over."

"Well, you're definitely mistaking the submarine you mentioned for the secret American one. Why do you think their official summoned ships are so low?"

'Low' was a relative term, but that wasn't what the battleship took issue with. She didn't like the idea of puncturing the light cruiser's fantasy, but they were better if they were a little more realistic..

"That's giving them too much credit." Gangut tempered, pausing to take another sip of her drink. "If they'd been hiding submarine summons, their fleet balance would be way off."

"How do you know they haven't been biasing their summoning towards submarines?" Sendai complained, and Gangut shrugged. Realizing that the Japanese cruiser wouldn't have seen the gesture, she added:

"I don't."

Well, it was worth a try. The edgy ninja had some insane hollywood scenario etched into her mind, and Gangut couldn't be bothered to try dislodging it. It was hard enough keeping Tashkent's antics from boiling over, let alone those of the rest of her fleet. Keeping the eccentricities of shipgirls in another country under control wasn't her duty. Naka could handle that.

Speaking of which, her fellow former abyssal had been uncharacteristically quiet. That felt like a larger cause for concern than anything Sendai claimed, but Gangut didn't worry until Naka spoke up.

"There's no nuke."

Her tone was decisive, her avatar resolutely focused on the road they were watching as the rest of the team's guns pivoted to her.

"So there's truth behind these rumors?"

"Yes." She confirmed, her voice halting. "I… really want to talk about it with you, Sendai, and you should have been informed weeks ago, Gangut, but those aren't decisions I can make."

Gangut should have been informed? That ruled out pretty much everything except some new revelation about abyssals. Whatever the situation was that caused such a revelation, it had Saratoga and Naka pretty concerned.

She took another drink, the bottle's weight noticeably shifting as its remaining contents sloshed to her lips.. Perhaps the battleship should have been angry that the secret was being kept from her, but if her own government didn't trust her enough to give her basic security clearance, so why should she expect the Americans to?

"...Still, they have it handled," Naka continued, her normal cheer returning over the voice channel, "and nobody's in serious danger, so you don't have to worry about it!"

"...okay, sis." Sendai finally replied, although she didn't seem satisfied by the answer at all. "Thanks for telling me."

"I look forward to hearing about it later." Kiso chuckled, "Sounds fascinating, whenever it goes public."

Gangut hummed agreeably, unsure of her own opinion. On one hand, there was clearly nothing she could do about it over here, and becoming as stressed as Saratoga or Naka was wouldn't help anything, but on the other, if another former abyssal princess thought she should know…

Perhaps she should bring this up with the admiral.

Here I go again, trying to get away with referencing real media that isn't related to the fic's fandom. This time it's for a game I've actually played, however, (not in big groups like this, but still) so the usual disclaimer of 'I probably got a lot wrong' doesn't apply.

This interlude stemmed a bit from critiques I recently got about the other major portion of this story, the Navy/Government side, seeming like it's getting ignored a bit too much/become irrelevant. The hope is this tides y'all over until the feds abruptly get involved again. On the plus side, this scene of shipgirls using a fairly chill game like ArmA to trade scuttlebutt has been rattling around in my head since I started this fic, so being able to use it now is nice. I'm pretty sure things fit in here, but if you've got reservations please let me know.