Rule 8646: Do not anger the monitors. They may be small, but they punch leagues above their weight!

Tahiti Beach, Saint-Tropez, France

June 6, 2018

It was well-documented that the French were becoming the masters of bouncing back and returning to business as usual after foreign occupation. The Hundred Years' War, World War I, World War II, and now the early parts of the Abyssal War had all proven that.

In the opening years of the Abyssal War, the French Riviera had been invaded and occupied by the eldritch warships. When the first kanmusu had appeared in Japan, the French stopped throwing men and ships at the Abyssals, opting to bid their time until their own shipgirls arrived. And arrive, they did.

Provence and Paris were the first, the two battleships immediately going to work liberating the Côte d'Azur region, freeing France's southern ports and allowing the use of Toulon Naval Base for future French shipgirl operations. Within a year, the entirety of France's Mediterranean coastline had been reclaimed for humanity.

That had been less than five years ago. Already, the tourist industry was almost back up to its pre-War levels. And some eyes were following one girl who was taking advantage of it.

While foreigners were not an uncommon sight on Tahiti Beach, the fact that she was wearing a 1940s-style one-piece navy-blue swimsuit was on the "clothing optional" beach. People who were charitable would consider her stocky or big-boned. Those who weren't might say that she was pudgy or at least overweight. Finally, the raging arseholes would call her fat. She'd heard all of these terms before, and they didn't bother her.

The closest things to identifiers she had exposed on her person were the Royal Navy insignia one one breast of her suit, a name patch reading "Wolfe" on the other, and a "I hit a target further away than anyone else" tattoo on her right shoulder.

She wore a wide-brimmed sun hat, dark sunglasses, and carried a beach umbrella with her as she sought out a place that wasn't too crowded on the beach.

As she set her imbrella in place, a twinge of pain rippled through her right shoulder. The specialized gun she carried was a bitch and a half to use, but the results were plenty worth it. Dealing with the shenanigans of the Royal Navy shipgirls? Not so much. Fortunately, after her latest liason duty with Admiral Masson in Toulon, the Admiral had granted her leave request and Masson had arranged for her to take a vacation on the beaches of the French Riviera. A vacation that Wolfe was all-too keen to take full advantage of.

She laid down on her back and rested her head on her hands, intending to make the most of today's sunny and clear weather. Then the screams started.

At first, she desperately tried to rationalize them away as the yells of children playing, but when that proved impossible, she hoped that it was a local incident that the police could deal with.

It was not to be.

"Abyssals!"

With a groaning sigh, she sat up and looked down the beach. As she had feared from the cry, a group of more than half a dozen Abyssals emerged from the shallows. Three Tsu-class light cruisers, one of then an Elite, and a few destroyers stepped and slithered onto the beach. If the lack of appropriate markings wasn't a big enough clue that these weren't Allied, the fact that they raised their guns to fire on the civilians was.

"Why won't my life go smoothly? Why won't it ever go smooth?" Resigning herself to her ruined vacation, the Royal Navy monitor HMS General Wolfe stood and summoned her rigging. Stepping toward the water, she hollered through a directed radio broadcast, "Oi, you gits! You're ruining my vacation! Why don't you scarper off and I won't pound up the lot o' ya like I did to Snaeskerke!"

They replied by directing their weapons at her.

"Don't say I di'n't warn ya!" She aimed her primary turret at the cruisers and fired. Shells from the twin twelve-inch guns ripped through the hull of one of the Tsus, leaving a gaping wound in the gut.

While she waited for the reload, she began backing away to open up the range and angled her armor to weather the return fire from their five-inch guns. She thanked whatever lucky stars she had that there weren't any heavy cruisers amongst the Abyssals. Then her gun chief let her know that her bombardment cannon was loaded, and with a minimum charge, at that, which meant that the Abyssals wouldn't be overshot.

With a savage grin, the old monitor lined up the big gun and opened fire. Her bombardment cannon was nearly unique; only her sister, Lord Clive, mounted one like it. The BL 18" Naval Gun Mark I was the largest ever fitted to a British warship, the longest-ranged, and the most powerful. With it, in the Great War, General Wolfe had scored more than twenty six hits at a range of 33 klicks. Against these Abyssals, at a range of two klicks? Childs' play. With a gout of flame eighteen meters long, the first shell erupted out of the barrel. When the 8 crh HE shell landed, the wounded cruiser and one other simply vanished in the fireball. The recoil clawed at her shoulder, but it was a good pain.

"Heh. Still got it." Then the remaining cruiser charged, the destroyers hot on its tail. "Aw, crap." Her 12" guns discharged, again, but the cruiser had angled her armor to bounce the old, obsolete shells. "Damn it." There was no way she would escape; her armor may have been as thick as a heavy cruiser's, and her firepower was equal to a battleship's, but her speed was the trade-off, only able to manage 8 knots on a good day.

"Die, foolish surfacer!" the cruiser yelled as she grabbed and threw one of her torpedoes, a prudent choice as her guns weren't working.

"Ah!" General Wolfe quickly turned to take the warhead on her broad torpedo bulge. It detonated, but did no major damage. "F*** it. Overriding safeties." She ripped out the gun stop from her rear casemate, allowing the depression of her 18" gun to well below the 22-degree minimum imposed by her designers. Gritting her teeth against the pain she knew would come, she fired the massive weapon.

Recoil she was never designed to take ripped the gun's mounting right off her rigging, along with a fair portion of said rigging, snapping her right shoulder like a twig. The results, however, she considered worth it.

A 4 crh AP shell leapt from the barrel and surged toward the Abyssals, whose pursuit had managed to line themselves up rather conveniently. The cruiser simply exploded, her abdomen disappearing in a cloud of shredded metal and parting ways from her legs. The massive projectile continued on, drilling through most of the destroyers. There were only one or two survivors.

"S***." Fighting through the pain, General Wolfe forced herself back to her feet, noting that most of the armor on her starboard side, and all of it on her starboard aft, was compromised by the sheer recoil of the horizontal firing of the big gun. The jostling of her arm sent a greater lance of pain up her arm, and she screamed, her vision blurring. Trying to minimize her movements, she raised her 12" twin turret into line with the last destroyers as best she could, which was only made worse as her unangled hull was perforated by shells from the Abyssals. "Please… let me… get off… one more shot." She fired, and her world turned into black agony.

HMS General Wolf awoke later in a repair bath, the unique multi-colored hair of Commandante Teste hovering in her gradually sharpening vision. "Guh…"

"Took you long enough to get up, you crazy Brit."

"What… happened?" the monitor managed to croak.

The seaplane tender, who functioned as Toulon's resident repair ship due to France's lack of one, handed her a glass of water, which General Wolfe drank down greedily. "'What happened' is that you decided to take on an entire Abyssal fleet, alone. You're damn lucky you're alive, right now."

The memories flooded back. "That… last DD…"

"You missed. Thankfully, L'Indomptable was close enough to arrive and bail your ass out by destroying that Abyssal destroyer.

Wolfe sank lower in the healing water. "I just wanted a vacation…"

Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan

June 5, 2018

Nagato stared at the new arrival to Yokosuka. She was, apparently, the new liason to the Royal Navy. A little under five feet tall, pudgy, and frankly cute as a button. There was a slight flicker around the battleship as Nagamon was aroused by the sight, although Hoppou and the destroyers were cuter, overall.

Straightening herself to do her duty, she stepped forward to welcome the shipgirl to the base. "I am battleship Nagato, third in command here at Fleet Activities, Yokosuka. I apologize that Admirals Goto and Fubuki were too busy to greet you, themselves. If you'll follow me, I'll lead you to your quarters." She offered her hand.

The smaller shipgirl accepted the handshake. "HMS Erebus, Royal Navy monitor." She pulled Nagato close with surprising strength. "By the by, I've heard of you, Nagato, and your… biggest personality quirk. If you try to cuddle me, it won't end well for you." The battleship felt something cold press into her gut. "Clear?"

Nagato looked down to see that Erebus had summoned her rigging, two fifteen-inch guns in a twin turret wrapped around her arm and the reason for the cold touch. "Crystal."

The monitor-girl's attitude underwent an immediate 180. "Good." She dismissed her rigging. "Now that that's out of the way, lead on."