Rule by Grathryn

6526. Science girls, while we appreciate the virtual reality games you've managed to program, it's now your job to get the girls out of them. Last we saw Tenryuu and Johnston, at least, were involved in some sort of 40K scenario while DesDiv6 were dungeon crawling in the fantasy version of the world
6526a. That's not even counting Zephyr taking Fubuki, Zenith, Mutsuki and Yuudachi in for some sort of noir detective novel or something
6526b. "It was a redo of some of the Blyton novels actually," - Megan

Looking around the room, Rika frowned at the group. The room itself was pretty much a standard briefing room, a screen on one wall above a stage with a podium for someone to speak at, practically standard for every military base and quite a number of emergency services worldwide. This particular one just happened to be based at Jacksonville Naval Complex, one of America's active navy bases that didn't have a permanent compliment of shipgirls.

"Does anyone have any idea why we're here, poi?" a voice from the side brought her head around to find her blonde dorm mate, the girl wearing a normal blouse and tight trousers instead of her usual black sailor schoolgirl outfit.

Rika shook her head, her own black hair whipping at her cheeks. "No idea… except that it looks like only light cruisers and lighter are here and I see several nations."

"Poi~"

Closing her eyes, Rika blew out a tired sigh. "Arei-chan… do you have to do that?" she asked, looking up at her friend. "I know it's part of how you want others to see you as Yuudachi, but I don't think anyone is going to comment if you let it lie for a while."

"Why did you even start using that anyway, Arei-chan?" their other dorm mate asked from opposite Rika.

Arei shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," she admitted, then grinned at the pair. "Besides, you know how much it pisses off Jersey-san, Mino-chan," she said, green eye flashing in amusement.

Both girls simply gave her deadpan stares before their attention was called from the front, a group of rather recognisable shipgirls meeting on the stage.

"Thank you all for coming," Yuubari started as she almost bounced on the stage. "I'm sure you're all wondering just why you were called out here, especially as this isn't one of our bases."

There was a moment of dead silence, as if every light cruiser, destroyer and submarine in the building were silently saying 'gee, ya think?' before the cruiser coughed and continued. "We've managed, with a bit of help, to create a full immersion virtual reality system and we'd like you to be our testers."

"What?" asked one of the American girls, "No, seriously, what?" she asked flatly.

"Please tell me that it's more 'holodeck' than 'Abstergo' or whatever that wannabe 'god' from Sword Art Online and its sequels used," Robyn's voice sounded from where a group of British destroyers were sitting. Looking over, Rika noticed several of them nodding in unison. "Because if it's anything to do with literally sticking my brain into a computer, I've seen where that shit can go, and if I don't have a door, I'll make one."

Mino grimaced at that, chewing her lip worriedly. "Kami… I really hope Yuubari-san hasn't done that. I don't want my brain stuck in a computer," she muttered.

Sharing a slightly worried look with Arei, Rika shifted to wrap an arm around Mino, side hugging her as the girl pulled her legs under her.

"No, no," Yuubari waved her hands in front of her while shaking her head. "No brain downloading involved, it's… think of it as a…" she frowned.

"It's a prelude to the holodeck from Star Trek," South Dakota cut in as she joined Yuubari. "You'll be wearing special suits similar to those they use for motion capture to enable you to interact more fully with the characters in the game."

Yuubari nodded, her friend's explanation bringing her back onto a more even keel. "That's right, we have several large warehouses set up with hologram projectors and the suits will let you interact with them and them with you. They'll also let you interact with the environment and the objects there."

"What we'd like you to do," SoDak took up the thread again, "Is test out the suits to make sure they work with the emitters and the game systems we have." She turned slightly, bringing up a film of what was apparently supposed to happen while in a VR game. "The games run up to ten players simultaneously and should run for about an hour to test them out."

"This is either going to go horribly, horribly wrong or horribly, horribly right, and I'm not sure which worries me more…" Rika muttered, massaging her temples with her free hand.


Sitting in the changing room with several other girls, Rika looked at the motion suit that Yuubari and SoDak had given her. It wasn't really much, just two full body cat suits sewn together with a layer of machinery and sensors in the middle. It wasn't even that glaring in terms of colour, just a light grey suit.

"I feel like I'm getting dressed up for a starring role in a Super Sentai flick," Arei muttered from behind her. "All it needs is some animal themed helmet and someone getting dressed up as a monster."

"As long as it's not one of those hentai versions," Mino muttered before flushing bright red as both Rika and Arei turned to her with identical 'WTF' expressions on their faces. "My sister keeps sending me links to sites with that on there… if it's not other things."

Rika shared a look with Arei, her lips twitching slightly. "Oh, Mino, is that why we sometimes here you moaning at night in the dorms?" she asked as she turned back.

"Or where you got those massagers, poi?" Arei added, a rather Cheshire cat grin forming on her face, "Or the DVDs and booze?"

Mino spluttered, her face going beet red as she dropped the body suit she had been holding. "I-I-I don't know what you're t-t-talking about…"

Smirking, Rika arched an eyebrow at her division mate. "Really?" she asked. "Then you won't mind if Arei and I take that bottle of sake you keep in that spare locker near the docks at Yokosuka some night?"

Arei shifted, pulling on her own bodysuit up to her waist. "What about the magazines under your bed?"

"Alright you two," Sally's voice cut through Mino's stuttering attempts at denial, "as entertaining as it might be to bring up Mutsuki's seedier lifestyle; most of us don't need to hear it."

"Hey!" Mino objected. "My lifestyle isn't seedy."

There was an amused snort from the opposite side of the girls as Robyn, already dressed in the body suit and a set of ordinary clothes over it joined them. "Honestly, we're teenagers, sex, drugs, music and rebellion are supposed to be things we're into. Besides, it's not like any of us can talk, I'm fairly sure there's at least ten to fifty percent of things we have are one of those and I'm fairly sure Jen and Helen have at least gotten to first or second base, no idea on Megan and Anna, but they've got a longer history."

"I think the only drugs we've got are either booze or medicinal and legal, but then there's what the Wilders can get…" Sally shrugged before tapping Mino on the head. "You might want to get some clothes on; walking out in your underwear probably isn't fun."

Flushing again, Mino let out an "eep," before rushing to pull on the body suit.

Chuckling at her friend's reactions, Rika helped Mino zip the suit up before allowing Arei to do the same for her, pulling her clothes over the top of the outfit.


Sally frowned slightly as she walked along with Rika, well, the brunette was a bit ahead of her, and far enough that she could actually see both Mino and Arei casting shifty glances at the other girl's rear. There seemed to be something there, though she wasn't entirely sure what was going on, so she simply filed it away for later.

"DesDiv Six is in the Keepsake storyline with Tatsuta, while Tenryuu, Johnston and Sammy B wanted 40K…" Yuubari muttered as she led the way through the various warehouses, listing off who was where. "That leaves this one for you five," she said, waving at a warehouse very much like the others on the lot, "Though we're still missing two… eep!"

Yuubari jumped back as a massive muscle bike seemed to appear out of nowhere, skidding to a stop that almost threw its rider off.

"I am… never… doing that… again…" the busty girl muttered as she dismounted, staggering a few steps before Robyn caught her. "Shit… where'd you learn to drive?"

There was a snort from the bike, which transformed back into the armoured form of Sally's sister before the armour melted away like moulted feathers, revealing the blue haired girl. "You wanted to get here fast, Kanae," she pointed out.

Kanae shivered, still breathing heavily. "There's… fast… then there's… that," she panted. Taking a deep breath, she swallowed hard before letting it out. "I mean… as lewd as that could be, I was more worried about pancaking from your stunts. Seriously, driving up a truck that's in motion? Jumping a plane, a C-130 at that? Then there's riding along the building wall just now." She shook her head. "You scare me, I mean, really scare me."

Sally snorted in amusement. "You've obviously never seen any of the Zulus really go at it with stunts," she commented dryly. "Besides, Karas, I don't need to stick to the normal time flow, hell, half the stuff I deal with doesn't exist in the normal flow of time they're like half a dimension over or something."

Yuubari coughed to get everyone's attention. "Right, now that the last pair is here, this is the game you'll be testing for us. It's based on an English children's author's works, and actually, you've got a near perfect split for this."

"If I've got to partner one of the Brits, bagsy the sane one!" called Kanae, waving her arm.

The three English girls shared an amused look between themselves before snickering, "Us? Sane?" asked Robyn before snorting. "Iku ain't any of us 'sane', or don't you remember the slime you caught with your face?" She got a grimace from Kaede. "I've worked with worse ones of them; heck there's a bunch we have to use NBC gear on. Those two, the last time they went on holiday, spent at least a few nights at a haunted naval base and were completely blasé about the spooks to the point they snarked at battleships, and Zephyr was one of the first to punt out abyssal heavies when they got blockaded in. Hell, Megan hacked a few into chunks."

Yuubari coughed again. "W-well, I'll leave it to you seven to decide who you're going to play, but the game is based around a series known as 'The Secret Seven', and there's seven of you so…" she shrugged before opening the door.


Sitting around in a holographic shed on a set of boxes and plant pots, Rika stretched slightly before settling again. "Does anyone know what we're supposed to do with this?" she asked. "I mean I know we had to pick characters from a group of seven kids and some of us are playing guys, but what did the Secret Seven actually do?"

"They're child detectives," Kanae answered, leaning back against the wall behind her, which was actually the wall of the warehouse. "There's like, a bunch of them. Oriana-chan had most of them and we used to read them together when we were children."

Robyn nodded slightly. "I don't remember much about the Seven, but the author, Mrs Blyton, wrote a load of stories. I only caught a few because of being an orphan, but I think she did something like fifty to a hundred books in all."

Slipping an arm each around Robyn, Megan and Sally leaned into her comfortingly. "I think we got the other groups more, but we almost grew up on the Famous Five, Malory Towers, St Clare's and the like," said Sally, frowning thoughtfully. "Depending on where we are supposed to be will probably change things up, though we're probably in the first book, so… someone lost their badge Christmas time or something and there's a creepy old house opposite that they find 'interesting', which leads to the mystery."

Megan nodded. "Honestly, it's a game; we'll probably get prompted for things if it's programmed right. Kind of like the remake of Shivers that we all did not too long after the three of us gained our abilities," she said, indicating herself, her twin and Robyn.

"Maybe… maybe they should have not had all the main characters replaced by players," suggested Mino, running her hands along the holographic dog's side as he came past her. "I wonder how they managed to get these to let us feel things though," she murmured.

"Yeah, poi, it's weird, poi," Arei added, getting unamused looks from the other girls.

Rika sighed, closing her eyes briefly. "Arei… please stop that. We deal with it enough on duty."

"Well," Kanae said, shifting in her spot. "I know one thing I'm going to do." She looked around at the group. "Have at least some childhood; besides, I think we're supposed to play in the snow anyway." She frowned slightly as she thought. "Yeah, actually, they gave us a kids' series, and at least two of us are orphans and my childhood was…" she grimaced in disgust. "Well, anyone that knows how I Awoke, can probably guess."

Shifting out of the twins' arms, Robyn crossed over to Kanae and tugged her up, dragging her over to the other pair before sitting and pulling the busty girl into a hug.

"I believe the term, craptastic, comes to mind," Megan said, side hugging Robyn again before twining her fingers into Kanae's. "All in favour of just playing up the characters?" she asked, getting a unanimous 'aye' from the rest.


Commodore Glenn scowled as she walked through the storage yard at Jacksonville. Normally she didn't have too many problems directly related to her girls, but that didn't mean that they didn't get into trouble every so often. Of course, that was before Yuubari and South Dakota had requested roughly half of her destroyers and light cruisers, nearly a week ago, and Admirals Goto and Briggs were missing a number of their ships as well from the same event.

She eventually found the two mad scientists in an older office building, huddled over a bank of computer screens as they muttered to one another. A look at the monitors had Lauren's scowl increasing as she spotted several of the missing shipgirls on the displays, including her nieces. "Ladies," she snapped, making both shipgirls yelp, Yuubari ending up banging her chin on the desk as she tipped her chair too far forwards and it skidded out from under her. "I hope you have an explanation as to why you are watching several of the other shipgirls and why they're still here and not out on the front lines where they're needed."

The pair shared a look and swallowed as Yuubari picked herself up. "Uh… we uh…"

Lauren arched an eyebrow at the two of them. "You don't, do you?" she asked rhetorically. "What is this?"

"It's a prototype holodeck, sort of," SoDak replied. "You see there are holographic emitters in the warehouses that create projections and the suits the girls are wearing allow them to interact with them, since we don't know how to make hard light holograms or shaped force fields yet."

"While the idea is good, there are two problems, firstly you used shipgirls we need on the front," Lauren pointed out. "Secondly, you tied them up without any sort of timetable, and even if it is light cruisers and lighter, those are the shipgirls that do the most work getting the resources where they are needed, including whatever parts and food you are using for this." She looked between the two shipgirls. "I suggest, ladies, that you get those girls out of there and find other test subjects, or at least plan things better; otherwise you're unlikely to be receiving any specific materials from overseas if there aren't any escorts available." She gave the pair a measuring look. "I need my girls back for the next convoy run tomorrow, and I'm sure both Admiral Goto and Admiral Briggs won't be shipping any materials your way unless you shake loose their girls."

Both shipgirls snapped salutes as Lauren turned away from them.