11320: I don't know what your definition of upgrade is but putting Aegis on a plane?! Also the less said about the giant ass guns on the wings, the better.
11320a: "This is worse than the time the twins gave Gatling, Gatling guns."- Admiral Goto
11320b: "And worse than the time SoDac gave Tennyru an axe!"~ Admiral Briggs
11320c: "Here Abyssal-byssals. Come out, come out wherever you are~" Max

11321: No hiding details from your reports, even if it is for good reason.
11321a: "I really don't know how to put this in a way that won't shatter the Admiral's sanity."~ Massachusetts
11321b: "I don't know how we can not put it in our reports and keep our sanity."~ Archerfish
11321c: "WHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WHHYYYYYYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEEE!"~ Admiral Briggs, learning the truth

11322: Max has earned a Silver Star for single handedly knocking off an entire squadron of Abyssals. She is also spending the next 2 months in her hanger for repairs.
11332a: "That was the bravest and the stupidest stunt I've seen since Hood did that cudgel move with Campbelltown."~ Archerfish.
11322b: "Who, besides you knows how to ride a plane? And has big guns."~ Max

It was a normal day at Norfolk Naval Air Station. After the Seawolf Incident Max and Archerfish moved to Virginia. The base was a good deal larger than Groton and although the submarine presence was nearly non-existent, surface ships provided plenty of entertainment. Also, the facilities here meant that Max could finally get the upgrades she so desperately needed in order to join the fleet. The opportunity to work with and fight alongside her lover had her very excited and she was almost always fidgeting on her gear in her hanger as the mechanics swarmed over her.

What wasn't known was the intrusion of science! into these modifications. Converting a 737 Max into a P8 wasn't as difficult as it may seem at first glance. The basic airframe was the same. And while the passenger based interior needed to be removed and new electronics and weapons systems installed, once the seats and cushions were out of the way it wasn't that difficult. What was tricky was South Dakota's plan.

Now South Dakota, the mad science shipgirl of mad science shipgirls had been responsible for some kind of mayhem on every base in the US and Canada, at least once. She, like all the other science girls were fascinated with Max. The first aircraft to show signs of true sentience like the kanmusu. Being stationed in Norfolk meant that a confrontation was inevitable. Thus, with the mechanics on lunch break and Archerfish off doing submarine things, South Dakota confronted her latest test subject.

Max was unlike most other test subjects. See she was well aware of the science girl's penchant for trouble. Oftentimes her experiments didn't go as planned so when South Dakota made her proposal, the 737 was rightfully wary. Then the battleship made a proposal she couldn't refuse.

"You want to be able to protect Archerfish don't you?" She asked.

Now what kind of question was that? Of course Max wanted to protect her. But her numerous weapons systems already ensured that. South Dakota smiled and shook her head when she pointed that out. "Max, poor dear innocent Max." She chuckled. "Harpoons and torpedoes are wonderful but has anyone told you of the early days of the war?" Max paused, then shook her nose in a no answer. South Dakota was happy to fill the gaps in her education. "Well the first few months we were, reeling. I dunno how much of the war reached the airways but the Navy took a huge hit. Nothing we had seemed to work. Nothing! Those nice anti-ship harpoons, they either ended their journey as duds or went on a return to sender path. And same with the torpedoes. It was like the Mark 14 all over again!" Max winced at that, aware of the torpedo's flaws as Archerfish had given her a history lesson.

"So the only weapon that proved to be even remotely reliable were phoelinx guns. Since you're a plane and not a ship, I honestly don't know if those other weapons will work on Abyssals or not. But its better to have a backup, just in case. Archerfish would never forgive me if I let you get shot down." That was certainly true and as often as Max put herself in directly in the fire for her lover, dying was certainly not on her calendar for the near future. She agreed to SoDac's modifications.

...

Abyssal Force 2 was stubborn and composed of a highly skilled fighting force. Highly skilled because of the Abyssal forces on earth, this was the only one that was entirely composed of original vessels. This meant that these evil ships had been fighting the war since the beginning. They were experts in dealing with human forces and shipgirls alike. The war had taken its toll on the force, reducing it to about half its original size which is why the US Fleet now took this opportunity to attack it. They were strong enough, and it was weak enough for the fight to be reasonably fair. That is not to say it would easy by any means.

With the opening shot it was clear this would be a long hard battle. The Abyssal force knew where to hit where it hurt and concentrated its attacks on the carriers and capital ships. But without avoiding the little guys entirely. The destroyers and submarines got their fair share of the action. Archerfish was pinned down for 6 hours by continuous depth charges. Max was one of three P8s that saw action that day. Having three meant there was a constant presence as each aircraft cycled through either to land and replace tired crew or hook up to a gas station. Max never left the battle entirely. Even hooked up to a tanker she made loops on the edge of the battle zone, keeping one sonarbouy fixed on Archerfish.

Archerfish for her part was having the time of her life! The Abyssal submarines were a challenge as she liked a challenge, as long as she could come out on top in the end. Which so far she had. But now her battery was running low. She needed to snorkel but the constant activity at the surface made that impossible. Retreating out of the battlezone wasn't an option either as the enemy destroyers were waiting for her the moment she tried to retreat.

"Can't go forward, can't go back." She sighed. Well she couldn't stay here! She made a break for her own lines. A risky maneuver as she could easily be mistaken for an enemy submarine. Friendly fire still happened in this war, it just wasn't as well known. But she had no choice. The Abyssals had made it for her.

As Archerfish raced back to the fleet, the sound of her screw attracted the Abyssals. She was desperate and making little effort to be silent, just hoping that she could reach the safety of her fleet in time. Daring a peak with her periscope, it was clear she wasn't going to make it. Two destroyers were charging at her. Archerfish made a decision. She kept her periscope up, guiding the destroyers in. They didn't come right away, naturally wary as they had seen this tactic before. But the chance of sinking a vulnerable submarine was too good to pass up as Archerfish knew it would be. She had her shot lined up when the lead destroyer got close enough. Her hours of practicing this down the throat maneuver payed off and she took pleasure in seeing the bow blown off her opponent.

Rapid sonar pings reminded her there was one more destroyer out there. By the time she had re-positioned, the destroyer was too close. She could dive to evade but her battery was so low by this point that doing so would almost guarantee she could not make it back to the surface. She had to take her chances here, shift her rudder at the last moment and hope she was nimble enough to dodge.

30,000 feet above her, Max circled on the end of a long hose. Her fueling was almost complete and good thing too because through the heavy cloud cover she spotted Archerfish. Going bow to bow with two Abyssal destroyers. They looked like Gearing-class, evil versions of them. Which meant that Archerfish was not only outnumbered, she was severely outgunned. Max wanted to race down there and help but she couldn't. Not properly disengaging from the tanker before resuming battle operations would damage them both, if not crash them.

Max cheered when she saw the one destroyer go up in flames, knowing Archerfish had nailed it but there was still another. Not that Max had ever underestimated or disrespected her lover's skill in combat. Archerfish was quite good where it counted but even she couldn't take care of two ships at once. Especially not at such close range. And that remaining destroyer knew it. It knew Archerfish couldn't set up another shot in time and Max, even from this height, could see the wake it generated as its engines were pushed to full power. It was going to ram her. Max snarled, pinging the tanker in an effort to let them know she needed to get back in the fight.

"We're pumping as fast as we can Max. Still another 2 minutes."

"Archerfish doesn't HAVE two minutes." Still Max could do nothing.

Finally, fueling was complete and the tanker's boom retracted. Max closed the fuel panel door across her nose and banked hard left, pointing her radar dome skywards. It was far from standard procedure but she was needed down there dammit. Max retracted all her flaps which she had extended to allow her to circle at low speed behind the tanker. But now they would just hinder her.

Climbing seemed to be the opposite of what was needed to rejoin the battle but there was a method to Max's madness. One that admittedly, was more than a little crazy. She tilted her nose high. 10 degrees, 20 degrees, 30 degrees... She reached an astonishing 52 degrees before automatic protection kicked in and began to push her nose back towards the ground. Here was where the plan became a little, well, stupid. Just diving towards the battle wasn't going to work. Safeguards prevented her from achieving the necessary speed and dive angle required to rejoin the fight fast. Instead of working against her systems, she would work with them. With a twist.

As soon as Max felt her horizontal stabilizer begin to push her nose down she froze her AoA sensors so that the only thing they would read was that her nose was at a 50 degree up angle. This was not something a flight crew could ever do, even if they ever wanted to (why would they?) But she was the plane! She could do what she wanted with her parts. MCAS did exactly what it was designed to do and pushed her down. It wasn't much at first but when the now frozen sensors detected no change, the commands were repeated and strengthened. Max did everything she could to help, pushing full power into her engines. With the flight systems fooled, there were no safeguards to act against her in how steep an angle she took. There was a risk she would just end up crashing into the sea. This system had knocked down two planes already but without the advantage of actually being a dive bomber, Max had to take what she could get. Sure, she would probably end up losing a few bits on the way down. Diving towards the sea at 250 knots and 60 degrees ensured that. She just needed to make sure she reactivated her AoA sensors and pulled up in time.

Once in the dive, the wind was unlike anything Max had felt before. It was a high pitched whistle, almost like a scream. As she cleared the cloud base at 5000 feet the surface ships realized the danger and opened up on her. Tracers streaked past as bullets flew just centimeters from her wings but Max was not terrified. If anything, the closeness was something she reveled in. Battle was where she belonged! She may not have been bred to fight but she was certainly born for war.

3000 feet, 2500 feet. At this altitude most aircraft would pull up and release a bomb or two on an unsuspecting ship's deck. Max didn't have bombs, she had harpoons and the only way to ensure the modern weapons worked in this environment was to get in close. At 1000 feet, she reactivated her sensors. MCAS stopped functioning and a thousand warnings began blaring in her cockpit as the rest of her realized the danger she was in. Most annoying was the ground proximity warning. If it was allowed, she would have shut off that loud "TERRAIN! TERRAIN!" A long time ago. As it was, she just had to ignore it and keep her focus. As she began to pull out of her dive, her belly just brushed the mast of the destroyer. She released a harpoon, then once clear of the ship and practically skimming the water, banked hard right to avoid the fire of a large cruiser in her path. She didn't see it but she heard the destroyer's magazines explode.

"Yes it worked!" She hissed. But the fight wasn't over yet. Now down on the deck, Max dodged fire from all angles, both from Abyssals and her own comrades. She was right in the middle of the worst part of the fighting, and it was inevitable that she would get hit. She did.

Just a few rounds wasn't enough to hurt her but after 3 minutes in the thick of it, something was going to give. Rounds finally penetrated her fuselage, just aft of her right wing. The high speed bullets went deep, severing her manual control cables. If her hydraulics were hit next, she would have no control to that side. She couldn't climb to escape. They'd pick her off with plenty of time before she vanished into the clouds. But neither could she run. Like Archerfish, she was stuck.

Or maybe not. The mounts on her wings, just outside of her engines were to the casual observer, just another set of flaps. SoDac had designed them that way to avoid suspicion. Max had yet to even test the new weapons let alone deploy them in combat. "Well, no time like the present." She muttered. Inside the cockpit a switch was flicked, a switch labeled "Phoelinx". The seemingly inconspicuous flap cover retracted and splayed out, revealing four nasty gun barrels on each wing. Max wasted no time putting them to good use. The ammo belt ran along the inside of her wing, giving her up to 5000 rounds to each barrel. It was complex system but its application was simple and deadly.

From the perspective of her allies down below, it looked like Max had exploded. Tracer rounds erupted from both wings and spontaneously one of the thinner hulled Abyssal destroyers exploded. Max used the gap in enemy fire to gain some altitude and continued her strafing runs, lending support to beleaguered and ammo deprived battleships. Against stronger vessels, harpoons and torpedoes came into play. And Max was a very good shot! Despite some of the Abyssals practically being entangled with the Americans. In such close quarters, Max never faltered, not once striking her allies.

With the lesser ships out of the way, Max made a move towards the Abyssal carrier. Their ammunition nearly depleted, the US fleet could only take a step back and watch. The carrier was a cross between a Yorktown and a Nimitz. The combination of WW2 toughness and modern deadliness made this ship a hard egg to crack. Not that Max cared. The storm of tracers was far more intense now and that was just from one ship. The only ship left in the Abyssal squadron. Max stayed as close to the deck as she could without getting wet and spun herself around and around in a twirl. The move prevented the Abyssal from getting a good fix on her, unable to see any one part of her at a time. Once Max was inside the range of her guns, it was all over. Her own guns had been firing continuously as well, knocking out the Abyssals anti-aircrafts one by one. By the time Max lifted herself off the deck, dropping torpedoes, the tracer fire was almost nonexistent.

Max's timing could not have been closer as just as she cleared the carrier, it exploded. Two torpedoes detonated under its keel, snapping its back in several places. It quickly sank, leaving an oil slick behind. Max made a circle, admiring her handiwork before limping back towards the fleet. Keen eyes could see that her right engine was smoking a little and would have to be shut down. She was covered in bullet holes and tracer burns and there was a large gash in her belly from where she'd scrapped against that destroyer's mast.

Massachusetts wasted no time getting on the radio. "Max, return to Norfolk."

"Max copies." With a waggle of her wings, Max made a sharp turn back towards the US coast, 200 miles away. It was unclear if she could get there without needing to stop at another gas station. Flying on one engine reduced her speed drastically, and limited her altitude causing increased fuel burn. Still, there were more pressing issues to consider.

Most of the fleet had been silent, purely out of sheer shock and terror. At last someone spoke up and no surprise it was Johnston. "An entire fleet." She whispered. The Taffy was unusually subdued but that was no surprise, considering what just happened. "One aircraft destroyed an entire fleet. Not that I'm surprised or anything. Aircraft are nasty buggers but a P8M*. She's not even built for combat!" The destroyer was torn between worshipping Max or being jealous of her. Massachusetts wasn't sure which one she preferred.

"So, how do we report this?" South Dakota asked. She was the only one not completely affected by Max's trouncing.

"Ignoring the fact that you so obviously gave Max those guns." Massachusetts said and SoDac just gave a shrug that had no guilt in it whatsoever. "I vote in favor of not reporting this, for the sake of Admiral Briggs' continuing sanity."

Archerfish was the next to speak up. She too was stunned by her lover's display. Who knew a 737Max, an aircraft designed purely for civilian work, could do that kind of damage. "I don't know how we can not report it and keep our sanity." She said.

...

Admiral Briggs was not happy. On his desk sat a serious of after action reports drawn up by Massachusetts and her fleet. While deeply informative they failed to answer one critical question. What had happened to the Abyssal Force 9? When asked, each ship simply shrugged and said "It was a hell of a fight but it wasn't me who finished them." At least the force had been annihilated. Still, the question of how remained. Was it extremely important? Not really. The force was gone and that's what mattered. But when dealing with shipgirls, it was best to try and understand MSSB as much as possible in order to better predict its outbreaks. A science that was, admittedly, still very much in its infancy.

Playing on a hunch, Briggs went through the folder of photos again. Collected from all the vessels snapshots of the fight, they provided a visual picture of the battle itself. And something immediately caught his eye. In each of the photos depicting an Abyssal blowing up, there was a small blob off to the side. In some images the blob was more defined. Briggs could just make out the features of a P8. And he had a sinking feeling that he knew which one it was. And that lead to a very unwelcome truth.

"WWWHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY MMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Admiral Briggs' wail was heard all across the base. In the mess hall, Massachusetts, Archerfish, Johnston, and South Dakota were all seated at a table. Pausing in slurping her spaghetti, SoDac shrugged and said "Whelp, guess he found out."