10964. As an addendum to a previous rule, ending up fighting giant alien hives or monsters means that spells of mass destruction are authorised. The fact that several Devonport girls and their admiral got into a situation where that happened means I need a freaking drink
10964a. "Yes it does involve those portals, and a world where holographic aliens are invading during the WW period. You know the base." - Glenn
Rule by Grathryn
Groaning as she woke, Mio hissed in pain as everything from her ribs to her nails flared.
"Steady there," a female voice said. "You took quite a fall, even with Megan managing to catch you before you hit the water."
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Mio groaned again, her eyelids flickering open to find a woman with dark brown hair leaning over her, blue eyes covered by glasses. "W-who?" asked Mio.
"Commander Angela Kilburn, HMNB Devonport," Angela introduced herself. "You're Major Mio Sakamoto of the 501st Joint Strike Witches?"
Mio blinked several times both because the woman knew her by sight and because of the tiny people that seemed to be moving around her. "H-hai… What—" she was cut off by the ear shattering boom of a large calibre naval rifle. "What's going on?" she managed after her ears stopped ringing.
"At the moment, a five-way brawl," Angela replied, pausing as several shots rang out. "The neuroi you were likely fighting, several abyssals and a few sirens apparently decided that they want us dead more than anything else today. Shipgirls from both my own world and one of our dimensional neighbours, an Azur Lane universe, are currently fighting them off."
That gave Mio several questions, though some were more pertinent than others. Frowning, she looked around; light from a lantern brighter than any she knew of lit a rough stone cavern while a crackling fire cast dubious warmth through it. "What happened? I-I lost my sword trying to fight a neuroi, then barely managed a shield."
Angela nodded. "You can thank Admiral Glenn and Captain Jones for that; they're the ones that caught you," she said. "Beyond that, pretty much normal issues for Devonport." She helped Mio up, frowning slightly at how slight the other was. "A group of abyssals decided to attack the base while we were using a portal to transfer some things and apparently a bunch of sirens had the same idea on the other side."
Shifting slightly, she didn't notice a couple of her fairies exiting her sleeve and disappearing under Mio's hair as she helped the Fusoian towards where a few monitors had been set up showing the battle raging outside. On the screen, a futuristic VTOL roared through the skies, gunning down dozens of both neuroi drones and strange looking fighters backed up by a number of other fighters with massive blocky engines that seems to move as much as the fighters' flaps as they avoided both lasers and tracers.
A moment later lightning blinded the camera followed quickly by a screech. When the screen cleared, it was zoomed in on a woman wearing a large backpack striker similar to the fighters flying around, a massive chain gun held in one hand while the other glowed with eldritch energy.
Even as the pair watched, the woman opened up with the chain gun, bullets tearing apart a pair of neuroi before sweeping the ground clear of ugly, malformed babies, another lightning bolt cracking out to blow up a destroyer with some strange alien geometry and armour.
"Blake, Hawke, focus on the cruiser pack on the port side, DesDiv Six back them up!" Lauren ordered into her radio. Flipping around in the air as a group of abyssal fighters zoomed past her, she spun in place, firing her gun to shred the first two before pushing her turbofans up and rocketing forwards. "Temeraire, Unicorn, get a lock on that carrier and sink the bitch! Zulus, Comet, destroyers trying to sneak on our starboard, drop them. Wilders and Crescent, focus on triple-A escort for Enterprise and Monarch, you two there's three battleships that need sunk, do it!"
Flipping around again in a move that would probably crush a normal person's organs, she unleashed a volley of icicles at a bomber that was circling, several punching through the cowling around its engines, sending it smoking into the sea.
A quick look showed a dozen smoking hulls from sinking siren warships, fire licking over the oil coated waters, the sky filled with smoke, criss-crossing lines of tracers and searing red lasers as fighters darted and danced, trying to send each other to their doom.
Even over the thunder of the BL16 Mk2s that the Lion-class mounted, the swirling cloud bearing down on them lit the area with an ominous red light as lightning crackled through it. Eyes narrowing, she scowled at the thing for a moment. That thing, which looked almost like a demonic hurricane funnel, was going to be a problem.
Snapping up a shield, Lauren grunted as one of the 'holo-fighters' sent a laser beam at her, pushing her back a bit. Eyes narrowing, she flipped out of the way of the follow up, bursting the thing with a quick burst from her chain gun only to have to dive aside as Megan – in her jet form – chased a group of siren bombers down, her own guns tearing the air.
Her pack's engines roared as she dived down to sea level, skimming the waves for a moment before pulling up, one of her attached missiles whining as it powered up and released, screaming into a siren cruiser to explode violently.
Back flipping herself around, she sent a burst from her chain gun into the face of an abyssal cruiser, making her yell in shock. Another missile blew that one's torso in two with a shower of gore and oil.
Another shield snapped up to block another laser but before she could return fire, Megan swooped up at the neuroi, shifting to her armoured form and slicing the thing in two, shattering it like glass.
A 14 inch shell exploding in her face had her reeling back and blinking at the flash blindness even as her four triple turrets returned fire in a series of rolling explosions. A shriek from across the battlefield told her that she had landed at least one hit on her target.
Shaking her head to clear the ringing from her ears, Aedryn growled as her guns reloaded, ducking another shell that tried to take her head off. The roar of her sister's guns covered the yells of pain from both sides as another siren battleship went up several columns of water before another explosion broke it in twain.
"You okay there sis?" Catelyn asked, her quad-40s filling the skies with flack that Unicorn's fighters, Megan and Lauren swooped around and through with the skill of long practice.
"Yeah, just flash-blinded for a bit, Enterprise," Aedryn replied. "You know our armour; we were designed to match the Iowas before they figured out Unicorn's laminate armour enough to use it for our hulls. Might have lost a few arrays but nothing major," she said, giving her sister a grin before letting her main battery open up again. Twelve guns roared in succession. Moments later the abyssal battleship shrieked as eight of the shots tore through her armour and wrecked her internals before two more tore her head off, sending her to the bottom.
"One down!" Aedryn called, pumping her fist. A flash of red and a feeling like a hot poker being dragged over her skin made her yelp. Another flash caused one of her twin 4.5 inch turrets to explode. Yelping again, she grabbed her shoulder as her other secondaries opened up with a thunderous roar, smashing a glowing crater in the 'vessel' that had managed to slip through her flack screen.
Combined fire from Catelyn, Crescent and Kempenfelt slammed into the thing as it tried to regenerate, smashing through its hull and destroying its core causing it to shatter like glass before a sledgehammer.
"Fuck you arsehole!" Catelyn yelled at the shattered neuroi, blinking as a massive basilisk erupted from the ocean, leaping over her to dive on the last abyssal battleship, swallowing it whole. "Holy shit!" she yelped, leaping aside from the splash wave.
Aedryn chuckled painfully. "And there's the third," she said. She smirked as the other basilisk burst out of the ocean right under one of the human-type sirens, snapping her up in its jaws as she yelped in pain. Another chomp and she disappeared down its throat. "That is fucking terrifying though, knowing that those were effectively ships and the only reason Tirpitz didn't get sunk that quickly was because her hull was too big for their parents to get their mouths around."
Catelyn nodded while Crescent stared wide eyed at the basilisk that popped up to get a stroke from Whelp. "So glad they're on our side," she muttered.
Shifting to her armoured form, Megan landed atop one of the few remaining neuroi in the area and fired twice, the core cracking, then shattering beneath her as a pair of massive raven wings unfolded from her back.
Swooping down, she sighed as she landed on the shore, taking a moment to look out at the wreckage that had been a combined abyssal and siren fleet while the others cut down the last few neuroi. "Well, that's that bit done," she muttered, "now what?"
"You need to destroy the hive," Mio said, moving out onto the beach. "But I don't know how you would; it usually takes entire squadrons of witches. Even if you all are, the core is…" she trailed off, frowning as she flipped her eyepatch up to reveal that her right eye was glowing purple rather than the caramel colour of her left eye. "It's up near the top."
Megan frowned, looking up at the vortex that had sat practically where it was the whole time they had been there, still flashing with red lightning. "You can see that?"
Mio nodded, "Magic eye," she explained. "I can pretty much see any neuroi core within sight." She sighed, dropping the patch back down. "But it's fading, along with my magic. I wouldn't be able to keep up with you."
"I'm not really the one you should compare yourself to," Megan responded. "Karas aren't witches, or at least I've not met any that were while they were awake, and I'm about the only one that works in my body rather than as an astral projection." She frowned, dismissing her armour in a shower of golden feathers. "Though that begs the question of why you're here alone if it was to destroy that, if that is why you're here in the first place."
"I don't…" the Fusoian witch trailed off, putting a hand to her head as her vision shifted. Three men, two Britannians, one Fusoian standing around an aircraft she recognised as an A6M "Zero", one of the former yelling something indistinct at the latter as the second Brit pulled a part from the Zero's engine.
"You alright?" asked Megan, drawing Mio's attention back to find herself sitting against the other woman's leg on the sand. "You looked like you were having a fainting spell there and you're sweating pretty badly."
Mio shook her head, opening her mouth to answer only for a small figure to pop out of her swimsuit between her breasts and hurl something away.
"OOOooooiiiii~!" The little being yelled as the thing thumped into the sand by Mio's hand. "Oi oi oi oi oooiii oi oiii oooi!" it continued as she blinked.
"Oh for…" Megan grumbled. "What are you even doing in there? She's not a sodding shipgirl."
"Oi oi oi oi oooi oiii oi," the man yelled.
Megan scowled. "Even if she does somehow pull a pilot and plane in her spirit with a dog, you're not supposed to be taking it apart."
"What?" Mio asked, still blinking.
The man ducked back into her cleavage for a moment before popping out again and tossing another component away. "Ooooiiiii…"
"And since when do you know how a Zero's engine is put together?" asked Megan. "Besides, you know it's not polite to muck around with others even among shipgirls, what makes it okay to jump from Angela to a complete stranger all of a sudden, much less 'replace the rusty bucket of bolts she has for an engine'?"
"Ooooiiiii~ oi oi oi… OOOOIIII oi oi oi oi oi oi oi oi… oi oi," he yelled before sticking his tongue out at Megan and diving back into Mio's cleavage, not that she could even feel him move down.
Megan groaned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Seriously?" she muttered. "They had to do this now of all sodding times? What the bilious blue barnacle encrusted hells were they thinking? Come to that, when the hell did Minotaur capture a sodding Zeke and dump it at Devonport?" She groaned again before huffing out a breath. "You think you'll be okay to walk for a bit, Mio?"
"I can try," Mio muttered. "At least if you tell me what in the kami's names that was about."
"Fuck if I know honestly," Megan sighed, helping Mio to her feet. "Apparently two of Angela's fairies decided since you're under her watch that means that they're allowed to muck around with things. How the hell it even works is going to be Magical Sparkly Shipgirl Bullshit." She shook her head, helping the black haired girl back towards the cave. "Maybe Angela can get a hold of the pair and get some answers that make sense."
Lauren looked down at Mio, the witch lying under a blanket in the cave, face pale and sweating. "Angela?" she asked, turning her attention to the incarnation of Devonport.
Angela shook her head, frowning as several more fairies moved from her to Mio, carrying food and plane components. "The best I can do right now is give you a guess, Admiral." The shifted a little as Lauren waved at her to continue. "I think it's to do with how witches here work, maybe even to do with your being here along with us."
"Go on," Lauren said, frowning slightly.
"Every shipgirl from our dimension is born human, meaning we change when we awaken, gaining fairy crews, or in my case a fairy shore crew. Apparently whenever we shift dimension things 'bleed' a bit, hence why the Royal Navy and Sakura Empire girls we have with us start 'tougher' than their fellows when they're summoned or the like, but along with that, you've allowed my fairies to maintain your striker so they might treat you as something of a 'plane girl'."
"Plane girl with a dragon bigger'n that one o' Wessex's – migh' be bigger'n Raven's cap'n when 'e turns scaley – an' a lizar'girl," one of the fairies commented. "An' le's no' forget t'other girls in thar. Girly 'ere only be 'avin' an 'alf starved doggy an' a plane wi' its pilo'."
Angela sighed, shaking her head. "Yeah, that," she muttered. "But even ignoring the comment on the dog, apparently the A6M Zero in Mio's 'mental space' that fairies can interact with is pretty badly off. The anti-corrosion paint's worn off in several places and the engine's got parts that are worn down or are clogged up worse than the time Mars managed to get a bunch of kelp wrapped around the propellers in her hydrojets." She shook her head again. "At least that one was easy enough for Mars' own crew to fix, but if this is the state of any other witches while we are here, it's no wonder they lose magic so early."
"So you think this is bleed off from the portal to our dimension being open?" Lauren asked, getting a nod. "What about the rest?"
"Well, we're not going to take down a 'hive' without backup, or bringing out bigger AA and Tegan's going to be useless on that front for a while, she used most of her anti-air missiles before we came, she's going to need time and resources to replenish them." Angela scowled, brushing a stray lock of brown hair away from Mio's sweat damped face. "I think we should see if we can find the rest of Mio's group and see if we can do anything then."
Lauren nodded, rocking herself to her feet. "I'll talk to Blake, Nicki, Ceit, Catelyn, Aedryn and Tegan about getting some aerial reconnaissance going, see if we can find out where Mio was sortied from."
Angela nodded, frowning slightly as her crew continued lugging parts across to Mio. "When we get back, I'd like to put in for an airfield or at least an area for MANTAs and helos. At least then I'll have something a bit more mobile to help."
"We'll see what we can do," Lauren said, patting Angela on the shoulder before heading out to talk to the other girls.
Light brown pony tail whipping in the wind, Lynette Bishop flinched as another set of bullets whistled past her ear while she was trying to block a laser from a neuroi.
Panting, she pushed herself higher into the air, trying to get a better look at what was going on.
The fleet was in chaos below her, many planes, and even her comrades in the 501st were almost crash landing on the deck of the Ark Royal, which had been sent out for this fight, while its escorts were exchanging fire with dozens of strange looking ships and monstrous women that had an annoy habit of getting under the guns, and that was without the storms of flack, tracers and lasers filling the skies as planes from all three sea bound forces fought one another and the looming neuroi hive's combatants.
Even as she watched, two ships exploded, one of them a destroyer escorting Ark Royal taking a hit from one of those weird whale things, remained afloat, though smoking heavily. The other, one of the strange cruisers was sliced in two by a neuroi beam and quickly sank.
The neuroi didn't last long as one of the white skinned demon women shot it, tearing huge chunks out of it until something hit the core, causing it to explode.
Diving away from another of the strange craft, she raised her rifle to her shoulder and fired, grunting a little from the kickback on her favourite Boys rifle as it punched a hole through what might have been the cockpit of one of the enemy fighters, sending it spiralling into the ocean.
They couldn't keep this up much longer, not with the amount of enemy firepower in the area.
Dodging aside, she fired until her gun clicked empty, sending another two planes seaward before something rammed into her back. Crying out as sea and sky spun she lost her grip on her rifle.
Moments later the sickening spin stopped as something wrapped around her stomach, a loud roar echoing in her ears as she found herself being carried back to Ark Royal.
"Iiz slen NUS!" the shout brought her head up for the first time to stare in shock as an enemy fighter found its engines frozen solid and tipped towards the ocean. "Can you fly?" the woman asked.
"I…" Lynette blinked and frowned, checking her striker as it started roaring back to life. "Y-yes, yes I can," she replied.
The woman nodded. "Good, stick close," she said, letting Lynette go so she could fly on her own and passing her a rifle. "From what Bella said, any weapon in a witch's hands hits like a fighter's machine guns on these neuroi so stick to targeting them where possible, let me deal with the surface ships if we need to fight them."
Lynette nodded, accepting the Lee Enfield rifle only to gasp as a neuroi turned to attack them, to be cut off by a fighter of a type she'd never seen before tearing it apart with machine gun fire.
The woman grinned at her before placing a finger to her ear. "Girls, now," she ordered.
Before she could ask what the woman was talking about or to, the sounds of three dozen sixteen inch naval rifles, four eight inch and dozens of smaller guns sounded. Several of the ships and monsters threatening Ark Royal and her fleet simply ceased to exist in huge plumes of water. More vanished not long after as more plumes erupted from the ocean.
Grinning at her again, the woman waved at Lynette to follow her as that strange fighter was joined by several dozen more tearing out of the sky with screams like the damned, their guns swatting down neuroi and enemy fighter alike.
Taking a breath, Lynette followed the woman through the mess, taking shots at any target she could. Even so, she could only blink as the woman unleashed fire, ice, lightning and other things at both neuroi and other fighters and bombers on one side while on the other she unleashed a massive chain gun that seemed to scream death as much as the strange allied fighters as it tore apart fighters, bombers and neuroi equally.
Angela scowled as she stood on the water towards the back of the fleet, watching as more abyssals, neuroi and siren mass produced models appeared. The first crawling from the ocean, the second from the stationary storm they had been told was a hive and the last teleported in by humanoid sirens.
Three fights in a row had all her friends lagging; their armaments depleted more by every shot while the enemy seemed to be willing to hurl more at them.
"Heh heh heh, what do we have here?" a creepy voice asked from behind her. "A weak little slave all on her own?"
Clenching one hand into a fist, she turned to the Ta-class that had slipped up behind her. "I've often found the weak are the ones that quickly resort to violence," she replied.
Eyes narrowing, her hand snapped up to grab the wrist of the abyssal when it tried to strike her and started squeezing. "It really is pathetic just how much your type jump straight from 'oh, I'm being put upon', 'people don't remember me' or 'I sunk in a fight' to 'kill everything'," she said flatly. "News flash honey, war's nasty business and nothing lasts," she continued.
The Ta spat something vile at her before screaming as she crushed its wrist, twisting to tear its arm off. A quick movement later, said arm smashed through the Ta's bridge, shattering glass and metal, splattering the water with blood, bone and brain. Snorting, Angela gave the abyssal a shove, pushing it over in the water.
Turning back to the battle, she sighed, shaking her head. "I guess it's time to see what I can really do," she muttered, surveying the smoking ruins of the Britannian surface fleet and the injured but still fighting portion of her fleet that had been dragged here.
Taking a deep breath to focus herself, she closed her eyes for a moment, reaching inside herself before her eyes snapped open. "Devonport, SORTIE!" As her rigging formed around her, the very ocean shook, sending several abyssals staggering.
Familiar shore batteries, buildings and docks, even the shore fortresses and sea breaks rose from the ocean at her will, Angela herself standing atop the Breakwater Fortress, something that had been massively overhauled with the Abyssal War to a four storey tower it had originally been designed as, but outfitted with several naval rifles from four and a half to fifteen inches along with anti-air weapons.
"OI, UGLIES!" Angela called as her other-self finished manifesting. "That's my fleet; you aren't having them so piss off!" Eyes narrowing at the enemy ships and fliers, she felt her focus split slightly as her crew aimed and loaded her batteries. "Devonport fleet, SORTIE!" she called. "All batteries open FIRE!"
The roar of her guns, fired for the first time since Admiral Glenn had approved the upgrades was drowned out by the calls of the over three hundred ships she had seen birthed, not to mention the hundreds that had been stationed at her docks in her five centuries of service.
Standing on the deck of Ark Royal, the young Fusoian witch watched with wide eyes as a ghostly echo of HMS Warspite opened up on the creatures that had been attacking them practically since they had reached the hive. Eight shells screamed overhead to hammer one of the strange warships, probably a battleship from the size, causing it to erupt in flame and smoke before it exploded violently.
A little ways off, HMS Lion and HMS Collingwood tag teamed another one of the alien battleships, hammering it with their guns while below one of the girls lifted one of the white skinned woman-looking things out of the water with a hammer uppercut.
Even the skies had turned. Where they had been filled with nasty looking planes and neuroi, now dozens of British fighters and bombers along with those strange advanced planes swept down on any enemy unfortunate enough to be in their way.
Hearing a noise behind her, she turned and jumped to hug Lynette, nuzzling into the older girl's breasts for a moment before the roar of naval rifles pulled her attention back to the combat, where one of the human-types had fired on the woman with the backpack striker.
As she watched, the woman flipped over the shells, something dropping from the wing of her pack to scream into the woman standing on water where it exploded with a thunderous boom. Blinking spots from her vision, she gasped as the woman waved a hand and sent a lightning bolt as thick as a person down on the human-type, making it scream before it dropped to its knees, drifting a bit before toppling into the ocean. The crackling boom was loud enough that it staggered several people.
Rubbing her eyes again, she turned to Lynette, feeling the girl say something. "What?" she asked.
"I… if you… alright… Yoshika," Lynette repeated.
"Can't hear properly," Yoshika replied probably a bit more loudly than she meant to. "Loud," she added after a moment.
Lynette nodded, hugging her.
As they watched, one of the strange allied fighters swooped towards the ocean, changing into a person in armour in a flash of light. That person skidded over the water, a sword in hand that sliced through two of the monster types before she stopped, facing one of the ones with big guns.
Yoshika gasped as the sword tripled in both length and thickness, the blade becoming a swirling rainbow mass, then, before either she or Lynette could say anything, the woman vanished and reappeared the other side of the monster, a dozen of them falling apart, looks of surprise on their faces.
"Krein yolein al laas bok!"
The yell drew their attention back to the woman with the striker pack right as an enormous dragon – just from the look, it was probably as long as Ark Royal – formed in the air above her.
Gaping, Yoshika watched the dragon draw in a breath, its body consumed with coruscating, rainbow flames before it swept forwards at the hive they were there to destroy.
The dragon struck the hive, tearing away the cloud around it in one swoop before it blurred. The hive shuddered as if it were being hit repeatedly, then the dragon's wings snapped open and energy gathered at its mouth. Within moments, the sphere of roiling energy was bigger than Ark Royal before it seemed to both compress and grow larger.
"Oh… my…" Lynette muttered.
Four more times, Yoshika counted, the sphere both compressed and grew until it was over five times the size of the dragon, enough energy cracking in the air that waves were being pulled up towards it and lightning vaporised water.
On the fifth compression, the dragon lowered its head, glaring at the hive and opened its mouth to roar.
Clapping her hands over her ears as the deafening subsonic bellow shook her bones, Yoshika watched, wide eyed as the orb hit the hive dead on and exploded into a blinding pillar of light.
When she finally could see again, she had to blink, because the hive just wasn't there. Nor were its guards, nor the members of the enemy fleets near it.
They were gone, as if they had never been.
The only traces, tonnes of sea water dropping into the gap and a fading dragon.
Groaning as her stomach clenched, Mio tried to swallow, gagged and threw up into the toilet in front of her. Coughing, she groaned again weakly, blinking at the low light turning her vomit black.
A hand settled on her back, rubbing in slow circles while another pushed her hair back. She could even smell avgas, burned avgas, and oil.
"That sounds pretty bad there," she heard someone say; it took her a moment to place the voice, Catelyn. "My first run was pretty rough as well, it didn't help that I'd only just transferred to Devonport or that we were supposed to getting outfitted later that day."
Mio tried to say something only for her stomach to roil again and another load of vomit to join what was in the john.
"Easy, just focus on breathing for now," Catelyn said. "If you've had fairies doing things to you, it's likely you need to purge the backup." She paused, sniffing the air. "Ugh, smells like a fair amount of backed up. I had that issue once, ended up drinking petrol while I was awakening and spent the next few hours throwing up my toenails while I should have been getting ready to be outfitted with uniforms and such." Even as she said it, she didn't stop rubbing Mio's back. "I was a slow awakener and didn't know my boilers and engines weren't made for car fuel, not that I was far enough along to handle the stuff anyway."
Vomiting up more black gunge, Mio coughed, managing to lift her head. "You drank petrol?" she croaked out.
Catelyn shrugged, pushing Mio's hair back. "Shipgirl," she responded, passing the major a bottle of water. "Thing is, awakening happens either fast, like either you wake or you die sort of thing, or it can go slow. I got slow, thing is, it's not pleasant." She shrugged as Mio swilled her mouth out and spat the result down the toilet with a disgusted face. "The fast route it's pretty much everything's there, the slow route means you can often feel things wrong. Aches and pains, cramps, vision going wonky, pica cravings and the like. I got pica cravings for fuel, I didn't know at the time I wanted bunker oil or marine diesel, not petrol and I hadn't adapted in any case, so spent a 'pleasant' few hours with the porcelain throne."
Mio gave her a look, clearing her mouth and sipping the water to sooth her throat. "That seems so wrong," she muttered before glancing at the contents of the toilet and grimacing. "Ugh…" she swallowed back another round of nausea. "Why does that look like the bottom of an oil barrel?"
"Probably because it is," Catelyn responded, frowning as they heard someone throw the door open, slam into another cubicle and start throwing up noisily, increasing the smell of spent oil and burnt gas. Sighing, Catelyn shook her head. "Guess we're going to need plumbers in here to scrape the loos," she muttered.
After Catelyn helped her to her feet, Mio looked into the other stall, grimacing at seeing Lucchini in there, black gunge oozing from clenched teeth. "Get it out, Lucchini," Mio said softly, crouching next to the younger girl, not noticing that Catelyn had slipped out.
Crouching there, she held Francesca, rubbing the girl's back until she had stopped vomiting black goo and had washed her mouth out. "Feel better?" Mio asked. "Let's get you back to bed then," she said, only for Francesca's stomach to growl, loudly, quickly followed by her own.
"D-don't want sweeties," Francesca muttered.
"You'd probably be better off with biscuits anyway," Catelyn put in, making both witches jump. "I found the reason for you both being sick, though probably your whole squad will be, so I left buckets near their beds," she added, holding up what Mio realised after a moment was a fairy. "Two thousand or so of these little shits is enough to give anyone the run around and Angela's got five centuries worth of them hanging about to cause trouble."
Mio sighed. "This has something to do with that place with the Zero, Doberman and three men, doesn't it?" she asked getting a wide eyed stare from Francesca and a nod from Catelyn. "Ugh… what was that even about? I didn't really understand Captain Jones' explanation."
Sighing, Catelyn let the fairy board her before guiding the two witches from the room. "Long story short, the fairies are a shipgirl – or installation's – crew. The people here?" she waved at the crewmen as they passed them on their way to the nearest mess hall. "If this Ark ever became a kantai no musume, they'd be fairies for her." She looked over at Mio, who was still holding Francesca as they walked. "For you, I'd guess that there was one who was a pilot, maybe he was your own nationality?" She got a nod in response. "Right, the others were Angela's, they probably treated you similar to a shipgirl, stripping down the 'plane' and rebuilding it or at least cleaning it out and ensuring things were working right."
Nodding, Mio shifted slightly so she could squeeze past a couple of crewmen. "One of the fairies tossed a couple of parts that might have belonged to an engine out when I first encountered them."
Nodding herself, Catelyn held a hand up to ask them to wait while the three of them got food, Francesca gathering a lot of different items, though she didn't take much of anything, unlike normal. Once they had a table, Catelyn set her plate down and sat. "I'm only guessing, but if they could interact with one witch, they could do it with others, and they probably went to maintain the 'plane' part of you. I presume you find certain equipment works better than others?" Once again she got a nod from both witches. "Well, they probably stripped those down, and cleaned the engines out, meaning there was a lot of essentially spent oil and fluids, which you threw up. You might find you feel better now," she said.
Mio frowned, picking at her food. While the bread, biscuits and crackers helped, they weren't exactly tasty fair. "What about the Doberman?" she asked.
"At a guess?" Catelyn asked, getting a nod. "Your familiar. It's possible how it looks is somewhat representative though."
"So the fact mine looked like it hadn't been eating could be my magic fading?" Mio asked.
"Or that you're not feeding your magic right, Admiral Glenn normally eats about what an active man would, but if she has a heavy magic or fighting day, she'll put away a fair bit more," Catelyn responded, causing Mio to frown.
The trio lapsed into silence, both witches occupied with their own thoughts as they picked at their food. While they didn't notice it, Catelyn noted that they wound up returning to the line for two more plates, both over filled compared to what the others ate.
"You know, Aunt Lauren, I'm sure we have a rule expressly forbidding that spell being used again," Megan said, frowning at her aunt's back as the older woman looked out at the sea from the flight deck of Ark Royal.
"Even with the best of intentions, no rule will cover all possibilities, Megan," Lauren replied, looking back at her niece. "If they did, there would be a lot less crime, as your father could tell you. In this situation, with the sirens in particular bringing in more fleets and that hive having an unknown amount of neuroi available, we needed the spell." She met her niece's eyes steadily, leaning against the ship's rail. "Let's face it, even with Angela actively sortied and sending out her echoes of everyone built, repaired or based at Devonport from the past half millennium, there's a limit to how long she would have been able to maintain it, and there's a limit to the strength of the ships. Warspite, just as one of the more famous examples, drew a lot more from her service than her build allows, things that Angela's duplicate of her can't carry unless Warspite spent time after her build there. Even the ghost of your sister is not as powerful as Sally is for all that her hull is still in the memorial park, because Sally draws from her own past as much as she does from Zephyr."
Megan sighed and nodded. "And not even counting the twin bond, the only thing we're completely sure on of our heritage is that we're half-seelie, and we have some human and some dragon blood, the latter being about a millennium and a half back."
Lauren nodded. "Exactly," she said. "Which brings us to this situation; we'd all had two fights without a real chance to restock, then that one where they kept pulling more in." She sighed, turning to look out over the ocean again. "Neuroi hives are something you want at least a full squadron of witches to deal with at minimum, we had maybe three still flying counting me, plus you, Angela and the shipgirls, who probably wouldn't be able to target its core along with a battered Britannian fleet that had few planes left to fly up there." She scowled at the ocean for a moment before turning back to her niece. "Right then, we either did a fighting retreat and left our opponents to grow stronger, maybe ally, or I used that spell, and even then, I only had enough for a half power one at best."
Moving to join her aunt, Megan sighed. "I can see that, but seriously, even at half power that was several miles of territory gone. I can see why the admiralty banned spells like that, or at least banned them close to civilisation."
"Something I agree with, considering the area was around fifty miles across at half power, about a hundred at full power," Lauren said, making her niece gape at her as she did the math in her head.
"Near two thousand square miles on half power?" she squeaked, wide eyed. "And the best part of eight thousand at full." Megan swallowed hard. "How the hell did you lose Dragon with that sort of power? I mean I spent I don't know how many relative years as a goddess and I'm not pulling that out, even with Ly, who is practically a demi-god herself, giving me a boost."
Lauren shrugged, looking out over the ocean. "Because power is nothing without control, because I didn't have that spell at the time and because it takes the backing of an aedra to pull it off in the first place," she replied. "Even without the rule on the list, it's not something I can throw around even when I want to. I was, maybe still am, an abyssal spooker, as some anime fans call me, but what I was, was desperate. Very few humans can fight on a level with abyssals, and most of them have something that gives them that strength. For us, it's divine tier beings more than anything, boosting us enough to start."
Megan shook her head, watching the ocean. "Even so… wow, just wow. You are seriously scary sometimes, Aunt Lauren."
"Only sometimes?" asked Lauren.
"I'm your niece," Megan replied impudently. "And I know Dad can still beat you in a fight."
"Scamp," Lauren commented, mussing Megan's hair, much to the younger woman's disgust.
"So the buckets?"
"Contained a mixture of avgas, oil and hydraulic fluids," the doctor confirmed. "There were two cubicles in the toilet that contained the same mixture."
The redhead frowned. "I see," she said, "does anyone have any idea how we could end up throwing that up? I certainly didn't drink any of those and I doubt anyone else would have either."
Shaking his head, the doctor shrugged. "The closest we can come is that we've seen some of those girls that aided our fleet drinking what looked like bunker oil," he said, making several of the girls in the room gag. "Some of the mess hall staff mentioned that they saw Major Sakamoto and Pilot Officer Lucchini with one of those girls, both seemed… distressed and ended up eating enough for two people each, though the girl they were with ate far more than either of them."
"Indeed?" asked the woman, looking over her subordinates. "Thank you for the information, ensign, dismissed." Once the doctor had left the room, she turned her attention to her pilots. "Sakamoto, Lucchini, do you have an explanation for what happened to us?"
The named pair shared a look before Mio stepped forwards. "An explanation, yes, whether you would find it believable or not, Wing Commander Wilke… it is something I'm still having trouble adjusting to." Seeing her commander's look, she explained what she had been told by those that had rescued her, an explanation that took more than an hour to go over.
Minna scowled through the entire explanation, even when several of her officers gasped at various parts of it. "And you believe this, Sakamoto?" she asked flatly, once the explanation was done.
"Commander… Minna, I had a person about the size of my hand pop out from between my breasts to throw a machine part to the ground. I felt him disappear, not move around, but actually seem to vanish both when he fetched another part that looked very much like an engine component of an A6M and after he essentially flipped Captain Jones off," Mio waved her hands at the explanation. "I was unconscious when I came aboard, and like you, I threw up what smelled like avgas, oil and probably hydraulic fluid. Ensign Caddell found another of those beings when she left me after we heard Lucchini come in. I saw it disappear into her sleeve, not a moving lump but actually disappear," she continued while Francesca nodded.
"I saw Ombra, a full G.55 Centauro and a Romagnan man along with some Britannian men working on the Centauro before I woke up feeling sick," Francesca added, nodding. "And then I threw up in the toilet and it was the same stuff they took from the plane."
Yoshika and Lynette shared a look only for Minna to catch them. "Something you want to say, Bishop, Miyafuji?" asked Minna, turning to them.
"W-well… Commander," Yoshika started. "It-it's just that if this is to do with those girls, you're talking about a group whose commander destroyed a neuroi hive, by herself, not to mention the rest of the brawl. They managed to destroy those monsters when our ships had trouble getting an angle on them with their main guns, and could still destroy the enemy ships and neuroi, and that's without the fact the one woman summoned a naval base that unleashed more ships than I think any fleet has in one place these days." She looked over at Minna and winced. "It might not be a good idea to annoy them too much, especially given what happened to the hive and the fact the fleet is being repaired at a base they summoned."
"I'm with Yoshika on this one, Commander," Lynette added. "Besides, it seems like they're willing to talk about things from what Major Sakamoto said." She paused for a moment before shifting uncomfortably. "I'd like a look at that striker pack their commander uses as well. I'm not anywhere near as good as Shirley but she seemed to use it better than most." She cast a glance at her Liberion colleague. "I think might want to see how it works, particularly since that witch was fast."
Minna sighed, rubbing her head. "I wasn't going to try forcing things, but I do need to know what they are capable of if you know."
Yoshika shrugged. "A lot, I don't know how much, but there were girls able to walk on water, their commander is a witch who summoned something capable of destroying a hive."
"She can do other things as well, when she rescued me, she yelled at an enemy fighter and froze it and later she used lightning somehow," Lynette added.
"Do you think they know what might have happened to us?" Minna asked.
"Both Captain Jones and Ensign Caddell had more or less the same explanation, that the 'crew' of these kanmusu can somehow interact with us in a way that allows them to actively work on the planes that our strikers most resemble," Mio replied. "I'm inclined to believe them given what I've seen so far."
Sighing, Minna ran her hands over her head. "I don't know how this report is going to go over with Command, even after I talk to these people," she said. "Even with witches and what we face, this seems fantastical."
