Hero proved herself surprisingly level-headed as they traveled, not picking fights or loudly proclaiming her identity to anyone they passed by on the road. Sure, she would bask in their stares and smile and wave, but didn't really talk. Of course, she probably didn't know Turkish- although she would never admit a weakness like that- but she seemed content to be silent and mysterious.
(She would chatter on later about how those simple yokels had never seen women like herself or Leander, though.)
Leander herself? She would bother to talk with them, stuttering her way through greetings. Mild and affable, she did a lot to smooth any feathers Hero had ruffled.
(Mild, affable, and very fast with the revolver she had been given. She shot a wolf before Andreas realized it was there.)
And so they worked through the country, attempting to remain as low-key as they could. They passed by quiet ranges and broad-stretching opium farms, scaling the quiet mountains of Anatolia. There was a quiet splendor there… of the sort Hero didn't particularly appreciate.
At her insistence, he talked. She was a big fan of stories of heroism and adventure, and considering where they were, there was only one that seemed fitting. The Anabasis.
And so he told the whole tale as best as he could remember it. The Greeks set out into Asia, accompanying a claimant to the Persian throne, ready to win honor and glory. They perform spectacularly in battle, only to realize that whoops, their pretender got killed. That left the Greeks in the middle of Asia- well, Mesopotamia, but that was like the middle of Asia to them- with enemies on every side. Their generals were killed by treachery, and so they became a sort of democracy on the march.
"That sounds pretty good, Leander. You wanna hold a vote?" Hero suggested.
"I vote Andreas," Leander replied immediately.
Hero blew a raspberry. "You're no fun."
The particular route they were taking was quite dissimilar from the route Xenophon had taken other than their end goal on the Black Sea… but it was easy to imagine. There was something timeless about the hills and mountains, something remarkable about the thought that the same breeze could have blown over the heroes of antiquity.
He meandered through the tale, through the battles that had Hero paying close attention and the various sackings and pillagings that had Leander shaking her head. He was pretty sure his retelling was inaccurate- he had probably missed like a dozen omens Xenophon had checked- but he eventually made his way to the big moment.
"And when they saw it, they cried out for joy. Thalatta! Thalatta! The sea!"
Unfortunately for this sense of dramatics, the next hill they crested did not have the wine-dark sea behind it. So he got to tell Hero about all the misadventures the Greeks had gotten up to in Pontus.
"And then what happens?" Hero asked.
"I… haven't read Hellenica, but I think Xenophon is banished from Athens for fighting with the Spartans."
"He didn't even get to go home?" Leander asked.
"I don't think so, no."
"That's quite tragic."
"But he's quite well remembered, isn't he? We're talking about him, twenty-three hundred years later."
"Would you give up your homeland for eternal glory, Andreas?" Leander asked him.
He struggled to form an answer, even as Hero loudly cried "Yes!"
Their march went on without much issue, other than Hero's demand for something to break the silence. He told her every Greek myth he knew, from Gaia to Galatea, and the girls would occasionally remark about how the myth matched up to the woman.
Galatea shared her name with a nereid, but as far as Leander knew, the ship had no dead lover. Andreas informed the two that Galatea was a name tacked onto Pygmalion's famous statue in the modern day, not in antiquity.
That was a mistake, because that led to him retelling the story of Pygmalion- a Cypriot, by the way- and his beloved statue to Hero. And Hero refused to stop ribbing him about it.
She was particularly fascinated by Pygmalion scorning fleshy women before he went off to make his lady of ivory. Several jokes about him and some alone time with a nice slab of rock were made.
("Are you too much of a coward to go for a real girl, huh?")
By the time they reached the ocean, he was about halfway to just riding the horse straight in. However, Hero practically ran to the water, her wisdom cube in hand. She squeezed it until it shattered like glass, although the fragments didn't harm her. When she opened her hand, the glowing blue dust floated away on the breeze.
But it was no normal breeze. It formed the dust into lines and surfaces, a lattice for the real ship to melt onto.
With that, they were in the Black Sea. Or the Euxine, if you prefer. Unfortunately, he suspected that the sea would be more Áxeinos than Éuxeinos- inhospitable, not hospitable. They were here as part of a war, after all.
For what it was worth, there weren't as many enemies in this theater, but the Wisdom Cubes hung heavy in his bag, and an incredibly bloody war was being fought to their north. After their little inland adventure, they needed to move and meet with the Soviets as soon as possible. God help them if the Luftwaffe caught them. That or mines. They definitely suspected mines.
So they sailed for Sevastopol and hoped that the Germans hadn't gotten that far. They were having trouble with the radio, especially considering the language barrier. His Russian wasn't workable, to be quite honest…
It was evening when they spotted a ship in the distance: two smokestacks, two masts, four sets of heavy guns, and sides dotted with casemates for lesser pieces. Unless the Romanians had the biggest monitor on God's green earth, that was probably a Soviet battleship. Thankfully, someone seemed to have sent a memo ahead, so the battleship did not open fire as they approached.
They came as close as they dared, and Andreas rushed to the edge of Leander's deck to get a look at the ship. However, there was no crowd of sailors staring at him, no Captain. Instead, there was a girl.
Her eyes were blood red, and barring two streaks of black her hair was white like snow, falling down to her knees. Her ears were oddly sharp and far too long, but they gave her a sort of unearthly beauty. Her rigging lay behind her, like some great animal feigning sleep. He had trouble forming words.
"Greetings, comrade! I am Soviet battleship Paris Commune. Parizhanka, if you'd like."
After a moment or two of silence- and Leander gently elbowing him- he said the first thing that came to his mind: "Paris Commune?"
"Yes." She snapped. "Do you have some issue with proletarian revolution?" His gaze flicked to Leader and Hero, ships of His Majesty's Navy. "No, not at all."
"Wonderful, comrade! Come aboard and I can get you something to drink!"
"Come aboard?" He asked, still a little surprised.
"As a battleship, I believe I am most capable of handling the Cubes. And you, of course."
For a moment, he hesitated, but the higher-ups did want the cubes in Soviet custody… "Alright. Just let me grab my things."
As he walked away, he heard Hero say, "What do you think you're doin', you-" He really hoped Leander would keep her from doing something stupid.
"You've got a little something on your uniform, Andreas." Leander wiped whatever it was off.
"I mean, we've already made first impressions," he sighed. "Did Hero-"
"She called Hero a lapdog of bourgeois imperialists, playing at rebellion."
He snorted.
Leander sighed. "Just… be cautious, alright. Enemy of enemy, and all, but…"
"She's a commie."
"You could put it that way, yes. Just… keep your home in mind, alright?" She stepped forward and hugged him, before standing up on her tip-toes to whisper in his ears. "I understand, though- she is quite pretty."
With that, he transferred from Leander to the Russian battleship Paris Commune. She plotted her course and made for Sevastopol with precisely zero input on his part, while Leander and Hero followed her guidance. She was an ally, but it still left him with a feeling of discomfort.
A little way into their trip, Sevastopol offered food- "No peace, no land, but we do have bread," she joked- and he was more than happy to take her up on her offer. Their meal consisted of rations and vodka.
He gave her a questioning look when she set a cup full of the spirit before him, and she responded, "What, comrade?"
"Is now the time?"
"I know my limits." Considering she had the same portions of booze for herself and a man who had at least a foot and a dozen kilos on her, he wasn't sure. "While the revolution is uncontrollable, my drinking is not."
She was wasted. By some miracle, the ship hasn't gotten too far off course, but in her current state Andreas wouldn't trust her to plot a straight path across the room.
He figured he'd be helping the Russians, but not in the sense of helping them to bed. With some work, he managed to guide her back to her quarters. For some reason known to her alone, she slept where the normal crew did, not in the captain's quarters. At least that meant he knew where he would sleep…
There were a few possessions scattered around. A box full of empty and broken bottles, a few other boxes used as makeshift bookshelves or desks… it was remarkably humble. However, the general austerity of the space did lead him to the one piece of decor Parizhanka allowed herself.
There was a picture in a frame, showing four girls: there was Sevastopol, a similarly white-haired girl leaning over her in a hug, and two brunettes- one with straight, short cut hair, the other with a thick head of curly ringlets.
Parizhanka saw him looking and smiled. "That's me, and my sisters- Frunze and Marat an' Oktya. Frunze is… Frunze is getting scrapped-" her eyes were getting a little wet, "-but Marat and Okytabrina are up there, killin' fascists!"
Cautiously, he lifted up the photograph to get a closer look, and as he did he felt something on the back. Flipping it over revealed a piece of tape with a few names written on it. Gangut, Poltava, Petropavlovsk, & "Sevastopol," he muttered to himself.
The photo was swiftly snatched from his hand. "Sevastopol," she hissed, "is the name of a traitor to the revolution."
He was absolutely positive the girl in the photo was the same Parizhanka who stood before him now. That meant…
A name change. Name changes for the entire class, even. He couldn't guess which of the sisters became Marat or Frunze or Oktya- short for something, he assumed- but it was rather like changing the name of Saint Petersburg to Leningrad.
He prepared for bed as Parizhanka-Sevastopol collapsed into her own. "Good night," he said.
There was a low sort of mumble into the pillows.
She was a slip of a woman, but she showed absolutely no signs of a hangover. It would have been remarkable if it wasn't so depressing. Still, she cut a remarkable figure when the first beams of sunlight hit her silvery hair.
In her hands, there was a book. "What are you reading?"
"Sholokhov," she answered as if she expected him to know who that was.
"I'm sorry, I don't…"
"I thought it had been translated," Parizhanka mused. "It's called Quiet Flows the Don. It's an epic novel about Cossacks."
"Sounds interesting." He said.
"It is. The part I've reached… I believe it was translated as The Don Flows Home to the Sea? I can't say how good it is, though." There truly was a remarkable gulf between this keen, zealous revolutionary and the teetering drunk he had seen last night.
"How long until we reach-" Sevastopol, "-the naval base?"
"A few hours." She answered. "Would you like me to read to you?"
"Sure." She flipped to the front of the book and read aloud:
"Not by the plough is our glorious earth furrowed…
Our earth is furrowed by horse's hooves,
And sown is our earth with the heads of Cossacks.
Fair is our quiet Don with young widows,
Our father, the quiet Don, blossoms with orphans.
And the waves of the quiet Don are filled with father's and mother's tears…"
NEXT TIME: QUIET FLOWS THE DON
Poltava and Petropavlovsk aren't in Azur Lane. Poor Poltava/Frunze was the scrapped one. I imagine Poltava as having curly hair kind of like Peter the Great's cut and Petropavlovsk/Marat having hair sort of like her namesake Joachim Marat. Very short cut. Gangut/Oktyabrina's full name was Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya. Sevastopol and Petrov got their old names back after a bit though.