Rule 2500 - Fubuki, Zephyr, William D Porter and Naka, Birmingham, England

It was rare for those ships that were born human to manage to get time off, particularly with all their various other responsibilities, getting time off as a group was almost unheard of, which was probably why a small group of them were currently sitting around in the outdoor seating area near Birmingham's Bullring.

"So," Fubuki started, swirling her drink in its cup. "Two and a half thousand rules, how did we even get that many?"

Zephyr shifted, leaning back in her seat. "I think it's mostly the fact most of us are summoned, yeah those of us who are born have rules pop up and I'm sure I'll be joining that soon with how things go, but our summoned sisters?" She shrugged and let out a breath, looking over at the near two century old church, watching the horde that moved past them. "By the time this war is over, it's likely we'll have a tome."

"Some of mine… I don't even know how we're sisters apart from the fact the US seemed to love the Fletcher design," William D. Porter pushed her food around her plate for a moment. "At least you three don't have too many sisters, nor have to put up with Iowa when she's three sheets to the wind." The girl shuddered at the memory of the last time she had seen Iowa that drunk.

"Eighty-one 'kids'," Fubuki muttered into her drink.

"Most of the wood hulls are rum guzzlers," Zephyr added, shaking her head slowly. "You would not believe how much protest there is whenever a new one shows up and we have to tell them the rum ration got done away with over forty years ago. I don't even know how they like the stuff myself. Of course then there's the fact my twin sister took over from our great-granddad as Plymouth's karas recently, supernatural up the ruddy wazoo." She looked over at the last member of their little group. "What about you, Naka? You ever have trouble with your sister ships or do you drown them out with working as idol for the combined fleets?"

The dark haired girl looked up from her meal, a prawn sticking out of her mouth. Like the others, she was out of her usual outfit, hair done up in a ponytail instead of odangos and simple jeans and t-shirt over the usual orange dress. Sucking the prawn into her mouth, she frowned as she chewed and swallowed it. "Well… if I wasn't having trouble, I don't think they'd be my sisters, though," she stopped, looking up at the sky for a moment. "Sometimes I wonder about things."

"The whole night battles thing Sendai-san loves?" Fubuki asked, after swallowing a bite from her chicken 'karage' curry.

Naka nodded. "That and trying to get Jintsuu-oneesan to accept being touched, I know she didn't have a good time as a ship but sometimes I'd like to just hug her without worrying she'll lock up on me."

Zephyr snorted in amusement. "We've all got issues, heck I've seen Myngs jump more than once if there's a low flying plane, even though we're outfitted with triple-A." She shook her head, closing her eyes as she remembered some things. "Then there's the reception my sisters and I got coming back. Kinda want to see Zodiac again though, she was with me and Zest in the 29th and the Home Fleet, though I was more often a convoy escort and…" she trailed off as a beeping interrupted her.

"Sorry, that's mine," Willie apologised, pulling her phone out of her pocket and wiping her hands off. A quick check of it had her blinking and snorting in amusement.

"What's up, Willie?"

"Well," Willie started, flipping the phone around. "You know how we all started with the two and a half thousand rules thing?" She got nods from the other three. "It seems some of the girls over in the States decided it deserves a party. Iowa is up a flagpole, naked and there's a pile of people collapsing or bumping into things from it."

Leaning over the phone, Fubuki, Zephyr and Naka blinked as a video, probably taken by one of the Fletchers, played, showing an obviously drunk off her screws Iowa hanging off a flagpole at a naval base, starkers but fortunately not showing things to the camera, before panning down to show several naval personnel and shipgirls ending up face planting or walking into things as they spotted Iowa.

After several minutes of laughing, the four managed to calm down enough that those around them weren't staring at them. "Oh jeeze, Iowa's going to blow a gasket if she finds that happened and people recorded it," Zephyr muttered.

"Hai, desu!" Naka exclaimed, slipping back into her 'idol of the fleet' persona. "Though I've heard being naked isn't unusual for Iowa-san."

Willie shivered. "Last time Iowa got that plastered that I know of, she ran up to me naked, hugged me and ran off." She shivered again, nodding to the other two destroyers when they squeezed her hands. "They found her with one of the abyssal princesses."

"Yikes! Though at least she's not as bad as some of the rumours I've heard about the subs."

Naka and Fubuki shared a look, "Iku—."

Cocking her head slightly, Zephyr looked at the two Japanese shipgirls. "How bad is she? I've seen a number of rules relating to her, but never had the 'pleasure'" – she air quoted the word – "of an encounter."

"She petitioned teitoku to open a number of businesses, all of them required members of the public to remove their clothes, tried to claim there was such a thing as 'accidental magnet-induced sixty-nine' and tries to get naked more often than anyone at Yokosuka, even around destroyers who, for the most part, don't even know what's going on with that." Shaking her head, Naka sighed at the antics of the best known 'lewdmarine'.

"Makes me glad I general only have to put up with the hamandcheese brigade, usually you hear them coming so you can throw something at them to shut them up," Zephyr muttered, shaking her head before turning to Willie. "Oh, thinking about it, you mentioned you had some ideas about that SNAFU with the attempt to do a destroyer battle line before you headed back to the States last, did anything come of it?"

Willie nodded.

"What SNAFU?" Fubuki asked.

"Fletcher got this idea into her head to try doing a firing line on an abyssal attack force… it did basically nothing," Willie explained. "It turned out though, while a lot of the girls did need lessons in aiming, it wasn't entirely our fault. Something gave us all mark 15 torpedoes with mark 6 detonators."

Zephyr blinked several times. "Those were the ones that constantly failed, weren't they?"

Willie nodded again. "Yeah, we managed to land about four hundred hits, but they were all duds. Nicolas wanted to go back in time and give the designers a torpedo enema."

All three girls flinched. "Are they really that bad, Willie-san?" Naka asked.

"Mark 6 exploders failed seven times out of ten on a direct strike until about two years into the war. We porcupined an abyssal Ta-class, but didn't manage any explosions."

"Wow… just, wow. That has to be some sucky set up that the day Fletcher decides to try that every torpedo on a Fletcher is one of those useless hunks of scrap." Zephyr shook her head at the ridiculousness of that timing. "Though given everything we've been having the last few years…."

Fubuki nodded, leaning back slightly. It was certainly a weird few years since the abyssal had shown up, especially with all the ships from everywhere showing up, drinking contests, ghosts, her friends and everything else that had been happening.

Taking a sip of her drink, Naka blinked as she noticed the time on her watch. "Aren't we supposed to be going to see the new movie in twenty minutes, Zephyr-san?"

Checking her own watch, Zephyr nodded. "Yeah, you girls done?" Getting nods from them, she gathered up their rubbish to toss it in a bin before pulling her phone to check where the cinema was. "Might as well head up, it's pretty much straight up there and on our left so we shouldn't get lost," she said as the others got to their feet and gathered their things, getting ready to spend a couple of hours relaxing in front of a big screen.