Rule by Grathryn
10507. Akatsuki-Sakura, first up how did you get hold of honey plort, secondly what possessed you to grind the whole thing and dose Kaga-Sakura's tea with it before a sortie?
10507a. She was literally bouncing off the ceiling joists as she went out and then, spent the entire sortie attempting to kiss or get in the pants of the Eagle Union carriers. Yorktown-Eagle about scuttled herself in embarrassment and we're not sure whether it was for what happened when Kaga-Sakura caught up with her or empathetic embarrassment for Kaga-Sakura's… intoxicated state.
10507b. "She deserved more than just embarrassment for what she did to our escorts to the other world." - Akatsuki-Sakura
The Battle of Midway was going wrong in more ways than one, though it always ultimately went wrong for the Sakura Empire, normally that was the result of the Eagle Union having better carriers, better planes, better tactics and being able to sink the First Carrier Division. This time though, the Sakura Empire destroyers were out of position, their battle line was already confused, cruisers were far off target and their planes might as well have been cut in quarters and flying through a storm bank.
Inazuma frowned as she watched the scene unfold in front of her, her light blue pony tail and blue kimono flapping in the wind before she turned to her sister ships, and the Royal Navy's C-class destroyers and Javelin, arching and eyebrow at the mobile phones that both Akatsuki and Comet were holding up. "Somehow, Akatsuki, I get the feeling this is your doing. What did she do this time out?"
"She was in Queen Bitch mode again," Akatsuki replied, glancing at her younger sister. "The same as when we came back home five loops back." The comment made Cygnet flinch and both Crescent and Comet grimace at the memory.
"Does this happen often?" Javelin asked, grimacing at a yell from one of the Eagle Union destroyers as Yorktown and Kaga blew past her. "What the bloody hell is she trying to do anyway?"
Ikazuchi shifted slightly where she was floating. "Normally she just gets pissy after being summoned back if she's sunk, usually she'll either stay away or drink." She frowned as Yorktown hurled a depth charge she had apparently stolen from a destroyer at Kaga, the white kitsune-like carrier calling out her undying love moments before eating the explosive. "When we first went to that other world and came back she was particularly bad, which resulted in Comet, Cygnet and Crescent buried in literal manure… I think the stench put a few people off their food when Inazuma brought them into the mess hall." She shot her sister a look.
Inazuma nodded slightly. "I felt sick just being there," she admitted, "and I only ended up wading through it to release them." She sighed, reaching back to grab her pony tail to play with. "I just wish this would stop though…" she trailed off and shook her head to clear the memories of the last few loops, even if it was funny that only the eight of them knew about time repeating and all of them had been to that other world at least once, with Javelin being the newest. "Still, what did you do, Akatsuki?" she asked, wincing at the sound of metal crunching against metal as a couple of cruisers, one from each side, attempted to stop the carriers only to wind up slamming into one another. "That can't be good."
Akatsuki shrugged, turning to look at her sister out of her one eye. "She was being Queen Bitch again, meaning there'd be no way in Hell any of us could even talk to someone away from base, much less someone from another nation, and if she got summoned after this…" she grimaced. "I would rather face Atlanta's guns at night again instead of sitting that one out, so I got one of those plort things the Wilders sell. One of the honey ones," she admitted.
That got the attention off all three of her sisters and all three C-class destroyers. "Please tell me you didn't use all of it," Hibiki prayed, only to groan and slump as Akatsuki rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment.
"No wonder Kaga is higher than a kite…" Crescent muttered before swatting Akatsuki around the back of the head. "You… you… IDIOT! Didn't you listen to the girls on the other side? Eating one of those is like getting high on cocaine, opium, LSD and marijuana at the same time…" she trailed off with a look of dawning horror. "Oh god… all of those are stupidly addictive, what if Kaga winds up addicted to honey plort? What if it carries over?"
Cygnet grimaced, shuffling back behind her sisters, wincing at the sound of gunfire and explosions as someone tried to get the battle back on course. "She wouldn't even know where to get it a-and it's not like anyone would want to tr-try containing a honey slime in their hull."
Inazuma grimaced and shook her head rapidly. "No way, nu-uh," she denied, waving her hands. "I can keep seeds in my hull fine, even recipes, but I'm not having one of those things bouncing around inside me." She grimaced again as the other girls gained disgusted looks. "Besides, we don't even know if living things like that would be affected by whatever it is that's resetting everything." Though they had figured out that the more time they spent around one another and the more around supernatural or people from the other world, or even better, both, the less they were affected by memory loss from the resets, which helped keep them alive in a few situations.
"Uh… girls?" asked Javelin. "I'm still lost here, remember? I only know we've been reset once, not the five times you recall, and I never went to that other world. How bad is this going to get?" she asked, waving at where Kaga had just glomped Yorktown and proceeded to snog the other carrier rather thoroughly.
Everyone else turned to stare at Akatsuki, who fiddled with her mask nervously. "W-well, I ground up a full plort… uh… about a pound and dissolved it in Kaga's tea." She flinched as her sisters and the C-class stared at her in awestruck horror.
"You know," Ikazuchi started, glancing over at where Hornet had pried Yorktown from Kaga's grip only to end up there in her place, "that might explain the chunks taken out of the joists in the carrier dorm when we were sent out." She looked at her masked sister. "You might want to avoid the base until… whatever happens," Ikazuchi said. "I don't think we're going to be able to save you from that." She pointed at Kaga.
"Sis… a pound of sugar would have even Kaga bouncing, a pound of honey plort – and how the hell did she not notice the taste? – is far worse," Hibiki deadpanned.
The three C-class girls nodded only to grimace and wince as an off-key song started from the melee. A quick look over proved what they had already guessed, Kaga was the one singing, and trying to get what looked like Enterprise to join in. Most of the Sakura Empire and Eagle Union forces were too busy watching Kaga's display to fight one another.
A particularly off-key note had them all grimacing and looking back at the 'battle' to see that Kaga had swapped Enterprise for Yorktown, who was wearing a look on her face that said rather clearly 'please, shoot me now'. The octet shared a look as Kaga snogged Yorktown, this time reaching for places people don't want touched in public.
"I think… it's time we tried having a tour of the theatres, say in South Africa?" suggested Comet, getting nods from her sisters and the Akatsukis. Turning, she gave Javelin a push to get her started, the eight of them fleeing the scene.
Kaga groaned as she woke up, feeling nauseous and with everything aching, especially her head. Even the fur on her tails and ears ached. Eyelids flickering open, she groaned again.
"Ah, awake are you?" an American voice asked, making Kaga whimper. "Yes, well, that sort of thing happens when you do drugs, and you had a doozy of a drug in your system, young lady."
"Whu… what?" Kaga managed, forcing her eyes to focus on a young looking, fairly busty nun with long, very pale lilac hair "Wh-who?"
"I'm USS Vestal, as for what happened, well, after your display at Midway, which managed to render the whole battle moot as our girls captured practically your entire force while they were distracted," Vestal introduced herself, pulling a clipboard from somewhere and looking it over. "But yes, you, Miss Kaga, were drugged with something I've never seen before. Apparently it was in your system for at the very least a full day by the time you passed out at Midway, after attempting to force yourself on all three of our fleet carriers."
Kaga blinked several times blurred flashes of her attempting to sing, of running over a destroyer, of forcing her tongue into another's mouth flickered through her mind's eye, causing her to whimper as she flopped back.
Vestal nodded slightly at the pleading look the carrier sent at her before reading a bit further and blinking herself. "Tell me, Miss Kaga, do you often eat sweet things? Because according to the notes I have here, your urine smelled sweet enough that they actually did a blood sugar test, you had over ten millimoles per litre, and this was after you arrived here, I'd hate to think how high it was at the start of the battle."
Flinching, Kaga whimpered. "Th-the only thing I remember having is m-my tea, which was a bit sweet but…" Grimacing, she pushed herself up. "W-was there a destroyer in the fleet that was captured?" she asked. "Sh-she would have been wearing a half mask with an onii horn and a kunoichi?" When she got a head shake from Vestal, she flopped back with a groan. "Akatsuki must've dosed me with something… I…" She trailed off with a grimace. "I only remember yelling at her about something before her bringing sweet tea then… flashes."
"Well?" asked Enterprise as Vestal entered the carriers' dorm. "Did you find out what happened?"
Vestal frowned as she took a seat without it being offered. "Not much I'm afraid, and at least some is… strange. I can tell you that she drank some sort of drugged tea before the Midway, given to her by one of the destroyers with her. As for the drug?" she looked up at Enterprise. "I honestly have no idea, her blood sugar was still over ten, several days after the incident, and the blood sample I got a report on…" she tossed a file onto the table. "Well, you can read it yourself, but to summarise, she was effectively having a cocaine, LSD, opium and marijuana trip at the same time as a massive sugar high. I'm surprised she managed to function enough to even get to the battle, much less anything else, she should have been curled up in their dorms drooling and muttering about pretty colours."
Enterprise scowled, picking up the report and flicking through it, trying to parse the technical language used. "So you're saying we have to treat this as something like sailors in port?" she asked, getting an annoyed screech from Grim. "That doesn't help when Yorktown is unlikely to be able to sail again after this."
Vestal sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I don't know what to tell you, E, except that with this, well, at least Yorktown is likely to be safe for the rest of the war and the Sakura Empire is well on the back foot from losing so many ships in such a strange way." She shifted, looking up as Hornet came in from the other room. "I don't know what I can do about minds, particularly given what you've both said about Kaga's behaviour and how much of it Yorktown received. I can tell you that a destroyer by the name of Akatsuki was likely the instigator of this, and it's possible, or even probable that it was a one off, otherwise it would have been used already."
"So what do we do now?" Hornet asked, adjusting her hat. "I mean, how do we fix Yorktown after this? Come to that, how do we find this Akatsuki girl?"
"Well, with Yorktown, probably the best thing you can do is make sure you're there for her," Vestal replied frowning. "I've heard from the human doctors that having people around helps, sometimes it even brings people back, if you keep things to normal and include her, she may get better on her own. If not…" she trailed off and took a deep breath, letting it out only to be cut off by the door opening again to reveal Yorktown wearing pyjamas.
"If not scrap me?" Yorktown asked. "Is that where that was going?"
Vestal shook her head. "No! But if you didn't recover, someone would need to look after you while they were away."
Yorktown grunted, moving to grab a seat and picking up the folder on the desk. "So, this IJN Kaga was the one that attacked me?" she asked, getting a nod. "And she was drugged out of her mind?" Another nod caused Yorktown to grunt. "Huh, guess I can't hold that against her, if she was that far gone. This Akatsuki girl though, I want to talk to her, if only to find out why she drugged her carrier and what it was with."
"The last she was seen, she was with her sisters and four Royal Navy destroyers heading south west, towards Africa, but that was days ago, so it'll take time to find her again, and no doubt the rest of her fleet would want words with her over her actions as well," Vestal said, getting nods from the other carriers. "I've passed it up the chain so hopefully command will ask the Royals to keep an eye out, their ships going rogue along with four Sakuran? Something's up, but it's not something we're likely to find out."
DesDivSix walked up the dock at Yokosuka after returning from their first patrol of the loop for the seventh time that they remembered only to run into Kaga standing at the top watching them.
"We need to talk," Kaga said flatly, waving them past her. "Starting with why time seems to be repeating and what the hell I did to you that made you drug me, Akatsuki?" she stated, giving the kunoichi a glare. "Particularly since from what USS Vestal said, if I had been human, I probably would have died of an overdose."
The quartet shared a look and gulped. This was going to be a very long discussion.
NB: Just as a quick note here, in Azur Lane the Sirens, the ones behind most of what we're aware of, have the ability to muck with time, at least in their universe, the way Winds-verse runs is that they're one faction of a group that includes the Abyssals and Neuroi (Strike Witches), each limited to certain abilities within the universe(s) they affect, without being able to cross into one another's territory. Winds/Sakura-Inazuma & co visited Winds/KC-Devonport a few rules back in 10414, 10424 and 10463-10465, which started knocking her out of the sirens' effects to some degree. She can still get time reset, but she remembers similar to the Loopers ala the Infinite Loops. The more that people are around others effected or around things from outside, the better they can remember other loops, of course some things affect more than others, so Kaga ODing on honey plort… she's now 'loop aware'. That doesn't mean they're capable of over powering the upper tier sirens, just that they're aware of siren bullshittery.