Rule by The Budgie Admiral

12678: Disrupting carriers while they are conducting flight operations is ill-advised.
12678a: No, that doesn't mean Zuihou gets out of caring for Kii until she gets better. You still screwed up, you deal with the consequences.

The Admiral had elected to assign them a newbie today. If Zuihou's opinion of the girl was to be inquired for, she'd say the girl was technically fit for service, but socially, she wasn't exactly up to snuff. Kii had been very nervous from the moment that she had set a foot on water, her bright, amber eyes frantically scanning the horizon and the clouds above, and flinching or all but jumping when she was mentioned by name.

Overall, the light carrier would rate the battlewagon as nervous, perhaps a little trigger-happy, but incredibly eager to prove her worth. Given the rumors of her resource intake and the monumental efforts that had been needed to summon her, she'd likely better be worth it, too.
To her misfortune, the Kongous were all on deployment, so the only fast battleship in Japanese waters that had been available for this operation had been New Jersey. Zuihou had flinched before she had even finished reading the deployment roster. And to send her on a mission to engage a heavily defended convoy… Well, Zuihou had her doubts about this decision.

So of course fate decided to roll a natural one on stealth and had directed Abyssal scouts to their location just when they were setting up their ambush, which meant that the convoy turned tail and fled while the enemy combat force charged them headlong, now, in turn, threatening to catch them while they weren't prepared.

"Move your ass!", Jersey barked over the intercom, tearing Zuihou's thoughts back to the present.
"You're designated as an FBB so get the fuck moving!"

"Ha-haii!", Kii yelped and frantically tried to keep pace with an Iowa that was hauling stern. As impressive as her firepower was, Kii couldn't hope to keep up with an Iowa on the best of days. She remembered one of the Fletchers calling Jersey's impossibly fast flanks "yeet speed rushes". She had indulged in enough meme culture to get an idea what that meant, and it had cracked her up rather nicely.

"Zuihou, get the fuck out of the threat area. We've got a bunch of destroyers inbound, go fucking deal with them while we mop up their cruisers!"
That was her call. Her BARCAP had been reduced to idle spotters in the absence of enemy carriers, so she had been mostly idle, trying to semi-leisurely keep her distance from the fight while following the enemy transports out of view.

She now signalled her escort, one of the DEs she hadn't met before, to turn away from the enemy and into the wind while she made ready her dive bombers.

"Shit, move, girl!", Jersey yelled once more, followed by a frightened "Eep!" from the other battleship.
"They're getting away- ah, fuck it, Kii, I can't fucking wait for you! Turn back to the fleet and help them with their destroyer problems. Myoukou and myself will press on the attack."

Scolded in such a way, Kii's response couldn't have been more miserable. "C-confirmed.", she stammered and dropped back, her eyes following Jersey as she picked up even more speed.

A five inch shell splash to her side alerted Zuihou that she had no time to waste on pity. The enemy destroyers were closing at her faster than anticipated and had started to open fire inaccurately at very long range.
"Get ready and stay close!", she barked at her escort before sending Val after Val skywards. She'd have to cut their climb short now, and she cursed herself for not equipping a couple of her trusted B5Ns. In the meantime, at least, she had a front row seat as Kii came about in a wide turn and rushed back to defend her from the approaching menace.

The next few minutes became awash in her memory. Her eyes turned pale as her conscious mind travelled to her aircraft to get a bird's eye view of the fight. Off in the distance, New Jersey and Myoukou were busy exemplifying the might of a fast battleship to an unfortunate cruiser group. A quartet of destroyers meanwhile were chasing herself and her escort, while Kii was giving chase as best as she could and was making ready to send ten sixteen-inch HE shells towards her assailants.

As she worried about being caught outside of Kii's gunnery range, however, the four creatures turned and instead charged at the much larger and menacing battleship. It took her a while to realize, but they seemed to fear their transports were in range of the Japanese guns.

Not the brightest move, Zuihou mused, with her dive bombers in the air already, she could easily lay waste to the transports if she wanted. But she wouldn't dare interrupt her enemy while they were making a mistake. Instead, she decided to give her newbie battleship some air support. They seemed to be mauling her surprisingly effectively, though. She couldn't see it from this height, but judging by the rapid muzzle flashes-

"Oi, Zuihou!"
Something tugged at her sleeve. She ignored it, mentally cursing the distraction, and returned her focus to her aircraft. They were just about to initiate their dive. Careful now, her aim had to be absolutely spot-o-

"Zuihou! Zuihou! Zuihou!"

"WHAT!?", she barked as her eyes cleared and she glared at her destroyer escort, reluctantly leaving her planes unattended.

"Miss Kii's clothes got burnt and now you can see everything… Is that bad?"

Wordlessly, she glanced at the battleship. It seemed like a shell had cut the shoulder piece of her kimono and had detached the top left side of the cloth, which was now dangling from her-

Oh, oh, how… Actually, that wasn't bad. Like, she hadn't expected Kii of all girls to be this… Huh. You learned something new every day, didn't you?

All it took, in Zuihou's deeply flustered hindsight, was a single moment of absence and a brief panic afterwards.

"EEP!?", went Kii as four 250 kilogram bombs impacted right off her bow and doused her in cold seawater. Panicking, the battleship's gaze darted from the destroyers to the circling planes and back again.

"F-ck…"
Zuihou bit her lip. This would mean soooo much trouble.

v

"Like, nothing against you, but HOW THE EVER-LIVING FUCK are all of you-"

"This is the fourth time, Jersey!", Zuihou groaned on their way back to base.
"I seriously just wanna die right now…"

"Well you're not one to talk, missie!", Jersey barked back, once more making the battered Kii, who was leaning on her shoulder for support, flinch at the volume of her lungs.
"Bombing an ally because you couldn't stop staring?"

"I'll never live this down! I got it!", the carrier responded, mortified, and tore at her messy hair.
"Now quit talking about our battleships' chests!"

"Um… C-can I s-say something?", Kii inquired, her voice but a whimper.

"No!", Jersey and Zuihou both responded in unison, causing an awkward silence to settle over the two tsunderes and the distraught battleship as they made their way into port.