Kaiser Lane

by severak

Spring, 1916. The Great War has ground into a stalemate. In a desperate bid to break the dreadlock, the German Empire turns to the sea, hoping to break the Royal Navy's blockade and reopen their ports to badly needed neutral trade. And perhaps the glowing blue cubes that they've received will provide just the edge that they need... (The Battle of Jutland, with Shipgirls)

2. Chapter 2 (Hipper)

May 12, 1916

Wilhelmshaven, German Empire

"Your Majesty…what…is it?" Hipper started, the Rear Admiral cautiously leaning down for a closer look. The cube in the Kaiser's hand seemed to react to his approach, its faint glow brightening slightly and a few further sparks and lightning bolts and rays of light drifting outwards from its heart; as the cube lit up, the Commander of the First Scouting Group felt a sensation akin to static electricity on his skin as the ends of his fingers reached towards the little glowing object, the faintest of buzzing at their very tips. And it was hard to be sure over the background noise of the port, but Hipper thought that he could now hear something coming from the cube as well: a soft, low hum, a subtle reverberation like the sound that might be made by holding down a piano's lowest note for as long as possible.

"It is the future of naval warfare, Admiral. Perhaps of all warfare," the Kaiser answered simply, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. He raised the cube up towards Hipper, uncurling his fingers from its sides and exposing more of its surface as he did, showing the Rear Admiral more of the strange light within the little object's center. "It is pure will, the power of pure will, made manifest."

"With these devices equipped to our warships, our surface fleet will be more than a match for anything that the English can throw at us," the German Emperor went on, a confident smile creeping across his lips, a strange glint in his eyes. "As you'll soon see for yourself."

At that remark, Hipper was silent for a long moment, his eyes narrowing as they gazed critically at and into the cube. The Kaiser's statements had answered absolutely none of the Rear Admiral's questions: indeed, they only further added to them. 'The future of naval warfare?' 'Will made manifest?' And 'see for yourself'...that's what Raeder had told him back when he had first arrived back on base, but from where he stood what he was seeing still wasn't answering any of his questions.

Indeed, the longer that Hipper stared at the cube, the less sense that it made and the more confused that he became. The cube's surface looked polished, glassy, but it produced no reflections; not of the Kaiser's fingers, not of Hipper's squinting, troubled visage, nothing. The Rear Admiral's superior's superior's superior was holding the cube all but dead still, but still the points of light and sparks and lightning within swirled and spun and swam around as if caught in a twisting, winding current, glowing and pulsating at seemingly random intervals as they did. It looked metallic, it looked heavy, yet as the German Emperor held it in his hand it was leaving not the slightest indent in the skin of his palm, as if it had no weight at all.

The Rear Admiral's frown only further deepened as the seconds passed, every question that he had left unasked throughout the morning bubbling to the surface as he continued his examination, every one of the cube's oddities only adding more. Unable to make sense of the little glowing cube (of how it seemed both hollow and solid, of how light shone through it like glass without producing a single reflection, of what was making the glow in the heart ebb and flow, of how almost it seemed to be…whispering to him), Hipper finally found his gaze flickering back up to his superior's superior's superior, and at last the Rear Admiral could no longer hold in his questions.

"Your Majesty…what is this?" Hipper repeated, unable to stop raw bafflement from practically dripping off of his words. His Majesty's only response was to lift an eyebrow as if he had already perfectly answered all of the Rear Admiral's questions. The Kaiser's mouth opened for a moment, but before he could speak the voice of Reinhard Scheer cut in and saved his subordinate from what would have almost certainly been an incredibly interesting discussion.

"If I may explain, your Majesty?" The Vice Admiral started, stepping forwards with a respectful bow as he did. His Majesty's gaze shot his way, a frown briefly twitching at the corner of the lips of Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern, but it seemed that the Vice Admiral had hit the right tone when he had interjected. A curt nod from the German Emperor and Scheer had the floor, the Kaiser stepping slightly aside and gesturing with his free hand for the Commander-in-Chief to continue.

"Thank you, your Majesty," Scheer began with a nod, turning to face his subordinate. "Now, Admiral, this Cube is…" the younger man paused for half a moment, his countenance briefly twisting into an uncertain grimace as he searched for the right words. Then he shook his head, and when he spoke again his tone was blunt and to the point. "Well…it can accurately be described as the single greatest leap forwards in the history of naval technology. If not world technology."

The questioning look on Hipper's face didn't disappear at that remark; indeed, the Rear Admiral's frown only deepened yet again as he glanced back over at the cube being presented to him. Now the little glowing object was 'the single greatest leap forwards in the history of naval technology', a description that was hardly any more descriptive than what the Kaiser had said to him: incredibly vague and telling him almost nothing about what the cube actually was.

Again Scheer shook his head, a resigned sigh escaping his lips as he caught the look on his subordinate's face "I…I am sorry, but if you want a more detailed explanation than that, you'll have to see it in action for yourself," the Commander-in-Chief went on, his hands raising in a placating gesture, his shoulders shrugging slightly in helplessness. "The actual…process isn't something that I could even try to describe or explain to you. I hardly understand it myself."

"But believe me, once it's implemented, the improvements to this warship's performance that this cube will produce…" a small smile flickered at the corners of Scheer's lips, a small tinge of something akin to wonder creeping into his tone. "Hmph! Well, you will soon be seeing it for yourself. And when you do, I guarantee that you will find it to be utterly astonishing."

"So…it will give Seydlitz a performance improvement?" Hipper inquired, seizing on the piece of solid information that his superior had dropped. Scheer's only response was the briefest flash of a small grin, the cryptic look in his eyes going nowhere.

"It's a lot more than that, Admiral," the Commander-in-Chief replied, a tinge of something (Hope? Optimism? Amazement?) in his voice that Hipper hadn't heard in his tone at any point in the past twenty-two months. "There are material improvements, yes: in gunnery, in maneuvering, in engine performance, communications, fuel efficiency, practically anything that you could possibly think of. Improvements beyond what our engineers could do with a decade of time and with an unlimited budget."

"By God, it may well improve them beyond what should even be possible! Admiral, if I had simply sent you the performance reports from the ships that we've equipped these cubes to, you would never have believed a single one of any of them!" the Vice Admiral declared emphatically, looking Hipper dead in the eye as he did, not the slightest trace of jest or deception on his face or in his tone as he did. "And that would have been before you saw the reason for the improvements."

"And this cube is the reason for the improvements?" Hipper asked bluntly, an eyebrow raising skeptically as he continued fishing for actual answers. The little glowing cube might have been unlike anything else that the Rear Admiral had ever seen, but if asked to describe it he would have been more likely to use the word 'strange' than 'impressive'. At the moment, the Commander of the First Scouting Group failed to see how, exactly, the alien object before him was doing anything to improve his Flagship's performance: there were plenty of things aboard Seydlitz that glowed, hummed or both, and no one ever got this worked up about any of them.

"Well…not quite," was Scheer's only reply, the Commander-in-Chief slipping back into enigmatics and evasiveness, something that his longtime Right Hand was not particularly appreciative of.

"And what does that mean, Sir?" Hipper blurted, the Rear Admiral biting back a frustrated snarl, his grimace briefly flickering into outright scowl. Silence fell for a moment after that, Scheer taking a placating half-step back as he tried to come up with the right words to say to his subordinate.

"Admiral…" the Commander-in-Chief finally answered with another little shake of his head, again raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I know that no one here has been giving you any straight answers, but that is simply because there are no straight answers to give. Until you see them in action for yourself, there's nothing that I or even His Majesty could say that would give a just description of what that cube can do."

"Sir, that is all that I have been hearing from everyone I've spoken to all morning long: wait to see it for myself," Hipper not-quite groaned, his voice tinged with a tone that he never would have dared let it take while speaking to the Kaiser. With an exasperated growl, the Rear Admiral turned fully to his superior, his teeth grit as he pressed for an actual answer to his questions. "What I am 'seeing for myself' at the moment, Sir, is admittedly something that I have never seen before, but is also, ultimately, a small, glowing box that hums."

The Rear Admiral narrowed his eyes as he thrust an almost accusatory finger at the cube. "I would greatly appreciate if someone, if anyone, would at least make an attempt as to telling me what this box does besides glow and hum."

For a long moment after that, Seydlitz's foredeck once again went silent, the small crowd around Hipper briefly taken aback by his outburst. The Rear Admiral's gaze flickered around at the others, looking for the slightest of hints of further information (and to make sure that he hadn't pushed the matter too far). Scheer looked thoughtful, a hand briefly stroking his beard as he tried to formulate a proper response; the Kaiser looked…unhappy, yet just as much at a loss as to how to reply as Scheer was; Raeder and the rest of the Navy men present all exchanged silent glances, glances that the Rear Admiral was able to read quite clearly: Who wants to tell him? How do we tell him?

As the awkward silence dragged on, Hipper's eyes wandered back to the little glowing cube, his lips dipping back into their previous frustrated frown. What was it? What made that little humming box so special as to leave men with years, with decades of experience so utterly dumbstruck? It had to have been something beyond simply the bizarre light in its heart, of the strange, alien material that it seemed to have been made out of, of how it was somehow, some way, almost…calling out to him…

It wasn't that Hipper didn't trust what Scheer was telling him, or the looks from the other Navy men present that all silently agreed with the Vice Admiral's declarations; he knew better than that. Never in all of their years of serving together had Hipper ever known Scheer (or Raeder, or really any of the other Navy men present, besides perhaps Boedicker) to be anything but bluntly (sometimes almost tactlessly) honest, especially in their assessments of the fleet.

Hipper trusted those men with his life, and indeed with the lives of his entire command, the Vice Admiral and the Senior Commander in particular. And even the seemingly endless stream of strange events that the day had thrown at the Commander of the First Scouting Group did nothing to dampen that trust: he knew the men before him too well. He wanted to say that he believed every word coming out of their mouths.

And yet…the Rear Admiral's eyes narrowed, his brow tightening and the corners of his mouth sinking yet lower as he examined and reexamined the little glowing cube again, and again, and again. For the life of him, Hipper still couldn't figure out what he was looking at. Multiple men that he would stand with at the very gates of Hell had told him to expect something indescribable from the small, metallic-looking object, from his Chief of Staff to his Commander-in-Chief to his Emperor. With his own eyes he could see that the cube was…something out of the ordinary. In his bones he could feel that there was something extraordinary about it.

But what was that something? Whatever it was, why did the Kaiser think that it would change the course of the war? How did it improve a warship's performance? How did it become 'equipped' to a warship? How on earth was that little glowing cube, barely bigger than a man's palm, supposed to be the key to defeating the Royal Navy, a task that had eluded the abilities of the entire Hochseeflotte for nearly two whole years? How could that cube overcome simple mathematics?

Hipper knew that German ships were better built than their British counterparts, and German Sailors were certainly more capable than their arrogant, pompous and entitled adversaries; the Rear Admiral was confident that every ship in his command could fight and sink any of their British counterparts in a one-on-one battle. Indeed, it was likely that every man in the Hochseeflotte thought as much, and it was just as likely that the assessment was true.

But while superior courage, armor and gunnery counted for much, they didn't count for as much as the ability to deploy overwhelming force practically at will. The simple fact of the matter was that the Royal Navy held a nearly three-to-two numerical advantage over the Kaiserliche Marine. And that was across all ship types: in terms of the heavy, modern capital ships that dictated both the terms and the outcomes of naval warfare, the balance skewed even further in the direction of the British.

The whole of the Hocheseeflotte had a total of sixteen state-of-the art Dreadnoughts available to it at any given time, with a further seventeenth in its shakedown period; the very best and latest intelligence reports stated that the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow had nearly thirty such ships. Hipper's First Scouting Group, with five vessels, represented every Battlecruiser that Germany had; the Battlecruiser Fleet at Rosyth was composed of three separate Battlecruiser Squadrons of three ships each, for a total of nine.

That crushing numerical advantage wasn't a mere paper tiger, either: it was a cold, hard fact of the operations in the North Sea, a cold hard fact that had forced Hipper to withdraw at best possible speed at Dogger Bank when the British had been able to send out five Battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy the three that he had sortied with; that had seen him barely escaping the aftermath of the Scarborough Raid, when six Royal Navy Battlecruisers supported by another entire squadron's worth of British Battleships had come within a hair's breadth of trapping and destroying the whole First Scouting Group; that had seen innumerable sorties, raids and patrols canceled, his ships forced to return to harbor by the mere report that the Grand Fleet was at sea.

How could that little, glowing, palm-sized cube allow him to 'strike a blow' against that? How could it possibly make so much difference? How could anything?

"Imagine…Sir…" Hipper blinked, his gaze flickering back over to the man who's voice had broken into his thoughts. For all the world, two decade veteran of the sea Senior Commander Erich Raeder looked like a schoolboy who's teacher had called him up to give a report on a book that he hadn't actually read. The Rear Admiral's Chief of Staff spoke slowly, haltingly, clearly unsure of every word that was leaving his mouth. "Imagine if this ship…if Seydlitz herself…could…speak to you…"

"Speak to me…?" The Rear Admiral quirked an eyebrow at the younger man's out-of-nowhere hypothetical, the Commander of the First Scouting Group giving his Chief of Staff a somewhat sideways look as he tried to work out what his subordinate was trying to tell him. Raeder wilted slightly under the older man's stare, the Senior Commander's gaze nervously wringing his hands as he went on, in apparent disbelief of the words that were coming out of his own mouth.

"Yes, Sir…" Hipper's Chief of Staff continued, visibly nibbling on the corner of his lip as he did. "Imagine if…during operations, that you could…talk directly to the ship herself," Raeder said, the Senior Commander looking as awkward as a boy trying to explain to their mother what had happened to her priceless Ming Vase."Face to face, I mean. That instead of giving orders to the crew, you could give them directly to Seydlitz herself."

"What…?" A frankly absurd mental image of himself giving orders to an unmanned helm entered Hipper's mind, the Rear Admiral blinking in confusion at his Chief of Staff's utterly bizarre suggestions. But it seemed that his confusion was not shared by the other men on Seydlitz's foredeck.

"That's not an…inaccurate…description…" Scheer murmured in agreement, a pensive frown flickering across his lips, his brow creasing in thought. Hipper shot a sharp look his way, his expression dominated by a frown of his own.

"Can you elaborate, sir?" the Rear Admiral challenged. "At all?" he added a moment later, shifting his initial demand more towards a plea, his tone softening somewhat from frustration towards supplication and his shoulders arching in a helpless little half-shrug.

The corners of Scheer's lips curled still lower, his eyes narrowing and his fingers stroking his chin again as he mulled over what he was going to say. For another long moment his gaze flickered around the foredeck, silently prodding the other men present for ideas. Then he glanced over at the cube, his eyes narrowing as they scanned over its shimmering surface. Then he looked up towards the Heavens as if in silent prayer. Then finally he spoke again, sounding at least somewhat more confident than Raeder had: he spoke with the voice of a newly commissioned Lieutenant instead of a newly minted cadet.

"Think of it this way," the Vice Admiral said, taking a deep breath as he began. "When you're at sea, and you give an order, how long does it take for that order to be carried out?"

"It…depends on the order, Sir" Hipper replied, blinking at the sudden topic change.

"Yes, but it's never instant, is it?" Scheer pointed out."Whatever you order, it always takes time to happen."

"If you want to fire a volley at an enemy ship, you first have to send a message to fire control. Then they have to make the firing calculations: range, ship's speed, target's speed and a hundred other variables besides," the Vice Admiral said, taking slow steps towards his subordinate as he did. "And that's just the targeting process: coordinating all the guns to act simultaneously is no faster or easier; neither is loading them in the first place. And while it might take you less than a minute to do it all, how much good is that when fractions of seconds are the difference between life and death?"

"Maneuvering has the same problem" Scheer continued, his tone hardening, his expression sharpening as his train of thought picked up speed. "If you want the ship to speed up or slow down or make any maneuver which requires something more complicated than a turn of the helm, you have to wait for your message to reach all the way down to the engine rooms, and for the men down there to read it, and for them to properly carry it out. And once they do, they'll still be limited by the machinery. Whatever you want the ship to do, it could again be up to a minute or more for it to actually do it, and again: you very well might not have that time."

"Same with communications, especially with another ship," the Commander-in-Chief went on, vehemently gesturing to emphasize his points. "And the same with damage control, and the same with receiving almost any information about just about anything. Everything takes too long: in moments when we have seconds to make decisions, yes, we can make the decisions in those seconds, but far too much can happen in the minutes that it takes for those decisions to become actions, yes?"

"Yes…Sir…" Hipper affirmed, nodding slowly as he tried to work out where his superior was trying to lead him. "But…those delays are inherent, just by the size of the ship. Unless…" the Rear Admiral glanced back over at the little cube, glowing innocuously in the Kaiser's palm, some small trace of comprehension beginning to dawn on him. "Unless that cube gives us a way to reduce it?"

"Admiral, that cube gives us a way to practically eliminate it," Scheer replied, nodding emphatically as his subordinate started to catch on. "Think of it like that: how much better would this ship, would any ship, perform if every order that you gave could be carried out instantaneously?"

"Think of it, Admiral! Even completely ignoring the mechanical improvements, think of how much more efficient, how much more powerful, the vessel would be!" Scheer described, pressing on as his subordinate's brow creased in introspection, the Commander of the First Scouting Group beginning to stroke his own chin in thought. "Think of it with fire control: imagine if every single firing calculation could be done like that," he detailed, snapping his fingers for emphasis, "without even having to say a word to the fire control room."

"Or imagine a ship that could stop, start or turn on the head of a pin, on a second's notice." the Vice Admiral went on, the strange tone of awe from earlier leaking back into his voice. "Without a moment of delay wasted waiting on the engine room."

"Imagine ships that could communicate with each other without the slightest chance of enemy interception, encrypting and decrypting messages in the blink of an eye," Scheer went on, a small gleam coming to his eye. "Imagine damage reports coming in the instant that the enemy shell hit. Hell, imagine just being able to know how much coal was left in the bunkers or how much ammunition was left in the magazines without having to send someone down to check!"

Another series of slow, pensive nods were the totality of Hipper's reply, the Rear Admiral's frown staying firmly entrenched in his expression. He could see, partly at least, the reason for his superior's interest in the cube: even assuming technical performance stayed exactly the same (which Scheer had already all but stated would very much not be the case), what the Vice Admiral was describing would provide their ships with a massive improvement. They looked to promise reduced reaction time on first contact with the enemy, better coordination between ships, faster fire on target, faster damage control, a shipload of other little ways to shave precious seconds off in a combat situation. The idea certainly had appeal. Now, as to how much sense it made…

"So…the cube…improves shipboard communication?" Hipper asked, casting another glance down as the little glowing cube as he tried to bring his thoughts full circle. That explanation seemed…underwhelming given the cube's appearance, the Kaiser's personal delivery of it, and the crypticness of everyone else that he'd talked to that morning. And indeed, it quickly proved to be: the sight of Scheer yet again shaking his head instantly dashed any hope that the Rear Admiral had had that he had been anywhere close to making sense of what his superior was trying to tell him.

"No, Admiral," the Commander-in-Chief rebuffed, that same by-now-familiar exasperated sigh escaping from his lips as he realized yet again that he and his Right Hand weren't on the same page. "No, the cube almost entirely eliminates the very need for shipboard communication."

"It's…somewhat more like what your Chief of Staff said," Scheer tried to explain, his hands grasping at the air as if he were trying to pluck the right words out of the ether. "With the cube, you won't be sending orders to your crew faster, you'll be able to give orders directly to the ship itself. And the ship itself will be able to respond directly back to you."

Hipper could only once more slowly shake his head in confusion, a look of utter disbelief creeping across his face as his thoughts returned to the absurd mental image of himself speaking to a series of unmanned instruments on an empty bridge. "That…sounds like you're oversimplifying, Sir," he managed, doubt painting his tone as what little semblance of understanding that he had been able to build up was yet again sent flying out the window.

"That's because I am oversimplifying, Admiral!" Scheer admitted with a bellow, the Commander-in-Chief throwing his hands up in the air in defeat as he struggled to get his point across. "And until you see the cube in action, I would never be able to even try and describe what it does in any way except for by oversimplifying!"

Now it was Hipper's turn to be taken aback: the Rear Admiral almost stumbled backwards, his eyes going wide at his superior's uncharacteristic outburst. On Scheer's part, the Commander-in-Chief only briefly buried his face in his right hand, internally admonishing himself for losing control. Another long moment of silence passed as the Vice Admiral let out a few long, slow breaths, visibly unclenching his hands as he regained his composure.

"Admiral…I am sorry, but that really is all I can tell you at the moment," Scheer finally said, resignation mixing with blunt truth in his voice. One last time, the Vice Admiral helplessly shrugged, raising his hands in a gesture somewhere between placating and defeated. "The cubes…don't make sense. They don't make any sense! And you can't even try and make even the smallest bit of sense of them until you've seen their power firsthand!"

"But from what I've seen, Admiral, from what we've all seen," Scheer declared, the smallest tinge of excitement once more leaking back into his voice as gestured at the rest of the small crowd on the foredeck, all of whom were nodding their assent, "these Cubes could, no, these Cubes will, provide us with the opportunity that we have searched for for the last two years: a chance to take the fight to the Royal Navy. To cancel out their numerical advantage and fight them on our terms, and succeed."

"You have to trust us on this, Admiral," the Vice Admiral concluded, the tiniest hint of pleading in his tone as he looked his subordinate dead in the eye, even as the briefest flicker of a grin danced across his lips. The same old cryptic glint filled his orbs, a look of wonder mixed with anticipation mixed with something that Hipper couldn't quite put his finger on. "You will see it for yourself soon enough."

"Indeed you shall, Admiral Hipper," the Kaiser cut back in, annoyance leaking into his tone. The German Emperor's expression made it clear that His Majesty had grown quite tired of the futile attempts to explain what the cube would do to the Rear Admiral (and of holding up said cube while waiting for said Rear Admiral to catch on). "Seeing is believing after all."

Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern shot a quick glance over at the Hochseeflotte's Commander-in-Chief, his fingers curling back around the cube as he decided that it was time for actions instead of words. "Admiral Scheer, I believe that it is time to begin the manifestation."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Scheer replied with a terse nod and a step backwards. Hipper glanced over at his superior, yet another question forming on his lips at the unfamiliar term, but the Vice Admiral spoke again before he could ask it.

"Admiral, if you would," the Commander-in-Chief said with a nod, gesturing to the cube. It was a gesture reinforced by His Majesty raising up the little glowing object until it was being held almost directly in front of the Rear Admiral's face. Said face still retained its look of doubt and disbelief, and Scheer could only sigh and shake his head in resignation one last time as he gave his order. "This will be far easier for you to experience than for me to even try and keep explaining. Take the Cube, please."

There was nothing else for it. Slowly, carefully, hesitantly, Hipper obeyed, the Rear Admiral gingerly reaching out to take hold of the little glowing cube. Even before his fingers brushed against its surface, though, the cube's glow redoubled itself, its faint light intensifying from the mere act of his hand growing close. For half a moment Hipper recoiled, his dark frown deepening yet further, his fingers curling back as a strange warmth (so unlike the heat of a fire or the sun, more akin to what he might have felt by holding his hands up to one of Seydlitz's electric lights) filled the air near their tips.

It was a frown reflected on the face of the Kaiser for the duration of the same half moment; another half moment later, and Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern was thrusting the little glowing cube forth in the wake of his Rear Admiral's retreating hand, the little object no longer being offered to the Commander of the First Scouting Group. "Take the Cube, Admiral," the German Emperor demanded, his fingers briefly clenching tight around the mysterious object.

One last time, Hipper's eyes flickered over to Scheer. The nod that the Vice Admiral gave him mixed reassurance with resignation, encouragement with command, and it was clear that at the moment that that was the most that the Commander-in-Chief could give. Well, that was that then. "Aye, Your Majesty," Hipper nodded, steeling himself and pushing aside the swarm of unanswered questions swirling around his mind. And finally, before he could give himself any more second thoughts, he reached out and grasped the cube.

As the Rear Admiral lifted the small, glowing object out of the Kaiser's hands, the first thing that he noted was just how little it weighed: it felt no heavier than a few pages worth of folded paper, the cube not so much as making indents in his skin as he turned it over in his hand. But despite its lightness, the cube also felt anything but delicate: its sides were stiff and solid as Hipper's finger curled around it, the surfaces not giving in the slightest against the Rear Admiral's tightening grasp.

The Hipper wanted to inspect the cube closer, but the little object seemed to have other ideas. As he tried to lift it up to examine it from a different angle, Hipper found himself forced to squint, wincing away from the cube slightly as its strange glow doubled, then trebled, then brightened to beyond the point where the word 'glow' remained an accurate descriptor, bathing the Rear Admiral in a warm, blueish-white light.

It was a light that Hipper felt as much as saw, a light that shone like the summer sun against his face. The Rear Admiral's doubtful grimace shifted into a look of mystification as he felt the…the energy flowing outwards from the cube, a sensation akin to that of electricity, the cube warming in his grasp with every second that passed. Yet it wasn't electrical: it felt in some indescribable way to be…different as he felt it against his face and flowing into his hand and surging up his arm, making his flesh tingle and his skin buzz and his hairs stand on end. It felt…directed. Conscious. It was as if there were something else within the energy that the cube was emitting, something far more than the simple sparks that ran through normal electrical wiring or light coming down from the sun, something that was directed by far more than the rigid mathematical determinism of physics or chemistry.

Something with a mind of its own.

"It's activating," Raeder commented, somewhere off to the side. Hipper barely heard him: the cube's humming noise had started to intensify with each passing moment, the Rear Admiral gritting his teeth as the thrumming whir crescendoed into a shrill, piercing shriek, a shriek that pervaded straight into Hipper's thoughts just as much as it filled his ears. It flooded his mind with a noise that sounded, perhaps, like the high, sharp screech of a ship's whistle, or perhaps more like a whole squadron of ships chorusing their whistles together in ear-splitting harmony. Hipper could hardly see either, the Rear Admiral forced to shield his eyes with his free hand as the cube's luminosity turned outright blinding, and in the same moment the cube's warmth was morphing into an almost painful heat, its surface rapidly becoming outright hot to the touch.

"It seems that you were right, Admiral. He does have an aptitude." Hipper heard the Kaiser observe. But he barely paid any attention to the words of the German Emperor either. How could he, when he could feel the cube's shrieking wailing just as much as he heard it, the little object's high, screeching whistling penetrating into the Rear Admiral's flesh, into his bones, into his gut, like the vibration of a ship that's engines were ramping up to full power?

And…did the cube look bigger than it had a second before?

"Hmm. As expected," came the voice of Admiral Scheer, the Commander-in-Chief stepping over to be at his Right Hand's side. Hipper vaguely registered the Vice Admiral gripping his shoulders a moment later, the younger man's nails sinking themselves into his flesh. He gave the gesture little attention: Hipper had little space in his thoughts for the actions of the men around him with the little cube in his hand becoming more indecipherable, more alien with every second that he held it, and Hipper growled in bewilderment and awe and even fear at the cube in his hand, an endless torrent of unanswered questions storming through his mind as he tried to comprehend the little object's increasingly incomprehensible behavior.

"Do. Not. Let go of that Cube, Admiral." Scheer's voice managed to break through to Hipper's ears, authoritative and clear, even as it was tinged by traces of the same uncertainty that the Rear Admiral felt gnawing at his own mind and heart. "You have to hold on until the process is finished; you absolutely can not let go now!"

"Sir…" A low growl was Hipper's only response, gritted out from between grinding teeth. The Rear Admiral wasn't even sure that he could have let go anymore: his whole arm felt as if it had gone numb, had been frozen from shoulder to fingertip as the cube's alien energy fizzled through it. It was as if his flesh were fusing itself to the cube's surface: Hipper's fingers didn't seem to want to do as he willed them anymore, the Commander of the First Scouting Group struggling to so much as make his extremities wriggle, as if the cube were paralyzing the nerves in his arms.

No. No, the cube was doing something far more than merely paralyzing the Rear Admiral. Somehow, someway, it's insanity was still finding new ways to manifest: even as it grew ever warmer to the touch, even as its blueish-white light grew all the brighter, even as it shrieking crescendoed yet further, feeling as though they were going to burst the Rear Admiral's eardrums, the little cube stayed absolutely still in his palm, not vibrating, not shaking, not moving in the slightest. Even more bizarrely, Hipper's hand was moving, was shivering and twitching and spasming all around the cube, its fingers clutching to the little object in what was becoming a deathgrip. But the little cube absolutely refused to move, as if it were now somehow anchoring itself in midair, and the Rear Admiral's hand and arm along with it.

And still there was something…more, something far more at play here, something that Hipper could feel in his mind, in his soul, just as much as he could feel in hand and arm. It wasn't quite a voice, it wasn't quite a feeling, but it was something, something at the back of Hipper's mind, at the very fringe of his consciousness, something that, even as the cube threatened to blind, deafen and perhaps even burn him, even as he felt the tingling sensation in his arm become an electric buzzing as if a swarm of insects had encased his whole arm and were all droning on it in unison, was telling him, was demanding of him, to clutch hard to the little cube.

It was something far more than the orders that Scheer was giving him: there was something taking hold in Hipper's gut, digging in in his instincts, entrenching itself in some primal piece of himself and screaming at him to hold on, to curl his fingers tighter around the little cube in his hands, that was roaring out that he couldn't dare to release it, even as every other part of him was beginning to scream and groan and curse. Something else, besides his own thoughts and will or the Vice Admiral's instructions. Something from the cube. Something far beyond mere heat and light and noise.

Something…other.

"What. The Hell. I-" Hipper managed to growl, genuine fear starting to tinge his tone as he felt another bolt of power surge its way up his arm, leaving hairs standing on end and muscles clenched tight and flesh buzzing in its wake. The Commander of the First Scouting Group felt himself trying to take a step backwards away from the cube, but he couldn't, he couldn't let go of the cube, he couldn't make himself move away from it, he couldn't' tear himself free from its orbit…

"The cube has started interacting with the ship," Scheer tried to explain, moving so that the Rear Admiral could brace against him, doing what little he could to reassure his subordinate. Hipper didn't feel particularly reassured: the Commander-in-Chief's grip on his shoulders was far weaker than the force that the cube was exerting on him, even as they turned into a deathgrip of their own. And the younger man didn't exactly sound sure of what he was saying either, the Vice Admiral's tone being very much like that of a man who was doing nothing more than echoing words that he had heard from someone else without truly understanding them for himself. But given what his own five senses were telling him, Hipper didn't begrudge his superior's uncertainty: he heavily doubted that there was anyone in the world that truly understood what the cube in his hand was doing, much less clearly explained it to him. Much less explained it in a way that calmed the primal fear he felt clawing its way up his throat.

"It's trying to…synchronize itself, to Seydlitz's hull. It's how the cube will improve the ship's performance. And it needs help doing it," Scheer continued, his hold on the Rear Admiral tightening yet further as he did (though Hipper hardly noticed the sensation amidst the cube's otherworldly insanity). "That's where you come in, Admiral. I can't exactly explain how it works," the Commander-in-Chief admitted, even as a newfound urgency filled his voice, authority mixing with apprehension in his tone, "But you're currently acting as the connection between the Cube and Seydlitz herself."

"What you need to do to complete the connection and for the cube to synchronize is concentrate," he went on, the Vice Admiral's voice shifting fully into the same tone as it did when he was handing out orders, even as Hipper could feel the uncertainty in the hands on his shoulders. "Concentrate on what you want this fleet to accomplish. Concentrate on what you want this ship to be able to do."

What I want, Sir, is to understand what the hell is going on, Hipper thought to himself, his teeth gritting together into a pained sneer. But the words never left the Rear Admiral's lips: the Commander of the First Scouting Group was only able to get out a pained grunt as another feeling like a lighting bolt shot through his arm, as the cube's hum intensified to become an even higher-pitched whine, the piercing blue-white light that it emitted leaving rainbow spots and black splotches dancing across Hipper's vision.

There were other things that flashed before Hipper's eyes, too: flashes of other places and other times, moving too fast for the Rear Admiral to process. He thought that they might have been glimpses of a ship's bridge, of its deck, of its engines and turrets and corridors and masts. And there were other things that filled his ears, besides the thudding of his own heart and the panting, ragged sound of his own breathing and Scheer's orders: sounds like the roar of a Dreadnought's main gun battery, of shells exploding and metal tearing and men screaming and bellowing and swearing.

"I need you to concentrate, Admiral!" Scheer prompted again, giving Hipper's shoulders another attempt at a reassuring squeeze as he shouted more orders, the younger man's fingers digging still deeper into his flesh. "The cube will be fully activated by your convictions! Your desires, your will! Your hopes for the future! It needs you to tell it what you want it to make this ship into! Focus on this ship!"

In all honesty, Hipper thought that the Vice Admiral's words made even less sense than his spiel about 'talking directly to the ship'. But with nothing else to go off of, Commander of the First Scouting group clutched to his superior's words like a drowning man to a life raft, Hipper doing his damndest to follow along with Scheer's instructions (even as the little object in his palm continued to do it's damndest to flip his whole world upside down).

Focus on the ship. Focus on the ship. Focus on the ship! Franz Hipper the shopkeeper's son might have felt outright terror tying his guts into knots as the cube's alien energy flooded his arm to the point that it felt as if it were about to ignite. He might have felt his heart trying to jump out of his chest as the cube's piercing wailing made his ears feel as if they were bleeding. He might have felt his breathing becoming heavy and labored as perhaps even panicked as the cube's blinding light flooded his eyes with further flashes and glimpses and visions that he could hardly make sense of.

Focus! On! The! Ship! But no matter what the shopkeeper's son felt, Franz Hipper the three-decade Navy man would still follow his Commanding Officer's orders to the letter. The more than thirty years of military discipline that had (in some cases quite literally) been beaten into the Rear Admiral who commanded the Hochseeflotte's First Scouting Group remained unbroken (if only because Hipper's combat instincts had kicked into high gear quite quickly after the cube's supernatural display had begun, taking control of him in much the same way that they would in battle and driving down his fear, forcing him to action), even as the little cube in his hand threatened to burn and blind and deafen him, even as it became ever more otherworldly with every single second that passed.

FOCUS! ON! THE SHIP! His Commanding Officer's direct order was like a lighthouse to guide Hipper in to a safe port, and the Rear Admiral was damn well making use of it. Hipper felt his teeth grinding against each other, could feel the skin and muscles in his brow and jaw straining tight as he defied the cube's insanity and forced himself do what Vice Admiral Scheer had demanded him to do: focus on the Battlecruiser who's foredeck he was standing on.

It was a good order: in sharp contrast to the supernatural lights and alien sounds and other otherworldly sensations that the little object in his hands was unleashing, Seydlitz was remaining her usual stoic, impeccable self. The twenty-five thousand ton beast of steel was utterly undisturbed by the scene unfolding on her bow, her armor-shrouded form remaining completely devoid of any sort of reaction to the cube's display, and in the midst of all the chaos of the cube Hipper held onto his Flagship's familiar form for dear life.

The Rear Admiral knew every square centimeter of Seydlitz, knew every nook and cranny and contour and seam of her form, and now the he latched on as tight as he could to those nooks and crannies and contours, holding desperately on to the fragments of familiar normalcy that they provided. It certainly helped that from where Hipper was standing there were plenty of things in sight for him to latch to: there was the instantly and eternally recognizable outline of Seydlitz's superstructure, keeping quiet watch over the proceedings on the foredeck; the steady solidity of the forged steel of her deck beneath his feet, apparently absolutely unperturbed and unaffected by the insanity unfolding hardly more than a meter above it; the massive forward turret and long, heavy anchor chains and tall, looming mast, all as unchanged and unyielding as ever amongst the alien chaos of the foredeck.

They were all small comforts in the face of the alien cube going mad in his palm, but Hipper found them to be comforts nonetheless. Her armor was unbroken; her hull was unbreached; her guns sat ready and willing. Even in the absence of the majority of her crew, Hipper could still feel the mighty Battlecruiser's power as her indomitable form loomed all around him, unflinching in the thick of the otherworldly cube unleashing madness upon her foredeck. She was an unassailable titan that Hipper could anchor himself to in the raging storm, a solid, immutable piece of reality that he could clutch to in defiance of the strange, warped world that the cube was trying to drag him into.

Despite all the otherworldly insanity radiating unceasingly from the little object in his palm, all the blinding lights and the deafening ringing and the burning heat coming from the cube, Seydltiz remained as unyielding and unbroken as ever. There were no groans or creaks of protest from the metal of the Battlecruiser's hull, no shakes or shudders of her deck, no flame rising from her superstructure or holes gouged into turrets or indeed any sign that the events taking place on her foredeck were doing anything at all that might be damaging her.

And the Rear Admiral who commanded the Hochseeflotte's First Scouting Group found a very real sense of security and strength in the notion that his Flagship was still afloat beneath him (a sense that was rather helpfully reinforced by the fact that she was apparently quite resistant to the supernatural). It was the kind of idea that had gotten him through Dogger Bank, when five British Battlecruisers that could out range and out run him had been chasing his ships down like dogs, keen on sending them to the bottom of the North Sea; that he had steadied himself with when the Scarborough Raid had turned into a deadly trap, what felt like half the Royal Navy racing to close a noose around his neck: Seydlitz was still there. She was still with him. He could still rely on her.

And in spite of the alien glow and shrieking whistles and alien energy of the cube, that was exactly what Franz Hipper did. As he had done at Dogger Bank, as he had done on the Scarborough Raid and in the Gulf of Riga and on a hundred other sorties, as he did whenever he went out to sea, the Rear Admiral put his trust in the certainty of Seydlitz's steel, put his faith in her to see him through.

During the whole course of the past twenty-two months, that faith had been rewarded, over and over and over again, at Dogger Bank and on the Scarborough Raid and in the Gulf of Riga and on every other mission he'd taken her on. No matter the danger, no matter the odds, Seydlitz had proven herself worthy, more than worthy of Hipper's trust, had let no enemy action so much as scratch him (and had returned all of their attempts to do so with mountains worth of interest).

And now, in the middle of a battle that he hadn't had even the slightest chance to prepare for, a battle that was unlike any that he had ever even dreamed of fighting before, the Rear Admiral made a silent plea, made an unspoken wish deep in his heart, that she could see him though again. She had survived British Battlecruisers landing hits that had blown apart the entirety of her rear turrets; she had slipped past an entire squadron of hostile Battleships sent out to hunt her down; she had endured being run into mines that would have ripped a lesser vessel clean in half. Surely she could survive an oddly glowing little cube that hummed a bit. Surely she could.

Surely.

"That's it. That's it! You're doing it, Admiral!" Scheer's voice broke back into Hipper's thoughts, the Vice Admiral's tone somewhere between desperation and anticipation, somewhere between pleading and pride. The deathgrip on the Rear Admiral's shoulders somehow tightened even further, and when Scheer's voice came again it was in a bellow inches away from Hipper's ear, so loud that it even drowned out the cube's wails for a moment. "You're almost there! Keep focusing!"

The Rear Admiral didn't need to be told twice: indeed, the cube was making it so that he didn't need to be told at all anymore. In one of its innumerable, incomprehensible oddities, the little object had apparently decided that it was going to be doing the focusing for him: as Hipper forced his thoughts to turn from the insanity of the object in his hand and towards whatever fragments of a sense of a security that he could summon up from the fact his invincible Flagship seemed immune to said insanity, the visions and flashes and glimpses that danced in front of his eyes began to slow, to bring themselves into focus. And Hipper could clearly see that they weren't random. In fact, they were quite recognizable.

They were of Seydlitz. The sights before Hipper's eyes were exactly, exactly those that he would have seen if he were walking through her hull. The cube was showing him millimeter-perfect recreations of every bolt and screw and rivet of the Battlecruiser, of every twist and turn and bend of her bulkheads and corridors. Hipper knew his Flagship inside and out, knew every square centimeter of her from stem to stern and keel to masthead, and every square centimeter of her corridors and her deck and her bridge and her chartroom and her engine rooms and magazines and turrets and more that the cube was now showing him was precisely, precisely as he remembered them, down to the smudges and scuff marks on the hatch handles and the specific lightbulbs that glowed more dimly than the others and the slight dark spots in the corridors where a few more layers of paint than average had been applied.

And the cube was doing far more than simply showing Hipper his flagship. The little object's piercing, shrieking whistling was being joined by new sounds, sounds that the Rear Admiral's ear almost instantly recognized: they were the rumbling thrum of Seydlitz's engines, the rhythmic crashing sound of waves breaking against her hull, the flapping of her halyards in the wind; the surges of energy filling his arm now mixed themselves with familiar vibration in his feet that came with the Batlecruiser getting underway, with the faint rocking sensation of the vessel plowing through the rough waters of the North Sea, with the mild tingling of his hairs that brought to mind a gentle ocean breeze.

Hipper thought that the cube might even have been replicating Seydlitz's smell, the vague odor of engine oil, burned cordite and the harsh soap used to scrub the deck and sweaty, hardworking sailors making constant use of the three that tended to cling to the warship's hull, thought that he could perhaps even taste the sea salt and coal dust and smoke that often filled the air around her. And in spite of the cube still going mad in his hand, Hipper felt the smallest sense of calm welling up in the back of his mind, could feel the smallest bit of weight lifting off of his shoulders at his Flagship's welcome familiarity amongst the otherworldly madness unfolding in his palm.

"Yes. Yes! Yes! You've got it!" That was Scheer again, his tone dipping even further into desperate urgency, the deathgrip on Hipper's shoulders undergoing a vice-like tightening one final time. The Vice Admiral's words were an undeniable order as he thundered them straight into his subordinate's ear, momentarily out-bellowing even the cube's continued wailing. "Keep focused! What do you wish from your Flagship?! What is she to you?!"

"GggghhhhHHHHHAAAAAHHHH!" A pained growl was all that Hipper could respond with, the Rear Admiral clutching at his head with his free hand as his skull suddenly felt as if it were about to split open. In the same instant the visions dancing across his eyes abruptly redoubled their speed and the noises in his ears trebled their volume and the buzzing, burning energy in his hand and arm became all but unbearable, a searing, stabbing pain surging through his entire body.

Vaguely, distantly, Hipper felt Scheer's arms wrapping fully around him, the Commander-in-Chief taking him into what was effectively a tight bear hug as he tried to hold his subordinate upright. "You're about to do it!" the younger man roared above the shrieking wailing that filled Hipper's ears, somehow, someway outsounding the hurricane of noise that the cube was producing. "Just a little more! Who is Seydlitz to you?!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHGGGHH!" An agonized roar escaped from Hipper's lips as the visions-no. No, they weren't visions anymore: they were memories. They were-

-The weather was perfect. But the proud, satisfied grin on the lips of Rear Admiral Franz Hipper had little to do with the shining sun or clear, blue skies or the singing of the seagulls dancing through the air above him. It had to do with something that, in the opinion of the Commander of the First Scouting Group, was far more beautiful: his new Flagship. The newest vessel in the Hochseeflotte. The most powerful warship that the German Empire had ever built. A technological marvel in every sense of the word.

Seydlitz had passed her sea trials with flying colors. No. No, she'd done far more than merely that: the tests of the Battlecruiser's seaworthiness and machinery had shown that she had the potential to put every other vessel in the Kaiserliche Marine to shame. Her engines were so powerful she had both a full knot of extra speed on and easily superior maneuverability to the older Moltke and Goeben, in spite of the fact that her armor had been thickened across almost the entirety of her hull (in some places by as much as twenty millimeters); her preliminary gun tests had shown that most of the kinks with the 28 cm SK L/50 gun design had been mostly worked out, giving Seydlitz a main battery that could out-range and out-shoot anything else in the Fleet; and her crew, mostly transfers from the Armored Cruiser Yorck (a former command of Hipper's), were taking to her like ducks to water.

And as of today, she was formally his. The strongest Battlecruiser in the world was being given to him, was being entrusted to him, and merely laying eyes on her was enough to remind the Rear Admiral of just how much of an honor, of a privilege, that that was: just before he stepped onto her deck, Hipper found himself pausing in awe on her gangway, his newly commissioned Flagship's beauty and power causing him to halt for a long moment just to admire her.

The Commander of the First Scouting Group found his small smile widening as he soaked in the distinctive lines of her superstructure's silhouette, as found himself admiring the thick, heavy armor that wrapped itself around her hull, found himself approving of the impeccable cleanliness of her deck and marveling at the raw power of the massive gun turrets that sat on her deck and simply being awestruck in general at the vessel that would be his home, office and greatest warrior from now until…well, until she was sunk out from underneath him, probably. It didn't take a man with an eye as trained as Hipper's to clearly see that Seydlitz wouldn't be up for replacement anytime soon.

He'd commanded warships before, of course; indeed, he'd even commanded German Battlecruisers before. Moltke had been a good Flagship for him ever since he'd been promoted to command the First Scouting Group the previous year. But as Hipper stepped onto Seydlitz's deck, he couldn't help but feel, in some small way, somewhere deep down in his gut, that this ship, that this culmination of the past decade and a half of a whole nation's aspirations and efforts, would be…different. That she would be special-

-they were his memories. Hipper doubled over in pain, letting out a feral scream as something, something not him began sifting through his thoughts, began to-

-'Five Enemy Battleships'. That was the report from Stralsund to Rear Admiral Franz Hipper. 'Five Enemy Battleships', less than fifty kilometers to his southeast and closing fast. He could have outrun them, perhaps, could have darted through the gap in the minefields off of the Yorkshire coast and been home free…if not for the other Four Enemy Battlecruisers that had been reported to his northeast, already skirmishing with his light forces as they raced southwards to slam shut the First Scouting Group's escape route.

Hipper gripped the chartroom table so hard that he thought that he might have heard its wood creaking. No matter how much he willed it, though, the map before him refused to change: heavy minefields to either side of him; two whole squadrons worth of hostile capital ships moving to seal off the one clear path through; the only force that had any possible chance of supporting or reinforcing him, Admiral Ingenohl's Dreadnaughts, well more than a hundred kilometers away and sitting dead in the water, waiting around for him to reach them at the designated rendezvous point (And possessing strict orders from the Kaiser himself to avoid an open engagement, as if everything else hadn't been enough).

At least the weather was bad. The rough seas might (might) slow down their pursuers; it might (might) let his ships disappear into a rain squall or a fog bank and slip away. But if the British spotted him…if their capital ships linked up with each other before he could shoot the gap between them…Hipper growled, just barely suppressing the urge to slam his fist against the chartroom table. Well, in that case, they'd be in for one hell of a fight.

For the briefest of moments, the smallest ghost of…well, it wasn't quite a smile, more of a determined grimace (but still something surprisingly akin to a bold grin, given the circumstances) flickered across Hipper's lips. Well, if the British did catch him, he could at least be certain that they'd have a hell of a fight on their hands as well. Seydlitz (and the rest of the First Scouting Group) would make sure of that: if the almighty Royal Navy thought that his command would just roll over and sink, then they clearly had no idea of just what his Flagship and her companions were capable of (and had just as clearly learned nothing from either Coronel or the Falklands).

As if in response to his thoughts, the Rear Admiral felt Seydlitz lightly shudder beneath his feet, the Battlecruiser rearing up slightly as she plowed forwards through the rough seas. For whatever it was worth, the weather wasn't slowing his Flagship down in the slightest: the familiar roar of her turbines was unceasing, Seydlitz shrugging off the squalls that had left half her escort scattered or half swamped from here to Dogger Bank.

For a few fleeting seconds, Hipper simply stood there in the chartroom, simply let himself feel the thunderous vibrations of his Flagship's engines. It was a reassuring sensation, feeling her power surging through the twenty-five thousand tons of steel plate and steam turbines and heavy artillery below his feet: it was almost as if Seydlitz were telling him that she was ready to fight, that whatever came next she (and her three hundred millimeters of main belt armor and her ten twenty-eight centimeter guns) would have his back.

And that was a comforting (or at least calming) thought indeed. More comforting than the thoughts that the charts in front of him were conjuring up, at least. With his Flagship's roaring engines encouraging him, Hipper found himself taking a deep, centering breath, the Rear Admiral refocusing himself for the tasks ahead. Then he turned on his heel, heading out from the chartroom to go prepare his crew to-

-to do exactly what Scheer had ordered him to do: focus on Seydlitz. To think about Seydlitz. To think of what she-

-"Sir, Turrets Dora and Emil are gone! That hit must have set off their powder charges!" "We need that flash contained! Flood the magazines, now!" "Those Battlecruisers are still firing on us!" "Keep returning fire, return fire!" "Sir, we can't raise the steering room! We're trying to send a runner, but there's too much damage between us and engineering!" "Signal Admiral Ingenohl! Tell him that we need immediate assistance!"

The battle reports came in in an endless flood, a torrential downpour of bad news that threatened to drown Rear Admiral Franz Hipper where he stood. Catastrophic damage to the stern areas of his Flagship; Blucher under heavy fire, starting to fall behind the rest of the formation and drift off-course away to the north; five enemy Battlecruisers throwing everything they had at him, an everything that was only coming down all the closer to being directly on top of the Rear Admiral's head as the British battle line slowly but steadily caught up to his own.

Hipper barked his own constant stream of orders, adding further to the cacophony, the Rear Admiral responding to all of both the ship and the squadron's half-dozen different crises at once. Externally, the Commander of the First Scouting Group was an island of calm in the storm, a steady hand for his men as he almost serenely chain-smoked at the center of the hurricane of roiling chaos that was Seydltiz's conning tower. Internally, the Rear Admiral's thoughts were going a million kilometers an hour, the gears in his head spinning faster than Seydlitz's turbines as he did his damndest to create solutions to his command's mountain's worth of problems anywhere close to as fast as the rapidly deteriorating situation was creating them.

That magazines had been flooded, heading off the threat of a catastrophic ammunition explosion; concentrated heavy fire from Seydlitz and Moltke was hammering away at the lead ship of the British line, the pair doing what they could to drive her back, to slow her down; Blucher…it was likely that nothing could be done for Blucher anymore, not with the gap between her and the rest of the First Scouting Group widening by the second, not in broad daylight with a numerically superior enemy running them down like dogs.

And Admiral Ingenohl had responded to his plea for assistance. He had sent back a response nine words long and as final as a coffin nail: 'Main fleet and flotillas will come, as soon as possible.' What went unmentioned was the simple, immutable fact that with the main body of the Hochseeflotte still all the way back in the Jade, 'as soon as possible' would be well more than four hours at the absolute best. Hipper might as well have put the support of Ingenohl's Dreadnoughts on his Christmas list.

As if to reiterate exactly why that was A Very Bad Thing, Hipper was abruptly shaken out of his thoughts by the sensation of Seydlitz shuddering beneath him, the Rear Admiral briefly sent stumbling as yet another volley of British shells plunged down all around (if not on top of) the Battlecruiser. The deafening booms of God only knew how many tons of high explosives going off flooded Hipper's ears, along with the *sploosh*es and *pitter-patter*s of seawater being thrown sky-high and then raining down upon his Flagship and the groaning, creaking sounds of armor plating straining to hold itself together.

And then, as it had like clockwork since the engagement had begun, came Seydltiz's response. Though reduced from ten guns to six, the thunder of the Battlecruiser's main battery still drowned out even the detonations of the enemy's shells, and for an instant nothing could be heard over the bellowing roar of a half-dozen twenty-eight centimeter guns firing as one, turrets Anton, Bruno and Cesar lashing out like the fury of the Almighty at the pursuing British.

Despite the desperate situation, Hipper felt a savage, almost feral grin flash across his lips as Seydlitz reminded the Royal Navy that she wasn't out of the fight just yet. The Battlecruiser still had plenty of strength in her punches: huge gouts of flame and smoke and seawater blasted upwards towards the heavens whenever her shells thundered down upon the lead ship of the enemy line, and in the blink of an eye the closest of the pursuing Royal Navy Battlecruisers' deck's was left aflame, the mighty HMS Lion starting to develop a clearly noticeable list to her port side.

Seydlitz still had plenty of speed in her legs, too: despite the pounding that the British were doing their level best to dish out, despite the flames that shot hundreds of feet skywards from the wrecked remains of turrets Dora and Emil, and despite the fact that neither Hipper nor anyone else in his command staff had heard anything from the steering room, Seydlitz was still moving at Full Ahead, was still pounding her way back towards safe waters at twenty-six knots, was still responding to her helm as if she were on a training cruise in the Jade.

Even as yet more British volleys fell all around her, and even as their shells drenched her in seawater and smashed against her armor belt and buffeted her with blast waves and heat and flame, Seydlitz soldiered on, her three remaining turrets still roaring out stern rebukes to the idea that the Royal Navy was anywhere close to laying her low, her engines still thrumming with power as she kept up the same punishing pace that she had for the past hour or more, her armor still keeping the worst of the endless rain of armor-piercing and high-explosive shells out.

And Hipper soldiered on with her, taking reports and barking out orders and commanding the battle unfolding around him. As long as his Flagship could continue, so could he. As long as she did continue, he would continue with her-

-"Who is Seydlitz to you?" Scheer's voice came again from…somewhere, from someplace beyond Hipper's memories. It was nothing more than a whisper in a hurricane, yet Hipper heard it as if he had thought the words himself, as if they had come from within his own mind. It was a clear, simple question, and Hipper tried to form a clear, simple answer-

-The day, at long last, was over. And Rear Admiral Franz Hipper wanted nothing more but to throw himself into his bed and sleep. As the Commander of the First Scouting Group finally put aside his papers and laid down his pen, he felt, somehow, someway, more exhausted than he had after the Battle of Dogger Bank. He supposed that it was the adrenaline, or rather the acute lack thereof: having the full might of the Royal Navy Battlecruiser Force doing everything in its power to send you and your entire command to the bottom of the North Sea had a certain way of keeping a man awake.

Today though? Today the First Scouting Group (and indeed the entire Hochseeflotte) was sitting in dock, its men having the exact kind of day that men spoke of when they said that warfare was 1% pure, heart-stopping terror and 99% boredom, cleaning and paperwork. There were no roars of cannon fire or booms of exploding shells this day, the fighting men of the Kaiserliche Marine left with no enemies to face except for the dirt and salt that soiled their ships' decks and the routine wear and tear that gnawed away at their ships' machinery and their own boredom.

Their officers, Hipper included, did have one further opponent to face down: the fleet's own bureaucracy. The Rear Admiral had spent the day cooped up in his quarters aboard Seydlitz, the Commander of the First Scouting Group partaking in the glorious and honorable duty of sitting at his desk for hours and hours and hours and hours upon end and writing his signature on the Heaven alone knew how many different kinds of files, forms and reports.

It was a duty that he had endured until he felt half (more than half) ready to simply doze off right there in his seat. As necessary as the work was, the sheer mind-numbing tedium was enough to make a man almost, almost wish that the whole of the Grand Fleet would come charging into the Jade: having to fight the entire Royal Navy would have at least been more interesting than another day of dull, banal monotony in the Hochseeflotte's home port.

Hipper might not have entertained such fantasies if such doldrums of pure, unrelenting ennui were rarer in Wilhelmshaven, but alas: in the recent history of the Kaiserliche Marine, '99% boredom, cleaning and paperwork', was, if anything, an underestimation. Admiral Ingenohl had almost never worked up the nerve to let his ships far enough out to sea for them to actually ever do anything of significance. And then, the one time that he actually had worked up his nerve, the Battle of Dogger Bank had occurred.

That had been enough to see the concept of actual combat sorties relegated to the realm of myth and legend for the remainder of Igenohl's tenure as Commander-in-Chief. And then, Admiral Pohl had somehow been even more hesitant to let the fleet out of the Jade, implementing a program that consisted of naught but the occasional training exercises and routine coastal patrols, all conducted almost entirely within sight of land.

On the brighter side of things, all that was set to change soon. For the first time in months, the papers crossing Hipper's desk had to do with more than the mundane matters of training, patrolling and maintenance. The promotion of Admiral Scheer to (and just as importantly, the departure of Admiral Pohl from) the position of Commander-in-Chief, long overdue, had finally taken place, and all signs were starting to point towards the Hochseeflotte at long last embracing the purpose for which it had been built.

But of course, no such leadership transition would be complete without the accompanying mountains worth of paperwork of all stripes. Between Scheer's ambitions for future operations and Pohl's…passivity towards certain day-to-day operational matters, there were stacks upon stacks upon stacks upon stacks of information and orders and strategic outlines that had had to make their ways around the Hochseeflotte's command staff.

Stacks upon stacks of intelligence reports outlining the suspected composition of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow; stacks upon stacks of repair logs revealing in excruciating detail the precise combat readiness of almost every ship in the Hochseeflotte; stacks upon stacks of papers marked 'Secret' or 'Confidential' that revealed Admiral Scheer's new vision for the Kaiserliche Marine and outlined the steps that he intended to take to start bringing it into reality; stacks upon stacks of ammunition and food and paint and maintenance part requisitions, and daily patrol schedules, and crew health exams, and the fleet's budget sheets, and the demands for information from the Kaiser, and the Reichstag, and the Heer…

God alone knew how many different forms that Hipper had spent the day reading through, analyzing, correcting, revising, requesting reevaluation of, asking for amendments to, signing, sending either up or down the chain of command…once again, a small part of Hipper nearly, nearly, wished that he was back at Dogger Bank. At least back there he had had the occasional catharsis of being able to apply very simple, 28 centimeter solutions to his problems.

Unfortunately, the Battle of the Endless Piles of Paperwork Adorning His Desk lacked any such moments of release, leaving the Commander of the First Scouting with naught but the unbroken tedium of sitting at the desk in his quarters for hours upon hours upon hours upon hours on end. That he was doing even more work than usual hardly helped matters: most of the time he would have been able to leave the majority of such clerical work to his Chief of Staff, but today's stacks were larger than even a man as capable as Erich Raeder was possibly capable of handling alone (and a not insignificant portion of them required the eyes and signatures of men that held ranks far above that of Senior Commander anyways).

And so the uninterrupted course of Hipper's full day, from the rising of the sun until the now, an hour long after its setting (at least according to the clock mounted on Seydlitz's bulkhead; God knew he hadn't been outside to see the actual sun), had been whiled away scribbling numbers into boxes and writing notes into margins and signing 'Rear Admiral Franz Hipper' onto dotted lines until his arm ached from the tips of his fingers all the way up to his elbow.

It was a duty done without disturbance, either: aside from Raeder and some of his other staff members coming around to deliver his breakfast, lunch and dinner, Hipper had spent the whole day alone in his quarters, scratching away at form after form, report after report, file after file, feeling the fingers of his writing hand go numb and stiffening to the point that he couldn't uncurl from around the pen that they held. Ah, the things he did for the fleet.

At least his quarters were decently comfortable: the residual heat from Seydlitz's engines and the watertight seals of her bulkheads saw to that. And as Hipper finally set aside his work for the night and part stepped, part stumbled, part drifted his way towards his bed, he felt his Flagship rocking softly beneath his feet, and he allowed himself a small smile as he was gently reminded that he hadn't, in fact, spent the whole day entirely by himself.

Seydlitz herself had been with him, and had made for more than decent enough company throughout the day. No one would ever outright call the Flagship of the First Scouting Group anything along the lines of 'cozy' or 'homely', but even sitting idle at the dock, her boilers unlit and turbines at total standstill, the Battlecruiser was far from being the dead, empty hulk of metal that a civilian or a landser might have confused her with. To be alone with the ship was to hardly be alone at all: the truth was that Seydlitz (in her own, strange, special, way) was just as lively as any member of her crew.

Part of it was her crew themselves, of course: you could hardly pack eleven hundred men into such a tightly confined space as a warship and not notice the fact that you were in the presence of, well, eleven hundred men packed into the confined spaces of a warship. Even at this late hour, squared away in his personal quarters, Hipper could easily pick out the signs that he wasn't the only one of Seydlitz's sailors still up and about: the footsteps of men wandering her hull, stretching their legs out; the scratching pens and shifting of paper from some of the neighboring quarters, hints of other officers trying that had been saddled with their own mountains of paperwork; the whispers that drifted through the corridors, traces of everything from late-night card games to crewmen giving reports to junior officers to young midshipmen coming up with plans for what to do on their off days; all sorts of little things that made sure that Seydlitz wasn't quite quiet, that reminded Hipper that her corridors and quarters were far from empty.

But it was far from the men alone that were bringing the Battlecruiser to life. There was so much more than just footsteps and whispers and scratching pens echoing around the Flagship: even as the darkness around her deepened, even as her turbines remained idle and her crew settled in for the night, Seydlitz herself remained awake. Maybe not in a way that anyone who had never gone to sea would (or could) have ever understood, but awake, and aware, and alive she remained.

There was a reason that Seydlitz's crew thought of her by name whenever they referred to her, called her 'her' and 'she' instead of 'it' or 'the ship', just as sailors had been doing since the dawn of recorded history. There was more, so, so, so much more to the Battlecruiser than just armor, guns and engines. Those who had never gone to sea might dismiss it as naught but silly superstition: a landlubber might think it odd, how sailors would speak of how 'healthy' their ships were, or how concerned they were with keeping her 'happy'; a landser might laugh out loud when they heard their naval counterparts talk about their war machines as if they were beautiful, noble ladies that needed their every whim cared for.

Indeed, that was exactly what many young sailors did when they first came aboard, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes as the superstitious old men of the sea spoke of the metal and wood and ropes and machinery of the ship as if they were bones and skin, limbs and organs and minds and even souls. But if they were good sailors, they learned quickly that that was indeed exactly what they were.

If they were good sailors, they learned quickly that the ship was alive, well and truly alive, and that they had better damn well treat her like it. There were consequences when you didn't: groans and moans coming from the hull plates; the steam pipes shrieking like banshees; the halyards and ropes and wires sounding like they were about to snap loose; the whole ship rolling in the lightest of seas; engines that didn't perform up to their design specifications, rattling and clanking and smoking and giving off unbearable heat; bulkheads that leaked; cabins that were as cold as ice.

The fresh-faced midshipmen and newly-assigned cadets that thought that it was all just 'irrational mysticism' could claim all that they wanted that it was just machinery that hadn't been sufficiently oiled and oversights during the construction process and sheer bizarre coincidences. But soon enough even the most doubtful among them would find themselves cursing and berating and swearing under their breaths at equipment that refused to get into order, calling uncooperative engines names and insulting the stubbornness of ropes that refused to tighten and imagining that there was some conscious force resisting all their efforts to make the ship comply with their will.

After the first few attempts to command the ship (or even simply just maintain it) by treating it as nothing as a pile of metal and wires to be brought to heel would end in hours of extra work, multiple broken tools, still malfunctioning equipment and a young man covered head to toe in all sorts of sticky engineering fluids, the young sailors would begin to learn. They would start to bargain with the engines, and negotiate with the helm, and beg and plead and ask ever so nicely of all the ropes and gears and valves and machines that they worked with to, well, work with them, taking that extra little bit of care in their labors in the hopes that the conscious force that they'd imagined the ship as having would take a liking (or at least a pity) to them.

It might not even be conscious, it might just be because everyone else around them (especially the old men who had been at sea for perhaps just a bit too long) were doing it, but over time the sailors would learn to treat the lady that they were sailing on well. They began to use 'Please,' and 'Thank You' and referring to the vessel with its proper, given name, just as they would when trying to get their fellow crewmen to work with them. It wasn't as if it would make the ship less cooperative, right?

And indeed, whether by coincidence or because the ship truly could hear their improved manners and could approve of their increased efforts, the men would find the ship running better: the hull would creak less; the hisses and whistles of the steam pipes wouldn't be ear-splitting shrieks; the wind in the halyards and the ropes and wires wouldn't seem as harsh; the rhythm of the ship rocking the waves became almost soothing instead of violent; the vibrations of the engines became steady instead of staccato, and their heat didn't scald or burn just by standing somewhat near it; the interiors stayed dry and warm…

'Good maintenance practices' a landlubber, an ignorant civilian or an dumbkopf Army grunt, might say. The ship taking a liking to them, the sailors started to think. It was a nice thought to have, that all the work you were putting in was being appreciated by the things you were working on. And from that thought sprung another: it wasn't quite right to think of the ship as being a 'thing', was it? Not with how much you talked to it. Not with how much you worked on it. Not with how much you relied on it when you were out in the wild blue sea. 'It', 'thing'.. words like that were too reductive. Too impersonal. Too inaccurate to what the sailors had begun to think of their ships.

And once a seaman began to have thoughts like that, once they started to imagine that their ships were more than just steel and wood and ropes and oil, they started to think about what they actually were. They imagined the ship having a mind, a heart, a soul of its own, and once they had had that thought, everything changed: the sounds of the engines stopped being just the sounds of the engines; the smell of the smoke from the stacks stopped being just the smell of the smoke from the stacks; the vibrations beneath your feet stopped being the just vibrations beneath your feet. It all became…alive.

It all became part of 'Her'.

It was Her sounds. Her scent. The way that She felt as She moved. Over time, you would only become all the more sure of it, that you could recognize all the little ways in which She was unique, that all Her quirks and habits and traits were so, so, so much more than just the byproducts of some discrepancies during construction or mechanical coincidences or anything else that could possibly come from 'just a ship'.

Could She be described to someone that had lived their life ashore? Could She be explained to someone that hadn't lived aboard Her? Could a sailor even describe Her accurately to himself? Probably not. Rarely, if ever, could a man name a specific time or place or reason as to when or why or even how however many thousands of tons of steel and guns and engines became She, but within a few months (a year or two at most) of going to sea for the first time, treating your ship as if it were alive, as if it could hear them and speak back to you, became as normal as breathing, became an irrevocable fact of life.

As did doing all that you could to keep her happy. An unhappy ship would damn well tell you that she was unhappy, with a creaking, groaning hull and shrieking pipes and snapping, whip-cracking ropes and wires and by heaving in the waves and by making sure that the engines ran wrong and that the quarters were cold and damp and dreary. Quite frankly, anyone that let their ship be displeased with them probably deserved the attendant misery: if a man ignored their oldest, closest friend screaming in their face that something was about to go terribly wrong, who's fault would it be when something went terribly wrong for said man?

But if you could keep her happy, if you could keep her fit and healthy and pleased with you…well, she'd let you know that, too, the sailors liked to think. If you cared for her, she'd care for you. Sometimes it would be dead obvious: if you went into battle with a ship that you'd looked after as if she were your own flesh and blood, she'd be all the more able to look after you, protecting you with the armor that you'd inspected, striking with the guns you'd calibrated, keeping moving with the engines you'd kept maintained.

Usually, though, it would be more subtle: routine repair work taking a few minutes less than it should have; a cabin staying warm and dry in the depths of a dark winter storm; lights that didn't flicker; boilers that burned that little bit hotter, letting you stretch your stores that little bit longer before you had to cake the whole ship in coal dust; and so many other minor, miniscule things that a man might not even notice yet made his life so much easier to bear.

Like, for instance, if a ship had a Rear Admiral aboard her that was going from dusk until dawn signing ungodly amounts of paperwork, the ship would make sure that none of the routine maintenance happening that day hit any snags that would require his attention. She would make sure to keep her rising and falling and rolling in the gentle waves of the Jade Estuary to a minimum so as not to disturb him. She'd keep his cabin warm, and her corridors quiet, and her lights bright and constant.

And when the Rear Admiral finally decided to rest, too exhausted to even bother changing out of his uniform as they laid back into his bed, it could be the feeling of their Flagship Seydlitz ever so softly rocking beneath him, the wind in her wires a soothing song in they ears as he drifted off to sleep-

-And there it was. That was his answer. His answers. Deep in his heart, in his gut, in his soul he knew that those were his answers: the memories he was seeing were of exactly what Seydlitz was to him. His pride and joy; his greatest privilege and heaviest responsibility; a peerless war machine; an unflinching soldier; a silent companion, yet perhaps the one closest to him; his Flagship; his duty station; his home; his helper; all those, and so many other concepts, other thoughts and ideas and desires and hopes that he couldn't quite find the right words for, all of them together at once and so much more besides.

And in the very instant that he realized that those were his answers, the cube put all of them, all of those dreams and wills and notions, into far more than merely words.

At the exact moment that Hipper's heart grasped onto all the things that Seydlitz was to him that she really, truly was to him, the Rear Admiral heard the most alien, the most otherworldly, the most supernatural sound yet from the little object in his hand. It flooded his mind, a sound like every bell in a cathedral ringing at once, like the trumpets of Heaven blaring down from the sky, like a capital ship's main magazine detonating, like a whole fleet firing broadside at once, and in that instant Hipper's whole world was noise, was pure noise, a noise that filled up every fiber of his being, drowning out everything else in existence.

And in the very next instant, Hipper felt the noise hit him. He felt a wave, a viscous, unstoppable tidal wave of pure force slamming into his chest, his gut, his face all at once: it was a sensation not all that dissimilar to the blast wave formed when Seydlitz's main battery fired a full volley (a force that in itself could knock a grown man flat), but far, far stronger, far, far more solid, as if the blast wave had become a fist of solid metal that was smashing straight into him at an incomprehensible speed.

Hipper felt himself going flying, the wave of unadulterated noise and energy and might lifting him off his feet and sending him soaring backwards, almost head over heels. A fraction of a second later, the middle-aged man of fifty-two years and eight months felt himself thudding down onto Seydlitz's deck, a wave of white-hot heat washing over him, as if something, something big, something filled to the brim with raw, unrestrained power had exploded in his face.

Instinctively, Hipper threw his arms over his face and chest, shielding himself as well as he could against any shrapnel or flames or further blast waves, a primal cry slipping past his lips as he braced himself for more noise, more fire, more insanity from the little glowing cube. But none came: the tidal wave of pure, unstoppable power that had almost swallowed him up an instant before passed on as quickly as it came, leaving Seydlitz's foredeck silent once more.

Not quite silent, actually: Hipper heavy, panting breaths, sharp and ragged as they passed through his clenched teeth, were far too loud for that. So were the frantic thumps of his hands against his chest and arms as he checked himself for injury. Finding none, the Rear Admiral's eyes flickered back upwards towards where the cube had been, blinking as they searched the still radiant blue-white light before him for some hint of what the hell the little glowing cube had done now.

He'd thought that it had exploded: the blast wave had been as hot and strong as a shell going off in his face, after all. But that initial assumption only served to redouble Hipper's shock as he caught sight of the cube, seemingly perfectly intact, hovering in midair exactly where he had been holding it a moment previously. It noiselessly spun and flipped and rotated around itself about a meter and a half above the deck, blue sparks drifting upwards from it like embers from a flame as arcs of white lightning darted through its heart and outwards towards and across its faces, all while the glow in its heart became as radiant as the sun, a pure white beacon so bright that it made its surroundings seem to dim, as if it were drawing all the light nearby into itself.

"What in God's-" "On your feet, Admiral." Scheer's voice pierced their way into Hipper's thoughts, and half a moment later he felt the rough sensation of the Vice Admiral grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him to his feet. Neither action did much to break the Commander of the First Scouting Group out of the mystified stupor that the cube had placed him in, Hipper only vaguely registering the next words out of his superior's mouth as he watched the hovering little cube begin to shoot beams of blue light out in all directions, wide bands of energy that looked almost solid, as if he could reach out and grab hold of them.

"Seydlitz will be out in a moment," the Commander-in-Chief commented, making a halfhearted attempt to brush the dust from Hipper's uniform as he did. "You shouldn't meet her on your backside."

"Meet her…?" Before Hipper could even start to digest Scheer's words, the cube decided that it still had one last trick to show off: the light filling Hipper's eyes suddenly turned blinding, the Rear Admiral raising his arms and hands to shield himself as the little cube's drama at last entered its final act. Near instantly, it had become all but impossible to see anything within the brilliant light that now shone from the cube in all directions, but Hipper thought that he saw a an array of blue-white beams radiating outwards from a single point somewhere within blazing radiance, right at its heart, right where the cube had been, and he thought that he saw that point rising higher into the air for a long moment, floating upwards towards the heavens…

And then, with a sound like that of a motor being near-instantly forced from idle to far beyond it's full power, like a turbine going from dead stop to about to tear itself apart in a split second, the point where all those rays of blue-white light met abruptly dived downwards, and as it hit the deck there was one last blinding, dazzling flash that left Hipper's sight full of flashing stars and pulsating black splotches.

Beneath his feet, the Rear Admiral felt Seydlitz shuddering, vibrating, shivering, a surge, a pulse, a wave of energy, of electricity, of some unknowable alien power traveling through her, radiating out from roughly the point where what must have been the cube had plunged itself into her hull, and for the briefest of moments Hipper thought he heard her armor groaning, thought he felt a living, almost human warmth coming off of her, thought that he saw her whole form glowing blue, just as the cube had done…

A few seconds later and a long, final moment of silence descended upon Seydlitz's foredeck. As the last of the light faded away and the last of the sounds went silent and the last of the Battlecruiser's buzzing ceased, Hipper found himself panting to catch his breath, the Rear Admiral blinking and shaking his head and clutching at his brow as he tried to make some sort of sense of what had just happened. The Commander of the First Scouting Group squeezed his eyes shut, almost painfully tight, for a long few seconds, attempting to force the stars and splotches out of his vision, attempting to gauge whether or not he had really just seen what his eyes told him that he had just seen.

And then, when he opened his eyes, any doubt whatsoever that Hipper had had as to whether or not the whole of the cube's otherworldly display had been some sort of stress-induced hallucination was instantly shattered as he laid eyes on a woman that hadn't been there a few seconds before.

A rather beautiful woman, actually. That was Hipper's first (and unbidden) thought as his eyes nearly bulged out of his head at this newest, strangest sight of what was rapidly becoming the most interesting morning of his life. She stood just about as tall as he did, perhaps a hair taller; she was lean, but not petite by any means; her hair was pink, of all colors, while her eyes were a deep blue, like the waters of the North Sea on a clear, cloudless day.

The woman was clad in full military uniform, though not quite what would have been Kaiserliche Marine regulation: she wore what could accurately be described as a navy-styled dress that bore a somewhat more than passing resemblance to the coat that Hipper and the other navy men present wore, although the coloration (white across her torso as far as the buttons, black around the sides and back) differed from the Admiral's pure black, and her sleeves, belt and necktie were more ornate than was the norm.

A plain black Commissar Cap adorned her head, and the filled scabbard of a saber her hip; her legs were clothed in what Hipper could only describe as armored, thigh-high stockings, with similar armor encasing her high-heeled shoes (the latter of which explained why she was a few centimeters taller than him); a long, flowing cape completed her outfit, complete with shoulder epaulets that bore insignias and rank markings that Hipper had never seen before and fastened with an Iron Cross-esque pin.

For the first few seconds, the Commander of the First Scouting Group could only stare at the woman in stunned silence, blinking stupidly with his mouth agape and his mind racing faster than Seydlitz's turbines as he tried to fit her abrupt appearance in with the rest of the morning's events. Who was she? Where had she come from? Had he simply missed her arrival amongst all the cube's insanity? If she was here now, why had she not been present when the cube's insanity had started? And where had the cube gone? What had it done to his Flagship? What had it done to him?

For the same first few seconds, the woman looked just as confused as Hipper did. She blinked, looking around at the men on the foredeck with her with an expression somewhere between wonder and confusion on her face. Her hands flexed and clenched uncertainly, and she raised them up in front of her, her eyes going wide as she watched her her own fingers curl and uncurl, as if she were seeing them for the very first time.

And then she looked up to find Hipper staring at her. And for what must have been the longest second in either of their lives, the two's eyes met, the three decade veteran of the sea that commanded the Hochseeflotte's First Scouting Group and the mysterious woman that had suddenly shown up out of nowhere on the deck of his Flagship at the end of what were probably the most bizarre sequence of events in the Battlecruiser's existence simply looking each other over in silence, until something clicked in the woman's mind.

"Salute, Commandant! Battlecruiser Seydlitz reporting in!" the woman declared, instantly snapping into the most rigid, textbook-perfect salute that Hipper had ever seen. On instinct more than conscious thought, the Rear Admiral found himself slowly returning the salute, Hipper's mind still racing to try and catch up with what the hell was going on. A million separate thoughts darted through Hipper's head as he tried to sort out the morning's madness: everything that his Chief of Staff and Commander-in-Chief and his Kaiser had said about the cube and what it could or would do, everything that the cube itself had done, all of the memories of his Flagship that had flashed through his mind that while he had been holding the cube, the woman and her sudden appearance…

Her sudden appearance in a place where almost no woman in the world would ever have been allowed to be in the first place.

Her sudden appearance at the end of all the cube's supernatural displays.

Her sudden appearance at the exact spot where the cube had disappeared.

Her sudden appearance right after the cube had disappeared into Seydlitz's hull.

Her sudden appearance almost immediately after Admiral Scheer had said that 'Seydlitz would be out in a moment'.

…wait, what had she just called herself?

"...Seydlitz?" Hipper breathed, blinking. Then he blinked again, his eyes narrowing as he focused in on the saluting woman in front of him. What on God's good Earth wa-no. No. No, this was ridiculous. She couldn't possibly be-

"Ja, Commandant!" the woman replied with a bark, ending her salute and snapping herself into straight-backed, parade-ground attention. Hipper's only response was to keep staring at her, as if that would make her sudden appearance make even the tiniest piece of sense. Raeder had said something about 'talking directly to the ship', but this couldn't be what he meant. It wasn't possible that-she couldn't have simply-there was no way-

"As I said," came the voice of Admiral Scheer from his shoulder, "You never would have believed me until you saw her for yourself."

Hipper turned to face his superior, a look of complete and utter disbelief painting his face. Surely the younger man wasn't saying what Hipper thought he was saying. Surely this wasn't the 'improvements' that Scheer had spoken of. Surely the woman before him wasn't-hadn't-couldn't have-from out of the cube? From out of the ship?

Scheer could only shake his head, shrugging slightly in resignation as he gestured to the woman in front of them.

"Admiral Hipper, meet SMS Seydlitz."

Comments and Reviews, Please! It gives me fuel to keep writing.

I would have finished this a couple weeks ago, but I got sick.

Also, Ao3 Link if FFnet ever finally kicks the bucket: /works/50448394/chapters/127466407