6th July, 1941.

"Frau Tirpitz! What the hell has happened!?"

Tirpitz stands firm, flagpole in hand. She salutes him and immediately answers, "Herr Käpitan zur See! Bismarck survived and has betrayed us! She has filled the heads of the other Schiffsmädchen with lies and taken every one of them with her to the Royal Navy! She has also abducted Herr Doktor Fritz!"

The officer balls his fists. "Scheisse… the Führer will be most displeased… do they also have the file?"

"Affirmative." Tirpitz says.

"Tirpitz, you were supposed to protect that file with your life! Only Fritz had access to that locker!" Her superior yells.

"…I…" The Battleship struggles to find the words. She's not quite as confident as her older sister.

"This… is not good…" he facepalms after taking deep breaths to calm himself. "You will be facing disciplinary action for this, you understand?"

"…Jawohl…" Tirpitz accepts her fate, whatever it may be.

On the way back, the Iron Blood Kansen become very intrigued with George's ship. Not all of them, of course, since Ark insisted all the new Destroyers stay on her ship for the journey back. George feels somewhat uncomfortable having all these former enemies on her vessel, but she trusts Bismarck enough to be able to control them.

Bismarck gets to the bridge with Fritz. George gets up and shakes his hand. "Doctor Fritz, I presume? I'm glad that you saw reason and came willingly. What's this?" She sees the file in his other hand. She sees the two letters VF on it, accompanied of course by the Nazi eagle. Seriously, they put that damn symbol on everything in Iron Blood…

Fritz explains, "This is a top secret file that only I had direct access to. I had my doubts for a while about wether I could actually trust Herr Hitler. It seems I was right to have doubts…"

George says, "Seems so. So, what's in the file?"

Fritz says, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to risk anyone hearing it who should not know. Call me paranoid, but this warrants it."

Bismarck backs him up, "Trust us, Frau George. He means it."

George, frustrated, says, "If it's so dangerous, why not just destroy it?"

Fritz cryptically answers, "Because its potential could change the war."

Nelson comes in after her tea break to find Victory smiling while working. "What's got you beaming like an idiot?"

"We've got him, Nelson. Dr. Fritz is in his way. I'm just hoping his device is what Anzeel needs, plus, his mind could give us another advantage." Victory answers honestly.

Feeling the excitement of potentially bringing back their fallen allies, Nelson hides it and huffs, "You get pleased far too easily…" she sits down to continue her work.

"It was your idea, Nelson." Victory deadpans.

"Yes, and it actually worked. If only your plans went that way." Nelson says, blushing slightly.

Victory rolls her eyes again, "If this idea of yours works, Nelson? I might give YOU a shoulder rub." She teases.

Nelson goes a red as her uniform and mutters, "As… as if you'd know… how to d..do it properly, idiot…" Victory chuckles to herself. She'll crack through her shell eventually.

Just then, a knock sounds on her door. Victory looks up and says, "Come in."

Bismarck walks in, watched closely by Nelson and George who had come in with her. She looks at Victory and says, "Kommandantin, Dr. Fritz would like you to read this. It's the top secret file he brought with him. It will need your approval."

Victory takes the file. She says, "VF?"

Bismarck informs her, "It stands for Vorrangige Forschung, or Priority Research in English. If you approve this, then Ärztin Anzeel and I will focus all of the lab's resources and time on it until it is done."

Victory says, "I see… I'd like for you to finish Nelson's idea first, but I'll give it a read."

Bismarck nods, "Jawohl, Kommandantin. Danke." She gives her the new Iron a blood salute and turns to leave.

Victory stops her, "Bismarck."

She turns round, "Ja?"

Victory smiles, "Thank you for everything you're doing."

Bismarck smiles, "After seeing what the Nazis are actually doing, I couldn't possibly keep supporting them." She leaves with George. Victory starts reading the PR file, her face making drastic changes with each paragraph. First, confusion, the excitement, then concern.

Nelson watches as she reads it. Deep down, she finds it quite humorous and… cute? She shakes her head and asks, "What's the matter? What's making you pull such annoying faces?"

"This is data for a new Kansen, but her ship doesn't exist." Victory says.

"… How is that possible!? Don't be daft!" She gets up and goes to her side to see for herself. She subconsciously puts her hand on Victory's shoulder and leans forward to read it. Victory smirks at the gesture, but doesn't mention it.

"Look, see for yourself. It has her name and everything." The Commander says.

Nelson reads it out loud, "Heavy Cruiser Roon? Huh… she really doesn't have a ship form… all that's in her design is a turret… how did they think this would actually work?"

Victory shrugs, accidentally making Nelson aware of where her hand is, making her retract it, and says, "Over on this page, they have written details of her length, beam, draft, propulsion, speed, range and even her displacement, as if she was real. Apparently we need something called Blueprints in order to construct her ship, and then she can be Awoken."

"And where do we find these Blueprints?" Nelson asks, fully invested.

"It seems, according to this, that we need to make them ourselves. I suppose we need to design her ship based on these exact specifications…" Victory guesses.

Nelson says, "So, are we going to do this?"

Victory responds, "Like I said to Bismarck, I want her focused on the current project first, then I'll approve it. I didn't even know what kind of effect of not even having existed on paper would do to a Kansen. We need to be careful with this."

Actually impressed by her caution, Nelson just takes the file and goes to sit back down. "I'll study this in more detail. You get back to work, Commander."

Victory salutes jokingly and sarcastically says, "Yes, Ma'am."

Bismarck returns to the lab. "I have presented the project to Herr Kommandantin. She says we should get this project finished first."

Dr. Fritz responds, "Good, I would as well, considering what we're are doing here." He presses a button on the fabricator and out comes some Quick Finishers.

Anzeel picks one up and says, "Ooh!" She inspects the drill-like contraption and asks, "So how does it work?"

"First we need to modify your Kansen Awakener. It needs a port added that will accept the device. With your permission, I will start on that." Anzeel nods and he starts to modify the machine.

Bismarck asks, "…Would it be possible at all if I can see the captive Siren?"

Anzeel says, "You'd have to ask the Commander about that one, Bis."

"…Bis?" The Battleship asks.

"Yeah, like it? My little nickname for you," Anzeel smiles.

"… I suppose…" Bismarck concedes. She remembers she's technically a prisoner here. She might as well just let her call her that. She walks out of the lab and George sees her. She asks, "Frau George, may I speak to the Kommandantin again?"

George nods, "Sure." She walks with her to Victory's office.

Hipper walks around looking for her little sister. She's about to give up and think that maybe Bismarck lied? How could she? She tricked them all! She has to get everyone together and go back! She-

"HIPPER!" Blücher suddenly yells out in pure joy as she jumps on her like an excited Labrador.

"Blücher! Get off, you…. You dummkopf!" She says while hugging her back and crying. In the distance, she hears someone sense shout out.

"SPEE! Over here!" Deutschland shouts out to her sister, who puts down the heavy boxes and runs over and hugs her closely with her huge gauntlets. Deutschland looks at her and says, "Are you alright, schwester!? What have they done to you!? Are they forcing you to work!? I'll kill them all!"

Spee deadpans, "I'm fine, schwester. I'm just volunteering. Want to help out, too?"

Deutschland says, "Me? Perform manual labour for these dirty tea drinkers!? Nein! And neither should you!"

"Would you do it to help me?" Spee asks.

As if she did a complete 180 on her personality, as soon as she heard that it's to help her. She huffs and storms over to the big box that Spee was lifting, grabs hold of it and starts trying to pick it up. Spee comes over, "Deutschland, maybe lift a smaller box?"

"Nein… I'm the big schwester, and I will handle the harder job!" Deutschland proclaims while struggling.

Spee rolls her eyes and picks up the box from the other side, making her sister think she's doing it. "Let's go."

"Hey, Spee, Look! I'm doing it! I am the greatest!"

Ark is with the Iron Blood Destroyers, showing them around. They get to the building all the base Manjuus live in and the little chicken things chirp happily to see new Kansen, regardless of their nationality. They flap their little wings and float up to meet them. The Destroyers, except Z2, all start happily laughing and playing with the squishy little feather balls. Ark leans on the wall smiling, she says to herself, "How precious…"

Warspite is taking a short walk to stretch her legs. She sees the silhouette of someone sat on the edge of a pier, just staring out at the sunset. She approaches and sees she's an Iron Blood U-boat. At first, she thinks maybe it's U-556, but upon further inspection she sees it's a different one.

U-96 looks at her, having detected her on her sonar, then back at the water. Warspite sits down next to her. She's only slightly taller than the sub. She says, "You alright?"

U-96 frowns, "Why do ya care? You would've happily sunk me if ya'd found me last week."

"True, I probably would have sunk you, if that were even possible for a Battleship, but I wouldn't have done it happily. Plus, I would've made an effort to save you from sinking with your ship." Warspite smiles.

The Sub looks at her in surprise. "Yer a Battleship?" Warspite's height makes her look like a Destroyer.

Warspite chuckles, "Yes. Is it because I'm short? I get that a lot. So… what's wrong? Why are you out here alone?"

U-96 looks down and says, "…I did something I am not proud of…"

Warspite says, "I won't judge you. You can tell me."

"I… I sank a transport… full of humans… I killed them all…" U-96 tries to hold back tears.

"I see…" the Battleship says.

The Sub clarifies, "I… I thought it was a supply ship… I expected only the crew to perish… that got me thinking… what kind of ace am I if I'm slaughtering people who can't fight back? I ain't nothing but a murderer…"

"Look, U-96… We were at war. Plus, we've all done things we're not proud of. The best thing you can do is learn from it. You didn't know, how could you know? Just take solace in the fact that you won't ever have to do it again, now that we'll be focused on an enemy that has drastically different looking ships with no humans on them at all." She gently pats the Sub's back.

"How… did you know my name? Are you a psychic or something?" U-96 asks, confused.

Warspite stares at her for a few seconds, then points to the massive U-96 tattoo on the Sub's right leg.

"Oh… ja…" U-96 says, leading to both of them starting to laugh at the silly question, joined by Warspite.

The Battleship stands and offers a hand. "Come. You must be hungry. I haven't seen you eat since you got here."

Just mention of eating makes U-96's stomach growl like a lion. She blushes, "I… suppose the old tank does need refuelling..." She jokes as she's helped up by Warspite and then walks to the cafeteria with her. U-96 asks, "So what kind of food do you have here? I haven't heard the best about British food…"

Warspite scoffs, "Well, clearly the ones who said so have never tried food prepared by the Royal Knights and Maid Corps."

U-96 says, "Ok… I suppose I can try it. After all, what's the WURST that could happen?" She jokes, followed by more laughter from both of them.

While they're eating together, Warspite asks, "So… what it is like being a submarine?"

U-96 says before taking a bite of her food, "Ya think submarine combat is fascinating, huh? Maybe you could come with me if I'm ever given a sortie."

Warspite chuckles, "Me? Oh, I can't stay underwater very long. I'm no Submarine."

U-96 smiles, "Well then, what do ya say about me teaching ya how to dive like a pro?"

The Battleship thinks about it and says, "Maybe some day…"