8779. Izumo will be in the docks for the next few months thanks to the Abyssals ambushing her convoy. While she recovers, Admiral Goto would like a full report on just how recon satellites, planes, and submarines managed to miss three battleships and two heavy cruisers.

South China Sea.

Convoy SBHCM-X4 cruised through the ocean's calm waters, the six bulk carriers and one containership led by the destroyer Ningbo and Izumo. They had left the Philippines eight hours ago, and so far everything was going smoothly.

"Bloody Hell, not again!" groaned a voice behind her, followed by the sound of steam escaping into the atmosphere.

Well, almost everything, thought Izumo as she turned to her teacher. Kongo had just come off of a two month patrol of the SCS and her condensers were in need of serious repair. Under normal circumstances, that would have allowed Kongo to get repaired by Delta at Subic Bay before returning home, but this convoy was high priority, and the Vietnamese had demanded a powerful escort. Thus, Kongo had only gotten a temporary fix for her condenser before being sortied out. And now it looked like that patch was failing.

"Kongo-sensei, are you alright?" asked Izumo, turning around to sail alongside her mentor.

'I'm fine, Izumo-chan." wheezed Kongo, steam slowly spilling from her ears. "Just a little hot under the collar. That's all."

Izumo looked Kongo over. Her forehead was covered in sweat, and Izumo could tell that the older battleship was suppressing the urge to start panting.

"Your condenser's blown, hasn't it?" at Kongo's silence, she continued. "Sensei, you must return to base."

"Now, just wait a minute, Izumo-chan." said Kongo. "It's just a little heat, I can take,,,"

Before she could say anymore, a huge plume of steam billowed out of Kongo's ears, as if one of the destroyers had turned on their smoke generators.

"You were saying, sensei?" asked Izumo. "You need to return to Subic. You are in no shape either to maintain speed with the convoy or in a battle."

"I can't just abandon you with this convoy by myself, can I?" asked Kongo. "What kind of a teacher would I be?"

"Sensei, what was the lesson you taught me about maintenance?" said Izumo. "A week in for repairs is better than..."

"An eternity on the seafloor." sighed Kongo. "Ah, irony. The student is quoting lessons to the teacher."

"All because I had a very good one." said Izumo, grinning. "Sensei, return to base. Take Nashi and Momi, and I'll inform the Ningbo that you'll be leaving us."

"You sure about this?"

"Of course, sensei." said Izumo. "After all, what could go wrong?"

Four hours later...

Izumo cursed her words as she dodged another Abyssal salvo. Her scout had determined that they were facing three Ta class battleships and two Ne class heavy cruisers. How such a force had managed to breach one of the most heavily patrolled sea lanes in the world was anyone's guess, but Izumo currently didn't have time to ponder that one. They were outgunned and outnumbered, and planes from either Junyo or the Liaoning were at least forty-five minutes away. And the convoy didn't have forty-five minutes. If she didn't do something, she and everyone in the convoy would die. Looking once again at the line of enemy ships just now at the horizon, she made her decision.

CIC, CNS Ningbo.

"Sir, I have a transmission from Izumo."

"Put it through, Lieutenant." said the Ningbo's captain, holding is radiophone to his ears.

"Captain, I need you to turn 60 degrees to starboard and lead the convoy to safety.." Izumo's static-laced voice said on the other end. "I've instructed our remaining destroyers to follow you and lay a smokescreen for cover."

"And what about you?"

A sigh came though on the line, and Izumo answered him. "I will delay the enemy."

Izumo broke formation as the convoy turned, bringing her guns to bear on the leading cruiser. Checking her radar, her turrets changed elevation, and then, nine 16-inch shells screamed out of their barrels and through the air, landing slightly behind the cruiser. As her fire control calculated new solutions, a calm voice spoke through the chaos.

I am battleship Izumo of the Japan Maritime Self-defense Force. This convoy is under my protection, and the only way you'll get to them is over my sinking corpse!

As the range closed, she focused on the cruisers. She could kill them far easier than the battleships, and every ship she sank before they inevitably killed her would be one less chasing the convoy. Pouring on steam, she accelerated to 32 knots and brought her forward secondary turret into the fight, aiming for the cruiser's weaponry. After a few more minutes of the bombardment, the cruiser faltered as her shells hit something important, gouts of flame shooting out from the cruiser's "B" turret. Any thoughts of celebration, however, were dashed as several shells from the Ta's slammed into her, causing her to grunt in pain.

"Oooh, you like to play rough, eh?" said Izumo sweetly. "Alright then. Let's play rough!"

Another salvo flew at the cruiser, and while at first it looked like they hadn't hit anything important, a huge column of flame erupted from beneath the cruisers' deck, consuming the Ne in a fireball and of the SCIENCE! girls would have been proud of. Turning her attention to the other cruiser, she saw it fall behind the line of Ta's that were now steaming straight at her.

'My, my." said Izumo. "Just when I thought you Abyssals were getting soft on me. Bring it, you washed up flotsam!"

Meanwhile...

Kongo groaned as her machinery protested the torture she was putting it through. When the distress call had come in, she had immediately turned around and left her escort behind, stuffing her boilers with as much steam as they could handle. Her student was fighting an enemy that outmatched her in every way imaginable, and she was the only one who could help.

I won't be too late this time, not today! thought Kongo as she gritted her teeth. Meanwhile, in her engine room, Kongo's chief engineer watched as her turbines rotated at a blistering pace, driving the screws through the water at 33 knots.

"Tell the fireroom I want another ten pounds of pressure on this meter, now!"

"Sir!" yelled his assistant. "We can't give her anymore! She'll fly apart!"

Knowing that Kongo wasn't going to stop until Izumo was safe, he gave one more glance at his girls' heart before he gave his next order. "Fly her apart then!"

Izumo shuddered as another shell slammed into her, knocking out another secondary gun. An instant later, her own guns roared in response, straddling the second Ta class. The battle had gone well at first, with a lucky shot breaking the leading battleship's back, but the Abyssals had retaliated by taking out her radar and two of her turrets. She only had her "B" turret left, and it's accuracy had gone down since its fire control connections had been severed. As more shells from the cruiser slammed into her superstructure, she directed what was left of her secondary's to switch targets to the lighter Abyssal.

"You're going to better than that!" she yelled as "B" turret scored another hit.

The Abyssals continued the pour their fire onto the lone battleship. The battleground was wreathed in smoke, broken only by a light breeze. With each salvo, the Abyssals expected to smoke to clear and reveal the Kanmusu's sinking wreck. However, all they received were feelings of shock when they saw that Izumo was somehow still afloat and defiantly firing back.

The battle waged on for another hour, as one of the battleships and the remaining cruiser succumbed to Izumo's fire, leaving her and the Abyssal flagship, which grinned as she sized up her opponent. Her comrades might be gone, but they had not gone quietly. Izumo was dead in the water, her one remaining turret jammed to starboard as fires ravaged her superstructure. She doubted that Izumo was even fully conscious, given that the was making no effort to clear the blood and oil from her eyes.

No matter, thought the Abyssal.she will die nonetheless. She did put up a good fight though. I'll have to ask the Director if she can corrupt her soul once she sinks-WHAT!?

Any further thoughts were drowned out as four 14-inch shells splashed into the water in front of her. Realizing that another opponent had arrived, the flagship turned to face the newcomer head-on. It was only when she was halfway though her turn that she realized her mistake.

Izumo was barely coherent. She couldn't move her guns, or her rudder. All the Abyssal had to do was stay away from "B" turret's arc and she would have surely sunk her in a few more salvos. But, as the Abyssal turned, she brought herself into "B" turret's sight, and Izumo, using all the will she had left, fired one last salvo. The shells soared out of their barrels and pierced the Abyssal's hide, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that ultimately reached her aft magazine. The last thing Izumo saw was the Abyssal vanish in a brilliant flash, and then the world tuned black.

Yokosuka

Admiral Goto stared long and hard as he read the report. Izumo was going to require virtual rebuilding to heal her injuries, and she would be out of action for at least three months, probably more. The normal anger he felt whenever any of his personnel were injured was exacerbated when Ooyodo had dropped off the Vietnamese findings on just how an Abyssal force had gotten so far into 'secured' territory. Apparently, an Vietnamese Air force plane had sighted strange floating objects near the Abyssal's suspected entry point, but the report had never reached Convoy Command, instead being tied up in the mass of paperwork. Goto angrily opened the tab on his computer to write his report to the Diet. One of his girls had almost sunk due to red tape, and he was going to make sure some heads would roll, lest the next time they wouldn't be as lucky.