Certainly, the mysterious Wo merited further investigation.
She quickly closed the distance, finding the Abyssal-themed box among several similarly decorated others, the collection of containers filling about half of one of the store's shelves. Interestingly enough, the image on the front wasn't a photograph, the abyssal's stern expression formed from dozens of loose, colorful blotches that added even more to the surreal nature of the image. Her rigging's tentacles had almost no detail at all, while behind her the vague impression of distant squalls was given as sheets of gray intercepted with a dark blue sea. The glow in one of her eyes seemed to be leaking, somehow, highlighting her face and rigging in ways that would be impossible in real life. Next to the stoic Wo, a scowling Ru-class dominated a second box, lightning intercepting with broad streaks of red that started at her eyes and disappeared at the cardboard box's edges.
The two were among several other similar boxes, decorated with stylized, skin-tone faces she didn't recognize or the blocky, imposing forms of human Steel-hulls. She thought she recognized the Carrier on the 'Kido Butai Starter Pack' from the Battle at Bikini, but wasn't entirely sure. Alongside the not-quite photograph, the box was decorated with a descriptor, a fleet title like 'USN '40s,' an ensign, and a bold, stylized label:
"Valkyries of Ran..." Trinitite whispered, wondering what the fleet who made this were basing the name off of. The name was quickly added to her research list, but she figured she could learn more if she inspected the box itself.
Perhaps reaching for the Wo-class Box would be a bit suspicious, but she couldn't help herself. The woman on the box didn't particularly look like her sisters… but the grim seriousness in her expression, imperious pose she struck, and way she seemed to be ignoring the world around her… it reminded her of Hypocenter, somewhat. It was odd that a human would make such a neutral depiction of one of her kind, especially in comparison to the snarling battleship right next to her. That alone meant there would be no harm in inspecting it, right?
As she bent over to grab the box, however, another detail suddenly caught her attention.
Maybe the 40k boxes had lowered her standards, but thirty-six dollars suddenly felt remarkably reasonable.
"Interested in the Abyssals, huh?"
Trinitite jumped at the voice behind her, leaving the box on the shelf as she spun to reveal its source.
"Well, it's not- I mean…"
What kind of response could she give? Had the Wo-box been some kind of cleverly-laid trap?
"Don't be embarrassed." The human chuckled, waving off Trinitite's desperation. Judging by the name tag that decorated his rounded body and that he'd been previously manning a post behind the building's cash register, he must have been an employee of the local fleet. "I know plenty of people who like to play the bad guys on the tabletop. Even ignoring all of 40k, you should have seen some of the ISIS or Taliban armies I saw on forums a few years back."
"Oh." Trinitite replied, relief preventing the abyssal from wondering what those two fleets had done to be compared with some of the princesses she knew of.
"You know," he continued, looking down at the two-dimensional Wo-class, "it's actually a good idea to start with abyssals."
"What?"
Wouldn't the wargame's makers want a buyer to prefer the human-aligned fleets?
"Yeah." He scooped the Wo-box off the shelf, turning it over to reveal a photograph of Two miniature Wo-class carriers, surrounded by a sparse collection of escorts. One was standing straight, hands resting on her cane, while the other was holding hers by the staff, pointing the crook menacingly towards an unknown object as she took a step forwards. Trinitite didn't recall ever doing that, but it looked kind of nice, now that she was viewing it. "They've got these interchangeable bases that represent their hull forms."
He pointed to one of the miniature abyssal's feet, where a long, rectangular base portrayed dark gray waves and the blackened form of a Shoukaku Class's flight deck. "That's a Lexington, I think…" The abyssal felt something in her bridge twitch at the obvious misidentification, but she had the presence of mind not to correct him. "...and that's a Graph Zeppelin class."
"I see." She replied, even though she wasn't entirely sure about the significance.
"There's a total of six bases for the Wos in this box set, meaning that before buying a shipgirl aircraft carrier," He motioned to the boxes around him, "you can see how they'd play by building a fleet list with one of your Wo's as an… Essex, for example." He finished, motioning to another box, a brown-haired woman carrying a camouflage-painted rifle dominating its cover.
"Oh." She replied. "It's a good deal, then." That probably meant there was only one Essex base in the box set, but she could probably get away with portraying Firestorm as a Lexington class, right? She'd had the 8"/55 guns for it, after all, and Trinitite doubted her sister would have taken a comparison to their mother badly. The box did have a Lexington-class base, didn't it?
"It is." he replied, before tempering "They don't have the unique abilities the named ships in the other boxes have, and you don't get national bonuses, but you can control the weather conditions, so there's that."
Trinitite had to hide a chuckle at that. Did humans really think Abyssals had any control over their princess's weather patterns? More than once, she'd wished that they did. Imagine the advantage of not having to turn into the wind to launch a deck full of Hell Divers, instead forcing the headwind to turn to you instead!
"Overall," The human pressed on, "Abyssals are going to be the most flexible and easiest to start with, while Steel-hulled fleets are theoretically the most powerful, but very tricky to use properly, and classic shipgirls are somewhere in-between.
"Beyond that," He continued, pointing to the words '.STL LINK INCLUDED' painted onto one of the corners. "If you want another, say, He-class, you could bring the manual to the desk and we'd print out a resin figure for you."
Print one out? Trinitite had used the library's printers to get a resume during her job hunt, but she had no idea how one would build a machine that could print… solid objects, instead of just ink on paper. She was tempted to take him up on that offer just to see such a machine in action.
"...Of course, you could also drop the six dollars for a higher-quality figure." He pointed towards a smaller box, decorated with the same fake-photo of a wo-class. "She'll be in a different pose and higher quality, plus you can get more bases for the ships you have!"
"That sounds pretty good…" The Wo-class acknowledged, trying to sound skeptical despite being taken up by the human's enthusiastic tone. Maybe she'd consider a third Wo-class, to represent herself, after she'd filled out the rest of the crossroads fleet. And besides, she could only really afford the 'Abyssal CG starter set' at the moment.
Trinitite suddenly realized she'd already decided to buy it. Sure, she didn't have much money left, but she was going to be paid soon, right? Whatever silly rules this 'Valkyries of Ran' wargame used, the Abyssal didn't really care. These weren't really to move around a tabletop, after all. The idea of having something to link her to her late sisters, to help herself remember them and her other fleetmates… it outweighed the modest cost, in her opinion.
"Great!" The employee replied, returning the box to its place on the shelf. "We're trying to start some pickup games on Saturday mornings if you're interested."
As he left, greeting another human who'd wandered into the store, Trinitite picked up the box itself, examining the simple image of the Wo-class further. She turned it around, confirming with the photograph on the back that it had what she'd thought: Two Wo-class carriers, a He-class light cruiser, two I-class destroyers and a Ha-class. She wouldn't have any use for the Ha, and the destroyers themselves seemed a lot smaller than they should have been, but those were fairly minor gripes.
Convinced, she tucked the box under her arm, smiling to herself as she brought it to the cashier.
At first, Alex had thought the night had been a disaster.
First, he'd made a lame joke about abyssals to someone who'd lost their home to one. In hindsight, her reaction hadn't been as good as he'd initially suspected, and the fact it had taken him so long to realize it only made the situation feel worse. Then, he'd had the horrifying discovery that his coworker didn't even know what fiction was, with the dubious exception of a movie from the 80s. On top of that, she'd found issues with some very foundational aspect of 40k, which was concerning in it's own way. Sure, asynchronous activation existed, even in a lot of similar games like Kill Team, but to him it didn't seem like she was letting it know that she preferred that system. No, the Woman acted like the idea of tabletop wargames was extremely new to her, which meant that the wargames she was actually familiar with must have been much more… intense.
It would explain why she looked so fit, though.
Putting all those factors together, it was very clear to Alex that the person Sarah referred to as 'Mother' hadn't raised her properly at all. Hell, this might be assuming too much, but perhaps she'd been abused before the abyssals came along!
He only felt worse when Sarah abruptly stood and left, abandoning the game despite how much he tried to walk her through it. At first, he'd been confused. His coworker had seemed interested in the game so far, but like a switch had been flipped, she'd gotten up and just… walked away. Had he just been really bad at reading her, and hadn't realized how much he'd been boring her?
That worry, at least, appeared to be unfounded. A glance over his shoulder revealed that Sarah was tucked into the warhammer section, his gaze drifting downwards as she leaned forwards to get a better look at something.
…
He suddenly realized what he was doing, cursing his hind-brain as he focused back on the battle on the table in front of him. Virgil's breachers had taken a beating as he'd concentrated his fire on them, but the pair of survivors were still clinging onto the objective, their morale higher than it had any right to be. Virgil had taken advantage of that by positioning his force behind more advantageous cover, making a run by Alex for any objectives himself a daunting task.
Honestly, part of him had wanted to hurry up and lose so he could pull Sarah into another game, so that was probably why Virgil ended up picking his forces apart so quickly. Still, when Sarah returned to the table, paper bag in hand, he'd still had some Skitarii left.
"Things aren't going well?" She had asked, his dire situation obvious even to the most casual observer.
"It's all over but the dying, I'm afraid." he reported, knowing the ancient reference would be lost on her.
As if possessed by a second wind, he seemed to do better that turn, pushing Virgil and finally breaking that squad of breachers on the first objective. It wasn't enough to stop The Tau from grabbing the rest of the macguffins, mind you, but enough that he hoped he'd left a good impression as the game rolled to an end.
Cameron's World Eaters and Dustin's Tanith First were still trading shots at the other table, but he was able to distract Dustin for long enough to ask if Sarah could borrow one of his unused guard armies. He'd been all too willing to help, flooding Sarah with details of his Armageddon armored and Valhallan artillery before Alex had reminded him he still had his own game to play. They spent the rest of that time pairing one of those army lists down to 15-hundred points, to bring it down to the level of Alex's underdeveloped Mechanicus list.
That ended up being harder than he'd anticipated.
"No, I'm keeping the artillery." Sarah insisted, the woman closely inspecting the massive, show-speckled form of a Basilisk SPG. "I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to do as much damage as possible from as far away as possible."
"We'll have to strip away most of everything else…" Alex tempered, flipping through the codex Dustin owned. "And Valhalla's strength is in all that infantry you're discarding."
"Hmm…" Sarah seemed to consider Alex's point, but dismissed it almost just as quickly. "You have all the screen we'd need."
By consensus, they'd all agreed that the next game would be Cameron's Khornate horde against both Alex and Sarah, to simultaneously get her into a game and circumvent the… incomplete nature of Alex's list. What actually happened was Sarah's insanely unbalanced collection of heavy artillery on one quarter of the map, while Alex's collection of light infantry in the form of Skitarii sat on the other.
It should have been a slaughter. Sarah's artillery was dreadfully exposed, the only thing standing between the fragile guns and Cameron's mechanized Berserkers were a flimsy command squad and a gaggle of conscripts. At the other corner of the table, Alex's mechanicus forces stood as close as they could to the Valhallans, but deploying to fully screen his coworker would practically surrender the objectives to Cameron.
However, when Alex looked across the table at the beginning of his friend's first turn, he caught Cameron bearing a knowing smirk… before he piled all three Berserker-loaded APCs on top of Alex's army, seemingly ignoring the threat Sarah's big guns possessed. It was still a slaughter, but with Sarah's battery of big guns free to keep firing unmolested throughout all five rounds, it was a double-sided one.
Blood for the Blood God, indeed.
A few of Cameron's other units spilled around the charnel house Alex's army had turned into and into Sarah's loose blob of conscripts, just to get her more involved, Alex guessed. They predictably broke immediately, but Sarah took the news that her Commissar could just execute them to prevent a rout disturbingly well, and the survivors proved to be a good enough meat shield for a turn until her artillery removed both the marauding raptors and the conscripts from the table. It was blatantly against the rules, but she hadn't known that when she'd announced her orders and everyone else found it funny enough that they'd let it slide.
With the forces of chaos bloodily vanquished, the night came to an end. His Mechanicus were tucked back into their repurposed tackle box, the guard Sarah had borrowed was returned to Dustin, and the young woman had stood, paper bag in hand.
"This was nice!" Sarah had said, before her expression fell into an apologetic frown as she looked to Alex. "I, uh, won't need a ride to my house, though."
"You won't?" Alex asked, suddenly confused. Wouldn't she need a ride back to the south side of Chehalis, at least?
"Yeah, my… house isn't too far from here." She replied, oddly hesitantly. "Thank you for the offer, but…"
"Alright." Alex replied, once again suddenly unsure if he'd done something wrong. "Uh… good night then."
"Good night, Alex." She replied, her tone friendly enough that he wasn't sure he'd screwed up that badly. "I'll see you later. It was nice to meet you all, Virgil, Cameron, Dustin." She nodded to each of Alex's friends, their goodbyes following her as she carried the brown paper bag out of the shop. Predictably, their goodbyes turned into teasing Alex once his coworker was out of earshot, but he'd expected that.
Driving back home, alone, Alex thought back on the night. It was clear his Mechanicus list needed better anti-tank ability, as well as a bit of armor of his own, but that would have to wait until next payday. He'd have to bring his Adepta Sororitas next time, where he wouldn't be hampering everyone else with an underdeveloped list.
The games only consumed a small amount of his thoughts however. The rest were focused on Sarah. She'd seemed to enjoy herself when she'd been manning Valhalla's guns, and had seemed to have left on good enough terms, but the more he learned of the woman, the deeper his concern over her past became. His Father had always warned him against getting too involved with women with psychological issues, but…
He glanced down to the passenger seat, his purchase for the night sitting where he'd been expecting Sarah to.
'Valkyries of Ran,' huh? He'd heard of it, but hadn't thought to try it out until he'd gotten a glimpse of Sara's purchase. Anyways, even if he never got the opportunity to play with Sarah, he could probably get Dustin to grab a starter set.
And thus, our poor Wo lost her first duel with one of the most dangerous types of humans in existence... salesmen. Let's hope her encounters with more dangerous beasts, such as Lawyers and Taxmen, go better.
Anyways, judging by the mistake I made in the last chapter, it's clear that I could have messed up here, too. Please let me know about that, so I can lampshade rules violations, at least. Accuracy is pretty important to me, after all, and I do go back and correct serious errors that are pointed out to me. Hopefully I can catch them in my research while I'm writing the chapter, but I haven't really had as much time for research as I used to, so your critiques have been invaluable!