It took less than an hour's work to track down the original image. As far as memes went, it wasn't much of one: A reverse-image search yielded results only on a couple of facebook pages and a scattering of subreddits, often to a middling amount of attention. Thankfully, that meant less noise for Kaite Harmon to sort through, and she didn't have to put too much work in to get the original facebook post:
The Commissar's indomitable abyssal carrier group spreads terror across our tabletops!
Think you can take her? Join us for Valkyries of Ran pickup games, 11:30 AM every Saturday!
The post was almost two weeks old, buried under a series of announcements and promotions put out by a Chehalis game store. She knew the town, but didn't have an opinion on it: it didn't seem particularly unique compared to all the other pit-stops along America's highways, until the abyssal moved in. Maybe their tourism board could latch onto that once this all blew over.
Since the games store kindly provided Katie with an exact time and place to find Trinitite, planning an investigation was laughably simple. She cleared approximately three weeks on her schedule, plenty of time to learn anything she needed, and started packing her car. The thought of calling Brad crossed her mind, but she quickly dismissed it. Considering they were dealing with a hostile carrier, the Feds would no doubt plow into the small town with a 'subtlety' that would make Waco look reserved, and this needed to be covert. That meant the team had to stay small, and it couldn't get smaller than just Katie.
She smiled to herself. No, Brad was getting an upgrade to her deluxe sleuthing services, free of charge. Those FBI goons who'd dismissed her would be proven decisively wrong, the abyssal would be dealt with, and Katie would have all the proof she needed in showing that she'd solved this case, not the feds who'd hired her. If that manipulative scumbag's promises of credit were hollow, then a few leaks to some ears in the media could earn her all the fame she'd ever need.
So, she left for Chehalis without informing another soul. Was it risky? Dangerous? Absolutely, but that only made the trip that much more exciting. Katie left a note about where she was going and what she'd uncovered on the table in case the abyssal found her first, but she doubted anyone would have to read it.
She arrived Thursday, booking a cheap motel and spending some time familiarizing herself with the town's layout. She only had a few hours, so as far as attempts at getting the lay of the land went this one was pretty shallow, but it wasn't like Trinitite had grown up around here. No doubt it wouldn't take much exploration to reach her level of familiarity with the town.
Friday was a more focused search, locating the games store and investigating the facebook post in more detail. The largest clue, obviously, was the kid the monster was fighting in the image: Dustin LeMay, if Facebook's facial recognition software was anything to go by. He didn't seem to use social media, but his parents did, and the picture their posts painted wasn't very exciting. This was an average American high school grad who'd picked a local trade school over taking on any college debt.
It was difficult to judge what the human's relation with the Abyssal was. Dustin was glancing over his shoulder at the camera when the image was taken, his expression fairly neutral. Perhaps he was a random stranger the abyssal was playing against, or maybe he'd been seduced by Trinitite into sheltering her. Given his hobbies, The Monster probably wouldn't find that difficult.
Trinitite, unsurprisingly, was a ghost on social media. It took the PI two hours to confirm that, but it had been worth the check.
Finally, Saturday arrived, and the Private Investigator was ready to meet her latest target. Parking at a restaurant adjacent to the business an hour before the store opened, Katie started her stakeout.
"What do you think about Hawaii?"
"Huh?" Alex asked, glancing at Trinitite for a split second before his gaze returned to the road. "You mean, before the war, or the situation over there?"
"Right now." The abyssal clarified, scrolling back up to the top of the discussion. "The senate minority leader is arguing we should abandon it."
She'd been searching the Open Source Sailor forums for signs of her mother, widening her search to topics related to the state of the war in the US, rather than unidentified shipgirls in the country. Still no luck, but it had led to some fascinating reading.
"Er- Sarah," He tempered, "I don't really follow politics."
She knew that, of course, but with some of the idiotic things people were saying in the thread, the Wo-class felt she had to talk about them. It probably wouldn't be wise to get involved there, so Alex would have to endure her argument.
Hopefully he didn't mind too much.
"This isn't a political issue, though." The abyssal objected.
"It shouldn't be," Alex asserted, "but it is, unfortunately."
"You're right, I guess." Trinitite admitted. She knew the sometimes irrational moves abyssal fleets would make for the sake of inter-fleet politics, and had seen first-hand how much damage they could do, so seeing it in humanity wasn't too alien to her, but their methods were so strange to her. Watching their internal squabbles threaten even their own position on Hawaii brought the infighting that led to the crossroads test into a new light for the abyssal. Why weren't the humans she actually interacted with this irrational? "Still, you'd think they'd choose an issue with a less obvious answer to bicker over."
"The answer's obvious?" Alex asked. "What is it, then?"
"Keep holding Hawaii!" Trinitite stated, fighting to keep her voice down. "Yes, it's expensive, but there's a reason The Abyssals invested so much into putting an installation there in the first place. If you give Central Space, then the Aircraft Carrier Princess and others are going to use Pearl as a staging area to threaten the convoys running from here to Australia and Japan."
"You sound a lot like Dustin, there."
Despite herself, Trinitite couldn't suppress a laugh.
"Hey, what's wrong with Dustin?" Alex jovially asked.
"Oh, nothing!" The abyssal replied. It was just that the idea of comparing her expertise, honed by two years of instruction, training, and combat, to a human who just liked to read about this stuff… "Dustin thinks he knows all this military stuff, but-"
The Wo-class paused, realizing she was sailing dangerously close to saying too much.
"...he doesn't?" Alex provided, but the Wo-class shook her head.
"No, it's just a lot of technical details, you know?" Trinitite explained. "He reads the statistics that come in an aircraft or ship's manual and thinks they'll work exactly as they're supposed to in real conditions. That's very rare."
"So you've worked on ships, then?" Alex asked.
"Calling them ships would be generous." Trinitite lied, looking away from her phone and Alex. She knew that further embellishing her story wasn't wise, but that wasn't the main reason she was already regretting what she was saying. "We had a small trawler, and a launch we could use to motor between islands on the Atoll."
"I see." The human accepted the lie easily. "Still salty about his backfires?"
What?
"I am not!" The aircraft carrier defended. "I won that game!"
"Suure…" Alex supplied, a teasing smile emblazoned into his face as he swung the car into a speed-bleeding turn. Trinitite looked up from her phone, noting her surroundings once more. "...and we're here."
Initially, Katie didn't pay much attention to the vehicles entering the parking lot. The abyssal was probably technically inclined, but thinking she would know how to drive would be a stretch. That was why she was so surprised when her target left a car with a human, casually conversing with him as she sauntered in. She allowed the abyssal to remain unsupervised for a few minutes, using the time to record the suspect car's make, model, and license plate number, as well as a few other things.
The chime of miniature bells announced the investigator's entrance to the store, drawing the attention of the acne-scarred employee at the front desk. Katie returned his greeting with a silent nod, adapting a practiced nonchalance as she wandered into the colorfully-adorned shelves. While she started removing and 'admiring' the boxes to various board games, she focused her attention elsewhere: The conversations happening in the back of the store.
"I've got terrain for this game, since we know most naval battles don't just happen in the middle of the ocean." A human male said. A quick glance from the Pandemic box she was pretending to look at revealed the speaker to be a man in his late thirties, standing across a table from the target and the human who'd driven her here. "You ever heard of Geocraper? The scale isn't perfect, but they're great for making little cities for my fleet to defend."
"Those are made in Japan, right?" The other human inquired, "Must have been super expensive."
This human wasn't Dustin, meaning a fair bit of her research had gone to waste, but he was a similar age and build. Black, trimmed hair topped slim features, his skin tone denoting some kind of mixed-race background.
"Ehh, I only got a handful of this new. Most of it came from ebay." As Kaite carefully put the board game back on the shelf and picked out another to ogle at, the abyssal's opponent messed with something on the table. "See, I can get a port and an airfield set up here, and they could be great bombardment objectives."
"Eh…" the Wo-class interjected. "I don't know…"
Katie paused. Her reaction at the opportunity to attack- even fake attack- on civilians… it certainly meant something. She made a mental note to review this conversation in the recording she was taking, once she'd gotten more information.
"What do you mean?" The human questioned. "Abyssals love nothing more than bombing cities!"
"Not all abyssals!" The abyssal protested. "There's, like, the Northern Ocean Princess, The Supply Depot Princess, and the fleet at Singapore…"
"Sarah's a refugee from abyssals." Trinitite's accomplice provided. "Part of getting to control them is preventing them from doing that sort of thing."
"Hmm, fine." The abyssal's opponent relented. "I don't want to just do a regular death match, though."
"Too bad we don't have any transports." The Wo-class mused. "I've been wanting to try out convoy missions…"
"Yeah, that could be cool." The older human agreed. "Maybe we could use some stand-ins"
The three continued to arrange the game, Katie browsing the store's shelves as a couple more men trickled into the back of the room. Unsurprisingly, the thirty-something with the disposable income had a much larger fleet then the other two, and thus the Wo-class's abyssals collaborated with the Americans to attack a British convoy.
Unlike her earlier statements about hitting cities, this one probably didn't mean anything.
If the monster wanted to remain inconspicuous, she'd clearly chosen a bad place: The abyssal seemed oblivious to the not-so-subtle looks she was getting from other tables, but that could very easily be an act. She imagined it would be much easier to ignore that kind of thing if you could effortlessly pulp any would-be aggressor.
Katie didn't follow the game too closely, or the one after that, where the monster's little lackey helped her fight two other kids who seemed the same age as him.
Instead of the game, the PI focused on how Trinitite herself was acting. In the reports she read about her actions in the construction crew, the abyssal had presented as a shy, but generally likable and hard-working girl. It was the kind of act that made sense for someone trying to stay under the radar. Here, however?
"No, that's just wrong." The Wo-class asserted. "You can't fully replace carriers with land-based aircraft."
"If you're trying to bomb a country on the other side of the world, sure," Dustin countered, "but if you're just trying to defend your territorial waters, a regular airfield's going to be cheaper, more durable, and can launch more powerful aircraft."
"You're forgetting the defensive advantage of mobility." The abyssal asserted. "I always know where an airfield is, and can hit it from my maximum range. That's why the Midway installation was basically a non-factor after the first phase of the battle in 1942."
"That was an island, though! These things are flying off of airstrips deep inland, surrounded by a wall of s-400 and s-300 batteries to swat any carrier aircraft out of the sky!"
"No air defense is impenetrable, Dustin."
Her opponent didn't notice the meaning behind the Wo-class's comment, but to Katie it was blatantly clear The Abyssal was speaking from experience. She placed the D&D sourcebook she'd been looking at to suppress a shiver, wondering if she was talking about her own defenses, or those she'd observed in her travels through Washington.
The argument died when the game between the four started proper. There wasn't much more that caught her attention, any clues lost to a torrent of numbers and jargon. Looking up and watching the game in more detail would be too obvious, so the private detective was forced to quietly wait as the game played itself out. When it finally ended, the four continued to linger as they packed up their fleets, joking with one another about this event or that announcement. The conversation as they trickled out wasn't particularly productive: the abyssal's supposed shyness returned as discussion turned away from naval matters.
Katie continued to browse as her target left the building, allowing the abyssal and human- "Alex," according to overheard conversation, to drive away unmolested. She'd have to bug their car later, but for now the tracker she'd planted on her way in should teach her plenty.
She smiled, picking a Doctor Who-themed Clue box from the shelf and taking it to the front desk. It was barely the afternoon of day one, and she already had made amazing progress.
Perhaps the full three weeks she'd budgeted wouldn't be necessary.
I think I've done enough job with Katie's character that her decision to go it alone makes sense... for her. She's fun to write, if unpleasant, and I'm looking forwards to getting the interlude characters in general out of their position of relative neglect, eventually.