12102. Whirlwind, how, just how?
12102a. "Trickster gods probably," - Whirlwind
12102b. For future reference attempting summons, particularly when not in your own world, should be carefully planned. Somehow Whirlwind managed to not only create and summon sisters for another world's Shimakaze, but also gave practically every light ship in that world hydro jets, and summoned other uncompleted, scrapped or in some cases fictional sisters
12102c. "Trickster gods," - Whirlwind
Rule by Ghrathyn
Watching for a moment as the blonde destroyer girl fled, Summer shook her head, turning back to the mob of shipgirls surrounding the one that had been summoned, a cruiser of some type.
Pushing away from the wall where she had been leaning, she followed after the fleet destroyer at a more sedated pace, eventually finding her pouting at the ocean, hugging one of the self-animated turrets that made up her rigging. "Want to talk about it, Shimakaze?" Summer asked.
"What's it to you?" Shimakaze grumped, turning for just long enough to glare at Summer before turning back to the ocean.
"Would you believe I know what it's like to be lonely?" Summer asked, "To not have a family?" When she got a head shake from Shimakaze, she sighed, looking out at the ocean herself. "It's true, before I awakened I never had any siblings, and my dad died before I was born. I had a mum, but I was three, maybe, when she fell out with my step-father, who never liked me. I've no idea why he took me with him, but it only got worse when he married a complete bitch of a woman. From a child's view, they looked like the Wests or the Moors Murderers, just waiting to kill me."
Shimakaze turned to face her, eyes wide with shock.
"They weren't that bad, but they probably could be classed as child abusers. Spreading tales, treating me as a live-in servant, ensuring I never had friends, books, toys or anything fun." Snorting, Summer shook her head, her short green-dyed hair brushing her cheeks. "It sounds like the start of a fantasy story, right?"
"Kinda… yeah," Shimakaze admitted.
"It wasn't, oh they never tortured me the way some scum do the kids under their care, but still…" she tipped her head back. "Even in a sea of people, one can be utterly alone. I don't know who said it, but it was pretty much my situation before awakening. It wasn't as dramatic as some of the other girls, but still, getting shot isn't fun, and one or the other of my step-parents managed to piss off the wrong person, causing that person to do a drive-by shooting in which I caught three rounds. When I woke up in hospital they told me both my step-parents were dead, but there was someone there from the navy to talk to me. It turned out to be HMS Umbra, who had been through similar herself; except her parents were murdered by demons hiding in human form rather just pissing off a gang or something.
"When I asked about family, she told me not to worry about it, after all, I had over three hundred sisters that would be happy to help, and that was just the local group." Summer smiled slightly and shook her head again. "If anything, that was severely underselling it when you consider just about every gun and torpedo destroyer after IJN Fubuki can claim her as a mother, making us all sisters, or at least cousins."
Shimakaze sighed, curling up again. "I don't have any sisters and… all I hear is 'stripper boat' or 'speed freak', and nobody does anything about it."
Shifting over, Summer wrapped an arm around Shimakaze, pulling her in close. "Feeling all you've got is your name and speed?" she asked gently, getting a nod as she rubbed the other destroyer's back. "I don't know about my alternate here, but there's a Russian destroyer, Tashkent I think, that's a speedster, she's a lone boat as well, so maybe you can talk to her about things." She shifted as Shimakaze leaned her head into her neck. "And I know you're not alone every universe, in mine they did make four of your class, in another we know of, SoDak risked herself to give you sisters."
Stepping into the base's mess hall and looking around, Summer narrowed her eyes at the shipgirls there before reaching into her hold through her navy BDUs pocket and pulling out an air horn. One long, loud (thanks to her speakers) blast later, she had the attention of just about every ship at the base.
"Right! For those of you that don't know me, I'm HMS Whirlwind, W-class from the Royal Navy. Specifically I'm from HMNB Devonport a couple of universes over and as of right now I'm telling you all, knock off the name calling towards Shimakaze. Yes I know how she dresses and her speed, don't make one of her strengths into something she hates."
"And who are you to tell us what to do?" a cruiser called out from somewhere in the back.
Summer turned to glare at her. "I'm a destroyer and she's my family, just as she's family to every other destroyer in here. Got a problem with that?" she asked. The cruiser, wisely, didn't say anything more.
Looking around at the group, Summer frowned. "Also, if you lot aren't aware, Shimakaze's speed is a major asset. She's the best surface recon ship you've got, she's fully capable of running messages, even lugging destroyers home, if there's a need and in a fight, with her three torpedo launchers she's probably the best one to flank around or blitz through enemy lines and sink their carriers or battleships if she can get a range on them." She looked around at the group. "Honestly, would you prefer her doing it to abyssals or coming after your afts?"
Watching Shimakaze run the line at top speed, only to nearly throw herself into a cliff, Summer shook her head. "Alright, Shimakaze, that's enough for now," she radioed to the other destroyer, "time to come in."
A few minutes later, Shimakaze skated across the foam to the beach and hopped onto the shore. "What was wrong with that?" she asked. "I did what you wanted."
"You did indeed," Summer replied. "However, did you notice a couple of issues you had?"
"Nooo…."
"That's why I called you in, Shimakaze, you're the fastest in this fleet, your top, emergency speed is nearly forty-one knots, but bear in mind that's your emergency speed, and you're over three thousand tons displacement, meaning you're not as agile as the smaller destroyers and agility can count as much as speed or armour in staying alive." She looked the blonde over, frowning slightly at the steam coming from the other ship girl. "You're also redlining your boilers when you run top speed, that's going to burn you out and land you in the repair dock or get you scrapped because there're no repair parts for you."
Placing a hand on the other girl's shoulder, Summer squeezed gentle, putting just enough force in so that Shimakaze knew the power she bore. "There's also the fact that we're destroyers, a good part of our job is to do escort or patrol, with the later running through it will just mean we miss things when we're in the position. Haste rather than speed wins there. Likewise with escort runs, we're tied to the things we're escorting, if we run off ahead a submarine or plane strike can slip behind us and kill our protectees." She shifted slightly, smiling. "I'm not saying don't use your speed, but make sure you use it right. Run messages, get people to safety, rapid recon ahead of a fleet or in battle getting to a good place to hit the enemy rear or their flag, don't burn yourself out on a speed high if you don't need to, and don't try to go everything alone."
"She's right, you know?" Another voice cut in drawing the pair's attention to a dark haired destroyer girl with a grey-green skirt held up by suspenders. "I would rather see you run to get people to someplace safe than just run headlong into an enemy fleet like a bull."
Shimakaze pouted at the other girl, making a growling sound, "Like you're such hot stuff, Miss Honour Student."
"I'm one of the few that's been standing up for you, Reckless Bull," the other girl responded.
"I don't need your pity!"
"It's not pity!" the girl yelled. "You're my sister, why shouldn't I look after you?"
Before Shimakaze could respond to that, Summer stepped in, placing fingers on both girls' lips. "I think that's enough," she said. Turning to the new girl, she removed her fingers. "I take it, Asashio, that there's a story behind this."
Asashio nodded. "During one of our training matches… Shimakaze charged the team I was on alone, if she had ended up in front of our entire group's firepower, she wouldn't be here." She shivered. "I-I was out of position and ended up intercepting her, and I saw… saw her turbines almost explode from training ammo."
Shimakaze froze in shock. "Y-y-you… I…"
Summer closed her eyes for a moment. "I don't think I've heard of a Shimakaze that had that issue…" she muttered before turning to Shimakaze. "I think you should see Akashi, Shimakaze, just see if there's any obvious issues with your turbines. If what Asashio said is right…"
Shimakaze nodded, still too shocked to really form a coherent sentence.
It had taken her two days to dig out Shimakaze's blueprints and another five to strip them part by part and rebuild them from her own blueprints. Now she was sitting in the summoning pool room with enough materials to make three more of the 'new' Shimakaze-class and hopefully enough to alter the existing one to the same standards, which made her wonder why, on summoning worlds, nobody else had tried this.
Letting out a breath, she checked her supplies again, making sure that there was nothing that she could see that could cause issues, including yanking the hard drive from the computer in the room and replacing it with one that only had the OS, music that would make sense for Shimakaze, the blueprints and pictures of the quartet she knew.
"Whirlwind?" the voice from the door had her turning around to find Asashio standing there. "What are you doing?"
"Hopefully I'll be giving Shimakaze a refit and some class sisters, some girls that'll give her what your sisters do for you," Summer replied. "You said it yourself; her boilers and turbines aren't designed for her speed. However in the world I'm from Britain had a major head start with regards to World War 2, between that and finding some twenty destroyer wrecks with better gear than we used…" she trailed off for a moment. "Between that fleet, honestly, Britain found that hydro-jets could be more powerful and more useful in some ways than standard props, even the ducted or screw types. They used the ones from the wrecks, the sixteen they got working, in the W- and Z-classes of the Warrior-class destroyers, but they took four apart and figured out enough from them and from others to refit everyone from Amazon down our line. They also outfitted most of the subs with them, though not the cruisers or heavier that they had already built because of the amount of reworking it would take. On the other hand, the Minotaurs, Ontarios, Lions, Vanguard and everyone since has used them, meaning our turbines are designed to work differently, at higher power ratings than normal." She smirked at the other destroyer. "It also means that we can more or less literally turn on a dime or go in any direction on a flat plane."
"Do you…" Asashio trailed off for a moment. "Do you want any help? I-I don't want to see her hurting herself like that again, and she's always so distant from everyone, it can't be healthy for her."
Summer arched an eyebrow at the slightly smaller destroyer. "Is that a bit of a crush I'm hearing in that worry?" she asked gently, causing the brunette to blush. Smiling at the girl, she shifted around. "Let's see if we can't get this done."
"What… happened?" Asashio groaned as she came to on the floor of the summoning room, feeling a little different to normal.
"Something went horribly right, probably," Summer grumbled, helping Asashio to her feet. "You okay?"
"Mostly… something's off, but I can't place it."
Nodding, Summer lent her a shoulder until they were at the computer where three new destroyers, ones obviously related to Shimakaze, though in much different outfits, were curled up together. "Well, the changes I wanted for Shimakaze at least worked for her sisters, these are Kitakaze, Sabakukaze and Arashikaze. Unfortunately I think something went sideways."
A few moments of tapping later, while Asashio studied the three new Shimakaze-class, all of whom were wearing what looked like plain t-shirts, tracksuits and what might have been running or cycling shorts with rigging distinctly like Shimakaze's, Summer groaned. "Did you find anything?" Asashio asked.
"Plans for just about every light ship class on the planet with hydrojets, which I not only erased but purged, and my personal stock, instead of being down about three and a half destroyers, is down enough to refit every one of those ships." Closing her eyes, Summer slammed her fist into the wall. "Bloody damned… I knew I shouldn't have anything remotely related to a chaos or trickster god involved. I forgot in some mythologies, Susanoo can be a trickster and likes mucking with Amaterasu." She sighed, shaking her head. "Fuck it, let's get these three to Akashi and see where things stand, because I doubt any admiral is going to be happy with their main fleet needing to relearn how to move on water."
Leaning against the wall as she watched Shimakaze interact with her new sisters, Summer smiled slightly. Even with the metaphorical strips torn off her for managing to muck up every destroyer, light cruiser, submarine and light carrier on the planet, at least some things had gone right. She still wasn't sure how she had managed to summon sisters for the other single ship classes.
Hearing space ripping itself open near her, she glanced over at the portal, smirking to see that it was one leading back home. Heading for it, she paused briefly, glancing over her shoulder in time to see the Shimakazes helping Asashio and some of her sisters get their sea legs back and smiled before stepping through.
Maybe this world would see things improve from here on out.
