I'm not sure what was worse: the freezing water or the freezing morning air. I was shivering like a leaf as we rushed towards the door of the maintenance bay and the relative warmth it offered, pausing only to grab our greatcoats. Even Gangut had begun to shake as she flung the door open and all but shoved me inside before she slammed it shut behind us.

Without waiting for her, I grabbed the duffel and pulled out the towels, tossing one to her as I wrapped the other around myself. While it was still fairly chilly in the maintenance bay, the fact that it was above freezing and towels wicking away the seawater from our bodies helped considerably. Still, in an unspoken agreement, we both decided it would be best if we conserved our body heat and embraced one another.

I let out a soft sigh as I felt the heat slowly returning to us, Gangut's soft and warm form comfortably pressed against mine. I couldn't help but notice she was still cold, however, and I began rubbing her arms. "That was…an experience," I finally said, now that my teeth were no longer chattering.

"It is indeed, Comrade," she chuckled as she ran her hands up and down my back, sending shivers through me that had nothing to do with the cold. "In time, you will find swimming in it to be the easy part. Getting out of the water," she said with a rueful grin, "That is always the hard part."

"At least we've got each other to help keep warm," I smiled back at her.

"Da," she agreed eagerly.

A silence fell over the bay as we continued to warm up and dry off. "So, uh…how often will I have to do this until you think I'm ready?"

Her ruby eyes unfocused as she thought it over. "It should only be…once a week or so."

"Once a week?!" I exclaimed, incredulous. "Think I'd rather wrestle the bear now," I grumbled.

Gangut chuckled softly. "Do not worry, Misha," she soothed. "You will become accustomed to it, and fairly quickly, I think."

"I guess…" I muttered, still unconvinced.

Sensing my hesitation, Gangut leaned in and whispered in my ear. "Perhaps, I could…make it worth your while, Comrade? Something to also help boost your stamina?"

From her tone, it was clear what that incentive might be. "That's a hard offer to turn down," I grinned. "You drive a hard bargain, Comrade Gangut."

"More like driven with a hard bargain, Comrade," she purred, pressing herself against me. "Perhaps you would like to discuss this further once we have warmed up. A nice, hot shower, perhaps?"

At that moment, a hot shower by itself sounded almost as enticing as sharing it with someone like Gangut. "Sounds like a plan. Let's bundle up and be on our way, Comrade."

One hot and steamy shower later, we got dressed and headed down to the mess hall, arriving just as everyone was sitting down.

"Dobray utra, Comrade Commander," Rossiya greeted us with a knowing smirk. "How was your polar bear swim this morning?"

"Freezing cold," I answered bluntly. "Definitely wakes you up in the morning, though. Wait. How did you know I was doing the polar bear swim?"

"We heard you and Gangut roaring at the top of your lungs this morning, only for you to suddenly stop." Pamiat looked up from her cup of tea and plate stacked with syrniki with a mischievous grin on her face. "First time?"

I glowered at her for a few seconds before I answered her. "Yes, yes it was. And just for the record, you heard me scream, stop screaming, and nobody thought to check on me?"

"Gangut was with you," Rossiya shrugged. "If something had happened to you, we would have her scream louder."

After giving it a moment's thought, and glancing over at Gangut, who gave me a sheepish nod, I was forced to concede her point. "Alright, fair," I grumbled as I pulled out Gangut's chair for her.

"Spasiba," she nodded as she sat down, and I quickly followed suit, gathering a selection of syrniki, eggs, sausage, and fruit compote.

As Gangut and I prepared our breakfast, Poltava watched us from across the table, her eyes boring into me. "So, Comrade Commander, our sister tells us that you treated her to burgers the other night."

I glanced over at Gangut, then nodded to Poltava, wondering where she was going with this. It was an innocent enough question, but there was a look in her eyes that made me suspect she had an ulterior motive. "Yeah, she wanted to try some Eagle Union cuisine, so I figured burgers would be kind of the…quintessential dish."

"I see," she hummed thoughtfully before she leaned in. "Would you ever consider making them for all of us?"

I looked around the table to find everyone looking at me expectantly, eager for my answer.

"Uh, well…" I began slowly, suddenly feeling a little bit ambushed. "I think I'd need to use a bigger kitchen, but yeah, sure. I was kinda hoping for spring when the weather was warmer so we could all do a cookout."

"A what?" Rossiya interjected, leaning forward.

"A cookout," I repeated. "It's like a…" I struggled to find the correct words to describe it. "It's kinda like a party, but not really? Basically, you have family and friends over for a meal that you prepare using an outdoor grill. So you make stuff like burgers and hot dogs, although some people cook chicken, corn, that sort of thing. While it's cooking, everyone just kinda hangs out, enjoys each other's company until everything's cooked, at which point everyone sits down to a nice meal."

Sevastopol piped up as she sprang out of her chair. "Is there alcohol?"

I chuckled as Poltava dragged her back into her seat. "There is, but it tends to be stuff on the lighter side, so usually beer is the go-to drink."

To a woman, they all made various but unanimous noises of disgust and dissent. "German swill," Gangut spat. "Is there anything else people bring beyond…that?"

"Some people will bring wine coolers."

Again, they all looked at each other before fixing me with a quizzical stare. "Why would people bring coolers full of wine?" Gangut asked for the group.

"Crap," I blurted out as I suddenly realized the phrase was lost in translation. "Not wine cooler as in 'a cooler full of wine'. It's uh, it's a type of drink. I think they use wine or at least some kind of fermented fruit. It's sweet, bubbly, tends to be lighter than most wines. A hard lemonade comes to mind, as well."

That did it. The girls all nodded in understanding at the mention of 'hard lemonade'. "This we have heard of, Comrade," Gangut said. "This would be preferable to beer. And in keeping with the Eagle Union spirit, da? All of the children running those little lemonade stands?"

I laughed at the stereotype, but she wasn't far off. "Yeah, something like that. Lemonade's definitely a summer drink, although we didn't have a lemonade stand on every street corner."

"And it must be done outside, correct?" Poltava asked, preventing the conversation from getting too off-topic.

"Yeah," I nodded. "It's part of the cookout, celebrating being able to enjoy outdoors after winter, that sort of thing. Well, that plus any indoor grill is going to get very smoky, very fast."

"A shame," she sighed. "I was hoping we would be able to do something like that before Sevastopol leaves for the Black Sea once more."

I saw the disappointed look on the smaller battleship's face and I just couldn't let her go home without a proper goodbye. "When does she leave?"

"In a week," Sevastopol said glumly. "So unless there's a sudden heat wave, I don't think I'm gonna get that cookout…"

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," I said slowly, an idea beginning to take shape in my mind.

Gangut turned to look at me. "...Comrade?"

"Sorry," I smiled apologetically, "Gonna keep this one close to the vest for now. Just an idea, don't want to get into the details and give people false hope for an idea that just won't work."

"Alright…" she said slowly as she got back to her breakfast. "But if you need help with anything, do not hesitate to ask any of us."

"Wouldn't dream of it. I know I can count on you, Comrade Gangut."

After we finished up with breakfast, Gangut and I headed up to the office to get started on the day. But before I could get cracking on the various reports and forms I needed to handle, I had a few things I wanted to check on first…

It took a bit longer than anticipated, but before long I had a list of everything I needed to make Sevastopol's going away cookout a reality. I then divided that list up into which faction could get me what I needed the fastest. The one that would take the longest would be the Eagle Union, but if I called in a few favors, I was confident I could pull this off.

In the meantime, I took the other lists to Gangut, setting them down on her desk. "If you could get these pushed through, high priority, I'd appreciate it."

"Of course, Comra…" her voice trailed off as she read the list's contents. Her eyes snapped up to me, a hopeful expression on her face. "Is this…?"

"Hopefully," I answered cryptically. "If we can get all of these on time, you think we can pull it off?"

Her snowy brows furrowed as she looked back down at the list. "I think so…but we're still missing a few things…but with this, I think I see where you are going with this Comrade, and…it is doable. Maybe."

"Yeah, I'm working on the missing items," I reassured her. "And I can live with maybe. I'd rather we try and get a less than perfect result instead of not trying at all and wondering at what might have been."

Gangut smiled as she stood up from her chair. "An admirable quality, Misha," she purred as she pulled me in for a tender kiss. When we broke she whispered, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," I whispered back, kissing her in return. "Now let's get going on these lists, we don't have much time."

"Da!"

By some minor miracle, we got everything we needed in less than a week. The morning of Sevastopol's departure, Rossiya, Poltava, Pamiat, Chapayev, Kirov, and I assembled on the parade ground, along with a dozen manjuus, to begin setup for what I hoped to be a beautiful cookout.

"Now that we are all here, Comrade, and you finally have everything you need for your master plan," Gangut grinned, looking around at the other assembled kansen and crates, "Perhaps you could let us in on your little secret."

"Of course, dear Comrade Gangut," I smiled playfully and gave her a little bow before I addressed the entire group. "We are going to have ourselves a cookout. Now, I know the weather's a little…frigid right now, but I have the solution." I slowly strolled over to one of the crates and slapped it on the top. "Space heaters. Big, industrial space heaters. Enough to keep a twenty-five meter by twenty-five meter area at a pleasant seventy-two degrees. I also got an outdoor grill, hot dogs, American cheese, hard lemonade, and a few other things." Most of the other shipgirls seemed shocked and pleasantly surprised, but Gangut, who had been in on it for a while, simply had a proud smile on her face. "Now let's get ourselves a cookout!"

"Ura!"

With the indispensable help of the manjuus, we got the space heaters set up by lunch, bringing the small patch of parade ground to the perfect temperature. It wasn't perfect by any means; wandering too close to the heaters would be an uncomfortable proposition, and there weren't any leaves on the trees, let alone flowers. But it was still good enough to enjoy oneself.

As morning turned into afternoon, I got to work on making the burgers. Gangut helped, setting up an assembly line of buns, condiments, and other toppings for when we were ready to serve. At least in winter, you didn't have to worry about bugs landing on your cheese slices.

Right as the first burgers were going onto the grill, sizzling as they filled the air with their savory aroma, Sevastopol arrived. She came to a sudden stop as she rounded the corner and saw us working, coats off, sleeves rolled up, in the middle of winter.

"W-what the hell is this?" she stammered as she took a few steps towards us, eyeing the space heaters suspiciously.

"It's your cookout, Comrade!" Gangut enthusiastically announced, striding over to her sister and guiding her past the space heaters. "Comrade Mikhail had a brilliant idea that if we could not wait for the temperature to change, we would simply change it ourselves! We may not have leaves, flowers, or birds and bees, but it will at least be warm enough to enjoy an authentic Eagle Union meal! Come, sit, sit."

Dumbstruck, Sevastopol wandered into the cookout area, still marveling at all we had done to set things up for her. As she approached, I leaned down and grabbed a bottle of hard lemonade. "A drink, Comrade?" I offered. She numbly took the bottle from my hands, and I picked up my own drink, tapping the neck of it against hers. "Za zdorov'ye."

"You…did all this…for me?" she asked incredulously as she continued to look around at everything.

"Gangut told me, very early on, that we're family," I shrugged. "I may not have had parents who gave a damn, but I'll fight tooth and nail for my sisters. And that includes you. So go on, relax, have a few drinks, and enjoy!"

Confusion slowly gave way to happiness, and she raised the bottle to me in salute before twisting the cap off and tossing it in the trash. "Alright, I will! Thanks, Comrade Com-Mikhail!"

I watched her go for a moment before the smell of grilled meat reached my nose and I quickly flipped the burgers. Gangut wrapped her arm around my waist and watched me work. "She was always the hard sell," she commented quietly. "Poltava, you can always count on her to do what's right. In fact, I am pretty sure she sent us up to the Parapet knowing exactly what would happen?"

I felt the temperature spike suddenly and I got very warm all of a sudden. Must have been a localized error with the space heaters. "Oh really?" I nonchalantly replied, or at least tried to sound nonchalant. "Sounds very clever."

"She is," she agreed, fortunately not noticing or ignoring my sudden spike in anxiety. "I knew if she did not approve, we never would have made it this far. But her," she gestured toward Sevastopol as she and Pamiat chatted amiably, "she was always going to be hesitant, always going to push back against you. I ran interference for you, of course. And for myself. She's always had a mouth on her."

I gave her a mock look of shock. "Surely you don't mean to say all those times she fell down wasn't accidental? Scandalous."

"It's true, it's true," she grinned, playing along. "This may be news to you, Comrade, but my hips can be quite powerful when I want them to be."

"I dunno, maybe we should test that theory later…"

"Oh, suddenly you are now Comrade Scientist Commander?" she laughed. "You are wearing many hats now!"

"Just a couple," I chuckled before looking around and whispering to her, "You're not going to tell her we're adding sex to the stamina-building routine, are you?"

"Nyet," she emphatically shook her head. "I would never hear the end of it from her if I did. Unless you are planning to tell her."

"God, no," I quickly denied. "She's already tried to publicize our sex life enough, and that was when it was a one-night-stand. As much as we enjoy each other, I'm not sure I'd want to see that…enjoyment…published on the front page of Parliament Pravda."

"Agreed," she laughed.

We lapsed into a happy silence as the cookout went on, everyone mingling and enjoying themselves. Just one big, happy family…

A/N-Only one chapter left. Voting on the poll is still open, and because I'm a doofus who forgot to list the shipgirls, they are: Musashi(Safe Harbor, vol 2), New Jersey, Formidable, U-47, Chikuma, and Royal Fortune. Until next time, fair winds and following seas!