Tanya did not hear all that much when she woke up. Nothing out of the ordinary, of course. Just the normal sounds she had slowly been growing used to. Even as early as she woke up, the constant hustle and bustle of one of the Empire's larger naval bases was constant.

She knew for a fact that just because she did not hear them, did not mean that the moment she opened her door the presence of four 'passersby' would be played off as a coincidence, for the fifth day in a row, after which they would begin attempting to curry her favor for their faction… or, more honestly, bicker with each other while she tried her best to ignore or deflect them.

So, when Tanya woke up, she luxuriated in the normal, ordinary sounds of the base that would soon be drowned out as she prepared herself for the day – dressing herself, doing what little she could to tame her hair, ensuring her weapon was working well – and then she stood in front of her door and took in a deep breath.

Tanya was not one to gripe about the facts of her situation that she couldn't change… but she did wish that she was being sought after for her abilities rather than her name.

Or that she was back in the army, sitting behind a desk now that the war was over.

With a shake of her head, she opened the door and began walking as quickly as she could without being accused of doing something as childish as running to breakfast.

"Lieutenant Degurechaff!"

She fixed her smile in place as they began. It had been a surprise on the first day, and she'd actually tried to converse with them and had the entirety of her breakfast wasted. She made no such mistake this time and continued striding forward.

As she asked what the others thought about the question asked by the representative of the aristocratic officers, beginning the first of what was bound to be many arguments, she wondered if maybe she should have been more cruel during her time in the army. Maybe her reputation would have terrified fools like these and convinced them not to waste her time?

-OxOxO-

If not for the four who would not leave her alone, her breakfast would have been absolutely wonderful – the army's… edible food paled in comparison to the food the navy offered, and if she'd known just how much better it was, that might have made the decision to join the army harder.

But, she did have work to do while the navy fought over what, exactly, she was going to do, though if her presence was simply meant to drive up the prestige of the navy, it was already doing that despite her lack of work. She'd already seen a newspaper proclaiming her switch to the navy and drawing conclusions from that one fact that ranged from banal to completely ridiculous.

She looked out across the water. She had not been unused to being damp during her work. Hiding inside of clouds was a good way to break line of sight and send an enemy after a decoy, after all, and the less said of the snow and mud, the better.

"Lieutenant Degurechaff!"

She smiled cordially and wiped away any sign of her frustration with her mornings. "Captain Gunther." She saluted as he arrived, and he gave her a lazy salute in return.

If the man in front of her had been part of the 203rd, she would have had that laziness beaten out of him, especially considering the fact that he had been an Aerial Mage for well over a decade. She also would have disabused him of the notion that because his father was a bigwig within the navy he was immune to disciplinary action for fumbling the formalities.

However, he was not and was instead acting as her teacher in regards to everything a Marine Mage needed to know, from formulas to tactics. She ignored his laxness and he gestured out to the water of the Emerald Bay.

"Why don't you get started with your drill and then we'll get into the nitty gritty," he said. She nodded, knowing he was probably going to use her time to finish the cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth. She almost wished he had remained starstruck like when he'd first arrived, but his instruction would have been sorely lacking when he was more focused on fawning over her abilities than picking out her mistakes.

She took up a stance facing the center of the Bay and began to spin up her Type 13 Maritime Operation Orb. This first drill was more of a warm-up than anything. It's purpose had been to give her a chance to see how well she was adapting to using the variation of the Type 13 she was using, as well as the variations of formulas that Marine Mages used and to set a benchmark to compare against as the week went on.

Gunther let out a shrill whistle, and Tanya flew off of the dock, the wind whipping past her hair as she sped towards the first of her objectives – buoys in the water marking where the fleet fired their shells for gunnery training.

But, even with the salt stinging her nose and the push of the wind against her passive shell, she couldn't help but lament just how slow she was going. She had been forced to hand in her Type 97 before leaving – the army owned it. The Type 95 was left in her possession, both because no one else could use it and because it was probably the only reason she hadn't been destroyed by those aliens. She completed the sprint, mentally figuring that she could have finished twice as fast with the Type 97, before heading towards the center of the bay.

Aerial Mages and Marine Mages used plenty of the same formulas. Enchantment formulas, mage blades, and optical formulas all fell into that basket. Gunther had admitted he'd forgotten about the existence of the optical formulas, considering how rarely anyone used them.

A few formulas were different. As her fight with the aliens had shown, a flight spell could be used to allow for travel through water. However, a Marine Mage's flight formula was more complex and allowed for travel through the water at close to the same speed as a regular flight spell… with the drawback that moving through the water at such speeds was very taxing magically.

A Marine Mage's active barrier was also more taxing. It could act as an Aerial Mage's would above the surface of the water, but below the surface the math changed a lot. Trying to keep up the entire barrier underneath the weight of the water drained mana faster than even fighting that bitch had, so the exact size and area that the spell covered had to be specified by the Marine Mage.

As Tanya reached the center of the bay and dove into the water, she resolved not to get into a fight underwater unless there was absolutely, positively, no other alternative.

There were also, uniquely, formulas that did not involve magic in the slightest.

As she sped through the water towards the entrance to the bay, she recalled how frustrating Gunther's surface level understanding of the situation had been. She'd done some research on her own and dove into the history of Marine Mages as a whole to find out more.

In times past, the rarity of mages and the lack of computation orbs had meant that most of them were employed in the army where they could do the most. A few – or in the case of the Commonwealth of Albion, the majority – made their way into the navy. Their ability to accurately spot the fall of shot far beyond the range of those on the masts of their ships meant they became spotters as Tanya had been during her first days on the Rhine.

A ship that could employ a Marine Mage could outrange a ship without one. It seemed that this had resulted in the Albish being even more proficient at sea than in her own timeline.

Spotting was not their only role, of course. Active barriers could protect people from shrapnel, sending a mage to sabotage an opponent's ship had been done more than a few times, leading boarding actions had been done more than once, and, of course, Marine Mages were used to disrupt or counter opposing Marine Mages.

Of course, the march of technology waited for no one. Anti-air fire was becoming harder for mages to penetrate, though she had proved it could still be done. Spotting mages trying to sneak towards a ship to sabotage it with mines was relatively easy high up in the air with the depths Marine Mages could operate.

They weren't out of a job, of course, or she wouldn't be there. A ship without Marine Mages could be harassed by enemy Mages, and while Tanya doubted even the Type 95 could put a hole through a battleship, there was a lot on the upper decks that could be bombed. Plus, the job of at least a few Marine Mages was to act as rangefinders when the ship they were assigned to did not have one of their own. Considering how expensive computation orbs were, giving mages more work to do to justify the expense of their equipment seemed prudent in Tanya's eye… although, dumping more work on your workers to make up for shortfalls in your resources was hardly efficient in the long term.

The docks she'd taken off from were within sight, and she rocketed out of the water and landed where she'd taken off from, surprising Gunther. He blinked at her nonplussed look and then chuckled to himself. "You've beaten my best time by over half!" he exclaimed. "I suppose I should've expected as much from the White Silver, of course, but… still!"

Tanya preened under the praise, even if he was using that moniker. "Thank you again, Gunther. What will we be learning today?"

He took in a deep breath… and then let it out. "Honestly, there isn't much else to teach… you know what? We'll call off the rest of today's training. No use in standing around going over things you could teach me better than I already know."

Tanya blinked. "Are you sure?"

He shook his head. "Nah. I'll even skip the political spiel today."

She blinked in shock… but she bid him farewell and walked off, a spring in her step. What to do with the rest of the day…

As she wandered around, debating whether doing some research on the half-remembered pieces of future naval technology and tactics from her own time to put into a paper or proposal would be a better use of her time than getting to know the shakers and movers of the base so those four annoyances would leave, she noted that the base had been getting steadily busier throughout the week. It had been a few people from naval command at first, but today it seemed that every other car that drove past had a scientist or general in it – she was sure she'd even seen a member of the civilian government she vaguely recalled from the paper.

As she finally settled on doing research, she found her plans spoiled as a man ran up to her to convey she was needed in the infirmary…

"Is it Schugel?"

He said he had no idea, and she didn't see any flinch or sign of lying, so she had to sigh and come along. She supposed there could be another reason she was being called there, but this was unfortunately the most likely one.

A handful of minutes later found herself staring at the Doctor through the window of his room, manically scrawling on whatever paper was around him – and the walls beside his bed, and his sheets.

She turned to the nurse standing nervously next to her. "Why is he in here, anyway?"

She let out a nervous chuckle as the doctor began to continue his calculations on his clothing. "He did too much cocaine."

…Yeah, that tracked with his personality. Honestly, she didn't know why drugs hadn't crossed her mind up to this point to explain just why he seemed slightly insane to literally everyone who interacted with him.

She pushed open the door, and Schugel hissed at her, until he realized just who she was. "Finally! I've been trying to get them to release me since I woke up! You must tell them that I'm the perfect picture of health!"

She blinked at the man slowly, ignoring how he was still scribbling out equations on his clothing. "I'm afraid, Doctor Schugel, that I couldn't possibly contradict the orders of medical personnel. I'm hardly a trained doctor, after all, and if they say bed rest is good for you, I simply can't argue against it."

He digested his words and then had the gall to stick out his tongue at her and blow a raspberry… and then begin writing on his tongue and wince at the taste of the ink.

…Could drugs have really driven him off the deep end this badly?

"Fine. I wanted you to know that I've got some tests that you will be participating in. BUT," he said, cutting off her acidic retort that she would do no such thing, "you won't be hurt. On God."

She tilted her head at the odd turn of phrase… before shaking her head as he returned to his mad scribbling. She looked out of the room to where the nurse was staring nervously into the room with an eyebrow raised.

"Doctor Schugel has become… convinced by his work with the technology that… all of humanity's thoughts and opinions are connected through a shared collective unconsciousness that can be used to shape reality. He's… trying to prove it exists," she said helplessly and Tanya stepped out of the room.

She stared back in and found that Schugel was now writing on his arms and shook her head. She had better things to be doing than standing at the bedside of a complete lunatic… though she'd take his warning about having her do more tests by giving herself as much work as possible so she could honestly tell anyone that even tried to unknowingly rope her into getting some other cursed object foisted upon her that she was just too busy to even look at Schugel.

If Being X was involved, it probably wouldn't matter, but she could dream, couldn't she?

-OxOxO-

As Tanya looked at the written orders for her to report to the dock she'd trained with Gunther at for 'testing' under the watchful eye of Schugel, Tanya found herself missing those four idiots. For well over a week she had wished they found something better to do, and now that they clearly had, she wished they were back, because, as much as she really would rather not, she absolutely had to get involved in politics.

Tomorrow was the beginning of the 'Unity' celebration, where nations from around the world were sending representatives to the Empire. She was supposed to get an award at the opening of the celebration for her efforts in fighting the aliens. There had been a flood of newspapers about the world that the Empire now found itself in that Tanya was honestly having trouble keeping up with considering how much work she had managed to find for herself to do – though she still had no official position, despite all of that work.

The world the Empire had landed in was as advanced as her first life – apparently the Sirens liked to hand out technology to human nations if they worked for them… or even for no reason at all. Tanya was thankful for this fact, because she could now roll out quite a few ideas she had had rattling around in the back of her head that relied on too much technology that either wasn't proven or didn't even exist.

With that said, she could find absolutely nothing about nuclear weapons. Not even tests. Perhaps this world simply hadn't seen the need for them?

Additionally, while the aliens – dubbed Sirens by the humans of this world – had a technological edge over every other nation, they seemed to be much more limited in the quantity of weapons they could produce, and the various countries of the world were more concerned with each other than with the Siren threat.

Despite the advanced technology, the political situation was closer to the second world war from her first life. An organization called 'Azur Lane' had been formed during the final days of the first world war when the Sirens had invaded for the first time. The Russians had become the Soviet Union and totalitarianism rose throughout Europe. Despite those setbacks, the world had remained largely united until the 1930s, when a lack of Siren attacks, the Great Depression, and the territorial ambitions of the totalitarian states had caused Azur Lane to collapse. The second world war had kicked off, with the Axis powers accepting aid from the Sirens to overcome the Allies.

In 1943, the Sirens launched an attack against everyone, and the Allies and the Axis had met in Turkey to hash out a peace agreement.

Most relevant to the Empire's situation was that Japan and the USA had retreated to their prewar boundaries. Japan had surrendered the territory they'd seized in China to the nationalists and recognized them as the 'real' China, while the United States recognized Japanese control of Manchuria and guaranteed trade as compensation.

Meanwhile, the situation most relevant to her personally was the fate of Europe. Nazi Germany and their quasi-puppet in France had split the lowlands, while the Germans had retreated to their prewar borders with the Soviets… while taking anything and everything that wasn't nailed down with them and destroying as much of what they couldn't expropriate as possible. The border between the two was demilitarized to a degree. They had established puppet states in Denmark, Norway, and Yugoslavia.

She could find absolutely nothing about the presence of concentration camps. Hopefully with access to the internet, she might be able to discover whether that was a thing.

While the French State claimed all of the land their predecessor state had owned, the Free French ran everything not on the mainland of Europe. Italy lost its African colonies but had carved out pieces of the balkans.

The situation… was bad. Of course, in the sense of some sort of greater good, the Nazis still being around was absolutely terrible. Fascists were barely above Communists for their meddling in the free market and killing thousands or millions of people for asinine reasons.

More importantly, however, them being around was personally bad for her. Gender equality was not exactly normal in the Empire's day and age, and the only reason she had expected any in this life was because the Empire was meritocratic.

Hopefully the prevalence of more advanced technology would ensure that destructive, useless biases against people were done away with sooner rather than later.

She was… honestly a bit stumped as to what she should do. No matter how much the media made her out to be the darling of the Empire, that kind of fame hardly translated into the kind of influence that push the public away from electing some chauvinistic idiots who'd force her to become a homemaker and push out three children while singing the praises of traditional gender roles.

Of course, that kind of thinking didn't need to come from within the Empire! Her country was apparently shopping around for allies – a logical move, considering how far behind they were from the rest of the world technologically – so perhaps the Kaiser would welcome the kind of thinking that gave him all the power in the country along with their technology?

As she trudged down to the dock and blinked at the people there, she couldn't help but marvel at her desire to talk with those naval factions. Chaining the Empire to the fascists – who would inevitably lose if war were to break out again – seemed like the worst way for the Empire to fall considering it had gotten out of the losing situation of their last world.

Schugel was sitting in a wheelchair with a clipboard as thick as her arm, still scribbling notes. The person behind him, however, she had never seen.

It was a girl. Not the most unusual thing to see, of course, but the fact that she appeared to be younger than Tanya and wearing clothes she'd never seen before but that certainly weren't regulation made her want to ask who, exactly, he'd stolen this child from…

And then she decided that she really wasn't getting paid enough to ask those kinds of questions. Considering there was some kind of observation station on the dock whose residents were being hidden behind obviously magically created illusions, someone would have shot him if they'd seen him offering some five-year-old candy.

She saluted to Schugel and he smiled widely, while the girl stared at her openly. Was she someone else the propaganda department had swindled into thinking she was a hero?

"Lieutenant Degurechaff! Take off that unsightly thing immediately!"

She fought, for a moment, to keep her cool or decipher what, exactly he meant by that, but when he held out what had to be a computation orb, she just sighed in frustration and took off her modified Type 13.

"This is the Type 98. I'm sure you'll notice the improvements?"

Improvements was certainly a word for how much more efficient and… capable this new orb felt. "How… did you make it with electronics?"

"Ha! I'm afraid not, though I do plan to make one. The computing power in a computation orb of that caliber… no, this is still a mechanically driven orb. But the metallurgical and material science of this new world we find ourselves in, by the grace of God, is far advanced compared to our own paltry offerings!"

He sighed happily while she glowered… and the child at the Doctor's side hid behind the scientist at her look. Just as she was finally working up the energy to ask what this kid was doing on the dock, Schugel cleared his throat. "Now, you have ten minutes to get used to it before you enter a… test. Be sure not to let down our audience," he said with a gesture towards the still unknown group.

She nodded slowly and took off without a glance back at them. If she really wanted, she had a few ideas about how to disrupt optical decoy formulas, and with this new Type 98, it would probably be easy.

She didn't really have a reason to do anything like that, and maybe if she was lucky, this had something to do with her getting an official job.

A brisk ten minute flight later had her directed to a spot a few hundred meters from the docks and the Doctor's lovely voice echoing from her radio. "Your assignment, Lieutenant, is to have a… practice match."

Tanya merely raised an eyebrow as someone stepped out from the shadowed area. She spun up a few formulas to get a better picture of the person as she sped towards a point a dozen meters away from Tanya.

The first and most obvious thing about the woman was the fact that she was walking across the water, but Tanya could do what she was doing with a flight formula easily enough.

The second thing one could say about the woman was that she clearly wasn't part of the Empire's military, because that clothing broke just about every regulation Tanya cared to remember, and probably the few regulations she didn't care to remember as well.

Tanya wasn't sure exactly which part of the ridiculous, white outfit irked her most. The long train of cloth training behind her, the metal… crown… thing on her head, the heels, her bust, or the fact that what little cloth was on her torso looked more like lingerie than a shirt.

Honestly, the eyepatch was about par for the course, considering every other 'pirate' seemed to wear one, even if they still had both eyes.

The third thing that jumped out to Tanya about the woman as she stood at the ready across from Tanya was the fact that the woman did not have a gun.

Schugel's voice smashed through Tanya's incredulity. "Remember, this is a weapons test for the both of you."

Tanya nodded automatically, as did the other woman, though Tanya saw no way for her to have received that transmission, and was Schugel blind, because the woman didn't have a weapon! Not even a pistol! Maybe she could stab Tanya with her heels, but they didn't look easy to take off-

"And Emden? Don't rough up Lieutenant Degurechaff too much; remember that she is only human."

What.

And, suddenly, the woman across from her pulled a giant mechanical dragon out of nowhere and charged towards her.

The fuck?!

Tanya tried to fly upwards to get some kind of handle on the thing charging towards her, but the woman pointed forward and the metallic beast followed, leaping above where Tanya would be. She darted downwards and fired off a few shots, only to snarl as the dragon shrugged all of them off-

She dodged backwards as the woman swung some kind of weapon towards her. Tanya ducked back and jerked herself to the side, outspeeding her.

She used the chance to catch her breath and spun up another observation formula…

She looked between her formula and the woman. She wasn't using any mana.

Was… she a Siren, then? That seemed unlikely, to say the least, but-

And then the dragon-worm thing was bounding towards her, and Tanya caught a glimpse of the weapon the woman was swinging around-

Except they weren't any kind of weapons Tanya might expect to be fighting against, because she was using miniaturized naval guns to beat her over the head wi-

BOOM!

She dove into the water in the nick of time as those weapons went off. The dragon swiped into the water, and Tanya tried, desperately, to figure out what they wanted her to do against that!

Okay, Schugel said it was a weapons test? Tanya was clearly testing out the Type 98, while this… Emden, Schugel had called it, was testing either the dragon or the guns.

She looked up to find the woman tilting her head while the dragon appeared to be preparing to dive into the water to get her. Tanya glared at the woman and shot out of the water.

She began to really push the Type 98 and sped around the woman, circling her and dodging the blasts from her guns. Tanya could see the carefully neutral facade she'd been wearing slowly forming into determination.

Tanya began to overpower an explosive formula and sent it towards the woman she-

Tanya blinked rapidly. She deflected it off of the guns next to her. Maybe an actual gun turret could have done that, but there was no way that tiny thing could-

"ROAR!"

Tanya swore and spun around, dodging around the dragon. She eyed Emden and noticed her reluctance to fire at the dragon, and Tanya got closer to the towering beast, narrowly avoiding its swiping claws as she powered up another explosive spell.

She continued dodging its attempts until she had a moment to smirk mockingly at it. The beast growled deeply and Tanya dodged under it into the water as it sailed overhead.

She shot out of the water once again and took aim at Emden once more, whose determination seemed to be turning into frustration. She fired-

WOOOSH!

-Into the water, and a great column of water flew into the air, obscuring Emden's sight. As the water fell back down into the bay, Emden found herself facing three copies of Tanya. She took aim at each one as they sailed through the air, becoming laughably predictable for just a momen-

"STOP!"

Emden blinked and turned towards the doctor who looked… unbelievably happy. Considering he'd expressed a desire for Degurechaff to win despite his faith in her abilities-

"That was a good fight! What, precisely, are you?"

Emden blinked and turned around to find Degurechaff behind her, lowering her gun from where it must have been aimed at her head. She looked back over her shoulder to find that all three of the Degurechaff's she had been aiming at disappeared with a wink. "How…?"

"I went down with the water I sent up," she explained as her mount returned to them. Emden could only sigh in defeat – she supposed it was a bit naive to think she could take on someone with so much experience, but…

"As I foretold!"

Emden and Tanya found their gazes dragged back to Schugel as the illusions around the other watching the match. Both began to walk towards them.

Tanya found herself somehow even more incredulous, because while a few of the faces among the crowd were those who'd introduced themselves that first day, as well as some she recognized as their superiors within the navy, quite a number of them were just as, if not more, ridiculously dressed than this Emden woman! At least two seemed to be the sister of the girl behind Schugel's wheelchair.

"Despite their seemingly fantastical creation and identity, the memories a shipgirl inherits from their time as a ship do not extend into all areas! They have experience performing their naval duties, but not even the eldest among them can stand against an experienced mage! They cost far too much for us to just throw them into combat and hope they learn. Therefore…"

He threw his hands up and almost sent his wheelchair into the water, but the girl behind him kept it grounded… despite her size. "If we are going to catch up with the rest of the world, let alone the Sirens, they need training! Who better than Tanya von Degurechaff? If she can turn less than fifty men into one of the most potent fighting forces in the Empire, imagine what she can do with these shipgirls under her command!"

The people standing around that she recognized walked over and began to speak with Schugel, seemingly agreeing with him.

Meanwhile, Tanya had never wished to have learned how to assassinate someone. What the hell was a shipgirl?! Why did she have to train people, again! Why couldn't she just get a nice posting in the rear!

Emden bowed her head to Tanya silently. "Congratulations on a battle well fought, Lady Degurechaff. Schugel asks that you report to him tomorrow so he can fill you in on some of the details before you head to the Unity celebration. It seems you're to be in charge of training the shipgirls of Nemonia."

"What?" Tanya asked, desperate for any kind of clarity. Emden tittered. "Ah, well, we wanted to call ourselves the Dragon Empire, but that name was taken. We thought the name apt considering the center of the Empire now overlaps with what was once point Nemo."

Tanya nodded stiffly. At least she'd finally gotten a role within the navy?

-OxOxO-

A/N 1: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.

A/N 2: Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, and Blackeagle91 for supporting this story and everything else I write.