[AL Bismarck]

The freezing cold Denmark Strait looked no different than last time we were here. Half of the entire stretch of water was frozen along the coast of Greenland once again.

I looked down at my online in my bridge. I found the picture of Hood and I that she had taken of us when we both had the day off last year. Her hopeful face alongside my rather annoyed expression are immortalised in it.

"Lord Bismarck, We are approaching the anomaly." Eugen announced over the radio, shaking me from staring at Hood's face, which I was focusing on… for some reason.

Grabbing my flagpole, I responded, "Very well. Come, Eugen." As I put away my phone and returned my ship to my Cube.

"Jawohl." My aide acknowledged, doing the same.

Landing on the water, I skated towards the visible distortion present on the surface, generating swirling clouds and lightning bolts in the sky and circular waves pulsating from it. It looked like a big sphere bending the light around itself. You could see through it, but it was clear that something was there. Whatever it was, it was what was causing the strange weather phenomenon. It certainly didn't seem Siren in nature. Not knowing what to report it as, I went for a closer look.

"Be careful, Bismarck!" Hood reminded me.

Of course I would've been careful… if I knew at the time how to approach it properly.

Sensing an immense amount of energy from it, I stuck the end of my flagpole through it, but to no avail. Nothing happened. My scientific curiosity got the better of me, and I couldn't resist putting my hand through it.

Then something very strange indeed happened.


[KC Bismarck]

Having found the anomaly, it seemed to warp space, like a black hole, except without the scary black part.

"What do we do, Bismarck?" Prinz asked nervously. "What even is that?" She instinctively held my hand.

"I'm not sure… stay back, I'll try to interact with it." I gave her a smile to calm her.

"J…Jawohl…" she complied, reluctantly letting go of me. Graf put her hand on Prinz' shoulder to prevent her reaching for me for her own safety.

I seemed drawn to that anomaly, almost as if it were calling to me. So much so that almost subconsciously I raised my hand towards it, just to touch it. As if something grabbed me, I was pulled in. I could only imagine Prinz' horrified face.

Inside the anomaly, I saw the distortionall around me as I was floating an over the water, which itself was perfectly still, no waves at all. The clouds all looked like they curved in unnatural ways, but the strangest thing of all? I saw… another me. One clad in all black and holding a big, red flag. She seemed… stronger than me, yet the same height, face and… well, bust size. Identical to me in every way apart from our outfits. Hers seemed far more… professional.

I wasn't able to process her staring right at me in equal confusion before we both passed by each other and I got spat out of the end she came from.

Shooting out of the anomaly, it seemed to close behind me and vanish.

"Lord Bismarck!?" A voice asked frantically, "What happened!? Why are you dressed like that?"

Lord Bismarck? Strange. I'd never been called that before.

As she helped me up, I got a look at her. Her familiarly grey outfit, her platinum hair with what looked like red metal horns on her head and… rigging with teeth?

Flashes of the gaping maws of Abyssal ships flashed in my mind upon seeing them. Instinctively, I backed away from her seemingly sentient main guns. "Who.. who are you!?" I asked while taking a defensive stance.

The young woman was joined by two others, one dressed in a blue dress with a British Union Jack draped over her shoulders and the other sporting a very formal gilded scarlet tunic. She looked at them in confusion and then back to me, "Lord Bismarck, it's me, Prinz Eugen, remember? Hood and Prince of Wales, too?"

The mention of the other two made me feel something… dark. Guilt, perhaps? They were both deemed incompatible with the Kanmusu Project in my world, so I was quite surprised.

"Was? That's… impossible… you're not Prinz! Tell me the truth! Who are you!?" I aimed my rigging at them.

"Bismarck, no!" The one in blue yelled as I fired my guns.

A very poor choice, as I'd swiftly find out.


[AL Bismarck]

I was helped up by a blonde Kansen I didn't recognise, or at least that's who I assumed she was. She didn't seem as physically strong as one her size, struggling to lift parts of my rigging, but she was standing in the water with parts of her ship on her back like a Kansen. The anomaly closed behind me.

I looked back at the seemingly Iron Blood girls staring at me. "Danke. Wer bist du?" I asked, instinctively reverting to my native language in my confusion.

"Bismarck? It's… me. Prinz Eugen. What happened in there? Did you… forget us?" She asked, seemingly a little heartbroken at the thought.

"Prinz Eugen?" I asked, looking her up and down. "You're not… wait… where are we?"

"Just off the coast of Greenland, Bismarck. In the Denmark Strait. Where did you get the new outfit?" The one dressed in all white asked. I will admit, I thought she was my sister before I looked directly at her.

"I see… it seems like some sort of portal sent me here… judging by what I saw in there, and you're another version of Prinz Eugen, this must be some sort of alternate universe." I quickly deduced.

The two Destroyers with them, Z1 and Z3, asked in unison, "A what?"

"Some of my Eagle Union friends in my world had theorised about living in a multiverse, where every action and decision creates at least one other universe where a different choice was made. Two worlds could be identical, just with some minor, insignificant difference, or they couldn't be any more different from one another."

The two little ones and the U-Boats then said, "Oooohhh…" although I'm still not sure they really understood.

Their second Carrier, a light one, asked, "You're from another world?"

Her appearance and accent reminded me of the Sakura Empire members back home, but she was part of this fleet. Quite an odd fleet formation. I would find out why she was with them later on.

The other Eugen, I'll call this one Prinz from now on, added, "And you're a different Bismarck? From that other world?"

"Ja. I believe I have swapped places with her through that anomaly. It's strange though, the only beings I suspect can do something like this have different looking technology than that…"

"…What beings?" Their version of Graf Zeppelin asked.


[KC Bismarck]

"Ugh… Verdammt…" I muttered as I laid in fatigue on the deck of a British Battlecruiser with the woman in control of it looking down at me, battered and bruised as a result of my attack on them.

Quite a poor choice, in hindsight.

"Why did you have to fight? We want to help you." She asked.

The one in red glared at me, "Are all Bismarcks so bloody difficult to work with?"

I sat up to look at her better, "All Bismarcks? As in more than one?"

The platinum-haired one, who claimed to be Prinz, sat in front of me and explained, "Back at base, the Eagle Union created some big machine to access alternate realities or something, but they can't really do much other than observe, so we have confirmed the existence of other worlds and it seems you just came from one, and swapped places with our Lord Bismarck."

I stared at her blankly, not knowing at the time what on Earth she was talking about.

The blue-dressed one hums, "It seems this one isn't quite as scientifically minded as ours, Lady Eugen." Hood offers her hand, "Well, I suppose it's only proper to introduce ourselves. I am the Hood of this world. I only hope that you got on with your own back home?"

I stood, shook her hand and replied, "I… recognise your name… but… There isn't a Hood in my world. I don't think you were compatible with the Kanmusu Program."

The one in red walked up to me and asked, "The Kanmusu Program?"

"Oh, you don't have that? But… you're shipgirls too, nein?"

Hood explains, "We were created from the Kansen Initiative. Metal from our original hulls were merged with our Wisdom Cubes to give us human bodies. We can control every part of our ship bodies and turn them to our riggings at any time."

That caught me by surprise. "Wait… you… are actually your ships? Like… you can feel us standing on your deck right now, Frau Hood?"

The two British women looked at each other in confusion and then back at me. Hood asked, " Yes, I can… are you not a ship?"

The third woman… I'll call her Eugen, seemed to be deep in thought during this. I shook my head, "Nein… I… had a normal life before becoming a shipgirl… I don't remember much, but I joined the Kanmusu Program and I was given the power of the Bismarck. My appearance changed to reflect her history and I got all the memories of her service life. I… remember fighting the two of you… but when they tried to give another woman your power, for some reason, it never worked. I'm not sure why, but Japanese ships seemed to have the highest success rate."

"So… you're… human?" Hood asked with widened eyes.

"Mostly, I suppose." I shrugged.

"Wales, a moment please?" Hood dragged away the other woman, much to her surprise. They went inside the ship and I turned towards the thinking Eugen.

If she is the ship that Prinz inherited the power of, I had to know more about her, as well as my own.

Could that other version of me be the actual ship whose abilities I was granted?


AL BIS

As I followed the alternate Iron Bloods, I suppose I should call them the Kriegsmarine, as they so insisted, I wondered why they didn't summon their ships. "Halt!" I requested.

They all stopped and looked at me.

"You all look exhausted. I'll prepare some beds for you." I offered.

They looked among each other, confused.

"Um, Bismarck, you don't seem to have any beds on you…" Prinz observed.

"Of course I can't carry them on my rigging. I keep them all in my ship."

"Your… ship?"

I smiled clicked my fingers. My Battleship form appeared behind me, knocking them all off their feet in shock.

Once my ship settled in the water, I come to a realisation, "None of you can do that, can you?"

"N…nein!" Prinz gasped.

"Well, come aboard, then. You all need some rest. What's wrong, Prinz?"

The timid girl nervously says, "There hasn't been a human-made ship in the oceans for years. The Abyssals detect ships they don't control for miles… they'll be onto us soon…"

I steadied her nerves by putting a hand on her shoulder. I confidently said, "Let them come. I'm more than used to fighting enemies from the depths of hell."

"You have Abyssals in your world too?"

"I'll explain later. Now get some food and choose a bed." I instructed. As she boarded my vessel with the others. I got a feeling I hadn't felt for some time.

Pride.

I felt like I was allowed to feel it again. These poor girls were far less powerful than the versions I knew.

I thought that perhaps I could try to put aside my selfish self-loathing to focus on how to help these girls in need.

How I was going to do that, exactly, I still had to figure out…