This is just a sort of breather chapter (mandated break, thank you Sydnicalist overlords) including some smaller stories/ideas, the first two of which I already posted on the discord), and a number of memes/photoshops on the AO3 side.
Rebecca
The clean room was completely and totally silent. No one but the Commander was there, and he could almost feel gazes through the one-way mirror. Queen Elizabeth, Enterprise, Akagi... all were waiting to see what would come out of this experiment. The math worked out, the Sirens had proved themselves capable of things like this many times... but there was still something terrifying about the thought of tapping into another timeline. Would they see a universe where he picked a better major in college?
The wisdom cube was hooked up to a whole nest of wires, which fed it enough complex mathematics to somehow punch a hole into another timeline. And this wasn't some small time experiment, picking out a universe where he had a banana instead of an apple with breakfast, this was big: some sort of massive diversion in the timeline a ways back...
He touched the cube and shivered, feeling something... strange as it began to glow. He thought of battleships dueling on some sea, splinters flying through the air like bullets, the thought so convincing he lifted his other arm to protect his eyes-
That helped protect him from that incredible brightness, at least, considering how it seemed determined to go straight through his eyelids.
When the light faded, a woman stood before him, and he almost felt relieved. She was familiar. "Ark?" He asked.
She gave him a confused look, hand drifting to a sledgehammer on her hip. That, her outfit, and the great bow she carried on her back were a reminder that she wasn't the woman he knew. Apparently, she didn't even go by the same name.
"My name is Rebecca," she said, "And I'd very much like to know how I ended up here. There are people I need to get back to."
Good old protective Ark, huh? Well, Rebecca. Strange name, but he supposed she might elaborate on that if she didn't kill him. "I'm sorry about that. We summoned you from your... timeline, to help us fight the Sirens."
"The Sirens?" Rebecca asked, gaining a look of curiosity. "I won't promise you anything until you can guarantee my return to where I was."
He cringed, and she frowned. "I'm afraid that may not be possible- because you're a copy!" He sputtered to explain himself. "The original Rebecca is back there, doing what needs to be done. And I know this is an awful thing for us to be doing… but we're desperate."
Rebecca's eyes narrowed, and he was reminded that Ark was one of those people who was genuinely scary when she got mad. "What a cruel joke. I get a chance to learn about our hidden enemy, and I can't even bring the information home."
"Sending information has looked more promising than sending people…"
She sighed. "I suppose this is the lot I've been dealt. My loyalty is forever due to my comrades, but for the defeating Sirens… I suppose I can cooperate with you."
Phew. That was… closer than he expected. There was something sharp about this other Ark, an intensity you'd usually find in Meta ships. Maybe she had undergone a process like that?
"Perhaps a re-introduction is in order, now that some of my shock has worn off."
"Sure. I'm Commander Wilson, of the Azur Lane Combined Fleet."
She held out a hand to shake. "RNS Rebecca, British Carrier. Together, I hope we might overtake our enemies and protect the people."
"RNS?" He asked.
Rebecca blinked, seeming equally confused. "Ah, this other timeline might have different politics, why didn't I consider… I'm a Republican Navy Ship, of the Union of Britain."
He couldn't imagine Lizbet's reaction to that particular nugget of information… "A republic?"
"A workingman's republic." Rebecca confirmed, "Unlike the farces other powers attempt to sell as democracies…"
UvH (as Luitpold) in Mittelafrika
"Luitpold!" Albert smiled up at her sister, while pointedly not leaving her seat.
"Albert." Luitpold took a seat across from her sister and looked down at the plate. "Is this stuff any good?"
"The gazelle's great. Like, almost worth conquering this place for the food alone."
"I'm sure the natives would be glad to hear that." Luitpold deadpanned.
Soon enough, their food arrived. Honest to goodness gazelle, just recently shot. Sachsen got press-ganged into a lot of safaris and other such events. It wasn't Sachsen's kill (Württemberg was the only sister who hunted) but the ships got to try some anyway.
It wasn't much compensation for being dragged out to some miserable stretch of sunbeaten country that strongly disagreed with her usual black clothes. And of course Albert didn't think to warn her, lazy...
Her sister spent most of the trip sunbathing and coming up with excuses to stay off of bumpy trucks so she could grab naps or some sunbathing time. Funny how she always ended up next to the perpetually energetic Sachsen, who seemed practically antithetical to sleep.
Luitpold tried not to mind the way her sister's eyes constantly moved. Her back was the corner, and every time some manservant moved between her and the exit- or her and Sachsen- she tensed. Not dramatically, but Luitpold knew her sister's tells, even after a few years of separation.
She was right, though. The gazelle was incredible, as meat came. Luitpold wouldn't say the situation was better than Lutzow's little lair on Saaremaa, but she understood how someone who wasn't her might come to appreciate it.
(The heat was one thing, the operation as a whole was another. Sometimes she felt as if it was a waste, using ammunition on her enemies. Not even worth killing. But how much ammo would be wasted to keep a German tricolor flying over this foreign continent for a few years longer?)
The Foreign Band
A band without a country, a band without a home,
And yet we're always welcome, no matter where we roam,
No one wants to claim us, and no one knows we're there,
A band without a country is our cross to bear!
The new world had been a mixed bag. Malaya would be honest and admit she wept tears of joy when she met the other Elizabeth – the one who didn't abhor her, the one who let her start fresh – but she still held the exact same politics as the old Elizabeth. There was no rancor, but there was an ironclad certainty that she was right: there had been no flight from Britain, no collapse of the monarchy.
How strange that this world saw the rise of communists – not communards – in the East, in rural Russia and China. And the ideology that rose from the ruins of post World War Germany… it was enough to make her think that her original timeline was the better one, in a grand sense. But this world was the place she found herself in, with sisters not quite like those she remembered.
It hurt a little, to see these bizarre reflections of her friends and comrades, but they lived happily. They used these funny things called smartphones that she, Barham, and the Bayerns couldn't make heads or tails of.
Right. The Bayerns. They had come along too, and they faced even greater culture shock than Malaya and Barham did. This new Britain was essentially their old one if their trajectory hadn't been changed by losing the home islands. Decolonization was a pleasant surprise, sure, but it was still a reactionary monarchy slowly ceding ground to liberal reform. Lizzie and her lot had been shocked by the Syndicalist regime Malaya described… meanwhile, the Bayerns got a few familiar faces in Lutzow and Seydlitz before being hit with a description of Nazism and why they had to be very careful about how nationalist they were.
Work was underway to bring more girls from their timeline – nicknamed Kaiserreich because the string of numbers and letters used to refer to that dimension/universe was a mouthful – but for now the six of them were essentially marooned. Like Malaya and Barham, the Bayerns struggled to find company in people who weren't what they remembered. Ulrich von Hutten was kind to Bayern, sure, but she didn't remember what Bayern did. Baden saw a woman with her mentor's face and no memories of the years of training she had given.
Their previous conflicts aside, they remembered the same past as Malaya did. They found this modern technology equally confusing, but they were also about as willing to learn. Even Wurt was curious, although her curiosity was tinged with paranoia.
And this world wanted to learn about them in turn. This unified Azur Lane agency was very transparent, perhaps because it was so international in character. (Well, Malaya hadn't seen a Dutchwoman or Turk or… what, Yugoslav? Austria-Hungary fell apart, after all…) The whole world knew that these visitors from another world existed, and they were naturally curious. Considering that Azur Lane was fighting a public relations war as well as a physical one, they were practically obligated to do something.
While there would be interviews and such, another part of the plan involved miniskirts and musical instruments. That needed… a lot of convincing. Part of it was simple shock and hesitation, but Wurt had serious concerns about the safety of venues that needed to be addressed. Add practice time to an admittedly generous schedule for their rigging training…
(Malaya also wanted to hammer out some of the specifics about profits. Sure, a lot of the money made went into a defense fund for mankind, essentially, but if she was going to be making people money with songs from an alternate universe, she wanted to make sure everybody was getting paid their fair share. She didn't know how sound technicians worked their magic, but they deserved their fair share.)
Some of the songs they knew weren't workable: Bayern remembered no small number of post-war songs crowing about German victory, and the less said about the crass songs Sachsen picked up from colonial garrisons the better. Malaya provided a few here, although she wondered if she was betraying the Syndicalist avant-garde who wrote them by selling them…
Selling out the Syndicalist dream aside, the practice was fairly fun. Elizabeth and Warspite came by in their performance outfits sometimes, maybe even accompanied by Z23 or Graf Spee. (Friedrich der Grosse came by to see one of their practices and Baden nearly poked somebody's eye out with the bow of her viola.)
Honestly, it was kind of strange that Malaya had settled in as well as she had. At times, this new world was too much. Too active, too dazzling…
"Malaya?" Barham shouted, having entered their room first. "Somebody's left you a… cee-dee?"
"What's it about?"
"The note says it's all punk rock, whatever that is?"
Lingua Franca aka Total Linguistics Head-Canon Time
Sometimes, a Kansen would be born bilingual. Hiei's Dai-3, later Asakaze, spoke Ainu because she was one, essentially. The information was essentially transplanted, without Hiei actually needing to know it; likewise, Giuseppe Garibaldi spoke Latin as easily as she spoke Italian, Kongou knew English. There is a sort of logic behind it – especially in Asakaze's case – in that they were made in or took inspiration from a region where those languages were spoken.
Still, what you knew when you were born wasn't enough to live off of, typically. In addition to training their abilities relating to ships, some Kansen learned other languages. For any Kansen within the Reichspakt, some familiarity with German was invaluable both as a lingua franca and as a means to learn from experienced German-speaking Kansen. Ships like Belfast and De Zeven Provincien took their first lessons in German… Austrian ships tended to know it too, with the occasional bit of Hungarian or Latin thrown in.
English is the obvious counterweight to German. Both American and British Kansen (whether Loyalist or Syndicalist) know it immediately, meaning a considerable portion of all Kansen spoke it, just inherently. Early American Kansen learned German in hopes of gleaning some extra information from the Germans, but as they grew into their own, this tended to be replaced with other languages: if one thought of the United States as the would-be policeman of their hemisphere, they needed to speak the language of the community. Some Americans knew Spanish immediately, like Arizona and California, but others learned before the Second Civil War. Others knew Native American languages, although it was usually just one. (Oklahoma knew none, South Dakota knew Dakota, fittingly enough, but couldn't speak a word of Arikara.)
The Canadian exiles tended to learn French, both for the Quebecois and their allies in Algeria. Those who knew a language from the get go tended towards indigenous dialects like the Americans. Likewise, the French in Algiers learned a lot of English, in addition to enough Italian to cooperate with the Two Sicilies and the shattered Sardinia Piedmont. French ships in the Metropole were similar, although their dialect of Italian was perhaps a bit more northern. The Third Internationale had a particular love for polyglots.
Even among shipgirls, where two of three languages wasn't absurd, there were a few remarkable cases. Turkish, Arabic, English, and German plus Portuguese for Agincourt/Osman, and similar for Erin, with a smattering of Irish in place of the Portuguese. Admiral Hipper picked up French and English in addition to her native German, added some Dutch while planning a defense of Indonesia, and had a relationship with the Vietnamese language that was nearly as rough as her relation with the people who spoke it. Still, there were communications she needed to read and a people she needed to understand…
Viribus Unitis, true to her name, tried to learn most of her empire's languages. German and Hungarian, Latin as a sort of grand European tongue, Italian and Serbo-Croatian because of their prominence on Austro-Hungarian coasts. (She did not, however, pray in Spanish or woo men in French.) Tegetthoff would enjoy her reputation as the woman who could curse in every language of the empire – and would gladly chat up someone in any language she thought would work. Prinz Eugen knew her Italian because of Savoy, Tegetthoff knew it for romance.
Going out of quasi in universe mode!
Personally I like the idea of one of the Japanese being like an aide-de-camp to Hiei and doing a load of translation work for her. Hiei already knows English so this character (maybe Aoba because she's my beloved and she has the journalism thing meaning curiosity and perhaps she'd be a paper pusher for Hiei) would try to keep up with all the languages nearby. German, Dutch, and French down south, Russian for the Transamur, maybe Chinese… and then throw in Ainu as a sort of private language shared by Hiei, Asakaze, and a few others. I like the idea of a highly clique-ish IJN where knowing a language for secret communications could be useful. Either that or maybe Aoba and Kinugasa being a sort of team – Aoba picks up a few, Kinugasa the others. Maybe French so she can cook that good foreign food.
I'm not sure if going out and giving shipgirls extra language learning or retention might be a bit much, but they would have a strong incentive to learn in my opinion.
You could probably write a whole lot more on accents or dialects: how differently would Englishmen in Canada and UoB talk immediately? How different would they be after like two decades? Do the exiles adopt Canadian slang, does the UoB change their language due to Syndicalism?
The FFN version of this fic is missing out on a lot of the memes in the Ao3 version, so all you have left from that segment is the terrible sap:
In all seriousness the #kaiserreich channel on discord is incredible fun and the lads have done some amazing work hammering out the naval lore of this strange world. 23,180 messages in about five months. When our brains aren't trickling out of our skulls we actually get some insightful research done. There probably isn't a single chapter in this fic not supported by at least a few questions I asked on the discord. Cheers, and here's to the war being over by Christmas!
So yeah, enjoy that. I know I really should be focusing on some of my other fic so maybe I'll do that or maybe I'll just limp back to Kaiser Lane. I don't know. I have a sort of potential idea for some sort of Goodbye Broadway Hello France chapter. It might clash with current epigraph convention, but my thought was it would be two timelines, half CSA ships arriving in the Commune and half AUS helping National France in Algiers. The debt squared two separate ways.
I'd be interested to hear other ideas. If the next chapter isn't a reader submitted idea, Hello France, or maybe a Kaga chapter it'll probably be a little number I have titled "We Proudly Present: A Series of Presentations About the Kansen, Otherwise Known as Shipgirls, of the Deutsches Kaiserreich From Their Inception to the End of German Hegemony". It's gonna be weird.