Trying for a slightly different genre than usual, and it might be enough of a change from the usual to be a bit… weird. Really weird, actually. This one took a while to write. Sequel to the earlier Hiei chapter, Goddess in Ezochi.
Chip ne yakka ingara yan, nei ambe anak ne ene poro shiriki,
aine, yupke rera ani apashte yakka,
kanchi koro guru rengaine nei shiri pon kanchi gusu henoyere eashkai ruwe ne.
Taishō 13
Unfortunately, Hiei hadn't managed to get her hands on Goryōkaku. It was a magnificent complex, even if she had missed it in spring when the cherry blossoms came into bloom and were doubled by their reflection in the moat… The old star fortress in southern Hokkaido had been a public park since before Hiei was born. Not terribly long, in the grand scheme of things, but the public had gotten used to their park. While certainly fitting for her – it worked for the Ezo Republic, and she was more than some elected official – depriving the people of Hakodate a sight of such beauty for her own ego felt rather crass.
Plus, her business was on Honshu – in the northern portion, Tōhoku, to be specific – while her leisure was on Hokkaido, a call to her chauffeur and a ferry ride away. (A ferry felt quite beneath her, but she couldn't be wasting the Ominato coal and oil supplies for her excursions.) The lion's share of funds went into preparing Ominato: there was to be a splendid celebration of Mutsu's visitation of the north, which obligated secure facilities for her and an entire retinue, in addition to the navy needing Ominato in the best possible shape.
Those were her military obligations, in addition to training for her next cube. Personally? There was the matter of her… the destroyer accompanying her. Dai-3.
What was there to say about her? Firstly, there was appearance. She looked young, about the same age as her siblings, and her eyes were rather like Dai-9's, little droplets of amber frequently caught between narrowed lids. Her hair was black and straight, not broken up by any ears except the usual human pair on the side of her head. Less usual was the dark crescent of a tattoo that curved across her face, a smiling tattoo like those of the old Ainu women who got theirs before the ban in seventy-one.
She was… with all due respect and a fair portion of quasi-motherly affection… a complication. Dai-3 felt, quite fairly, like something of an alien among the Japanese, even if she knew the language perfectly. Her accent wasn't even that far out of place, a blend of Hokkaido and Tōhoku tones that was perfectly reasonable for where they worked… with the occasional sprinkling of what Hiei assumed to be Ainu expletives and interjections.
"Did you need somethin'?" Dai-3 asked. "You're starin'."
"How have your crew been recently?" Hiei asked.
Dai-9 rolled her eyes. "I can keep my own house in order, Hiei-sama."
There was nothing off in the tone, but Dai-3 tended to play with her suffixes when she even bothered to include them: this was the same girl who occasionally referred to Kongou as 'her excellency' – Kongou-kakka.
"I don't doubt that," Hiei said, "But the reins can't be allowed to go slack. Especially not yours."
Once the initial amazement of a ship spirit wore off, you were left with a woman in a male profession. The shipboard shrines didn't backtalk, give orders, sass (argue any points at all, even), or rebuff a man's advances, but a Kansen… it didn't require terrorizing the men, but you needed to be willing to stand your ground. Hiei had been called in as reinforcement for cases like that before.
(Kaga and Tosa did the same in their own camp. They all had a collective interest in staying respected and obeyed – Isuzu's crew had to be partitioned and scared straight, once upon a time.)
"Yes'm," Dai-3 grumbled.
"I have some better news, though," Hiei said.
"You couldn't have started with that?"
Hiei's migration north was an upset in the politics of Japanese Kansen that surpassed even the arrival of a battleship. Barring Haruna, none of them had ever… left. Despite disagreement in the ranks, they stayed together, for they had (or could imagine) nowhere else to go. It was hard to imagine settling down outside of Yokosuka, and while Hokkaido certainly wasn't the realm of the dead, Hiei's move compelled questions: who was going to replace her? And was it possible to follow her example?
For the second question, the answer was, in most cases, no. This was not an excuse for a vacation in Kyushu or any of the empire's overseas territories, it was not a chance to get out from under the collective thumbs of their admirals. It required a proven track record and trust, both from the admirals themselves and from Kongou, who still ruled the roost and was quite hesitant about letting, say, Tosa, oversee Sasebo or Kure.
Kansen politicking looked about ready to spill over into the naval districts, but there was also the matter of roles to fill at home. Fusou stood ready to take over most of Hiei's social obligations, but Hiei did more: in addition to reliably picking up the slack wherever Kongou needed it, she was a good face. Not foreign-looking like Kongou or rambunctious like Kirishima… the horns were a distraction, but most of the Japanese ships had something similar.
To some, both among Kansen and the general population, it seemed to have a note of Hokushin-ron about it: why would the empire's battlecruiser move north if not to say something about the Russians? Kongou and Kirishima knew their sister's motive was a sudden interest in Hokkaido, not some scheme to pave the northern road into Siberia…
Kongou was hesitant to be seen favoring the Northern Expansion Doctrine, but if she was forced to pick between it and Southern Expansion… Kaga liked to bandy the phrase 'European sympathizer' about, but Kongou really did think that striking south would be kicking a hornet's nest. Was there plunder for the taking? Yes, but the price would be high. If not empire-destroying high, it would brutalize the ranks of shipgirls and devastate the people.
(And was condemning Japanese soldiers to icy deaths worth the price of saving Kansen? Weren't they soldiers of the empire, like all the rest?)
Kongou felt Hiei's absence keenly, but she knew her sister wanted Ominato. Needed it, maybe, especially with that little Ainu protégé of hers. Once the initial shock of the photograph had worn off, Kongou could only be glad. Beyond her sisters, she had Dai-9. Kirishima had Ise and Hyuuga.
A bit of separation from Yokosuka would being good enough on its own, not even counting the time with Dai-3. There were girls who wanted out of Yokosuka: beyond the aforementioned requests to oversee overseas bases, several girls had politely asked if they might be transferred to Ominato. Part of it was just an admiration for Hiei, but wanting to get away from Yokosuka by any means necessary seemed to play a part.
It seemed a good idea – eggs, one basket, building up goodwill in girls otherwise uninterested in base politicking – but Kongou didn't want to just foist guests on Hiei immediately. A few months to settle down, to determine if a satellite base for Kansen was reasonable… there were plenty of reasonable excuses that gave her sister a bit of time.
Kongou pulled her gaze away from the list of names asking for reassignment to Ominato (already nicknamed Hokuchō, like you could have a Northern Court with two people), trying to focus on the pile of paperwork that needed resolution before the end of winter. Should she propose the idea to Hiei in her next telegram?
Speaking of… she'd just received some news about the movement of the British fleet, and she'd need to pore over that. A few battleships were sailing over to Canada, and that might be sufficient to boost them over the threshold to get their next cubes? It depended on how much time they'd spend drilling on the way instead of touching up their paint jobs.
There was a familiar rapping at her door, and her gaze shot away from the sheaves of reports. "Yes?"
"Telegram from Hiei!" Kirishima said, already pushing the door open to wave a telegraph envelope in the air.
"From Mutsu?" The city, that was.
"Hakodate," Kirishima said. Opening the envelope, she paused for a moment. Encrypted… but she was a Kansen. She read aloud: "My dear Kongou and Kirishima, all plans for Ominato are proceeding apace. Mutsu will be ready in March. For the next fortnight, send all telegrams to Hakodate. Barring emergencies, I will be in Ezo. Hope to learn more about their cuisine. However, I plan to winter in Mutsu."
Kongou gave Kirishima an expectant look, and she continued: "Stop. Hiei."
"You'd think she could make it longer," Kirishima said. "Not like she's paying."
"But don't you like handwritten letters?"
"But they're not as fast," Kirishima sighed. Neither of them particularly liked having Hiei unavailable, but they were capable of standing on their own.
After a beat of silence, there were three knocks on the door, their rhythm as steady as a metronome. Kongou turned to the door: "Dai-9?"
"Yes, ma'am." Kirishima opened the door and Dai-9 walked in.
"I thought you had another half an hour left for lunch."
"I finished quickly." Kongou wondered how much of it was finishing quickly and how much of it was getting ambushed by Dai-7 and a bento before she even left earshot of Kongou's office.
Kirishima grinned. "Can you hold down the fort, Kyūchan?" Dai-9's brow twitched, but she made no comment about the nickname, just nodding her head. "Here's your coat, Kongou."
"Thank you, Kirishima. And thank you, Dai-9."
They landed in and departed Hakodate with little fanfare. She sent a runner with her telegram – written on the ferry over – and made a few token visits to the authorities and public appearances. She could, with some reliability, squeeze a ball or dinner out of the larger cities in Hokkaido, but that required giving notice in advance… and parties weren't quite the same when you weren't planning them.
A party thrown for you could be quite fun, for example, see Kongou and Kirishima celebrating her launch day. However, being courted by slightly desperate bureaucrats who wanted her naval disbursements, her image, or her… It was tiresome, even if playing them was occasionally necessary to get what she wanted.
Her chauffeur had them puttering away in a few hours, the height of Mount Hakodate shrinking in the distance. As mountains came, it was a small one – Hiei's namesake, along with those of her sisters, would loom over it terribly – but Hiei wondered if one of Hokkaido's mountains might gain the dignity of a ship. Maybe not Hakodate, but what about Asashidake? The highest mountain in Hokkaido, wreathed in diamond dust and clouds of steam…
(Certainly more impressive than the long rows of charcoal kilns that seethed at the city's outskirts. They coughed smoke like volcanoes, but their mountain range was a long line of regular cones, their fires igniting on a human schedule.)
Dai-3 stared out the window, watching the green shoots of winter wheat bob and weave in the wind. There was a thin, spotty carpet of snow around their bases, but Hiei had been reassured that didn't necessarily mean starvation for the isle. Snow insulated winter wheat from the worst of the temperature oscillations.
However, it didn't seem like Dai-3 was really paying attention to the region's agriculture; she stared with longing at the fringe of brown-green that marked the end of the fields. It wasn't the wild Hokkaido both of them were hoping for, considering that they were driving to a lodge in that forest, but it was about as different from an enclosed hull of steel as anything could be.
The sea was more vast than the land, but you couldn't walk into the sea and eke out some living for yourself on top of the whitecaps. Both sea and land could swallow you, but on land, you could live in the belly of the beast for a while. (Wasn't that an oddly topical comparison…?) How many people had gotten lost, intentionally or no, in the mountains of Ezo?
The house was a traditional, stately thing, tidily wrapped in a snow-capped wall. That had been non-negotiable, both Hiei and her guards agreed, and the place was stocked for a siege on top of that. If supplies were not sufficient for a battlecruiser, they might suffice for a destroyer, and they would certainly be enough for a household.
(It wasn't as much of a money sink as you might think. A letter of introduction cheapened the house and the land quite a bit, and misbehaving soldiers and sailors 'volunteered' their labor.)
The guards swept the place before opening the car door for Hiei – Dai-3 was fidgeting. As soon as she was freed from the car, she took a deep, bracing breath before frowning.
"You can only smell the car?"
"Yes." Dai-3 sighed. They both knew what she wanted.
"Enjoy yourself. Dinner should be in a couple of hours." With that, she was off.
Their previous excursions proved that Dai-3 had no preternatural understanding of the Hokkaido backcountry, although her woodsmanship was already a step above Hiei's. A few soldiers peeled off, skis and rifles on their backs, ready to extricate her should the worse happen. Whether they or Dai-3 would limp home first was an open question…
But both parties could handle themselves well enough for Hiei to turn her attention towards settling in. She had arranged for fresh foodstuffs – she was loath to cook with canned, even if an abundance of caution called for some supply – and it seemed like Hiei had managed to lure an Ainu woman by for lessons in a few days… That did raise the question of what a native Ainu would think of Dai-3. Hiei didn't know how to say knock-off in Ainu, but she had a suspicion about it.
Hiei would be making some minor progress on that front tonight, assuming that Dai-3 didn't tucker herself out and was in the proper temper.
Learning Ainu was certainly a proposition, one that possibly crossed the threshold into seeming subversive. The policy of the state was to blot the matter out – along with the culture as a whole, really – but these sorts of things could prove quite persistent.
Speaking of persistence – and those things that Japan hadn't quite managed to expel from her shores – there was the book she had managed to acquire: an Ainu copy of the Bible. Look, finding anything written in Ainu was difficult; the Reverend Batchelor was the first to write any Ainu down.
(Which was not to paint him in too rosy a light. She'd read some of his works on the Ainu, and his was certainly a colonial perspective. Hiei was principled enough to dislike colonial condescension from any man in any nation. An Anglican Englishman coloring Ainu culture wasn't magically better than Japan doing the same.)
The first part of Dai-3's excursion was spent, as was tradition, trying to shake her tails.
(Tails in the sense of a pursuer. Like Dai-11, she lacked a tail tail. She had a passing interest in one, and who wouldn't, it was another limb, but she could settle for not having a great shaggy tripping hazard hanging off her rear.)
The snow stuck to her boots and made the yellowing grass kowtow low as she plunged into the wilderness. Hop a fallen tree, weave here, double back there, hop a stream and try not to splash on her gaiters…
She kept low, nearly crawling up the slope on the stream's far side. Even low to the ground, she couldn't pick up anything more than fresh air and pine needles. And the cold, if you could smell it.
Reaching for a tree limb to grab, her sleeve rode up, exposing a small stretch of tattooed arm. Those weren't done yet; eventually, they'd form a delicate latticework that stretched up to her elbows, but that assumed that she could find a tattooist to finish the job… and that she got married. With a hop, she cleared the lip of the slope and found herself back on roughly level ground. That patch of cedar there looked interesting, a bit better than a stand of threadbare birch, stripped of all their leaves.
They used birchbark for the tattoos, actually. Dai-3 supposed she was lucky that she got the mouth tattoos without the whole process… it was, from what she knew – in that foggy, half-remembered way – quite painful. It left your lips puffy and inflamed for days afterward, you had to suck your water from a soaked cloth. But until the Japanese started cracking down on it, that was simply the way things were done.
Admittedly, 'how things were done' didn't mean much on its lonesome. There was a proper way to shoot a torpedo or start a fire or cook a fish, yeah, but that didn't mean that the whole Japanese suffix system did much good beyond stroking egos. Which was, she supposed, needed from time to time, but frankly, she didn't think most people deserved as much respect as they assumed they did.
(And where did that leave the matter of Ainu tattoos? They were custom, but they were supposed to be… mimicry, she thought? The evil spirits that lurked around them were dissuaded from entering the nose and mouth by tattoos that looked like those of the kamuy. The gods. In addition to that and their beauty, the tattoos set the Ainu apart.)
The wind groaned through the pines, making the branches rustle against each other, dancing in front of a uniformly grey sky. It was a mild sort of grey, still pale with the sunlight behind it, but it spread uniformly across the whole sky. Fortunately, the earth hadn't been quite so quick to mimic that monochrome fashion. Despite the chill, the evergreens held on.
Maybe that was part of what Hiei liked about Hokkaido. The persistence.
Hiei. How could you talk Dai-3 without talking Hiei? Urgh. Okay, maybe urgh was a little strong. Dai-3 liked Hiei – in a weird complex way she didn't really want to sit down and analyze too deeply – but she didn't particularly like the idea of being seen as an accessory to Hiei, the Hokkaido to her Honshu.
And yet she'd never really known any shipgirl other than Hiei; the elder battlecruiser was essentially settled in Ominato when Dai-3 came into the world, and they had both agreed that staying would be best. It wasn't just due to Dai-3 taking Hiei's warnings about the politicking at Yokosuka on faith, though.
She needed time in Hokkaido before meeting her sisters, as callous as that may have sounded. She couldn't… she wouldn't let herself be defined by anything less than this. Harsh, uncompromising Hokkaido, stones pressing against her gloves, branches tugging at her hair.
She reached the crest of a hill and slowly turned around, trying her best to soak it all in while not making automatic guesses about distances and angles. Dai-3 wouldn't mind if Hiei went a little easier on the trigonometry practice… especially in cases where half a dozen problems stood between Dai-3 and a miserably delicious smelling dinner. That wasn't tattooing, but it was its own sort of torture.
Already, she could see a whisp of smoke rising from the house. She hoped that they had a good stove. (Whatever she was, she wasn't a Luddite. The revolver on her hip was proof enough of that.)
Dinner was venison, although it was prepared in decidedly non-Ainu fashion. If soy sauce and miso were some form of Japanese colonial imperialism… well, Hiei could accept that, assuming that it didn't destroy Ainu cooking entirely. A trip to England had made her a better chef – thank you, George V – and she was always interested in expanding her repertoire, mixing together cuisines previously separate.
She had managed to provoke an "It's good," from Dai-3, and as usual, the men were looking ready to scrap over their portions. Cooking for soldiers at all was something she had to be careful with – it would be a terrible loss of face if she were to cook for her crew – but with her personal guards? While she couldn't quite stoop to friendship, she took an interest in their lives and provided a much-needed feminine touch (in a motherly way)...
(That sort of behavior wasn't unprecedented either. When not busy with her shrine and shipboard duties – and shipboard shrine duties – Fusou played matchmaker, compelled her men to write their relatives, generally kept them on the straight and narrow… barring the ears, she was the image of traditional, pious, Japanese domesticity. It was in her name. Fusou, Fusang, Japan. An ancient, poetic name for a modern battleship, a man-made isle of steel. But that was just their sort of contradiction, no?)
After dinner – and a few token sips, it was a sort of vacation – Hiei made her request: "I'd like to learn Ainu, if you'd be willing to teach me."
Dai-3's eyebrows rose. "You want to learn Ainu?"
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"I was under the impression I got you in a lot of trouble."
"And I can handle my own trouble, Dai-3," Hiei responded. The admirals didn't appreciate her use of a cube without permission from on high… but they couldn't exactly fire her, could they? She was hard to replace, and worse still, the people knew her. Liked her. (Kongou may have had pride of place, but Hiei was a close second and had Japanese looks.)
"Am I your trouble too?"
Hiei was silent for a moment. "Have I overstepped my bounds? Would you prefer that I leave you be?" Unfortunately, Hiei had the feeling that a laissez-faire stance would just leave Dai-3 open to be snatched by someone else.
"I… no," Dai-3 mumbled, sliding her hands against her skirt like she was wiping off sweat. "If I wasn't…?" she shook her head. "Never mind."
Hiei… decided not to pry, at least not now. It varied, of course, but Kansen could get… prickly about these sorts of things. "I've had trouble acquiring a dictionary, but I did manage to acquire an Ainu book…"
Dai-3's reaction to the book in question being a bible was a resounding "Really?", followed by a careful examination of every inch of it. A frown spread across her face when she realized the lettering was Latin, but that didn't stop her from reading with growing amazement. She flicked over to the next page before recalling that Hiei was there, and even then she needed a bit of coaxing to start sharing.
(The girl was not, in any sense, immune to flattery; it was just a matter of not laying it on so thickly as to arouse suspicion.)
The price for the Ainu words for alcohol – sake, tonoto, and ashkoro – was a bit of the genuine article. With some hesitance, Hiei let her have a bit, and she thought the girl rather disliked the taste, even if she put on a confident front and finished her portion. Still, even if she could hide a new drinker's reaction to the taste, she wasn't adjusted to the impact of booze.
"Tonoto-ooo," she sighed, "is like a mix of 'tono' and 'to.'" She leaned against Hiei's side. "It's kinda funny, you know. Tono like an official. The government. And 'to' like a teat. Government milk." Dai-3 chuckled. "Isn't that funny?"
A quirk of etymology was funny, but Hiei couldn't help but wonder if that 'tono' was taken from Japanese. Peddling booze was an old colonial trick. Not that the native people were somehow too good and wholesome for alcohol production; it just that the trade tended to eat away at them. Cheap, foreign, and strong was a very unfortunate combination.
At some point during Hiei's contemplation, Dai-3 had dozed off, her cheek pressing into Hiei's side. Cautiously, she tried to adjust herself…
"You awake, Hiei? Miss Hiei?" Someone was whispering to her, but there was no shaking of her shoulder like Kirishima was wont to do. "You'll be wantin' to see this, Miss Hiei…"
Opening her eyes, she could see that the culprit was Dai-3. Her hair was tamed in a rough braid and there was a black stain on the cuff of her shirt. Inhaling, Hiei smelled... "Good morning, Dai-3. Thank you for starting the brazier."
"I had to, you know. Snowed fiercely last night."
Snow…? But the forecast… Frowning, Hiei rose to her feet. A couple of extra sacks of coal sat against the wall. Had Dai-3 hauled them in, or had she ordered someone to do it? Though the men may have been their guards – and subject to either of them – Hiei would admit that the thought of them getting too close was discomfitting. Again, some separation was required.
Dai-3 tugged her outside, where the men were busy excavating paths in snow that had suddenly leapt up to their torsos. The car was liberated, but an attempt to clear out a path for driving in front of it resulted in a collapse and a stream of obscenities from a shivering guard.
"I'll start on tea!" Hiei announced. That seemed to gladden the men, although their officer gave her a disappointed look – he thought she was mollycoddling them. Still, he knew the conditions better than Hiei. "Is this sort of weather unusual?"
"The weather can turn, ma'am, but I've never seen so much snow in one night. I'd the sky had given up all it had to give…" But he looked up at a darker sky than yesterday, a great expanse of flat gunmetal.
"Should we retreat to Hakodate?" Hiei asked.
The officer sighed. "It might be best, ma'am, but the car won't make it. Waiting for the melt is unacceptable… we could send for a sledge, or you could attempt to ski." That last suggestion got Dai-3 grinning.
(Wasn't skiing growing popular as a sport in Europe? At least in those mountains where the rich and affluent weren't liable to run into a Syndicalist patrol.)
"Send a man to arrange for a sledge, if possible. If not, we ski or we walk. The empire cannot afford my wintering here."
"Yes ma'am!"
"In addition, I'd like you to increase the watch at night… just ensure that they're rotated inside frequently." Was the snow sufficient to let someone scale the compound's wall? Perhaps. A bit of extra caution never hurt.
Freak weather… was almost nostalgic, wasn't it?
While Hiei hadn't anticipated weather like this, she had expected a chill, and as such ensured that her room could play host to a kotatsu. She lit the coals, prepared tea, and got to studying with Dai-3. After a few quick skinny triangles and torpedo angle problems, they got back to Ainu. Dai-3 seemed to enjoy teaching more than studying, although Hiei doubted she would have the same pride and enthusiasm if asked to teach a class about navigation.
Hiei wasn't even close to the point where she could comprehend whole sentences, but Dai-3 did read the occasional excerpt, her voice seeming a bit affected. Whether that was due to trying to annunciate clearly for Hiei's sake or some discomfort with the text, Hiei couldn't say.
"Orowa, tambe ka e otta Ku ye, Aokai anak ne Petros ne, orowa tan watara kata Ku karisia Ku ashte kusu ne; orowa, Hedes apa nei ambe annokara skomoki kusu ne ruwe ne." Dai-3 read. "What does 'Hedes' mean?"
"Hades," Hiei answered. She had her own English copy, which was much easier to get. "It's… rather similar to Yomi. The abode of the dead. What would that be in Ainu?"
"Pokna-moshir," Dai-3 answered. "But if it's bad, it's teine-pokna-moshir."
"Teine?"
"Damp. So it's… wet Hades, or wet netherworld." Dai-3 answered.
(Wherever Haruna had gone… Hiei thought her sister might prefer it a bit wet. Despite the catastrophe that had occurred out there, you couldn't truly part a shipgirl from the sea.)
"And why is… Simon renamed Petros?"
"Petros is related to the word rock in some way," Hiei said.
Dai-3 hummed to herself. "And he just… took that? Never changed back to Simon?"
"No. He stayed Peter until he died a rather unfortunate death." Hiei said. She hadn't had a chance to visit the man's resting place – secrecy on the way to England, chaos in Italy on the way back – but she knew a bit of the story.
"Seems a bit rough, just havin' a new name tossed at you by somebody else."
"That is what happens to most people, I'll note," Hiei remarked.
That provoked a smile at least. "Seems like an imposition, though."
As Hiei understood, it was a new name for a new life. Some of the English Kansen took baptismal names: Elizabeth (guess who), Anne, Esther, Maud. Of course, it wasn't a practice that any of the Kongou sisters ever adopted.
They continued reading and chatting well into the evening, when Hiei started offering the men going out for their watches something a bit stronger.
Hiei awoke the next morning to a terrible ruction, and any drowsiness left her immediately. She shot up and looked around. No intruders in their room, Dai-3 was still dozing… but she could hear orders and arguing outside. She was out of the room in maybe two minutes, hand resting on the grip of her sword. After about three steps, she nearly tripped over him.
Hiei looked down to see her boot pressed into the skin of a bluing arm. The arm stretched up to a pale, bare torso, black hair on the chest crowned with a sprinkling of snow. Another man swept the snow away before throwing a blanket over… was it a body? There was no movement, the frostbitten face fixed into a gaze of total fascination, like the first adoring crowds who greeted Hiei four years ago.
"Hypothermia?" Hiei asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
From what she remembered, the man couldn't really be counted as dead until he was warm… "Did you remove his clothes because they were sodden?"
"He did that himself, ma'am."
"Whatever for?"
The man sighed. "It's a sort of madness that comes with some cases of hypothermia, not uncommon. Perhaps the mind is so overloaded with the cold that it imagines heat. They strip like they're burning up…"
"And then, most of the time, they die," Hiei said.
"Yes. But the man didn't come inside, he didn't burrow… he walked out, stripped, and froze there." He replied. "... Ma'am. It's an odd case, ma'am."
Hiei's gaze drifted back to the frostbitten soldier. Just last night, she had ladled out a portion of warm sake for him. And now he sat on the tatami, rigid in not-quite-death. "The men will go out on watch in pairs." She ordered. "Have we any news on the messenger sent to town?"
"None, ma'am."
"I suppose we won't be wanting for a spare pair of skis," Hiei remarked grimly.
The man thawed, and he died. They buried him in the snow. A proper ceremony would be later.
Hiei had trouble falling asleep that night. Part of it was the thought of that man, somehow lured into a frigid death in the cold. Why? Was it suicide, or some temporary episode of madness? If she hadn't come out here… even if obviously avoidable, the death put everyone on edge.
After putting her own coat on and putting a bit more fuel in the fire to keep it going for her return, Hiei stepped outside into the cold. Her breath became a fog in front of her face before it was torn away by the wind. Circling the house, she came to the spot of snow that marked the man's resting place. An oblong pile of snow vaguely suggested the human form, a bayonet buried in the snow near the foot and… something at the head. Hiei stepped off the porch and circled around, making sure to give the pile a wide berth.
Squinting in the faint light, Hiei found a bowl. Inside said bowl was a tiny pile of rice and a pair of cheap, splintery chopsticks, broken crosswise. Half a dozen unrolled cigarettes sat next to the bowl, and a pair of cut-up socks were on the other side.
Hiei felt a temptation to kneel down and take a closer look – was that a hint of a hole she saw in the bowl's bottom? – but she stopped herself. Perhaps she shouldn't be lingering outdoors on a night like this. She wasn't planning to join the man.
She could find something to do with the next few hours. There was nothing social she could arrange, but she could write letters, brush up on her ballistics…
And she could ensure no one stayed out too long.
Hiei woke up embarrassingly late the next day. In her defense, Dai-3 actively took pains to keep from waking Hiei up in all but the most urgent circumstances. She was hesitant to rouse a dozing crewman, even if she wasn't particularly sympathetic in other areas. (Idiosyncratic. Idiosyncratic like a pile of purposefully ruined grave goods?)
After her morning ceremonies, she dressed for the weather and went outside. Unfortunately, the necessary gaps in her armor for her face exposed her to the bitter chill, but she wasn't having snow thrust into her eyes, for what that was worth. She had to squint a bit, but even then, she could see a short little figure leaning against the wind.
"Good morning," Hiei said.
"Is it really?" Dai-3 groused.
"I suppose you could just say 'morning', then."
"Mornin'." Dai-3 said.
"Can I do anything for you? A particular breakfast, tea?"
Dai-3 was silent, and for a moment, Hiei wondered if she had overplayed her hand. If it seemed a bit too much like coddling… Dai-3 pressed the toe of her boot against the porch they were standing on, pushing a thin layer of snow away to reveal wood beneath.
"His name. Can you remind me what his name was?"
"Hiroshi," Hiei answered.
Dai-3 bit at her lip.
Hiei had hoped that the day might be somewhat normal, barring the presence of their dead comrade. She prepared hefty portions, in case they made a break for it today, but Dai-3 had barely finished her eggs before one of the officers rushed over to Hiei. "Ma'am, we found… something near the gate."
That was not the tone of a man who had accidentally gotten the gate caught or jammed. Hiei rose to her feet and reached for her sword. "What, exactly?" Had it been planted there? If so, by whom?
The officer's gaze flicked over to the men. "Your sort of something, ma'am."
She raised an eyebrow. Her sort…?
"A cube."
Almost instantly, Hiei's gaze turned to Dai-3, who swallowed her egg badly and fell into a coughing fit. After a long gulp of tragically un-savored tea, she cleared her throat and made a denial: "Not mine! You know I couldn't!"
Hiei did know that, but Hiei certainly didn't do it, and there wasn't another shipgirl anywhere near them, probably not even north of Kanto. Assuming someone didn't march through the Hokkaido snows for a joke, the cube had come from some unknown source.
"Show me."
The officer led her outside as she contemplated possibilities. It had to have shown up recently, because they would have seen it on the way in, so it couldn't be some sort of rarely occurring gem or mineral. She knew how heavy cubes were, so unless this one was an exception, it wasn't light enough to get carried by even those mighty Hokkaido winds… and if they just appeared in random snowbanks, the war at sea would have been very different.
Was there any possibility other than it being planted? If so, it wasn't coming to mind, and Hiei did not savor the thought of anyone creeping around the premises of the compound, much less someone with the means of acquiring a cube. (Ancient relics?) The British had never revealed anything about where they got their cubes.
(Of course, Hiei and her sisters had tried to investigate the matter while over there. Why wouldn't they? Unfortunately, most of the British seemed genuine when they said they knew nothing. The Elizabeths said as much as well, but they weren't great liars. On top of that, Elizabeth and Valiant used their status as hosts/heads of the British Kansen to stonewall any investigation.)
She did not like this situation, but she was obliged to investigate if it really was a cube. If there was any way to get around the usual requirements for cubes, something that didn't require agonizing, morale-obliterating drill for 'efficient' production…
Pushing through the snow, she marched through the gate and turned to where the men were clustering. They parted to let her see, backing away to watch her strange Kansen magic… from a reasonably safe distance. And yes, as soon as Hiei saw it, she was certain it was a cube, although it was unlike any specimen she had seen before.
It had an inner luminescence like all other wisdom cubes, but instead of a uniform blue-white glow, this cube shone with a glory of color. Despite being a perfect cube, it caught and threw light like a gemstone with hundreds of facets, the slightest shift in viewing angle exposing some magnificent new motley of red and gold, almost seeming alive like a fire. In its periphery, flashes of pink darted to and fro, chased by a white that made normal cubes seem cold and harsh.
She could imagine no cutter in the world who would dare to strike it, not that it needed any sort of improvement. It would shame Hope and every last one of the Cullinan pieces, and it would beat an entire jeweler's shop for sheer variety of color. It was a ruby like blood, it was a citrine like a magazine explosion, it was a sapphire like a clear sky above a pitched battle.
Reflections of its glory bounced off the snow and the thin rim of water that encircled the cube's base. Reaching out, her hand came to rest against the cube's side, and she found that it was warm to the touch, the heat seeping through her gloves. Carefully, she took it in both her hands and lifted it up, watching as the light inside somehow brightened more.
Analysis of each side revealed no imperfections, but that didn't necessarily mean it was a good thing. Oh, Hiei most certainly wanted to bring it back home, but she had to question how it had managed to fall into her lap. She had no idea where the British and Germans (and Americans) had sourced their cubes, but whatever it was beyond Hiei's ken, probably beyond all of Japan's.
A line of brilliant light sprang from the cube, like a sunrise through a cresting wave, and she couldn't quite bring herself to put the thing down. It was still warm – did the same mysterious energy that spawned Hiei allow it to maintain homeostasis? What could the scientists learn from it?
"Damn," Dai-3 murmured. "It's beautiful."
"It is," Hiei said. She looked up at the men. "You two, take this and bury it in the snow on that crest over there –" Hiei pointed, trying to ignore the bitter cold that reclaimed her hand almost immediately, "– and be sure to mark it. It's an object of strategic importance, but I'm not sleeping near it."
The light of the cube seemed to dim a little at that, and Hiei fought the urge to take it back. She didn't know what it was, honestly, a mere hill over might not be far enough. If the energies contained within were let out… the cube had enough energy to generate a person.
(She wasn't familiar with the work of scientists like Einstein, but she didn't need to understand the energy-mass equivalence to realize that an anomalous cube could have anomalous, potentially lethal effects.)
Without prompting, one of the men wrapped the cube in cloth, not even daring to touch it with his bare hands. She supposed that cubes had gotten a reputation as something to be handled by Kansen and officers alone, but it felt a bit too awed for her own personal guards. Hopefully, it was just a rational desire not to let it touch him.
"Dai-3?"
"Ma'am?"
"Do you have your pistol on your person?"
Her eyes widened, and her hand shot to her hip.
Some token attempts to mount skis were made, but the wind chill was brutal, and her officer gave her some unfortunate omens about snow density and wind slabs that convinced Hiei that no attempt could be made by two laywomen. They could see past their noses, so shooting was possible, but beyond a few practice shots to confirm that Dai-3 knew how to operate her firearm, they conserved ammunition.
(Even with advance warning, all the men jumped every time the pistol fired.)
For what it was worth, the oddity of the cube seemed to, in some sense, swallow up the oddity of the guard – Hiroshi's – death, or at least gave it a sort of sense, in being part of a grander scheme. It wasn't that terrible sort of madness that truly fell upon you catastrophically, like a meteor from heaven; it was some sort of cube insanity. Understandable. Maybe not something that could be solved with human strength, but they had Hiei.
The men lingered as long as they could on their night watches, they huddled around Hiei's corner of the house… it was an uncomfortable invasion of her privacy, but Hiei could bear it. She was a protector of the empire, including its soldiers, and it did feel nice to guard instead of being guarded. That didn't overshadow her unease, but it was a silver lining.
Unfortunately, she couldn't stay up forever. She dipped in and out of consciousness, picking up blurbs here and there. "Stop fiddling with your pistol, brat," someone warned… The fire crackling, cans of something or other being split open… She might have caught bits and pieces of a whispered debate about loveliest Kansen in the navy… Murmured prayers…
After some time bobbing on the periphery, she eventually surfaced into a foggy sort of consciousness. She found a wall and leaned against it, trying to rise without swaying too severely – even now, she was smart enough not to lean on her sword – and squinted into the light of dawn. She wasn't in a state to realize that probably didn't mean an end to their weather problems, but she also wasn't in a state to get overly hopeful. She blinked slowly, creeping outside.
The chill helped to purge the drowsiness from her system, although she still felt a bit sluggish as she squinted outside. She might be running a risk of snowblindness like this, but there was a certain splendor when the light bounced off the snow…
And when the sunbeams soared through the heart of a wisdom cube, stained glass spilling out onto the snow around it.
Her sword leapt from her sheath before the full, dread consequences really computed. The cube was delivered to them by some external party, one who had either watched the burial or tracked the cube, and they wanted to ensure that their gift was received.
Maybe the part of her that would have exercised more caution was still asleep; she stepped forward, knelt, and lifted the cube. The flickering, dancing motion inside sprang back to life, like fuel had been sprayed over a fire. It warmed in her hands splendidly.
She stood there for a while, gazing into the cube, the warmth seeping into her hands distracting her from the general chill. It took a particularly vibrant reflection – greenboy emerald bouncing off of steel – for her to realize she had dropped her blade. The snow fell away, but the cold had sunk into the tang.
The obvious thing to do was drop it. Throw it over the walls, which she certainly could do – sometimes it seemed like they were nothing more than ballistics computers in skirts – but she couldn't bring herself to abandon it.
Would they have to abandon the outdoors now? Or would that be jumping the gun? If the gate in the exterior walls could be subverted, then there was no reason to think the house couldn't be entered as well. Being lured out and kept there, somehow, might explain how a man had died of hypothermia practically on their doorstep. That wasn't a pleasant thought, especially when paired with the possibility that their mystery visitor had held Hiei's life in their hands.
She looked over the cube again, trying to see if she had missed anything. Was there some means of recording, perhaps? Some of the theories bouncing about were that cubes were, in some sense, information made manifest. They had never managed to 'fill' a cube more than usual, as far as they could tell, however, that didn't mean a cube couldn't be tweaked to absorb more information, did it? Wouldn't be much good for spying though, being so conspicuous…
Looking around, she couldn't see anything beyond the gate beyond an endless expanse of white and a thin seam of dark wood. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, and Hiei felt distressingly like some prey animal standing in the midst of a vast plain, impossible to miss. Or perhaps a ship at sea was more apt.
The news wasn't good, but there was something somewhat reassuring about the thought of a real, concrete enemy – no one assumed friendliness – that could physically move the cube. If it could touch the cube, it could be touched, and therefore shot, in turn. Unfortunately, that was paired with a swing into exceptional jumpiness. Men shot at hares, at birds, or even just a funny reflection off the snow.
Maybe they could have just tried skiing, considering the weather, but no one wanted to creep across open country as Hiei and Dai-3 fumbled their way through the snow. The house may have felt a prison at times, but it had a wall and supplies, and they could feasibly winter there. Perhaps that safety was an illusion, but they tried to separate themselves from the wilds of Hokkaido.
In this calm, low-stress environment, Dai-3 and Hiei holed up and tried to study the cube as best they could, given their circumstances. The men left them to their fey business, and Dai-3 filled pages with her scrawl, describing their journey, the strange occurrences around the cube, and then the beast itself. Dai-3 would start scowling at her if she waxed too poetic in her dictation, so she tried to keep it simple: incredibly beautiful, even unnaturally so, with a strange sort of… familiarity that she couldn't quite put into words.
Dai-3 made no comment if Hiei was struck by the sudden need for a cat-nap, although she did get fidgety. Just not fidgety enough to leave her side.
Brief episodes of sleep squeezed between long episodes of discussion or contemplation of the cube did give the day a dreamy, unreal sort of feeling. That wasn't helped by her actual dreams, which grew more vivid and frequent than usual, and harder to distinguish on top of that. A northerly station, uncooperative weather, a backcountry filled with people she didn't truly understand,w domesticity and danger separated by a knife's edge… it was a bit like the North Sea.
Who was it that wondered whether he was dreaming the butterfly or if the butterfly was dreaming him? Zhuang… it escaped her. There were moments when she almost thought that all of this, the chain of events that led her to a snowed in lodge in Hokkaido, were a nightmare brought on by too much English fare before bed.
Unfortunately, she didn't awaken in the Firth of Forth, even if the Haruna who appeared in her dreams seemed so real as to make her heart ache. Hiei returned to reality to see Dai-3, faint lamp light only allowing Hiei to make out half of her face. She caught half of something that wasn't quite a smile… "Good, you're up."
"Did anything happen while I slept?"
"It got dark." Dai-3 deadpanned.
"Anything else?"
"Weather got worse. We wouldn't have made it if we tried."
Figures. She stood up, leaving the cube on the floor – it burst into a splendor of color, somehow more vivid than ever before – as she stretched, trying to work out a few aches from her bizarre sleeping position. Her hand came to rest on the back of her neck, where she felt a crick, but she lowered it quickly.
Not quickly enough. "Are you wantin' some snow for that?"
"I can manage."
"There's no point in flagellatin' yourself," Dai-3 huffed. "Imagine if… ah… there's no point in acting stoic."
"If you insist."
"I don't insist…" Dai-3 grumbled, already heading outside. Hiei followed along, hoping to let the chill banish any last vestiges of sleep.
Dai-3 knelt with a kerchief to grab a handful of snow, while Hiei looked up at an empty sky. Her knowledge of constellations was spotty and quite European on top of that. Fusou knew the Chinese symbols and the lunar mansions, while Hiei had a few half-remembered nights spent stargazing in Scotland. She supposed it wasn't relevant, considering that there were no stars to see…
"Here's the snow," Dai-3 offered a clumsily tied cloth stuffed with snow, and Hiei took it. Pressing it against her neck did feel better…
"Thank you, Dai-3." Dai-3 frowned upon hearing that. "Is something wrong?"
"I… I don't want to die as Number Three."
Suddenly, Dai-3 seemed smaller. Frailer, like the teenage girl she appeared to be. She wasn't a Kansen like Kongou or Kirishima that just so happened to be poured into a smaller vessel: she was a scared child. Hiei laid a hand on her shoulder, and despite her tensing, Dai-3 didn't move away.
"Have you considered any names?" Hiei asked, her breath misting in front of her.
"I was thinkin'... maybe…?" Before she could field a suggestion, there was a crack like a gunshot – no, Hiei recognized it, that was a gunshot – and Hiei proceeded to shove the girl into the snow. Dai-3 spat out a mouthful of the stuff and quickly took stock of the situation. "Outside. Sounded like outside."
Hiei crouched in the snow, quietly waiting for some sign of what was going on, before realizing she already had one: where was the reaction? After the gunshot, there was nothing but silence. No men rushing about, no shouts or cries, not even a following shot… Hiei's hand came to rest on the hilt of her sword, and the wind turned, filling her nose with a terrible, acrid sort of smell, like someone had burnt out all the electronics in Tokyo.
Where were the men? Hiei turned to Dai-3. "Go inside, wake the men. And stay there."
"Ma'am!"
"That's an order."
Dai-3 rose to her feet, nearly tripped, and rushed over to the house, tracking snow on the patio before rushing inside. The crunch of snow faded, and again, deathly silence fell over the land. The reek of that harsh chemical smell still burned her nostrils, but the source stayed hidden.
For a few moments, the whole world seemed static, like a photograph. No wind, no snow, just perfect, deathly stillness. Really, a night like this… she was glad it would end, at the very least. More than fire, more than wet, she thought hell might be something like this. Cold and stillness and loneliness.
Even the sound of something jostling the gate was welcome, in a bizarre sort of way. An answer to the mysteries of the previous days, a confrontation… something, anything. Under that overwhelming smell, she thought she caught a whiff of… flowers? Blood? The rasp of hinges was complemented by the sound of Hiei's sword being freed from its scabbard. If the interloper heard, that wasn't sufficient to make them stop.
A thin sliver of black appeared between the heavy wooden doors of the gate, and after a moment, a flash of red appeared in the seam. Familiar, terrible red, with a hint of polished ivory just above. Hiei felt her stomach churn and wondered, again, if she was dreaming.
A strand of hair fell before the eye on the other side of the door, dark brown like a slab of British naval cocoa. Hiei took a trembling step forward, only to freeze when a shot of something red went through it. Not like blood, although Hiei had nightmares of blood on that face, but brighter, more of a vermilion or coral. The rest of the strands followed shortly after, like dye was somehow flowing from the roots up to the tips.
This wasn't… Hiei hopped back as the gate really started to give way, the figure leaning against it growing more and more alien as seconds passed. Portions of the horns simply sloughed off, pieces falling like petals, but the rest seemed to flow across the skull, forming a second, smaller pair of horns that sat directly above the eyes instead of curving over them.
Her stomach churned, but whatever this was, it wasn't so disarming as to prevent Hiei from placing her sword between herself and… it. The eyes changed color, bits of the nose dripped away, the angle of the chin softened, like the face was being reshaped by invisible hands.
The mouth opened: "I missed you, Hiei…" It crooned, sounding exactly like – her katana was dipping, but Hiei lifted it back up and kept it squarely between her and the doppelganger.
"Practice already? I haven't been back five minutes yet, Hiei!" She - it reached down for a sword which she unsheathed with a disturbingly familiar gesture. The gate was wide open now, the edge pattern of the blade like the dips and crests of the snow-covered ridges outside. The sheath fell to the ground and melted in the snow, the resulting puddle curving toward the heel…
Hiei darted back to avoid a playful jab. "Do you think I've gotten better? I know I missed out on some of our practices…"
For a few moments, they went through an awkward sort of dance, their blades never touching. Hiei would admit she had probably gotten a bit rusty, but Haruna had never been this good, specifically because she devoted time to hand-to-hand. It pulled a feint Haruna would have never dreamed of, and then went for a vicious swipe.
Hiei blocked, marvelling at the sheer strength in the blow, a strength quickly overshadowed by a yank that nearly pulled her over. She caught herself before falling forward into the snow, but she stumbled as she threw herself back, looking up to see a patch of… something wrapped around her katana, keeping it attached to not-Haruna's, forming a bizarre cruciform sort of shape.
The face was shifting again, but whatever it was couldn't manage to contort itself into a realistic look of compassion. A stranger's face, Haruna's voice, an alien's understanding of human expression…
At the very least, Hiei wouldn't want some simulacrum of mercy or regret. The hair lengthened, color fading from vibrant red to grey, before darkening to black. An eye was golden, an eye was red, both were orange, the horns shifted again, the fake blade shrank, sinking into the palm until Hiei's sword sat in the doppelganger's hand.
It made a practice swing that was practically indistinguishable from one of Hiei's own before taking a careful step forward, and then another. It lifted the blade –
Before the roar of a gunshot that made the shoulder disappear in a spray of pitch-black ichor. Something flopped to the ground, and Hiei darted forward to grab her sword as it staggered around, spilling inky puddles of blood – without so much as a noise of complaint. As Hiei rose to her feet, she saw something like a tendril form in one of the larger puddles, a strand thick as her smallest finger rising up before collapsing under its own weight.
Yet again, the features began to shift, but instead of a new guise, it seemed as if the real thing was being revealed. The hair was milk white, the eyes yellow, the fat of the face and the keratin of the horns melted away and flowed like water down to the stump of the arm, hiding a core of metallic bone and brightly colored sinews. Curious… not that Hiei felt the time was right for a chat.
With a single swing, any progress made to repair the arm was swiftly undone. The next blow should have been lethal, but her opponent only pushed herself – if this was its true form, it seemed quite feminine – off the blade and staggered away, wearing no expression at all. (Maybe it made sense. Whatever it was, it didn't have a heart.)
It took a lot of effort to ensure the thing was dead. The… blood? The blood pooled – it didn't even seem to melt the snow it landed on – but eventually, it fell still and stayed that way. However, Hiei's huffing, and the sound of footsteps from the house, kept the world from descending back into that terrible silence.
"You're alright?" Dai-3 asked. "For a second there, it looked like –"
"I'm fine," Hiei said. "But how are the men?"
"Asleep, for the most part. Couldn't manage to wake 'em up."
"For the most part?" Hiei asked. Dai-3 cleared her throat, before dipping her head in the direction of the wall. The gunshot. Looking down, Hiei could see the source of the second gunshot of the night: a carbine hanging off of Dai-3's shoulder. "Let's investigate," Hiei said. She couldn't say if another one might be lurking.
The man outside was, as far as they could tell, fine, although missing a bullet and caught up in that same sleep that fell over the others. After some hesitation, they decided to move him inside. (Both Hiei and Dai-3 were stronger than they looked.)
Dai-3 looked back at Hiei. "I still have my name idea, you know…"
"I'd like to hear it," Hiei smiled, before warning: "Doorframe, your left."
"Oop." Dai-3 dodged the aforementioned doorframe – and kept the soldier's feet from meeting a similar fate – and then turned back to Hiei. "I'd like to be Rera."
Unfamiliar… Ainu, then? "What does that mean?"
Dai-3 – Rera – smirked. "You can figure it out, Hiei-sama."
After eight years, Kongou had complete faith in Hiei. How could she not? Sometimes, there were moments when Kongou thought she got a bit too much credit for being Japan's first Kansen. That wasn't to say that she minded the fame – she didn't – but Hiei had been there moments after. There was probably less time between their births than there would have been between the births of human twins.
Kongou had been truly alone in the world for the length of a coffee break. A shower. Then Hiei was there. She loved Kirishima, and Haruna left a gaping hole in her life, but Hiei was Kongou's… if not for the usual implication, she'd say her other half. (Of course, any other half hopeful who couldn't pass Hiei's muster would never become a part of Kongou's life.)
The part of her that worried for Hiei clashed with the part that was supremely confident in her sister. Hiei could plan around a storm and would plan around a storm, so the monster that seemingly sprang from nowhere and slammed into Hokkaido should be perfectly manageable. But few things nagged at Kongou like uncertainty, and this was the most dreadful kind you could imagine. At least Texel had been quick.
The floor was saved from her unconscious attempt to tap a hole into it with her heel when the door shot open. "Knock, ple–"
"Telegram from Hiei!"
"Oh, thank God," Kongou sighed.
Kirishima started to read before squinting at the page. "It's our encryption."
Kongou gulped. They, as sisters, had agreed on a special code for themselves. If other sibling groups on base had the same idea, they weren't sharing, but considering the Kansen knack for cryptography, Kongou wouldn't be surprised. Regardless, anything in their code was either exceedingly intimate or exceedingly sensitive.
"Dai-3 and I are fine. Snowed in, but plentiful supplies. Sent message by ski. Need to talk to you in person. Discovery…"Kirishima paused. "What?" She cleared her throat. "Sorry, she didn't say that. Discovery regarding origin of cubes."
"You're certain?" Kongou asked.
"Positive," Kirishima confirmed. "Discovery regarding origin of cubes. Send trustworthy coroner as soon as possible; come yourself if practicable. Will arrange party, if so. Stop. Hiei."
"A coroner," Kongou repeated.
"A coroner."
Behold also the ships, which though they be so great,
and are driven of fierce winds,
yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.
Rera: literally, the wind.
This takes inspiration from Arthur Machen, author of 'The Great God Pan', although this particular chap takes inspiration from the Innermost Light, at least in the latter half. I won't spoil that for you - it's not a long read - but the parallels are fairly obvious, I think. (You can find it for free on the interwebs, by the way.) Not sure if I'll ever manage to execute horror on that level, but I enjoyed writing this.
The other forms the Siren takes are explicitly supposed to be Haruna and Hiei's original arts.
In Hokkaido, Dame Da Ne Guy is Waya Da Ne Guy, possibly? A few other bits were based on my googling of the Japanese language. Kirishima calling Dai-9/Hatakaze Kyūchan is essentially her saying 'Miss Nine', 'Little Nine', or maybe even 'Little Miss Nine," but it's supposed to be somewhat fond – Kirishima appreciates Hatakaze helping Kongou, even if she thinks the girl could stand to remove a stick from her rear.
Speaking of, before the wind renaming the Kamikaze class undergoes (which might happen earlier with kansen, if they found stamping a number on a girl less palatable) their nicknames might be: Kamikaze - Ichan (Ichi chan), Asakaze - San-chan, Matsukaze - Nanachan, Hatakaze - Kyūchan, Oite - Juichan (or maybe Chōchan or Gachan? Butterfly and moth, respectively), and Asanagi - Jugochan… assuming that none of the above is like a slur or something. Eleven and up get a bit repetitive, essentially being ten (ju) and then the same number from five ships back.
Speaking of names: the baptismal/Christian name thing… hmm. I know some ships are probably confident enough to just be their ship name, but it might be something to show the girls testing their bounds, expanding their horizons. Even then, a baptismal name probably won't supersede the original entirely: can't exactly be kissing medals and taking babies as Tiffany instead of HMS Whomever. Still, if this does happen, I imagine Malaya might pick Maud/Matilda. This is a reference to Empress Maud, Lady of the English, who vied for control of England during the Anarchy in the mid-1100s. Suitably traditional, I think, an English historical reference, and a foreshadowing of her eventual clash with Elizabeth.
This chapter's description of the Ainu was informed in part by googling and in part by the books 'The Ainu and their Folklore' by Batchelor and 'Ainu Creed and Cult' by Munro. Both, along with the former's Ainu New Testament and dictionary, are available on the Internet Archive, although Creed and Cult needs to be checked out. That's worth it, considering he's colored by a bit less bias and also just covers different stuff. I've taken from both men for this. The bit with the broken chopsticks and grave goods is a somewhat warped version of Ainu burial practice, intended to free the 'soul'/ramat of the objects to accompany the dead person.
(Isn't that a rather tidy excuse, claiming that any inaccuracies are due to Dai-3's own lack of understanding of Ainu culture?)
One thing Munro discovered that Batchelor didn't was the girdles. Ainu women took great pains to hide special girdles from their menfolk, passing both the tradition and patterns down matrilineally. Dai-3/Rera not having one would be part of her struggle in microcosm, I think.
Hopefully, I'll get to writing a shorter American culture thing for KL soon? I have some fun ideas about that. Also got to consider that my two hundred fic count is creeping closer on AO3…