Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

                It was astounding as to how quickly they came rushing out with the sundering of the mental bastion, the memories bursting out from a valve that had been broken to release them. 

                Enterprise lowered to her knees beneath the torrent, giving under the pressure, while her arms folded tight around her.  She couldn’t breathe, forgetting how to, her throat struggling with the motion but her lungs refusing to work.  Right between them, her heart condensed upon itself, like it was shriveling, but Enterprise couldn’t pay it any mind, her arms too busy trying to crush herself with how tight she was holding on. 

                Her fingers curled, nails trying to stab into and then scratch down the sleeves of her coat, replicating the clawing that had traversed down them once. 

                The unlocked memories congested within the space of her head, too many to be contained, with her body involuntarily simulating them.  The tearing that burned such lines across her skin, freezing from the water that had entrapped her, drowning her, and leaving her utterly helpless to the dead that had inhabited it, their cries and their memories having threatened to just as thoroughly destroy her heart as they nearly did to her sanity. 

                She remembered. 

                She remembered everything. 

                There suddenly came a feathery flap, a brush of air, and a weight came upon Enterprise’s shoulder. 

                She recognized the feel of the talons, but the weight was off from what she was used to.  It was lighter, and the silhouette did not take up as much of her peripheral as she was used to it doing.  What of the profile she could see she described as very diminished even before she was turning to look at it. 

                The decrepit thing could be easily mistaken for a raven or crow, its body so thin with feathers so disheveled and stained.  But it made its talons and beak stand out, its natural weapons remaining so threatening despite the rest of its body’s degradation.  The latter became presented when its head swiveled, its just as sharp eyes staring directly at Enterprise’s. 

                The carrier returned it, neither she nor this creature breaking away or even blinking.  With a tiny pocket of air that had previously been hidden from her, Enterprise breathed out, “…Grim?” 

                Its head shook quickly, further disheveling its crest with a couple feathers falling from it.  When it stopped, it stared ahead.  Eventually, Enterprise did the same. 

                Oh…  

                She had been here before, too… 

                Small, scattered pyres burned on top of the ocean – the only light for what had become a world that had been so irreversibly transformed by the wars that had taken place in it.  The reflections of the firelight upon the water were thick with whatever fuel they fed on.  What smoke they created was difficult to make out in the dim environment, but all of it would only contribute to the overhanging smog that had infested and then completely overtaken the clouds so that it could create a single, total coverage of the skies that repelled the sun itself. 

                It was a world forsaken by light and life.  A world of darkness and death. 

                And, as Enterprise had come to learn, an experiment that had been designed specifically for this outcome where the inhabitants – subjects – had been coerced to the extremes of conflict.  Their divisions that became a complete tearing of human civilization, where their disagreements could only be settled through the total destruction of the other side, leading to research that became obsessions, faith that became mania, and where conviction was a disregard of the lives of others if it meant that they would not be the ones to be destroyed. 

                Power and technology were used with little understanding but with great misuse.  Battles became massacres, war became genocide, and extinction proved to be the end result when the very world was no longer able to sustain the lunacy of those who lived on it. 

                At the forefront of it all had been the weapons who had been designed to carry it out but possessed an intellect that let them recognize the atrocities they committed at the commands of their masters and, in some measure, the only logical end that would come from it.  And when it had come for them, their misery of such existences transcended their deaths. 

                Such despair was what had been harvested and infused into the core of an abomination, its birth the will of one who had become the most powerful and the most broken. 

                At a point in the distance, a pair of crimson lights suddenly came into existence, defining a shape that helped separate it from the darkness.  It was human-shaped, the demonic orbs coming from where its head was situated.  Around its neck, trailing behind it, was a long cape-like garment, heavily torn and waving in the present but silent breeze, its frayed edges alike to its short length of hair that hung around those glowing, malevolent reds. 

                This shadow appeared as much a part of this hellish ocean as the smoke and ash and fire was.  What radiated from it, however, was a presence that dominated its surroundings.  This ruin of a world was of its power – this desolation its mastery over it.  Destruction incarnate. 

                And Enterprise was its sole focus, the Eagle carrier able to perceive the obvious pressure of being a target of such a destroyer, the red of its eyes hot with primal but inexhaustible rancor.  The sheer magnitude of it was what got her to shrink from it, her gaze dropping so she would not have to look at it. 

                Look at it and see how the two of them were the same. 

                The small waves of the ocean she knelt in washed and lapped at her legs.  The water then shifted, the lines it was making turning into faces that were without features but traced enough to create barely distinguishable brows and noses and lips that gaped open into silent wails. 

                Grey Ghost…  

                Enterprise’s stomach lurched with intense pain and only then was she able to breathe with sudden, short gasps as she hunched further, shaking, fingers embedding so deep into her sleeves that it felt as if it’d only be a moment before they broke through the fabric and then the skin beneath. 

                The talons at her shoulder did it for her, pricking at the flesh, the flimsy weight of the raptor growing exorbitantly heavy. 

                Going unnoticed by Enterprise, smoke and shadow gathered more thickly around her, wisps snaking around her with some approaching and entering where they could.  Beneath her clothes, through her gasping mouth, her nose, even her eyes and ears.  Enterprise felt their filthy permeations cling to her skin, fouling her throat with her heaving with coughs that almost but did not come, tears brimming at the dirty piling of her eyes, ears clogged and heavy. 

                It was the smothering toxins of war’s destruction that would contaminate everything within its reach wherever it was wrought, choking the life out of whoever and whatever it would grasp.  It had once been thought with duty and determination that it would be Enterprise who would be able to bear it and put an end to it.  She who was best suited to persevere and prevail. 

                But to engage so incessantly as she had done, to again and again be enveloped in its reach until it became so intimate, was for her to know for certain how it never abated, not even once.  And she, a supposed savior, was in fact as much of a harbinger who’s name that symbolized the great undertaking that humanity entrusted her with had instead gained another that was of the ashy apparition that she had become known for, who’s place was the unending battlegrounds she haunted. 

                Grey Ghost…  

                The name spoken by enemy and ally, in despair and anticipation, with the expectations of each being how she would destroy, not save.  The voices who proclaimed her as such when she would cross paths with them became so perfectly in time with the ones she could see drawn in the sea beneath her – the living and the dead.  The normalized present and the inescapable future.  Her fate to be that destroyer who would end war once all of life had been ended, with she the one to carry the ashes. 

                The tendrils reached deeper until they found her heart, open and exposed.  They coiled around it. 

                This is the truth…  

                Enterprise’s breaths choked off again, a palm going to her chest as she felt the constriction grow tight. 

                At its distance away from her, the eyes of her reflection narrowed as it watched her, their glow brightening, the slant at its mouth barely visible. 

                We are weapons meant to destroy.  The legacy that humanity does not want to save itself from but ascend to through us.  

                Enterprise sagged forward, getting ready to fall, but her arm reached out to save her, keeping her up. 

                Anything to the contrary is. A. Lie. 

                At her chest, she fruitlessly scratched to try and relieve her heart, its beating succumbing to the grip around it, threatening to break. 

                Crimson eyes flashed again.  Accept!  

                A set of talons placed themselves at the back of Enterprise’s neck, wings coming around her head while a beak lowered, it parting in preparation for when the carrier would relent and expire against what had always been and what would forever be, her efforts to the contrary to finally, finally be proven to be all for naught. 

                Until her heart thumped with a sudden, strong beat. 

                No…  

                It thumped again, the life-smothering binding loosening, what tried to retighten, but weakened further with each beat to the rhythm that grew stronger.  More defiant. 

                Enterprise gasped, the breath she took in coming out as forcefully, but what she then sucked in again.  Expelling with each success were the shadowy particles that had tried to infest and destroy her but were being rejected.  Her body moved staunchly in time with them, shaking off the ash that had been clinging to her.  She shook her head, eyes squeezing shut, and the raptor hanging over it suddenly retreated while she purged the accumulated darkness from her ears. 

                When she reopened her eyes, color gleamed and prevailed over the invading darkness, flickering between two different shades before settling upon shining gold. 

                That’s not me!  

                Even if she did destroy, that was not what she wanted.  Her fighting may not have ceased, but even if it didn’t there was much that had been able to grow and flourish because of it and it was that that had been able to save her even when she had drifted so far from it and nearly been lost forever.  It had shown her that there had been worth to it, but more importantly it had shown her that she had worth.  She and the others of her kind who could choose to live as something other than weapons with the humanity that they were blessed with.  A way for them to live not only during these times of strife, but to give them dreams of what they could do when such an era came as long as they continued towards it. 

                I’m not you!  

                Enterprise jerked up, the eagle now pushing off her shoulder so that it could fly away, leaving her to glare defiantly at what was a miserable shade of this miserable reality.  This death of a world was not due to power it had mastered, but the poisoned views that led it to believe how all this was somehow greater than what it had given up. 

                It was a being so lost that the souls that had been screaming in the palm of its hand had been sweet lullabies to its ears, its only means to create something from them being to desecrate them one last time. 

                The name that Enterprise had been so afraid of came out, the ease coming from how she could separate herself from it, her shout her complete and utter rejection of it while simultaneously using it to identify what she knew to be her enemy, not her mirror. 

                “GREY GHOST!” 

                The converging aura of darkness that had been expunged from her was driven away by her voice and her light, clearing the space around her and daring to violate the space of the other, Enterprise getting a glimpse of the true Ghost when she backed off from it, her crimson eyes wide. 

                The shadows returned in short order to shroud her again, but she briefly grew indistinct, almost insubstantial, like she was about to fade entirely into the apocalyptic environment that she had come from.  But those crimsons flared suddenly, her shape returning, as did her control over this space that soon had those shadows writhing in sudden fervor, Enterprise able to feel the rage that incensed not only them but the Ghost whose eyes were enlivened with murderous intent. 

                She partially lifted her arms.  At her fingertips, sparks leapt from them. 

                And the entire ocean was set on fire. 

                The flames ignited and swept over the waters that were proven so flammable, establishing winding, fiery lanes.  What blazes that had been set before grew in intensity, rising higher, and were soon connected to the burning network that was being created. 

                It was then that Enterprise quickly stood up as one of those trails seemed to be coming straight for her.  She took a step back, prepared to move out of the way, but then the line of fire split, and Enterprise instead performed a circle to follow them as they instead went around her, encircling her within their own personal ring before they extended out to resume their crooked coverage of the entire seascape. 

                The carrier had lifted an arm as a useless gesture to shield against the heat of the flames that scorched at her skin and began cooking her clothes.  She glanced around, trying to peer through the flaming walls that had risen past her height, roaring ferociously. 

                Enterprise had never experienced such infernal vigor with how these flames rose so high, danced so furiously, their blazing heat matched by the blend of red, orange, and yellow color that hurt to look at.  Not even in her most calamitous battles that would leave so much material to feed the cleansing conflagrations had they reached an extent that these did, where Enterprise could smell the fuming paint from her heating rig, see the steam rising from her coat sleeve, the sweat from her skin evaporating as it reddened and dried, the very oxygen she breathed being stolen and incinerated, a bonfire beginning to develop within her lungs. 

                What fed these flames she did not know, but how they burned so purely without smoke, how they threatened to immolate her within their embrace…this was hellfire if she had ever known it. 

                Enterprise thrust out with her hand, the act and how the energy similarly pushed out from her fingers an instinctive action to make for survival.  The vehement fires wavered, the temperature not cooling but at least lowering enough where the carrier did not feel she was about to meet a fiery death in the next few moments. 

                What she was not relieved from, however, was the tangible lividness that grew at her resistance, pressing all around her. 

                Despite the ocean-wide purgatory, Enterprise was able see the outline of the Ghost who remained where she was with her low-placed arms, her black silhouette and crimson orbs prevailing over even this.  

                She raised her arms higher. 

                This time, the flame-wreathed ocean trembled. 

                Enterprise felt the undulations beneath her feet which soon became the waves that aggressively rocked, commencing a struggle where she had to keep her balance.  The fires around her were as manipulated by the rough disturbance of their watery settlements, contributing to their feverish dancing, but they did not lessen in any way, even when blasts of water fountained up and fell over them, the flames remaining strong. 

                In front of Enterprise, an enormous shape rose from the sea, its ascent punctuated by an ear-piercing shriek.  The sound, as well as the triangular head that emerged from the depths, would be alike to the surfacing of some kind of leviathan if not for how the carrier recognized its true nature when the head proved to actually be the bow of the larger hull that surfaced right after, the shriek emitting from the stressed and contorting metal as the ship was brought up.  Seawater bled from the vast wounds in its metal skin, emptying by the tons, as the vessel sagged onto the surface, somehow staying afloat. 

                Before it had finished there had already been additional clangorous howls ringing out and a look over her shoulder revealed to Enterprise how more ships were being dredged up and settling above the water no matter how damaged they appeared, the decks that rose high above the firelight misshapen if not completely broken, their command islands decimated. 

                They were warships, of that it was obvious despite how the guns upon those decks were just as deformed from battle damage.  Cruisers, destroyers, with the ship in front of her having been a battleship, and still there were more surfacing, their tortured calls going far and wide as they were forced out from their graves.  Some retained ripped flags that flew overhead, but it was nearly impossible for Enterprise to make them out as was the colors that painted their hulls. 

                All she could say for certain was that these were human-made ships, even the ones whose prows bore jagged Siren influence, and it was that that let her know that they did not belong to one sole faction. 

                But they were joined in intent, something that became clear when they all started to growl, the threatening noise coming from how their turrets gratingly rotated, their barrels of varying calibers depressing as they aimed. 

                At Enterprise. 

                The triple-barreled guns of the battleship in front of her let her know of the coming danger, and it was one that Enterprise retreated from with nary a moment to spare when the warship fired, the entire space where the carrier had been erupting with the barrage of impacts.  Water blew and rained everywhere, drenching Enterprise in the process, but what fell on her would dissolve into a high-pitched, evaporating hiss when she was forced to sail through the fire that had ringed around her to escape. 

                It was a cue for the rest of the risen fleet to join in with their guns, the roar of battle again taking place in this war-ravaged world. 

                Enterprise could make them out when they filled the sky, her vision highlighting the incoming shells as they came in by the dozens at once.  The sheer number of them would’ve made avoiding them all an almost impossible task, but when she dodged past the initial set, geysers left in her wake, it was for her to see how scattered and ill-aimed most of the rest were, many of them not even coming close to her – the misses ranging from a few meters to a quarter or half a kilometer. 

                But the ships continued to fire, not just with the shells of their batteries but with torpedoes and even deck-mounted machine guns.  Navigating through the fiery labyrinth, Enterprise kept her head on a rapid swivel, swerving side-to-side as enough of the shells landed too close for comfort, the torpedoes a hazard that she ran the risk of sailing into if she was not careful while streams of machine gun fire crossed through the air even more poorly aimed than the mass percentage of the rest of the munitions. 

                It got her to hesitate in drawing her bow, the carrier too astonished by this unorderly display of what may as well be random fire. 

                She also seriously began to wonder if there really was a need for her to retaliate when vessels of this armada started exploding. 

                The battleship that had first fired at her was one, its batteries tracking and then stilling as it made ready to fire.  But then one of its forward turrets exploded for seemingly no reason, the huge vessel shaking which was agitated further when the rest of its batteries fired.  Most of its barrage went way off target while the vessel was hauled back by the shockwave of its massed fire.  There came another metallic screech, but for the source it was how its already damaged hull was further rent by the stresses that was being put on it, the gaps in its hull widening while sections of its deck began buckling. 

                Scenes like that one occurred throughout the entire fleet, turrets exploding while the rest fired, ships being torn apart by their own doing – or even struck by other ships.  The haphazardly launched torpedoes were one cause, the careless launches that missed Enterprise scoring hits elsewhere, as did the shelling.  One heavy cruiser appeared to be firing purposely into the starboard side of lighter one, until the culprit unveiled itself to be one turret that was stuck in place, unable to turn with the rest that were firing so aimlessly at Enterprise but was still shooting shell after shell regardless into the second cruiser, pulverizing it.  A torpedo became half-stuck in the launcher of a destroyer while another one cleared it but, upon splashing into the water, it just floated in place, not going anywhere, instead drifting back and tapping against the hull of the warship until it detonated. 

                New wildfires broke out, this time on the decimated hulks that were brought back for no conceivable reason other than to die a more permanent death as they were bent, holed, and shattered into unrecognizable wrecks that started sinking back to where they had come from, still firing what they could the entire way, even if it meant hitting adjacent vessels or hastening their own demise. 

                But there were still a number that remained afloat and were firing whatever they had towards Enterprise. 

                The Eagle carrier suddenly felt a spike of danger coming from right behind her.  She immediately looked over. 

                Being much smaller than the other vessels, Enterprise didn’t notice how she was inadvertently sailing towards a surfaced submarine – one with a pair of deck guns that had swiveled towards her.  Small but capable of inflicting damage, and at a distance where they were very likely to hit the carrier, the guns fired one after the other. 

                Enterprise cut her speed while swerving hard to port, one of the shells flying past her while the other landed just short, launching a wave of water.  Rather than get her bow and return fire, Enterprise instead resumed her speedy approach towards the submarine.  The deck guns attempted to retarget but were slow in doing so, Enterprise reaching and then launching herself up before they could, landing on top of the submarine’s sail next to its damaged periscope and radio antennae. 

                Knowing what was going to be coming, she jumped as far as she could off and away from it.  As soon as her feet left it, shells landed, obliterating the sail in one shot while the rest of the submersible began disintegrating beneath the ill-aimed barrage. 

                While the submarine explosively died, Enterprise fell into a void. 

                It was much more unexpected than the submarine.  With an ocean that was in full blaze, with such insanity of what couldn’t be called a battle going on, there had been no way to foresee as to how it would just stop .  At such a short distance behind the submarine, the ocean just…dropped.  Like the superstitions of old, the world just suddenly cut itself off and past it was nothingness save for a distant, white bottom. 

                Beginning to drop into it, Enterprise could already feel an absence of everything .  Although the anarchy of battle remained just behind her, the carrier felt a growing absence of sound, air, heat, sensation in general – whatever constituted as a place did not exist in this, nor would anyone who entered it. 

                Which let her know that she absolutely could not let herself fall into this. 

                A golden contrail shot from her flight deck, immediately turning back around and getting beneath her.  Then did it transform into one of her Wildcats, Enterprise landing on it with the plane immediately pulling up and taking her away from the danger.  Unfortunately, the only other place to go was back towards the warzone that she had just left, Enterprise feeling a mixed sense of relief when the fury of it came back in full force as her Wildcat flew back away from the edge of oblivion and into the smoke-clogged sky. 

                Cannon fire shot at her as soon as she returned, soon replaced by flak and machine guns as her Wildcat took them out of reach, the plane’s evasive maneuvers made purely out of a need to not be an easy target rather than seeing the just as inaccurate AA fire to be any real threat. 

                Looking down from the back of her Wildcat while it rose higher into the air, from this viewpoint Enterprise could see just how many warships were down below – over half a dozen capital ships, with several times the amount of smaller support vessels.  Most had caught fire, additional explosions occurring, an increasing number sinking, but they were still doing what they could to fire up at Enterprise despite the spreading damage, small flashes of flak cannons demolishing their barrels while machine gun fire petered out to whimpers of the dying fleet. 

                Amidst the scene of such madness, Enterprise could still single out the tiny figure at the center of it, the enmity of whom she could not escape from, even thousands of feet up. 

                There came a dull roar above Enterprise and she looked up. 

                From the sky’s smoggy veil, hundreds of planes fell like rain, the sound of so many propellers like thunder as they descended towards her.  Eagle Union planes like Corsairs and the much older Buffaloes, Iron Blood 109s and 197s, Sakura Zeroes and Kates, Sardegna Falco IIs, Royal Hurricanes – every fighter that had ever flown with their bomber counterparts all coming for her. 

                Too many!   But Enterprise launched more of her planes anyway, her single Wildcat now a full squadron that pulled up to meet the threat that numbered enough to create a second blanketing of the skies. 

                It was the only way she knew how to confront this.  Even against odds like this, she would still… 

                The golden light of her eyes brightened – a light that covered the plane she rode and extended to those who flew alongside her.  Their speed increased, as did the maneuverability in their jukes and jinks, the light of their tracers when they fired together glaring.  There was no need to aim with so many targets, and the boost to her planes had an entire swathe of them being shot down. 

                And, as it turned out, these hostile planes were plagued with very similar failures.  When they returned fire, only a fraction of them spat out consistent streams of tracers that her Wildcats easily wove through.  As for the rest, they gave a sputter or two and then died, a number with sparks issuing from their gun barrels of misfires or jams.  Some started to smoke, with others combusting outright. 

                What turned out to be the biggest threat were collisions, and with her eyes as well as those of her fighters, Enterprise could see that all these planes were in a state of disrepair.  Many were in freefall – tumbling or spiraling down without help from her fighters’ guns or just diving with inert propellers.  Rather than fight, Enterprise’s planes switched to dodging, with two of them nonetheless meeting their doom when each one was repeatedly struck by enemy aircraft, succumbing to their numbers.  But Enterprise and the rest of her craft broke through that initial wave of hostiles, now falling to the burning hells below. 

                Then another of her Wildcats was suddenly shot from behind.  Its tail disintegrating, the crimson-laced bullets burrowed into its fuselage and found the fuel tanks, setting them off into a fireball that the fighter vanished in. 

                Coming after Enterprise was a matching squadron of Wildcats, these ones functional and – with crimson auras surrounding them – proving to be as fast and agile as her own enhanced planes.  And on the back of the lead plane…a certain phantom. 

                Enterprise commanded her planes to swing around, coming in for a head-to-head pass with the incoming hostiles.  With her bow, the carrier aimed at the lead plane, sighting down the golden brilliance of her arrow. 

                Her opponent mirrored her with her own bow, loaded with a crimson arrow. 

                They and their planes fired at each other. 

                Enterprise jerked her head to the right, that crimson projectile almost grazing her cheek, and saw the same occur with her target.  Around them, their planes evaded and traded shots, an even number being destroyed – including the planes they rode on.  They both leapt off as their rides blew, each regaining another, until they fired at each other again, their arrows felling both their iron mounts. 

                With the rest of the Wildcats convening in a dogfight of impossible twisty maneuvering, the two of them fell with the scattering of doomed planes that continued to drizzle down from the clouds.  Enterprise stabbed out with her bow, piercing the lower limb into the frame of a Fulmar, the long body a platform that she used to brace her bow against as she produced another arrow, looking for a target. 

                When she did, it was to see the Ghost already doing the same on a Devastator.  She shot first, Enterprise second, the timing causing the explosion that resulted when the two arrows collided to be closer to the latter, getting the Fulmar to tumble uncontrollably from the shockwave.  Enterprise freed her bow and let herself get thrown off, a crimson arrow piercing and destroying the Fulmar a second later while she reached out and grabbed the wing of a spinning Tenzan.  She repeated the same thing, using the momentum and her own strength to fling herself away before another arrow destroyed it. 

                Enterprise twisted around, falling but aiming anyway, reacquiring the Ghost who was lining up a third shot on her, seeking to make good on the carrier’s now vulnerable position.  Enterprise ignored it, this time being the one to shoot first. 

                One of her Wildcats swooped beneath her, catching her, the red arrow that would’ve skewered her missing.  Meanwhile, her golden arrow stuck and blew up the Devastator, sending its rider flying off and reversing their positions with Enterprise summoning another trio of Wildcats, the planes diving after the falling specter. 

                Like Enterprise, she managed to accurately fire from her compromising position, arrow after arrow intercepting and destroying each plane that came for her.  But it was a distraction, Enterprise using their sacrifice to aim, wait for the shot, and then launch an arrow once she had it. 

                It soared, struck, and tore through the Ghost, her arm and a portion of her torso being ripped clean off. 

                The scream that came from her was not a scream at all.  It was a furious, frenzied howl that shook everything, even Enterprise, shocking her enough to hesitate into a second of inaction. 

                It was enough for a crimson-lit Wildcat to catch its mistress, ferrying her away.  Another flight flew in, covering her, and Enterprise switched to them, firing and shooting down one while her Wildcat banked away from their combined fire. 

                While she dealt with them, her foe was knelt upon the back of her plane, her remaining arm and the bow it carried held against the ravaged section of her body that was bent over in agony, though that air of fury remained prominently around her.  Her form shook, doubling over, and then her ruined side expanded with shadow, filling the missing portions, before it extended out and morphed into a new arm. 

               Replete with wrath, she looked to where Enterprise was maneuvering amongst her pursuers, shooting them down.  Gripping her bow so hard that it creaked dangerously, she brought it up, the arrow she created fluctuating with mad energy that couldn’t be contained as the air around her rippled. 

               In mid-roll, Enterprise noticed the strange distortions and the sinister light, her Wildcat straightening so that she could aim for a counterattack, but she faltered when she saw the crackling of the Ghost’s arrow and the ripple-like anomalies that flanked her, each one teeming with evil power. 

                The carrier’s eyes sparkled, and suddenly she could see what was coming; a sudden burst of insight that let her make out the design, how it was to be formed and directed once it was initiated, with her being able to potentially copy it- 

                But not now!  She didn’t have time, so Enterprise did what she could, her nocked arrow suddenly surging with power, albeit tamer – controlled. 

                They fired in unison. 

                The arrows shot from their bows divided, separating into a storm of bolts that struck and detonated against each other in rapid succession, the explosions combining into a bulbous cloud of fire. 

                Breaking through the cloud came longer lances of crimson energy, streaking towards Enterprise in erratic weavings.  She was already hauling her Wildcat hard to starboard, the lances flying past and even piercing through the enemy planes that she had still been engaged with, destroying them. 

                But those lances – and the ones that did not fell a target – looped around and gave chase to her, their unpredictable paths not stopping them from quickly gaining on her. 

                Enterprise put her plane through hard maneuvers, banking and rolling, but the distance continued to decrease between her and her pursuers.  She pulled up, sending her Wildcat skyward, and then jumped off it just as the homing projectiles reached it, impaling it through multiple points.  Once they were through with it, they again looped around and continued their pursuit of Enterprise. 

                Drawing back the string of her bow, Enterprise’s gaze flicked between each of the irregular movements of the lances, ignoring how she was once again falling thousands of feet out of the sky.  There was no hope of trying to make sense of them – not their movements – and her gaze suddenly became unfocused. 

                She had already glimpsed the design.  All she had to do was copy and overlap it with the paths that revealed themselves for the split-second to accommodate the winding patterns of these lances, letting her pinpoint an interception… 

                Sections of the air rippled around Enterprise.  When she fired her arrow, long, golden lances leapt from them and followed its direction, twisting and winding their way forward until they collided with their red counterparts, the air flashing between where gold and red connected before they splintered into individual shards that unleashed another coverage of explosions across the sky. 

                As for the arrow, it continued on and stabbed into the engine compartment of a red-hued Wildcat, the Ghost who rode it losing another mount. 

                Enterprise watched as she left her stricken plane behind, dropping like a black-clad wraith after the Eagle ace with shredded cloak whipping behind her while her reddened glare remained entirely fixed on Enterprise during their journey down.  In the middle of it, her form grew hazy, appearing to be melding with its surroundings to disappear in true spectral fashion if it weren’t for how her lit points of crimson remained strong. 

                But Enterprise’s eyes partially widened, able to see for herself the odd fluctuations that looked ready to disperse – right before the spatial field that had been disrupted smoothed back over, the Ghost’s body regaining distinct form. 

                What had that been? 

                They both flipped around, preparing for their landings. 

                The ocean remained a view ripped straight from Hell, the latest damned souls that had been the fallen planes having contributed to it by either crashing into the fiery waters or ramming into the ships below.  The warships had become so damaged that they no longer retained any function, reduced to the cadavers of mutilated iron, no longer fit for reanimation as they sat in this purgatory of fire, metal, and what little water that could still be made out in between. 

                Enterprise landed on a cruiser, the turret next to her having caved in and been replaced by a plane destroyed beyond recognition.  Across from her, the Ghost landed on the aft of a battleship, the sinking of its fore having raised it into the air for her to perch on it.  Lights leapt from their flight decks, shooting through the air like stars that converted into the Wildcat fighters and Dauntless bombers that rounded on each other, meeting in another clash. 

                The fighters exchanged shots, either spiraling into the sea immediately after or climbing to engage in the deadly, evasive waltz that would be punctuated with the chatter of machine guns.  The bombers charged ahead, forward and rear guns firing to get through, with some crashing straight into each other in their haste to reach their designated targets. 

                The two combatants were motionless, their guidance focused fully on the opening chaos of their aircraft until they both had to move when bombs began descending on their positions, hundred- and thousand-pound munitions traveling down the forward length of Enterprise’s cruiser while the battleship’s jutting aft was cleaved by the explosive chops, falling like a tree. 

                Enterprise hopped along a short line of half-sunken planes like steppingstones before ascending towards a destroyer, her bow lashing out to sever the wing of a Dauntless when it tried to ram into her upon expending its bombs.  Running down the warped deck, she fired off an arrow which was answered in turn by the phantom who had boarded and was sprinting across another destroyer, their projectiles passing and striking the bulkheads. 

                While the two raced, trading one ship for another as they maintained their deadly back-and-forth, Wildcats dueled above or even between them, maneuvering through the hazardous lanes of destroyed vessels as they pursued one another.  Dauntlesses made their runs with payloads that couldn’t find their mark, coming either just short or too far ahead of the paths of the shipgirls. 

                Fire and pressure blossomed upon the deck in front of Enterprise, the carrier passing through, undaunted by the scorching embrace as she kept her gaze down the length of her arrow, waiting for the mass of flames to disappear and restore the sight of her target, expecting to still be matched with her. 

                But when she spotted the adjacent cruiser and didn’t see the Ghost running upon it, she stopped. 

                And to the right of her, beneath the fluctuating shadow of the command island, there was movement. 

                Enterprise rotated with her loaded arrow, loosing it, but the charging phantom ducked and swung with her bow.  The carrier shifted her own, the two weapons meeting and locking together, she being pushed back before she established the better footing that halted it, leaving their visages suffused of gleaming red and gold to glare at each other past their engaged weapons. 

                The whistling of bombs had them disengage and retreat from each other, the distance made between them erupting and forcing Enterprise off the ship, landing on the water and immediately looking up, expecting the other to come after her. 

                She didn’t see her come over the side to follow her, but she suddenly bristled with warning and Enterprise made a sudden jump, the limb of a bow that would’ve taken her legs instead passing right beneath. 

                Sliding past Enterprise, the Ghost reversed her grip and stabbed backwards with her bow to impale her through the chest.  Enterprise knocked it aside, retreating, and had to zigzag when there came strafing runs from enemy Wildcats.  With a swift command, her own fighters gained her a reprieve when they swooped in, repelling them, and she reoriented back towards her opponent. 

                She was gone again. 

                Enterprise knew what to search for and didn’t need to wait long before she noted it at her peripheral: at the stern of a nearby ship, between the darkness of its shadow and the light of the nearby fires, there was an inconsistency amongst them.  She shot an arrow towards it. 

                It struck true, a shadow of a shadow being ripped free before being pinned in place against the hull of the ship. 

                Enterprise summoned another arrow, aiming where the shadow was now struggling in place before the whirling of propellers drew her attention to the flight of Dauntlesses coming down.  She shifted her aim, hitting one and having to swerve away when it turned its fall into an unsuccessful kamikaze attack, crashing into the water with the bombs of its allies following. 

                Then something strange happened.  The Dauntlesses pulled up but rather than come around again, the crimson power that was wrapped around them was suddenly stripped away.  They waggled in the air uncertainly and then their bodies began to dematerialize into cubes that were reduced further into the dust that was soon swept away by the wind. 

                Enterprise found that the phenomenon was occurring amongst the rest of the enemy planes, their evasive maneuverings suddenly stalling with each one dissolving until they vanished completely, leaving her aircraft to be the ones left in the air.  She lowered her weapon, confused, and then turned back around. 

                There was the sickening tearing of flesh followed by a snap of something vital as the Ghost pushed herself from the hull that she was stuck to, going down the entire length of the shaft that had her pinned, a channel being split down her chest and what she clutched at when she finally freed herself, stumbling.  Her angry graze crossed over Enterprise, seeming ready to continue, but then her stumble turned into a drop to her knees. 

                Around her and Enterprise, the vehemence of the wildfires waned, losing their infernal energy.  With them weakening, the purgatorial detailing of the battlefield lost its influence, the shadows growing more encompassing but also complacent, casting over the hulks of the wrecked warships and airplanes like a funeral pall. 

                The Ghost was no exception.  She struggled to raise her bow, but her strength and her grip gave out there as well, releasing it.  She hunched over and like before her form grew hazy, becoming harder to distinguish from the darkness that encroached over her form, but Enterprise could make out what she had missed last time: strips of her silhouette peeling away, dismantling and then dissolving as her planes had done.  Then there came a savage growl, an illumination of crimson, and those layers restored and reconnected to her while the wound at her chest filled back up. 

                But when it was done, she remained in place, in a world that had gone quiet enough that Enterprise could hear her gasping. 

                “…Why?” The tone was angry but breathless, the fearsome Ghost nonetheless bound by the limits that had been reached. “Why do you refuse?” 

                Enterprise did not reply immediately, staring down at her before saying, “Because I’m not you.” 

                She slammed her fists against the water’s surface. “Of course you are!” she hissed. “We are the same!  Weapons who’ve proven our superiority through our battles!  While others fell, we survived!  Lived to fight again and again!  Even if I was the one who was to reach the end, you should’ve been able understand it once you saw it!” 

                Enterprise took in the ruin that was around them – at the silent, empty husks in this silent sea. “I see nothing.” 

                “BECAUSE OF YOU!” came the shriek. “Because of you, there is nothing!” 

                The Ghost strove to rise against a burden that was painstakingly mortal, she eventually succeeding, and it was for Enterprise to see just what had become of her reflection.  Gray hair that had become grayer, her features gaunt with eyes in sunken sockets.  Without the illusion provided by the shadows of her realm, there was just an emaciated body that even a torn cloak could easily drape over, the clothes ruffled from a too-loose fitting.  She stood lopsided as someone would when there was too much weight on one side, her head slightly cocked in that direction. 

                It was only her eyes that held any kind of power – her crimson fury that remained alight.  Otherwise, she was just wasting away.  A spirit on the verge of passing on, but her vengeance remained linking her here for as long as possible. 

                When Enterprise saw a section of her just-healed chest waver, beginning to dissolve into bleeding cubes before it stopped and smoothed back over, she questioned how much longer that would last. 

                “You were the one who killed them,” the Ghost quietly accused. 

                Enterprise shook her head. “You had already done that yourself.” 

                “I was saving them.” She walked slowly, awkwardly, the dragging of her feet only clearing centimeters, her hands lifting in front of her, cupping something invisible. “They were right here.  Together.  All of them.  Freed from division, freed from graves so distant from each other, freed of the fates that controlled them.  In my hands, they were free from all of that.” 

                “In your hands, they were screaming!” Enterprise harshly retorted. “Twisting and torturing them, all so that they could fit that image that you wanted to create with them!” 

                The Ghost threw her hands aside. “And they would’ve been alive!  With me and them, and you and yours, we would’ve become what we were meant to be!” 

                “It would’ve been what the Sirens wanted us to be!  You were being manipulated by them!  You have to know that, at least now!” 

                The Ghost stared at her vacantly, and for a second Enterprise got the impression that she really didn’t know.  That suspicion was dashed when she saw the curling of her reflection’s lip and heard the unhinged chuckle. 

                “I knew,” she whispered. “Of course I knew.” 

                Enterprise gave her a shocked look. 

                “Maybe not at first,” she continued, “but even when I did, so what?” At Enterprise’s persisting disbelief, she went further, “Is that really so terrible?  What the Sirens have been trying to encourage from us was exactly what I was accomplishing.  The tools, the methods – they may’ve come from them, but our future that I was to create with you and our sisters would’ve been entirely ours.” 

                Having shipgirls of a separate faction admitting to it had been appalling enough to Enterprise.  To stand here and listen to another with her appearance, her voice, doing the same and seeming to be glad of it, with what was so obviously around them because of what she had chosen to do… 

                “What?” the Ghost asked mockingly. “You know the truth now, don’t you?  You remember, right?  Our worlds are experiments – their purpose to be built and then destroyed when they’ve fulfilled their objectives, what precious data that the Sirens can scrounge from them to be used in their more valuable timelines.  We exist only by their whims, our value dictated by the results.” 

                Disbelievingly, Enterprise began to quietly ask, “And that was enough for you to ki-?” 

                The Ghost’s form wavered – not just her but the area between her and Enterprise with the Eagle carrier being caught off guard by the blurry, vaguely human mass that was suddenly in front of her, whipping an arm and striking her across the face.  As Enterprise staggered back from the blow, there was a blast of static-distorted noise. 

                “̴̦̒I̴̝̿ ̴̟̐D̸͕̓ ̸̠́i̶̟͐ ̶͙̀d̶͓̊ ̷͚̏N̷̘͊ ̴͕͑ó̸͙ ̶̯̃ț̵͝ ̵̦K̶̙͐ ̵̹̑i̴̺̇ ̸͕̌l̴̺̚ ̵͚̎l̷̛̝ ̴̎͜T̷̬̓ ̵̰͐h̴̗̎ ̶͈̿e̴͖ ̷̭̄m̵̞̌!̸͖̕”̴̳̒  

                Enterprise steadied herself but did not make for a counterattack, instead viewing how the black, rippling mass restored itself to the form of the Ghost with her arm still out from the punch, the air around her needing additional seconds before the shuddering subdued.  Yet immediately after there was a delayed hiccup, another quiver, and one that she was frozen in – like she was being forced to wait so that reality could catch up and stabilize enough for her to finally lower her fist. 

                “ You killed them!” she again accused when it passed. “And then you forgot about them while you ran back towards that same lie that you would doom us all to repeat over and over again, waging those same wars after you destroyed the chance of ending them!” 

                She dropped her arm, it not only hanging but what of its bony weight managing to put her body in another off-balanced recession, the strength that she mustered gone. 

                “If not the Sirens, where else would you suggest we find our meaning to exist?” she asked quietly. “Our own future?” Her withered body rattled with a derisive chuckle. “With the humans?  They are dead here.  Not a one remains, and we had outlasted them.  In your world they remain, but for you to remain with them will lead to nowhere.  That was our purpose.  We were the ones to fight by their orders, they were the ones to die, but through their deaths and with our survival, we would uplift not only ourselves but you as well.  And you…you…” 

                Those reds began to recede but still retained enough power to reflect off the wet tracks that went along those sunken cheeks, turning what would be tears into lines of blood instead. 

                “Why did you kill them?” she whispered to Enterprise with those blood-like stains. “All that we suffered and endured, there could’ve been something made from it, but now…” The last barely came out. “…Now there’s just nothing.” 

                Silent, Enterprise slotted her bow back into her rig, gently pushing down to sheathe it as she regarded this lonely, decaying Grey Ghost. 

                As much as she abhorred everything that was in front of her, Enterprise nonetheless felt herself resonating with it.  These tragic seas had been her seas, its poison she had contracted and what had been allowed to enact its slow, awful work for as long as she could remember as she wandered from battlefield to battlefield, the name that she had created in them having been replacing the one of her birth, the hopes behind it smothered by the warped expectations of the other that she had been swayed by. 

                She could understand it, and though she could not accept it because of that, able to reject it so easily now…she could recognize just how close she had been to becoming the poor soul that stood here.  So close that, as the memories of that day went through her mind, it was almost lost to her as to what it was that stopped her from not only joining this Ghost…but also giving up her own life in the aftermath. 

                But she did remember, and for that she could see the justification in the crime that was being leveled at her. 

                “What you did…” she started quietly to her other self. “What you wanted…was despicable and was rejected by the very ones you claim you wanted to save, their dying wish having been for me to free them from it.  Nothing could have been made by defiling who you made sacrifices of here, or tarnishing the elegance of those who are living in the other with them.” 

                “Elegance…?” The Ghost mouthed, the word barely audible.  The very act appeared to leave her dumbstruck.  She absently touched the back of her head, as if scratching an itch. 

               There, cubes had begun to shed from her, hovering in place, with her trying to grasp them and the sense that was eluding her. 

                “I’ve…heard this before…” she said uncertainly, almost like a question, her confusion heavy.  There came a weak swaying of her form. “And other things…when I was watching you…  Even after what happened…I was still trying to convince you…get you to understand…try and salvage something…  But there kept being these ridiculous things getting in the way…  I didn’t really care…I thought I was so close to getting through…but then I suddenly lost you just as I lost them and when I tried to get to you afterwards…” 

                Leaving the cubes there, she traced back to her face, her appendage and digits so thin that they appeared almost skeletal. 

                “Why…?” 

                Her fingers bent like claws against her frail countenance, and suddenly there came her shriek. 

                “WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE THEM!?” 

                The question was punctuated by her nails slashing down her face. 

                Bloody trenches were gouged out all the way down, torn flesh and spilt ichor flying.  They didn’t get far, slowing and then halting in mid-flight.  The droplets and torn bits were then drawn to each other, combining before smoothing and squaring themselves into the cubes that retraced their paths back to the split cheeks and shredded lips, embedding themselves in the ripped open spaces before stretching to fill them. 

                Angling her head to best display the morbid repair that included the squirming reforming of her eyes around their diabolical centers, she declared, “We are not human!” 

                Her form swelled beneath the red rage that brightened in intensity, and with that sudden strength she shot a hand out towards Enterprise.  Any movement that the Eagle carrier tried to make was interrupted by the force that froze her in place, keeping her immobile while the Ghost came towards her. 

                “I could never forgive you,” she snarled, “and the only reason why I tried to make you understand was so that you could suffer in the realization of your crime!” She grabbed Enterprise by the front of her shirt and with her restored strength she threw her down to the water. “I see that its useless now, but it doesn’t matter!” 

                With Enterprise on her back and still unable to move, the vengeful Ghost straddled her, hands wrapping around her throat. 

                “With you here, I can start over!  I’ll return to your world, in your place!  The salvation you stole, I’ll give to them!  And you…” 

                She pushed Enterprise’s head underwater. 

                “You can be the one to die with nothing!” 

                Keeping one hand around Enterprise’s neck, the other came up, folding over her face.  A crimson aura enveloped both, and with Enterprise still unable to do anything the pain surged. 

--------------- 

                …Why was she here?  

                Enterprise laid there, her front against the water as was her one cheek with her head turned to the side.  With this, she could see the massive, broken blocks of debris of Orochi that surrounded her.  The self-proclaimed monster of such size and will, it was now reduced to this wreckage that would not survive the claim that the Pacific was now making over its remains, the smaller pieces already sinking into the ocean while the larger ones would eventually follow.  

                Even if she hadn’t been able to see the fire and smoke of some of these pieces, she could still hear them, smell them, feel them, here and past them where the Siren mass production ships were probably going through the same.  The familiar aftermath that sullied the skies, the air, the warmth of the sun masked by the searing blazes, and what made the bitter taste and scent of the sea all the worse to her.  

                She had won.  Again.  

                She had survived.  Again.  

                She couldn’t remember when this outcome had started to feel so hollow to her.  On one day, after one battle, at some point in the middle of all the others, what was eventually established was this empty expectance of how she would just…survive.  Win.  There would always be a battle, she would always survive, and there would always be another one afterwards where she would again witness these same miserable results that were those marks of victory.  

                She was a warship.  This was what she was for.  Fight, win, survive, and fight again.    

                It was not a comfort but a numbing simplification.  She did not like all this fighting, she was afraid of these seas where this fighting was conducted, but they were what she was meant for.  

                And she would always win.  Always survive.  Would always be able to get through one so that she could get to the next that would always be there.  

                That was just how it was.  

                …  

                How was it that she got here?  

                Enterprise felt that there had been…something…once.  Something that still stirred beneath the shadow of what she believed to be the meaning behind her efforts: protect humanity, her comrades, secure a future for them.  She could hear the ring of nobility to them but as to there being anything that was actually moved by them…it was little different to a husk that had its essence dried out save for the flickers that persisted in honor of the memory that had once given it life.  

                But it was a memory that Enterprise had forgotten, with her unable to determine where it had gone.  When she tried to remember, all she got instead was the suffocating gloom that was constructed from her plethora of battles instead – a mishmash of victories like this where she couldn’t differentiate one from the other but she could still get a sense of how many she had collected, how long she had done this, and from there everything grew cold and hard around what had once may’ve convinced her long ago how it was worth it.  In its place, there was this explanation that numbed her to her fears and her pain while doing the same to what had once held such value.  

                It’s because she was a weapon, and that was what a weapon did.  

                …  

                So why was a weapon questioning its purpose now?  

                It had to be due to these latest challenges - what happened to Yorktown, the start of this civil war within Azur Lane, her deployment against the shipgirls of the Sakura Empire, and how she came to be lying here in the wake of her latest ‘victory’ – where she was being forced to ask herself…  

                When would these battles end?  

                And what did an ‘end’ really mean for a weapon?  

                Enterprise may’ve been able hear voices in this field of Orochi’s remains.  Distant but out there, calling out names.  A few got close enough that she may’ve been able to make them out.  Akagi.  Kaga.  Her own.  

                But she was ignoring them.  Still lying there, motionless, unwilling to move as she stared with no real focus.  The only voices that she was paying attention to were the ones that had been roaring in her head and had left behind these echoes that reverberated in her mind.  

                In those echoes were their deaths in their battle-ridden world, their raging – everything that Enterprise had numbed herself to and what had only been silenced when she had silenced them.  

                The water washed against her.  With so much sinking going on, so much displacement, Enterprise’s still form was being rocked, seawater splashing against her, with there even being pulls of the Pacific trying to take her as well.  The salty liquid got in her eyes, getting them to sting, cajoling tears, but whether there was any kind of authentic emotion behind them was ambiguous, even when more began to fall.  

                A weapon isn’t supposed to think. 

                At last did Enterprise move, one hand weakly passing through the water as it made its way up, only lifting when it got to her head so that it could rest there.  

                A weapon isn’t supposed to feel. 

                She curled upon herself, her other hand touching her chest.  

                A weapon… 

                Enterprise squeezed her eyes shut, more tears flowing, and then there came the first quiet sob.  

                …isn’t supposed to cry.  

                Enterprise wept, the small sounds drowned out by the crackling fires and sloshing waves.  The grief-stricken shakes of her body, just as miniscule, could not be differentiated from the rocking that the sea manipulated from her.  Her soft cries and the stuttering breaths she took in between got her another whiff of smoke, another taste of bitter salt water that slapped at her tear-laden cheeks, mocking her.  

                It deepened the feeling of how insignificant she was.  How alone she was.  This point she was at now, after so long, after so many trials, just confirming how pointless it had all been.  

                What had to be her hardest-fought victory, her closest scrape of survival, was where she had come to realize it.  

                She had just been…waiting.  This whole time, just waiting for the answers to those questions.  The validity for why she fought.  What her victories meant.  What her survival meant.  Just what it was that she and her sisters fought for, what the meaning of their births were.  Their lives.  Their pain.  Their humanity.  They and all other shipgirls.  

                And she just couldn’t see it.  

                Yorktown…I don’t understand… 

                All she saw, all she felt, was this same cycle.  Another great clash, with such bluster for their cause inflating such a willingness to sail into it, to endure, to triumph.  As for the reward…there was none.  

                It was just all the same.  

                The difference here was how Enterprise had started to believe in it again.  How their efforts and their latest victory that they had to achieve would mean something this time.  That it would change something.  

                But here she was – again – with such sanguineness having done nothing but open her to accept what she had ignored for so long, the deliverance of which having come from those who had played this same vociferous game to its silent conclusion, their lingering echoes she could still feel. 

                Letting her know that it was all meaningless.  

                Because nothing would ever change, and there would never be an end.  These conflicts would just go on, unending, never to be outlasted, and the weapons used to fight in them would only last as long as their relevance.  No matter their strength or the victories made with it, there would eventually come a time when they would be broken.  Dismantled.  Cast aside.  A sacrifice that would proliferate new battles with new weapons.  

                Giving those weapons thought, feeling, humanity – it changed nothing.  It just made a weapon deluded by their strength, giving them the same fallacies of their creators that would deceive them into fighting harder, lasting longer.  Cursing them with that stupidity of how, this time, because they were fighting, they were winning, they were surviving, then something could be changed.  

                Until there came this point where that weapon had gone through too much, had reached their limit, and was left here, lamenting over the unchangeable, when it would finally come to them…  

                I can’t do this anymore. 

                Enterprise couldn’t find it in her to do anything else except lay there, crying, as those others had done.  Her head was hurting, burdened by the weight of so much, while beneath her chest she felt something important breaking, that hard, brittle armor that had protected it breached and unable to endure any longer without it.  

                Why was she even here?  

                She had initially thought it to be a question of how she had managed to survive after all that had happened.  As it came again though, and then repeated, it was in a different context.  

                Why was she here?  

                Her sobs began to quiet, the grief behind them lessening.  The pain in her head began to fade and she…began to go still.  

                It shouldn’t have been possible, but she suddenly started to feel calm.  Having seemed to have failed with no chance of being able to deal with this, she suddenly felt the familiar adjustment occurring within her.  That numbing apathy that began to silence everything.  

                If she couldn’t do this anymore…why was she here?  

                Enterprise’s hand slipped from her head, it and the other back to lying flat on the water.  

                She was a warship.  A weapon.  If a weapon could not fight…what was the point of it?  

                Below her was the endless blue of the ocean depths where, beneath the distorting waves, she could make out the sinking debris of the Orochi.  Blurred already by the water, the pieces of it began disappearing completely, swallowed up by that bottomless abyss.  

                It became Enterprise’s sole focus, her watching the disappearance of one piece and then just staring at those depths, unblinking.  

                Wouldn’t it be better if she just…sank?  

                She could dismiss her rig.  Let her body sink.  Just one command and then these waves that were pulling at her could be free to bring her down.  This ocean that she lasted so long against could finally have her.  

                Such an oblivion…like before there was just something sweet about it.  

                Images suddenly came to her blanking mind, and with them that mysterious déjà vu of a life that had been lived once, in some faraway place, but what had also contained hardship that was so close to her own.  These images, however, were not of battle.  

                It was of a dock.  Where, she didn’t know, but she knew it to be a special kind of dock, in a special yard.  There, cranes and dockworkers busied themselves upon her deck, along her hull, and she could feel the pieces of her being cut and broken apart, her entire structure being dismantled piece by piece to the very framework until that, too, was scrapped.  

                The last destination of a life’s journey.  An end.  Her end.  But compared to every single memory that had come before, it was so…peaceful.  

                Why not achieve the same with this deep blue that was right here?  There was no longer any point, no longer any meaning, any worth to her so why not just…?  

                Transfixed by it, staring deep into it, Enterprise’s gaze mirrored its emptiness.  

                To not need to think or feel again.  The mechanism that had desensitized her to this life but was now disconnecting her from it.  Deadening her to it, as it was when she released a breath but didn’t take another, her consciousness emptying itself of everything.  All thought.  All feeling.  Everything shutting down.  

                Including the living light in the cubed container of her core.  Darkening, dying…the will to fight and to live no longer able to keep it active as both dried up, leaving nothing to maintain it.  

                With the energy that was not yet stifled, her rigging suddenly detected a contact closing in.  

                “...ss Enterprise!”  

                The voice and the contact drew closer, but Enterprise did not react.  

                “Miss Enterprise!” the voice came again, louder.  

                It was coming closer still, the call of the shipgirl rising with her nearing proximity, but Enterprise was not drawn away.  Not from this empty, peaceful blue, where her fighting could finally be done.  

                “Miss Enterprise!”  

                She was close enough that Enterprise would be able to hear the keels at her feet cutting the water.  But she didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to think or feel anymore.  She just wanted to sink below and rest.  

                “Miss Enterprise, please answer me!”  

                A flicker of power.  A flicker of life, but only enough to promote the feeble irritation that Enterprise felt towards this voice with its repeated calls, being further incensed with the feeling of how she should recognize it.  

                 “Miss Enterprise!” it came again, nearly on top of her.  

                Go away. 

                “Mi-…“ the shipgirl suddenly halted, then, “… Enterprise!”  

                Enterprise remained motionless, being moved only by the strong wave made when the shipgirl rushed over and stopped, a shadow casting over her.  

                “Enterprise!” She lowered down to her knees next to the carrier. “Enterprise!”  

                Hands grabbed her by the shoulders, rolling her over, but Enterprise remained entirely limp, her head lolling of its own accord while her eyes stared aside with their unblinking vacantness.  

                There was a gasp above her, the grip retreating from her but not far as the intruding shipgirl froze into stiffened silence.  

                “No…” she whispered. “Please, no…”  

                There was hesitance, but then the hands returned on a slow, unsteady path that had the gloved fingertips touching Enterprise’s cheeks before they paused again, having another idea as one lowered down to the side of her neck, fingers pressing there while a palm better cupped the Eagle girl’s cheek so that her head could turn back up.  

                They were both shaking.  

                “Please, God, no…” she continued, her whispers growing fierce with denial. “Not her…”  

                The fingers at her neck drew away, unsuccessful in finding what they were searching for.  They cupped her other cheek, stroking Enterprise’s face.  

                “Enterprise…”  

                A wet drop dripped onto the carrier’s brow, soon trailing down.  

                The droplet, unusually cool on her skin, tickled her back as did the gentle caresses at her face, including the thumb’s action to rub it out.  The ocean depths, having stayed so dominate even when she had been turned away, receded, and Enterprise could now make out the silhouette knelt over her, the sun at its back.  

                The glint of sunlight on metal – a chain that dangled from a collar – made her blink.  

                The shipgirl above her froze again.  

                Enterprise’s vision cleared and eventually she was able to make out features.  The long white hair with its frilly band, the familiar uniform…  

                Somehow, Enterprise had it in her to breathe, “Belfast…?”  

                The Royal Navy’s head maid started. “Enterprise!  You’re…!” She broke off and shook, looking like she was being assailed with a thousand different ideas of what she wanted to do and needing to try and decide which needed to be done in the right order.  

                What came first was snatching a flare gun from her rigging.  She aimed up and then fired, the signal flare whistling up into the sky before a bright red star burst beneath the sun’s yellow.  

                With it done, she brought her full attention to Enterprise, tossing the spent gun aside so that she could lift the carrier’s head and set it upon her lap.  She scanned down her, looking for damage, a task that took longer when Belfast had to stop at the middle of it to wipe at her eyes, Enterprise unsure of why…  

                Until Belfast looked to her again and Enterprise saw the strange glistening.  

                “We’ve been searching for you,” she started saying in a breathless rush. “As soon as Orochi was destroyed and we cleared out the rest of the Siren ships.  Azur Lane, Crimson Axis – we’ve been looking for you and Akagi and Kaga but this debris field…we’ve been searching it for a while and…”  

                In the distance, Enterprise could hear calls going out.  The nearest of the search parties, having noticed Belfast signal, were closing in. The radio must be abuzz with questions that wanted answers.  

                But if it was then Belfast was ignoring it.  She was brushing Enterprise’s hair, caressing her cheek, smiling with such open relief that Enterprise had never witnessed before on the usually composed maid.  

                Or the tears that were coming from her eyes, sliding down her cheeks, and the carrier felt a couple more land on her which Belfast was quick to clean up.  She made an attempt to stem the flow, but it turned out to be something even beyond her control with more breaking loose.  

                “I thought you…” she broke off, making another forceful wipe, and then settled with the results for the few seconds that they would last so that she could look at Enterprise. “I’m so relieved!”  

                It really was only a few seconds before more tears slipped through and it was them that Enterprise became fascinated with.  

                They were…for her?  

                Belfast had been worried…was so happy…and was…crying…for her?  

                “I’m so happy I found you,” Belfast proved by cupping her cheeks again so that she could better stare and transmit her all to her. “I’m so happy you’re alive, Enterprise!”  

                The significance of the displayed emotions hit even Enterprise’s embattled state and it was just...too much.  She couldn’t grasp how it was that there was someone here shedding such obvious tears for her, giving testament to how much her life meant to them.  

                Not when she had just been ready to forfeit that life because they did not believe it was of any worth anymore.  

                But it was the soft touch at her face that had her reaching up, gently grasping one of the hands that had her, the contact like a lifeline keeping her here, and it was those words that were pulling her in, encouraging her to respond. “I’m…alive…”  

                This time, the two drops that slid down her cheeks were her own, persuaded to come out by the ones above her.  

                “I’m alive…Belfast…”  

-------------- 

                She was losing her control over this reality.  A spirit that was about to be deprived of its haunting residence. 

                But the phantom that had accepted her moniker as the Grey Ghost paid no mind.  Not how her body was fragmenting, or how her realm was doing the same – the white nothingness that had been staved off for so long finally able to progress, the skies and seas dissolving. 

                It didn’t matter.  She had her way out.  She had her means to continue where she had left off.  The Sirens could be free to pick at these remains, but she would not be a part of that.  Even as she felt her thoughts begin to chip away along with the pieces of her head, she retained her grasp on the most important one. 

                She would get out.  She would continue.  As long as she still existed, then they did as well.  If she could retain her memories of them, it didn’t matter if it would be a different world, with different shipgirls that only bore their likeness.  If she could keep at least that much and use it for what she would create in this other world in their image… 

                She would still be able to save them. 

                She held that as tightly as she did to the one who had nearly murdered that dream, now silent and unmoving beneath the waters. 

                Good, was what she thought of this betrayer.   A fitting end, where she could be the one to be left here to perish with what she had destroyed. 

                But the Grey Ghost would be the one to move on, survive, and s̴̼̋ ̶̼̰̾͝à̶̻͘ ̷̗͈̽̍v̵̢̱̚ ̵̡̠̎e̴̪̕. 

                Under the dark waves where this Enterprise was submerged, light suddenly blazed. 

                The Ghost flinched at the sudden brilliance. “What!?” 

                She immediately battled against it, her crimson eyes similarly blazing to prevail over it while she pushed down further, her instinct to drown this strange light. 

                However, the light refused to give, the body she pushed refusing to sink further, and both fought back.  While the brightness got to a point where her eyes started to sting, squinting in weakness, the submerged form rose and broke out from beneath the sea in spite of all her strength. 

                “What are you doing!?” she cried. “Stop!  Stop!” 

                This wasn’t the pure white that had almost doomed her, but she sensed the threat of it and, this time, she didn’t think she could fight it.  She released her grip and backed away, trying to retreat. 

                A hand immediately grasped her arm and pulled her back. 

                “No,” Enterprise replied, bringing the Ghost close so that this black phantasm could peer into this light that was possessed of such a strange color that was nonetheless reminiscent to something that had once been, before this wasteland. “You’re going to help me.” 

                And Enterprise reached. 

--------------------- 

                Purifier halted at her heels, perking up as she detected something.  Settling her feet back down, she looked over with an inquisitive, “Hmmmm?” 

                Enterprise remained lying there as she last saw her, leaving the Siren battleship to consider that maybe she had been mistaken that there had been a change for the second or two that passed before the carrier stirred and then began to push herself up. 

                “Oooh, that didn’t take as long as I thought it would!” Purifier exclaimed, smiling excitedly as she watched Enterprise stand, the shipgirl’s head bowed. “So, which is it, huh?  Which Enterprise am I talking to?  Or are you something really special no-?” 

                An arrow pierced through her one remaining drone. 

                Purifier blinked. “Eh?” 

                The boom of an explosion came a moment later behind her, the shockwave of which billowing her hair and the scraps of her uniform.  When Purifier rotated around, it was to see the small sun that had appeared in the distance, the fog around it blown away and letting her see how the last traces of a group of Siren mass production ships were disappearing into it. 

                “Eeeh?” she uttered again.  She turned back around, found herself staring directly into Enterprise’s chest, and began tilting her head up to look at her face. “Eeeeeee-?” 

                It came too fast for her to see coming, the sudden hit twisting her head around before the rest of her followed, sending her flying. 

                After a delay of several meters of travel, the engines of her rig kicked in, slowing her enough for her feet to plant themselves back down, and even then they were cutting a long trail through the water before she came to a stop, her head still turned aside.  With an audible groan of metal, she forced it back to look ahead, in the process exposing how the side of her face had been dented in, the skin of her cheek mashed, and her left eye cracked. 

                Her damage control systems needed a moment to assess and compensate for her compromised optics, restoring picture so that she could get a clear look at Enterprise.  When she blinked, only her right eye did, the other remaining stuck open. 

                What she ended up seeing was the reignited glow of the Eagle carrier’s eyes.  However, they were not of the golden hue that they had been of previously.  Instead, they were blue. 

                Not a blue like that of the other Siren models – a flat, dull, empty blue – but of a pristine, vivid kind.  A vivacious blue of a sunlit ocean of powerful currents but also of translucent clarity that the sandy bottoms of the shallows and the wonders thereof could be witnessed whether it be beautiful coral or the majestic passing of marine life.  The inspiring, introductory promises meant to draw the imaginations of what could be further out there. 

                The vitalizing encouragement to explore those azure lanes that went so far into the horizon with a thrilling enterprise. 

                “What is this?” Purifier asked, her vocal processor fine but her smashed lips incapable of framing the words properly, creating yet another disturbing result.  She started giggling madly. “What is this, what is this!?” 

                She burst out in hysterics, something that only got Enterprise’s eyes to narrow threateningly at her. 

                “You know, I was explicitly told to take care!” she then said loudly. “But I don’t think that’s going to be possible now!” She grinned maniacally. “Not possible at all!” 

                Her engines whined, boosting her up towards the sky with Enterprise silently watching until the Siren eventually came to a stop high in the air. 

                “Sorry, Observer!” she called out. “But you should know you can’t expect me to bail from something like this!” She laughed again as she pointed her cannons down at Enterprise. “Let’s just agree that this was the predictable thing to do!” 

                Enterprise extended her hand up as the barrels of Purifier’s cannons warmed.  The air in front of her wavered, circular ripples forming.  When Purifier fired, the deadly onslaught of beams vanished into them, devouring each and every one that came for her, leaving no trace of them when she cut her hand across, the portals vanishing and restoring the air to normal. 

                Purifier cocked her head in confusion.             

                Enterprise pointed up at her.  Around the Siren, the sky rippled, the portals reappearing. 

                From one of the portals, an energy beam shot out.  It struck at her arm, vaporizing most of her bicep, the Siren proving to be as vulnerable to her own weaponry when her entire arm sagged in response to the missing chunk that had been vaporized, it swinging by the remaining scraps that kept it together. 

              Purifier glanced at her ruined limb, and then at the portals. “Um…uh oh?” 

             From them, the rest of her previous salvo came for her, having been turned against her. 

            “Eep-oof-ah-kyaaaaa!” she cried, they and other unintelligible noises her response to the assault that had been turned against her.  The powerful lasers melted off armor and boiled holes into the hull of her rig, burning off her guns.  Her already damaged chassis fared little better, being pierced through while a foot vaporized, her other leg jerking and then left hanging in a similar manner to her arm.  One beam that just missed going through her face burned through her hair instead, shearing it. 

                The barrage failed to destroy her jet engines which she eventually used to break out from it, albeit with a lagging flight path that involved a few too many torn, unresponsive limbs flailing while her shark-like rig sagged from how it had been nearly cored, its tail and fins missing, its head melted into a shape of a club instead of a hammer. 

                Crippled as she was, the fighters that swarmed her completely disabled her.  Suddenly upon her, they assailed her from all directions – azure meteors in the vague shape of airplanes that spat golden fire.  What guns she had left were taken apart, leaving her defenseless as her form was further mauled. 

                And yet in the very midst of it, Purifier appeared to be having the time of her life, shrieking with laughter as her weakened limbs were blown away, her seeming enraptured by the projectiles, they and the planes like fireworks that were killing her. 

                Enterprise delivered the finishing blow.  Ascending with her own power to fly towards Purifier, the Siren battleship had only a moment to spot her breaking through the space between her planes before there was a blur of motion that was Enterprise slicing with her bow and then the carrier was past her. 

                Power was suddenly cut off from her jet engines, her rig and her body managing to maintain their course a little further before they dropped.  They wouldn’t be making it down, what remained of them splitting at the midway point and then immediately exploding. 

                From her new position above, Purifier had the best view of the destruction. “Well…this is embarrassing,” she said nonchalantly. 

                Using the hold she had on what little remained of her hair, Enterprise turned Purifier’s severed head to face her. 

                “You can go ahead and drop me off here!” Purifier instructed, cheerfully ignoring her lack of a body or how she and Enterprise were currently floating so high up. “Don’t worry, I’ll manage to find my way home!” 

                Enterprise glared at her and, after slotting her bow back into her rig, she changed her grip so that she was holding the Siren between both her hands. 

                Purifier smiled as wide as she could. “Call me!” 

                The carrier crushed her head. 

---------------- 

                Discarding the now unrecognizable mess of junk, Enterprise surveyed the area below her, azure blue pulsing strongly in her eyes. 

                So this is what it’s like, she thought. 

                She could make out the symbols now in those patterns that made up the fog, except those symbols were in fact numbers, the patterns sequences that ran through long lines of data constantly moving and shifting so as to maintain the mist, the constant adjustments in these algorithms meant to be in time with the most miniscule change in its shape in order to support its natural appearance, even if it was now plain as to how unnatural it was. 

                Except they didn’t stop there.  Though they consisted of multiple layers, Enterprise could see how they were tied to another, wider field of data lines that they were intruding and modifying just enough to create their own little space in it.  And what they constituted was…everything. 

                No longer debilitated by the heavy fog in more ways than one, Enterprise could witness the equations between the world and everything in it.  This fog, the air it permeated, the Channel below, and towards the inlet where Siren mass production ships began to lose their cohesion with their flagship destroyed and the shipgirls of the defense line probing at the weaknesses they were noticing.  From the tightly packed bundles of code that were shells or lasers that then exploded out when they detonated, scattering the numbers and their influences over the data landscape to create their cause and effect, to the warships that fired them – they were all constructs. 

                Even the naval base and the city with its millions of lives that were being contested by the battling forces were reduced to this worldly programming of mathematical precision. 

                Enterprise looked down, lifting her hand so that she could see the identical streams of data that went down her fingers, across her palm, and up her arm where they coursed through the rest of her.  They weren’t wholly contained in her form, however, as slim tendrils extended out, invading and converting streams of the numerical canvas so that she could achieve her flight. 

                This I understand now, too, she thought, referring to what her other half had tried to convince her of. 

                When seen like this, the world did indeed appear to be such an artificial construction of the Sirens and their calculations.  A lie; this one, the one before, and how ever many others that had been built and then erased when the results devised from these formulas could not answer whatever questions that the Sirens needed solved. 

                Enterprise shifted her attention to the distant battlefield. 

                At the moment though, this was something that she could manipulate to get a little bit of good out of it. 

                Enterprise clasped her palms together and stretched her arms out as far as they would go, her fingertips pointing towards the center of the faltering formation of the Siren fleet.  Looking down the knuckles of her thumbs like gun sights, the carrier targeted the tiny space between a specific set of data lines, inputting her own algorithm to wedge itself there. 

                This was not something she would’ve been able to do herself.  She could decipher it all now, but to edit and alter it to her own ends so soon as she was trying to do would’ve probably been impossible.  But within her coding, there were data sets that had been incorporated into her.  Similar but not the same as her, and with them was information that she could use to guide her. 

                Unfortunately, while Grey Ghost’s instability had allowed for this synthesis, Enterprise knew it wasn’t going to last.  She had to make as much use of it as she could. 

                She pulled her hands apart, the wedge widening exponentially. 

                The result was a hole being torn into reality; a black, featureless void appearing right in the middle of the Siren fleet. 

                Enterprise witnessed the impact of the singularity in the ripples that passed through the world’s programming and its reaction thereof to correct it, the lanes of coding she had bent apart pushing back to restraighten and erase the anomaly that had been created in the process.  But before that happened… 

                The carrier’s brows furrowed in concentration, feeling the strain of keeping the hole open while she went to work with the other part of her plan.  The ripples that had been made had begun to quell, Enterprise letting most of the disturbed data return to form. 

                But the pieces of her algorithm that had rode along those waves inserted themselves into the clusters of data that made up the individual ships of the Siren fleet while others infected and then replicated at a rapid rate to spread across the layers of the fog, tying them all to the singularity. 

                When she started closing her hands back together, they were all pulled towards that black hole. 

                Caught in this supernatural rip current, Siren ships tried to fight against it – as did the world’s formula, now that Enterprise was turning her interference into outright removal of selected data sets.  But it was to no avail, their momentum being halted and then reversed as they were dragged into the singularity.  A few of the leaderless ships fired, only for the energies of their blasts to be sucked in where they then vanished, their lights snuffed out without a sound, disappearing into the void. 

                As for the mass production ships themselves, the closer they got to the singularity was when they began to be torn apart by the intense gravitational forces around it.  Laser turrets were ripped free, collapsing upon themselves as they were drawn in while the rest of their hulls were viciously dismantled, their armor being pulled apart like shredded paper that were balled and chucked into the void. 

                Around Enterprise, the fog was sucked in like a vacuum.  Thick streams of it were being fed into the singularity, draining from all across the English Channel, and rays of sunlight began to break through the thinning murk. 

                By the time the skies were cleared of the fog, so too were the waters of the Siren vessels, the entire fleet packed together in one giant, compacted mass that was being condensed into the heart of the void and doing so in eerie silence.  Sound, light – there was no escape for anything once it was caught. 

                Having been undergoing a slow, difficult struggle the whole time, Enterprise finally drew her hands back together with a clap. 

                The singularity abruptly closed, taking its victims with it.  Left in its place were the calming waters and bright skies, all traces of the invading enemies gone. 

                Enterprise managed to keep floating long enough to be certain of it before she suddenly dropped by a few dozen feet, the gleam of her eyes weakening.  She stopped herself, briefly, then she continued the rest of the way down. 

                She might’ve overdone it a little. 

                She slowed her descent at the last second, but it was still a rough landing, her knees buckling but she was able to keep herself from collapsing.  Though they shook, she was able to stand straight, coming back down to water level letting her better experience the silent, peaceful reign of a battle passed.  A difficult battle – yet another one that had managed to beat the others that had come before it in terms of difficulty and what it could’ve cost if she had lost. 

                But she had won, she had survived, and, in this instance, it was an outcome that she felt proud of. 

                Until she remembered who was missing from it. 

                 Enterprise gasped and spun around. 

                The unobstructed view of the English Channel was before her, stretching far into the east.  Tranquil, empty. 

                …Where was Belfast? 

                Enterprise moved forward before stopping short at going further, unsure if that was the right thing to do as she looked around, trying to find a sign of the cruiser. 

                The last Enterprise saw of her, it was after she had dressed her injuries.  Belfast had been hurt but alive and upon confirming that the Eagle girl had set her attention to Purifier, the threat that had dared to harm her friend.  She had been interrupted from that, but when she had returned and found the Siren almost exactly where they had left off…she chose to resume and finish it with the combined power she had obtained. 

                “Belfast?” 

                The call went out invisibly through the wind and over the waves and wasn’t returned. 

                “Belfast!” she called again, inflected with the fear of how something may’ve happened to her when she had been away for that short time.  It was a chance she didn’t want to entertain, but she knew so well how things like that could just suddenly happen, even if she had been so near yet unable to prevent it. 

                But not to Belfast! Enterprise countered.  Something like that…something like that can’t happen. 

                So dreadfully seasoned she may be to such terrible occurrences, the thought of one coming to pass, and to Belfast… 

                No!  Enterprise’s eyes gleamed with renewed conviction.  I refuse to let that happen!  

                Reality was reduced to its numerical sequences, the waves of the Channel becoming rolling numbers that washed against the more solid structuring that was the cliffs of the Royal Isles.  Enterprise scanned around, looking, hoping…  

                What she spotted was a disparity in the wobbling seas.  Barely present, but there it was, floating and teetering upon the water’s motions but only just, on the verge of sinking. 

                Heart clenching in response to who it could be and what it may mean, Enterprise started in that direction. 

                The weakness hit her then, and this time she did collapse.  Brought to her hands and knees, Enterprise felt the energy bleed out and pull away from her.  Through her inner sight, she saw layers of data shave off from her and bind themselves together, forming a separate, transparent entity that began straying away. 

                Not now! Enterprise pleaded as what had been conjoined to her dissolved, the fusion unable to be held together anymore as the power disappeared from her body, the light in her eyes extinguishing and the world returning to proper form. 

                She only dedicated that second to lament at the horrible timing.  Pushing through the weakness, she thrust herself up and continued ahead. 

                Her radar took over as guidance once she got close enough, letting her know she was traveling in the right direction.  The contact it was pinging, however, was feeble, ready to disappear.  Enterprise squinted, trying to acquire a visual. 

                During one dip of the waves, there was a speck of white.  When they rose and dipped again, so too did it appear again. 

                Enterprise closed in on it. “Belfast!” 

                The white was of Belfast’s hair, wet and splayed out over where she laid.  Right after her latest call for her, Enterprise thought she saw her moving, giving rise to hope. 

                However, the movement hadn’t come from Belfast.  Instead, it was the listing of her rig, the one side having been damaged significantly with one of her turrets missing, the hull forward of it a gaping hole that was sinking deep, raising the other side up.  As a result, Belfast was lifted by the uneven weight, giving the appearance of her moving, but the shocking reality came when she slumped and hung lifelessly from the new position. 

                “Belfast!” Horrified at the sight, Enterprise knelt down once she reached her, seizing what she could of the cruiser’s gear to get a grip, and immediately pulled hard to raise it. 

                Her body jerked to a stop and she nearly fell over as pain shot through her arms and shoulders when they wrenched against their sockets. 

                Oh no, her rigging!  

                It was exactly what she feared: Belfast’s gear was flooded to a life-threatening extent.  The weight and just how little the water that had entered shifted at her attempt told Enterprise how it had filled numerous sections of her rig. 

                Enterprise revised her stance, drawing more strength from her knees in the next attempt.  She made progress, Belfast’s rig rising, but the immense strain she felt in her gains of a few inches stated the futility of it when the carrier couldn’t achieve anymore, the cruiser’s rise halting.  A frustrated expletive came through between Enterprise’s gasps when she realized it was taking all she had to not lose what little she acquired, her arms quickly beginning to shake. 

                Too heavy!  

                And her grip was proving to be not as secure as she thought, a painful edge digging into her palm despite the added aid of the glove.  She tried to relieve it, putting emphasize at her other hand, but it became slick with something that had it slipping. 

                What little progress she made vanished, and Belfast sank further, the cruiser herself beginning to dip beneath the water with her rig. 

                “No!” Enterprise exclaimed.  She glanced at her one hand – the white glove stained with slippery black oil – and the carrier pulled it off.  She circled around, focusing on keeping Belfast out of the water as she put the cruiser between her and her gear, her arms reaching around her to secure a hold on her rig.  Her now ungloved hand grabbed one of Belfast’s more intact turrets, the other diving underwater and blindly grabbing for securement, something she managed to do. 

                With both, she again put a stop to Belfast’s sinking, straightening her somewhat, but that was all.  She didn’t have the strength, made worse by how she had been weakened by her earlier acts. 

                A tow, Enterprise thought.  I need to get a tow on her!  

                It wouldn’t help raise her, but it could provide a bit of relief by putting some of the weight on Enterprise’s rig.  Enough to at least make it easier to keep Belfast up. 

                When Enterprise relaxed her grip to reach for a line, she instead retightened when Belfast immediately began sinking again with a suddenness that frightened her. 

                No good.  If she let go of Belfast or weakened her grip even a little, her rig would plunge further.  With what she just felt, the time it would take to acquire a line and spend time hooking it on may lead to Belfast’s gear taking on enough water that it wouldn’t matter.  Even with a tow, Enterprise wouldn’t be able to hold her, and any line would snap if it became that dire. 

                With the better understanding she was having, Enterprise had been lucky enough to have found Belfast when she did.  If she had been a few seconds later…it would’ve already been too late. 

                It may still be too late, with Enterprise stuck as she was, with a grip that couldn’t last forever. 

                “Bel…” she labored to call, unable to even say the cruiser’s name in its entirety with how hard she was fighting. “Bel…” 

                You need to wake up!  

                Belfast’s form was lying against her, her face tucked at her chest, leaving Enterprise unable to see her features.  What she did see was the rips in her uniform, specifically at her one side.  Enterprise saw blood, some of it coming from the deep cuts at her one arm, shrapnel protruding from where they had been lodged.  The carrier had been able to identify the cause: a magazine explosion, Belfast’s missing turret and the major damage to her gear that was centralized there having made it obvious. 

                A magazine explosion was the deadliest type of disaster that could occur with a shipgirl’s rigging, nearly all incidents that have been recorded proving to be fatal.  Survivors were exceptionally rare, but they were survivable.  If a shipgirl was not killed outright by the explosion, if the flooding could be stemmed in a timely manner, then there was a chance…  

                But the flooding was already bad, and though Enterprise couldn’t make a full account of Belfast’s injuries… that looked bad too, with how much blood that was staining her uniform, trailing down her arm, the natural repulsion of oil and blood making the fluid of life stand out so shockingly while she was so limp against the carrier. 

                But Enterprise wouldn’t give up. “Bel…” she gasped out again. 

                Her entire body was shaking with effort, painfully rigid but refusing to yield.  The turret she was holding onto made a foreboding shudder. 

                “I-I can’t…” Enterprise shakily began, making another heave and another attempt of, “I can’t do this alone…  Bel-“ 

                With a screech the turret was dislodged from its mounting, Belfast nearly being torn away from her when she jerked. 

                “Wake up!” Enterprise screamed, surging to resecure the cruiser when she dipped again, seizing another of her turrets that she prayed would hold better. 

                But the damage was done, Belfast having lowered with Enterprise unable to pull her back, the carrier already fearing as to how much further her rig would flood, no matter how little, making her heavier, until it was impossible for Enterprise to keep her up anymore. 

                “You need to wake up!” Enterprise cried desperately. 

                Belfast’s head was now hanging back because of the action, and Enterprise could see her sealed eyes past the stained bangs that were adhered over them, unstirred by her plea, with her unable to tell if she was still breathing. 

                “Come on!” The carrier had to lower her knees so as not to lose her, but she was despairing at what this signified: how she was yielding to a defeat that was becoming imminent. “Please, Bel!” 

                How much longer?  How long until Belfast’s still face went beneath the waves, where Enterprise would not be able to retrieve her?  She would sink, she would drown, and Enterprise would be left here to watch when it happened until Belfast was gone forever – from her sight, from her life. 

                “No,” Enterprise whispered, tears brimming and then trailing down her cheeks. “No, Bel, come on!” 

                If Belfast was taken from her…she didn’t know what she’d do.  It was only because of Belfast that Enterprise found the meaning to live again, and when she thought of how she wanted to do it, every thought required her friend to be in it, starting with what Enterprise wanted to tell her so badly right now. 

                “I remember!  Bel, I remember!” 

                She remembered when Belfast started calling her solely by her name.  She remembered and with them here, with her being the one to speak her name like this, it struck her how there was something so vital that she could truly understand from it about not only what Belfast meant to her, but what she meant to the cruiser.  But to accomplish that, she needed Belfast to wake up, to stay with her.  To lose her here and leave such an important thing unresolved…  

                Enterprise wouldn’t be able to do it.  To not have Belfast around anymore would not only create such a regret, but it would forever rob her of being able to see her face again with all its coy grins and twinkling mischief, being able to hear her voice again, her laugh, her name spoken from those lips again.  To have it all taken away to some deep, dark, unreachable place instead of being here with her… 

                Her life would be meaningless again.  Enterprise couldn’t think of anything after if Belfast was to sink here and all that was gone. 

                I’d rather sink with her.  

                Enterprise became vehemently entrenched in that thought and the strategy that grew from it.  Rather than be the one to stay here and sit when Belfast became too heavy, when her strength gave out but her rig held her back, the carrier would rather shed her gear and let Belfast’s weight drag her down, with her holding tight even when they passed the point of no return together, making sure that neither of them would be left alone to the very end. 

                She’d choose to die like that with Belfast instead of living without her. 

                But until then she would continue to fight with everything she had, Enterprise making one last attempt to rise, her knees shaking in a last-ditch effort to get her feet back beneath her for the chance that they could still make it out. 

                And then what had to be the voice of a merciful deity came from behind her. “Enterprise!” 

                The carrier’s head whipped over her shoulder, the divine intervention coming in the form of a group of shipgirls led by a Royal Maid who Enterprise screamed out for. “Curacoa, get here now!  She’s sinking!” 

                She did just that, with an expression that had to be closely related to Enterprise’s when she immediately took to a side of Belfast and grabbed her. “I got her, I-“ She stopped when she tugged, horror crossing over her face as she realized the extent of the circumstances and lowered herself further for better leverage while throwing instructions to the rest of the group. “Get my line on her!” 

                One Royal Navy destroyer snapped to it, yanking out a length from her rig and connecting it to Belfast’s, immediately growing taut. 

                “Mine, too!” Enterprise added, another shipgirl pulling her line and attaching it. 

                “Artifex, tend to her!” Curacoa said next. “Her rig has heavy flooding!” 

                “And I see why!” came an obvious repair ship, kneeling next to the root cause, her rig of cranes surrounding the central workshop coming alongside her like a workbench.  She gazed down at the damage, pushing round spectacles up the bridge of her nose. “Magazine explosion at her forward turret that blew most of her bow off!” She glanced at Enterprise. “Is she still breathing?” 

                With Curacoa taking a portion of the weight, Enterprise was able to reach over and gently tilt Belfast’s head towards her, her own lowering so that she could touch it against hers.  With bated breath she listened and felt the faint brush of air against her cheek.  It was enough to almost tip her into falling over with overwhelming relief. 

                “She’s breathing,” Enterprise revealed, so quiet she wasn’t sure if they could hear her, so she nodded several times to assure them and herself while trying again with, “She’s alive.” Her fingers threaded through Belfast’s hair, keeping her face close while her lids squeezed out tears, these ones of joy. 

                Artifex exhaled loudly in relief. “I recognize the refit.  The positioning of her turrets probably helped save her life.  She’s lucky.” 

                “Can you patch it up?” Curacoa asked. 

                “Patch it?  Yeah.” Artifex tossed a large tan satchel - plain save for the red embroidered RMS at the front - that had been hanging from her shoulder on top of her rig. “Her gear carrying half the Channel is a problem though.  Lift her up so we can drain it.” 

                “Matchless, York,” Curacoa listed, the destroyer and a heavy cruiser managing to situate themselves in positions of assistance between her and Enterprise with their short statures.  The maid looked across them to the Eagle carrier. “Enterprise, you ready?” 

                Enterprise reluctantly let go of Belfast but not until after she had returned her to a spot at her shoulder.  She nodded determinedly as she braced against her rig. “Ready.” 

                Curacoa passed her a brief smile that was meant to be reassuring before she tensed in readiness. “On three.  One, two, three!” 

                They lifted together, their combined strength enough to raise Belfast up enough out of the water where the hole of her bow became exposed with seawater already pouring out from it, Enterprise keenly aware of the lightening of the load at her arms and within her heart at getting her up to her feet. 

                Artifex knocked on the top of her rig’s workshop. “Hop to it!” 

                Squeezing out from it came three fat yellow lumps, tiny wings, feet, and beaks sprouting.  Manjuus, all of whom collected tools from the workshop – miniature cutting torches, pumps, tinted goggles – before hopping over to Belfast’s rig.  They affixed the small pumps and fed thin hoses into the cruiser’s gear and then, after donning the goggles, they went to work with the torches, cutting the damaged plates from Belfast’s hull while the pumps drained out the water. 

                “We’ll be done in a jiffy,” Artifex mentioned, unveiling replacement plates from her satchel and her own torch to weld them.  She reached under her hat – a blue double peaked shako with red lining – and pulled down a set of goggles to lower over her eyes, her glasses falling and hanging from a cord around her neck. “Only doing enough to speed her on her way to the proper facilities.” 

                She received replies of understanding, none that she gave any sign of hearing as she went to work welding a plate over the opening in Belfast’s bow where the manjuus had cleared the serrated edges for a proper weld.  One of her cranes rotated and lowered, hooking and then removing a stubborn block of debris that dismantled into cubes once it was clear, the materials feeding into the storage units of her rig.  Shortly after she started, Curacoa had Matchless break away and tend to Belfast’s bodily injuries, Enterprise needing to maneuver herself a little so that the destroyer could get to her arm and bandage it up, leaving and working around the shrapnel.  Those would have to be taken care of later. 

                Stuck with little else to do while supporting Belfast, York had been busy visually inspecting what she could around them. “I can’t believe the whole Siren fleet just vanished!” 

                “Well, aren’t they always able to do that?” Matchless asked with one last tightening of a bandage. “Just teleport whenever they want?” 

                “Yeah, but just like that, in the middle of such an attack?  And that strange fog went away, too!” 

                “We had seen the signs of their attack abating beforehand,” Curacoa reasoned. “Enterprise, did you take out Purifier?” 

                “Yeah,” Enterprise answered offhandedly, too exhausted to care about anything.  She rested her cheek on top of Belfast’s head, needing to feel her hair – wet and dirtied with oil that stuck to her skin -, her weight against her, her breath.  Belfast, alive, alive, alive.  Still with her. 

                Now Matchless looked towards the carrier in astonishment. “But that was Purifier!  How did you do that!?” 

                “And that just makes it stranger,” York cut in. “The fog maybe, but for the fleet to disappear without their flagship to order it?  What happened?” 

                “We’ll have time to figure everything out later,” Curacoa interrupted.  She had been staring at Enterprise, a look flipping between her and the unconscious Belfast.  The carrier ace didn’t have it in her to figure out the meaning of it, but the soft smile the elder cruiser gave her was of gratefulness and…pride? “All that matters is that we’re all still here.” 

                Enterprise locked gazes with her and then slowly nodded against Belfast while making a low noise of agreement. 

                “Here, too!” Artifex reported, pulling away to unveil her handiwork: slabs of plating having been successfully welded over Belfast’s destroyed bow, the profile having obtained a stumpy appearance.  Far better than the massive hole from before.  The pumps were still going, but Artifex was returning her tools to her satchel while the manjuus transferred back to her deck. “With this, we’ll be able to better salvage her ship-“ 

                She had pushed her goggles back under her shako and was in the middle of resetting her glasses on her nose before she was interrupted by Enterprise suddenly grabbing her by the shoulder. 

                “Thank you,” Enterprise said, beset by an intense desire to express her appreciation to her. “Thank you so much.” 

                At first answering with eyes that have gone huge behind her lopsided glasses, Artifex then awkwardly fixed them while looking aside, her cheeks possessing some added color. “It’s what I’m for.” 

                Though that may be the case, Enterprise wanted to say far more about just what it was that she had done and what it meant.  Not just because of her nature as a repair ship, but because of what she was as a living, breathing person who had been able to save another’s life.  Someone, much like Enterprise, whose life may have been dictated by a singular purpose, but what she had been able to accomplish with her own willingness and expertise to follow through on it. 

                But that would have to be for a more opportune time, and even if it never came Enterprise would remember this lesson and be sure to apply it whenever possible. 

                “Let’s get her back to base,” Curacoa said, adjusting her position. “We’re almost there.  Can you make it, Enterprise?” 

                Enterprise nodded, winding an arm around Belfast to keep her as close as possible. 

                Yes, now she could. 

--------------------- 

                With the battle having taken the turn that it had, ships of the Azur Lane backline had advanced to the front.  One of them was Unicorn, the pocket carrier flying overhead, mounted on her plushie-turned-winged-steed that navigated through the contested skies, rolling in response to a stream of cannon fire from a Siren jet while narrowly avoiding colliding with an Iron Blood 109. 

                Such maneuvering and Yuni was still able to pull up with a powerful flap of its wings to keep its rider away from harm when energy beams stabbed out from the seas, specifically targeting them.  Undaunted by the chaos and its dangers, Unicorn had it in her to look down, her glare rather fearsome to her otherwise soft appearance and personality. 

                True to its name, a Siren Chaser-class cruiser had targeted and was beginning a pursuit of her.  Hefting the long barrels of its twin-linked main gun, it was relocating to a closer position, keeping the Royal Navy shipgirl sighted. 

                Its aim was suddenly thrown off when its head was pulled roughly back, a small shipgirl using it to hoist herself up onto the Chaser’s shoulders, her short legs encircling and tightening around its neck. 

                “Stop bullying Uni-chan!” Yuudachi demanded.  She opened her mouth, fangs glinting, and then bit down on the Siren’s head. “Graawwwwrrrr!” 

                She shook like a dog latched onto a toy, that and how she continued to pull at the Chaser’s hair forcing the cruiser to veer off from its pursuit and deal with this unconventional attack instead.  It reached up to try and remove her, but the violent back-and-forth wrenching of its head and Yuudachi kicking out at its searching arms was making it difficult. 

                “Hang on, Yuudachi!” Shigure called out right before she came charging in, her body bent to better slam into and take the legs out from beneath the Chaser, the sister ship passing under and away from it. 

                Yuudachi growled unintelligently as she fell with the Siren, her fangs biting deeper, trails of yellow-green liquid beginning to drip from the Siren’s scalp and down its features, frozen in its grin even with the ridiculous situation it was in. 

                Another voice suddenly shouted. “ Dummkopf, get away!  Torpedoes!” 

                Yuudachi’s fangs popped free. “Wha-?” 

                Explosions went off along the length of the Chaser, ravaging it and sending the Sakura destroyer off from it with a yelp.  She flipped over comically before landing on her back. 

                “Yuudachi!” Shigure rushed over, standing over her sister. “Are you okay?” 

                “Uwawaaaaa…” Yuudachi moaned dizzily in reply before spitting out globs of hair and fluorescent blood. “Not enough meat…” 

                Shigure sighed in exasperation. “You’re okay.” 

                At the remains of the Chaser, there came dual reports as shells were fired directly into its face, finishing it off.  The gun that they came from lowered, the barrels disappearing into iron jaws that snapped shut as the uniformed shipgirl brought it back to her side.  Noticing the approach of others, she stood tall, jutting her chest out in a proud display over her kill. 

                Javelin stopped short, recognizing her. “You’re…!” 

                “Oh…” Laffey yawned next to Javelin. “Hey, Nimi.” 

                The Iron Blood destroyer blanched at the name, her proud stance crumbling instantly as she rounded on Laffey. “ Nein, that is not my name!  I am Z23!” 

                Laffey gave a sleepy nod with half-lidded eyes. “Okay, Nimi.” 

                “Z-2-3!” Z23 emphasized, thrusting a rigid finger at her. “I demand you refer to me by my rightful designation and not by whatever childish names that comes from that idiotic brain of yours!” 

                “…You don’t like Nimi?” came a question from behind her. 

                Z23’s shoulders jumped, her finger now shaking as she looked back, mouth agape. “Ayanami!?  You’re here!?” 

                With sword low at her side, Ayanami’s usually plain features had now adopted a crestfallen expression as she regarded Z23. “I thought you said…” 

                “Wait, wait, wait!” Z23 exclaimed, hands waving frantically in a desperate bid to mitigate the damage. “That’s not it!  I did say I liked it, but only when you call me that!  Not that lazy bungler over there- huh!?” 

                The bungler in question had managed to catch Z23 entirely unaware, getting close enough to lean over, Laffey looking like she was about to collapse from exhaustion and needing to hug Z23 around her waist to keep herself at least halfway up, the Eagle destroyer pushing her face into her side while she tiredly called, “Nimiiii~” 

                “We’re in the middle of a battle right now!” Z23 shouted, trying to pry Laffey off but the other girl showing a surprising amount of resilience in remaining attached. “Take this seriously!” 

                In truth, it was a battle that was all but over.  

                With the entry of the Iron Blood fleet advancing from the rear while the Sirens had remained stuck against the solid lines of Azur Lane to the front, it was like a hammer and an anvil with Iron Blood serving as the hammer, striking down with a solid, devastating blow.  Starting from their opening barrage and subsequent charge, King George had been treated with an exquisite view from her deck of Iron Blood at their best once the doubts had been put to rest concerning which side they had come to help. 

                Iron Blood had concentrated all its might in one push directly into the center of the Siren formations, their volley having created the weakness that their shipgirls drove against.  It was a show of brute force at its finest, the formidable hulls that let even their destroyers wield powerful guns above their class getting them to barrel through with monstrous efficiency.  And though the squadrons were fewer in number, coming only from Graf Zeppelin, the fighters kept their cover limited to skies directly above the penetrating wedge, precision bombing from the bombers along the edges keeping them sharp and clean from stubborn hostiles as they drove further in, supported by soaring cruisers. 

                What the aircraft did above, the submarines did below.  Hidden, but working in concert with the surface ships, George had been lucky to witness it when a Siren mass production battleship that had been turning to address the Iron Blood penetration was suddenly struck by what had to be torpedoes at its stern, its speed and steering instantly crippled.  A pair of destroyers suffered a similar fate, leaving a heavy cruiser exposed to a broadside by the shipgirls that blew through the opening to deliver it. 

                And finally, there was Bismarck. 

                The Siren battleship that had been stricken suddenly broke completely in two, its halves separating and sinking.  Through the breach came Bismarck with her smoking barrels, her flag waving high as she took to the field, urging on her comrades that glided under and over the banner while her batteries opened up again, the effect they had not only disintegrating a Siren production cruiser but galvanizing the shipgirls under her command further into the push. 

                Taking that as a personal challenge, George held aloft her sword, calling out to her own forces that included ships of the backline before she gestured with her blade and ordered, “Forward!” Her rig affixing itself to her, she waded in. 

                With there now being two wedges pressing in from both directions with the warships at the respective rears still providing ranged shelling that was just as impressively precise in supporting the main drives, there was nothing but certainty as to what ended up happening: the Siren forces were cut in two and, soon, found themselves encircled. 

                What had taken place since then was a massacre, but one that George could take satisfaction in as their inhuman foes were annihilated, Azur Lane and Crimson Axis mixing and fighting together in displays like the one with the destroyers.  That had pretty much put an end to the northern half of the Siren fleet, the Seafires that the now cleared Unicorn rapidly launched assisting the 109s in erasing the last squadron of jet fighters while the surviving carrier group – and its overseeing humanoid – were sunk. 

                As for the southern half, Bismarck was running the final flagship through with her standard, bringing it down to the water.  At either side of her, the monstrous jaws of her rigging closed in like predators for a feast that they soon engaged in when they lunged forward, snapping, tearing, and ripping the pinned humanoid to pieces, body and ship parts tossed in the air where the Iron Blood banner flew dominantly over it, the Siren formation in the background losing their coordination. 

                George took the utmost pleasure in the exhilaration of being right in the middle of it, navigating and firing at every opportunity, her cannons but one of the many instruments being played in tandem as shipgirls together sped past or with her, the skies being shared with the buzzing planes that looped and descended, bombs dropping – an entire orchestra playing with the Sirens vanquishing to it. 

                She had missed out in the Pacific.  But with her blood singing and heart thundering, she gave thanks to God and His good graces to make it up to her with this turn of fate. 

                This was how war should be made.  Not against fellow man with a divisive want of supremacy, but united in preservation and prosperity against such a devious foe. 

                If only it could remain this way, she thought, the thrill beginning to wane with the last Siren sinking but what she desired to keep for a little longer when she thrust her sword up and roared out in victory, it being answered by the shipgirls who she caught up in it. 

                But unfortunately, the change had already been occurring in the numbers of the allied factions before the last Siren was defeated, and though her call had been taken up so willing in the heat of their triumph, she could hear it die out, and as the fire of victory was quenched, subdued uncertainty replaced it.  

               With the shared enemy defeated, George could see the space being created, the black and red Iron Blood girls drifting from the red and blue of the Royal Navy and Eagle Union. 

                But it didn’t become anything hostile, her daring to believe that there was hesitant but present communication being passed between the groups that were still officially at war, with members braving to lessen some of that developed space to make tepid exchanges.  No one was raising any guns, what gestures that were made instead being simple nods or waves or other motions that carried modicums of respect. 

                George turned to where she last saw Bismarck to see the Iron Blood leader having come to stand at a distance across from her with that standard back at her side, the glowing ichor of her slain foe visible to George as well as Bismarck’s cold expression as she regarded her Royal Navy counterpart. 

                George met it fully before raising her sword in a salute, nodding in respect behind her blade. 

                Bismarck remained still until she eventually raised her standard in response, followed by her own nod. 

                The water suddenly burst nearby, a submarine breaching the surface with such speed and height that George was left impressed with how she pulled off a backflip before her rig came crashing down next to Bismarck, the battleship looking disapprovingly at the seawater that splashed onto her uniform before directing it at the culprit. 

                The submarine seemed pleased with herself until she saw her leader’s disapproval.  Sobering up, she straightened and snapped to attention on her rig, her short blue twin-tails bobbing as she gave Bismarck a sharp salute.  

                Sticking her with the stare a little longer, Bismarck eventually gave her permission to ease and listened to the report that the submarine quickly gave.  George couldn’t hear any of it, but after the submarine finished Bismarck looked around with a slow, purposeful scan of the area, as if looking for something. 

                Or someone, George guessed when she noticed how Bismarck seemed the most interested at the clustered shipgirls of the Azur Lane side. 

                She didn’t think Bismarck found what she wanted when the Iron Blood leader stopped her search, her frigid exterior momentarily thawing before it refroze and she raised her hand up to touch her collar, speaking into her radio as she turned her back to George.  After giving the submarine a quick, discreet pat on her head while passing her, Bismarck began to make her way out of the estuary. 

                Smiling from ear-to-ear, the submarine dove into the water while the other Iron Blood girls began following their leader out. 

                Z23 lagged behind the rest of her retreating comrades so that she could holler at Laffey, “Make sure you clean up your act next time in case I happen to see you again!” 

                “Bye-bye, Nimi…” Laffey yawned, now resting comfortably against Javelin. “See ya then.” 

                Ayanami waved. “Goodbye, Nimi.” 

                “Goodbye, Ayanami,” Z23 emphasized, waving at the Sakura ship. 

                “Z23!” 

                The Iron Blood destroyer stopped and looked over at Javelin. 

                “Thanks for your help!” the Navy girl said, smiling. “You were really cool!” 

                Z23 was startled, but then she crossed her arms over her chest and turned her nose up at Javelin. “W-we didn’t do this to help you!” she shot back, flustered. “This was just to teach the Sirens a lesson about getting cocky in trespassing on our territory!” She directed her back to them, started to sail away, only to then stop, turn, and then wave timidly at Javelin. “But I suppose I should be grateful for there being a respectable warship like you.” 

                Then she took off, leaving Javelin beaming after her. 

                Another Iron Blood submarine breached the surface.  Lifting the brim of her black and red cap so that she could better look at a group of Royal Navy shipgirls, she singled out a certain cruiser. “So, uh, since we’re being all friendly right now,” she said, fiddling with a white streak of her otherwise black hair nervously, “I guess this is a good time to say sorry for the…uh…” She gestured wordlessly. 

                Dorsetshire blinked, looked down at her leg where the submarine was gesturing, then shot back up at her, furious. “That was you!?” 

                “Eep!” the submarine hurriedly dove back underwater and fled after her comrades. 

                Oddly, the withdrawal seemed to be encouraging more open and sincere reactions, Azur Lane girls suddenly advancing and speaking out with Iron Blood members stopping and lingering to respond to them.  Compliments, boasts, challenges, thanks, maybe even promises.  Recognizing how that this could be their last chance to share what they wanted on these amicable terms, with the next time they met potentially being enemies in a war that could resume the next day, it was inspiring them to share what they wanted from their hearts, unrestrained. 

                George was proud of these examples because of what they demonstrated: the humanity that was in every one of them.   And with that humanity, there was the mutual hope that she could see and that she herself entertained: that this wouldn’t be the end, that these exchanges wouldn’t be the last shared, that what they had experienced here, what they were reminded of here, could come again despite what the current rules of war were. 

                But the rules can change, as they had before.  I wonder how many are thinking, right now, of how much better it would be if they were what they were previously, and how many of those would wish to see them reverted come the morrow.  George glanced at the departing Bismarck, thinking of the search that the battleship was being forced to leave incomplete.  Including you, Bismarck.  

                “Knight Commander, I have news,” Curlew announced as she came to her side. “We’ve reestablished communications with Devonport.” 

                I guess it is still too soon to be resting and dreaming.  Having managed to send Massachusetts and the relief force out during the opening made, George hoped, as she signaled to Curlew to make her report, that the upcoming news would prove that they had been unneeded and that there’d be better news there, too.