Harry Potter & the Shipgirls

[darthcourt10]

Maes

Harry Leferts said:
Natsumi took several big breaths before shaking her head. "I just... I never expected that amount to come from it. I mean, that's a lot of money... A lot."​

*-*-*-*-*-*

"Errr... I probably shouldn't mention the rest of the letter?"

". . . rest of the letter?"

"Says it's only the first part of the payment. The auction profit is still in escrow for a week and the 'muggle exchange' ran out of bills..."

"Harry? What are you saying?"

"Well, they're apologizing quite a bit over only having been able to send less than a tenth of the whole amount for the moment."

*cough*tenth?!*cough*

 

[darthcourt10]

RCNAnon

Welp, with all the discussion going around I managed to get another snip out. Hope you all enjoy.

Ron and Warspite 8: In which there is plotting.
------------------
Rain pattered against the window, the occasional flash and rumble of thunder coming through the walls and glass. Inside a small fire burned cheerily in the fireplace, more an affection than anything but providing welcome warmth for the two women nearby. With the same large pot of tea placed between them, Duke of York and Warspite were engaged in another of their friendly games of chess.

"So," said Duke, reaching out to move one of her pieces, "How did it go?"

"How did what go?" said Warspite, pausing to survey the board before making a move of her own.

"Don't give me that, Warspite, you've practically been glowing ever since you got back from your visit with Ron. Give a girl some details would you?" Duke smiled at Warspite as she paused mid move, finally setting her piece down.

"What makes you think it was anything other than a nice visit with my friend?"

"For one you're still a terrible liar and deflecting isn't helping. Secondly, your sisters mentioned that you've been in your room an awful lot lately. You're clearly doing something in there, and gossip is you're staring off in space when you think nobody is looking." Duke moved another piece decisively, even as Warspite took a sip of her tea.

It was clear that Duke wasn't going to let go without getting at least a few answers, it was only a matter of how many she wanted to give.

"It was… an eventful trip," Warspite said, finally opening up a little bit. "Ron took me on a lovely tour of the castle before the game and we had lunch out by the lake."

"Romantic," said Duke with a smile, the game falling by the wayside as the two talked about more important things.

"Yes, yes it was." Warspite paused, biting her lip as she considered how to proceed. "The game was interesting, Ron and Harry's house managed to win so of course there was a party afterwards."

"Of course, teenagers and the like." Duke leaned forwards, placing her chin on her hands as she waited for more.

"Yes. Ron and I participated and it went quite late. At some point I fell asleep on the couch… with Ron."

Duke's eyebrows raised in interest at the statement, Warspite's cheeks dusting lightly with red.

"Sleeping together already?" she said teasingly.

"Sleeping yes," Warspite said, shooting her friend a look which glanced off her grinning face like a round of her armor, "Neither of us planned it like that but we did. It was… I was the most rested I think I've ever been with such little sleep."

"Good for you," said Duke, the sincerity in her voice clear to both of them. "Anything else exciting happen?"

"We went for a flight," said Warspite, "He was in control of course. I thought I'd be nervous but once we got in the air… it's hard to describe the feeling of being in the air with the ground rolling underneath you, nothing holding you back."

"I think I get the picture."

"We landed at one point, a clearing in the forest. With the just the two of us… he asked if I liked him."

"Brave of him," said Duke, "Bold even."

"Especially at his age," Warspite nodded.

Duke took a moment to take a sip of her tea, looking up at Warspite as she did.

"You said yes of course."

Warspite flushed but she nodded.

"I did. I said of course I liked him like that and then..."

"And then?"

"And then I kissed him," Warspite said, her face warming at the memory, her face half hidden behind her teacup.

Duke's eyes widened at the statement and an even bigger smile crossed her face.

"Well look at you. I'm sure Dreadnought would have a fit if she learned about that but it's a good step for you."

Warspite winced at the mention of the mother of the fleet but it was fleeting, the memories of her visit even weeks later keeping the smile on her face.

"It was…. It was right for both of us," she said, her eyes meeting her friends, "He means so much to me and he's right at the age to know. With everything he's done for me, I don't think there's anything else I could have done."

Duke's eyes narrowed, examining Warspite's face even more.

"You're leaving something out," she said, "Something big. You had it bad before but now…"

Warspite didn't say anything, sipping at her tea as her mind raced, face a mask.

Duke leaned back, a soft smile crossing her face.

"If it's that big I won't pry," she said, taking a sip of her own tea, "You deserve your happiness."

Warspite's mind was made up in that instance, as her friend wished her all the happiness in the world and respected her privacy at the same time. She was sure Duke would understand and keep her silence at the same time.

"It's… you can't tell anyone else, not yet," Warspite said, reaching into her dress and pulling the book out of her internals, the only place she was sure to keep the book safe. "It's hard to describe but you'll understand."

Duke nodded as Warspite handed over the leather bound volume, noting the seriousness in her friends voice. She opened it with all the care and respect it deserved, even as Warspite sipped at her tea, eyes closed. The sound of the pages turning lightly, the crackle of the fire and the patter of the rain on the windows were the only sounds for quite some time.

Finally there was a thump as Duke closed the book, Warspite's eyes opening to see her friend staring pensively at the book.

"That's not tracing is it," she said, more a statement than a question.

"No," replied Warspite, "It's part of his promise."

"...I had chief engineers who didn't know me half as well as that boy knows you," said Duke, "Trained men thrice his age, taught in the finest schools of the Royal Navy pale in comparison to a self taught thirteen year old."

"Yes," said Warspite simply, the smile on her face widening as Duke understood like she thought she would.

"If that's not Love with a capital L I don't know what is," Duke said as she pushed the book back towards Warspite, "The time to make that alone..."

"I know," said Warspite, the book sliding back inside to be secured in the same space as her ships log.

Duke's face was a strange sort of relaxed, a wry sort of smile playing around the edges of her lips as she stared at her tea.

"He's going to fix that steering of issue yours," she said, "It's not a question of if anymore, it's simply when."

"I don't think it's been if for a long time," said Warspite, "It was just that nobody, including me, realized it."

"How long till you think you can summon your hull then?"

"...a month or two. Summer at the latest. It's just a matter of finding the time."

A companionable silence fell over the two of them as both became lost in thought.

"You know, I think I'm jealous," said Duke, looking up at her friend once more, "In a good way. Not many people get what you already have Warspite. The other things, like time and your issues fixed…" she let out a wistful sigh.

"I could ask him to take a look if you'd like," Warspite said, her eyes meeting her friends, "At your plans. He could probably use the practice, seeing as how we're in agreement he doesn't need to work at mine anymore."

Duke flushed at that, her hand instinctively going up to her shoulder.

"Are you sure?" she asked Warspite.

"I wouldn't offer if I didn't mean it," Warspite said.

Duke nodded, her eyes thoughtful once more.

"If you would."

Warspite smiled and off to the north Ron sneezed suddenly, wondering what possibly could have caused it.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Crouching down on the water's surface, Tenryuu frowned as she looked through the large goggles that she was wearing. Several miles distant, an island rose out of the water, one of the hidden ones. Pulling away the goggles, she let them hang from around her neck. "You know... I got to admit, that's a lot of activity for some place that every flyby has stated shows no signs of life."

Beside her, Inazuma nodded some. "Hai, Nanodesu! I wonder who they are though..."

Verniy blinked some and lowered her own goggles. "Da, one must wonder. Though Haru-San thinks that they are a settlement of Yokai." Bringing the goggles up to her face, she zoomed in as much as she could and noticed that some of the figures in the boats fishing seemed to have tails. "And I think that she is right."

Scratching her neck, Ikazuchi huffed a bit. "Still not sure why we're hanging out here to watch them. We should be going over there and greeting them!"

Gently patting her on the back, Tatsuta shook her head. "We would, but each time we've tried they've vanished. So right now, we need to learn more about them."

Only nodding, Tenryuu didn't say a thing as she continued to watch the small boats go here and there. Switching her gaze to the island, she could see small lights there as well. "They got a pretty good thing going though. Small goats for milk if what that biologist said about the breeds was right. And lots of fruit trees as well... And then you some of the abandoned islands nearby with gardens that seem to have had been raided."

With a huff, Akatsuki frowned some as she crossed her arms. "Waiting in the dark though isn't very lady-like. This is something more like Sendai-San."

That got a chuckle from Tenryuu as she grinned a bit. "Yeah, Yasen-Baka would love an assignment like this." Still grinning, she glanced at Tatsuta. "Sorry for dragging you out here and away from your date."

Much to her amusement, she got a small blush from Tatsuta as the other Light Cruiser frowned. "It was not a date, Tenryuu-Chan. All it was in fact was simply a sparring match between Satoshi-Kun and myself."

Humming, Tenryuu's grin became a smirk. "Sparring match, huh? I must be getting old if that is what they are calling it now."

If anything, the blush on Tatsuta's face increased and she decided to ignore the jab. "Besides, I simply told him that some duties came up and I had to do them. He had no problem with rescheduling our match for a later time."

Each of the Akatsuki Sisters merely shook their head at the byplay. They understood that it was rare for Tenryuu to have anything to tease Tatsuta about, so when she had the chance to she milked it. Rolling her eyes, Ikazuchi sighed to herself. 'Still pretty boring.'

Suddenly, Inazuma gave a hiss. "Guys! Something is happening over there!"

Almost as one, DesDiv6 and the two Light Cruisers turned in the direction motioned and blinked. It took a few moments, but Tenryuu gave a grunt. "Looks like someone caught something a bit bigger then what they wanted-" Then her eyebrows rose. "Shit, they hooked a Great White."

Pulling her goggles away from her face, Akatsuki stared at her mother. "Wait, a Great White?! Here!? In Japan!?"

Only grimacing, Tenryuu nodded. "They're not common in our waters, but they pop up sometimes. And we're far enough out at sea that I'm not surprised to see one. But depending on the size, that little boat might not be big enough for it."

Tatsuta shook her head. "It's not big enough. They're big enough to pull in fish, but not big enough not to fit in those sea caves." Her frown grew as the shark's thrashing increased and nearly capasized the boat. From where they were, they could see the other boats trying to come to the rescue but the boat in question was being pulled along. "This is not good."

For several moments, Tenryuu was silent before sighing. "Okay, let's move in." At their looks, she rolled her eye. "Look, if they capsize, they're going to be in the same water as a very pissed off shark. They're already pretty far away from the other boats and we're closer. They tip, we fish them out before the shark does anything or they drown. At worst, we just set them on the island and pull away. At best? We actually get talking with them. In either case, situation's changed."

By the time that the group got close enough, they could see the boat finally capasize and dump those in it into the cold, Pacific waters with the Great White. Said shark, sensing the fishermen's thrashing, twisted around and headed straight for them. It was hard to say who was more surprised though when Tenryuu jumped the shark, the predator, or the Yokai in the water. Once it was dead, Tenryuu turned and was about to say something when Ikazuchi raised a hand. "Um, hi, we come in peace?" At the facepalm from her mother, she grinned weakly. "Er... take us to your leader?"

All Inazuma did was sigh and put her face in her hands. "Nee-San, stop, Nanodesu..."

The Yokai, both those in the water being helped out by Akatsuki, Verniy, and Tatsuta, not to mention those in the boats, simply blinked.
_______________________________________________________________________

Head slightly bent to prevent it from hitting the ceiling, Tenryuu glanced around in curiosity while the rest of her family followed behind. They had been brought in through one of the sea caves and then into a series of tunnels under the island itself. As they were walked along with a chōchin obake leading the way, the Light Cruiser could see that the tunnel they were in resembled World War Two tunnels, which gave her a slight clue when she remembered the ruins above. Every so often, they passed doorway which often had young Yokai peeking out at them.

Some of them were Kitsune, others Tanuki, or even Mujina.

All of them, Tenryuu noted, were animal Yokai except for the odd Tsukumogami. Finally, they reached what had to have been an office at some time. But now, it was some sort of meeting hall and in front of them were various Yokai. All of them seemed nervous, though they tried to hide it. 'Huh, guess that these must be the Elders.' Glancing at a seven tailed Kitsune, Tenryuu bowed as did her daughters and Tatsuta. "A good day to you all. Thank you for speaking to us."

Clearing his throat, the seven tail nodded some. "And a good day to you. As well, you are most... welcome, for us speaking with you." He then gestured with a paw at a tatami mat. "Please, take a seat."

Once they were all seated, Tenryuu kept her gaze on the Yokai in front of her. With every moment, she could tell that they were getting more and more nervous, and so held up her hands. "Before we go any further, we wish to let you all know that we're not involved in the magical government, at all. The only ones who do know that you are here are some officials in the JMSDF and the government."

Eyebrow raised, a Mujina frowned. "Yes, the JMSDF. They would know as you have been spying on us."

Just to the side of Tenryuu, Inazuma raised a hand. "Um, we've only been watching because we noticed activity here. Which made us worried because of Abyssal activity, which has caught people off guard before and we want everyone to be safe, Nanodesu."

Blinking, they turned to Tenryuu who nodded. "Hai, Ami-Chan's right. Our duty is to protect people, and, well... you're people. I'm sure that you noticed that our patrols have been close to the island?"

Frowning, the female Kawuso nodded. "We have as a matter of fact. But we had assumed that you were trying to catch us."

Much to their surprise though, Tenryuu shook her head and waved them off. "Nah, not really. We wanted to talk with you, to make sure that everything was alright. Maybe see if there was anything that we could help with since you're all well within the line where evacuation is mandatory at the moment. I got something here for you though, just in case we did contact you... If I could?"

At their hesitant nods, Tenryuu reached into her clothes and pulled out a scroll that she placed in front of them, seal facing the Yokai. While the others were concerned that it may have been trapped, the Kitsune spotted the seal and gasped. "The Ono Clan seal!" Looking up, his jaw dropped some. "You know the Ono Clan?"

Confused, Tenryuu only nodded as she did not expect that reaction. With a glance to Tatsuta, who also seemed surprised, the shipgirl frowned. 'I wonder what caused that reaction from them... Looks like I got some real questions for Haru-San when we get back.'

Meanwhile, the Kitsune unrolled the scroll and there was a lot of quiet conversation going on between him and the other elders at what they read. Sometime after dawn, DesDiv6 left the island behind and were sailing back to Yokosuka with a scroll from the elders of the island which they learned had been one of the outposts of the magical side of the IJA during the war, and which Yokai had taken over after it was abandoned to hide. More then that though, the Yokai there had relaxed and stated that they were willing to start talking with them.

All in all, a successful mission.

 

[darthcourt10]

K9Thefirst1

A little something I whipped up in one sitting, just to see if I could. I apologize for the inevitable loss of quality.


Eastern Mediterranean, On the Coast of Israel, Six months after Blood Week

To the Humans, she would for years be known as the Maltese Princess. That was, after all, her Seat of Power. But to her sisters and her underlings, she was the Middle World Ocean Princess, for that was what she was - The embodiment of the first sea that Man had conquered, and thus, she claimed, the first sea to claim Man. That... Hadn't quite panned out. The scale of the Mediterranean Sea meant that there wasn't a square mile that wasn't in range of land-based air power, as in-effectual as it was against the Abyss. Still, the Mark I Eyeball issued to every pilot meant that her forces could be tracked easily enough outside of their Princess' storms, meaning that the growing numbers of shipgirls could engage her fleets at almost any time. Time and again, raids and landings were repulsed with infuriating regularity, and her territories were being infringed upon by the forces of Man. Worse, Middle World Ocean could sense that her hold over the hearts of her slaves was being displaced. A sense of significance had somehow wormed its way into more than a few. Enough so that no less than three had the blasphemous audacity to rise above their station without her permission! Thus they were cast out, or ordered on suicide missions.

But alas, the damage had been done. The Princess' hold over her fleet was beginning to fracture. Left unchecked, her command would collapse, and she would be laid exposed to Regicide, or defeat at the hands of the dirty race of Man. It was a time for fortification, a withdrawal to her stronghold to honestly assess her position and act on it, lest she suffer the fate of her sisters, such as Central Atlantic, the eldest and mightiest of their number, or Nordic Horde, the most bloodlusty, or their sisters beyond the bend of Africa and South America, rendered silent these long months. But sadly, the slender Elder Princess of the Mediterranean did not see the need to do any such action that would suggest that she had been mistaken in her actions. A mindset common among her kin. Therefore, the Elder Princess continued in her preferred course of action.

"Dig faster peons!" She bellowed, taking no action to assist in the goings on in the pit the ships she brought with her were creating, her prominent cheek bones making her agitated sneer all the more sinister, "I can feel it! Smell it! Proof that Our ancestors ruled these lands!"

Her sisters all considered her obsession to be an eccentricity at best, a waste of effort at worst. But Middle World knew, knew! that it was true! She could sense the same energies that emanated from herself and her fellow Elder Princesses. They whole area was saturated with it. Especially here, in the Levant, in Egypt, in Turkey and the Aegean. A faint sense of something connected to the sea, to Power. And it was here, amidst an unassuming rocky outcropping, that these faint energies was at its strongest. It wasn't much, a mere warm campfire's ashes compared to even cowardly Gateway's fiery inferno - But it was there, buried deep beneath the rock.

For days now, her chosen of the fleet chiseled away at the rock, blowing boulders away even as the waves crashed them against the outcropping and each other. Dozens had already been written off and scrapped from the damages endured, but they were always replaced within a few hours. What was a slave, if not a disposable tool? And with every hour, Middle World grew more certain the sacrifices would be worth it. At long last, her goal would be achieved! She had timed the full schedule to coincide with this very moment. The chamber buried into the rocks was largely underwater; so to avoid damaging the contents, the breach had to be at an extremely low tide. The movements of the moon had been carefully studied even before they agreed that the time to attack Man was right, and thus Middle World Ocean knew that the lowest possible tide would happen on this day, at this hour! And these worthless slaves were going to make her lose her window! She was about to lash out, crush the skull of the nearest peon for the crime of being a convenient target, when a rumbling sound echoed up from the pit. They had breached the chamber.

With an almost mad cackling, the Elder Princess leaped from ledge to ledge, her white robes flowing about like wings, and shoving off an unfortunate Ru-Class to her demise. Her final leap brought her through the narrow gap made by the workers and into the chamber. With a thought, her personal imps powered up their spotlights and pealed back the darkness, revealing what could only be a tomb.

Strewn about the chamber lay a horde of items. A chariot, arrows and bows, statues of every subject and description. Scores of fired clay tablets, covered in the written language of the peoples of the era were stacked to the ceiling. The walls were painted in vibrant colors, depicting the story of the occupant of the tomb. A story that Middle World Ocean Princess found that she knew by heart.

In the Abyss, Darkness reigned. And from the Abyss, Nine Sister-Goddesses rose to conqueror the Land. Man Fought. And Man Died. The Abyss Ruled All.

"Yes... Yes! I knew it-! I KNEEEWWWW IT!"

And there, in the center of it all, was a dais, carved of marble. Upon that dais was a skeleton... Which Middle World could feel was the very source of the energies she had been sensing all this time. The Elder Princess tentatively walked up to the dais, taking in the sight. Alas, the centuries, even sealed in a tomb, did not treat the last mortal remains of the Abyssal Elder Princess with due respect. The skeleton had largely decayed into fragments and dust... Save for the skull. Though by no means in pristine condition, there was no mistaking the ring of prominent black horns around her head like a crown. Only an Elder Princess Abyssal would bare such a regal visage, even in death.

Beside the remains, there lay a blade. With giddy trepidation, Middle World gripped the handle - the leather thongs along the handle long rotted away - and held it aloft. It had no doubt originally been made of bronze, but the process its owner used to imbue it with her Power had turned it black, and it's edges twisted into wicked angles. And yet despite that, an academic would still recognize it as what was categorized as a Naue II type sword. The Elder Princess made a few practice swings, and found that despite the age it was still sturdy enough to endure the Princess' strength. She marveled it, ran her hand along its flat. There would be need of fashioning a new handle, but that would be a simple thing. With this proof, at long last her sisters would recognize her brilliance!

"Your Gloriousness?" came a mewling wretch of a noise from the hole in the roof, "We must leave! The tide is coming in and the Land-Slaves are approaching!"

"Yes, please, we must hurry!"

Middle World Ocean Princess grit her teeth at the interruption. Trust the slaves to not understand the significance of what their Master was in the midst of doing. Still, they did make a fair point. It was time to leave. The pit above would be flooded, but slowly, so the artefacts should not be to terribly damaged, or disturbed. And once the Race of Men was cast from the Seas, she could examine the items within at her leisure. Thus, sword in hand, the Elder Princess of the Mediterranean climbed out of the tomb, and into the light of day and her destiny...

But had she cared to continue the story painted on the walls, Middle World Ocean Princess would have noted that the tale continued. Yes, the Abyss Ruled All. But with that, the Sister-Goddesses turned on each other. First through proxies. And soon enough directly. And within a century of their victory... The Abyss returned to whence it came, leaving the last of the Sister-Goddesses, wounded in battle with her sister, to die alone, buried with her possessions, and her story and all the knowledge she had possessed with her, by her sole remaining worshipers. And in the Heiroglyphs of the Egypt upon the wall, and in the Sumatran writings in the clay, the name of this lost royal was written, and would remain even as the water rose to engulf it until next seen by mortal eyes - the name of she who had been laid to rest in this chamber some three-thousand years ago, was Leviathan.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Waking up slowly, Harry yawned a bit and blinked his eyes. Feeling warm breath on his neck, he looked down and chuckled softly at the sight of Natsumi having snuggled into him sometime during the night. Which did confuse him, especially as she had her own futon due to staying over as Haru was away. Shaking off that, Harry turned his head to look at his clock when he felt something squish against it. Eye rolling as far as it could, Harry noticed the pale arm that was holding him close at the same time he felt a weight against his leg. 'Ah, there's Regina.'

Rather then wake up though, the Re-Class sighed and pulled him, and Natsumi, closer to her. Needless to say, Harry was rather amused by the fact that the two of them were being used as big teddy bears in a way. Not to mention how Natsumi was using him as one... or was he using her as one? After a moment, Harry simply shook his head. When he tried to move his hand from where it was against Natsumi's back, he paused. Not because he felt her move under it.

No, it had to deal with the fact that he could feel something furry against it.

Slowly, Harry lifted up the blankets of the futon and his eyes widened. Because, sure enough, sticking out from Natsumi's pajamas was a fox tail. Said tail thumped slightly against the mattress of the futon. In an odd way, it was almost... hypnotic. Also rather cute as Natsumi's foot sometimes kicked out some. Glancing quickly at her head though, Harry could not see any fox ears, which he sighed in relief at.

Of course, that was when Natsumi shifted some and started to mumble as she began to wake up.

Dropping the blanket, Harry moved his hand away from where her tail was and took a nervous swallow. Not even a minute later, Natsumi's eyes fluttered open some and she yawned widenly. Wide enough, in fact, that Harry could see quite a bit of the inside of her mouth. Especially the four large, nearly fang-like canines. "Um, morning, Natsumi-Chan..."

With a blink, Natsumi paused partway through another yawn as her human looking ears wiggled a bit. Turning, she frowned at seeing Harry there before her gaze moved to Regina. "Harry-Chan? What are you doing in my futon?"

A small blush on his face, Harry gave a cough. "Er, Natsumi-Chan? This is my futon... not yours." It looked like Natsumi was about to say something when she paused. For a brief moment, there was a look of panic in her expression before she hid it. If Harry had not known her for as long as he did, he might have missed it. "Is something wrong, Natsumi-Chan?"

Looking away, Natsumi shook her head. "No, no... Nothing's wrong, Harry-Chan." She glanced at him and internally breathed a sigh of relief. 'Good, Harry-Chan didn't notice my screw up... that was close." Then the Kitsune frowned a bit. 'Though... maybe I should tell him, Harry-Chan would accept it. I mean, I trust him and he trusts me after all. Just need the right time and to talk with Oba-Chan.' Seeing the frown still on her childhood friend's face, she coughed some. "Um... just wondering how I got here-"

It was then that she noticed Shiromizu. More then that, she noticed that said snake was watching them in amusement before pulling out a fan with her tail and snapping it open to hide her face behind. In fact, Natsumi could just see the snakes version of a smirk. Following her gaze, Harry blinked a bit. 'Wonder what that is all about...'

However, he did not notice Natsumi give Shiromizu a murderous glare. 'You are behind this, aren't you!? When I get my hands on you at our next training session-"

Then Natsumi froze a bit as she shifted which made Harry turn his attention back to her. "Natsumi-Chan? What's..." The black haired boy paused as he noticed her slowly turning more and more red. He also noticed that her gaze was now looking at a specific spot. Something that Harry became aware of himself as his face slowly turned red. "Oh..."

Regina chose that moment to open her eyes and yawn before looking at the two red faced teens. Confused, she tilted her head some with a frown. 'Did something happen?'

Several minutes later, Nagato was sipping her coffee at the apartment's table before looking up as a red faced Harry quickly walked to the bathroom with some clothes to get changed. Just before the door closed, she could also see a similarly red faced Natsumi. Once he was out though, the Battleship cleared her throat and was about to say something when Harry looked at her with mortification. "Mum? Let's just say that I am glad that you gave me the Talk already..."

Frowning, Nagato furrowed her eyebrows before it all clicked and she gave a nod. "Ah, I see..." Coughing, she shook her head. "Yes, I suppose that would make it much worse for us..."

By the time that Natsumi and Regina left the bedroom now dressed, Harry was already at the stove making some items. With a glance at Harry, which made her cheeks redden again, Natsumi headed into the bathroom muttering under her breath. Something that amused Nagato to no end. Once she was out though, Harry put a plate of eggs and some bacon in front of her as well as Miso soup. What caught Natsumi's gaze though was the pieces of toast and jar of peanut butter. Before she dug in though, she gave a bow to Nagato. "Thank you again for letting me stay the night, Nagato-San."

All Nagato did though was softly smile at her and wave it off. "It was no problem, Natsumi-Chan. Having you over is always fun and I know that Harry enjoys it." Sipping her coffee, she hummed a bit. "Speaking of, I noticed that Harry made some lunch last night that's in the fridge."

Swallowing, a bite of her toast, Natsumi nodded. "Some of that is mine. Harry-Chan offered to make it for me last night so that I would have something to eat at the Shrine today as I need to take care of it for Oba-Chan." She then gave Harry a small smile. "Something that I am thankful for."

Lips twitching, Nagato gave a smile. "I would imagine so as a matter of fact."

Harry simply shrugged some. "Well, why wouldn't I? Besides... I don't mind doing it. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, Natsumi-Chan."

Only scoffing, Natsumi shook her head. "Harry-Chan, I doubt that I would not enjoy it." A pout then crossed her face some. "I'm still annoyed that you're a better cook then I am."

Chuckling weakly, Harry rubbed his neck. "I just got a lot of practice is all..." Then he sighed some. "And, well... People enjoy it and actually tell me so."

Moments later, he blinked as Natsumi paused in her eating and put down her food before walking over and giving him a hug. "And they should, Harry-Chan. You do a great job and you deserve to be told so." With another squeeze, she leaned up on her tip toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I for one appreciate all the work that you put into it."

As she watched the two, Nagato had to hide her smile behind her mug. 'So kawaii... So very kawaii.' Shoving Nagamon down before she could make an appearance, and biting back a coo, the Battleship coughed. "So what are your plans for the day, Harry?"

With a glance towards her as he cooked, Harry frowned some. "Well... Regina has been wanting to have a look outside of Yokosuka." Knowing that his mother had a concerned look, he shook his head. "Nothing big, she just wants to see some of the farms is all. Shinano-Chan is coming too."

Now relaxing, Nagato chuckled some. "Ah, that sounds good, though I don't imagine that there would be much to see this early in the year. Anything else?"

Looking up from her own breakfast, Regina gave a bright smile. "Shinano is also going to take me to do some shopping." Her head tilted to the side a bit. "She knows a place that sells hoodies! And some are in our size because Americans shop there." At the looks though, the Abyssal gave a shy smile. "Um, we both like wearing hoodies..."

Simply raising an eyebrow, Nagato allowed her lip to curl upwards. "Ah, I think that I know the place that you are talking about. They're not very big though, but some of the others go there to buy exercise clothes."

A door opening made them all turn to see Hoppou come out and Harry passed her a plate which she took. "Thank you, Big Brother! And good morning!"

Behind her, Aeroprin also appeared and gave a nod. "Good morning, Uncle Harry." Taking the offered plate, she brightly smiled and nodded. "And thank you for breakfast."

Just chuckling, Harry reached over and ruffled her hair some. After all, his breakfast was already done as well. "You're very welcome, Blackie Smokie. And so are you, Hoppou." Several moments later, they were all seated at the table and topics turned to other matters. Once breakfast was done, they all headed off for their own destinations for the day, though Harry did walk Natsumi to the Shrine much to Nagato's amusement.

 

[darthcourt10]

NotHimAgain

This would be longer, but I'm watching Overly Sarcastic Productions. Fun stuff.
A Few Split Moments

-----

The Black Princess is sitting on the ground, back against the wall of the store that they had chosen to wait outside of. The dog, Yamamoto-san, has flopped down over her legs and is lying there panting happily. The Princess runs her hand down his back slowly and repeatedly. She hasn't made a sound since her earlier half-discussion with the human boy. Ruri feels an odd pulling in her heart, as if whatever had been cruelly ripped open in her after witnessing… what had happened is trying to haphazardly knit itself back together.

"She looks… better," she says to the boy—"Harry," he said his name was—who is sitting next to her watching the Princess with her.

"It was a thought I had," he admits with a shrug. "They have animals that they give to people who have panic attacks, or trauma problems… I think they're called therapy animals? I felt like having her pet the dog would help her feel better." Ruri nods. Off to one side, the destroyer and the human girl trade small talk. Ruri isn't really sure what they're on right now, something about hosts? They've been talking for a while.

She's been sitting there for a while too, she realizes. What were Nemo and her boyfriend doing with that girl? Maybe… Ruri snickered to herself. Nah, not likely. While she would not be the last to admit that the girl who had walked away with them was easy on the eyes, Nemo is the type to get just a little more jealous. But if she took it from another angle… Ruri files the thought away for later.

"Something funny?" Harry asks her, and she shrugs.

"Just thinking that we might want to be going soon," she only partially lies. "I'm a little worried that Riri might have run off and tried to eat another of those puffer fish." Harry blinks.

"Puffer fish?"

"She thinks that they're the best snack ever," Ruri laughs. "Only problem is that she keels over every time she tries to eat one. And since she's always trying to eat them…"

"Well," Harry points out, shrugging, "Puffer fish are poisonous." Ruri supposes that makes sense, considering the way wait.

"Come again?" she asks sweetly, turning to face him fully. He looks up her frame at her and flushes slightly—she supposes they are a little close together, but he's very much not her type. Still, it is adorable so she doesn't quite mind. He scoots away, putting his thoughts back together.

"W-well, puffer fish are very dangerously poisonous," he repeats himself, "you can only legally prepare them with special training and a license. Otherwise, you'd probably end up killing anyone who tried to eat your cooking." Which means that it can be safely prepared, Ruri extrapolates. That… that's fascinating. Definitely something to remember.

The though is, unfortunately, interrupted by the White Princess and Musashi--ooooh boy. Ruri barely registers the Princess's brief conference, the confirmation that negotiations will continue, and some minor stipulation or other. As far as she is concerned, there is something more to be worried about.
-----

"I am disappointed in you," Sakurada says to Takumi. He recoils slightly. She's seemed perfectly fine with Nemo so far, where is this coming from?

"S-Sakurada-san?" Nemo asks, curiously. The human girl waves her off imperiously.

"I can understand you catering to her interests," she says, "but you have deliberately neglected her education. Dragon Ball. JoJo. Sailor Moon. The classics! How does she not know them?!" Nemo mouths the words to herself, trying to understand what she's talking about. Takumi is too busy gaping. This is… surprising for him.

"Those are manga," he says. Sakurada looks affronted.

"Philistine!" she shrieks. Then she snorts, and begins giggling madly. It's all Takumi can do not to walk away then and there—she was being deliberately weird. He didn't even know that was something she did.

"Seriously though," Sakurada snickers, "if you're going to walk her around like this, you're going to have to show her some sort of pop culture. Fullmetal Alchemist, try that."

"Full metal?"

"It makes sense when they explain it," Sakurada replies.

"I don't really understand," Nemo admits, "but you're laughing so… it's a joke?"

"You catch on," Sakurada replies. "Oh gosh… I had to work myself up for that…"

"Huh?" Nemo is now thoroughly confused.

Sakurada sigh, shoving her hands in her pockets. "People aren't… easy for me," she explains. "I tend to lean more towards solitude for comfort. Tachibana and Uzukawa have helped me a lot in that regard, but it's still kind of an issue for me." Nemo considers this for a moment. Then she walks forward, firm and resolute. Reaching forward, she embraces Sakurada. "What-what are you doing? Stop that! Help me! I don't do hugs!"

This time, Takumi is the one who laughs.
-----

Well what do you think, sirs?

 

[darthcourt10]

S0ngD0g13

Long Ago, on an Iron-Gray Sea...
......................................................

Northern Horde Princess was dead, slain by treachery in the night, and her fleet was broken, sank in their turn or assimilated into the conqueror's retinue. A red dawn broke over the iron-gray sea...

A ragged, tiny band of survivors assembled at one of their fleet's emergency rally-points, drawn by a coded radio-message. From the east came a Ne-Class, half-carrying a Destroyer Water-Demon who had once been a Ro-Class. From the south, a Ta-Class and a Ru-Class emerged, bleeding from many wounds. From the west came a Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Demon, and awaiting them was the former Ru-Class, turned Demon, Runic. "Are we all that remain?" asked the Ta-Class.

"We are, Tatzel," responded Runic. "We are."

"What now?" asked the Ne-Class, Nebel. "Surrender? Flight?"

Runic snarled. "We repair and rearm as we can, refuel, and we plan, Nebel. But we will not surrender. For now we fly from here, but we'll return, mark my words..."

.....................................................

The six-ship flotilla watched from the cover of an iceberg as the Abyssals of the Usurper's fleet patrolled; among them were several who had defected from Northern Horde's forces...

"Traitors... Girls, before we move, I want to say something," said Runic, withdrawing an arm-ring of Abyssal iron from within her hull. "We have served together; we have fought together and bled together, in our old fleet and in these last three weeks after our Princess was slain. Though we're not kin by blood shared, to me, we are kin by blood shed. To me, you are my sisters, and I swear it so on this, the oath-ring Northern Horde gifted me when I ascended to Demonhood."

The other Battleship Demon reached out to take hold of the ring. "We are sisters; on the Oath-Ring of Northern Horde Princess I swear this."

One by one, each Abyssal swore sisterhood with the others, and then they took their positions...

When they burst out of cover and charged the Usurper's patrol with the flag of the Northern Horde Fleet flying high above them, Runic's voice rose high over the din, calling out a single name, a powerful name...

The others of the Usurper's forces found that patrol, and others, dead on the icebergs, the Northern Horde defectors among them torn limb-from-limb, and the banner of Northern Horde Princess planted among the wrecks, depicting the world encircled by a great serpent...

Jormungandr.

.........................................................

"Sisters, gather round," said Runic six weeks later, after they had finally been driven from the Baltic out into the North Sea. "I have gifts, Sisters."

The Abyssals gathered and Runic grinned. "Do you recall when I asked each of you for steel, a piece of yourselves?"

"Aye, we recall it, Runic," replied Rukh.

"I have had Stríðsóp make weapons of that steel. Rotte, Bold Rotte, to you I gift the daggers 'Rote Flamme und Weiße Flamme', 'Red Flame and White Flame'. To you, Long-Limbed Tatzel, I give the spear 'Wal-Lied', 'Whale-Song'."

Runic presented the blades to Rotte and Tatzel, then faced the others. "Nebel, Mad Nebel; your gift from me is the seax 'Nacht', 'Night'. Rukh, my sharp-eyed sister, I gift to you the atgeir 'Bisse-Rüstung', 'Bites-Armor'. Stríðsóp now wields the Dane-Axe 'Sjo-Ulfr', 'Sea-Wolf', and I the sword 'Seeadler', 'Sea-Eagle'. Care well for them, and use them well; the steel in them was smelted from the steel we all gave. Each blade is a piece of us all."

As the others goggled, Stríðsóp spoke quietly to Runic. "Where will we attack next, Runic?"

"The time has come to go a-viking against the Humans, and to mark a new era, I've decided to take a new name. Call me 'Skadi'. When the others calm down, we sail south to raid..."

Skadi smiled a wild, joyous smile, and told her sworn-sister, "Our first target is Lindisfarne."

 

[darthcourt10]

K9Thefirst1

Parentage

Gateway left her Second with her materials. She had a lot of studying to do if she was to be of use in the upcoming conflicts. Meanwhile, Gateway had still further plans in motion. Reivana needed to know that Woken was completed, and that it was time to force the issue regarding the Humans and her realm. Thus, she called her protégé over the sea line. The Re-Class must have been occupied as Stab answered. Still, Gateway was confident that if he knew, Reivana would in short order. So she said nothing more than a single sentence before hanging up.

[The Flood Gates of the Styx are open, and the Ferryman is ready, make ready the landing.]

With the promising start of the humans not killing her envoy, and letting her exist in their midst for these past two months, came the first real challenge to securing the peace: Admitting that they had dismantled their war graves, but honored their dead and were perfectly happy with returning them home. The princess took in a breath as she considered all the ways that could backfire, and clutched at her breast at the pain in her chest as her heart quivered in horror.

"I need some air…"

Within the hour, she was back on the surface. She took in long, soothing breaths of the sea air, mind racing to focus on something she could do something about. Above the roar of the seas and the driving winds and rain, Gateway heard the drone of prop engines, and the hum of struts through the wind. Looking up, she saw a flight of fighter planes undergoing exercises against another flight of bombers. To a normal human's eye, they were no different from any other aircraft of the Abyssal forces. Closer examination would reveal pusher props on the back of the craft, unlike the seemingly supernatural means of propulsion normally associated with the planes. To those that survived Blood Week, the aircraft would have been recognizable as the model that devastated so much of the world where shell or torpedo could not reach. Gateway was certain that no other fleet on the planet fielded these antiques. Assuming they didn't scrap the craft entirely, assuming any survived combat.

A distance away, Gateway found their home ship. She bore a certain resemblance to the common Wo-Class, with a betentacled hanger on her head, a staff, and clad in a white bodysuit and black coat and boots. Other than that, there was little to compare her to the rest of her race. Her body was much more slender and petit compared to the standard carriers, the hanger was a collection of armor slabs, angled to deflect shells and radar, and from her hips slung a pseudo-skit of additional slabs protecting her legs. The staff was bone white, and instead of a crook it was topped by a loop with crosshairs in it's middle. And instead of the typical green, her eyes glowed a bright purple. The only sign of her Royal Blood. She was Angband, the Ag-Class Advanced Carrier, and she was the only one of her kind in the world.

And she was the second daughter of the Ancient Atlantic Gateway Princess.

As she watched the flights come in from their exercises, Gateway felt her eyes water at the sight she beheld. Humans would have seen a few admittedly outdated Abyssal planes land in the mouth of an Abyssal Carrier's hanger. But to those that could truly see, they would see flights of Boeing Model 15 biplanes landing on the flight deck of a dark parody of a Midway. The Princess swallowed and made for her younger and sole living daughter. The awkwardness would be a better alternative to drowning in fears of what could be.

"Angband."

The carrier jerked around with a start, very nearly losing a plane in the process. Fortunately she managed to catch the irreplaceable piece of equipment with only a few fumbles. With it secured, she bowed to her mother and sovereign.

"My Princess, to what do I owe this honor?"

"Can a mother not check on her daughter?"

From her expression, Angband did not seem to know how to answer that. And if she were honest, Gate could not blame her. The pair fell into an awkward silence, with the Princess shifting her weight from foot to foot, and the carrier resuming her pilots' landings. Finally, Gateway conjured up a topic.

"I see that… You are keeping up with your training."

"Yes," her daughter replied, "Morgothim would never let me live it down if I… I…"

The pair fell to silence again, remembering the four carriers that had stayed with the fleet… Until their Princess ordered the invasion of St. Brendan's. The mother put a hand on the shoulder of her daughter, comforting her as they quietly mourned the teen's mentors.

"I needed a carrier to sell the ruse that the attack was genuine… So I asked for a volunteer. I never imagined that all four would insist on going."

"They knew it was their last chance mother." The daughter replied, "To do something for you. They were to old to be able to withstand a real battle, and we don't even have the industry to replace lost planes. Let alone… Let alone build new models. Woe-Slayer… She told me 'Girl, we're old and busted. When your mum gets proper planes to replace those crates of ours we gave you, you'll be of more use to her than all four of us combined.'"

"Yes, that sounds like her," Gateway said with a nod, "though I still wish I could have kept one of them, to help you train with whatever planes we get. Or train any new carriers, once we are free to expand. Rest assured daughter. Once peace is secured in the Atlantic, I will ensure that their lives are remembered in a Chronicle. Their deaths are… More heavy than I anticipated."

"Heavier than Sister's I take it."

The quiet felt like a heavy blanket had fallen on the pair. Gateway rubbed her arm and chewed lightly on her lip at what felt like an accusation.

"The needs of State are… Not always pleasant Angband. You have a right to outrage, but-"

"No, she was an arrogant, belligerent fool, a greater threat to us than the Humans and needed to go down."

"…Ah."

The quiet returned. As the seconds began to grow into minutes, Angband began to fiddle with her staff as her mother crossed and uncrossed her arms in an awkward need to do something. Angband made to speak, but stopped herself, then tried again before stalling again. With visible effort, the Ag-Class managed to chock out what was on her mind.

"M-mother, my birthday is coming up, and with Sister dead… You have need of an heir, yes? I'm your daughter, and your only living issue! So.. I… Well…"

The girl petered out as she saw the shadow falling on her mother's face, which grew all the more pensive as she spoke. Gateway rubbed her face for a few moments to collect her thoughts, and breathed out a sigh.

"Angband… You know why I can't do that. You have all the traits I ever dreamed of being in my heir: Consideration, patience, a mind for intrigue and long-sightedness… Except for the Divine Right to rule. A right that your useless sister had, if not your personality. Perhaps, if she was more easily controlled, or less easily influenced by the bloodthirsty of my subjects, I could have trained you to be the power behind her throne, but it would be a blasphemy to name you as my heir. You would make a fine military commander, or regent. But that is all that I can give you daughter."

It was not the first time this conversation had taken place, and by Angband's expression, it was clear that she was wounded by the dismissal. And the disappointed look in her face wounded Gateway as well. Then something came to her, fragments of old conversations when the twins were young coming to mind as a solution, or at least a consolation.

"But, you are right. Your birthday is soon. Perhaps you would like to know of your father instead?"

Angband looked to her mother with a jerk of the head, mouth agape.

"You… You never spoke of Father before."

"Well, truthfully, it isn't the most interesting of stories. But you deserve to know. I suppose. I am certain you have questions."

"Did you love him?"

At the Princess' cocked eyebrow, Angband blushed, embarrassed at how quickly the question came out of her mouth.

"W-well, I've had a lot of time, and I've always liked the books in the archives relating to such things so…"

Gateway smiled warmly, having the good grace to not tease the girl.

"Sorry to disappoint daughter, but no. My only interest was in experimenting with the prospects of Dynasty. And his interest in me was purely carnal."

Angband deflated slightly, her disappointment in there being no forbidden romance obvious.

"Oh…. Then, how… How did you meet then?"

"Well," Gateway began with a shrug, "it was before my sisters gave the order to attack. Sometime around… 2000 I think, or 2001. I had a habit of wondering the ocean, just watching the ships pass and listening to the radio traffic. One day, there was a storm, and a cargo freighter got caught in the worst of it."

Gateway paused at the uncomfortable sound her daughter made.

"No, I had nothing to do with it. I'm not one to waste effort like that."

"Ah."

"Now then… Yes, I suspect that either the waves damaged either vents on deck that flooded the hold without the crew realizing it to late, because as the hours went on it sank lower and lower, but there was no mayday. Then the ship took a dive and didn't recover. Two minutes and she was gone, taking the crew with her. Save for one man, whose brawn and will to survive kept him alive."

"Was…" Angband began, almost hesitant, "Was that Father?"

"He was. I had thought off and on about the needs of an heir, and I had figured that with his obvious strength the fruit of our union would be physically imposing enough to at least intimidate foes into talks rather than war, and his simple-mindedness a sign that I needn't worry about him manipulating a power struggle. So I took him to an island I had settled in those old days and nursed him back to health. After which I put forth the effort to seduce him."

As Gateway spoke, she unconsciously crossed her arms under her generous bosom, and the motions were made all the more obvious by the indecently scant pair of breast-hammocks that she had the infuriating nerve to call a top. Angband looked at her mother's chest with a deadpan expression, then looked downward at her own, much flatter, chest with derision. Given her mother's figure and her choice of… "Attire," Angband was quite certain at just how much 'effort' her mother needed to put forth to seduce a man.

"There really isn't much more to the story after I conceived I fear. After that I really only kept him around because I foresaw a need for a consort. One can never have to many spares after all. And with your trash sister, I had something close to the ideal heir I wanted, plus a spare, you. But…"

While before Gateway's bearing throughout the story was of a frank nature, all of a sudden, she grew… Angband could almost call it pained. But why? What could have happened between her parents? Sure, it wasn't love, but they sounded content enough. Father had a lover that would never age, and Mother had her breeding stud…

"Well, when you and your worthless sister were about a year or three old, the day came. Despite all my concerns about the timing, of the value, of the initiation of hostilities, my older sisters gave the order to attack. In compliance with their wishes – and against my better judgement – I had my fleet draw off the human fleets near the Azores and occupied the islands with only a few casualties among the constabulary and garrison. And…"

Gateway Princess turned away from her child, her face hinting at a storm of long ignored memories. She took a few breaths.

"Well, to be honest, he was going to find out what was going on, and what I was, eventually but…"

'Bullshit. How could he not have known you were a sea-demon?' Angband thought, and was about to say as much aloud… When she took in another look at her mother's generous curves. 'Then again…'

Unaware of her daughter's thoughts, Gateway Princess continued.

"A few days after we had settled in he… Well, he tried to enter into your rooms armed with a knife and… Well, that sort of thing I could not ignore. After that, I swore off the possibility of a consort until peace is secured. I even made Demon promise to punch me in the mouth if I ever consider rescuing a human for that purpose again. And if that doesn't work, she is to convince me to save the one using his brains to survive rather than his brawn. At least then he might be reasoned with."

Angband made only a tiny 'oh' sound of disappointment, and the pair fell back into that awkward silence that so commonly filled their time alone together. Gateway Princess, however, was back to that night, if only in her mind. Dredging up the old memories of one of the few times she was genuinely afraid, not for herself, not for her plans, not even for her people. But for specific lives. The stormy night, the man with his back to her, knife held high above the crib that the twins slept in. And in the next instant her wrist was crushed to paste in her hand, and despite the physical disparity – he being a full foot taller that she, broad of shoulder, and physically strong for a human – she flung her arm to spin him around, and inadvertently taking his limb with it even as she gripped him be the underside of the jaw and squeezed, before throwing him to the floor, pulping his head on the hard tiles. After that she was bending over the crib, grasping at the twins and holding them to her bosom. Not caring at how they were crying, or how she was the one to wake them up, taking no heed of Ocean Liner Demon trying to get her attention or how she organized the cleanup, only weeping in joy that the babies were unharmed, and held them close until dawn's light rose over the Azores Archipela-

[Mehmed II marches on Rûm.]

And like that she was back in the modern day. For the first time in years Hel had contacted her without prompt, and it was the code phrase she had dreaded: Open invasion from one of her neighbors, one with the goal of obliterating all that she had built.

"Angband, I need you to move. Go in that direction, and don't stop until you come to an island."

The carrier looked to her mother and sovereign as if the older woman had gone mad, gesturing into what was, to her, empty ocean.

"What?"

Gateway Princess did not heed the girl, merely turning about and descending into the depths to her palace.

"The rest of the fleet will join you shortly, but go and do not do anything until either Demon or myself say otherwise. Now girl!"
------

And so we get a little bit of background for the sort of ruler Gateway Princess was in the Azores, and we finally have a flaw for her! She's a shit parent. There, now no one can claim she's a Mary Sue.

I wanted to do Goda's attack, but the snippet was getting longer than I realized, so I left it to just this scene. The rest will come later. And almost as if I am compensating for Gate, I have made her daughter an Abyssal incarnation of Flat is Justice. I hope everyone is satisfied.

Also, who else imagines that, in the future, Disney may make a movie heavily based on Angband, where Not!Angband the Abyssal manages to – through pluck and effort – change her mother's mind and make her a Princess? Missing/dead parent, living, fantasy-denying parent, dreams of being something more than she is, a lot of the elements are there. Now she just needs a love interest and comical talking animal sidekick.

As to Angband and the Ag-Class in general as carriers in the Abyssal Fleets, here's the assumption I have been working with: If the WO-Class can be considered analogous to the Late War Essex-Class carriers, then an Ag-Class can be viewed as a Mid-Fifties configuration Midway. On the other end, the MO-Class I have hinted at - which Morgothim was - can be considered the equivalent of an Abyssal Langley carrier.

So that should give you an idea of what Gateway has to work with regarding Naval Aviation: She has a single Midway, but the only planes she has the plans for and resources to build are early 1920s vintage biplanes. Now can you see why she is so eager to begin trade with the Humans?

 

[darthcourt10]

Snippet 134: S0ngD0g13

Jaw slid out from under the vehicle he was working on and grinned. "Alright, start her up, Zui."

Zuikaku started the heavily-modified electric motor in the kit-car Jaw had built for her and listened to it purr. "It sounds good, Jaw."

"Let me get my Ford cranked and we'll go for a drive and see how she runs." He dusted himself off and started his black Deuce-Coupe, and the pair pulled out of the driveway, Jaw leading. He keyed his radio mic at a red-light and said, "Okay, Turkey, take the lead and let loose; I've got your six."

Zui dropped the clutch and took off like a cat-shot, running up the gears as her speed climbed steadily. Jaw kept neck-and-neck with her until she went up into sixth-gear, and then watched with a mechanic's pride as the cherry-red electric reproduction '67 Jaguar XK-E left him in the dust...

After the pair stopped for burgers, they set out for their destination, Yokosuka; word through the grapevine was that the boys from Top Gear were gonna do a show there...

.......................................................

As they drove, Jaw slid into the lane next to Zui's Jaguar and turned on his XM radio. He relaxed and sipped his bottle of Coca-Cola as a Corb Lund song began to play...

Playin' late-night crazy pot-size games
With the Asian dealers who,
With all that tax-free money
Got deeper pockets than I do;
I can't fade that kinda action
But my name's there on the list;
And who would go to Vegas
With a game in town like this?

....................................................

In Zuikaku's car, the Carrier started her playlist and took a long pull from a bottle of Ramune as Seminole Wind began to play...

Ever since the days of old,
Men would search for wealth untold;
They'd dig for silver and for gold,
And leave the empty holes...

..................................................

The pair were just outside Tokyo when Akizuki hailed them on the radio. "Breaker one-nine for the Young Pup; this is the Runner-Duck. Who's that running your front-door, Big Brother?"

"Runner-Duck, this is Lady Fan-Tail; a certain scruffy mutt of ours got me my own wheels. You like?"

"Oh, I like, I like, says the Duck on the Bike. Off your port-bow, Zui." Jaw and Zuikaku glanced to their left in time to see Akizuki slide into the next lane over, astride an electric kit-bike made to look like a vintage Triumph Bonneville.

Jaw grinned wide. "I like the new wheels, Little Sister. How 'bout we take the back way onto base and see if she'll run, eh?"

"Jaw, she runs like Man o' War. Last one to the PX buys the sodas. Ready?"

"Steady," replied Zui, reaching for her gear-shift.

Jaw whooped with joy and shifted gears as he shouted, "Go!"

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

It was an odd group taking a stroll along the roadside just outside of Yokosuka. Beside each other, Shinano and Regina were both licking ice cream cones with smiles on their faces. Meanwhile, Harry was seated on Regina's tail licking his own cone and holding one out for her tail's head. Said tail extended it's long tongue and took a lick as Harry smiled at it. "So, any good?"

Pausing for a moment, it tilted it's head and then nodded before taking another lick. Shinano watched as she giggled some at how said tail was acting. Further back, the Carrier could see one of the JMSDF personnel walking along. Then she glanced at Regina who had a badge pinned to her cloak which declared her an Allied Abyssal. As Shinano glanced at the happy Re-Class, she smiled. "How about you, Regina-Chan? Are you enjoying your ice cream?"

With a blink, Regina turned to her and then smiled as she nodded some. "Um, actually yes. It's really good." Frowning a bit in thought, she licked it again. "I don't often get ice cream back home... though I heard that Lady Supprin is trying to solve that."

From where he was on Regina's tail, Harry raised an eyebrow. "You don't?" At the shake of the head, he frowned. "That's not right. Ice cream is the right of all sapient beings."

That got him a giggle from Shinano and Regina. The Yamato then wagged a finger at him with a large smile on her face. "I'm pretty sure that is not how it goes, Harry-Chan."

All Harry did though was smile right back at her. "Of course it is, Shinano-Chan."

Once more giggling, Shinano only shook her head and turned to Regina who made a thoughtful noise. "I did like where we got the ice cream though. Its a very nice farm."

Shinano gave a nod at that. "I love going to Sekiguchi farm for ice cream, it's always so good! And its always fresh too!" Looking around, she leaned in. "They make it with fresh milk straight from the cows we saw there after all. And the farm is close enough to Yokosuka that we can easily get to it when we want."

Nodding, Regina smiled a bit more. "Mm-hm, that's what they said, um, I mean about the ice cream." Her expression brightened some as she took another lick. "Thanks for showing it to me, Shinano." Getting a interested look, she furrowed her eyebrows some. "Do you often go there?"

For several moments, Shinano considered the question. Then she slowly nodded some. "Hai, I go there sometimes. Kaa-San especially likes their ice cream and brings me there when I really did a great job and we eat a lot of ice cream."

Eyes wide, Regina stared at her. "Miss White Plains takes you there for ice cream when you do a really good job?" When Shinano nodded, the Abyssal looked at her own ice cream cone. "Wow..."

Puffing out her chest, Shinano nodded. "I know! I got one of the best Kaa-Sans out there! She's really great." After giving her cone another lick, she hummed. "But there was once that we brought Jersey-San there. She gave us an odd look when I said that we were going to get some ice cream made from fresh Jersey milk and wanted to show her where to get it."

About to say something, both of them turned when they heard Harry make a choking sound. At seeing them stare at them, he waved them off. "It's nothing, just... Some ice cream going down the wrong tube."

There was a frown on Shinano's face as she shook her head. "Then you should be more careful, Harry-Chan." Not having noticed that Harry had bit his lip as he nodded, Shinano turned back to Regina. "But it's a real good place to go for ice cream, and you can see the Jersey cows there! It's really popular with the Destroyers, and I heard that those with their bikes often come out here to get some."

Frowning, Harry hummed a bit. "At least the days have started to get warmer now. A couple of years ago, it would have been more chilly around here. Heck, the Mikan orange trees had some issues."

Confused, Regina frowned and looked at one of the orange trees nearby. "The orange trees had trouble because it was colder?" At their nod, she tilted her head curiously. "Why?"

Neither Harry nor Shinano said anything right away, though from the looks on their faces they were trying to come up with a way to say something. When the Carrier looked at the black haired boy, he shrugged and sighed some. "Well... it was because of Blood Week and the months after." Seeing the widening of Regina's eyes and the confusion, he continued. "With the attacks and stuff, there was a lot of smoke from burning cities and refineries as well as oil rigs that got sent up into the atmosphere. It sort of caused stuff to cool down a few degrees I think." Becoming thoughtful, he looked up at the sky. "I remember a lot of late frosts and stuff."

At seeing her friend's shoulders slump, Shinano reached over and patted Regina's shoulder. "But things are a lot better now! And you're a friend too!"

Brightening some, Regina gave a nod. Her smile returned as she felt Harry wrap one arm around her. "Yes, we're friends now."

Eventually their ice creams were all done and Harry had twisted around. Now he was fully astride her tail with his leg on either side of it. The black haired boy had also reached around and had his arms wrapped around her middle. While she would not admit it, Regina really enjoyed that. It felt like he was giving her a continous hug. Poking his head around her side as they walked through a trail that between barley fields as a shortcut back to where they would meet the car taking them back to Yokosuka, Harry raised his eyebrow. "So are you enjoying your trip, Regina?"

Slowly, Regina nodded some with a smile on her face as she looked at the plants on either side in interest. "Uh-huh. This is really nice! I've seen cows, goats, and other things!" Tapping her finger against her chin, she smiled some. "I wonder if Lady Wanko would enjoy any of it, though I think that she might like the ice cream."

Giving the Abyssal a squeeze, Harry grinned. "I think that Big Sis would really love the ice cream. So maybe we should bring her around." Turning, he chuckled some. "What do you think, Shinano-Chan?" Not getting an answer and noticing that his friend had turned pensive, the wizard blinked. "Shinano-Chan? What's wrong?"

At the same time, Regina noticed the Carrier's posture and stiffened some as she glanced around. Something telling her that they were not alone. Through the sensors on her tail, she could tell that the following JMSDF guard had also come to a stop at noticing that the two had become pensive. "There's something here, isn't there?"

Part of Shinano noted that the day was getting late and that the Sun had begun to set. Eyes narrowed, she scanned the barley field and was about to say something when she caught movement. "There!"

Both Regina and Harry, as well as Regina's tail turned and focused on the spot. For several moments, they saw nothing but young barley plants moving in the breeze. But then they saw what looked like a large, muscular man standing in the field. What caught their attention though was that his skin was blue and he only had one eye. Gulping, Harry watched him as he looked at the group. "Ao bōzu..."

With a blink, Regina glanced back at him. "A... Ao bōzu? Um, what's that?"

Keeping both eyes on the being, Shinano frowned. "It's a Yokai, a strong one that likes to haunt barley fields close to evening. There's stories of it snatching up children and such when they're playing in the fields. I... don't know if it's dangerous to us though."

Eyes narrowed at that, Regina watched as it slowly strode out into the open and continued to watch them. Then it went into a pose and somehow they all knew it was challenging them to some sort of match. Regina slowly took Harry off her tail and handed him to Shinano. "Harry?"

All Harry did was nod and smile. "Go ahead and enjoy yourself, Regina. Beat him!"

Now nodding, Regina walked forward until she was right in front of the being. While she was taller, she narrowed her eyes. After all, the Re-Class knew that just because something was smaller, it did not make it any less dangerous. "You will not hurt, Harry." Then she tilted her head as the being blinked. "If I beat you, you'll move on?"

Slowly, the Ao bōzu gave a nod. From where she stood with her arms around Harry, Shinano cupped one hand to her mouth. "Be careful! Ao bōzu are really, really strong in the stories!"

Glancing over her shoulder, Regina gave a nod before going into a stance. Before her, the Ao bōzu got into its own stance. Then the two clashed, their hands slamming together. For a second, they stared at each other in the eye before Regina felt her hooves slowly leaving the ground. Knowing what was about to happen, Regina did the one thing that she could.

She let go of control of her weight.

The ground shook a bit as several thousand tons slammed into it, her hooves sinking midway up her shins through the gravel of the path. But it stopped her from being thrown and she could see the widening of the blue Yokai's eye in surprise. Now grinning as she felt eldritch flame leaking from her eyes, Regina chuckled as she felt the strain. "My turn!"

Boilers roiling, she threw her strength into her arms as the two grappled with each other. Neither one of them gaining an advantage as they each tried to beat the other. The more that they did so though, the more Regina grinned as she felt her arms shake. A challenge, even one like the one she was facing where neither were outright trying to kill the other, got her blood rushing. In fact, she barely noted Harry recording the match on his phone or the JMSDF guard staring in disbelief at what he was seeing. Eyes wide, Shinano watched her friend as her and the Yokai grappled. "Wow..."

Only nodding, Harry grinned himself. "I know! Regina is so awesome!" But then he looked back up at Shinano and smiled. "Though you would be just as awesome!" Head tilted to the side, the wizard frowned. "Think that he might take up a match with you?"

Lips twitching, Shinano hugged Harry a bit closer. Oddly, it reminded anyone watching of a girl holding a teddy. "Um, maybe? I guess that it looks interesting and kind of fun..."

Puffing, Regina narrowed her eyes some and gave the word. Deep inside her hull, her Imps threw some levers and allowed her boilers to come to full power. In front of her, the Ao bōzu's eye widened in shock as Regina slowly began to lift him from the ground. Several moments later, he was flying through the air and impacted the road in a cloud of dust. Huffing a bit, Regina stood up straight and watched as the Yokai slowly got to it's feet shakingly. Then she bowed a bit. "Good match? I really enjoyed it."

In reply, the Yokai bowed back and then before their eyes faded away until it was gone. Both Regina and Shinano looked around and relaxed some as they felt its presence vanish. Then the Abyssal looked back as Shinano frowned and sighed. "I didn't get my own match."

All Harry did was grin at that though. When they passed where the Ao bōzu had been, the black haired boy had realized that there was a scroll there and Shinano had her fairies pick it up. They agreed though that they would be giving it to Junyou or perhaps Ryuujou to check over first in case it was anything of interest.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Everything was fuzzy for the being who was within darkness. Around her was something wet and chill. At the same time, something told her that there was a wrongness, that something was utterly and completely wrong. But what...

What...

Wait...

All of a sudden something drifted up from within her mind. A name... Fubuki. Was that her name? Was she this "Fubuki"? It seemed right... and yet somehow wrong at the same time.

Reaching out with her arms, she pressed against something. Whatever the object was, it had some give, but some parts of it were also hard. How odd? At the same time though, a realization came to Fubuki. One that rang through her being.

She. Wanted. Out.

And so she pushed and pushed. Strength surged up from somewhere inside her and she could hear a murmur from outside whatever her prison was. Harder and harder. Slowly, but surely, her prison gave way.

Then with a burst of strength, it broke open spilling her out into the world. Around her, some sort of liquid gushed out of her prison and across the floor. At the same time, Fubuki was coughing and vomiting as the liquid she was in was being expelled from her body. While she did so, a voice spoke up in some curiosity. "My, my, now this is a bit of a mess. Assistant! Clean this mess up at-"

Another sound of gushing nearby could be heard and Fubuki blinked as she turned to see someone fall out of what looked like an egg of all things. Said person had whitish pink hair with a hair ornament holding it up. Around her head there were various horns while her clothing had a crescent moon on it. Then the other being looked at her and blinked before her expression became one of horror and shock as she began to cough and puke. "Fubuki-Chan..."

Furrowing her eyebrows, Fubuki only frowned in confusion as she tried to place the face. Why was everything so foggy? She should be able to remember, but it was all a blur. But then the mental fog in her mind. "Kisaragi-Chan... I..." Reaching up, she grasped the side of her head. "Why is everything so hard to remember..."

It was then that the voice spoke up again. "How very interesting, you have trouble remembering? And yet, the Demon does not? I wonder now..." Looking up, Fubuki suddenly could see a pale skinned face with spectacles. There was madness in those eyes, and somehow she felt like the being in front of her in tattered robes saw her as a particularly interesting insect. "Yes, very interesting"

Other sounds made them turn to see another two eggs, larger ones, begin to rock. Slowly, they split and cracked open, spilling their contents onto the cold floor. The two inside gasped and choked as they spat and vomited. One of them was dressed in black, with what looked like striped coloring on it. On her feet were massive, armored boots.

The other was in a large, white dress. But both of them, like with Kisaragi, looked familiar to Fubuki. Once more though, it was Kisaragi who named them, her voice coming out in a croak. "Shoukaku-San? S-Saratoga-San...?" Then Kisaragi noticed herself and stared with a whimper. "W-what happened to us?"

A cruel smile on her lips, the glasses wearing woman chuckled. "Happened? Why, I did subject Destroyer War Demon." Spreading her arms, she laughed some. "You and your companions are my greatest success! Especially as I created you from so little!"

Spitting out some more fluid, the one that Kisaragi called Saratoga stared at her. "Created... us?" Wincing, she groaned and held a hand against her head. "Why... why do I remember three lives... I... Died? Monsters from another world and using that on them...? B-but I also remember Sky..."

With a hum, Research Princess walked over before her arm shot out and grabbed the chin of the odd Saratoga. "Because I found a way to resurrect you, Abyssal Jellyfish Princess. A shame that those I contacted and you fought, they tried to stab me in the back when I helped them here. But there was just enough of you to try and bring back... Which failed, sadly." Shaking her head, she smiled, though there was nothing kind there. "At least until I used the materials from an attack on the shipgirl Saratoga. Not quite sure why it worked, but it did and that is all that matters."

Once she let go, Kisaragi spoke up. "Materials... I... what do you mean?"

Just shrugging, Research Princess shook her head with a sigh. "Ah, Subject Destroyer War Demon. I had my assistants attack you and yours and make off with materials. Didn't kill your others, not that I expected the attacks to unfortunately. But now... Now things have changed!"

Head tilted to the side, Fubuki frowned as more and more memories became clear. One word surfacing in her mind: Abyssal. Yes, this was an Abyssal, something that she fought against. Bled against. And now... it had made her one as well? "What do you mean... things have changed..."

Now grinning, the Research Princess looked down at them. "Why? With this success, the Abyss can once more begin to win! My brilliance has brought about something that will lead to the downfall of the humans and shipgirls! Any Princess that falls, I can bring back if I wish. And more then that! I can now create the greatest foes that a shipgirl can face!"

Frowning, the Abyssal Shoukaku blinked, even as she shared a look with the others while Research Princess turned her back. "Greatest foes that a... shipgirl can face? You mean... us?"

With a hum, Research Princess nodded. "Yes, exactly. I shall be able to create copies of shipgirls, ones who are Abyssals! For what else would be one's greatest enemy then one's own self! An enemy that thinks exactly like you! That knows what you know! Soon, the Abyss shall rise ever higher thanks to my own brilliance!"

There was a silence and then she heard the sound of rigging being summoned and turned to see that all four of the newborn Abyssals now had their guns turned to her. It was the Abyssal Fubuki who growled at her and gave their answer. "No."

Blinking, Research Princess frowned. "I knew that I forgot something..."

A thousand miles away, a Wo Class paused and tilted her head before snorting with a smirk. "Seems that our beloved Princess bit off a bit more then her capability. How very sad."
Nervously, the Light Cruiser beside her swallowed. "S-she's dead? Really?"

Only nodding, the Wo class began to chuckle. "Yes, that crazy bitch is finally dead. No more experiments on us. And good riddance-" Suddenly, she gagged as pain shot through her body. From her mouth, a gout of oil and blood shot up as the other Abyssals in her group stared at her wide eyed. 'What!? What is going on!?' She could feel something inside her gasped, even as more blood seeped from her mouth, her back budging outward. "WHAT IS GOING ON! WHAT IS THIS-Gaaalgh..."

Her final words were cut off as the bulge on her back ripped open in an explosion of blood and gore to reveal Research Princess there. Not paying much attention to what covered her, she ripped the rest of the now dead and empty husk of one of her Abyssals away from her body. Tossing it to the side to sink, she huffed a bit. "How bothersome. The sheer unthankfullness of them!" After a moment, she shrugged. "Oh well, there is always next time, I suppose. And it's not the first time... But finding a new base is going to be so bothersome as will be recreating all my research..."

Several hours later, the Sun was sinking toward the horizon as the Abyssal versions of Kisaragi, Fubuki, Shoukaku, and Saratoga looked out at the ocean. From various spots on the island, smoke rose up signaling where Research Princess' Abyssals and other assistants had been before being killed. Somewhere behind the four, various human former prisoners of the Research Princess watched them. Glancing at Abyssal Jellyfish Princess, Abyssal Fubuki frowned. "Are you sure that you want to do this? It's a long way and there's no real way to tell if they will attack you or not."

Looking out at the water, Jellyfish Princess shook her head. "No, but I need to do this. I think that I know how to get there without them attacking. And..." Her eyes closed and a smile bloomed on her face as the image of a face appeared in her mind. "I need to see him, to see Sky. I know that he loves me and will accept me as I am now. Just like I love him."

As she frowned, Kisaragi slowly nodded as she ran her hand through her hair. But then she grimaced at the feel of the horns and her skin. "Yeah, I remember hearing about that. Though honestly, I hate what this has done with my hair and skin."

Head tilted to the side, the Abyssal Shoukaku walked up and patted Abyssal Saratoga on the shoulder. "Good luck, then, Saratoga-San. We're going to build some rafts and get the humans here to safety once we're able to get a position of where we are."

Jellyfish Princess patted her hand before sharing a hug with the two Destroyers. Then she stepped out onto the water with what looked like the wreck of her original hull appearing upon her head as her body submerged. Slowly, she steamed away into the Pacific, heading east...

For the United States and her boyfriend, not knowing at that moment he was once more squished between the Carrier Saratoga and the Battlecruiser Saratoga. None of them knowing what would happen...

 

[darthcourt10]

Lord K

A.N./ So this is something that kinda grew and grew.

It originally started as a supposedly small snippet inspired by some of the stuff mentioning what the yokai of Japan had to deal with, but then it just kept on bigger and more evolved, intermittently over the course of god knows how long, until it was this monster. Didn't help that I had to keep going back and editing bits as new snippets fleshed out the world and its background events, but oh well.

Thus is the nature of the muse I suppose. And after how much I poured into it, I was determined to see it finally done, regardless of the passage of the thread since it was first inspired. Could probably be a bit more nuanced or brought in line with the world building in a few places I may have got slightly wrong or forgotten the exact details of, but screw it, if this sits around any longer, I just know it's gonna end up on the "to be completed after another pass or two" list indefinitely.


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Spoiler: Ai's Journey
Once upon a time in her adolescence, Ai had hated the Americans.

Really, she had hated all westerners in equal measure. Imposing their rules upon her world, and turning her once feared and respected peoples into second class citizens in their own lands. She, who carried the blood of ancient beings, and could trace her unbroken ancestry back to some of the greatest and wisest of her kind, was regarded as a demi-human. less than human by the outsiders, and something to be forgotten or snubbed by those who trampled the old ways and divided away the lands her elders claimed her birthright should have gifted her stewardship over, before she was even born.

But by the time she had reached her equivalent of her teenager years, it was the Americans Ai had reviled most of all.

Her family were among some of the lucky ones, powerful and intelligent enough to disguise themselves with illusions and magic, while lying about how near-human they actually were. But a lord without a castle is not much of a lord at all however, and for all the pride in her heritage Ai was brought up to stubbornly cherish and fervently relish, she had never truly known the mountains and forests of her people. Only the human labyrinths and developing urban jungles of late Meiji and Taisho Japan.

And then the wars came. First the conflicts in China, then the war in the Pacific, before finally the fires of ruination that came to Japan itself.

Ai had hated the Americans, because that was expected in their disguised lives as citizens of Japan.

Ai reviled them because of what they revealed.

Muggle bombs flattened the dwellings of the landless, and evicted those living without protection in the cities, just as easily as any magic user's spell. Carefully preserved mystical arts and archives of hoarded knowledge meant nothing when non-magical firestorms could destroy the livelihoods their keepers needed to survive and preserve, simply by killing or scarring away the rest of the non-magical neighborhood. Control and mastery over the winds meant nothing when basic physics and chemistry sapped away the very oxygen in the air, suffocating everyone during the week of ravenous infernos that consumed Tokyo.

In the equivalent of her teenage years, Ai had abhorred the Americans with all her being, not because of what they had taken from her, but because of what they had seemingly unintentionally proven; The stigma against the more inhuman phenotypes of her people. And the pillars of sand her family's pride had been built upon.

Preferring whatever fate may throw at her as a disguised human orphan, to the shameful cage of an ICW reservation, the world of the mundane soon became her normal. One of the few upsides to the post-war period, was that it made building a new identity every few years rather simple. A lot of people lost what limited records they had in the firestorms, and wanting to move out into the quiet of the countryside or wandering in search of any sort of work in the reconstruction in the immediate aftermath, was something shared by far too many people.

At first, Ai picked towns, out of the way places such as farming communities and mountain villages where many other displaced non-humans and off-reservation yokai found it easy to blend in. Lands where nature and the old ways still had some last, withering gasp of power and relevance rather than merely respectful remembrance. Very quickly, Ai learned three things;

Nature sucked, and her upbringing had consigned her the unfortunate fate forever being what could most politely be called "a city girl".

A lifetime of embellished knowledge from sources tinged with vainglorious self-importance and prideful rose-tinted glasses, followed by a few years living it rough, made for a very interesting culture clash when meeting those of actual importance and higher rank.

And finally, lamenting for the old ways and the past meant nothing if the future passed her people by.

In the wake of her harsh wake up call and resoundingly unsuccessful attempt to carve a place out for herself among the old fold, it was inevitable Ai set out on her own path once more.

Upon her return to Kanto however, it stunned her how Tokyo had changed just in the short decade and a half since she had been left homeless. Her people still pined and lamented for an era which was by that time hundreds of years past. Meanwhile, the muggles had at some point in only the last few years, replaced her gutted and abandoned family home that had been there since the days of the Bakumatsu, with a multi-story shopping complex.

She was still a child in her people's eyes, still only an inconsequential and uninformed teenager. But by the time she fully reached the maturity of womanhood, who knew how much the muggle world would change. Meanwhile, magical Japan would likely still feel just as repressive and human-centric for her people under the yoke of the IWC, no matter who was actually in charge of Japan.

Inspiration struck Ai. She was adept enough with basic disguises and illusions after so many years of use, that people regularly confused her for a kitsune or shape changer of some kind. She already knew the non-magical world like the back of her hand. The list of people in the whole of magical Japan she actually gave two shits about could be counted on the fingers of that same hand as well.

Fuck the ICW, and screw her people if they didn't want to help themselves. She had opportunities here!

The next few decades were a whirlwind of jobs and aliases.

Got to school, "age" up, pick a job that sounds interesting, get bored, "move" and "just happen" to lose touch with everyone.

Got to a technical college, try out something different this time, get bored of that job, restart.

Aim for a university this time as a challenge, start early to better the odds, graduate, get in, realise the course actually sucks.

Too poor and lazy to make a new identity, instead pick a job by throwing darts at a paper pinned to a dart board, try out being a chef for a few years.

Don't bother with schooling this time, try a new career, leap frog between things, feel like an idiot from the old legends after getting caught in a Ponzi scheme, pick up a new identity rather than pay off the debt.

It's surprisingly not a lonely existence. She doesn't give up on the magical world completely, and there are a startling number of yokai who live under the radar around Tokyo if you know where to look, so it's not like she's strapped for meaningful social interaction that she'll have to worry about cutting ties with every 8-10 years. She even has a short, but unsuccessful fling at one point with an Okuri-inu, before much to her annoyance, he is put off by her youth, despite being only a few decades older, the hypocrite.

What she finds herself missing however, is a goal. Being "young and twenty-something" forever starts to feel pointless after a while, when all she's working towards is saving up in preparation for each "reset" whenever people start to get suspicious of her already dubiously-twenty-something looks.

Then one day, she finds what she's looking for. Inspiration and a goal to strive for, in the oddest of places.

It isn't the first time her wandering search for interesting jobs and new sights in the non-magical world has taken her out of Tokyo, but it is the first time in a very long while that she has been to Yokosuka. Once upon a time, she traveled with her aloof and proud parents and sisters, to bear a gift to a family friend on a voyage to secure victory against the Americans in the Solomons. A voyage that nobody would ever return from. Now she works behind a bar, serving cheap drinks and cheaper food to drunk and rowdy American sailors on leave.

To Ai's own surprise, the intervening three decades have mellowed her and her once tempestuous and impulsive childhood feelings.

She tries her hand at bartending, not because she needs to, but simply out of curiosity. She's not some prideful and aloof young maiden anymore. She knows what she's in for, even if she was hoping it would be more of a local bar than a sailor one.

It helps that her once burning hate for the Americans has gradually since burned out. The non-magical world, she has discovered, moves far too quickly to bother holding emotionally exhausting and prospect limiting grudges. Life among humanity has long since lead her to the realization that it is pointless to hold a vendetta against those she will inevitably out last, and would probably have never seen again.

Though the memories of the hatred remain, the cold fire has long since burnt out. Instead in it's place Ai still feels an ashen hollowness for those old days. But even so, the weight of melancholy and mourning is far preferable to the stomach twisting knots and powerless anger, and she has gradually learned to put the former aside when needed during her daily life.

She finally feels validated letting go of her hatred after only a few weeks at her new job. The vast majority of the sailors she sees in Yokosuka weren't even born until well after the war. They are a post-war generation, who even at their worst, cannot inspire anywhere near the almost palatable hatred once held by herself and others for their forefathers.

They are not the ones who's victory ruined her home and shattered both the worlds she stands with one foot in either doorway of. They are not monsters, not enemies, not even those who struck the original wrongs. They are young, and drunk, out for a good time, proud of their service, and sometimes even polite. None, are the shadowy, vague villains and archetypes she has for so long pictured as one of the few sources she can openly accuse in similar company, for all the wrongs and hardships in her life.

Bartending at Yokosuka, and seeing sailors and favoured regulars rather than the monsters and barbarians she was taught to see as foes, is what finally teaches Ai how to move on, rather than that she should.

It is also bartending at Yokosuka, that finally gives Ai something new to define her life by. Something other than being the hopped up orphan "slumming" it among the non-magical humans for lack of prospects in the magical world. A goal beyond simply lamenting the status of her people, a prideful woe that will always remain thanks to her upbringing.

It is through bar tending that Ai first meets Samuel.

Samuel Freeman only ever knows her as Kobayashi Airi. A false identity among so many others in her recently reached century long life of lies and falsehoods. And yet so much of who she becomes, she has Samuel to thank for.

Because what first draws her attention to Samuel, is that Samuel is black.

Although technically, what starts it is that Samuel is first drawn to her. Or to be more accurate, Samuel and his fellow shipmates are drawn to the bar where she works. As one of the more out of the way and lesser known establishments in Yokosuka, neither Ai, nor her boss and fellow bar staff can afford to consider turning away happily paying customers. Rumors of good service and a friendly atmosphere soon lead to a thriving rotation of regulars among not just the USN's coloured sailors, but other non-white contingents whenever they put in to port at Fleet Activities Base Yokosuka as well.

The black sailors fascinate Ai, and not for the reasons some of her more leacherous huan coworkers jokingly suggest and titter to each other about in the breakroom. Before long, Ai (who soon becomes a favoured bartender of theirs' thanks to her decent grasp of English, and thus ends up regularly listening in on or being regaled with their stories of home, while at other times playing fly on the wall to group debates) slowly begins to find that many of their tales and backgrounds strike strangely and unexpectedly close to home.

As repressed as they are, Ai and her people have thankfully never known outright slavery. Actually, their position is arguably more akin to the non-magical native Americans in how they are treated by the ICW's mouth pieces in the post-occupation government. But what Ai does understand is the desire to escape her peoples' lot in life. A desire for, maybe not a romanticised return to something that would be impossible to recreate in the modern era anyway, but at least something better.

Something like equality.

At first it confuses her, how these sailors speak of things that seem to incite unrest at home, while at the same time wholeheartedly serving in the navy of the nation that looks down upon them. Some of them don't even speak of the groups they claim membership of outside of likeminded company, for fear of marring their careers or making targets of themselves when they get back home.

But then she takes note of Samuel. Samuel who is easily the most outspoken and driven of them all, and yet also regularly bragged of a proud lineage in the service of his homeland via a father who served in the "Black Panthers" of Patton's 761st, a grandfather in "the Hellfighters", and an even more distant line of ancestors who were "Buffalo Soldiers". Samuel, who is also more than willing to humor the quiet curiosities of a tiny Japanese bartender, who is increasingly less subtle in her carefully tempered fascination and listening as time goes on.

He tells her of the Civil Rights Movement back in the United States. The tumultuous times of the late 50s, 60s, early 70's, and even now still, for champions of not just Black rights, but also Native Americans and other downtrodden ethnicities of of the US. Off-handed stories of activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, James Farmer, John Lewis, Dorothy Height, James Meredith, and even splinter movement leaders such as the infamous Malcom X, soon became subjects of research that consumed her spare time. Events and places capture her imagination, reminding her of lost hopes and forgotten dreams, except as synonyms that after all the hardship and pain, came to positive resolutions. Ai is riveted by tales of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Battle of Hayes Pond, the Freedom Rides, The March on Washington, Freedom Summer, Selma, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Assassination of Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and so many more that Ai's head practically spins listening to Samuel, and the never ending stream of events that continued even up to present day.

So many battles, and so much hardship. And yet despite being largely achieved through peace and non-violence, the Civil Rights Movement and other similar minority rights causes of non-magical America had succeeded, where the magical races of Japan and all their ancient might had faltered, scattered and become disenfranchised under the centuries of human-centric ICW legislation and later MACUSA oversight. The fight was not over, but Samuel and those of likemind continued to strive for equality and fight against an oppression she knew and feared almost as much.

It was all too easy to feel the same things they felt and become enraptured in the history and ideas of their cause, when topics like the Trail of Tears, Jim Crow Laws and the Mississippi Burning case, could evoke oh so similar comparisons and emotions to the "Jukai e no Yokai no Ikō", the "Grogan Stump Definition of Being, Beast and Non-Being of 1811", and the "1923 Cypress Dog-Howlers Prosecutions".

Ai knew that beyond the surface comparisons and wishful thinking, the American Civil Rights Movement and the rights of non-humans in the magical world were two entirely separate beasts, and would require totally different and equally complicated methods to reach their eventual conclusions. Adopting the ideas and inspiration from King and Ghandi was not going to miraculously accelerate, shake up or change the much more conservative and ridged status quo of international magical politics and rights. But it was certainly something worth paying attention to, a beacon of hope, even if the opportunity for change was unlikely to ever reveal itself in the limited human lifetimes of her friends.

Because much to her own surprise, that is somehow what Samuel Freeman and a great many of his fellow rights activist sailors become. Even if they do not quite understand why someone, that to them is only a Japanese barmaid who has never even been to America, would express so much interest and hope in the success of their cause and the equality they still strived for even into the 70's, it is a stepping stone to something like camaraderie that none of them aside from her can explain. Out of all of them though, it is Samuel she forms the closest bond with. And while he doesn't know the origins or whys of her fascination, he encourages her, and motivates her interest, even though it is via a cause she needn't fight for, in the hopes of aiding another she never reveals.

Despite her care to have as few long term connections as possible within the non-magical world to ease the process of cutting ties with old identities whenever she replaces them, when Samuel and the others finally complete their tour in the Far East, she quickly finds herself keeping in touch with them and following along with their fights for equality via posted letters and mailed newspaper clippings.

Inspired by Samuel's example and suggestion when he finally leaves the USN, she also follows suit, quitting her job at the bar and taking a new go at a college degree under her current identity. This time however, she learns not of science, or engineering, or mechanics, but of laws, and rights, and how the sociology of society effects the latter two.

Even if her ensuing career in law is not as high flying or high risk as Samuel's, she still follows along with great interest via their correspondence. Sometimes they even trade case notes, sanity-checking each other's work and angles of pursuit, despite differing justice systems, cultures, and the transition time of the mail. On a few occasions, she even contemplates the risk of dodging the ICW and Japanese magical government in order to head to America via non-magical travel, whenever it sounds like Samuel's crusade of justice for the downtrodden and maligned has put him in the sights of those willing to abuse their powers and commit evil to preserve their agendas and biases.

Eventually Ai does so anyway when invited to the wedding, an event she wouldn't miss for the world, no matter how hard it increasingly is to forge a passport. At first the recently engaged and soon to be Mrs Margret Freeman is suspicious of this strange legal-powerhouse of a Japanese waif, whom her future husband has been in regular correspondence with for well over a decade since leaving Japan. Ai is equally unsure how to deal with somebody who seems to suspect the entirely platonic and rights related friendship that she and Samuel still maintain after so many years.

Thankfully, and much to her surprise, she and Margret soon get along like a house on fire, a peaked interest soon forming the start of a lifelong respect and friendship, much like with her and Samuel's initial meetings. Of course Samuel would only marry a woman who would understand what it would mean to be as dedicated and unyielding a champion to a cause as he was, and apparently at some point in a recent trial, an opponent of Civil Rights and Feminism just happened to place themself in the center of both their crosshairs. It was a match made in heaven, and much to Ai's relief, it was also a match she found added its own value and friendship to her correspondence with the couple.

Soon enough, Ai often finds herself often addressing Margret in her letter with Samuel in return. Sharing tidbits of life or discussing the topics of rights, suffrage and numerous other causes whenever needing to bounce ideas or gain view from one on the international scale. Ai misses the birth of their first kid, but regardless of ICW restrictions and muggle security, she would be damned if she missed the second.

Birthdays were also supposed to be pretty important. Or at least that's what she was always told. She missed their eldest's birth and first birthday, so it was only right that the mysterious Aunty Airi turn up for little Alice's fifth. And decades were important in the shortlived lives of non-magicals, so of course she was going to turn up for Samuel and Margret's 10th Wedding Anniversary too. But then Bradly, who was so enamored with her, found out she'd been to his sister's fifth birthday, so couldn't she turn up for his tenth? After which, Alice had wanted her there for her 13th, but thankfully Samuel and Margret managed to talk her into "sharing" her aunt's visit with her brother over Christmas. That was then followed by the time she scored extra leave as a reward for winning the firm a big case, so what a better way to spend it than with the Freeman family and her pusedo-nephew and niece over an extended Golden Week holiday. And of course, there was no way she was going to miss Alice's big sixteenth. Even she understood what an important road marker on the way to adulthood and independence that ages was becoming for American children these days.

It is a strange feeling Ai has one day, realising she is starring into a mirror and debating on how normal adding just a few gray hairs and a slight deepening of her smile lines looks, or if there's less chance of mucking things up if she holds off for a few more years and just suddenly goes grey all at once. In that moment, it finally occurs to her that not only has "Kobayashi Airi" outlasted every other identity of hers, but on some level she has become Airi more than "hatamoto Saburo no Ai".

For the first time in a very long time, maybe even since before she was old enough to understand what the constant apocrypha driven into her by her family of what they'd "lost" meant and how bad things supposedly were compared to the rose-tinted golden age of the past, Ai felt truly happy. Not just happy, but maybe something like contentment. Contentment and peace enough to understand what still needed to be strived for and and the realisation of how to do it, without the hot blood so common in her youth firing in her veins. Samuel jokes in her next letter that it must be the wisdom of age, while Margret cheekily suggests that is simply just age, not wisdom.

Ai's good-naturedly faux offence in her next letter is valid on two levels. Kobayashi Airi is only supposed to be in her late 40s. And Ai herself is only just leaving the "adolescent years" of her kind.

Life goes on. Letters become faxes, which then become emails. Alice and Bradly seem to dramatically shoot up like beans more dramatically every time she visits, which only get more common and global travel cheapens. Eventually she visits the states for a very special day in particular, Alice's graduation. She makes the partnership in her firm after almost 20 years of service. She takes her cues from Margret and lets herself "go grey" in the early 2000s, though she very purposely neglects to show the side effects of age on her figure, much to the good-natured envy of her friend.

Even on the magical side, the world is beginning to look up. Change will always be slow on a political scale where the average candidate looks more suited for a crypt than a courtroom, but the seeds are there. Europe may have taken a backstep for much of the post-war era, and North America is as stagnant as it ever was, but currents coil below the surface. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening up of the Far East have had their own reverberations in the magical world as well, and while a decade behind the pace of their non-magical counterparts, the long awaited change is at last coming.

Just as it was the activities and crimes of the long suppressed South that finally boiled over into an ugly truth the laypeople could no longer ignore, until it was finally a political hot potato that those in Washington could no longer be without a side or stance on, Ai realises what will happen. The hard campaigning will happen in the chambers and debating halls of Britain, America, France, and all the other old countries. But the change will have to come from the people. The ICW and it's member bodies will be filled with nothing but filibusters, if not outright opposition, unless it is within the interests of those wishing to remain in power, to see out the wishes of those who's votes and currency empower them.

It is time to see if empathy and peace will bring voices to their cause, capable of changing what hundreds of years of teeth, claws and steel have been unable to do in the face of being silenced by human spellfire.

It is with tentative excitement and uncertainty that Ai first reaches out with careful whispered feelers, for likeminded individuals who not only still champion non-human rights, but are willing to consider the methods she proposes. There is little that is immediately glorious or gets the blood rushing at the idea of non-violent pacifism. There isn't much honor in suggesting they purposely invite the heavy hands and ridicule of the Magical Diet and the ICW down upon themselves, then do nothing to resist when it happens. Who among the downtrodden would ever seriously consider putting what little they still have at risk, especially considering the often divided natures and historical animosity between the different species and even inter-racial conflicts of the non-humans of Japan?

And yet, to her burgeoning surprise and excitement, her first uncertain calls are answered. She is not alone in dreams of equality and hope, but even more than that, she is not the only one to have paid attention to recent non-magical history. Many of her first associates are fellow students of world events over the last 50 years. Most have looked to America. Others to magical and non-magical independence movements in India, Ireland, and numerous other nations of the globe that didn't exist only a hundred years ago. All have seen what has and hasn't worked. Among those that slowly congregate around their similar and unified ideals, is even a certain Okuri-inu from her past, much to her and Kiba's awkward embarrassment and the amusement of their peers.

Some though, only join up simply because they've seen in plenty ways how violence, bribery, coercion, and so many other manners of forceful or heavy-handed attempts have failed. But at least, they console themselves, this seems to be something different.

A few others even leave when they find out who she and some of the others are. The desire to fight for freedom is often an inherited one, and unfortunately she isn't the only member of the group to be stained by the name of a relative or family who was swayed by honeyed words promising a better lot in life for all, in the lead up to a time when the world went mad.

Even so, their circle grows. There is no real name yet anybody can decide on, but that is fine. Ai doesn't mind the pace of the group's formations taking it's time. She knows this will be a long race to the finish, and a strong base for its foundation and flagship members will go a long way toward future endeavors.

Their biggest steal however, is Diet support. For all the human-centrism of the ICW, their impingement and suspension of Yokai and non-humans that have historically often had close magical and economical relationships with the pre-Meiji magical aristocracy of Japan, has meant that a surprising number of Old Money and even older blood politicians harbor sympathies for their cause, if only because they stand to benefit from the loosening of restrictions and granting of rights to associates and family allies was well. It will require a careful balancing act to court the double-edged influence and support of this portion of the Diet, thanks to their usually conservative and often anti-ICW, if not outright anti-western and sometimes nationalistic bent of their more fringe members.

Regardless, it is a massive boon to the cause. One that buoys everyone immensely, and now spurns even greater numbers to their flag, thanks to the added legitimacy the group takes on. More and more, not only do legally off-reservation yokai flock to their cause, but even members of underground and hidden non-human communities begin feeling embolden enough to begin lending their support. For weeks, Ai is on top of the world, in spite of the mounting workload as she goes through a whirlwind of meetings, planning, organising, and detailing as they plot out the nitty gritty details required to assemble their burgeoning not-so-little-anymore group, into an official political organisation.

Not even the ill wind can break her stride, nor the omens that seem to appear for everyone else as well. While many associate the suppression of Japan's non-humans with the larger overall domination of the ICW over the sovereign magical institutions, almost 250 years of human-centrism has still managed to create its share of bigots and supremacists. It was inevitable that the ICW's more strongly felt lackeys and believers would not suffer their movements existence unchallenged. For many, the idea that somebody would attempt to kill the organisation while it was still in the womb was almost expected.

And so everyone waits for the inevitable shoe to drop. Many of the soothsayers seem to think that it will happen on the day their allies in the diet are poised to first test the waters by bring up the subject of non-human right's in passing during a debate session. The question is, who is going to be the targets?

Almost everyone going to Tokyo that day seems to be the most at risk. But then so are many other's, often for seemingly no rhyme or reason. A few of the more paranoid suggest the possibility of some sort of plan of decapitate the most vocal founders and figureheads perceived as most likely to be potential leaders of the group once it were properly organised into a proper political movement, followed by some sort of general round up of Japan's non-humans known to be supporters of their cause.

The problem it, it sounds too heavy handed and extreme, even in the current oddly troubled political climate of late. While many of the magical governments of around the world have been clamping down on, and highlighting an unusually high number of near-breaches of the Statute of Secrecy supposedly blamed on non-humans and beasts in recent decades, this isn't the days of Post-War MACUSA oversight and ICW occupation anymore. Even the human-centrists in the current Diet don't wield enough power or would have grounds for such a rounded up, for a group that isn't even a fully fledged political organisation yet.

For all their influence, this is not America with it's brutal and often fatally fervent adherence to the law. Nor is it Britain, infamous for being populated by rampantly supremacist groups, untouched by the justice system thanks to old money and political figures. And outright disappearing not just political leaders, but their followers and families as well, was always more of an Eastern Europe thing, and would never have flown in Japan. Even the human magical citizenry would have been up in arms at such an action against many of the still mostly respected non-human groups now associated with their cause.

And yet as the date draws closer, the feeling that of encroaching dread only gets worse. Sometimes Ai feels something. An instinct from that primeval part of her, a remainder of a time when her ancestors were more of nature and beast, than of spirit and guardianship in the eyes of humanity. At times the wind seems to die around her, and in the cloying silence as the world holds its breath, the ancient blood in her veins chills and shrieks at her to flee, to damn her disguise and take flight, like a bird fleeing before the tsunami it knows is coming with animal clairvoyance.

Ai doesn't begrudge when many start making preparations, cautiously distancing themselves from herself and the rest of their leadership. Other's outright say they are going into hiding. More say that they're all just getting paranoid, but even those less attuned to such shifts in the world can tell something is wrong. While they might not be able to smell fear, everyone is spooked.

Regardless, the course is set. Those most central and dedicated to the cause make their plans. They are prepared to fight for the change that is coming. They are prepared to be the change, that they wish to see in the world.

Bail money is pooled. Relatives and family just happen to go on vacation or be staying with friends in out of the way, or often very warded locations. Businesses are locked up and employees sent on short, out of the blue, paid holidays.

Ai tells her partners in the law firm that she is taking a small bit of her well earned and rarely used leave, to go deal with a sudden family matter that is unfortunately going to take her out of cell reception way off in the sticks. Not only are things getting busy enough in the lead up to the debate and their first official public reveal that Ai is increasingly having difficulty balancing her non-magical job and her Rights Organisation work, but if she is honest, she's also getting a little fearful.

It almost adds to the pressure when one day she gets a surprise call from Samuel and Margret. The two of them have recently decided to go on holiday, and despite all the years of her visiting them, Samuel has never been back to Japan since the 70's, and Margret has never been at all. So to make use of the massive bonus Samuel has recently come into after winning a particularly tough and lengthy case, the two of them have decided to plan a trip to Japan in the near future.

Despite the pressure as zero hour approaches, and the ill omens increasing dogging everyone that nobody can seem to make sense of, Ai feels her spirits lift.

She so badly wants to thank Samuel. She wants to tell not just him, but Marget too, about everything that's going on, and thank them. Everything she is planning to do, so much of her involvement, so many of her ideas, the first seeds of her inspiration, she has Samuel to thank for, and the two of them for motivating her through all these years waiting. Slowly biding her time for the right moment that sometimes seemed to never come, but still kept hopeful by the tribulations and successes of the non-magical world across the Pacific.

And now here she stands, maybe not the most central leader of the group, and maybe not the first or most notable member of the current generation to have roughly the same ideas and inspiration to emulate the successes of the non-magical world around the same time, but standing here she nevertheless is, as a part of this new non-human rights movement in magical Japan.

Despite all the fear, all the worry, all the pressure, and all the unsaid things she wants say to Samuel for inspiring a lost and disenfranchised youth to reach and dream for something she had once forgotten out of bitterness and aimlessness, the call takes a weight off her back and brings the clarity back to her mind and vision. Whatever fight is coming for Ai and her allies, they can deal with it. Oppression only wins when the oppressed allow it to.

It also helps to have a light, maybe not at the end of the tunnel, but at least as a rest stop on the journey.

If Samuel and Marge's example is an indicator, it's going to be a long hard slog to the finish. Maybe even one the she might not live to see in her own lengthy lifetime, when looking even further back to not just worrying examples of tragedy like Martin Luther King Jr, but right to the very beginning of the NAACP, where the majority of the founding members never lived to see the successful resolution of numerous Civil Rights Movement goals in the late 60's and 70's. Many of those who campaigned, marched and protested in the high points of those years, were still fighting for equality in some parts of the US even 30-40 years later.

It is with her resolve restrengthened and her thoughts unburdened, that she finishes the call. Fortune permitting, if by the time Samuel and Marge's cruise ship gets to Tokyo in four weeks, things haven't completely blown up and whatever mysterious foes of their cause haven't moved against their group, she'll have the elderly Freeman couple's visit to look forward.

The determination in her stride and the surety of her mind is impossible to get ride of, not even the next day as she gears up for battle, just as much as she prepares for the impending war of the debating floor. Unlike the last time she sequestered a fan and a sword on herself though, this time she feels silly. Even without them, the Yakuza who were rumoured to be more than willing to silence her muggle client via force and more rape would never have been able to touch her.

Magical spellfire on the other hand, was something she still very much feared and was at risk from. It doesn't help that after so many years, she is far more accustomed to the crisp, no-nonsense uniform of a dress suit in a courtroom setting. The musty traditional garb befitting a lady of her honestly rather irrelevant-these-days-station on the other hand, feels like walking in a circus tent after so many decades forgotten and shoved successively further and further into the backs of her closets across multiple apartment changes.

Intimidation and sexism never stopped her in the muggle world though, and it certainly never stopped Samuel and Margret when they faced down officials and juries in hostile courtrooms either, so why should the magical side be any different.

The slow drive through the heart of Tokyo towards the magical bureaucratic capital in southern Chiyoda Ward gives her time for one last reflection on her path to where she is now. Her grip on the steering wheel tightens in tune with her resolve. Her course is set and the die is cast. The Diet will be convening shortly and by the time she arrives, the debate will about to begin.

By hell or high water, she would see this through, and no one would stop her. Not man, nor monster, would halt the wheels of change.

At least that's what she thinks, right up until in the middle of cruising along Bayshore Route of the Shuto Expressway toward the Ueno Route interchange to Chiyoda, she gets a call.

A panicked warning from Okuri-Inu no Kiba, as he and numerous other dog and wolf yokai in Totsukawa and across Nara prefecture call everyone they know, screaming of an instinctive urge to gather in the Cypress groves of the Tamaki Mountains. The same mountains where 80 years earlier, Kiba's parents had impulsively been illogically drawn to, hours before anyone knew the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake was about to happen. Just as Kiba's grandparents had instinctively been drawn to the mountains before a great flood in 1889.

A icy chill creeps over Ai. One that has nothing to do with Kiba's warning already too late warning, or the urge to take to the skies and flee inland. Feeling like the sparrow that has ignored autumn's warnings for too long, Ai narrowly avoids plowing into the growing back log of rubbernecking motorists as she looks southeast across Tokyo Bay at the frigid death that has come.

Ai feels winds around her recoil at the wrongness of the building unnatural sea air that rolls in from the mouth of the harbour. Her skin crawls and feels tainted at the first raindrops of the approaching unseasonal downpour. And upon the air is a scent not of salt, or sun, or storm, or even humanity's cloying acidic addition of pollution, but something else. Something with a taste. A palatable carrion odour of rust, still oil and most sharply of all, something she can only call hatred.

And then the hatred speaks.

A banshee choir of dead metal and deader flesh, that lashes out with thunder across the water to scourge the port of Yokohama with cordite and steel, in what is only the beginning of a destructive march of desecration up the coast to Haneda.

Blood Week is a shameful scar on Ai's memories. It was not the sunrise of equality and hope she had for so long planned for it to be. Nor was it a day of heroics for her. Because even as JMSDF vessels and Coast Guard ships raced north from Yokosuka to desperately do battle in the shooting gallery Tokyo Harbor became, Ai fled. Leaving her car, and very nearly her disguise, Ai became little better than the panicked throngs of non-magical humanity she cowered alongside and fled inland with.

Realistically, she probably would not have been able to do anything. She was young, out of form, and entirely inexperienced to boot. For decades she had honed her skills in the courtroom, largely ignoring her ancestral arts and magical heritage beyond the trivial skills that were too useful not to learn, or enabled household laziness. And even if she had lived through some sort of ill-thought intervention, Statute hardliners would have wanted her head upon a platter, regardless of how she could have influenced the outcome. Still, watching southern Tokyo Bay begin to burn, was an image she would ruminate on for years to come.

By the time she makes it to Chiyoda, the magical Ward secreted within the heart of one of Tokyo's oldest districts was in a panic.

The attack had not just been limited to Tokyo. They had not even been limited to Japan. It was global.

Some feared that the fall of the Statute of Secrecy was all but certain. Between the ICW calling many of its members for an emergency session, politicians tripping over one another in an attempt to get a handle on the recently declared state of national emergency, the apparent destruction of a large part of the Auror force in the still ongoing battle in the Bay, and numerous others taking off to either defend their homes or join the fights taking place in coastal cities across Japan, the Magical Diet was in shambles.

Any hope of bringing up the subject of Japanese Non-Human Right's anytime soon, likely just went out the window.

Many of those who came for the debate, now crowd around the press halls and lobby of the Diet in shock and confusion. Everyone had expected an attack on themselves. All the signs, all the warnings, all the portents and omens. Nobody had realised the what the scale of the warnings meant. It was never just about them.

Ai felt sick. Cut off from Internet and cellular reception, someone inventive soul set about using a combination of a Wizarding Wireless set and a Walkman radio barely capable of receiving signal through the magical wards, to try and gather a confusing picture of what is going on across the globe, and what the Wizarding World's own response is to this clearly magical and unnatural catastrophe is.

Yokohama and Yokosuka had also been hit as the monsters in Tokyo Harbor dragged the battle southward to try and draw out the destruction before they were finally cornered and destroyed. There were conflicting reports of an attack on either Nagasaki or Kagoshima. Osaka had been gripped by a mass panic as rumors and unconfirmed reports snowballed into a chaotic exodus out of the city. S.O.S signals by terrified shipping turning back to Busan seemed to suggest something in the Tsushima strait that was either still massing its forces or had yet to attack as well.

Internationally, Portsmouth had been hit and the Thames estuary soon became the site of a desperate ongoing battle to protect the route up to London. Something equally major had gone down of the coast of LA, and ended in the destruction of most of the combatants on both sides. Most of the attack on Hampton Roads in the American Northeast sounded like it'd been blunted at sea and in the air, but Honolulu was still under attack. Singapore had been hit. The Chinese were trying to stall three simultaneous attacks in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea before they could reach land. Big chunks of New Guinea and the Solomons were silent or in flames. Most of the Crimean Peninsula was dark, while Leningrad was now under siege from the ocean. In fact, the Baltic and Mediterranean in general, were rapidly turning into absolute quagmires of confusing and overwhelming numbers of enemy sightings and actions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, no one had heard from many of the smaller island nations located across the Pacific. Much of the news is hampered and muddled by civilian panic and mass flights from coastal areas and seaside settlements across the globe.

The news on the magical side is somewhat reversed. Individual groups and initiative were largely leading the charge, while many of the governments are in panic. Numerous magical governments have already been thrown into disarray by casualties, or are hampered by fierce debate and deadlock within the ICW on the level of freedom to take action in response to the global crisis. Someone up in Hadaka meanwhile, was very publicly busting out the fire magic, and it sounded like the Kappa and many coastal magical communities were giving a good accounting of themselves in a number of places as well. From the sounds of things, quite a few of the older families in Kyoto hadn't even bothered waiting for Diet permission or trying to coordinate coordinate with the government, and automatically rushed off to join the magical community in Osaka and Tokyo in their defenses of the cities.

Communications with magical Pacific and African nations are generally more intact than their non-magical counterparts, and many speak of long thought extinct or suppressed creatures and spirits exacting their own pounds of flesh from the steel monsters attacking their homelands. Elements of the British and French Auror forces meanwhile, seemed to have decided they could live with asking forgiveness rather than permission, and without clearance, had joined in with the battles of the Thames Estuary and at Cherbourg from behind the scenes. By the sound of things, the two fights were rapidly turning into a much larger combined international action on both the magical and non-magical sides to retake the English Channel, and protect the communities on each nations' shores with slowly growing success.

Elsewhere however, efforts seemed to be of greater mixed effectiveness. A third faction appeared to have entered the fight in Egypt, scything a terrible toll through both the Egyptian-ICW combined forces and the hateful invaders moving up the Nile. In the Pacific, a number of faculty and senior students had sold themselves dearly to enable the evacuation of Mahoutokoro. And the last anybody heard, the situation in the Bonin islands was dire, rapidly degenerating into a last stand as some valiant souls defiantly held their ground, attempting to buy time for much of the surviving magical community in the area, human and yokai, to retreat to an old decommissioned ICW Reservation with the desperate goal of supercharging the concealment wards in the hopes of hiding until a relief force could be spared and sent. By time the distress call made it through the flood of information spilling over the desk of the Japanese Wizarding Wireless National Network however, it had already been hours and Bonin had all but fallen silent.

The fights on both sides of the magical divide, were rapidly turning defensive. There was simply too much ocean, and too many aggressors for even the largest militaries and wizarding forces to entertain the thoughts of an offensive, without leaving themselves or their more vulnerable neighbours at risk. Battle damage and public panic were also causing not just a loss of communication as power grids were cut by the fighting, while phone lines and floo networks were overloaded, but also miscommunication as cities emptied at rumors of attacks, and global militaries struggled to assess the true movements from the false reports of an enemy displaying an increasingly hellish tendency to just appear out of the blue.

The mounting severity of the situation reaches it's crescendo when, even as the ICW remains inactive and deadlocked in their debate as to whether the Statute of Secrecy is unbroken or should be upheld, the leaders of the non-magical world begin convening for action of a most terrible kind. In the middle of a global U.N. teleconference, reports begins to trickle in to media across the world of a nuclear incident, far away in the frigid north of the arctic sea.

Judging by the readings, many speculate the radiation pulse detected has emanated from the supposedly lost Russian Kirov class Battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov, and not from the detonation of a nuclear warhead. Rumors and stories begin to circulate that after being left for dead in the wake of a disastrous surprise attack on the Russian Fleet, the Admiral Nakhimov's crew may have played possum and purposely melted down both their reactors in an attempt to catch or poison stragglers of the victorious enemy fleet in the ensuing explosion and fallout. Others say it could have been the result of battle damage, left to fall into a runaway failure due to destroyed systems without anyone living left to save the vessel.

Regardless of the cause, the Admiral Nakhimov's fate pulls the genie out of the bottle that many of the increasingly helpless and stunned non-magical governments have even until that point, been wary of escalating to.

Few stick around to listen to the U.N. debate on whether or not to seriously consider breaking out the nuclear weapons. For many of those present, long memories, lengthly lifetimes and osmosis of other facets of non-magical history while looking at Civil Right Movements across the globe, make the evolutionary end points of the increasingly technological and systematic destruction of Japan's cities 60 years ago, a subject that is still all to fresh and raw. What was previously a trickle of people leaving to check on their homes and families, or valiantly join in the fights elsewhere, turns into a vocal maelstrom of those suggesting they stay, and those wishing to flee from whatever madness has over taken the world.

Many of those wishing to remain in Tokyo fear for the safety of those in the Ryukyu Reservation. Non-magical news bulletins suggested a combined force of the USN 7th Fleet and JMSDF ships was already preparing to buy time against an imminently expected attack in the area, while the Japanese Government scrambled to organise either an impossible evacuation, or the gathering and shelter for the civilian populace of the entire island chain on Okinawa to centralise the area to be defended. By all accounts the non-magicals were preparing to simply write off the majority of the outlying Ryukyu islands if the defence of Okinawa was stretched any thinner, so as soon as they had the chance, the Stay faction wanted to petition for the evacuation of the Reservation as soon as they can get a message into their allies in the Diet.

Some however, say "to hell with Diet". The Diet and the ICW had never put much stock in them, so why should they put stock in it acting in their interests now, in this most dire hour of crisis? Many who leave to fight, whether in defence of those trapped in the Ryukyu Reservation or to protect their lands and territories, never come back.

It is to Ai's eternal shame, that she makes excuses to join the third group, the largest portion of the masses that leave Tokyo that day. Many of their less powerful members, the common folk only originally there to show support, without political power, great magic, or aristocratic status of their own, are scarred, terrified, and just want to go home. To be with their families. To make safe what they treasure most and hide. They came to Tokyo that day for a Civil Rights debate and political speeches, not for war and front row seats to the potential downfall of the Statute of Secrecy.

There is a growing fear born of rumors on the wireless and floo networks, that these attack are tied to the rising rate of supposedly non-human and beast related incidents and breaches of the Statute of Secrecy over the previous decade. Few can actually elaborate how exactly those things are related to non-humans and beasts, and what that means. No one knows what that means for them.

Ai makes the case that as one of the less politically relevant members present, who at least has a semi-appreciably flashy amount of magical skill, it isn't a political loss or magical overkill if she leaves to play escort for all those fearful or paranoid of facing some sort of reprisal on their journeys home, especially when more than a few have been living their lives outside the reservations illegally. Her family line is of hatamoto rank, but they weren't ome-mie ijo.

In reality, Ai is scared. Even if the fires are already being controlled and the destruction is not as complete, the heat in the air that blows in from the south, and the scents of smoke, ash and death take her back to a Tokyo 60 years past. And in that moment, her youth catches up with her and she wishes flee, memories how nowhere is safe returning. Stray bombs uncaringly penetrating wards that bombardiers would never have known were there, just as so many other non-magicals hadn't for hundreds of years. Protections meaning little when the target of destruction was not of specific dwellings, but like a tsunami that rolled over and encompassed the entire neighborhood. The wind magics of her family and flight meaning little in the face of the incendiary spawned supercells of flame, devouring and flattening whole blocks at a time with cyclonic winds that stripped the oxygen from the air, ignited everything in their path, and left the world a blistering molten slag in their wake.

Ai is one of the few figures of the leadership and founding circle to leave that day. And as shameful as it sometimes makes her sometimes feel that she lied about her fear in order to flee and delay her return with overnight journeys around the countryside, Ai knows that she is lucky and cursed in equal measure.

The next day the "Abyssals", as is increasingly the common term for the monsters that are assailing the coastlines of the world, make another suicidal attack on Tokyo. Running a gauntlet of JMSDF anti-ship missiles and JASDF bombs, only a few of the Abyssals manage to make it into the harbor proper this time. But even those few Abyssals who's arrival has been brought with the death and expenditure of the rest of their fleet, still manage to wreak havoc with their Second Battle of Tokyo Bay. Havoc, that unknown to the non-magical defense force and media who will long ponder at the Abyssal Battleship's choice of targets in the random side streets and parks of southern Chiyoda ward, has resulted in catastrophe for magical Japan.

Resulted in catastrophe for Ai as well.

The Diet was hit, right when in the middle of an emergency session, while many other people and officials waited for a statements and instructions in the surrounding lobbies and press halls. Practically all of magical Japan's leadership, gathered in place for this meeting after the ICW session finally dissolved, is dead. The shattering of the chain of command is so compete, no one is even sure who among those left is now the default interim-minister. A problem exacerbated by the destruction of many of the Diet's post-war record halls and archives in the fire that followed the explosion. It says something that of those who remain, the Minister for Education may be the highest ranking government official they have left.

But it's not just the magical Japanese government that has been decapitated though.

At the time of the attack, those of the group who had remained behind in order to petition for the evacuation of the Ryukyu Reservation, still had not had a chance to met with their allies inside the Diet. They, and all those who's support they had been counting on, are dead.

In the course of a day, the burgeoning Japanese Non-human Rights Movement has seen it's membership scattered or sent fleeing into hiding, all of it's strongest political allies, and practically all of it's founding members killed.

Ai is floored, but even then, she makes an attempt to contact those who remain and figure out what is going on to the best of her ability. Where do they go from here? What is the plan now?

The answer apparently, is a divided one. One that basically spells the death knell for what's left her's and the few remaining others' brave hopes of forging a proper organisation and association out of their cause.

The fear of a return to the atmosphere of the late-WWII and post-war days is prevalent, when the non-humans of Japan first felt the vice grip of war, and later the descending boot of the ICW and MACUSA occupation. Many are going into hiding. Few among those living legally outside the Reservations want to risk sticking their heads up. Nobody wants to take the chance of exposing themselves, should it come to pass that the response against the Abyssals catch non-humans up in it as well.

Others are even more haunted than Ai by the ghosts of the last time non-magical warfare came to Japan. Many of the secret Yokai neighborhoods across Chiyodo, Ginza, and other places that Ai has been visiting since her days wandering post-war Tokyo, as well numerous similar neighborhoods in the ancient wards of the oldest cities across Japan, practically become ghost towns overnight. Yokai aren't the only ones fleeing for the hills either. With parents who often remembers those days, or they themselves being elderly enough to have lived through it, many of their causes' older human allies and supporters are involved in taking themselves and their families on their own exoduses to the countrysides.

Within a week, only the stubborn, the brave, and those who's roles and duties in their actual day jobs require them to stay, remain in Tokyo. The Japanese Non-Human Rights Organisation, is officially dead in the water.

Then comes the final blow for Ai. The news that pulls what's left of the rug out from under her. An email from Alice Freeman, that somehow manages to make it through the straining and overloaded Internet after so many of the undersea cables or their onshore data centers have apparently been destroyed.

Samuel and Margret are presumed dead.

Communication was lost with the cruise ship they were on the day before the attacks began.

It never made it back to port.

Ai feels like she as been punched in the gut. Like a sparrow caught in the winds of a cyclone, and with no control as the winds dash it upon the ground again and again.

It's like she is a child once more. Her world and everyone she knows, burned to ashes and cinder by an act of calamity she could do naught but cower from.

It takes her a week to finally get herself together. Even then however, she feels aimless and lost. The world has come undone, and her place in the puzzle that she knew, is now out of shape. Years of her life's work, something she has spent decades working towards, now lie ruined or cast by the wayside. Two of her closest friends, her personal heroes and role models to emulate, are dead. Ingloriously lost to the sea in a manner that will over shadow the lifetime of work the two of them did together, instead becoming only numbers in the global death toll the world reels and grieves from.

Some are still around, and cry that the movement is not yet entirely dead.

For all the good they can do do though, so few in number, and with the open war against the Abyssals now understandably occupying everyone's attention. Why would the decimated remains of the Magical Diet pay attention to the cries and petitions of the Yokai and other non-humans in this current crisis? Never mind the ICW, even if they wanted to help.

Kiba calls. As one of the few other surviving founders, he and a couple of the others are assembling a bill. The aim is to relieve the strain on what's left of the Japanese Magical Government, by allowing Yokai in many of the smaller coastal reservations, to form their own militias and administrative teams, so that their human guards and bureaucratic overseers might be freed up to fill desperately need positions or replace casualties elsewhere. Unfortunately, with the Diet still a smoking ruin and down to a political skeleton crew, many of the nationalist and self-determinist parties they could have relied upon, have been left gutted by the Second Battle of Tokyo Bay. The pressure of the ICW and the human-centrists is a keenly felt presence on the emergency voting floors on the rare occasions anything gets done via democratic action, rather than emergency powers anymore.

Ai doesn't bother going back to Chiyoda. Expecting the vote to fail, and more than a little paranoid of yet another pin-point suicide raid by the Abyssals on the capital, she stays holed up in her apartment in Ota, looking up the skyrocketing prices of apartments and accommodations in Nagoya.

What she doesn't expect, is the sheer condescension in the simultaneous announcement of it's failure, and the pointless pettiness of fining of Kiba and many of the other canid Yokai that were present with him for the potential breech of the Statute, by howling from the Tamaki Mountains on the day of the attack, when the non-magicals had believed that there have been no wolves left in Japan for well over a hundred years.

The patronisingly, insulting, racist gall of it all awakens in Ai the kind of blood boiling fire she hasn't felt since her helpless and directionless youth. Not even her fine-tuned lawyer's control can keep the cap on her emotions as she impulsively shreds the paper and ends up aerokineticly scouring the table top as well. The events of the past few weeks proceed to crash down on her in a wave of emotion that almost makes her feel physically sick.

The unfairness of it all! To be held in such disregard, for all their abilities and power! That her kind, her people, should be practically helpless and at the mercy of politicians who are so closed minded, they won't even give them the chance to defend themselves! To defend not just their homelands and territories, but their nation as well! Denied from them! Because apparently "it is the opinion of the Diet, that Japanese Yokai lack the rational self control and intelligence to ignore their less than human instincts and baser natures, that would compromise their ability to defend themselves while preserving the Statute of Secrecy"!

Lack of self control! Obviously they'd never seen her drive through Tokyo in rush hour traffic! Having to deal with that is a real test of anyone's "base" desires to not start breaking out the magic against their fellow drivers in public!

Not that many of the backwards human-centrics would realise some Yokai are so thoroughly adapted to hiding in the non-magical world that they know how to drive! The thought alone would probably make their heads spin as much as the opponents of the Tuskegee Airmen or the tankers of the Black Panthers would have if they ever saw today's-

Her train of thought causes Ai to freeze in her agitated pacing of her apartment.

Something....

A memory comes to her mind.

The seed of inspiration, from something so long ago.

Turning to the bookshelf in her lounge, Ai sifts madly through the disorganised stacks of previously read volumes and tomes, encompassing everything from litigation proceedings, dog-earned physics text books from the 60s, Civil Rights cases, burned scraps of scrolls passed down through her family for generations, biographies of famous people, forgotten manila folders full of post-it note covered case records, musty old engineering text books, and the genealogy records of her family. Eventually she finds what she is looking for, unearthing from her magpie nest of literary treasures, a book once mailed to her by Samuel so long ago. A book on the 761st Tank Battalion that his father once served in.

And there, just a few pages into the first chapter is a excerpt highlighting the difficulties faced in even just founding the unit, using a quote from an inter-war report made after a 1925 study by the US Army War College;

"The Negro is physically qualified for combat duty. But he is by nature subservient and believes himself to be inferior to the white man. He is most susceptible to the influence of crowd psychology. He can not control himself in the fear of danger to the extent the white man can. He has not the initiative and resourcefulness of the white man. He is mentally inferior to the white man."

Staring at the words of bigotry and racism 80 years past, Ai's thoughts drift to the content in the morning paper she previously disintegrated. Mental wheels turn slowly in her mind, contemplating the disconnected skeleton of a plan that is beginning to formulate in her head.

That study had been full of shit, even before the success of the Black Panthers and Tuskegee Airmen in the Second World War. The Harlem Hellfighters had proved it in 1918 at Marne and the Muse-Argonne, succeeding when serving under the much less discriminatory and more accepting French, unlike their original denigrating AEF Commanders. The French and British, while not without racism themselves, had often utilised black and other colonial troops to great effectiveness. The French had even had one black American who flew for-

Scrambling back through her increasingly disorganised shelf, Ai locates the next book she is looking for. "The Black Swallow of Death: The Incredible Story of Eugene Jacques Bullard, the World's First Black Combat Aviator".


Mouthful title aside, having the book in her hands jogs Ai's memory. Stowing away on a freighter to Europe as a teenager to escape the ever present discrimination in the American South, Bullard had enlisted as a volunteer with the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of WWI, serving with distinction and later transferring to the French Air Service after Verdun. Despite completing well over twenty combat missions and serving in the Lafayette Flying Corps which was created to accept the overflow of volunteers aiming for the famed Lafayette Escadrille, when the US joined the war and sent the United States Army Air Service to recruit back and test aviators, Bullard was flunked out and had to go back to the French for not being white.

Post-war he finished up with a boat load of medals and was actually rather well known and successful in France. Unfortunately, despite volunteering to fight for France again in WWII, he was injured and deemed unfit for combat after making an escape to the US. Though still honoured and remembered in France until his death, Bullard had died relatively unknown in his own homeland.

Even as the somewhat sad twist to the tale makes her frown, Ai finds another book with a long title that attracts her interest with it's relevance. "Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond". Joseph Medicine Crow, the first of his tribe to graduate from college, had been studying for a P.h.D when WWII broke out. Coincidentally completing a number of traditional war deeds over the course of his service without realizing, he had unintentionally qualified to become what would likely the be last true Plains War Chief. His achievements hadn't ended there though. Joseph Medicine Crow's lifetime of post-war work included being a seminal author, historian and lecturer on Native American history, culture and the reservations, as well as his activities as a spokesman, anthropologist, and a leader in preserving and renewing the Native American culture for the next generation.

Ai began pulling forth more books, rapidly refreshing in her mind names, groups, and historical events that in some cases had sat on her bookshelves for decades since she last read them.

The American Army's 442nd Infatry Regiment, made up of second and third generation Japanese-American volunteers, determined to prove their loyalty to a country that doubted them.

The New Zealand Maori Battalions of the First and Second World Wars, often credited as one of the primary cornerstones that allowed the native people to prove many of their 20th century naysayers wrong, and would later provide one of the many springboards for the cultural renaissance of the 1980's and 1970s.

Robert Smalls, a slave who escaped to the Union with the gun boat Planter and it's slave crew, later serving as it's pilot and even acting captain at times. In the Reconstruction era, he then later led a successful series of business investments and ventures employing freed men, as well as using his wartime fame and heroics as the foundation for a lengthy political career.

Wanda Gertz, who masqueraded as a man and served in the Polish Legion of WWI, later commanded part of the normally secondary role Women's Volunteer Legion through frontline fighting in the Polish-Soviet War, was an active member of the Polish Resistance in WWII, and then spent part of her post-war career helping search for, prepare, and resettle displaced Polish women across Europe in Britain.

The list goes on and on. Other historical tales and figures start adding the flesh to the mad, bare bones plan forming in Ai's mind. A book on Florence Nightingale that mentions in passing her infamous altercation with the British Inspector-General of Hospitals, Dr James Barry. "The Cavalry Maiden", the autobiography Nadezhada Durova's career through the Napoleonic Wars. Some old magazine article Margret had once sent her, covering The Legend of Joan of Arc. A smoke-damaged threadbare scroll, from some distant forgotten ancestor that mentions in passing the real Hua Mulan.

Before Ai realises it, an entire day has passed, and reams of refill paper and sticky notes surround her as she contemplates the difficulties and obstacles she might face. It is the makings of a plan to turn her ambitious idea, into a sequence of achievable goals. Days pass, as Ai not only begins to plot out the details she will need to make it work, but slowly starts to think that thanks to all her past study and history in the non-magical world, maybe her mad idea isn't so mad at all.

Ai spends a lot of time soul searching and evaluating herself. Looking at her strengths and weaknesses. She has her innate magic and ancestral arts, but a hermit of the mountains, she most certainly is not. She's respectably wealthy for a 50-something year old partner in a law firm. But on the magical side, her true youth works against her, while post-conversion, her income and savings are nothing compared to the real sums that are thrown about on the political scale. Speaking of which, as fancy as it sounds, her inherited title is worthless and has no weight, but in the non-magical world, such things don't matter to most people anyway. Your worth is in your work and achievements, regardless of where you are from.

Ai is a nobody in the magical world, and has barely any marketable or stand out skills as a non-human, especially when compared to the more acceptably near-human yokai. Meanwhile on the non-magical side, she has had 20 years experience dealing with the ins and outs of the Japanese judicial system, while studying sociology and rights movements around the world in her spare time. She has degrees in mechanical engineering and physics that are likely still valid knowledge to call upon when it comes to the core subjects and basic principles, even if it has been 40 years and they were taken under different aliases. A combination of kitchen experience and repeated stints through college, have given her a gift for making five star meals out just about anything with the right ingredients, up to and including instant ramen. As "Kobayashi Airi", she's left a paper trail anybody looking closely at would have to go back decades, to the pen-and-paper documentation of the disorganised post-war era, to even find any discrepancies. But most importantly of all, she has a thorough enough grasp of the mundane world, she sometimes fits in better than even some of those originally born into it

Ai has never been that great or relevant of a yokai. It doesn't help that she's never had a chance to.

In the non-magical world though? She knows she can be successful there.

Kiba stops by at one point to check on her, initially only seeking her opinion on what to do about their now gutted, toothless and forgotten rights movement. Realizing what she intends, he promptly calls her plan insane.

In the end though, he helps her anyway. Always one to toe the line of the law if need be, Kiba's the one that sets her up with someone capable of finagling all the annoying electronic details, computerized government data, and other falsified digital footprints that the average person leaves behind from birth in this modern day of the Information Age.

Two months after Blood Week, Kobayashi Airi finally makes her reappearance. Or something close to it. Sporting a fake arm cast and some bandages across her other limbs for good measure, she apologizes to her firm in person because she actually does want to say good bye to her colleagues, that unfortunately she cannot come back, or at least not full time. She tells them that her return was already delayed due to lingering injuries she received during Blood Week while visiting her family, that now complicate her ability to dedicate the long workaholic hours she sometimes previously did. But more than that, she now has a dependent to look after.

A distant niece, Kobayashi Aina, who has now lost everyone she knows in her sheltered, traditional countryside life, but her previously estranged Aunt from the big city.

"Aina" is enrolled in high school and due to begin her final once all the schools reopen. The main reason for this, and why Aina exists at all, is because unfortunately "Airi" not only has completely the wrong fields of qualifications for what she plans to do, but is simply just "too old" for what she plans to do.

Kiba questions why got to school at all, and why the need to even keep "Airi" around when "Aina" is technically old enough to live on her own. Ai tells him that real life isn't like an anime, and there are far more benefits in the long term, economic and socially, to being under her "Aunt's" wing, than the already strained, and now tragically overloaded and strained thumbs of a government institution or social worker in the wake of Blood Week.

Having not just classmates who by mere existence can prove her immediate background, but also an "aunt" capable of backing up her earlier history, will be invaluable if people ever go snooping into her past. For the sake of fleshing things out further, she also ropes Kiba into being a friend from childhood who also grew up in the same area. One that just happens to be filled with disguised yokai who are more than used to providing the background chaff and setting for each other's false pasts in a small, out of the way community, that supposedly still clings to a lot of traditional ways and is very isolationist.

The other reason she even can't stand the thought of getting rid of "Airi" or just "killing her off", is her attachments. It's something she prays doesn't come back to haunt her double life one day, but Ai refuses to even contemplate completely doing away with her old identity when the Freeman children have already lost their parents. Technically Alice and Bradley stopped being kids quite a while ago, and she has no idea when civilian international air travel will clear the crazy backlog that is still around even months after Blood Week, but Ai refuses to weigh them down with more death, and can not bare the thought of being forced to cut ties with them as well. Ai may have missed the empty-casket funeral, but even as she slowly "retires" Airi from the majority of public life beyond the bare minimum needed to keep up appearances of the ex-lawyer existing and helping her orphaned niece get back on her feet, Ai maintains a steady stream of emails trying to give what support she can to the Freeman siblings from her apartment in Japan.

"Aina" races through her final two years of schooling. Thankfully most of her classmates assume she is too traumatised, are traumatised themselves, or are just so caught up in the constant ebb and flow of the war to pay too much attention to her, especially once rumors of women armed like ships and moving on water first start to spread. Others are put off by her often steely focus, cutting intelligence, and her carefully controlled and reserved nature. Ai blames it as a side effect of being a lawyer for 20 years, where words, fact recall and logic are the weapons for defending her statements, making her points, and catching her opponents out on the logic and portrayals of theirs. Thankfully most of her classmates seem to write it off as just a result of her sheltered upbringing or what has happened to her, rather than thinking she is trying to be older than she should sound, or is a disguised Yokai that's forgotten how to pretend to be a high schooler again.

Objectives achieved, Aina finishes high school with stunningly high marks across the board that haven't been doctored as part of her created identity, and a small circle of maybe not close friends, but people who allow for a realistic circle of acquaintances and ex-classmates that she can pad out her social and online footprints with, via keeping in touch with them. She has a mostly air tight background now. She has the credentials to get into a good online course and start earning back her engineering degree as quickly as possible through her identity as Aina. But there is a spanner in the works of her plan.

Kanmusu.

They are not just magical. They are very public. And they are like a gateway drug for everything magical to start appearing out of the woodwork around them.

The ICW initially seems unable to decide what to do about them, or just out right ineffectual in their attempts, and the debates largely end up moot when there are very quickly so many of them in the non-magical public eye. It is obvious to everyone that just like the Abyssals, it will be impossible to keep a lid on things, even without the rumors that reach her ears of the intermittent failures of magical government attempts to cover things up.

It doesn't help that with the Abyssal crisis entirely out of control, the ensuing past two years of shake ups, deaths, and loss of public faith in many sitting governments, mean that there's been a slow shift in many of the balances of powers overseas. Previous pillars of conservative policy making, now face the undercutting presence of a newer, less hardline and more realistic, internationally and interworld-minded generation trickling up through the ranks to replace lost blood, empty positions, expanded departments, and voted out seats. Adding to the slow erosion of the Statute's once sacrosanct letter, are the stories of witches and wizards, sometimes even government employees, who are increasingly turning the other cheek to the spirit of the law whenever they can get away with it, for the sake of larger the crisis or cooperating around issues at hand.

Kiba brings her news that it isn't just ship-spirits soon bending the bounds of the Statute, if not outright poking holes in it.

Hushed tales circulate in the non-magical community of strange goings on and activities in the vicinity of kanmusu bases, especially in nations where larger navies like the USN or Royal Navy, make the effected population size larger more, or in nations like Germany or Japan where the magical governments still remain heavily hamstrung or decapitated two years on, resulting in a cyclical combination of lack of oversight and overworked people, slowly losing the grasp on covering up facets of magical evidence in time as they are forced to triage between incidents and breaches.

Spells the ICW had internationally standardised for government use in covering up magical activity for hundreds of years, are rumoured to be failing when used upon those in close proximity to kanmusu. Non-humans and beasts move increasingly freely and without fear in ever greater numbers, as enforcement of their movements is simply swamped under the tides of refugees from coastal areas, human and non-human alike. Previous rates of Statute breaches in the decade leading up to Blood Week, are put to shame by the new increasing regularity non-magicals are stumbling across creatures once thought extinct or mythical, and the public announcements of the discoveries to the world before anybody can stop them.

And most problematic of all, wards, charms and other forms of magic used to hide locations or disused non-magical attention for millennia, now backfire as non-magical militaries simply don't notice Abyssal incursions with their boundaries. Numerous islands and shore communities must now be defended solely by overloaded magical governments, law enforcement agencies out of their depths, or less than subtle local militias and defence forces. More than a few underground tales now circulate of groups sometimes forced out of desperation, or unable to stand by and watch as their neighbours are left defenceless, toeing the line of the Statute, if not out right breaking it in some communities if rumours are to be believed.

When Kiba tells her that there is a Kitsune possibly setting up shop almost on the literal doorstep of Yokosuka, Ai realises her plan needs to change.

She has severely overestimated how much time the Statute of Secrecy has left. The Change she once thought would take a lifetime, is now hurtling towards them like a flood roaring down stream to a battered and holed dam. One that some in the ICW still seem to think they can save by plugging their fingers in the holes.

Maybe with just the Abyssals, the Statute could have survived, albeit that's a very big maybe.

With shipgirls in the picture however, and the strange unraveling of secrecy and magical reveals constantly surrounding them, the plethora of holes left in the Statute by Blood Week are only widening. And between the ever increasing number of shipgirls, growing cases of under the table cooperation between wizards and non-magicals, breakdown of centralised government or ICW control in places like Japan, and the all consuming scale of the war as time has gone on, the rate at which the holes are growing is only getting worse.

Kiba reckons they only have about 10 to 15 years left once the war finally ends and the non-magicals begin looking for answers.

Ai thinks they'll be lucky if the Statute holds for another 10 years, with or without the end of the war.

Originally, her plan after high school, had been to pursue her Engineering Degree again, this time in the form of one of it's modern successor-splinters, Aerospace Engineering. But that would take at least four or five years at minimum. Never mind the training she would need after it.

And Ai had no plans to let the Statute of Secrecy fall, without performing some manner of contribution and claim to fame in this war.

Thankfully, the doing away with that portion of her plan is no real loss. Pre-war, an aerospace degree would have been a good foot in the door to a world where only the best of the best were allowed to qualify, and standards were high.

In wartime conditions, the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force is happy simply to take anybody who is of age to volunteer, has good marks, and shows an acceptable aptitude in the initial round of tests and simulators.

Ai has always been proud of using her smarts. But she long ago also learned never to be too proud to cheat. Plus, it's not really cheating if it is technically a natural advantage. It takes three years to train a green civilian into a pilot under the emergency wartime program that's rolled out towards the end of her tenure in high school, to fill the rapidly needed ranks of the JASDF that suddenly found itself playing improvised air wing to the JMSDF through the many desperate first months of fighting until the Kanmusu carriers first appeared. Ai makes sure to put those three years to good use.

She acquires a reputation for pushing planes to the edge of their flight envelopes, and very often stumping instructors by pushing past them. As restrained as she tries to be, ironically it's her own assuredness and confidence in her ability that almost trips her up.

What does she have to fear from the sky, when it's winds are her's to command? What is the real difference between the leading edge of a wing, and a very long sword you wish to protect from the damage of something else impacting it at high speed? Compressor stalls are only a problem if you can't moderate the pressure and airflow yourself. When you get down to it, a thrust-vectoring system is basically just a gimballing cylinder-shaped extension of the exhaust nozzle. Stall speed becomes less of an issue when the invisible winds around the plane can become greater lift generating surfaces instead. A lifetime of basics concepts and magical techniques, are subtly modified and surreptitiously evolved, giving Ai an edge to go with her instinctive piloting skill and confidence born of being a creature of the air and surrounded by her element.

However, to be a preternatural flier is one thing. Purposely pulling off flatspins during displacement rolls, and riding the razor-edge of control in high-g turns other trainees refuse to follow her through while being completely unflappable about it all, is something else. Combined with her reserved nature and often cooly focused attitude, some start to think her nonchalance and confidence is annoyingly pridefully, no matter how good she is. The fifth time her determination not to be out done for top marks gets the better of her, and she overestimates how surreptitious she is when putting her plane through a post-stall maneuver normally only achievable in a super-maneuverability fighter (or via cheating with the aid of wind magic to replicate thrust-vectoring), her fellow trainees settle on her nickname after yet another round of failed interrogation of her logic and sanity by the instructors.

It almost makes her laugh when they initially start calling her what inevitably becomes her callsign behind her back. Not because of how inadvertently right it is, or because of her skill in the air, or even her terrifying habit of making the trainer jets fly like birds rather than aircraft. She laughs at the irony of them settling on it because they think she is sometimes annoyingly prideful or oblivious, in her accidentally irksome confidence that she always knows and can list exactly how hard she's pushing her airframes, and is always unfazed by her constant dance on the razor-edge of performance and human limitations.

In retrospect, it's hard not to come off like that when she can't actually explain how she is really cheating in their faux-dogfights and training flights. They also say it sticks after the one time somebody attempts to insult her by saying her nose is big (Kiba assures her that her Aina disguise is fine).

For all her close shaves with her instructors and the constant stream of nearly impossible aeronautics and pilot skill, Kobayashi Aina passes with top marks. Her hair-raising flying style and unflappable analytic attitude in the face of danger, also help with getting the posting she eventually hopped for.

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 airframe was truly an amazing and versatile aircraft. Initially produced for the USAF in the 1970s as an interdictor air superiority fighter, 35 years of service to multiple nations around the world proved that despite originally designed for "not a single pound, air to ground", you could do just about anything with an F-15. The punishment the plane could take was almost as legendary as that of the A-10 Thunderbolt II. It's body produced enough lift, it could fly with most of one wing ripped off. The two engines were powerful enough they could for limited periods sustain a near vertical climb, and easily return the fighter home if one was lost. The Israelis had been successful with fighters mcgyger'd to drop bombs and ordinance, even before the F-15e Strike Fighter derivative had been produced. The Americans had once had plans to shoot down satellites using missiles carried up to high-altitude by F-15c fighters. But most of all, it has a thoroughly proven combat record, even before the Abyssal War.

At the start of the Abyssal War, the F-15j model had formed the mainstay bulk of the JASDF. However, the F-15j was based off of the air superiority focused F-15c, while the real multi-role and anti-ship aircraft of the JASDF had been the newer but less numerous F-2A, the almost phased out Mitsubishi F-1 ground attackers, and the aging fleet of F-4 Phantom II variants which had been mostly converted for recon and training duties.

Inevitably, an interim solution had been needed to supplement the overworked wings of F-2As and F-1s, themselves struggling to support the overloaded JMSDF naval-air elements in across an unending plethora of anti-shipping, sub-hunting hunting, and air-to-ground missions. At it's core, the crux of the problem was that the scale and naval nature of the conflict was one no-one had ever foreseen in peace time, when the Japan's primary ocean going threats and rivals had previously been the mostly submarine oriented fleets of of 1980s and 1990s Russia and China. Of course, with it's history of versatility, ruggedness, payload capability and range, the F-15j was an obvious choice for a limited run of modifications to temporarily support the F-2A until more could be produced, or the pipe-dream of buying a more dedicated strike aircraft off anybody who wasn't desperately using their's materialized.

Some of these F-15j pilots however, had not only risen to the challenge with gusto, but then embraced the high risk missions their roles took them on with flourish. Barring the element of surprise, the biggest threat Abyssal fighters posed to modern jet aircraft was weight of numbers, and that was really only if one was stupid enough to try and dogfight planes that considered cruising speed what some modern fighters stalled at. For a competent pilot, racking up air-to-air kills was like shooting fish in a barrel, at least until one ran out of missiles and cannon shells.

No, unless she wanted to pursue the now almost impossible to catch up with race for Ace of Aces, air-to-air wasn't where Ai saw her best chance of earning fame and notoriety.

It was in the ranks of the F-15j pilots of the 13th Air Wing, 7th Strike Fighter Squadron based out of Iruma, that Ai saw the future of her plan. The daring, fearless, and some would say mad collection of pilots, who with their modified F-15js, specialized in Anti-Ship and naval support operations, boastfully counting "warships, not warplanes". Often purposely flying into dangerously close ranges, and adopting dive-bomber and torpedo-bomber style tactics to ensure accuracy against such small and low aspect humanoid targets, the "Abyss Divers" as they were nicknamed, relied on modern speed and technological superiority to spoof or streak past Abyssal AA that was only really meant to deal with WWII-era planes, and secure blistering point-blank kills on everything from Battleships to Destroyers. It was a necessity of economy, as well as numbers and patrols.

The Abyss Divers of the 13th Air Wing had developed their tactics out of, and prided themselves on maintaining an almost flawless target hit rate during the early months of the war, when munitions had at one point run low, and many squadrons had been forced to utilize unguided bombs, rockets, and even gun-pods out necessity, as supplies of anti-ship missiles and guided armaments had dried up. And though eventually they had been resupplied, and the logistical bottlenecks had slowly passed, the tactics and pride in their daring performance remained.

Some thought them insane, for taking planes originally designed to dogfight at high altitude, and then tackling anti-ship missions with them as if they were doing wild weasel operations or flying like WW2 pilots on crack. Others saw them as modern daredevils and rockstars, with enamored fans charting the kill counts of ships, involvement in battles, and particularly ballsy attacks, almost as closely as those of air-to-air pilots constantly jockeying and pulling away from each other in pursuit of the various nations Ace-of Ace titles.

In a squadron of the fearless and confidant, Ai's self-assuredness and unshakable calmness allows her to fit in perfectly. In a squadron where skill, reaction speed, and more than a little luck can decide everything, Ai's "almost supernatural" flying and seemingly intuitive understanding of her aircraft in flight allow her to stand out. In the midst of the chaos of combat, where things go unnoticed, and when the lives of her squadron mates, allies on the ground or water, and sometimes even the fates of civilians are at stake, Ai rapidly discovers she has less and less qualms about cheating.

Over the next two years, Ai builds for herself a reputation of brazenness and skill, even among those considered brazen and skilled by everyone else. She quickly becomes renown for having the highest successful hit ratio in the squadron, and rapidly begins catching up to even the veterans in the 7th in terms of ship kills.

And with good reason.

The infamy she gained in training for pushing aircraft to the razor edge'd limits of their flight envelopes, soon follows her to Iruma and Saitama Prefecture, along with her tendency to afflict superiors and squadron mates alike with near heart attacks at her death-defying recoveries.

Ai regularly weaves and dives through flak barrages to attack targets via angles no-one else dares approach from, yet never gets hit.

None but the stupid or overconfident ever try to seriously turn-fight abyssal planes using jets, but some pilots swear to have seen her impossibly doing so on occasion when ships below are at stake.

Many soon speak of her uncanny ability to always put a bomb exactly where she means to, to the degree that someone notices she always nails Wo-Class Aircraft Carriers dead between the "eyes" of their headgear.

She so regularly pushes her F-15 to the edge when responding to air-support missions and especially civilian S.O.S requests, some suggest she should have been given "Overspeed" or "Impending Engine Failure" as a callsign.

The mechanics and techs are regularly baffled by the flight data and diagnostics that sometimes come in, suggesting over-g turns and strange wind and pressure phenomena around her aircraft during missions, that no-one else sees her go through or experience.

Eventually it's almost an expected occurrence for newbies in the squadron to call out that Ai has hit the deck or crashed, due to her tendency to sometimes put so much ordnance on targets, or wait until as late as she can to improve her accuracy, before finally pulling out of dumb-bomb dive-bombing runs at just above wave height.

On the one occasion Ai ever does take damage after an Abyssal battleship somehow catches her unaware from below cloud cover and gets supremely lucky with a Shinkansen shell, she awes the rest of her squadron by somehow managing to return to base and land with a vertical stabiliser completely gone, a wing looking like burned swiss cheese, an engine and intake cowling that's completely torn apart after ingesting chunks of shell, and a spider-web of cracks and soot blocking most of her vision and views of the damage out the front and right sides of her canopy.

Kiba tells her to be careful, as soon enough, rumors of her infamy and cool headed daring inevitably reach the Internet and civilian populace, likely after one too many stories of close shaves and ridiculous accuracy with her ordnance is regaled by squadron mates in a bar. The Okuri-Inu warns her that she is playing a dangerous game, being so brazen as she is compared to her original plan.

Rather than toning things back and shying away from the limelight however, Ai puts on airs of dutifully embracing the PR work when the JASDF rapidly begins to take notice of the coolly reserved daredevil flier that's surfaced among the ranks of the Abyss Divers of the 7th Strike Fighter Squadron. As the Statute of Secrecy continues to quietly crumble in the backrooms of military planners, and upon the under the table meetings between members of either world in aid of the war effort and common human empathy, the opportunity to quietly garner publicity and get her name out is simply too good to waste.

The JASDF's Public Relations and Recruitment departments love her. The kanmusu practically do their JMSDF counterparts' jobs for them, and while there are plenty of male aces to emulate and glorify across the spectrum, it's hard to find female pilots that break the mold of either "cute and genki", "boldly tomboy-ish" or "rigidly professional". Ai technically falls into that last one, but Ai adds something else to the mixture that they love for the whole new flavor it gives.

Aina Kobayashi is by the books, yes. Calm, reserved, dutiful, and polite with an air of something traditional about her and her mannerisms, even if she can be respectfully blunt and professionally cutting at times. But in combat, Ai rides that "by the book" element until she's just barely balanced on the page's edge, threatening to burst into flames along with the rest of the book with how she's dancing with danger and verging on disaster. Only to then recover, and as cool as a cucumber, turn back for yet another run through a hellstorm and pull out that would have most pilots piss themselves, if they didn't pass out first. It irks Ai with how close it is to her actual past, that Aina's background of being orphaned by war is also something "useful", because that apparently makes her sympathetic and adds a tone of "tragic hero" to her. More than anything else though, Ai's "formal but steeled" personality and nature make her marketable. Marketableto not only girls and more traditional kinds of parents, but also potential female recruits and even guys, in a daringly bold, action filled way that most "Yamato Nadeshiko" types aren't.

As someone once raised to actually uphold the kind of role the character archetype stems from, Ai doesn't really consider herself own and makes no claims to it. Inversely, this only seems to increase her popularity among both younger and older girls alike. The irony of fans gathering to her, because she doesn't play herself up to be more than she already is or as someone she isn't, is something not lost on Ai. The cynical twist as she is increasingly marketed as not just a skilful and heroic pilot, but also as role model by the JASDF, is one of the few things that makes Ai feel guilt about the deceitfulness of the eventual end goal of her plan.

And end goal which it is becoming increasingly obvious that, despite having lucked out with the amount of fame she attains by the end of her third year of piloting, she is still inevitably going to have the conditions for it met far sooner than she intended to.

Much to Kiba's concern, and even the worried comments of Alice and Bradley who chart "Aina's" rise to local Japanese stardom via the Internet and their emails with "Airi", whenever the yoke of PR duties is released from her neck, Ai soon finds herself returning to the 13th Airwing's home in Iruma, and throwing herself back into her missions with the Abyss Divers of the 7th Strike Fighter Squadron, whenever the opportunity arises.

She needs more ship kills, because magical creatures are honestly starting to come out of the woodwork around Japan like it's going out of style.

She needs to pull off more ever more daring attacks and saves, because there's a rumor circulating about how multiple WWII-era Japanese non-magical cooperative installations have been turning up in the JMSDF's hands over the past few years.

She needs more fame because the scuttlebutt trickling down from Yokosuka is that a battleship is marrying a Tsukumogami, and no one on either side of the divide seems to care about the ramifications of this knowledge spreading at this point.

She needs a rank promotion to something with actual weight and command to it, because according to rumors Kiba's picked up, while "Aina" has been fighting, Ai's been out of touch with the magical world and the Japanese non-human community for so long, she missed the JMSDF's Kitsune having more success making in roads with non-magical government officials than her.

Some of her squadron mates jokingly ask if she plans on emulating Adolf Galland. Flying off the books combat missions even after she ends up flying a desk, if she keeps up with her antics and finally terrifies the JASDF into clipping her wings. Kiba warns her that she's seriously pushing the line now.

The Okuri-inu shows her a video someone caught on camera, of her F-15 charging through the rain and out to sea on yet another mission to pick off whatever Abyssals have managed to jump someone out of range of the normal kanmusu CVs and their summoned aircraft, or that only the supersonic jet fighters will get to in time. To the layperson, the shifting ripples of white around the aircraft could just be written off as Ai's aircraft breaking the sound barrier. So of course, some particularly eagle eye'd fans and aviators just had to notice that it's not, and while they can't tell what exactly it is, they can tell that it's the result of the plane flying through the rain at high speed.

If the camera had been capable of higher capture quality, they might have made out the shield-like sheath of wind surrounding the aircraft, only made visible by the splatter of the rain she flew through. The shape of which sported a lengthened, streamlined form with canards and thrust vectoring nozzles, lending itself an image almost akin to an F-15j wearing the invisible skin of a stealthier version of N.A.S.A.'s F-15 A.C.T.I.V.E. technology demonstrator.

For the first time in a long while, Kiba gets mad.

He warns her that she is not just getting sloppy, but lax to a degree that is endangering not only her, but also himself and everything they have respectively worked for on different sides of the magical divide over the last decade. If she gets caught or they get found out before the Statute of Secrecy actually falls, they will both be in oceanographicly deep shit.

He accuses her of getting lost in the fame and acceptance of the "Kobayashi Aina" she has created, becoming the mask more than her actual self. He verbally tears into her, wondering if she has lost sight of her own goals, and the entire reason for the charade in the first place. Or, he wonders, was the JASDF enabled revenge killing of Abyssals the real reason she indulged in their whole scheme in the first place?

Ai let's him say his piece. Then she slaps him, for daring to think she would do all this and risk so much just for revenge, no matter how much Samuel and Margret's death's still stung after so many years. Ai cooly reminds Kiba what those two, who for so long were her closest friends, spent so much of their lives fighting for, and why she feels insulted that he would think she would toss it all aside for what could just as easily end up being only transient fame, or a pointless cycle of never-ending revenge against a seemingly never-ending enemy.

The command rank, Ai reminds Kiba, has always been the second-to-last piece of the plan for a reason. The final, indisputable crux that would validate and secure the relevance of her endeavor against any future naysayers or opponents of equality and change. Values that she has far from forgotten, and kept in her mind through every step, every flight, and every mission on her long journey, that has always far predated those terrible events of Blood Week, no matter how much they threw a spanner in the works.

But this key component of the plan, this promotion to any sort of position of wartime command of leadership within the Air Wing, with whatever weight and status it may lend, is one she has to attain before the Statute of Secrecy finally falls.

Because regardless of what happens afterwards; Whether she gets discharged from the JASDF for lying about not just her identity, but her species as well, whether she faces public backlash from her fans for being more of a mask than anybody else, whether she loses her friends and the respect of her fellow pilots for using magic to attain so much of her fame and infamy.

What matters is that she makes it in the first place.

In an environment where the human-centrists said her kind would never be able to help themselves but egregiously breach the Statute of Secrecy and be unable to lend themselves to the fight, people must be able to look at Ai and say "no".

They must, she emphasizes to Kiba, be able to say that the human-centrists were wrong. That it was entirely on the merits of her determination and skill, the she made it as somebody important and proved to be competent. All while being hamstrung having to hide her magic, the limitations of the Statute of Secrecy hanging over her head thanks to the ICW and the war-time magical Diet. An ace pilot, a warrior of a different, modern kind, forced to fight under the banner and command of a non-magical government, because her own didn't recognize her ability to fight for and defend her own country.

And she will, Ai reminds Kiba, make sure they have no choice but to acknowledge that fact. Come hell or high water, if all goes to plan, Ai will prove them wrong.

Because one day soon, the Statute of Secrecy will finally fall apart completely. And on the day that happens, on the day it is officially acknowledged that magic exists and the revelation becomes impossible for anyone to stop or ignore, Ai will commit to the grand finale of her plan and a revelation of her own. One that would prove the inequality of magical Japan undeniable, due to not only the history of her successful career in the opportunity filled non-magical world, but then her capability as a ship hunting ace, among most daring and skillful of Japan's pilots of the Abyssal War

Her own public revelation of Lieutenant Kobayashi Aina as the Hatamoto Saburo no Ai, would be indisputably fact.

Living, irrefutable proof that she, not even a daitengu, but a mere, lowly kotengu, could be a human's equal.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Outside the Administration building for the shipgirl side of Yokosuka's activities, the Sun had set and evening had begun to set in. Inside the office where Goto did most of the work regarding shipgirls alongside Nagato and Ooyodo, there was little sound except for them plugging away at such things. This monotony though was broken by a knock at the door which made them all look up in interest before Goto cleared his throat. "Come in!"

Moments later, the door opened to reveal Harry pushing a cart with food on it while behind him, Kongou bounced in with a bento of her own. "Mum? Ooyodo-Oba? I brought some dinner for you."

Practically leaping over the Admiral's desk, Kongou smiled some as she landed in his lap. As the chair rolled back and bumped into the wall, she held up her own bento. "And I brought some for you as well, Teitoku!" There was a twinkle in her eyes as she smiled. "You shouldn't miss dinner after all!"

Simply sighing, Goto shook his head with wry amusement. "Thanks, Kongou, I appreciate it." A sigh though escaped him as Kongou opened the bento and then held out some food for him to eat. 'Sometimes...'

However, nonetheless, he did begin to eat some as Harry handed out food to his mother and Ooyodo, both of whom thanked him. Then he brought out a thermos and filled it with coffee which they both smiled at. Sipping some of the coffee, Nagato hummed before kissing him on the head. "Perfect, thank you, Harry."

The smile that she got was one that always warmed her heart. Most boys his age would have complained or such. But Harry? Not once did he complain when he got any sign of affection from her. Quite the opposite as the black haired boy sucked it up like a sponge. Then much to her amusement, Harry got up onto her knee which made her chuckle, which made Harry blink. "What?"

Only shaking her head, Nagato patted his head as she grabbed some food. "Nothing, Harry." Chewing a bite of food, she hummed before sighing. "Just thinking that one day you'll be too big to sit on my knee."

In reply, Harry blinked and then looked up at her with a snort. "I'll never be too big to sit on your knee, Mum."

A snort from Ooyodo made them both look over at the Light Cruiser who waved it off. "Sorry, sorry, just had some food go down the wrong tube. That's all."

While Harry shook his head in confusion, Nagato's lips twitched. Part of that was due to the excuse that her fellow shipgirl had come up with. The rest though was due to the image that she suddenly had and she knew that Ooyodo likely had. Mainly that of a thirty year old Harry sitting on her knee. 'I wonder if he means that...' Taking another bite, the Battleship dismissed that thought for later. "So how is Hoppou doing?"

Enjoying the feel of his mother's arm around him, Harry glanced at her. "Hoppou? She's doing a check up for Tanya to make sure that the repairs are working out. But I already brought her some food as well."

Slowly nodding, Nagato considered that. "I see, well as long as she does not miss dinner herself and gets home on time."

When he saw her glance at him, Harry smiled a bit. "Regina is downstairs right now." After a moment, he chuckled weakly. "Um, speaking of... You might want to have someone refill the chocolate covered raisin machine..."

Ooyodo paused some and then sighed before facing palming. "Which one? The dark chocolate one? The milk chocolate? Or the white chocolate?" Getting nothing but silence, she shook her head. "So all three then... alright, I suppose."

Lips curling up into a smile, Nagato had the image of said Abyssal with her cheeks bulging from the amount in her mouth. All the time making happy sounds and smiling. 'That... is oddly adorable.' Quickly shaking her head before Nagamon could rise up more, Nagato slowly nodded. "That's good to hear." With another bite of food, she raised an eyebrow. "And your homework?"

Now grinning a bit, Harry snickered. "I got my Hogwarts stuff done last week. And all my non-magical homework is done, Fubuki-Nee was a big help."

Considering that, Nagato hummed a bit. "I see, then I'll have to thank her for giving you a hand."

With that, Nagato turned fully to eating what Harry had brought her as Harry enjoyed being held by his mother. To the black haired boy, that was always special. A throat clearing made him look over at Goto who was giving him a small smile. "Hai, Teitoku?"

Just taking a small break from eating, Goto gave Harry a considering look. "Harry? I have a scenario for you."

Sitting up a bit more straight, Harry nodded. It was something that Goto sometimes did, he would ask Harry his opinion on something. Once the youngster answered, Goto would pick it apart and give pointers about it. "A scenario? Sure!"

The Admiral watched him for several moments before giving a slight bob of his head. "Very well then." Almost a minute passed before Goto cleared his throat. "You are a Commander and need to build a new outpost. However, the area that it is needed in is well out at sea. Worse, most above water areas are just rocks at the mercy of sea and weather. Shoals really if that. There are shallow areas though which are perfect for land reclamation. Now, what methods would you use to make the base in as little time as possible?"

Arms crossed and head tilted to the side, Harry frowned some. Seconds passed before he looked at his uncle figure. "Um, is magic allowed in this, or not?"

On Goto's face was a small smile as he nodded. "Magic is allowed in this scenario if it helps set up the base quicker."

With a nod, Harry began to give it a lot of thought and furrowed his eyebrows. Unnoticed by him, Nagato gave Goto a raised eyebrow as did Ooyodo. But the Admiral simple smiled a bit while Kongou barely kept a grin off her face before they turned back to eating. Meanwhile, Harry reached over and pulled a notepad out from his pocket and began to write in it. Several minutes later, Harry gave a small nod. "Well... first thing I would do is see if one of the Kanmusu Motherships could stay in the area to provide a temporary base until the reclamation of land is done."

Slowly, Goto nodded at that. "Good, that might buy you some weeks at least. But you will also need to spend time guarding the reclamation area."

However, Harry shook his head. "Only if you use dredgers and the like for landfill!" At the raised eyebrow, Harry continued. "Well, depending on how many breakwall materials you got, a magical or team of them can do most of the work very quickly. The nearby rocks can be smashed with bombardment spells, and then used in the breakwaters or for covering the bottom of the area given as gravel. Then a wizard, or group of them, could use expanded trunks to transport proper breakwater materials or landfill out. Considering that a lot of them are able to be shrunk, you could carry the equivalent of several dozen tons of material in one trip."

Eyebrow raising, Goto slowly nodded. "That could work, yes. And it would speed up things very quickly as you would not need to have escorts for the ships bringing in the breakwater material. And also get large amounts of landfill right away. But! How would you transport it?"

A grin on his face, Harry tapped his notebook. "That's easy. It depends on how far you are from land. If you are less then fifty miles from land, you could use a broom or flying carpet for transport. If less then a hundred, Apparition would work if you set a flat spot on one of the nearby rocks, or maybe a reusable portkey. Further then that? Um, maybe a Owl Box to transfer the expanded trunks through back and forth."

Rather amused at what he was hearing, Goto chuckled. "Very good. But what about the buildings themselves? Once the land is reclaimed, you'll have to build the base itself. How would you go about it?"

Biting his lip, Harry considered the question before frowning. "Well... if we're talking either one magical or a small group... You could use expanded trunks to transport a lot of the materials. At worst, some wizarding tents set up would give temporary shelters and buildings. Or you could bring some of those mobile homes inside a trunk or two and use them while you build the more permanent structures. I guess that might also work for disaster areas to in order to set up temporary shelters."

Eyebrow raised as Goto nodded, Ooyodo spoke up for the first time. "If you have a small group? What if you have more then?"

That got Harry more attention as he chewed his lip. "Um, it's something that I read about when I was looking up stuff about familiars. It was in a book that described rituals, though it did not go into them in detail. Or at least not enough to be placed in the Restricted Section." At their looks of interest, he flipped through his notebook until he reached another section. "Um, it was last really used during the various wars and such during medieval times to move magical homes and even entire villages out of the way of destruction."

Utter silence met him as nearly everyone was staring at him. Finally Goto cleared his throat. "A ritual that could move entire buildings, Harry?"

With a shrug, Harry shook his head. "Pretty much? With it, you could transport a building a 'Day's Journey' from where it had originally stood. And by that, they meant how far a horse could travel in a day. But... like other rituals it fell out of use as it was easier to just put up a bunch of magical protections to drive away non-magicals from your home and it wouldn't work well against magicals anyways as they could just get there within a few hours and attack anyways. Another issue was some of the stuff used in it and the fact that you needed between twelve and twenty wizards and witches working together to power it. The whole thing took about four hours to complete."
Intrigued, Goto shared a look with the shipgirls there before Nagato caught Harry's attention. "Are there any other rituals that could be used in a military manner, Harry? But need a lot of people?"

Frowning, the twelve year old slowly nodded. "Um, yes? There was one that could create a giant, damaging storm that brought down lightning, high winds, and hail upon enemy armies. Or in winter, massive blizzards and extremely cold temperatures... but that had more then fifty magicals working together and took them most of a day. A similar one made it rain oil or pitch, it wasn't clear, and then igniting it. That one was about a hundred magicals... Or setting off a volcano, but that one took nearly four hundred magicals and a week to pull off." He shrugged not noticing the wide eyed looks. "But the book mentioned that those were all but lost and it was written two hundred years ago."

Just wincing as he imagined it, Goto shook his head. 'And that would be for the best and perhaps in that case, the Statute helped by taking away any chance of people using them which meant they were forgotten. By the Kami...' Clearing his throat, he raised an eyebrow. "There must be ones more useful for peace, right?"

Harry shrugged some. "Sure! There were ones for pleasant weather which might use only two or three wizards and could last a week. Those were used for festivals and such. Or to bring rain when needed to an area. Heck, it mentioned there was one that a single magical could use to increase the catch of a village's fishermen by sacrificing the first catch to the ocean and tossing it in to make sure that they had a bountiful season. Didn't say much if those were written down somewhere though. The book mentioned that most people simply stopped using them as spells were more easy, such as clearing the weather for a single day by casting several times. Or they just weren't needed anymore."

Needless to say, they all sat back some and imagined it. Eventually shaking it off, Goto turned their attention back to the original subject with him pointing out issues and Harry taking notes. Unknown to Harry, it was just another of the small sort of lessons from the Admiral.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Having left her tank, Shiromizu watched as Harry moved his wand in various ways with what looked like a box of stone in front of him. More then a little curious, she slithered over until she could more closely see what he was doing. An action which caused a smile to appear on Harry's face as he glanced at her. "{You're wondering what I'm doing, aren't you?}"

With a soft hiss, Shiromizu bobbed her head in a way that showed her slight amusement. "{I will admit that I am rather curious. After all, this is not the first time that I have seen you working on this.}"

Lips twitching some, Harry gave a small nod. "{Not too surprised really. But yes, I've been working on this.}"

Several moments passed before Shiromizu raised an eyebrow. "{Well?}"

Blinking, Harry looked at her as if confused. However, Shiromizu knew better due to the twinkle in his eye. "{Well, what?}"

For almost a minute Shiromizu held his eye. And then she reached out with her tail and gently whacked him on the hand with it. "{Don't pull that with me, Harry. You know what.}"

Just snickering, Harry nodded. "{Yeah, I know what." Examining the box, he hummed a bit. "{Well... Right now I'm working on Natsumi-Chan's birthday present.}"

That caused Shiromizu to blink in confusion for a moment as she looked at the box. "{Her birthday present? That's what you're making?}" At Harry's nod, she moved in to better see what it was. "{I see...}"
Moving the box around in his hands, Harry gave a small smile. "{You remember the ribbons that I made for Natsumi-Chan? The ones that I gave her for Christmas?}"

Very slowly, the white snake bobbed her head. "{I remember them. And I also remember just how happy she was to get them...}" She then gave her best friend a smirk. "{As well as the kiss she gave you.}"
A blush on his face, Harry thought back and remembered what happened. Hearing hissing laughter though, he shook it off and gave Shiromizu a small glare. "{It was just on the cheek though! Nothing else!}" Seeing her whip out a fan though, he blinked. 'I wonder where she keeps that... And should she be doing that openly around me?'

Let it not be said that Harry did not have some idea that Shiromizu was not a normal rat snake.

Fan still held in front of her face, Shiromizu let out another laugh. "{Fufufufufu! A kiss on the cheek, perhaps! But still a kiss!}" Her version of a smirk on her snake lips, she moved some until she had her head tilted to the side towards Harry. All in all giving the impression of having a secretive whisper, though anyone who was a Parseltongue or could talk with animals would understand her. "{Come now, you enjoyed it, did you know? Feeling our Nastumi-Chan's lips against your cheek... And recently against your own?}"

Once more, Harry's blush deepened and his eyes glazed over a bit. Moments later though, he snapped out of it and gave Shiromizu a glare. Unfortunately, it was ruined by the blush on his own face. "{It was a friendly kiss, that's all! Nothing else.}"

With the fan concealing her face, though not her mirth, Shiromizu let out a hiss. "{Perhaps, perhaps. It was quite friendly.}"

Taking a deep breath, Harry let it out. "{Do you want to know or not? I kind of need to get the next bit done before Natsumi-Chan gets here}"

Simply waving her tail at him to motion him on, fan now vanish, Shiromizu gave him a smile. "{Ah, my apologies. You were saying?}"

Harry frowned at her before sighing and continuing his work. "{Anyways, when I went to Natsumi-Chan's room when I visited, I noticed her ribbons were on her desk in a pencil case and that was the best that she could do for now. I asked her why they were there and she said that she didn't really have a place to put them to keep them clean. She couldn't put them in the dresser as they might get lost. And while she has a small, wooden jewelry box, she didn't want them getting tangled up with anything in there.}"
Now cluing in, Shiromizu gave a small nod. "{Ah, I see now. This is for her to put her ribbons into, right? And keep them safe and clean.}"

A smile on his face, Harry gave a nod. "{Yup! And... we're done.}" Looking over his shoulder at Shiromizu, he smiled a bit. "{Want to see how it works, Shiromizu?}"

More then a little curious, Shiromizu bobbed her head. "{As a matter of fact, I would.}"

Nodding, Harry moved his hands some and there was a click. Then he placed the box down and Shiromizu rose up to better see. "{Okay, it just looks like a rectanglar prism made out of stone, right? With the top having a depression?" Slowly, the snake bobbed her head as Harry gently grabbed one end of the box. "{Now, this end you pull out like this.}" Doing so revealed the inside of the box, as well as the walls being not too back thickness wise. "{And there you go! Now you can put something inside or take something out.}"

Just examining what she could see, Shiromizu eventually gave Harry a bob of the head. "{That is rather clever actually. But would it be able to secure them?}"

Rather then saying anything, Harry took several pencils before putting them inside. Then he slid the lid back into place and held it upside down and gently shook it. "{I got the design from the net for them, though it's normally in wood, not stone. But... I figured that Natsumi-Chan would like this better as it would last a lot longer then wood.}"

If she could have, Shiromizu would have raised an eyebrow at him. "{A lot longer then wood, hmm? And you think that Natsumi would like that fact?}" Seeing Harry freeze, she shook her head. "{Well, I would say so! After all, wood might rot away in a few years. This she would have for the rest of her life.}"

Calming down, Harry gave a weak chuckle. "{Um, yeah... for the rest of her life.}" With a glance at the time, he picked up the box and walked over to his trunk to put it inside. "{Anyways, I'm almost done with it. Just a bit left to do.}"

Head just tilted to the side, Shiromizu regarded him as he hid the box inside of his trunk. "{It's not done yet? What is left for you to do then, Harry? Because it looks finished to me from what I can see.}"

Only chuckling, Harry shook his head. "{Not quite. All the hard stuff is done and I just need to finish it up.}" Knowing that would not be enough of an explanation, he continued. "{Remember how I was looking up those cantrips? The ones that deal with minor things?}"

Curious, Shiromizu hissed a bit. "{I do remember them, in fact I believe that 'The Magical Handyman's Book of Handy Spells and Potions' had really caught your interest. Not sure why though.}"

Wagging his hand back and forth, the black haired boy smiled a bit. "{Some of the stuff in it was pretty interesting. It's where I got those spells that I used to make Regina's seat with outside the transfiguration. And also where the recipe for the potion I used to make a varnish for it. There was some other spells in it as well. One of them polishes stone though I need some sand of various grain sizes for that one.}"

That made Shiromizu stare at him in confusion. "{Sand? Why would you need sand for that?}"

Lips curled upwards, Harry shook his head. "{The spell uses the sand to do polishing of the rock. Rough sand first, then smaller grains until fine sand finishes it. After that, I use a rock polish potion. It's going to make the basalt shiny enough that Natsumi will see her reflection. Then I do the last bit.}"

Rubbing her tail under her chin, Shiromizu tilted her head. "{The last bit you say? And what would be the last bit here?}"

With a quick look at the door, Harry leaned in close to his friend. "{The last bit? Well... I do some final transfiguration to put Natsumi's name on either one of the long sides of the box. I got some gold from the cauldrons which I can fill those in with.}"

Several seconds passed as Shiromizu stared at him. "{You... That is how you are going to finish?}"

In reply, Harry simply nodded and frowned. Then a hiss escaped her followed by another. All too soon Shiromizu was on her back hissing in laughter which made Harry blink at her odd behavior. "{Uh... Shiromizu? You don't think that she would like it?}"

Once she was calmed down, Shiromizu reached up with her tail and flicked at her eye. "{Oh, quite the opposite, Harry. I think that she will love it as a matter of fact. Actually, she would likely treasure it, so you made her a good gift there.}" Leaning forward, she propped up her chin with her tail. "{I do wonder how you'll beat it though.}"

Frowning, Harry considered that. "{Well, I have a few ideas about it anyways. Especially depending on what I learn in Alchemy next year.}"

Shiromizu perked up a bit. "{What you might learn in alchemy you say? What sort of things?}"

Thoughtful, Harry laid back with Shiromizu slithering onto his chest. Gently stroking along her back, he hummed some. "{Well... most of the first year is just laying the foundations I guess. There's not a whole lot that we're actually going to physically do according to what I heard. It's mostly things like getting us used to the equipment, various processes and the like. But... we'll start off with some dyes and such. Heck, we're supposed to learn how to make Egyptian Blue, Han Blue, and Han Purple.}"

Needless to say, the mention of the last two made Shiromizu freeze before she turned and stared at him. "{Wait... you mean that you'll be learning how to make Han Blue and Han Purple? I thought that the method was lost long ago! How...}"

A frown on his face, Harry furrowed his eyebrows as he thought back to what he had read. "{Um... From what I read an alchemist went to China itself for an expedition and came back knowing how to make it. Mayan blue is another one that we might learn. Apparently it's simple enough for an introduction though we might not be able to make any of them until Fourth Year depending on how well we do.}"

Slowly, Shiromizu shook her head and internally sigh. 'Now that I can imagine getting a real reaction from Natsumi... Or any one else in her family.'

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Christopher had been annoyed when his parents decided on a cruise through the Greek islands. Sure, some of them had been really cool. But it was just so boring when on the ship between the islands themselves. There was all sorts of stuff for the adults to do, but not people like him or his little sister. It was so boring.

Suddenly, he was pulled from his thoughts by his sister jerking his sleeve. "Chris? What's going on over there?"

Frowning, he turned in the direction that she was pointing in and frowned. From what he could see, some of the crew were talking among themselves. More then that, they looked worried about something. "It's probably nothing... Hey, let's head back to the cabin, okay?"

Just nodding, Alexa let herself be pulled along by her eight year old brother. What Christopher did not state though was that he was worried as well. There was something in the air, as if there was danger nearby. He also heard about several boats disappearing over the past few days. Not big ones, just some sailboats mainly. And while he hoped that said people were alright, it did cause him to be somewhat nervous. So were the adults, though they tried to ignore it.

The siblings headed below deck to where their cabin was on the small Cruise Ship. Within minutes, they were both immersed in a game of Go-Fish. But in the background, there was still that nervousness, that fear. Their instincts telling them that something really bad was about to happen. Finally, Christopher noticed that Alexa's hands were shaking badly and nearly dropping the cards. Reaching out, he clasped her hands and gave her a smile. "Hey, what's wrong?"

Sniffling a bit, the girl looked around even as sunlight streamed into their cabin. "I-I'm scared, Chris. S-something b-bad is about to happen."

Even though he felt the same nervousness, Christopher put on a brave face. Sure, his little sister could be annoying at times. And others a real pain in the butt, but she was his sister. So he gathered her up into a hug. "Nothing is going to happen, Alexa. Nothing at all, so stop worry-"

Before he could get much further though, there was an alarm through the ship and the two siblings were looking around frightened. Then the intercom system came on. "Attention all passengers, this is the Captain. We ask for you to please remain calm, but an incident has occurred in Greece and we are making full speed to Santorini for your safety."

In the background of the announcement, the two could hear the bridge crew shouting though what they were saying could not be heard. But there was another sound that made Alexa look around. "Chris? Was that thunder?"
Also blinking, Chris frowned as he glanced at the window. "Couldn't be. There's no clouds after all."

Meanwhile, the Captain continued. "Once more, we ask for all passengers to remain calm and-"

Whatever else he was about to say was cut off as there was an explosion that caused the entire ship to lean heavily to the side. All around there were screams of terror and fear. But Christopher did not notice any of that as he was violently flung and only had time to twist to shield Alexa with his body before slamming into the wall and everything went black as Alexa screamed. "CHRIS!"

How long he was unconscious for, Chris didn't know. But eventually he came to and found himself wincing as his sister shook him while crying his name. "Alexa? What... what happened?"

Crying, Alexa shook her head and whimpered. "I-I don't know, Chris. Y-you hit the wall and then you were not talking or anything... And... and there was all sorts of screaming and yelling and people running around. Someone said something about they're dying and-"

A scream ripped through her as suddenly what looked like bullets punched through the wall of their cabin and out the other side deeper into the ship. Burying her face in her brother's chest, Alexa sobbed as Christopher slowly tilted his head back and blanched. The bullets, or whatever they were to leave such big holes had missed him by inches. It was then that the eight year old noticed that the ship was tilting to the side. Worse, he could now also hear the chaos going on outside their cabin and smell smoke and something else on the air. A metallic smell and one he recognized from one time when he got hit by another boy in the nose really hard.

It went without saying that he tried to ignore what that smell meant.

To distract himself, he ran over to where the lifejackets were in their cabin and pulled them out. Looking over his shoulder at his frozen sister, he shouted at her. "Alexa, come over here now! We got to get these on!"

Running over, there was more sound of gunfire, which Christopher recognized nearby. Tears running down her cheeks, Alexa let her brother put on the lifejacket onto her and then put one on himself. Sobbing, she looked up at him, pure terror in her eyes. "W-where's mommy and daddy, Chris? I want mommy and daddy! Why aren't they here!"

Deep inside, Chris felt a chill as he had a good idea why neither of his parents had come for them. And it was not a good one either, but instead of saying anything, he grabbed his sister's hand and gave her the best comforting look that he could. "I'm sure that mom and dad are waiting for us where the lifeboats are, okay? But we need to get to them."

Even though he could tell that Alexa knew what he had said was a lie, she nodded. "O-okay, Chris. L-let's go."

Grasping her hand in his, he began to pull her along even as the ship continued to list. Chris could feel it still moving forward, somehow. In fact, from the thrum under his feet he swore that it was trying to move faster. Opening the door, he tried to see down the hallway towards the corner that lead to the stairs. Then he looked to the other side and froze as he felt himself nearly hurl. Just swallowing though, he pulled her along not giving her time to see what he had before they were around the corner.

The sight of the body of some woman due to the high heeled shoes she wore, torn apart by bullets and painting the corridor in blood and gore was one that would stick in his mind for the rest of his life.

Both of them rushed along the last bit of the corridor until they reached the stairs. There was another shudder and Christopher stabilized both him and his sister before helping her up the stairs. Upon reaching the main deck though, the two found themselves in a scene from a horror film. One which made Christopher pull his sister's face into his chest as she screamed. All around them the deck was painted red with blood and dead bodies. And some not so dead bodies that still cried out for help or mercy, if not simply moaning and groaning.

Here and there though, there were still people alive though crawling around and Chris ducked down with his sister as more bullets flew over head as they made their way to where the lifeboats were. All Christopher did was swallow as he tried to get his sister to safety of some sort. 'The lifeboats... if we just reach them, we'll be safe... we'll be safe...'

When they reached them though, they found that there were none. All of them had either been launched or destroyed. In fact, Christopher could see one with some of the crew in it making their journey away from the ship. Worse, it was not yet fully filled... But before he could scream at the indignity of it all, the lifeboat was blown apart. It was what had done it though that made him freeze. It looked like some sort of dead baby with an odd helmet on it's head. From the helmet's tooth lines mouth area was a gun that fired at the ship and made it shudder.

Now, off to the side, he could see what looked like some sort of whale... demon thing. It wasn't doing anything at all, simply following them alongside. Meanwhile, the baby things kept firing at the ship, which suddenly turned sharply. Blinking, Christopher looked up at where the bridge was and stared as there was nothing there, just a smoking ruin. For some odd reason, he focused on the fact that the bridge was gone, which meant that there was no way that the ship could be steered. And yet, it was obviously being steered somehow.

Oddly, he swore that he could see a woman in the ruins of the bridge. She was wearing what looked like it had been one of the uniforms worn by the female members of the crew, but it was now in tatters and covered in blood from many wounds on her. There was fear in her expression, but also defiance and hate. For some reason, Christopher took strength from that before he blinked and she was gone. Then he felt the ship shudder and turn toward the bow where a shimmering wall seemed to be sweeping across the deck, the ship vanishing.

For some reason, he wanted to run from the wall. Pretend it did not exist and move away from where it was. But he was frozen in place, before snapping out of it and covering his sister's body with his own. Then the shimmer hit them and he felt every inch of his skin prickle. And then it was past and he could see that the parts of the ship that had vanished had returned. More importantly though, there was an island just ahead of them, and getting closer.

Under his feet, he could feel the ship's engines pushing as hard as it could. Behind them, the monsters, and that was all that they could be, continued to fire at them. Then the ship made a hard turn and he was thrown from his feet as he felt the ship hit bottom, the sounds of the hull buckling rippling upwards from below as well as a female scream of agony from around them. However, Christopher did not notice much of this as both him and his sister were thrown from the deck and overboard, slamming into the water below. And they were not the only ones.

Stunned, they nearly touched bottom before the lifejacket's buoyancy kicked in and they shot to the surface. Breaking free of the water, they both gasped and coughed the water out of their lungs. But then they froze as they saw the monsters come closer towards them. The big one opened it's mouth and what looked like a cannon came out and pointed towards where all the people were. Some were crying and begging while others glared and screamed defiance.

Christopher just held his sister close to him as she whimpered.

Just as he was sure it was about to fire on them and end their lives, something slammed into it's head and forced it to the side. An unholy screech ripped out from it and from where he was, Christopher could see a hole the size of his hand in the side of the head. Then it was hit twice more when it turned and a third hit nailed it in the eye, making it screech again as the eye shattered. Around it, the demonic babies were turning when they, too, were hit by something. Eyes wide, Christopher could see what looked like a giant arrow stuck in one of them before a second took off it's head.

Quickly shaking it off, the eight year old began to paddle towards the island as hard as he could while out of the corner of his eye he spotted where the projectiles were coming from. Above the ocean, a cliff rose upwards and it looked like people were firing something that looked like those things he saw in a museum at the monsters. What were they called... Ballista! That was it! Other ones had what looked like big crossbows in their hands and firing them at the smaller ones.

How long it took him to reach shore as he dragged along his five year old sister, Christopher didn't know. But he could just see the beach ahead when there was splashing and a large hand grabbed his arm and started pulling him quicker towards the shore. Whoever it was said something in what sounded like Greek and he turned to thank them and froze. Mainly because it was someone who looked his age, and yet was much taller and muscular then he was. Around her face fell russet hair, but it was her face that caught his gaze.

Or, rather, the one eye in the middle of it as he also noticed similar men and women helping the survivors out of the water. And then there were the people with bull heads that were tall as well...

Startling awake, the now fourteen year old Christopher sat up in his bed in a cold sweat. For several moments he sat there before holding his face in his hands and softly groaning. "That dream again... I'm never going to be free of it..." With a sigh, he tossed the blankets to the side and made his way to the nearby dresser where there was a pitcher of water which he poured into a bowl. Then he reached into the bowl and splashed his face with the water before leaning against the dresser.

After almost a minute, Christopher looked into the mirror. What he saw there was a young man of fourteen years old with wry muscles from a lot of physical work. More then that, one could easily tell that the teen spent a lot of time out in the hot, Mediterranean Sun from his tanned skin. With a sigh, he began to pull on his clothes. They were not much, just a wool tunic and some trousers, but it was something. His old clothes had long since gave up the ghost and there was no real replacement except for what the locals made.

Only stretching some, the young man walked out of his room and into the complex of tunnels that he lived in with the rest of the survivors. Apparently, the locals had some villages and one town on the island. But when the Abyssals attacked, they rapidly evacuated into the old copper mines on the island. Mines that had been expanded on for a year before hand after some of them had a vision of a coming time of troubles. Something that turned out to be right.

Coming to a stop at the mine's exit, he paused and turned to see a carved slab of stone. Walking closer, he looked at the cluster of names that were written on the stone monument until he reached two in particular. Two names that always brought an ache to his heart.

His parents.

Eyes closing, he thought back to those early days. He remembered the people of the island during the nights going back to the beach and to the ship itself to gather the dead. All of whom they buried away from the sea. Those identifiable by other passengers or identification on their bodies had their names written onto the gravestones. Others though were unable to be unidentified and buried with a marker stone. As they never identified his parents' bodies, they were one of those. Nowadays, said graveyard was peaceful, wild flowers growing around and on the graves as trees shaded them.

At a sigh, he turned and blinked some. "Had that dream again, huh?"

Simply shrugging, Christopher looked up at the female cyclops that was there looking down at him. She might have been only a year older then he was, but he only came up to her stomach. "Yeah, I did have it again, Delphi. Never going to leave me I think."

Reaching out, Delphi had nothing but understanding in her sea green eye. "Maybe, or maybe not. Who really knows?"

Lips twitching some, Christopher chuckled some. "You? After all, you do have some oracle in you. And you were the ones who through a vision knew where the ship was going to end up and so got your father and the others there in time to come to the rescue."

Much to his amusement, the cyclops blushed before looking away. "It was the only thing that I could do." Slowly, she turned back to the monument and her gaze saddened. "If only..."

Giving her hand a squeeze, the young man shook his head. "There was nothing that you could have done. Your letters about what was going to happen to the Greek magical government didn't get any response. And besides, thanks to you everyone who got saved did get saved."

Still staring at the monument, Delphi allowed herself to sigh. "Maybe." Shaking off her melancholy, she let out a breath. Both of them knew that she blamed herself as her family had passed on information about her visions of what was going to happen. But all they got was dismissal from the Greek Ministry of Magic. Now looking at the names of the parents to the boy beside her, she frowned some. "You think that they would have approved of us..." Realizing how that sounded, she blushed. "I-I mean how we're friends?"

Also with a blush on his face, Christopher nodded. "I think that they would. Mom at least would state that if we were back on the mainland she would take you shopping for clothes."

That brought a small smile to Delphi's face as she imagined it. Eventually she sighed some and shook her head. 'I wish that I could have met her.'

Meanwhile, Christopher was deep in his own thoughts of what might have beens before he dismissed them. "So... Where's Alexa?"

Rather amused, Delphi hummed for a moment before looking at a nearby rocky hill. "Where else? Up at the shack listening."

With a sigh, Christopher shook his head. "Really? So she's helping Old Jack with the radios? Those don't have the range to reach anyone."

Only shrugging, Delphi gave him an odd sort of smile. "Perhaps they won't. After all, it's using a crystal radio to power a spark gap transmitter to try and get a signal out since the Sirens have lost control of the sea to the Ship-Nymphs. It does not have that big of a range."

Glancing at her, the boy frowned and narrowed his eyes. "You know something, don't you?"

However, all Delphi did was grin at him, her eye sparkling with amusement. "Maybe I do. Or maybe I don't. The mists of the future are hard as ever to see through and understand."

Just groaning, Christopher rolled his eyes at her. "Great, you've gone all mystic on us. Anyways, might as well go and grab Alexa so that we can grab a bite to eat together this morning."

A laugh nearby caused him to blink and Delphi's eyebrow to twitch. "And then you join me on the slopes to watch over the herds, Chris. It is your turn to perform that duty today." Turning, they both found a female minotaur walking towards them. "Good morn to the both of you."

Taking a deep breath, Delphi pinched her nose some. "Chloe... May I ask what you are doing walking around with that? Do you have no shame?"

With a glance at where Chris was watching her with his face red, the fifteen year old minotaur grinned. While she did have a bovine head, in it's eyes sparkled amusement as she looked at her friends. "I will have you know that this is perfectly acceptable clothing for my people. We've worn them since we left Crete to come here, to Aeaea."

Eyebrow twitching, Delphi snorted some and crossed her arms against her chest before pointing at the minotaur. "More like to air out those udders of yours." Finally sighing, she shook her head and then shoved Christopher some. "Stop staring."

If anything though, that amused Chloe and she let out a snort. "He's welcome to it you know."

That done, the three began to walk along with Christopher in the middle. Much to his amusement, he was actually the shortest of the three of them. While he came up to Delphi's stomach, he came up to just collar level for Chloe. Both girls often teased him gently about being so small, but there was no meanness there. Especially as he often teased them back about how tall they were. Jokes such as asking if the other had enough oxygen or if they needed to keep an eye out not to step on them were common between the three. Granted, the two girls often got into competitions between each other. Something that confused the boy when he was younger.

However, with the recent comments from Delphi's much taller parents and Chloe's that the girls were getting to marriageable age gave him an inkling. Not helped by how both sets of adults often looked directly at him with smirks. And while he sometimes had... dreams... involving the two, Christopher wanted to be sure one way or the other.

With a look at Delphi, the fourteen year old had to swallow some. Russet coloured hair fell around her head to her shoulders while a sea green eye gazed out of her face. It certainly did not help matters that while still as muscled as ever, the cyclops had put on some feminine curves in the past few years. Glancing to his other side, he looked over Chloe who like his other friend was also muscled, the two having nearly bronzed skin from all the time spent in the sun and outdoors.

Unlike Delphi though, Chloe had a cow's head in place of her human one though she did have canines inside her mouth. And from the hips down, she resembled a black furred cow as well. However, it was then that Christopher spotted the ear with a golden hoop through flick and see her grin. 'Crap, she noticed.'

Softly smiling as her eyes became hooded, Chloe leaned in. "Hmm? See something that you like?" At his sputters, she softly laughed. "So easy!"

Delphi just sighed and shook her head some when Christopher looked at her. "She's right you know. You are too easy at times." Then she smirked. "Though that just makes you more likable."

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. Then Christopher caught sight of another female minotaur walking along. At her side though was a young, six year old girl. Nodding his head, he gave both of them a smile. "Iola, Amy, how are you both this morning."

The minotaur gave him a small smile as the girl held onto her hand. "We're doing fine this morning, are we not, Amy?" Slowly, the little girl nodded and Christopher's eyes softened. Her mother was a pregnant woman who was on board the Cruise Ship and had not survived long past childbirth a few months later. However, the minotaurs, Iola and her husband, stepped in and took her in as their own child. Needless to say, with a number of older minotaur brothers, no one was too worried about her protection.

In fact, Christopher pitied anyone who tried to court her once she got to that age.

After some more chatting, they parted ways and walked on. From where they were on a slight rise, the group could see the town below being slowly rebuilt now that they knew that the immediate danger had passed. Here and there they could see centaurs as well as the odd nymph. Though from what Christopher had been told, these centaurs were quite a bit different from some of the others. And in fact one time he asked about how he heard there was a group of them hidden in Britain, he found they had nothing but scorn for their cousins. 'More concerned with the stars then what is happening then and around them' was likely the nicest thing said.

Listening as his two friends bickered back and forth while trading barbs, Christopher just smiled. While he missed his old home, his parents, and what friends he had, he treasured the new ones that he now enjoyed. Though he did wish that he could show both Delphi and Chloe the outside world, even if they might not accept them. But he knew from what he overheard that was probably impossible.

But a guy could dream, right?

 

[darthcourt10]

NotHimAgain

This one took a lot longer to write than I expected. I had a few assignments that needed completing.
Invalids Everywhere

-----

As soon as the door opened, Benio slid through, rattling off "'comin' in!" and kicking her shoes off. Given that her clothes were a sodden mess of sweat and Haru had air conditioning, Tatsuya could guess that was what she was going for. He and the others followed at a more sedate pace, Maeda-Sensei twitching visibly and Reiko looking around in quiet awe. Apparently, whatever Haru was, she was a big name in their community. This wasn't actually that hard to believe, considering the fact that it was Haru.

The miko in question excused herself for a moment, leaving them in the room with Harry Potter-Nagato. It felt like someone was supposed to be saying something, but Tatsuya couldn't think of anything to bring up. He took a seat on the tatami mat, and Reiko immediately planted herself next to them. Maeda-sensei kept walking back and forth, pacing circles around the room while Harry looked on in amusement. Benio simply flopped over on the floor.

After several minutes, Haru returned to the room. She was carrying a massive metal tub that, by the sloshing and clinking sounds, she had filled with ice water. As soon as the base of the tub hit the floor, Benio peeled herself off the floor and dragged herself over. With sigh of relief she lowered herself in, closing her eyes comfortably. Haru eyed the puddle of sweat in the middle of her room distastefully.

"You're cleaning that," she said. Benio hummed uncaringly, scooping up some water in her hands and pouring it over her face. The miko shook her head, and turned to Maeda-sensei. "Now usually when Tatsuya-kun comes to visit, the subject matter is somewhat urgent. Let's get the important things out of the way, and then I'll get some tea. Does that sound good?"

"Wha—oh, yes. Yes. Definitely," Maeda-sensei started, then nodded frantically. "I mean—that is…" she trailed off, looking at Harry, who was giving Benio a confused look and wet T-Shirt focus on the miko.

"Don't worry," Haru replied. "Harry-kun is a student at Hogwarts. Whatever is going on involving the lovely young jorogumo, it is perfectly fine that he hears it." She paused. "Also, he's Nagato's son, so he's had even more experience with the supernatural." Tatsuya was almost instantly on alert. While he was aware of the Nagato connection, the idea that the friendly little kid who showed up from time to time was a wizard was more than a little disconcerting, considering that the first enemy he had ever fought looked like a bus driver up until the moment he hadn't.

"Nagato's… I… I'm not really surprised anymore, I guess," Maeda-sensei sighed. She groaned. "Ono family… Nagato's son… Let's do this." She crossed her arms, shrugging. "You're both familiar with the yokai reserves set up by the magical government?"

Haru hissed under her breath. "All too much," she replied.

"S-so, there's a town, district, Sakura-shinmachi, it's where I work, and where she lives, its… Okay. During the second world war, when yokai were moving around more openly, a few families moved into Sakura-shinmachi. One of the village elders, her husband turns out to be a former auror, and he's not very happy, but they talk him out of doing anything. He ends up befriending one of the younger ones, I think it was a kitsune, but that's not really important, and I'm rambling—"

"I noticed," Haru replied cheerfully.

"Anyways, the war ends, and the ICW starts moving back in, putting yokai where they want them. And the yokai… by now, they're pretty much part of the community. They have friends, the kitsune girl is engaged with some local kid, no one wants them gone. The old man goes to two of his friends in the government, and they help him set something up."

"And officially," Harry finished, "there were never any yokai in Sakura-shinmachi." Maeda-sensei glanced at him, startled, but nodded.

"Exactly," she said. "The old friends move in with their families to keep the secret ever getting out, and everyone goes about their lives. One day a kappa comes down the river. He's exhausted, he's been running from the government after running from a preserve. And the townspeople decide to help him out. They hide him, the aurors show up, and the old man sends them on their ways. And the Kappa decides that he wants to stay, because… cucumbers, I guess. The point is, if "free-range" or "escaped" yokai—" she finger-quoted, "—get to Sakura-shinmachi, they can hide out there. Everyone, magical, non-magical, is in the know, and we all work together to make sure no-one outside of town finds out, because if they do, the government comes down on us like the end of the world and we have our friends and families erased from our minds. And it feels like more and more yokai are drifting in and we're getting worried about whether or not the secret can actually be kept…" Maeda-sensei sighed, looking Haru in the eye. The miko was impassive, returning her gaze. The teacher looked at the floor. Then she knelt, planted her hands against the floor, and prostrated herself.

"Please," Maeda-sensei said. "If there's anything you can do. Help us."

Haru watched her for another few seconds, planted firmly on the floor. "While having people bow to me has always been amusing—" Harry choked and Tatsuya groaned, "—it's really not necessary in this case. I'll go get the tea. Then we can start on the details."

"Actually," Harry cut in, pointing at Benio. "What exactly is she doing?"

Tatsuya sighed. Had this literally never come up before? Then again, they had only been peripherally aware of each other this whole time. He back at Benio eyes eyes eyes, who met his gaze.

Should we tell him?

I don't see why we shouldn't.

Wizard, wizard friends. Some might not be as friendly.

That's what I've got you for, haven't I?

Please take this seriously.

Don't worry about it. We've gotten out of bigger scrapes than this, haven't we?

It only takes once. I don't want to lose you.

"If you two are done flirting," Haru cut them off, "you might as well tell Harry what's going on." Tatsuya and Benio fixed her with a joint glare, which was about as effective against her as throwing a ping-pong ball. They glanced at each other again. Even if the miko got some sort of twisted pleasure from toying with their heads, she was one of staggeringly few people they had met who was on the level. Tatsuya nodded.

"Benio's mother is a Yuki-onna," he explained. "Her older sister, Chihiro… I guess you haven't met her… She got the standard mix of characteristics. Weakness to heat, some kind of power over ice. Benio… just got the weakness." Harry turned to look at Benio, then flushed and directed his gaze higher.

"Need to keep my body from overheating," Benio confirmed for him, swirling a finger among the melting ice cubes. "Isn't always easy. Heatstroke would be a stupid way to go."

"I was actually thinking of bringing the matter up with you," Haru called from the kitchen. "You remember that enchanted jewelry you're so fond of making for your friends?"

"Huh?" Harry asked. "Oh! Yeah, I can do that!"

"Enchanted jewelry?" Tatsuya asked.

"Actually," Haru added, interrupting Harry's explanation. "I don't think I'd like to carry on two conversations at once. Maeda-san, would you and your student like to move to another room while Harry-kun discusses his new commission with his customers?"

"Uh… sure," Maeda-sensei agreed uncomfortably. Reiko pouted, but Maeda-sensei mouthed "Ono" at her, and she begrudgingly moved from her spot. Harry watched them leave the room, then turned to face Tatsuya again.

"So, here's what we were talking about," he began to explain.
-----

"You feeling any better?" Umi asked, handing Saki a mug of tea. The sick girl took the offered cup and blew on it.

"Not in the last five minutes since you asked," she replied. Umi laughed, and waved it off.

"Makes sense. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not exactly the most patient person in the world."

"Oh, I don't know," Saki replied. She took a sip from her cup and winced at the still-noticeable heat. "I think the subject has come up before." Umi laughed harder. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"I'll be fine," Umi reassured her. She looked up at the clock absently. "Huh. Namiko's patrol starts in five."

Saki felt a pang run through her body, sore as it was. "I guess that'll be a few hours, then," she said. Umi was noticeably silent.

"Should be, yeah," she admitted. "And then she'll probably pick up something to eat from Hoshou. She likes the food there." Saki blinked. That was an odd subject for Umi to start on.

"Umi?"

"I'm no good for her," Umi said quietly. Saki laughed, and then she tried to stop laughing because it hurt her sides.

"Don't be ridiculous," she snickered. "You two have been together for literal years. What's bringing on something like this all of a sudden?"

"Who did she talk to about seeing Haneoka first?" Umi asked.

"I… well, me, but—"

"You. She didn't say anything about it to me for another day." Umi sighed. "She can't talk to me. Not when it really matters to her. But she can talk to you. Hell, you're the first person she thought to go to!"

"That doesn't mean you're meaningless to her," Saki pleaded.

"No, it doesn't," Umi agreed. "What it DOES prove is that I can't really be there for her when it counts."

"You and I both know that's not true—"

"No!" Umi cut her off. "You do not get to turn this into another self-pity-I'm-not-good-enough session! The point of this is that she can reach out to you, but she can't reach out to me!"

"But…" Saki attempted. She let the failed sentence go, looking down into her cup of tea. "What you two have…" Umi groaned.

"Are you even listening to what I'm saying?" she asked. "Namiko and I… We've always moved at my pace, going where I thought we should. Even after I followed her into the military. Now? I… I don't know how much of that was just me dragging her along. I wish I could tell, but I can't. I… can't trust myself. But I can trust you—"

"Isn't that just the same as you were saying, though?" Saki exclaimed frantically. Pain shot through her head and she brought one of her hands up to grip her scalp.

"Woah, woah, hey—lean back, slowly," Saki didn't react to Umi helping her lie down. The headaches honestly weren't that bad, but staying upright was still a bit tiring. And now she probably had to get the two of them to talk this out. Brilliant.
-----

I would say something snarky about how life isn't a soap opera, but from time to time you get people who just end up dealing with all the drama.

Well what do you think, sirs?

 

[darthcourt10]

Barricade

"They fought and died in defense of My citizens, their homes, for My very nation, and were forced to do so in secret or be labeled criminals. Criminals! We have reports here, confirmed reports, that several yokai were not just sent back to their so-called 'reserves', but were either imprisoned or killed for their 'temerity in leaving their designated zones for unwanted and necessary assistance'. These magicals knew Our defense forces, were fighting not only for their lives, but for the civilians across our islands. And they condemned these yokai to further persecution for risking what little, no, everything, they had in order to help us? They had the very gall to condemn kami. This will not stand. This will not stand. Call Our daughter at Ise, Abe-san, and the heads of every party. They are to present themselves before Us at the earliest possible moment, here at the palace, and We will not accept any excuses for those unwilling to do so. They will learn what We have have learned this moment. They will be made to understand as We understand. And We will not let this travesty rest."

-=-

"Prime Minister, We have heard through Our own sources, as well as those that report to you, of numerous magical beings and others who fought to protect Our Kingdom and Our subjects, yet were persecuted by the hidden society within Our Realm. Many of whom were made to flee before members of this society even as they freely offered aid and succor to Our subjects, sweat and blood in defense of Our shores. Minister? Our left hand rests above their heads. Our right hand holds tightly the Sword of Offering. Make it clear to this hidden Ministry what that means. Make it very clear. He who strikes at those whom would defend The Crown, threatening imprisonment or death upon these defenders of Our realm, will see the unyielding gaze of The Crown fall upon them, backed by Our fullest might."

-=-

"I was elected during a war we didn't start, that came from nowhere, which targeted everyone. These somnbitches in MACUSA, pardon my language or not, had the sheer nerve to attack these 'hidden' citizens who helped us. I don't care if they're people like us, little green men from Roswell, actual Sasquatch, or an actual Jersey Devil. They bled for us in secret, and then were chased off, if not outright shot at, while still in the middle of helping us. I don't care if it was bullets being used, or spells being cast, it was still lethal force aimed at them. All of them, every single one that these reports refer to, have been here for centuries or more. They're as much American citizens as anyone else, and their actions in each of these incidents proves that. I outright refuse to act like those who sat in this chair and allowed natives to be put in chains and shipped off to reservations, or what happened back in the '40s. Never again. The folks at MACUSA who couldn't see beyond their petty bigotry to see we were dying out there, and still turned them away? I remember the Hellfighters, the Tuskegee, the 442nd, and many others, and I dare anyone tell me that they still weren't treated like filth while doing actions that would make most men blanch with fear. We won't go back to that. We will not go back to that. Never. Again. So I want these people. I want them badly. I want them found, and I don't care if I have to drop the entirety of the FBI and NSA on their heads, but I want those bastards dragged in chains before the courts, and if brings this damned 'Statue' to its knees, then so be it. And I want those who bled for our citizens to be allowed to stand in plain sight before the cameras and be honored in deliberate spite of those who would instead damn them."

- Excepts from 'The Hidden War: How Global Politics Helped Lead to the Fall of the Statute of Secrecy and the Role Magical Species Played During the First Abyssal War', published April 2024

 

[darthcourt10]

Lord K

A.N./ Disclaimer; I am not a pilot. I am not a lawyer. I am also pretty sure the Japanese probably use something different to Multiservice Tactical Brevity Code.

But seeing the pretty positive reception Ai got, I decided to clean up and modify two earlier draft snippets into something that hopefully also works.



Flight and Fight

Ai scans the waters below. Like the sea cormorants their flight has been named after with their call-sign for this mission, she watches for anything out of the ordinary in the white caps dancing beneath her wings of steel. And then she spots it, a much longer and unnaturally straight length of white, that cuts and snakes far to cleanly through the rest of the waves, even as the sea diffuses it.

The radio crackles, as out of the corner of her eye, she watches Umiu 2-2 pull up into the wingman position just off her starboard beam.

"Whatever it is, it's small. Radar return is faint. The track keeps dropping."

"Copy that Kudzu. Returns are faded, but I see it. I have visual on the wake."

Even as Ai affirms the detection of the similarly weak radar contact Kudzu only just managed to notice by chance, Umiu 2-4 chips in. "Taikomochi here, I have eyes on the possible wake as well, but nothing on radar at all."

"Well I don't see shit," grumbles the fourth member of Umui Flight in consternation. "There's nothing on my scope either."

"And that's why we call you Boke", quips Taikomochi to Umui 2-3 automatically.

Ignoring the by play between her fellow pilots, Ai sizes up the distant wake below with a hawkish, assessing gaze. "Smaller than a fishing boat then", she mutters over the radio to the others.

"Kanmusu maybe?" offers Boke with no real conviction.

"This close to home without an IFF?" Taikomochi scoffs. "Unless they're wanting to invite a blue-on-blue, they'd still be squawking. Maybe another three hundred clicks out, I could understand going dark, but there's too many air patrols through here to risk being mis-I.D.'d."

Though the others can't see it, Ai nods in agreement as she takes a moment to glance down at the map among the papers strapped to her knee-board, with it's assortment of shaded circles and patterned zones that adorn the area today's patrol path is supposed to take them through. "Hachijo-Jima is roughly 600 clicks ahead of us, on the nose. Anything out here would be just beyond range of the monitoring station."

"So Abyssal then?" Boke's tone states the obvious suspicion held by all present.

"Could always be a sub or something running quiet," Kudzu openly ponders. "And there are all those new "friendly" Abyssals that've been periodically appearing out of the blue the last few years."

"The only good Abyssal's a dead one," mutters Boke darkly, a well worn subject Ai can practically imagine Taikomochi grimacing at while Kudzu has to stop himself from making a emphatic counter-point about.

"Well, it always means less for us to kill, so at least there's that." Out of the corner of her peripheral vision, Ai then catches a glimpse of Taikomochi's helmet shifting to gaze quizzically in her plane's direction. "What do you think Tengu?"

"I think we should check it in first." Ai's tone immediately shifts, one all that is business and command as she switches frequency.

"Umiu 2-1 to AWACS Sora-Me. Contact, contact, visual on skunk bearing 049, range 10 kilometers, azimuth is 060, aspect unknown. Radar fade, no IFF."

"Really Tengu?" grumbles Boke over the unit frequency. "500 yen says that's an Abyssal."

"Suckers bet" counters Taikomochi as Ai pointedly ignores them and continues with official procedure.

The AWACS' crackled response isn't long coming, what with her identification of an unknown vessel small enough to barely show up on radar, yet still be so far out to sea.

"Sora-Me to Umiu 2-1, confirm flight, posit and track?"

Ai glances across the control board of her cockpit, instantly absorbing the relevant information with the ease of reflex and experience that immediately allows her to flick her assessing gaze back to tracking the mystery wake cutting through the waves below.

"Umiu 2, flight path bearing 365, Angels 30, 140 kilometres east of Ogasawara, returning to Home Plate Iruma from Strike-BARCAP perimeter."

There is a pause, likely the AWACS technicians attempting to work what limited technological magic they can against a surface vessel so small, and querying whatever Intel is on hand, before finally the controller answers.

"Sora-Me to Umiu 2-1, that's tumbleweed on your skunk. Negative radar contact at this time. Stand by for friendly check."

Just then Boke chimes in over the radio, concern raised in his abrupt interjection to her communication with the E-767, that is now likely trying to determine who they might be looking at, on the off chance their unknown really is a friendly.

"Umiu 2-3, confirmed visual of skunk. Is that one big wake, or a bunch of them?"

Frowning as the scrutiny of her focus intensifies, Ai then realizes what the element lead of their flight has managed to pick out and everyone else missed. The long streaming lines of white that Ai initially thought to be the parting wash of the wake, are actually multiple smaller wakes themselves. The unknown form they took to be a lone uncertainly sized vessel on the water is in fact multiple ones, moving in close enough proximity to create the single fluctuating reading as the already weak contacts' returns merge and break up.

"Good spotting 2-3. Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, be advised, Skunk may be heavy." Ai stares down intently, trying to guess the thought process of the unknowns below. "Smaller skunks are either in a double column or close escort with larger unknown vessel in the center."

"Classic AA formation," grumbles Boke. "They probably know they're in an air patrol zone now."

The radio crackles as Kudzu then chips in. "Umiu 2-2, I'm counting five- no, seven skunks. No confirmation on class yet."

"So that means.... I'm guessing a small light cruiser or some sort of tender, and maybe some destroyers or subs," suggests Taikomochi. "Anything else would be providing less fluctuation when they merge, or stronger individual returns."

Kudzu disagrees. "There's a lot of chop down there today. Dipping between the troughs could be worsening the returns dropping like they are. Waves that high are also gonna make getting radar locks a pain as well, if it really is a bunch of the low in the water small fry."

Ai grimaces at the thought as she raises the AWACS once again.

"Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, skunk is definitely confirmed heavy, I say again, skunk confirmed be heavy. Squadron or divisional in size and formation, multiple destroyers or subs, flagship possibly I.D. as a Light Cruiser."

"Uh, rodger that Umiu 2-1. In that case, Sora-Me confirms friendly check complete. Skunk heavy matches no known friendly force within your AO at this time. You do have one friendly kanmusu sub within the AO however, last known bearing from your current position 170, distance 5 kilometers, azimuth 010."

Ai looks down and scans the water.

"Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, no visual on friendly sub. Umiu Flight confirms only skunk heavy. Skunks are Wall, bearing 048, azimuth 285, aspect.... aspect is 280."

"Copy that Umiu 2-1. Radar, IFF and Radio contact are all still negative at this time."

"Roger Sora-Me. Umiu 2-1 requests course deviation for Umiu Flight to close with and confirm identity of unknown Skunks."

There is a pause, likely as the development in the mission is logged, and the request is momentarily run up through the proper channels and chains of command before the AWACS controller crackles back to life over the radio.

"Umiu 2-1, you are cleared for course deviation. Set new heading to bearing to 050. Skunks are Warning Yellow at this time, you are Weapons Tight until confirmed I.D."

"Roger Sora-Me, Warning Yellow, Weapons Tight. Will Raygun targets, then attempt to visually I.D. if still unresponsive. Umiu 2-1 out."

Almost immediately as the group begins banking into a formation turn toward the new heading, Taikomochi can't resist adding his two cents over the radio. "You know, the day we ever do one of these skunk checks this far out, and it actually turns out to be a deaf kanmusu or a very ballsy fisherman, is the day I eat my helmet."

"Why do you always go through with this Tengu?" Ai can practically hear the exasperation in Boke's voice. "You know we always end up buzzing unknowns like these and using the Mark 1 eyeball to realize "oh, hey, these are Abyssals" anyway."

"By the book exists for a reason." Ai carefully reminds the two of them as Umiu Flight begins to tighten up their formation after the slow bank to their new intercept course. "We stick to it."

"Yeah," chimes in Taikomochi. "Right up until they start illuminating us with their radars- speaking of which, oh shit, what do you know- Mud, Mud, RWR alert."

"I read it too. Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, I have Mud alert, ground threat emitting, bearing 047 hot, type registers as world-war era naval surface-to-air." Ai rattles off with calm and authority unfazed by the sudden alerts from her own aircraft as well.

"Sora-Me confirms, that's your skunk. Radar signature is captured, and signal analysis suggests Abyssal Anti-Air rangefinders are now radiating. Warning Red."

"Oh joy" mutters Kudzu, while Ai takes a glance at the readings on her control panel.

"Umiu Flight, drop tanks, switch to master-arm on and what state check."

There is the sound of already empty external wing tanks detaching with dull clunks, and numerous engines abruptly compensating in relief for the lack of drag, while furious mental number crunching and gauge checking takes place (as well as more than a little grumbling about her pedantics). Finally everyone then starts rattling off their conditions.

"Umiu 2-2 to Flight Lead, dropping tanks, master-arm on, weapons hot. State is Active 4, Radar 2, Heat 2, GP 1, 10 minutes at full burn until joker fuel."

"Umiu 2-3 to Flight Lead, dropping tanks, master-arm on, all hot. My state is Active 4, Radar 2, Heat 2, GP 1, 10 minutes at full burn until joker fuel."

"Umiu 2-4 to Flight Lead, dropping tanks, master-arm on, board is hot. State is Active 4, Radar 2, Heat 2, GP 1, 10 minutes at full burn until joker fuel."

"Umiu 2-1 to all, dropping tanks, master-arm on, all weapons hot. Active 4, Radar 2, Heat 2, GP 1, 11 minutes at full burn until joker fuel."

Ai nods at the loiter time available being roughly in line with her math after the uneventful and lazy patrol so far. With no need to expend any of their armaments, everyone still carries their full load out of four harpoons, two pairs of sparrows and sidewinders on the off chance they get into an air-to-air engagement, and one GBU-10 Pavway II each, in case they encounter anything feeling like it wants to be particularly difficult to target with the Harpoons. With only 10 minutes at max power though, they will only have a couple of passes before being forced to burn back up to cruising altitude and continue home.

"Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, request to continue present course, and engage hostile skunks."

"Sora-Me to Umiu 2-1, request cleared. Skunks confirmed as Abyssals heavy. You are cleared hot and weapons free. You may engage hostile Abyssal force at your discretion."

"Umiu 2-1 copies all, Umiu flight is Judy."

"Acknowledged, Sora-Me out."

Even as the AWACS signs off, there is a collective restrained cheer from her fellow pilots, with even Kudzu joining in.

"Alright, time to show them why we're called Abyss Divers!"

"Let's get this show on the road!"

"Hahaha, you said it! Time to kick 'em to the curb!"

"Daddy needs a new kill-assist silhouette!"

"That's if you even get your licks in before Tengu kill steals the flagship again."

Ai rolls her eyes in friendly exasperation.

"Okay, cut the chatter Umiu Flight. Kudzu, with me, Taikomochi, you're on Boke. We do this hard, we do this fast, we do this clean, and we do this together. No single ship attacks. This sea state is going to be make it hard for the Harpoons to get a lock, so we drop to Angels 30 first and try our luck. If no joy, we descend Angels 20 and go around again. If still no joy, we swap to Paveways. Copy?"

"Umiu 2-2 copies, you have the lead."

"Umiu 2-3 copies, ready to begin run."

"Umiu 2-4 copies, holding with 2-3 and ready to kick ass."

Ai sighs at the unprofessionalism, even as she can't help but feel a cruelly hawkish smirk fight to overcome her usual implacableness beneath her oxygen mask. Her heart beat increases in intensity, preemptively excited by the expected rush of combat, while something ancient in her veins grows heated and hot with predatory thrill at the thought diving down upon the Abyssals below.

Looking down at her control panel once more, Ai's gaze lingers on one item in particular before she momentarily lifts her left hand from it's readied grasp the throttles. While officially frowned upon and something that's supposed to be a relic of aviation stereotypes and WWII movies, off the record no one bats an eyelid at the tendency of many pilots to stick keepsakes and totems upon their cockpit control panels. Some pilots have photos of their significant others or prayer beads, as cliche as it sounds. Ai has on more than one occasion flown escort for a bomber crew who have been repeatedly in trouble for the dashboard hula-girl figure they bring with them for luck.

Ai has an offuda, sticky-taped out of the way on the wall of the foot well where she can still run a hand over it. Most of her fellow pilots think it is a charm of some kind, a rare instant of her traditional nature and upbringing clashing with her no-nonsense practicality. None of them realize that it's purpose is protection of a much less direct kind than just luck in combat. Against the already constant movement and shifting of the plane as Ai's F-15j roars through the air in the lead position of the flight formation, it is impossible to notice the slight ripple in the coursing winds around the plane. One that hides what Ai feels, as the F-15j around her suddenly becomes so much more than just metal and science limited to the controls in her hands, quickly developing a rapidly diverging handling profile and nuances until it is almost an entirely different aircraft; Speed and maneuverability that would put the even the most agile of the F-15's successor generation to shame, while still looking visually identically in level flight to the untrained eye.

At least, until she starts drastically maneuvering.

"Umiu 2-1 to all, prepare to engage."

Now finally unburdened by everything unnecessary and with freedom to attack as they wish, Ai allows a small smile to grace her lips as she noses down and begins shedding altitude to tune of the weak, growling, warble of her Harpoons attempting to gain a lock.

"Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, we are beginning our attack run."

Even in spite of their normally over-the-horizon anti-ship missiles struggling to find a bead on the Abyssals dipping in and out of the swells below, the thrill of the attack is infectious. Not even the first ineffectual puffs of flak, that are quickly left impotent and unable to keep pace with their speed and movement, can ruin the sense of the hunt, nor the repeated "No Joy"s as they make pass after pass without success.

Finally Ai thumbs her HOTAS and scrolls down to what is her much more preferred manner of dealing with Abyssals anyway. One where it is far easier to disguise the use of successful magic supplementation, as extreme skill and simple luck.

"Umiu 2-1 to Sora-Me, Harpoon runs unsuccessful. Too much sea interference for sufficient radar lock. Umiu Flight, switch to Paveways." Ai takes a moment to look below, plotting in her mind the optimal course to drop down on their hopefully terrified and helpless prey like a hawk upon chickens. "Everyone to afterburner, we'll boom-and-zoom them to outrun the flak wall, and go for a top-down attack. It's time to dive into the fireworks."
------------------

The footage is grainy, and even if it is in color, the instability and wobble of the almost submerged platform that captured it adds to the issues of attempting to record from over a kilometer away. Above in the sky, a quartet flight of planes descends into view, hurling themselves out of the sky like the dive-bombers of old.

Three of the planes detach the largest of the bombs underslung on their centrelines, and quickly pull away, engines leaving shock-diamonds as they claw for altitude and weave to escape the barrier of flak thrown up by the Abyssals at the last minute.

The fourth plane doesn't stop.

Without fear or caution, it spirals and rolls through it's meteoric downward dive, somehow managing to find an angle that lets it streak through the blooming cloud of Abyssal fire and shrapnel with blistering unscathed speed. Down and down it continues to hurtle, with such unwavering flight towards the ocean-bound figures directing all their fire upwards, it could almost be assumed the pilot is already dead or trying for a kamikaze attack.

Then it slows, the F-15j showing it's obviously modified lineage as full flaps, air-breaks and non-standard dive-breaks deploy, bearing the previously hidden painted trim of the Abyss Divers of the 13th Airwing, 7th Strike Fighter Squadron. Even as the aircraft hemorrhages speed, it's descent is still one of terrifyingly riveting chicken as it continues to get closer and closer to not only the Abyssals, but also the unforgiving white-capped waves of the ocean surface.

Finally, the F-15j lurches as the massive bomb detaches away from it's body. Rather than immediately pulling up however, the F-15j wobbles as in a display of almost inhuman timing, skill and aircraft control, the pilot ripple fires a pair of missiles, before dumping a burst of cannon shells into a third target as they finally begin to pull out of their near-suicidal dive. For a moment it almost looks like they don't make it, nearly being caught by the fireballs and shockwaves they leave behind, before then momentarily disappearing from view in the great sprays of water that are kicked up by the hair-raising F-15j barely skimming above the tips of the cresting waves. Throwing up a massive wake in the shockwave of their passing, the pilot retracts all flaps and breaks while slamming the throttle open to full afterburner to make their escape.

The Abyssals aren't nearly as lucky. Of the three earlier planes, one of their bombs misses, a second nails a destroyer, and the third lands a badly damaging hit on the cruiser at the center of the formation. The Abyssal cruiser has little time to process this unfortunate loss of her arm however, before the fourth bomb promptly catches her dead in the chest, resulting in an explosion that leaves little behind. She isn't the only victim of the either lucky-but-insane, or just insanely skilled pilot, as of the two missiles she ripple fired, both promptly dive down the stacks of an unfortunate destroyer in search of the red-hot boilers they had been carefully locked onto and lobbed towards, while the cannon shells rip through and detonate the torpedo armament of a second.

As the video finally ends with the remaining Abyssal destroyers scattering and fleeing in terror at the death of their flagship and half their number, the camera takes one final shot of the modified F-15j climbing up from the deck to rejoin it's fellow Abyss Divers, while the kanmusu submarine who recorded it all swears at the deaths and dispersal of the foes she'd been stalking for most of the day and trying to catch up with.

Closing his phone and the Facebook video titled "Greedy JASDF Killsteal, But I'm Not Even Mad, That's Amazing", the wolfish looking rogue looks up at the crisply business dressed figure approaching his table in the corner of the traditional style tea-house, and gives a knowing smirk.

"So, I see you've been busy. Enjoying making the social media headlines again?"

Giving Kiba a withering look, Ai slides into the empty seat opposite the disguised Okuri-Inu as he surreptitiously traces a pattern on a nearby napkin.

"Please do not remind me. Major Ugeki looked like he was about to have an aneurysm when he realized the brass would inevitably see the video. And I do not know whether the Colonel wanted to pin a medal on me, strangle me, or simultaneously shake my hand while having a stroke." Taking a moment to glance around the rest of the mostly empty tea-house, Ai then returns her focus to Kiba. "By the way, are we secure here yet, or-?"

Lazily the wolf yokai lifts up the napkin to show her the offuda drawn in stained tea.

"Sometimes, I do not know whether to be amazed at your genius and ability to improvise past lack of resources, or ponder at how much of it is in aid of enabling sloth and complacency."

"It's a gift." The wolf smugly preens.

"Right." Ai says dryly. "Because us "talking" about classical Edo era poetry went so well last time. Did you somehow purposely check your memories for the most tonally ambiguous conversation you could find from when we were actually courting?"

"I thought it would be hilarious. And who says "courting" these days? Your age is showing."

Ai's gaze narrows. "That is funny you see, because I rather remember the absence of it being an issue. Equally amusing in a situation's lack of it, was the nightmare you created with that otaku."

"Hey, I didn't even touch him." Kiba holds up his hands innocently, even as he wears a shamelessly toothy grin. "I just let him wear himself out until the police arrived."

Ai can only facepalm "All while joking to the crowd that you did not wish to get me in trouble by physically defending yourself. Yes, you could dance rings around him, but now some people see that level of "concern", and really do believe that the two of us may be involved, rather than just friends."

"Strong, witty, quick footed, intelligent, a fine physically prime specimen of lovable scoundrelness and animal magnetism- who wouldn't want to be involved with this?"

"Scoundrelness is not a word Kiba," Ai finds herself reflexively mumbling through her fingers.

His smile slightly wavering, Kiba gives a crooked grin. "Even if it isn't, it's partly why I'm here."

"I assumed as much," sighs Ai as she lowers her hands. "You always call these out of the blue meetings when some manner of legal ill or roadblock has fallen your way."

"Well.... Yeah." Tiredly, Kiba runs a hand through his hair and leans back, the air about him much more worn down than his previous lackadaisical attitude. "Suigetsu is in trouble."

Ai winces as she pours herself some tea "Oh. Well, not to disservice Suigetsu, but I can not say this was wholly unexpected, what with his unfortunate perchance for trusting his moral compass more than his brain sometimes. What did he do now?"

Kiba winces. "He got himself arrested. One count of smuggling, one of failure to comply with rationing, and twelve counts of use of unregistered rationing coupon books. And there's a fourth charge that's possibly on the cards as well, unprotected supply and sale of magical goods in a non-magical area.

Ai is lucky she has yet to do more than partake in the fragrances of her tea, for if she had been drinking, she may well have performed a spit-take. "Twelve?!? What in the hell was that frog-brain doing with twelve unregistered coupon books?! Where would he have even found twelve coupon books anyway? They hand those out on a household basis! And what is this about non-magicals!?"

"He had some inside help" The look on Kiba's face is pained. "Suigetsu knew a witch and a couple of wizards in the War Department of Supplies and Rationing who heard he was involved in trying to keep a bunch of the coastal communities supplied, and they knew from his involvement with us that he was likely trying to look out for a number of off the grid Yokai hiding in close proximity to human neighborhoods as well. They wanted to help, so they smuggled him coupon books and goods under table for supplying the unregistered families and sometimes even their neighbors."

"How did he get found out?" Ai's grip on her cup tightens. "He was not betrayed was he?"

The Wolf Yokai shakes his head in relief, even as the grimace remains. "He just happened to get stopped by an Auror in Chiyoda the other week. Completely bad timing and terrible luck. The racist prick told Suigetsu to empty out his pockets while making ass jokes the entire time. Probably just wanted to embarrass him, but Suigetsu just happened to have one of the unregistered books on him. They raided his place and found the rest, with suspicions that he may have had more books hidden elsewhere. Something aided by all the receipts from stores and purchases up and down the length of the country."

Ai stares at Kiba is disbelief "So what is Suigetsu going to do? Is he on bail? Are they going to fine him? Or is he looking at an immediate sentence of some kind?"

"They..... seem to know, or at least suspect he was getting help of some kind. That many coupon books, they'd be idiots not to worry about an inside job. They think it's normal ration dodging or smuggling though, because he refuses to dob in the unregistered families by saying who he was supplying all this stuff to, but they're putting the screws on him with fines and sentencing 'cause he also refuses to sellout who his contacts were in the Diet or WDoSR. And if they can definitely prove that magical goods which passed through his hands were reaching non-magicals, then he is completely fucked."

Ai exhales sharply as she runs the situation over in her mind. "Fantastic. A defendant who refuses to defend themselves lest they implicate another party. Such cases are always a fine kettle of fish."

"Yeah. Tsukino is trying to finagle things to help him out and offer legal advice, but....."

"But you want my two cents on this as well."

"Yeah." Kiba grimaces. "Some of the others, they..... they want to help Suigetsu. There's so few of the original team left, but at the same time.... There's so few of us left, some are worried about what this could do people's perception of us if we stand up for someone who as far as everyone else knows or cares, is just another desperate yokai or greedy smuggler."

Ai tents her fingers and frowns, brow knit with the concentration of careful rumination.

"Let us look at the things we know they are charging him on for now. The way I see it, Suigetsu is currently up creek without a paddle. They have all the evidence for means, motive is maybe debatable with a good defense, but opportunity is also aplenty. It's all rather naught in the current picture anyway, because they caught him red handed and there was an amendment to the Emergency Powers Act around '07 or '08, that has a number of clauses governing sentencing within reason but without trail, for trying to cheat the Rations books when in unexplained personal possession of rationed goods over sufficient quantities."

She hums thoughtfully to herself, raking her mind for what details she can remember off the top of her head "That amendment though, is more grounded in aiming to stop Black Market activities and large scale smuggling. Did he have any actual goods on himself or his property at the time?"

"As far as I know? Just the books." Taking a sip of the tea, Kiba gestures helplessly. "From the sounds of things, he never tried to hold on to anything for more than a few hours before delivering it, and was spending a small fortune on floo powder so that he would only use specific coupon books at specific stores across the country to avoid suspicion."

Ai takes a moment to mull over the facts in her head. Recognizing the deep thought for what it is, Kiba allows the lawyer-turned pilot her silence and the chance moment to pour more tea. Finally, Ai looks at him with the carefully measured and tentatively probing look that Kiba has long since learned can only lead to a headache.

"How determined is Suigetsu.... How important is it that he does not let anyone know where these off reservation yokai are? Is he trying to help hide some particularly maligned group containing onibaba and hone-onna or the like?"

The wolf's response is a shrug. "I wouldn't know."

"Well.... He has two options then.... Own up at least to what they have him for and eat the fine or imprisonment sentence."

"And the other?"

"Own up to what they already have him for, and then try to spin it as reasonable actions of a provider under duress and extenuating circumstances."

"What?" Kiba looks at her with a baffled frown. "Okay, I know you've got to have some vein of logic behind that when the War Powers and Emergency Powers Acts are a thing, on top of all the Special Emergency Amendments to the courts. Don't leave me hanging Ai, fill me in. What's your train of thought?"

"A tricky one that let's Suigestu at least escape the smuggling charge, and hopefully the 12 counts of unregistered ration coupon books that are hopefully registered to someone if he was really using them and getting them stamped off by shop keepers and apothecaries."

"I don't hear an out for the failure to comply with rationing."

Ai winces. "They may still nail him to the wall on that. The other issue is that he would need- it was definitely just the twelve books you said they found?"

"Definitely just the twelve." Kiba nods. "If they had more, either his contacts grabbed them before the Aurors could, they're too well hidden for anybody to find, or they're with the unregistered families he's been supplying."

"Okay then." Ai drums her fingers on the table with the dissatisfied look of a legal practitioner who not only knows her client is actually guilty, but knows he's boned as well. When innocence is out, all that's left is to figure out much of the long dick of the law they can avoid taking instead. "The only way this works, is if you can figure out if any of those books belonged to anybody in particular or if they just had assumed names in them, and then you find twelve families of the same sizes, willing to put themselves at risk to go to bat for Suigetsu."

"Okay, now I know you lost you mind. Did you finally paste your brain doing too many Over-G maneuvers?"

The kotengu ignores her fellow Yokai and continues on. "If you can prove that Suigetsu was simply doing these people's shopping for them, then it is only an issue of a person not related to the family or registered to the coupon book, using it for ration transactions. And that is only a fined offence unless the original registered coupon book holder presses charges. It's a loophole in the event you have dumb youths picking their parents' pockets, or someone from a larger family or clan with multiple books that grabs and uses the wrong one without malicious intent."

Kiba's eyes brighten in understanding "So if we can find the original owners of, or volunteers willing to stand in for the assumed names and families on the captured coupon books, that solves most of the charges right off the bat. Are you really sure that would fly?"

Ai grimaces uncertainly. "There is maybe, some precedence for such decision making."

His moment of hope is then replaced a troubled frown. "But the entire reason Suigetsu got himself into this situation in the first place, is because these families were unregistered and illegally outside the reservations to begin with."

Ai nods in annoyance. "That is indeed, the other issue with that plan. Suigetsu either risks a sizeable fine or jail time, or he only reveals the presence of some of the people he has been trying to supply. In turn however, his contacts in the WDoSR remain free to move and hopefully still beyond suspicion. A bitter pill to swallow, but arguably better than the alternatives of Suigetsu taking the fall completely, or everyone giving nothing until an investigation turns over enough rocks to get everyone in the end anyway. The only real reason I even seriously suggest sprinkling out the circle of complicity and putting these people on the Department of Yokai Relations and Management's radar like this, is because the DoYRM is relatively toothless right now anyway."

"That's true I guess." Kiba nods, even though it is obvious he does not like the outcome either. "No Auror's ever going to bother with a Relations and Management resettlement request in this day and age. Hell, the Reservations themselves are starting to become revolving doors at this point. Tomokako mentioned to me the other day that the guy she bribes to get in and out of Daisetsuzan is at this point leading a check point team that's at a third strength. Said it was only a matter of time before the non-magical tourists start stumbling across all the fence jumpers. Speaking of which, what about the unprotected supply and sale of magical goods in a non-magical area charge? They might not press, but if they do, what then? Suigetsu will still be screwed!"

Ai pauses, pondering the question deeply for a moment.

"If they do press that charge..... Look up-"

Pulling out a pen, Ai hands it to Kiba, while grabbing a napkin and a second to begin scrawling down shorthand notes on her's.

"Write this down, but double check it because I may have the names wrong- Look up "Plouton Papri Plutarch vs the ICW" as part of the "International Resolution of European Inter-Statute Crimes Tribunals" circa 1947, the over-ruling of the verdict by the International Court of Wizarding Law and Justice in 1959, and then 1963 for the ICW retrial verdict. Also look up the "International Resolution of European Inter-Statute Crimes Tribunals" for "Janske Eektimmerman vs the ICW" in 1948, and then you may need to have Tsukino look up an even older case for when referencing Eektimmerman's defence which I have no idea where you'd find. I think it should be under "the Wizengmont vs Cech Dodhaoich", which I just know I have butchered badly, from some time around the 1850s."

"And what is the relation to all of these cases may I ask?" questions the rather baffled Kiba.

"Plutarch was a Greek wizard of neutral alignment during World War Two." Elaborates Ai with growing distaste upon her face. "So neutral that he did nothing while his non-magical neighbours starved to death around him during the Great Famine that happened during the Axis occupation, even though he made no efforts to hide not only his continued access to food, but also a rather noted corpulence in spite of the hardships everyone else faced. His lifestyle didn't earn him any particular friends among his magical neighbor's either, and after the war, some accused him of non-magical baiting. Purposely living in such openly visible excess while even some of the magical population starved around him, and there were also rumors non-magicals could see his produce-laden fields from a distance, but never get into them due to a purposely poorly cast repelling charms. However, on the grounds that he did no outright baiting, nor any direct harm or open spell craft to or within view of his dead neighbors, Plutarch was left to go free with only a minor slap-on-the-wrist fine for a poorly maintained family charm on the property."

The wolf's lips curl in a snarl of disgust. "So he basically got away with enabling the deaths of his neighbors by negligence."

"Only temporarily." Ai says with a thankful shake of her head. "You see, shortly after Plutarch's trail, Janske Eektimmerman was then charged for a similar crime done under not to dissimilar conditions as Suigetsu with the right spin. During the Dutch Famine of 1944-45, Eektimmerman had been a civilian witch of again, neutral alignment during the war, who had been relatively untouched by the conflict. When her neighbors started starving Eektimmerman supplied many of them with non-magical produce that had nevertheless been cultivated by magical means or brought through wizarding markets with wizarding ration cards, and in one case, may have saved a family from freezing to death by maintaining a fire through magic means after the German blockade lead to fuel sources running out for many."

"Oh boy, how'd she weasel her way out of that one?"

"She didn't. Eektimmerman admitted guilt to everything, but she pleaded her defense and grounds for a not guilty verdict on three points. A reliance on logical disbelief, based on the fact that everything she had done was never outright in front a non-magical, and could just be explained away through Occams Razor, such that her neighbors could easily assume she was simply involved in the black market. And grounds of extenuating humanitarian and compassionate circumstances, which tied into her third point, the referencing of "the Wizengmont vs Cech Dodhaoich".

"She wanted to use the 1850s case as what, some kind of legal precedence?"

Nodding a Kiba's confused head-tilt, Ai nods. "Cech Dodhaoich was a rather "eccentric" Scottish Wizard by the standards of his fellows, somewhat enamored with many of the ideas of his half-born and non-magical-born peers, who themselves were influenced by early sociology and humanitarian thinking that developed out of the late Scottish Enlightenment. During the 1840s, he was in Ireland when the potato famine broke out, and was eventually caught and charged for using magic on non-magical crops, and using magical means to provide food at a time when everything he was supposedly growing was either running out as the famine set in, dying off from potato blight, failing due to the poor seasonal weather, or outright outside of season. Most damning of all, he was even accused of openly colluding with a non-magical mayor to provide for a town."

"He fucking what?!"

"Any normal wizard would have faced an open-shut case for such a unrepentant breach of the Statute, but Dodhaoich was not just "eccentric". He had a lot of money, his parents were mildly important, and he also had numerous friends in high places. So while he was eventually barred from ever returning to Ireland again, and most of the town was obliviated, his father and his friends did eventually manage to bribe and lean on enough people to make the matter end before it passed from the Wizengmont to the ICW, with only a couple of fines for technically not openly ever breaching the Statute in front of anyone as far as they could tell. Which was a big fat lie in reality, but the verdict and it's justification was still there almost 200 years later, when it was time for Janske Eektimmerman to defend her aid of her non-magical neighbours."

"Okay, so I guess that means she successfully managed to argue that whatshisname sets a legal precedence." Kiba scratches his chin thoughtfully. "How does this then all relate back to those two other cases for the fat guy you mentioned first?"

"It ties into a non-magical rights resurgence in the aftermath of the war." Replies Ai, stabbing at her increasingly ink-stained napkin to underline a new bullet point. "Even many those of who did not particularly care for non-magical affairs, were rather horrified by a lot of the things that were done on both sides of the magical divide. Only the most callous and politically suicidal were publicly unfazed by the slave labor, P.o.W. executions, the death camps, magical and scientific experimentation, employment of Unforgivables on civilians and in interrogations, usage of the dead as inferi. A lot of the amendments added to the Statute of Secrecy post war were essentially "exclusion clauses". Things to cover the legality of the interventionists in events that were already involving magical and non-magical activities. A number of people however, then argued that "Plouton Papri Plutarch vs the ICW" and "Janske Eektimmerman vs the ICW" were both grounds for an Amendment as well, as they both showed opposite sides of the same coin. Eektimmerman's "limited intervention" saved lives, while Plutarch's negligence and disregard killed people as certainly as any SS bullet or experiment by Grindewald's Army. The attempt to get the "Limited Intervention" Amendment failed-"

"What?!" Kiba looks disgusted, but Ai forges on.

"- failed, because many saw it as being either too open or vague in it's limitations and the freedom granted to act, or as the seed of a slippery slope that could see a return of Grindelwald's "We have the power, we should know best" mentality in policy making, at a time when wizards were globally pulling away from non-magical interaction out of reflexive aversion to the ideological trends that helped ignite the magical war. Despite this, the Limited Intervention Amendment proposal still generated enough of a debate and hubbub about moral obligation, legal culpability, and humanitarian responsibility in the face of limitations imposed by the Statute of Secrecy, that in 1959, the International Court of Wizarding Law and Justice overruled the verdict of the 1947 trial and ordered a retrial that ended 1963 with a verdict of "Multiple-Count Negligent Manslaughter."

"WHAT!?" Kiba practically leaps out his seat, obvious disbelief and fury vying for control. "That's bullshit! He didn't just do nothing as those people died, he practically mocked them!"

"Even so, it was a start." Glancing down at her napkin and realizing it is now almost totally obscured by smudged ink and barely legible short-hand, Ai finally spins her adhoc notes around and passes them to Kiba as he slowly deflates back into his chair. "There have been other cases since then that have sometimes tried to plead on the same ground, though most of them have generally failed. I think the last example I properly read up on was one that was born out of the Siege of Sarajevo, and no doubt there have been more than few that I haven't heard about since this war started, but Plutarch and Eektimmerman have primarily been the precedent setters for the last 70 years, due to their positions on polar opposite ends of the spectrum regarding examples and stances on indirect magic usage for the preservation of non-magical lives during humanitarian crisis."

Ai wrinkles her nose at just the thought of what such a years long and divisive case would be like. "If they really do charge Suigetsu with unprotected supply and sale, that is your best place to start. Maybe Tsukino might turn up something better, or an angle less liable to kick over a hornets nest, but spur of the moment, this is my take."

Kiba still looks pissed off about the resolution of the of Plutarch case. "So that's it. If he's charged, it's break out the big guns and go big or go the hell home? Fuck!" Ai allows him his moment of emotion. After all, stories of wartime deprivations always strike home with the Okuri-inu.

"Putting it succinctly, yes."

Kiba lets out an explosive sigh. "Well that sucks, but it's a hell of a lot more than I had to go on when I got here." Shaking his head as if to shed water from a non-existent coat, his expression turns apologetic. "Sorry, I mean- Thanks. Really. Tsukino and Suigestsu will fucking love you for this. To pull that much legal jargon and history out of your head like that."

Ai smirks, echoing Kiba's words from earlier.

"It's a gift."

Now it's the wolf's turn to chuckle and shake his head. "Shit like this is why I'm just the guy that talks to people and makes the plans happen."

"Come now Kiba, you are never as lacking in knowledge as you seem to think you are. Not like you used to be at least after rubbing shoulders and associating with the rest of us all these years." This time Kiba laughs, a bark that makes him smile in thought of wistful days and passed memories.

"I wish you were still with us Ai. Walking legal encyclopaedia that you are."

All Ai smiles at the complement, even as she can't help but sigh with the tired sadness of one who knows and has dedicated them self to their course already. "You know I can't."

"And I know that too." Smiling and placing a hand on her's, Ai takes comfort in the strength of the trust and understanding in the platonic gesture, in spite of her and Kiba's past. "As much as I wish you would be more careful, your place is where you see it. You can't teach a dog a trick it doesn't want to learn-"

"-and you can't cage a free bird," finishes Ai, feeling the small tug of a halcyon smile at her cheeks.

Kiba returns her reserved nostalgia with a wan grin of his own. "That's how this works isn't? We're yin and yang, you and I. Opposite sides of the same coin. Opposite ends of the same world. Of course your place would be here, going up there to do the fighting in the clouds."

"Well," ponders Ai in jest. "Over there in the dirt is no place for a crow. And when you're a kotengu, you see a lot of dirt."

Kiba laughs, even if it's one tinged by the sadness of how low Ai's expectations are at times. "Haha, dog joke. But trust me. One day you're going to come down here- One day, you'll be able to willingly come back to our "there" rather than the non-magical one, and not have to worry about the dirt. It might be hard to see from up there Ai, but we're getting there."

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Blinking, Reivana tilted her head first in one direction and then in another. In front of her stood a wax figure of Queen Elizabeth which made her frown in thought before she turned and regarded the Light Cruiser beside her. "So this is your Queen?"

Slowly, Hermione nodded with a small smile on her face. "That is correct. What stands in front of you is a wax statue of Queen Elizabeth the Second, Ruler of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth."

Considering that, Reivana was about to say something when Stab spoke up. "Eh, not really all that impressive."

Head whipping around, Reivana hissed at her tail. "Stab!" Turning, she gave Hermione a weak, shaky smile as she patted her tail none too gently. "Hehehehehe, pay no mind to him. He's got issues understanding things."

Eyebrow raising, Hermione hummed some. "I'm sure." Pretending not to hear the grumbles from said tail, Hermione turned back to the figure in front of her. They were never going to give an audience to the Queen for Reivana. But at the same time, they didn't want to be rude in a way that could aggravate any negotiations. Hence... Bringing her to the Madame Tussards in London after hours. It was likely the closest that she could come to seeing the actual Queen in person.

And of course, no good deed going unpunished meant that due to being the one to suggest it, Hermione was escorting the Re-Class.

Not that she minded too much. Reivana was very curious about the human world and in the short time that the Light Cruiser had known her, she had asked many, many questions. At the same time though, Hermione was thankful about herself being a shipgirl. Especially as it was currently either very late or very early. All the more to prevent issues as the populace was not used to the idea of Allied Abyssals. And, Hermione reminded herself while looking at Reivana who was examining the wax figure and the mock-up of the rest of the portrait made for her Silver Jubilee. "So you're enjoying yourself?"

Pulling herself away from the exhibit as they began to walk away, Reivana nodded to herself. "I am actually!" Arms outstretched, she twirled a bit. "There's so much to learn in here! And there's so many famous humans!"

Internally, Hermione coughed some to herself. 'And more then a few infamous ones...' A glance to the side made her blink and hum. She was pretty sure that Reivana did not notice the Submarine in the shadows nearby. In fact, it was probably the sixth one that she had seen. Then Hermione looked behind her and smiled a bit at the sight of Upholder there following them at a distance. 'At least no one is taking chances... for either of us.'

Suddenly she tuned back in to how Reivana was going on about things. "... It is so amazing that humans have made such life-like statues!" Frowning in thought, she then shrugged. "Though I suppose it's a bit hard to decide which is better. This wax museum or the other ones that we have seen."

Raising up a bit, Stab sighed. "They're all a little boring if you ask me."

Now scowling, Reivana wagged a finger at her tail. "That's wrong and you know it, Stab! They're all really interesting! Such as that exhibit that we all went that showed the inside of the human body! That was extremely informative!"

Only sighing, Stab shook its head. "Still boring. I mean, yeah, they were all real human bodies on display but so what? We've seen the inside of humans before." He didn't notice Reivana stiffen or give Hermione a nervous look. "So there wasn't really anything new there."

Instead of doing much, Hermione only shrugged. After all, they were Abyssals and likely killed humans. But then again, so had she as a warship. And at least now they might get some peace. However, Hermione then smirked a bit as they walked into one of the newer sections. 'I wonder how she will react...'

More then a little nervous, Reivana turned away from Hermione after clamping Stab's mouth shut. The first thing that met her though were two red eyes staring up at her fixed in a pale face. Above said face was the obvious horns of an Abyssal Princess in the white hair which made her jump back. "A-ah! I am most sorry, I didn't know that there was... anyone..."

Slowly trailing off, Reivana blinked and realized that the tiny Abyssal Princess wasn't real and looked at Hermione. Said Light Cruiser had a small smile on her face. "Meet Hoppou, the Northern Ocean Princess and one of the Abyssal figurines here at Madame Tussauds Shipgirl and Abyssal exhibit."

Eyes wide, Reivana turned back and stared at Hoppou before turning her attention to how beside her, and standing well above the Princess, was a wax reproduction of Wanko. Also there was Supprin nearby. Besides them, one could see a figurine of two Re-Class as well, one of which made Reivana grimace a bit. While she understood that they were going to be possible allies, Revina rubbed her the wrong way at times. Though why Stab was snickering at the time... But more importantly though was the fact of what this meant. "They made wax reproductions of Allied Abyssals?"

Hands in her pockets, Hermione tilted her head back to look into the face of the wax Wanko. While she knew that it was impressive compared to most people, she had seen the real thing. Something that a lot of people had never seen outside of pictures and that meant that there was a feel missing from the reproduction. One of power and other things that only the living version had. It was then that she shook off her thoughts and turned to the Re-Class. "They have as a matter of fact. I've heard that they're going to add Aeroprin to the exhibit soon enough."

Looking around, Reivana could see the reproduction of an office nearby. Inside said Office sat a Japanese man behind a desk while several Japanese shipgirls were around him. While her thoughts swirled here and there, they continued to walk along. In another "Office", there was an American Admiral with a few Japanese shipgirls, but also some American ones. What drew her attention was that one of the American shipgirls was badly scarred. A glance at the small sign for it made her blink. 'Sasebo?'

But then her attention was grabbed as Stab sighed. It was the way that he sighed though that made her eyebrow twitch and she turned to see one of British shipgirls. And, sure enough, Stab was looking at the wax reproduction of Vanguard. "Ah... now this is true beauty. Though they have not captured it all as it would be quite impossible..."

Eyebrow twitching, Hermione fought back the urge to whack the Abyssal tail. While she would deny that she was a Momboat, she was highly protective of the last British Battleship to have ever been built. Clearing her throat, she gave the sheepish Reivana a look. "Yes, well, they do good work."

Understanding the implied threat in the steel of the Light Cruiser's throat, Reivana moved on even as Stab tried to keep as much of his sensors on the wax figurine. However, she came to a stop and stared at three shipgirls who were standing together. All of them looked similar enough that they were obviously sister ships. One was in what looked like a uniform of those who worked in an ocean liner during the Edwardian Era. Another one was in a nurse's outfit from WWI. But it was the last one who caught Reivana's eye. "W-who is that...?"

With a blink, Hermione looked from her to the three shipgirls. "Them? Those are the White Star sisters." Pointing at each one, she named them. "That's Titanic, she sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912, and beside her is Britannic who sank after hitting a mine in 1916. And there is Olympic, who survived her sisters by a few decades and scrapped in 1937." Noticing how Reivana was now staring at Olympic, Hermione narrowed her eyes some. 'I wonder why she's shaking a bit...'

Meanwhile, Reivana swallowed to try and wet her suddenly dry throat. Quickly moving on, she gave Hermione a shaky smile. "S-so... if we were to sign the treaty, would my Princess be given a spot here?"

Slowly nodding, Hermione gave a hum. "I would expect so, likely within a year or two." Then she frowned. "They might place her in her own section as I believe she's her own faction, separate from any other possible Allied Abyssals here in the Atlantic..."

Calming down, Reivana sighed as she considered coming here to see her Princess' commanding figure standing above all the humans who would pass through. Humans that would be in awe of her ruler and how magnificent she was.

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Here's the next snippet with credit to NotHimAgain for helping to write it:
_________________________________________________________________________________

Consolidating his thoughts, Harry frowned for a moment. Not just over what Haru dumped in his lap, but also that Haru had openly stated what at least two of her visitors were. Something that bothered the black haired boy considering what normally happened. Then he looked at the boy across from him and his friend. Granted, he looked away as it seemed that she did not notice what having a wet t-shirt do. After a few moments he cleared his throat and got to the subject at hand. "Right, enchanted jewelry. Like Haru-San said, I've gotten made some for my friends and people that I know. I make it the jewelry myself, but the enchanting is done by a professor at my school." At the look he got, the twelve year old shrugged. "He's a Charms Master. Um... and half-goblin as well, I think if that helps."

"And you'd trust this guy with your life?" Tatsuya asked, resting his chin in one hand. "He's on the level?" Benio gave him a flat look. "What? I can be a little bit paranoid if I want."

Slowly, Harry nodded with a chuckle. "Actually? I would as a matter of fact. Professor Flitwick is one of my more favorite teachers. And my Mum's, biological one that is, had nothing but good to say. Apparently he fought in the war against Voldemort..." Having noticed the blank looks, he winced. "Um, a Dark Lord, evil wizard in other words. Long story short about the group he lead... think terrorist Nazis but replace the whole Aryan thing with 'Pureblood' magicals. People who have no non-magicals in their ancestry at least to their great grandparents on either side. They considered magical beings such as Yokai just above non-magical humans."

"Could he have changed since then?" Tatsuya demanded. At Harry's stricken look, he sighed, leaning back onto his hands. "Sorry, it's... Look, it's not you. God knows it's not you. It's just... Can I tell you a story?"

"Okay. This was when we were nine, alright? Couple of nine-year-olds. Back then, I figure what Benio has is some kind of medical condition. She gets picked on sometimes, so I do what I can to make her more comfortable."

"Our school, it's a little farther away than some might like, we have to take a bus to get there. Every day, we get on together, we get off together, we go to school together. Well, about two years earlier the guy who drove the bus got sick, and they had to replace him. We liked the old guy, he was a nice person to be around, and Benio has this sort of... passive aggressive rivalry with the new guy. They're always sniping at each other. So one day, we get on the bus, and we're the only ones on it. That's kind of weird, but it's happened before so it's okay. Then, suddenly, the bus driver turns down a completely different street. We start getting nervous--what's going on? Why is he doing this?"

Benio shuddered, hugging herself at the memory.

"So, the bus driver stops in some alleyway. Benio starts freaking out, demanding to know what's going on. Suddenly, he turns around, grabs her, and bang!" Tatsuya clapped his hands. "They're both gone. Single most frightening moment of my life. Now me being a nine year old, the obvious solution doesn't occur to me. Why should I go to the cops? This guy took my friend! So I dig around the driver's seat, and I find some stuff..." He groaned. "Getting off track. The point is? For all that Benio didn't get along with the guy, we trusted him to do his job and get us where we wanted to go. Then he turned out to be some kind of psycho mage type person who wanted to drain Benio dry and use her blood as some kind of spell catalyst. We've learned that we can trust Haru to come through for us when we need her to, and she likes you well enough, but..." He shrugged. "I've never heard of any half-goblin professor."

For almost a minute, Harry was quiet. But when he spoke, there was a gravity to his words. "Oddly enough, I can understand where you're coming from. Remember that dark lord I mentioned?" At their nods he continued. "Well, when I was a baby, he came to my house and killed my dad and then my biological mum, rather then stand back and live, stood between him and me. She died, but somehow used her sacrifice to create a spell of protection. When he cast the Killing Curse at me, it rebounded leaving the scar on my forehead and destroying his body... He was left as a wraith of sorts." Seeing Tatsuya about to say something, he held up a hand. "Just... let me finish."

Slowly, Tatsuya nodded with a sigh as Harry placed his thoughts in order. "Last year, my first year at Hogwarts, the school for magic? There was a teacher for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Quirrel was his name... Everyone considered him something of a joke really. Always walking around with a turban covering his head with an odd smell almost like garlic from it. He also stuttered a lot to where people had issues understanding him and seemed scared all the time... Turned out to be one big act." There was a look of emptiness in the black haired boy's eyes as he looked at the two. "Quirrel was trying to get at something for his master, Voldemort, that Dark Lord. It was supposed to bring him back to full life. Heck, the bastard even allowed for himself to be partially possessed by the wraith and drank unicorn blood to stay alive. At the end of the year he kidnapped me and was going to use me to get the item, tried to kill me even..." Staring down at his hand, Harry bit back a shudder. "I had to... he's not around anymore, let's just say."

Benio and Tatsuya were both silent. Benio looked down into the tub, and Tatsuya nodded once, deeply and gravely.

Quickly shaking off the dark memories, Harry sucked in a deep breath. "Right, anyways... I trust Professor Flitwick. But if it would help any, I do have a solution." He waited until they nodded. "If you want, once the enchanting on whatever you want is done, I'll pass it onto Haru-San. Then she can check it over and make sure that there is nothing harmful to Benio-San here on it."

Tatsuya and Benio gave each other another look, like the one they had shared before he had explained her heritage. "That sounds like it could work," Benio admitted.

"Yeah," Tatsuya agreed. The corner of his lip twitched, and he glanced away uncomfortably. Then he faced towards Harry again, face set and determined. "I guess it does. Let's do that."

With a deep breath, Harry let it out. "Okay, now what you need to decide is exactly what are you looking for me to make. I've made some different things before. Once we get what you're looking for out of the way, we can start on what to make it with." At their looks, he shrugged. "I made pendants for example by transfiguring rock crystal so that it wrapped around something."

"Yeah," Tatsuya shook his head. "That's a no go. No pendants. Get lost, get broken, and..." he mimed tugging at a noose around his neck. "Kind of a choking hazard in a tricky situation.

Frowning, Harry slowly nodded before closing his eyes. "Hmm... Yeah, I can see why that would be a problem. Broaches are out as well as they could easily be ripped out by someone with some strength and, well... they would have a nice pointy end. Earrings are the same as clip-ons could be pulled off pretty easily and actual piercings..." As he trailed off, Benio winced. "Yeah... Which means either a bracelet of some kind or a ring. With a bracelet that would mean having two identical ones if you don't want it noticeable."

"So a ring?" Benio said brightly. Tatsuya shook his head.

"While it's nice to know just how you feel about me," he smiled cockily, "I'm afraid we just aren't at that stage of our relationship yet." She splashed him.

Rather amused as the boy across from him chuckled even soaked in ice water, Harry snorted. But then he turned a bit thoughtful. "Well, it's either that or, like I said a bracelet. I mean, you could do anklets and stuff... But a ring is less noticeable. And there are friendship rings, those are worn on the right hand ring finger, like, um, engagement rings which are worn on the left hand."

"Friendship, huh? I like friendship." Tatsuya turned to look at Benio. "What do you think?"

"I think my ice cubes are dying," Benio replied, holding one up. "Also, a friendship ring sounds wonderful, yes."

A small smile on his face, Harry made a note in a small notebook he had. "Okay... that leaves what sort of material you want it made from really. Hmm... I got some silver, gold, copper, or brass for metals. Alternatively? I can make it from something else." Not noticing their blinks, he pulled out his phone and types something in before sliding it over to Tatsuya. "I can make it out of stone of some sort or a semi-precious gem like amethyst or the jade in the picture..." Noticing Benio frowning as she looked at the slowly disappearing ice cubes, the black haired boy coughed some. "Um, if you want I can cast a freezing spell? It would turn at least the top layer into ice but..."

"You can do that?" Benio asked. Tatsuya, looking over the pictures on the phone, stiffened slightly and glanced at Harry.

Slowly Harry held up his hands and nodded some. "I can, but I won't do it without either of you giving permission. That's why I brought it up..." Turning, he brought out his wand and pointed it away from either of the two and waited for Tatsuya to give a nod before making a wand motion. "Glacius." A bluish white light shot from his wand into the air and the temperature dropped enough that the breath of both boys misted in the chill air as they shivered a bit. "See?"

"Yes," Tatsuya nodded, drawing in a breath of air and shuddering at the cold air entering his lungs. "I believe I do--ah!"

As the spell cooled the air, Benio stood in the tub, half-closing her eyes as if she were basking in the sun on a mild day. "Benio," Tatsuya said, looking specifically out the window, "please sit back down."

Also rapidly turning around, Harry felt his cheeks heat up so waited until he heard the water splash some before looking over his shoulder. Seeing Benio now back in the water, he brought his wand over and cast the spell again. This time, the water began to freeze at the section he had his wand pointed at down near her feet. Once she nodded, he stopped the spell and then cast the spell at the metal, which frosted over. "Um, right, so hopefully that helps... So, er, any ideas what you want for the ring? If you want I can add some ornamentation to it or a carving along the outside, it won't be too fancy though."

"Not fancy is good," Tatsuya agreed. "Ornamentation... like a gem, that could catch attention at the wrong time." He held the phone up for Benio to see. "You'd be surprised how easy it can be to notice something shiny at a distance.

Benio hummed, sinking into the tub and resting her head against the cold metal. "I like the idea of carving," she admitted. "Like something... Celtic, I guess? I kind of the designs that they made."

For several moments Harry thought it over before nodding even though he was a bit confused about her going for a Celtic symbol. "There's a few designs for that sort of thing, I remember... Give me a moment, it was years ago." Eyes closed, he missed the silent conversation between the two. "It was from an Irish woman who lived near, um... the people I lived with before Mum. Something about friendship and loyalty..." All of a sudden, the black haired boy snapped his fingers and opened his eyes. "Right! It was called the Claddagh!" Then he frowned and remembered something else. "Er.... then again, maybe not... maybe just some Celtic knots..."

"Celtic knots are good," Benio nodded.

Making some more notes and such, Harry tapped his chin in thought. "Right, which leaves the material for the ring itself. Any thoughts on that?"

Reaching out, Benio swiped down the page that the phone was opened to. "Hmm... oh, jade! Jade looks cool, let's go with jade!"

Tatsuya rolled his eyes. "Last time we made a choice based on what was 'cool,'" he air-quoted, "we ended up fighting that one psychopath with the soul-stealing camera."

"That's totally different and you know it," Benio replied, wagging a finger. "Though what did happen to that guy, anyways?"

Tatsuya shrugged. "I try not to think about it."

Briefly, Harry considered asking before softly snorting. At their looks, he shook his head with a chuckle. "You both sound like you have the same issue I do with getting into situations..." For several seconds he thought and nodded. "It'll take some time to get a hold of some jade, but I can do it. Oddly, jade... has a special symbolism in Chinese culture. It's a Stone of Heaven and is also considered to ward off evil." At their looks, he shrugged. "Yukikaze-Chan spent a lot of time with the Republic of China's Navy after World War Two. Sometimes she comes up with facts and stuff."

"Ward off evil, huh?" Tatsuya snorted. "We could always use that."

In reply, Harry simply shrugged. "Supposed to anyways, it's part of why you see a lot of trinkets made of jade in China. Or why their Emperors used to have themselves and close family members buried in full body suits made of the stuff."

Tatsuya blinked and nodded. "That also explains so many things that I never wanted an answer to," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Sorry. Some kind of weird Chinese ghost-zombie I don't know what," Tatsuya replied. "Basically an object lesson in why ancient evils should never piss of a fox the size of a horse." Tatsuya shuddered. "So. Jade ring, Celtic knots. There anything else you need to ask?"

Considering what he needed to know, Harry glanced down at his notebook. "Well, besides how thick and how wide you want it? What sort of spells you want enchanted into it." At their looks, he continued. "There is obviously the spell to keep Benio-San cool, it was developed to help people when they're in deserts and such, like Egypt. It'll keep her at a comfortable temperature for her, not for anyone else, so probably pretty cold though no one else would notice. A spell to make it as hard as metal would also be good as well as a resizing one so it grows with you. Other then that, there's a security charm which... from what I heard would mean a drop of blood from both of you onto the ring, thus making it so that only you can remove it. Not sure how you feel about that though." Becoming thoughtful, Harry frowned. "Maybe see if I can get a flame freezing charm so fire won't harm her, not sure if that is possible..."

"We do end up using fire a lot," Benio pointed out. "It'd be a lot safer." She raised her hand, fingers splayed, and examined it. "It doesn't need to be very big, unless the ring needs to a certain size for the enchantments to work. So... not very thick? And being able to remove it..."

"Actually," Tatsuya shook his head. "I think that it should only be Benio who's able to remove it. Cut down on the potential workarounds." Only shaking his head, Harry frowned. "No, it doesn't need to be a certain size. I've seen small earrings enchanted, just wondering about your personal preference. I might increase the size to do the carvings on the ring, but it would be put back to normal before being enchanted." After a moment, he turned to Tatsuya. "As for you? I just figured that if something ever happened, like Benio being unconscious and needing the ring removed, it might be best if you were keyed in as well. That was all."

Tatsuya angled his head back, considering this. "I guess that makes sense," he mused, "but I'm a little worried that someone might try to make me remove. Forcibly put my hand on the ring or something."

Somewhat amused, Harry shook his head. "Not how it works in this case. The enchantment only allows for you to remove it if you do it of your own free will." Seeing the surprise, he shrugged. "There's a spell in the magical world that... well, mind control works to describe it. In England, it's a one way trip to a prison full of happiness eating, soul sucking demons if you cast it, but... some do. There's other dark spells that can make you do stuff, though usually by confusing you. So people came up with it as a way to prevent people from removing valuable jewelry and stuff with such magic."

"Magic. Whatever can it not do?" Tatsuya's voice was laden with sarcasm, but he was chuckling slightly with amusement.

"Happiness eating, soul sucking demons," Benio groaned. "What are the odds we're going to run into those at some point?"

Giving her a long look, Harry sighed. "Either I was just jinxed or you were. Because that is how Murphy is." A frown on his face, Harry hummed before he shook it off. "You might be amazed and exasperated at some of the things I've seen magic used for. Anyways, yeah, that's how the security spells work." Benio and Tatsuya looked at each other again, holding another quick, unspoken conversation.

"I guess that works," Tatsuya nodded. "Will you need any kind of payment?"

Looking at Benio, Harry considered how miserable she looked when she had arrived. With that image in mind he shook his head and held out his hand. "No, just knowing that I'm helping is enough... Though I wouldn't say no to friendship, no one can ever have enough friends... Especially if they can understand how life can be interesting."

Tatsuya snorted. "You're an interesting kid, Harry Potter-Nagato-San. Anyone ever tell you that?"

Tone drier then the Sahara, Harry answered right back. "A few have said that."

Benio laughed. "Can't imagine why."

All three laughed at that before calming down some and Harry shook his head. "One of these days we got to share some stories. I've got a few such as, well... killing a Basilisk a few weeks back." Then he shrugged and gave them a look. "And if you ever need backup or even potions to heal, don't be afraid to contact Haru-San. She can get in contact with me and then I'll send some to you."

"Right back at you," Tatsuya smirked. "I'm not sure what we could do for you, but we've survived a heck of a lot more than we ought to have. Maybe we can help you out somehow."

"He dueled a fairy lord of some kind," Benio said, nodding at her friend. "A rogue right out of whatever kind of court they keep these days. And he did it on the back of a moving train."

Tatsuya winced, rubbing at some phantom injury. "Thank you so much for reminding me of it. You never look at a tree the same way again when it's coming straight at you at forty kilometers an hour."

Leaning back, Harry frowned in thought before shrugging. "Met a Kelpie once as she gave me a gift from the Summer and Winter Courts." At the looks, he flushed some. "Long story short, I saved the life of a unicorn who apparently both hold as theirs. In return, they gave me a gift that might help me out when I'm an Admiral and will keep my feet steady upon the waves. That... was frightening." Then he shook his head. "As for helping me? Just having someone who understands does."

Benio grinned. "Last summer, we went to Dun Scai--"

"I really don't think he needs to hear about that," Tatsuya cut her off. He grinned sheepishly at Harry. "But... yeah. It does."

On Harry's face was a grin and was about to say something. But then he paused and looked at Benio and Tatsuya before frowning in thought. "You know... since you're here, I can probably hand you some first aid stuff just in case. It's not much, bruise healing paste, cut sealer which slows down bleeding... and some burn paste." He gave them both a smirk. "Since fire is an issue at times. Works great for bad sunburns as well."

Benio turned to look at Tatsuya. "Can we keep him?"

Chuckling, Harry grinned some. "Sorry, I'm too high cost for upkeep."

Benio's eyes sparkled. "Omigosh Tatsuya please."

Tatsuya snorted. "Even if you had somewhere you could keep him," he shook his head. "I seem to remember a little sister somewhere in the mix who would react somewhat dramatically."

"We could keep her, too!"

"Don't you think you're getting a little too in to this?"

Unable to help himself, Harry's lips twitched. "There's also an older sister and a Battleship mom. Maybe six younger nieces as well." At their looks, he shrugged. "One of the Destroyers that Hoppou created became a Princess, and has her own fleet. All of them call me Uncle."

Benio lowered her head, pouted, and gave Tatsuya a pleading look. He was impassive. "Look. However cute and nice they may be, I'm sure that we need Abyssals running around our houses like we need the black plague. No offense to your family," he added, nodding at Harry.

Simply waving him off with a snort, Harry shook his head. "None taken."

"You're no fun," Benio groused. She sank up to her nose into the tub. The water near her lips began bubbling. Tatsuya rolled his eyes, reached over, and flicked her in the head.

"So. Would that be business concluded, then?" he asked.

Considering the question, Harry gave a nod. "Pretty much, yeah. I'll try and get it to you as soon as possible before it really starts getting hot out. And if I have any more questions, I'll send you a letter via my owl, Hedwig. She's a snowy owl so you'll recognize her easily... and she's a fan of bacon as a head's up."

Tatsuya gave him the grudging smile of a man who'd run a marathon without training. "I'll keep it in mind." He stretched out his hand.

Reaching out, Harry grasped the offered hand and shook it. "Then we got a deal."

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

Frowning as he walked along, Harry looked down at the PM he had gotten on his Moderator Account for Shipgirls Online. It wasn't that odd for him to get PMs sent, in fact it happened pretty often. What did cause his eyebrows to raise was who had sent it and what they wanted. 'Okay... something is going on here. Not only is Aso asking for a trunk with an expanded space inside, but she is also being nice and polite about it. Why would she want one?' Quickly, Harry sent off a reply and waited for an answer as he walked along.

As it turned out, he did not have to wait long and the answer was, if anything, even more puzzling.

Eyebrows now furrowing, Harry stared at his phone. 'Storage? She wants an expanded trunk for storage?' Looking up at the sky in thought, he paused in thought. Then the black haired boy made his way over to a nearby bench and sat down as he thought it over. 'That... kind of makes sense, I guess? If a shipgirl wants more room in their quarters anyways. But... Aso? And her being nice?'

Several more seconds passed before Harry closed out his window and then dialed a number. Not long after, a very familiar voice answered him. "Moshi, moshi, this is MacAmis Houshou speaking."

The familiar and warm voice brought a smile to the wizard's face before he cleared his throat. "Houshou-Oba? It's me, Harry."

Inside his head, he could almost imagine the warm smile that likely bloomed on Houshou's face at that moment. "Ah, Harry-Chan! Its good to hear from you again. It has been a while."

Unable to help himself, Harry felt his smile grow. "Sorry for that, Houshou-Oba, I've been a bit... busy."

A chuckle came out of the phone at that. "So I have heard, Harry-Chan. Kaylee has spoken quite a bit about how busy you have been. Still, it is nice that you remember this old Baba every once in a while."

Softly snorting, Harry shook his head. "You're not that old, Houshou-Oba. And certainly not a Baba!"

Houshou gave a hum at that. "Perhaps, Harry-Chan. Then again, Kongou-San is older then I am after all. So I suppose that if anyone was to be an Obaa-Chan, it would be her."

From some distance away, a shout could be heard which made Harry snicker. "I AM NOT OLD, DESS!"

Extremely amused, Harry grinned. "I think that Kongou-Oba heard you." When only laughter answered him, he felt his grin widen. "You're never going to forgive her for showing Jaw and the others pictures of your first voyage and first airplanes, are you?"

The dry tone he got made him laugh this time. "I have no idea what you mean, Harry-Chan. Bothering Kongou over her old age is the furthest thing from my mind. Especially in revenge for the shipgirl version of baby pictures... Though considering that she is such a old, rickety woman that she even had such..."

Once more, a voice rang out over the base. "I AM NOT OLD, OR RICKETY, DESS! I AM A YOUNG MAIDEN IN THE SPRINGTIME OF MY YOUTH!"

His eyebrow raised, Harry listened as Ooyodo joined in. "KONGOU! YOU'RE REPLACING THAT WINDOW OUT OF YOUR PAYCHECK!"

Both of them were laughing but eventually Houshou calmed down. "It is nice to hear you again, Harry-Chan. Is there some reason for the call though, not that I mind much."

For several moments, Harry put his thoughts into order as he considered what he was going to say. Then, slowly, he nodded. "I just received something of an odd PM, Houshou-Oba. One from Aso as a matter of fact."

Silence met him and he could tell Houshou was thinking. "Aso contacted you via PM on your account?" When Harry gave an affirmative sound, she sighed. "How bad?"

On Harry's face was a frown. "That's just it, it wasn't bad. No insults or even calling me a Gaijin at all. More importantly, she was actually polite to me in it."

Yet again, utter silence met him as Houshou digested that. When she did speak, it was in a soft, thoughtful mutter. "How very odd... What did she want?"

Frowning, Harry tapped a finger against the bench. "Aso asked me for one of the special storage trunks that I got access to."

Houshou hummed in thought for some time before she spoke up. "A storage trunk? One that you have access to? I would assume that it is one of those with a rather surprising amount in it for storage for the size?"

Nodding even though he knew that she could not see it, Harry's frown deepened. "Hai, that is right. And while she wanted one, Aso also asked if she could have more then one if it was possible. Even offered to pay full price that it would have been. It's... just odd."

Finally, after a minute, Houshou sighed. "And you wanted my opinion on it since I am sure that you know what happened to her?"

All Harry did was shake his head, even though the other side of the conversation couldn't see it. "I heard some things about what had happened. She could be... Aso... but that was way too much even from what I heard. No one should have that happen to them."

On the other end of the line, Houshou gave a mutter. "No, and I wish that I was there to show my disapproval to those that did such a thing. But right now, all we can do is help her in what ways we can to recover." There was a few seconds of silence before she spoke up again. "Harry-Chan? I will call you right back, I need to make contact with someone first."

Understanding, Harry had a wry smile on his lips. "Not a problem, Houshou-Oba, I'll wait until you call back to answer her." Roughly a half hour later, Harry was walking around when he heard his phone go off, Answering it, he smiled at the number before bringing it to his ear. "Moshi-moshi, Houshou-Oba."

There was a chuckle on the other end as Houshou answered back. "Hello, Harry-Chan." Her voice then became serious. "I have spoken to some people, Harry-Chan. There is some oddities going on at the moment, but nothing dangerous. To Aso-Chan or to anyone else. In regards to the trunk? Well, the answer is that, yes, you may send her some if needed. As a matter of fact, I am willing to pay the cost for them myself."

Hand waving in the air, Harry shook his head. "There's no need for that, Houshou-Oba. I found a bunch of them anyways in a room at school and were allowed to do with them as I will. So it costs nothing." Thinking it over, he then nodded. "I'll find Maruyu-Chan once I send a PM back to Aso regarding the answer. She can take them on her next trip down to Kure."

A chuckle could be heard over the phone. "Thank you, Harry-Chan. I am certain that Aso-Chan will appreciate this. And it is something that might just help her quite a bit. Please, give my thanks to Maruyu-San as well when you see her."

Several minutes of small talk later, they ended the conversation and Harry reopened the window. Sending off the PM with his answer of sending three such trunks, he waited until he got a reply. However, seeing it made his eyebrows raise. "Okay, something is definitely going on. Especially if she is thanking me like that." It was then that the black haired boy looked up and suddenly smiled. "Yukikaze-Chan!"

The Destroyer in question blinked and then turned to look at him from where she was walking. With a small grin on her face, she pulled her binoculars up to her face and pointed at a similarly grinning Harry. "Ah! Harry-Chan sighted!"

Laughing, Harry walked over and hugged her with her returning it. "How are you doing, Yukikaze-Chan? I haven't seen you for a few days."

Yukikaze's lips twitched as she enjoyed the hug and then pulled back. "I've been out on patrol for a bit while Shinano-Sama was on leave. Louisiana-San still needs her escorts after all!" Pumping a fist, she nodded. "Yukikaze will make sure to protect them!"

His smile growing, Harry patted her on the head which made her laugh. "And you do an awesome job of it, Yukikaze-Chan." The two then settled into an easy walk as made their way along. "You should have seen what happened the other day..."

As he told her what happened on their trip outside of Yokosuka, Yukikaze listened. When he got to the point with the Ao bōzu, her eyes widened. "Wait, you came across a Yokai? And that one?"

Nodding, Harry frowned some. "We did and it was just staring at us." Suddenly, his grin was back. "But then I let Regina go and wrestle it and she was so awesome! The two of them couldn't beat the other until Regina pulled some of these cool moves and threw it into the ground... But then it disappeared and left behind a scroll."

Eyebrow raised, Yukikaze's lips turned downwards. "A scroll, Harry-Chan? What was in it?"

With a look around, Harry checked to see if anyone was within earshot before turning back to Yukikaze. "Well, I gave it to Ryuujou-Oba and Junyou-Oba to check it over. It was just some written notes about some exercises for magic and stuff to strengthen mental barriers. Nothing harmful though... But you want to know the freaky bit?"

Leaning in, the Destroyer nodded. "Sure thing, Harry-Chan."

Briefly, Harry chewed his lip. "At the end of it, was a last bit of a note. It was addressed to me for some reason, and for me to keep up the good work." At the widened eyes, he shook his head. "When Haru-San got back though, Junyou-Oba and Ryuujou-Oba talked about it. According to Haru-San though, it was nothing to worry about for some reason."

However, that just made Yukikaze frown in thought. 'So someone sent that Yokai to Harry-Chan to deliver a message? And a gift? But who? It's obviously someone that might know what has happened recently, but why use a Ao bōzu to do so?' After a few moments, she just sighed and shook her head. "That's just confusing, Harry-Chan."

Shrugging, Harry gave her a look that stated he was no better. "I know, right?" Then he perked up some. "Oh! By the way, I was wondering about if you can get me something..."

Just blinking, Yukikaze smiled and ruffled his hair some. "Sure, Harry-Chan. What do you need Yukikaze to go and get for you?"

For a moment, Harry just rubbed the back of his neck and then chuckled. "Well... I got an order to make something-"

The smile on her face brightening, the Destroyer smiled even more. "Congratulations, Harry-Chan! You deserve it!"

Now blushing brightly, Harry grinned some. "Thanks, Yukikaze-Chan. Um, anyways..." Taking a deep breath, he let it out. "I was wondering if you could do me a favor and get me some jade? I need it for the project."

Eyebrows raising at the request, Yukikaze frowned and considered it. "Hmm... Well, it might not be easy to for most to get some. I'm assuming that you just want jade? Nothing made with it?" At his nod, she continued. "Well, I made a number of friends among the shipgirls in Taiwan, they're all shipgirls from the Chinese navy from before World War Two. Anyways, thanks to how things are in China right now they've been covering things in Hong Kong and some of the surrounding area. Not sure how they managed that, but still... I can contact them and see if they can get you some."

Relaxing, Harry gave her a hug. "Thanks, Yukikaze-Chan. I really appreciate this." At her question of how much he needed, he frowned. "Not much? I'm making a ring..."

Yukikaze cocked her head to the side in thought before nodding. "That would probably be pretty easy to get then. Might ask for a bit more though in case you actually need it."

Brightly smiling, Harry's hug tightened. "That's even better!" Much to her surprise, he then kissed her on the cheek which made her blush. "Thanks!"

Unable to help her own smile brightening to match Harry's, Yukikaze shook her head. "You are very welcome, Harry-Chan. Though..." Leaning in, she gave him a small wink as her blush died down. "I wouldn't mind a small present made with one if you have any left over from your commission."

All Harry did was grin back at her and nod.

 

[darthcourt10]

K9Thefirst1

Hope Like Hell Your Captor is Evil

En Route to the Meteor Seamount

Hel gulped nervously. She knew that the Princess got her warning, and that she would act on it, so she wasn't nervous about her or the fleet. No, she was worried about herself. Goda's word was law in her fleet. When she said everyone was to join her in the attack, everyone was going into the attack. When one of the light cruisers on sentry duty didn't answer the muster, Goda showed her typical fury and promised a slow execution upon their return.

This resulted in Hel being pulled along for this death trap of a fleet, hoping to find a way to get out of it alive.
------

"Demon!"

Her subjects parted like water before a bow as Gateway Princess marched through the halls and corridors of her palace. Those from the earliest days saw their Princess this agitated only once before – The day Middle World Ocean Princess barged in on their home island. The day that they had to evacuate their home.

Gateway Princess ignored them all – she was a Sovereign after all, recognizing the rabble was only done as needed – on her way for her Apartments, where she had left Ocean Liner Demon. She was still there, combing over one of a dozen folders littering the map table. At her Princess throwing open the doors with a band, Ocean Liner Demon jumped, scattering the pages in her hands.

"Demon! You need to leave. Everyone needs to leave."

"Princess?"

"Immediately! Take everyone to Antillia right this instant!"

"What! Why?"

Gateway felt a migraine forming, and took a deep breath; rubbing her temple to sooth the pain until she had calmed herself.

"Because, Hel contacted me. Just now."

"Hel?" Ocean Liner Demon rifled through the other folders until she found the one she was looking for – Operation: Month of the Long Knives. Specifically, she was looking at the sheet detailing the list of ships sent on long-term espionage. "She's one of The Ten. What did she say?"

Gateway in the meantime had made a point to close the door. No one was near the Elder Princess' chambers, but the Ancient Atlantic Gateway Princess did not live as long as she had – while all of her sisters and scores of Petty Princesses had died – by taking unnecessary risks. Ocean Liner Demon stood up as she spoke, and faced her Princess.

"Hel had managed to weasel into Goda's fleet. I don't know how she justified her continued existence among them given the tart's obsession with more powerful and more advanced models of ships, but she did. She risked breaking cover by contacting me. Goda apparently took extreme exception to my refusal. She's taking her entire fleet here with the intent to kill me, claim our resource stores, and the fleet. No doubt to use my subjects as canon fodder for her own plans."

Gateway placed her hand on her Second's shoulder, guiding her out of the apartments, passed the Throne Room, and ending at the entrance.

"Now, as I have said, I need you and everyone else, including Woken, to make for Antillia. You don't need to land on the beach but you should hug the shore. Angband should still be there waiting for you. Once in position, wait for the opportune moment."

"And what is the opportune moment? And what are we to do?" Demon asked. Gateway merely smiled indulgently.

"You will be within the bounds of an invisible island right next to a fleet commanded by a self-important, arrogant twat. You're a smart girl Demon, you'll figure it out."

Gateway Princess closed the door, leaving her inside the Throne Room. Along with the offensive third fragment of her rigging.
------

Within the hour, the patrols had been called back, the dining hall cleared, and the entirety of the palace and the surrounding environs had been evacuated. Everyone was confused, concerned, and asking questions.

The only answer was that given was that they were under attack by Aircraft Carrier Princess Goda from the south, and that the Princess ordered everyone to a fallback position. And when the sentries from that border inevitably tried to call shenanigans, Ocean Line merely pointed south, where the tell-tale smoke and clouds of an Abyssal fleet under a War Deployment was clearly visible over the horizon. And when the more panicky of the fleet began to ask about where this fallback position was and what they were to do when they got there, Ocean merely held her tongue until they crossed the barrier and Antillia came into view, Angband sitting on the beach and looking quite put-upon. Giving the fleet of over hundred-fifty ships of an antiquated build a moment to digest what they were seeing, Ocean Liner Demon considered their options, and observed what Goda and her fleet were doing.

They were around the area "average sized" as far as Princess-Class ship-type Abyssal fleets went. Demon-Class Ship-type Abyssals normally commanded fleets ranging around ten to twenty craft if they were independent. Installation-Type Abyssals, Demon or Princess, could command fleets starting around a hundred and could go much higher than that. Goda, in this instance, had more or less sixty ships by Ocean's count, Destroyers, cruisers, submarines, battleships, and three Wo-Class carriers, all of which were of the latest variants of their class. To say nothing of the formidable power of the Aircraft Carrier Princess herself.

'No CAP though… Then again, with our carriers gone she likely doesn't see a need for one. Still, that does shorten the fleet's range of vision.'

Turning her eyes back to the fleet, she noticed that they weren't spread out in a proper formation. Rather, they were all clumped together, easily within each other's turning circle. If any of the ships needed to make evasive actions, they would crash into their fleetmates, and the ships behind them wouldn't have the time to either come to a stop, or turn to either side to avoid compounding the collisions.

'So she's only interested in a show of force, she's not expecting to actually need her fleet to fight…'

And then she noticed that none of the submarines were submerged, but surfaced and unobservant. In fact, the general trend of expressions on the whole fleet was one of boredom. None of them appeared to be paying the slightest attention to what was going on. And judging by their course… They were slowing down. And when they stopped they were going to come directly in front of them, easily within seventy yards of the barrier.

[All right fleet, you fags wait up here,] Goda broadcast to her fleet, right there in the clear, without even a basic attempt at encoding her orders, [I'm going down stair and gut that coward. Right there in front of her stupid-ass shitty ships. Show 'em what a real Princess does business. After that we ransack the place for oil, food, and ammo. Then we march on the Azores. Killl the Humans, and then head right for the mainland. It's time we showed everyone else who's the top bitch around here.]

And to top it all off, the most powerful unit of the fleet, and the one that could seamlessly command said fleet out of a surprise attack, was leaving to go after a separate target. Alone.

Ocean Liner Demon smiled inside her helm. Opportune moment indeed. In a flash everything clicked in her mind, and she addressed the fleet over the Princess' secure channel.

[All stations, Ocean liner Demon. Form up. Submarines, destroyers and torpedo equipped cruisers in a row up front. Other cruisers and battleships behind them. Angband you're behind me, and don't give me sass about being able to fight. Destroyers, cruisers and subs, I want a full torpedo spread ready to fly over the palace, right where the fleet is going to come to a stop. I want those fish to be packed so tight you could stick them in a can and sell them. All the torpedoes are getting prepped, I want all guns to calculate a firing solution on the fleet as they come in. Once you have it, recalculate and adjust for the difference. Keep doing that until I give the order. We have only one chance at surprise, so make sure your shells hit the targets. Hold all your fire until I give the order.]

Ocean was pleased when no one gave her back talk, or even a dirty look. Rather, they simply did as ordered. Yes, Ocean Liner Demon could get used to the idea of having power over warships…

A half hour passed with them simply watching Goda and her fleet waltz on in without so much as a shot fired. Finally, Goda separated herself from the fleet and descended to the depths, leaving her fleet to drift to a stop. Directly in front of them.

[Torpedoes fire. Then reload. Hold gunfire until they see the fish.]

In the fleet at present, there were about ninety destroyers active, plus fifty-five cruisers, of which thirty were of the light variety, armed with torpedoes. Assuming each ship could only fire a single torpedo, that represented one-hundred twenty torpedoes running straight and true down range into a target-rich environment of tightly-packed ships. But… They each were not capable of firing only one torpedo at once. The number of launchers varied depending on the class, but they were all capable of firing at least four torpedoes. With the Chi-Class torpedo cruisers having twenty launchers per side. The phrase "shooting fish in a barrel" referred to the water displacement of a single bullet hitting the water liquifying the internals of a fish swimming within. The phrase did not apply here. Unless the gun in the analogy was a shotgun.
------

In the fleet, Hel was the only one paying the slightest attention to her surroundings. After all, if she was going to survive this day, she would need to find a way to contact someone who knew her from before, likely through blinkers. It was due to this attention that she saw the torpedoes long before the rest of the fleet did. And her heart sank at the sight. Sure, she could try to move out of the way. And thus alert the rest of the fleet to the danger, and as such undermine the effectiveness of her Princess' surprise attack. Even if she didn't use her engines and simply stepped out of the way, it would be to noticeable. With a heavy heart, Hel braced for the impact and whispered one last show of loyalty to her Princess.

"For Abyssinia."

Mercifully, the impact detonated her magazine.
------

"Volley!"

At Ocean's cry, called out seconds before the first impact, every single gun, from her own twelve-pounders to the battleships' mighty array of calibers opened fire simultaneously downrange.

"Reload! Follow your shells and compensate for any misses."

The torpedoes could be said to decimate the line of ships closest to them. But it would be woefully underselling the carnage. After all, to decimate means "to destroy one-tenth of something." The swarm of artillery shells wreaked havoc amongst the fleet. Those spared the torpedo hits were pummeled by shells of every caliber and had no idea where they could have come from. Half a minute later they heard a voice callout from this air.

"Volley!"

And seconds later a second wave of shells pummeled the fleet without any sign of their origins. One second there was nothing, the next there were shells falling from mid-air into them. Half a minute later-

"Volley!"

And the carnage repeated. Some of the shells were armor piercing. The smaller ships weathered those well enough if their armor was thin, as the shells would punch clear through. Not comfortable by a long shot, but not fatal. The heavy cruisers and battleships? Less so. And if those were the only rounds falling on them it wouldn't be so bad for the fleet. If it weren't for the hail of high explosives mixed in – Setting fires, knocking out guns and anti-air mounts and radar antennae, doing spalling damage that injured their imps inside.

And then there came another wall of torpedoes bearing down on the crippled fleet.

"Volley!"

This was no battle. It was an execution by firing squad.

"Close in and fire at will!"

When the Azores Princess' fleet came out from whatever their cover was, no one was in a position to capitalize on it. Most of the fleet was sunk or sinking, and those that weren't were to badly damaged to do anything other than wait to die. Save for the carriers. By one means or another, the trio of WO-Class had separated themselves from the fleet, and used their comrades as meatsheilds as they sent their entire airwings aloft. Two-hundred seventy planes, all loaded with bombs and torpedoes, ready to wipe away these old-timers like one would an oil stain.

Two-hundred seventy planes, of the latest designs… Flying over a tightly packed fleet of some one-hundred sixty ships, each and every one of which with anti-air batteries so densely packed that it would be easier to identify spaces without barrels pointing to the sky.

Back amongst the fleet of the Azores Princess, Ocean Liner Demon watched the carnage like one would ants after the colony had been kicked over. To one side, a Chi-Class was munching on her breakfast as she took in the show. The invaders had interrupted her meal, but that didn't mean she was going to let it waste. Angband took in the sight about them with deadpan boredom.

"The enemy seems to be sending in their planes Ocean."

"Yyyyep."

"Want me to-"

"Nope. All stations… Light 'em up."

At once, thousands of barrels opened up. The droning roar of the anti-air mounts drowned out all other sound, save for the bangs of the shells high above. The smoke of the propellant wafts through the fleet like a hot, noxious fog, while above the black flack blocks out the sun, casting the fleet into shadow. One by one, plane after plane, each of the most advanced design common amongst the Abyssal fleets, falls in flames like meteors into the sea. One especially unfortunate plane took a hit directly to the bomb slung under its wing, blowing it out of the sky and its shrapnel damaging nearby craft. Only one plane out of all two-hundred seventy in the assault, only one, a torpedo bomber, managed to make it to its attack run. It was shot down just as it released its torpedo… And the cartwheeling wreck was hit by the weapon, causing an early detonation.

Quiet fell upon the battlefield like a heavy wool blanket. The prevalent wind cleared the smoke away, revealing the three enemy carriers, surrounded by the floating debris of their dead comrades and the ocean thick with oil… And staring in horror as they finally realized that they were now completely at the mercy of those they had come to kill. Ocean Liner Demon concentrated on the three WO-Class, reading their lips.

"That… That was our full air wing…" One said, clearly in shock. Beside her, one of her sister-ships pulled out the rarely used anti-ship mount hidden in the holster on the small of their back.

"Do… Do we fight?"

"No," the last of them said as she turned south,"RUN!"

"Destroyers," Ocean said, "engage. Cruisers provide backup."

The destroyers bayed in sadistic glee as they pursued the carriers. Even with their antiquated design, their propulsion plants could still propel them faster than the carriers. They were dead, it was simply a question of how long it would take for them to accept their fate. While the slaughter took place, the rest of the fleet relaxed and watched the show. A Ru-Class battleship began to provide popcorn to her friends. Ocean crossed her arms as she relaxed. She turned to her right, looking to the transport ship Woken beside her.

"So. How did you take your first real battle against the planes?"

The reptilian head looked up to the Demon.

[The salt of their tears provides flavor to this unit's food. This unit desires more victims.]

"…Oh you are just adorable."

In good time the carriers were dealt with and the pursuers returned to the fleet. In lieu of orders, the fleet fidgeted in place, muttering amongst themselves. They had just been attacked. Not by humans, but by their fellow Abyssals. How could this be? Why did this happen? Could it, will it happen again? And what about the Princess? Had anyone word of her? No? Was she even alive? After all they did let Aircraft Carrier Princess Goda waltz into the palace unhindered. With answers not forthcoming, a sense of dread began to permeate the fleet. And all the while, Ocean Liner Demon was silent, thinking, observing… Calculating. When the tension seemed ready to ignite, she spoke. Loud, clear, and unwavering.

"Everyone! I want one in five destroyers, and one in three cruisers, to fan out and patrol the perimeter. Check for more invaders. I want half of our battleships patrolling inward, ready to provide backup in the event of additional hostiles. The rest of you are to begin breaking apart the wrecks. Any equipment we can use is to be salvaged and put into storage for the engineers to comb over. Anything to damaged or useful for us is to be scrapped for resources and parts. The organic bits are to be chopped up and mixed into the chum tanks for fishing expeditions. Angband!"

Said carrier jerked ramrod straight at the call, staring almost cross-eyed at the Demon's finger pointing at her in the face.

"I want you to take Woken, and gather anyone with an eye for machines to salvage the wrecks of those planes. If anyone here knows what can be salvaged and what we can reverse engineer, it'll be you. I expect a written preliminary report on your findings and recommendations by tomorrow night.

"Let's move people. We don't have all day."

The air of dread reduced – if not broken – the fleet dispersed and moved about their tasks. Some volunteering for one job or another, others being coerced after being to slow to take up their preferred task. Ocean Liner Demon, however, made for the palace. Angband took note of the demon as she descended into the depths.

"Ocean!" she called, "what are you doing?"

"It isn't obvious? I'm going to check on the Princess."

"But what about Goda? She's a Princess-class!"

"So I've heard…"

Those in earshot stared as they watched the Demon stoically sink into the sea.

"Bad. Ass." a Ne-Class whispered.

Angband rolled her eyes and started corralling ships to aid her in her assigned salvage op.
------

Meanwhile, In the Palace

Goda marched through the hallways, her temper mounting with each step, with each corner turned, with each empty hallway explored. Where was everyone? The fleet, the lackies, Fucking Azores Princess?

"Did that faggot fuck off again? Coward!"

Now well and truly frothing, Goda came to the entrance of the throne room, and tossed open the doors with a mighty shove. She marched through the doorway and came to a stop, looking at the empty chamber before her, seething. And all of a sudden, she felt a pair of hands on her head, one on the curve of the back of her skull, the other on her chin. Immediately there was a sickening crack sound, and she was looking at the ceiling with a burning pain in her neck, followed by her falling limp to the floor, where her breath left her with a long, continuous sigh. Other than her eyes, Goda was completely incapable of moving any part of her body.

By chance, her body landed in such a way that allowed her to see what was behind her. And there was Azores, with a smirk on her face as she looked down at the broken Goda. Without a word she turned about and made for the statue on the right of the door. Like its twin on the other side, it was a representation of a knight at the ready. Azores reached behind the knight, and pulled out a short sword, that had been hidden in a secret slot. Goda was unfamiliar with the different types of sword, from want of effort mostly. But if she had been, she would have recognized it as a Naue II type sword, common for centuries during the Bronze Age, though this one appeared to have been made of Abyssal metals.

Still not bothering to waste time and effort to give even a snort of derision, Azores lifted up the blade, and stabbed Goda once, twice, thrice in the ribcage. The pierces instantly flooded the Aircraft Carrier Princess' interior spaces, and four ropes of air bubbles – one from each stab wound and another from Godas mouth – rose from the dying corpse. And like that, the Aircraft Carrie Princess Goda was dead.

Ancient Atlantic Gateway Princess stared evenly at the corpse. With a sigh she rubbed her eyes and made for her throne. She only made it part way up the stairs leading to her seat of power before sitting down on the steps. Chin in her hand, Gateway gently tapped the ancient sword on a step, looking at the corpse that was once a mighty Princess of the Abyss, Petty though she was. Above, the sound of battle rumbled like distant thunder, but she didn't pay it any mind. In time, the sounds faded away, and silence reigned in the Royal chambers.

After a time, Ocean Liner Demon ran around the corner beyond the door and slid to a stop at the sight of the open passageway… And the room beyond. The Demon walked in carefully, taking in the sight of the corpse in a heap on the floor. The unnatural angle of the Princess' neck, and the stab wounds in her torso.

"Huh. A bit anti-climactic." She said, looking to her sovereign.

"Fair fights are for suckers Demon. If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying."

"True," Demon replied, stepping on the corpse on her way to the Princess, "though admittedly, I was expecting you to use your weapons on her the second she opened the doors. Blow her away."

Gateway looked to her Second for the first time since she entered the Throne room, the expression on her face one of dull derision. Wordlessly, she gestured to the wall at the far end of the room, and the fine mural decorating it. The sentiment was obvious – 'And risk ruining the decor? Surely thou dost jest.'

For what felt like minutes there was not a word spoken between the two. Finally, Ocean Liner Demon tread to her Sovereign and sat down beside her.

"The fleet seem, on edge, your Highness. A lot of them are asking questions about why, and how, another fleet of the Abyss could turn on us so suddenly."

"Good," the Princess replied, "that will prove useful, when the time comes. Few things motivate quite like righteous indignation."

Giving a nod and hum of agreement, Ocean continued with her report.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering salvage operations for resources and usable parts or equipment. We shot down a lot of planes so… With some luck, Angband can start training her pilots in appropriate equipment."

Gateway gave a sigh. "That… Would be ideal. Assuming we can build enough to keep her supplied."

Demon nodded, before growing pensive.

"I saw… On the way here I saw Hel, Princess. Among the dead. She… She must have maintained her cover up to the end. It's the only reason why they weren't expecting some sort of attack."

Gateway rubbed at her temples, the muscles of her jaw clenched tightly.

"I see. We must remember her Demon. Let her sacrifice be remembered when it is time to Chronicle Our rise to power…"

Ocean nodded in silent agreement. After a moment of silence to honor the fallen, she continued with her report.

"I also ordered the Mobile Anchorage Charybdis pulled from Mothballs, along with two divisions of destroyers, two of cruisers, and two battleships. They are to make for Goda's territory and establish a military presence there. With Goda and her fleet wiped from existence, we have a vacuum on our southern border."

"Thank you Demon," Gateway said, still staring at the corpse, "however, delay their departure by… thirteen hours. We don't need our neighbors to have reason to suspect us of being involved in the eradication of an entire fleet. Not yet."

"Yes Princess."

"And tell them not to cling to tightly to the territory. The time isn't right for all out war. They are to fall back if pressed. We'll have our day of expansion, but not today. Not yet.

"Also, see about fabricating some destress signals, or at least some radio chatter. One to our east, the other to our northwest. A Petty Princess and an entire fleet are sunk, something had to cause it. No specifics, just enough for the surrounding Petty Princesses to jump at shadows, muddy the waters. Today may have risked my plans, but I may as well take the opportunity to stoke the fires of paranoia."

"Will do."

The pair sat in silence for a long time, Ocean Liner Demon watching her Sovereign, and Gateway staring at the corpse in the middle of the floor.

"It's funny," the Princess said at last, "but… But I see a resemblance. To Central Atlantic. It's, in her eyes, and nose. And her temperament, Central Atlantic was probably the most keen on killing off the humans. Never bothered to explain why whenever I asked though. She never seemed to have a strategy beyond 'attack, attack, attack.' No thought to, to goals, or supply lines, or resource acquisition… Or even if we needed to go straight to war, when we could have… Held the oceans for ransom for territory or something. Another century Demon. Another decade…. Hell, another year, to stock pile, build up our forces, and we could have smashed the humans beyond recovery. Then we wouldn't have to face their shipgirls. Wouldn't… Wouldn't have to… To fade away…

"We were mighty… Once. And now look at us. Turning on each other for something as base as a single gallon of oil. A few rounds of ammunition… How far we've fallen… It breaks my heart Demon… It breaks my heart…"

Shoulders slumped in emotional exhaustion, the Princess put her face in her hands. Not in sorrow and sobs, but in fatigue and frustration. Ocean Liner Demon put a hand on her Sovereign's back, rubbing circles into her flesh to help ease her tension. There they sat until nightfall, when the clean up crews came to claim the corpse of Goda. By then the Princess was… Recharged, if nothing else, and content to simply sit back and observe her subjects at work. She could feel time was running short. If Woken's mission was a success in showing Mankind that the Abyss had a heart that valued sentiments like they did, then it could be a basis from which proper negotiations could begin. And then...

And then, maybe - just maybe - they would survive their Wroth...
------

"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word."
—Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

------

And thus we see the basic playbook Gateway prefers to go with if she has the chance: Quick and simple elimination of enemies. Obviously she can't win the Atlantic using this trick every single time, but in these early days she can get by with it. In the future she will need to attack and conquer traditionally, but that can wait until The Opportune Moment.

In completely unrelated news: Goda and her fleet never watched The Mighty Jingles:

 

[darthcourt10]

135: S0ngD0g13

The Battleship Demon sailed forward, stopping when a Cruiser emerged ahead of her. "Halt, Stranger; who're you, a-sailin' so blithe and bonnie into my Lady's turf?"

"A nameless wayfarer, a warrior seeking to take service in the fleet of a noble Princess. Tell me, Border-Warden, is this the domain of she who's called the Princess of the Ancient Atlantic Gateway?"

"Aye, it is, Wayfarer."

The Demon smiled slightly, brushing her hood back to show her face and helm. "Then it is she who I seek."

The Cruiser stared for a moment, taking in the Viking helm and the Dane-axe of dark Abyssal steel that lay across the Demon's muscular shoulders, then her eyes widened. "That axe... There were stories about a fleet, served under the Northern War Demon, that carried blades like to that one..."

"Aye. I fought alongside Skadi."

"I-I can't let you c-come before the Princess a-armed, Wayfarer..." The Cruiser stammered nervously, her eyes never straying from the axe-head and its cruel, gleaming edge...

"Peace, Border-Warden; I intend no harm to your Mistress." The Battleship Demon fixed a leather cover over the axe-head and extended it to the shaking Cruiser. "I'll be wanting it returned, later, mind you."

The Cruiser nodded and accepted the axe, then turned and shouted to a Destroyer nearby, "You! Go let the Princess know there's a Battleship Demon who's seeking an audience, one who sailed with Northern War Demon, and bring word back. We'll catch up."

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

In an area between Wake Island and Johnston Island, there was a small island. Discovered in 1868 by a Norwegian Captain and named after him, Schjetnan Reef was just another small spot of land in the vastness that was the Pacific. However, after it's discovery, it seemingly just vanished. Despite searches including a few performed by the United States Navy itself, nothing of the island was ever found. Even in the modern day, there was no evidence that it had ever existed in the first place. It was simply written off as a Phantom Island, a piece of land that did not and never existed.

As with many things though, that belief was in fact wrong.

When in the 1850s, Japan was opened to the wider, outside world. Within the magical portion of the worldwide community, this meant that ICW was finally able to enforce the Statute of Secrecy upon the island nation. One of those who contributed heavily to such actions was in fact MACUSA. It helped that with the opening of Japan, it became much easier for magical American markets to finally reach the Asian markets. Magical ingredients rare to find in Europe and the Americas could be easily found in Asia.

However, there was one last issue: Distance.

At this time there were a number of ways to magically cross the distance. One was via broom or flying carpet. But only a fool would attempt to fly over the Pacific in such a manner. And even crossing the Atlantic was so dangerous that many died in the attempt. Another method was Apparition, but doing so across an ocean was all but impossible. One would need to hop across Alaska and then down the Aleutians or the longer route across Eurasia. Portkeys were possible and commonly used for such a distance, but they were heavily restricted at this time.

The final methods were either by magical ship or through the International Floo Network. Either one of these worked but one took several weeks of travel. And the International Floo Network would take time as well as people were bounced along the twisted and convoluted corridors within it thanks to a lack of Floo points. With things happening in Japan though, it was decided that this could not be allowed.

It was therefore considered a stroke of luck when a worker for MACUSA overheard about the island that was found. A hop from Hawaii to Johnston and then a broom ride proved that the island existed. An island that would serve well as a waypoint for both magical ships and for the Floo Network to be extended from Hawaii to the island and then to Mahoutokoro before ending in Japan. Within days of receiving the get go from Magical Congress, various Warders and the like descended upon the island and set up various spells to hide it. After all, it would not do for the non-magicals to come across and build on the island.

Especially as some feared that the United States Navy would use it as a refueling point as they had with other islands.

Once the spells were in place, MACUSA went to work building on the island. The first thing to go up was a Floo connection for the International Floo Network, which included two sets of fire places for people to step from one and then into the other to continue on their way. Also added was a Portkey receiving area and leaving area. Outside the buildings, MACUSA filled in a good chunk of the Lagoon and constructed a harbour for magical ships. In a short period of time the island was more then doubled in size.

By 1875, it was ready and the first magicals began to pass through. The island itself became a trading port and stop over place to keep non-magicals from running across. For decades, it worked as an outpost in the vastness that was Earth's largest ocean. But starting in the 1930s, problems started to arise due to what was going on in Japan. Then came the war, which had magical Japanese forces take control of the island from the Americans in the hope of using it to launch attacks on Hawaii and then America.

However, the Americans blocked off the other end of the Floo Network on their end of things. Meanwhile, they launched counter attacks to try and take it back from the Japanese. Back and forth their battles went across the island, both attempting to take it or to hold it. For the Americans, while this was going on, they made other connections to the International Floo Network. They did not activate the connections though, instead they planned.

After the war, Schjetnan Reef simply was no longer needed. That is not to say that an effort was nor made to rebuild there. But the Tsunami of 1946 damaged the buildings on the island and it was written off and left to decay. In the 1990s, some anti-nomaj wards failed enough for a sailor from Hawaii to spot the island, which made MACUSA repair them. And in the late 1990s, with the rise of attacks from a mysterious group of obviously magical beings on the oceans, there was talk of them using the island as a base to patrol outwards.

Such plans came to an end with Blood Week which devastated coastlines and it was left abandoned...

But not for long.

In the present day, if those magicals who had been there before could see it, they would be stunned. Abyssal fortifications were everywhere on the island. In the harbor, Abyssal Submarines could be seen coming and going while other raiders waited until the fall of darkness to return or leave the harbour. Meanwhile, the Isolated Island type Princess who ruled over it all frowned as she sipped from a glass of oil. With a hum, she turned and regarded the Battlecruiser Princess who was glaring at her. "Oh do calm down."

A snarl on her face, the Battlecruiser Princess glared at her companion. "Calm down? CALM DOWN!?" Standing, she glared down at the smaller Abyssal. "I lost a quarter my fleet to the damn Grey Ghost and that bitch of an floating hotel! We're losing out there!"

What she did not expect was for the Isolated Island Princess to chuckle. "Yes, we are. For now."

Eyes narrowing, Battlecruiser Princess frowned. "For now? What do you have up your sleeves..."

On the other Princess' face was a cruel smile. "The humans and shipgirls think that they are so smart. But in reality, they're fools stumbling around." Gesturing around, she laughed some. "Just look at this place! It stands just outside one of their convoy routes, and yet they do not even know that it exists! I can launch raiders at their precious convoys all I want, and they never suspect a thing. No, they think that they're free roamers."

Crossing her arms, the other Princess snorted. "And? Is that it? Because I am not really impressed."

Still smiling, the Isolated Princess shook her head. "Yes, you should be. After all, this is a staging point. But more then that, it is where we shall hide the hammer blow that will come to our foes. One that will make them fear to tread upon the sea once more."

When she gestured for the other to follow, she did so. Slowly, the two made their way through the twisted hallways right out from some sort of nightmare. Here and there, human remains laid as if some sort of macabre art. Eventually, the two came to a stop in front of a doorway which had four Re-Class silently guarding it. Her eyebrows raising, Battlecruiser Princess turned to her companion. "You have to have some sort of powerful surprise here for this security."

Reaching up, Magical isolated Princess gently stroked her companion's cheek. "Of course, one that I am sure that you will find to be just as pleasant." Pulling away, she opened the doors and walked through. "Come on then."

Arms crossed as she followed, Battlecruiser Princess took a step forward. The first thing that met her was the smell of death and decay. And from what she could see, there was a number of dead humans there. From the robes that still covered their bodies, she suspected that they were some of those foolish magicals. "As nice as those Submarine Carriers you built? To attack the other Abyssal fools?"

Lightly laughing, Magical Isolated Princess nodded. "Oh yes, though I am only testing them. But they will still do quite well when the time comes. Especially with the special weapons we received information for from Satanazes Princess in the Atlantic. When we finally do attack, many of those disgusting meatbags will die."

Shuddering, Battlecruiser Princess allowed herself to smile. "Yes... with their skin burning, nerves dying, and their final breaths coming from froth corrupted lungs. Glorious."

Once more laughing, Magical Isolated Princess traced one finger along the other Abyssal's arm. "Yes, their screams shall make for the most lovely of lullabies." Coming to a stop, she gestured in front of her where the bodies were the thickest, each of them nearly mummified. "Such as what came from these meatbags as I drained them of life and magic."

Eyebrow raised, Battlecruiser Princess walked forward and then traced her hand along one of the giant, Abyssal eggs. Closing her eyes, she had images flash past. "Carriers? But so very large..."

Unable to help herself, Magical Isolated Princess laughed. "Hmm, yes. Carriers bigger then any other in the Abyssal Fleets. All with anger beyond what you could imagine. Heavy bombers that will devastate the human cities with weapons that they could scarcely believe. Once more, we shall be feared and the blood shall flow to the oceans to sink into the Abyss. The Americans will feel our wrath first. But it will be years yet before they are ready, but we can wait."

Pulling her hand away with unholy glee, Battlecruiser Princess turned and gave her lover a look. "What are their names?" When told, her lips curled upwards into a smile. "Oh yes! Yes!"

Her hand snaked out and grabbed Magical Isolated Princess and pulled her into a heated kiss. After they pulled apart, Magical Isolated Princess was breathing heavily. "Yes, love. Just think, the humans in the United States will find themselves being killed by that which they named after themselves and strangled in the womb..."

 

[darthcourt10]

Snippet 135: S0ngDog13

Charlotte skittered up the trail toward the back of the McAmis house, her fangs clicking nervously.

"Mornin' Charlotte," said James from the back porch. "Looks like you grew a good bit with this last moult." He took in the appearance of the now-pony-sized Acromantula and whistled.

"Um... Uncle James? I kinda need to tell you something..." Charlotte said as she shifted from foot-to-foot.

"What's that?"

"When I was at Hogwarts with 'Ginia," she began, and James noticed how her voice and diction had grown more mature, "there was this other Acromantula, a boy Acromantula... He was nice, and he brought me deer he'd caught, and..."

James had a good idea where this was going, much though he'd prefer otherwise. "You weren't just your normal moulting-grouchy this last time, you were broody weren't you? How many eggs?"

Charlotte seemed to draw in on herself. "Ten, Uncle James, but only two survived. They hatched yesterday. Kids, come here."

Out of the brush came two puppy-sized hatchlings, their movements tentative and shy. "Uncle James, meet Boromir and Faramir. Boys, say hello to Uncle James."

"Hi..." the pair of twins said in high-pitched stereo. James thought them unimaginably cute, if mildly creepy. "Hello, Boromir, Faramir. Welcome home. Charlotte, have your boys eaten yet?"

"Not yet, Uncle James."

"Well, then, let's get'em fed while I let Kaylee know she's a grandma now." The quartet went inside, and James called Kaylee.

......................................................

"Lieutenant McAmis, I don't think I heard you properly. You said Charlotte has hatched two more Acromantula?" asked Admiral Shimada.

Kaylee nodded. "According to Charlotte, the sire was one of Aragog's get, in Scotland. I... I take full responsibility for this, Ma'am; I knew Charlotte was right at being fully-mature and I didn't think to take precautions. According to Charlotte her clutch was ten eggs, but only two survived to term. Both hatchlings are healthy males, fraternal twins she named Faramir and Boromir. Both are well-behaved so far, shy in personality but that might change as they socialize. Admiral Shimada, Ma'am, I am very sorry."

The Japanese Admiral sighed and nodded. "Charlotte's fully-mature, physically?"

"She is, though she'll continue growing over time, like a crocodile. Mentally, I'd put her in her late teens, early twenties."

Shimada sighed again. "Charlotte's your responsibility, and so are her children. Take care of them; the same restrictions apply to Faramir and Boromir as apply to Charlotte. Dismissed, Lieutenant."

"Aye, Ma'am." Kaylee came to attention and saluted, then stepped back, about-faced, and exited the office.

Admiral Shimada opened a program on her computer that listed personnel assigned to her base and typed...

-McAmis, Charlotte A.
-Rank: Seaman Apprentice, USNR
-Billet: US Navy Military Police Detachment, JMSDF Kure
-Status: Single
-Dependents: McAmis, Boromir; McAmis, Faramir (Male, Fraternal Twins)

 

[darthcourt10]

RCNAnon

So, I've got another snip. This one's a bit longer than the previous ones, hoping you all enjoy. Comments welcome, I had to rewrite it a few times.

Ron meets Duke.

---------
Ron waited by the gate of Portsmouth Naval Base that was closest to the shipgirl dorms, Warspite running late for one reason or another. The gate guards mostly knew him by this point but he simply nodded in thanks and waited outside for his minder, not having been given any sort of permanent pass yet.

He'd somewhat expected to see Warspite during the break given what had happened between them but he hadn't expected her to contact him with a request for one of her friends. She had asked him to look up the designs of the KGV class battleships for her friend Duke of York, who had apparently been having a number of issues with her shoulders, which translated roughly to her turrets, like she had for her ankles. He had of course done so, he had little else to do on his break since he'd finished his homework early. He'd known from his work on Warspite that there were thousands of parts on a battleship and that he should focus on the specific areas they'd requested.

Ron had found that of all the things on a KGV class battleship that had been discussed, the turret and what exactly had been wrong with them had generated a lot of discussion. Books had been written about the topic, discussions had been done and he'd even visited the internet a bit to see what it had to say as well as to get blueprints. In the end he did his own analysis of the turrets and came to a few conclusions that largely matched with the general consensus. Namely that the KGV four gun turret was over-complicated in places, needed some better hydraulics and some reinforcing along with some minor change in flash protection. At least that was what he thought were the most pertinent issues. He'd come up with some ideas for fixes but he needed to speak with Warspite about it first…

He looked up as the sound of someone coming from the dorm side, one of the soldiers on duty raising his hand in salute. It wasn't Warspite that had come to get him, it was someone else.

The blonde woman was taller than Warspite was when she stood, though her hair was up in a ponytail with a white headband instead of loose and styled, still nearly dragging on the ground from how long it was. She wore a white dress, black tights underneath covering her legs. Like all ship girls, especially the normally statuesque battleships, she was attractive. Her face was a bit more severe than some, especially with the sharp blue eyes she had but there was a little bit of a smile on her face which softened it immensely. He also knew who she was from Janes but it was his first time seeing her in person.

"Ma'am!" said the gate guard as he saluted her, which she returned correctly.

"I'm here for Ronald Weasley," she said, her voice slightly deeper and darker than Warspite's but still pleasant to his ears.

"That's me," he said, stepping forward from where he was waiting. Instead of robes he was wearing a muggle outfit that Warspite had bought him, a button up shirt and matching set of pants. He managed to bow his head politely and smile at the same time.

"HMS Duke of York," she said, offering her hand, "You can call me Duke."

"Duke," he said as he took her hand, still looking up, "You can call me Ron."

She gave him a slight smile at that and then turned towards the dorm, gesturing for him to follow her.

"Warspite has been unavoidably delayed with some admiralty meetings and asked me to escort you, I hope you understand."

"I understand," he said in return as he walked by her side, having to match steps larger than his without rushing too much, "There is a war on and this is a personal visit."

"Quite," said Duke as she lead the way into the dorms, then headed towards the stairs. Ron followed after her, keeping his eyes down as they went up several flights. When they reached the proper floor Duke led him down a direction he hadn't gone before, finally arriving at a nicely appointed parlor with the windows already open, a pot of tea nearby and a chess set on display.

"Warspite has mentioned once or twice that you play chess with her regularly," said Duke, a bit of a smile on her face, "Would you care for a game while we wait?"

Ron looked at the chess board, then up at Duke and nodded. "I'd never turn down a good game."

Duke nodded in turn, settling behind the black side of the board and ceding the initiative to Ron, even as tea was poured.

The following hour was a fiercely fought match between the pair, with Ron taking the initiative early and managing to keep it, slowly pushing Duke back in a series of moves which finally ended when he pinned her king between a rook and a bishop.

Looking around the board one last time Duke conceded the match with a nod.

"It seems you're just as good as Warspite mentioned," Duke said, pouring herself another cup of tea.

"Thank you," said Ron, "It was a good match, if you'd started out first I think it might have gone the other way."

"I'm not so sure," she said, "But thank you for the complement."

There was a brief silence as the two sipped at some tea before Duke spoke up again.

"I understand that you're a bit of an engineer."

"A little bit," he said, "Self taught really."

"She's shown me some of your work," Duke said, "It's very good."

Ron felt his cheeks heat up just a little bit at that, he knew what the book meant and the fact that it had been shown… no, it simply meant that Duke was a very good friend of Warspite's.

"Thank you," he said, "It took a lot of work."

"I'm sure it did," Duke replied, looking at him with those piercing blue eyes of hers.

Ron managed to meet the gaze with his own, Duke keeping it a bit before it softened slightly.

"I also understand that Warspite asked you to take a look at my plans," Duke said, her voice softening slightly.

"She did," Ron replied, feeling his mouth going a bit dry. He took a sip of tea to hold off the impending nerves.

"Did you have any ideas on my shoulders?" Duke asked, finally tripping over something that Ron had been dreading.

Ronald Bilius Weasley had for most of his life, been a child of "not". He was not the oldest of his family nor the hardest working, that honor went to Bill. He was not the most athletic, Charlie took the Weasley spot in that. Nor was he the smartest or most driven, as Percy was both of those in spades. Fred and George were both more creative and charismatic than him, even if they did use their powers more for pranks and jokes than anything productive. Nor was he the favorite, as Ginny was the daughter her mother had always wanted. With his father being more inquisitive than most three people and his mother being the commander of the Weasley horde, Ron had not stood out in any way. Even his one standout feature of being the best chess player was often overlooked, as his family knew he was the best and he'd often have a hard time getting them to play him.

In the many strange turns of fate that made up life, it had taken a war to change young Ron's life.

He could still remember the day clearly now, when his father had taken him to work with him near Portsmouth and he had stumbled upon the strange blonde woman in a wheelchair playing chess in the park. After losing to her repeatedly, though enjoying the challenge, Ron had learned that the woman was in fact a battleship, HMS Warspite. Though his father had not taken the initial revelation well, in the end it had resulted in him having the strongest non-familial relationship of his life.

It had also brought forth much talk and discussion between him and Warspite, which had changed his viewpoint in life over the years. He was not many things. However he was many more.

He wasn't naturally as hard a worker as Bill, nor as strong and brave as Charlie, or even as smart as Percy. Neither was he as inquisitive as his father, commanding as his mother or inventive enough to match the twins.

He was however, nearly as hard a worker on things important to him, brave enough to stick with his friends through thick or thin and smart enough to do well in school when he put his mind to it. He was inquisitive enough to have done research through muggle resources even his father had never thought of, was decisive enough to match his mother in the small positions he found him self in and creative enough in areas where he did well to keep even the likes of Victory and Warspite guessing on what style of chess he was going to play this time. He was also, though only self taught, the best engineer in the Weasley family and through dedication and hard work, the most likely to find work on the muggle side of the world when the Statute of Secrecy fell.

All in all that made him, in Warspite's own words and opinion, the most well rounded of the Weasley family. Though it had taken him more than a little time and effort to come around into thinking that way, Ron had come to the conclusion that Warspite had the right idea. He didn't have to match his family in their own specialties, just do the best he could and focus on what mattered to him. Which had led him here. About to offer his "professional" opinion to someone he'd only met an hour earlier.

"Well," he said as he set down his cup of tea and looked Duke in the eye, "I had an idea after going over your plans."

Duke simply nodded her head, looking him over.

"After doing a lot of reading and some research from people who'd looked it over before, along with what I've learned with Warspite… I think you just need some more support."

"Support?" Duke looked confused, her eyes questioning.

"Well, there's nothing glaringly wrong with your turrets," Ron said, remembering back to everything he'd gone over, "There's some over-design in places and some things that could be improved but nothing glaringly wrong."

"Well, that's good to know," said Duke, giving a smile, "So you've thought of some fixes then?"

"Uhm… yes," said Ron, turning a little red, "There's some enchantments I think might help and then I'm going to study runes this summer and I think a few of those might help too. Once I've gotten all those together I think I might be able to make something."

Duke started to smile again but then noted Ron starting to redden. "Is there something wrong Ron?"

"Ah..." Ron paused, marshaling his thoughts and fighting down the redness in his cheeks, all the while making sure he didn't look anywhere but Duke's face.

"Even with all enchantments they still need a base and well…"

Another breath and he put on as professional a face as he could manage.

"Given everything I think it might be best the base was a sports bra."

Ron was proud of himself that he managed the final delivery smoothly, though he'd been dreading saying it in the first place. He hadn't even known those were a thing until recently, given they were largely a muggle item but it fit what he needed, even if it did make things somewhat awkward given how… impressive a battleship could be.

Duke's face was interesting, maintaining a smoothness that went beyond pleasant as her eyes blinked a few times. Finally she coughed and turned away.

"Ahem. You… you're sure?" she finally said.

"I can't be certain," he said, focusing his own eyes forward, "But I couldn't think of anything else that fit both the physical and spiritual sides of what we need."

Duke nodded to that, taking several sips of tea.

"Did you… need anything special on that end?" she asked him.

"I was going to ask you if you could take care of… procuring the items in question," Ron said, "I understand it can be a sensitive issue."

Duke nodded, her own cheeks decreasing in redness after a period of quiet between them.

"Thank you for looking into the issue Ron," she said, turning to give him a small quirk of her lips, "It's somewhat sensitive and I do appreciate it."

"You're welcome," he said, perking back up as it seemed the "issue" wasn't that big of a deal, just somewhat awkward for both of them. Especially given that his dad had just given him "the talk" after he'd gotten home from break and Fred and George had told about what had happened in the common room. "Anything for a friend."

Duke smiled at that, warmly this time. It was then that the doors opened and Warspite finally arrived, looking somewhat flustered but grinning as she saw the two of them.

"It seems like you two are getting along," she said as she rolled in.

"Ron has been lovely company," said Duke, her face relaxing somewhat at the sight of Warspite.

"Duke was a very gracious host," he said, also feeling himself relax as she rolled up.

"Good!" Warspite said, rolling up to grab some tea for herself. "Now that the dreadful meeting is finally over, lets enjoy ourselves shall we?"

Ron and Duke both nodded, the trio settling in for another few hours of enjoyable chatting and discussion.

---

A few hours later Duke found herself sitting at the bar of one of the lounges, a glass of wine in her hands as she sat with Warspite.

"I thought that went well," said Warspite to Duke, "You seemed to get along quite well."

"We did," said Duke, thinking back to everything that happened, "He's quite the remarkable young man."

"Did you learn anything?" Warspite asked her.

"He's very… straightforward, in a good way," Duke said, thinking back to their game, "He knows what he's doing, he's upfront about it and except for one or two acceptable pauses," she flushed a bit herself, "He had no problems stating his opinions."

Warspite smiled as she took a sip of her drink.

"You know, it's not as embarrassing as you might think," she said.

Duke flushed some more at that.

"I just… didn't expect the discussion to turn that direction," she said.

"Perhaps," said Warspite, "But it does seem like a good idea."

"It did and it does," Duke agreed, "Otherwise I would have been more offended."

"But you aren't."

"...No."

"Good," said Warspite with a smile, "Because I think Ron was quite impressed with you as well."

"I… I'm happy to hear that," said Duke, taking a sip of her drink to hide a bit more red.

Warspite chuckled again, even as Duke tried not to blush more.

"You wouldn't mind meeting again?" Warspite asked.

"I think I'd enjoy it," said Duke, "As long as you don't mind."

"I don't mind," said Warspite, "It's good to see you smile."

Duke just shook her head at that and Warspite laughed again, the two ending the day shortly after.

-----
Spoiler: Duke of York

In case somebody hadn't seen it before. I didn't figure she'd bring out the sword to a friendly meeting.

Edit: Didn't realize the image was borked, attached a new one.

 

[darthcourt10]

NotHimAgain

"Tanya?"

"Yes? What is it?"

"It's... nice to know that you want to stay with me after you heal, but... am I really that important to you?"

"... the window is closed."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'll--"

"No, I mean... it's a metaphor. The light. It's shining around the edges of the curtains, but you can't really see anything outside. But if you open the window, you see the world outside, and there's so much more. That's what you did for me."

"... I opened a window?"

"Before we met, there were only two things that mattered to me. Duty, and my sister. I lost both of them within five minutes of each other. And then you came, saying things that I couldn't hope to understand. Helping someone for no other reason that it being right... I had no idea that such a thing was possible. I didn't know that there was so much more to the world than I could see. I couldn't tell that the curtains were closed. And then you opened them, and I saw the world... I guess?"

"Tanya..."

"It's not easy to put into words. But it means more to me than anything else in the world, even my legs."

"Tanya... thank you."

"Huh?"

"Nothing. I've had trouble with other doctors in the past, they thought I was too... idealistic. I'm just glad to know that there's one person out there who believes in my words."

"Ah-haaaah..."

"It's almost time for your session. Come on, I'll help you get ready."

"Ah! Right!"

 

[darthcourt10]

Harry Leferts

While still a chilly, April spring day, the sunlight shone down upon the land below. And by one odd home, there were flashes in the sunlight. If anyone had wandered by, they might have wondered what was going on there.
Those there however did not wonder as they already knew what was going on.

Eyes widening, Luna ducked under a blade before lashing out with her own. Said blade was expertly parried by Queen Anne's Revenge who grinned. "Not bad, lass, yeh have improved!" Slowly circling, she held out one sword as Luna also circled around. "But can yeh put up more of a fight?"

All Luna did was smile brightly as she adjusted her hat. A rather fancy hat which she had gotten from the pirategirls. Something about her needing such a hat, not that she understood. "Can I?"

Nodding with a grin, Queen Anne's Revenge let out a booming laugh. "Aye! Let's see!"

With that, she lunged forward and the two were parrying each other. Off to the side, Golden Hind was sipping some tea as she sat on a barrel. "Steady on those toes, Little Moon! Swordplay is serious!"

Only nodding, Luna narrowed her eyes before they widened as she seemed to trip and fall back. Something that caused Queen Anne's Revenge to grin as she lunged forward aiming for beside Luna's head. Then her grin disappeared and her eyes widened as Luna's leg shot up and nailed her between the legs. "ARRRGH, MERCIFUL JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!"

From where she was off to the side, Golden Hind blinked and then began to grin as Luna held her sword to the staggered Queen Anne's Revenge. Luna's response though made her howl with laughter. "A pirate must use any and all advantage, even dirty tricks!"

Groaning as she tried to scowl, Queen Anne's Revenge slowly nodded. "True enough, Little Moon, true enough. And that was a true dirty trick." Feeling something, Luna looked down to see the end of a pistol up against her stomach. "But you're going to need to do some more then that to beat this old girl, Savy?"

A pout on her face, Luna huffed a bit as she pulled back her sword. "Hmph. And this time I though that I would get you. Especially with the Nargles helping me."

Simply straightening, Queen Anne's Revenge chuckled and then rubbed Luna's hair gently. "Maybe next time, Little Moon." Then she picked up a stone and tossed it into the air. Before it touched the ground again, she lashed out with a kick that sent it flying right between Golden Hind's eyes. "Ah, stop with yeh cackling, you hyena!"

Having fallen from the barrel, Golden Hind got up with a scowl on her face. "There was no need of that, you damn salt encrusted barnacle!" Pulling out her own sword, she snarled. "Now have at yeh!"

There was a smile on Luna's face as she switched places with Golden Hind, both Pirategirls going at it. Insults and comments about ancestry were flung back and forth as the two fought. However, she did watch intently, especially as their blades were practically blurs with how they used them. That, more then anything else, showed the eleven year old girl just how far she had to go to match the two. Or any of the other pirategirls who performed security at Hogwarts.

And she could not wait.

Eventually though, her gaze went down to the barrel and then back to them. After a moment, she grinned some. Her shout though caused both of them to pause and turn. "Catch!"

Spotting the barrels heading towards them, the two pirategirls grinned before leaping on top of them. Back and forth they went once more, this time their footsteps being even more deft as they kept their balance with ease. It also made it harder for them to fight, but at the same time they were also enjoying their spar far more then before. "Haha! Our Little Moon knows how to make things interestin', doesn't she?"

Golden Hind lashed out with one blade before nodding. "Aye, that she does, Revy! Could have used her on me hull, I could have!"

Upon Queen Anne's Revenge was a scowl before she leaned back away from one of the slashes, the sword missing her throat by inches. "Don't be callin' me by that name, yeh swine! What sort of name is Revy for a pirate!?"

All Golden Hind did though was shrug. "Who knows? What sort of name is Jack Sparrow for a pirate?"

There was a roar and she jumped up and over the sword. "Jack be an excellent pirate! And those movies are some of the better ones!"

Rolling her eyes, Golden Hind sighed before noticing that one of the branches were close as she dodged various swings and swipes of the sword. "No, those movies are not that great, yeh great lummox." Jumping from her barrel, she places one foot on a tree and leapt onto the branch. One foot slammed into Queen Anne's Revenge's nose, knocking her off her barrel. Meanwhile, Golden Hind swung up and around the branch until she sat upon it. Looking down at the snarling shipgirl below her. With a sigh, she looked at Luna. "See what I need to deal with, Little Moon?"

Softly giggling, Luna shook her head with mirth sparkling in her eyes. "Maybe. But then I do like those movies too."

In reply, Queen Anne's Revenge pointed her sword at Luna. "See? Now that little lady has taste."

Just groaning, Golden Hind facepalmed in mock despair. "More like no taste! Poor lass has been infected by yeh!" Tensing, she grinned before leaping down and her boots catching Queen Anne's Revenge in the face. "Seems like I'm just goin' ter beat it out of ye!"

Having spotted the wink, Luna grinned and rushed over before bringing out her own sword. Soon, she was helping out Queen Anne's Revenge against Golden Hind. Laughing, the younger of the two Pirategirls grinned. "Now see here? This is how real pirates fight!"

Luna only nodded at that. "Yup!"

There was something in her voice that made Queen Anne's Revenge internally blink before her eyes widened and she dodged the sword's edge that Luna sent her way. "What be this then? A mutiny!? Betrayal!?"

With a shrug, the witch smiled. "It's the way of the pirate."

After a moment, Queen Anne's Revenge threw back her head and howled in laughter. "Aye! And I am so proud of yeh!" Then something glimmered in her eyes and she lunged forward. "Now prepare yehself!"

Even as their "Fight" went back and forth, Luna could tell that they were taking it easy on her as it turned into a threeway. It was obvious with how they moved back and forth, making it more easy for her while each took the other shipgirl seriously. Some might have been annoyed at how they were acting, but Luna? She was just glad that she became friends with them. And that they were close enough not to mind coming to her house to see her either!

Hence, it was just another wonderful day spent with wonderful friends.

Later, as the sun began to set, they trudged back to Luna's home. When they had first seen it, the two shipgirls had grinned and declared it to be a true home befitting their "Little Moon". From others, it might have been an insult, but from them? It was a compliment. Upon reaching the door, Golden Hind knocked and smiled at the man who answered it. "'Ello, Xeno. We're done for the day."

The odd man just smiled and looked down at Luna who was breathing hard and somewhat dirty before nodding. "Have a good day with your friends, Luna?"

Her grin becoming wider, Luna nodded. "The best, Daddy! And they said that I'm really acting like a pirate!"

All her father did though was nod and pat her on the head. "Ah, I see then. Well, all three of you come in and wash up before dinner. It's almost done after all."

Blinking, Queen Anne's Revenge raised a finger. "Aye, that would be good. But we don't be wanting to impose any-"

She was cut off as Xeno shook his head. "You're not imposing at all. And far be it for me to not fill those stomachs of yours after spending time with my Little Moon all day. Now come in, come in, please."

With a shared look, the two pirategirls only shook their heads and walked in with smiles on their faces.

 

[darthcourt10]

Snippet 136: S0ngD0g13

Azuma and The Patrol...
...............................................

Azuma sailed across the calm waters of the Inland Sea toward the Kanmon Straits, Monitor at her side and two of the Kure Minesweepers, Rebel and Barricade, ranging ahead of the patrol while Virginia rested aboard the Tender Polly with the Minesweepers Scuffle and Barrier. The group was larger than normal; this was a combination patrol and reconnaissance-in-force, as Abyssal activity had begun to pick back up near the straits that connected the Inland Sea with the Sea of Japan.

The Ironclads and Minesweepers had been tapped to execute the recon, with JSDF air-support on-call, since the Abyssals in question were never reported in great numbers and weren't of the most-modern design.

"We'll anchor here," said Azuma as the sun set. "Set pickets and we'll continue at dawn; that should put us into the Kanmon Straits by mid-afternoon."

.................................................

The next morning dawned red, and the sky was a forbidding gray with stormclouds rolling in as the hours passed. The seas grew rough and the waves ran high, and Azuma made the decision to bring the others on-board the Polly, since none of them were especially-blessed with good sea-keeping and Monitor was outright phobic of storms...

The Patrol Tender rounded a point in the Kamnon Straits in search of a sheltered inlet or bay to anchor and ride out the storm, and Virginia felt a tingle across her skin that made her shiver. It reminded her of when she'd...

"Wards," she said to Monitor and Azuma. "We just crossed somebody's Wards." Anything else she would have said was interrupted by the Minesweepers rushing to the rail and bawling thunderously just as an Abyssal burst from cover, its Imps beating a gong in alarm, and fired on them. The projectiles whipped past, the Abyssal's aim spoiled by the growing squall, save for one that crashed straight into Monitor with an echoing BANG before dropping to the deck alongside the stunned Ironclad.

"Shit Fire and Save Matches, that's a twenty-four-pounder roundshot!" shouted Virginia as she knelt to check Monitor. Azuma looked out and saw Abyssals emerging from the hidden inlet, and from the stormy seas behind them...

"They're junks! Wako pirate junks!" shouted Azuma over the storm and the cannon-fire. "Two, no, three dozen!"

Virginia helped Monitor to her feet and snarled. "We're surrounded, Stonewall; they've got us hemmed in tight." The sailor at the helm tried to break free only to be turned back by a hail of cannon-balls ahead of them.

Azuma keyed the radio by the pilothouse. "Thunder, Thunder, this is Iron-Gray; requesting immediate air-support on my position! Patrol currently engaged closely and completely surrounded by thirty-six, say again three-six Abyssal junks with cannon! Requesting support, danger-close!"

"Iron-Gray, this is Thunder; negative, negative, we cannot scramble to support you at this time! This storm has everything with wings grounded! Hold out or break out; we'll scramble as soon as we can! Thunder-Actual out!"

Azuma stared into the grim eyes of her partners and sighed. "It's on us, Girls! The planes ain't coming! Over the side and look alive!"

Monitor rolled over the port rail and summoned her rigging, bringing her two eleven-inch Dahlgrens to bear, and Virginia vaulted the starboard rail and summoned her own rigging with a shouted, "Fucking Chair-Farce!"

Azuma dropped over the stern and the four Admirable-Class AM's took station off Polly's bow...

.................................................

Gotta fly faster... Gotta get there... Got a bad feeling...

The one winged thing aloft in the storm fought the wind and rain as he continued his journey. He'd had a bad feeling all day, until finally he couldn't remain on-base. So he had flown...

................................................

"Stonewall!" shouted Virginia over the din of battle, in her stress calling Azuma by the name she had borne in her Confederate service. "Stonewall, Monitor's nearly swamped; I'm pulling her back aboard the Polly!"

Azuma hurled another shell into the press of Abyssals, missing again, and ducked as another hail of roundshot hissed by her. We can't hit shit in this rough weather; the only good thing is the Abyssals can't hit shit either... Kuso!

"Kuso! Virginia, 'ware boarders! They're trying to close with us!" Azuma sidestepped an Abyssal's lunge and hip-checked it, jamming her portside seven-inch rifle against its hull and firing point-blank, even as Imps leapt aboard.

The Minesweepers howled and Virginia shrieked her defiance to the skies as she fought...

.....................................................

There they are! What?! No! NO!

He couldn't let them be sunk, he couldn't! He nosed over into a dive and roared his rage...

"No One Hurts My Shipgirls!!!"

................................................

Virginia drove her attackers back with fists and boots and cutlass, feeling the slashing melee inside her as her crew fought to repel the Imps who'd made it aboard; as a fresh group hurled themselves in at her, she felt her hide suddenly erupt as though hundreds of hornets had all stung her at once as Monitor fired both her Dahlgrens, loaded with grapeshot, past her. The effects of what amounted to two eleven-inch-diameter shotguns at such close range on the Abyssals was spectacular and bought Kaylee a moment's breathing-room.

Azuma saw a shape pierce the clouds and fall toward them, and heard a high-pitched sound, but couldn't place it... until Bonaparte suddenly snapped his wings wide and swooped over the Abyssal fleet, spewing flame across the wood-hulled enemy ships. The Mastiff-sized dragonet banked away and climbed, flapping hard to gain altitude again, then swung around and made a second flaming-pass before landing atop Polly's pilothouse. He clung stubbornly and spat flames at every Abyssal that came close.

Both passes had reaped a toll on the Abyssal Wako; fully a dozen were aflame and sinking, and as Azuma whooped in joy and Virginia counter-attacked into their disarrayed midst with a fang-filled smile and a Rebel Yell one Abyssal exploded violently as flames reached its powder magazine...

The storm began to slacken and Bonaparte took to the air again, darting in and bathing Abyssals in fire by twos and threes before peeling away. Azuma drew her last Captain's katana and charged in; the sight of Bonaparte, her dragon, fighting for her, drew the cry from her lips, "Fire and Blood!"

Virginia laughed as she hacked an enemy down. "Seriously, Azuma?! You read too much G.R.R. Martin!" The Natural-Born Ironclad laughed a barking laugh. "Fuck it, why not?! What is Dead May Never Die!"

......................................................

The Abyssal Wako were sunk, burned by Bonaparte's flames or shattered by the Shipgirls' blows and guns...

The exhausted Ironclads and Minesweepers lay sprawled on the deck of the USS Polly, the newly-emerged sun bright and warm on their faces...

"Azuma?"

"Yeah, Virginia?"

"Do you reckon if you brought Boney along on every patrol, they'd reclassify you as a Carrier?"

Azuma laughed. "Probably not. I've only got the one Bonaparte, after all."

"Hell," said Monitor, wheezing through sprung ribs, "One Bonaparte's enough to beat a whole squadron from, how'd you put it, Gray-Back? The 'Fucking Chair-Farce'?"

Virginia nodded. "I move Bonaparte be listed as a Naval Aviator, Draconic."

"Motion Seconded," wheezed Monitor.

"Motion Carries by Acclamation. Bonaparte F. Ball, I hereby induct you into the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force as an Honorary Ensign," said Azuma. "You did good, Bonaparte..."

Virginia reached out to pet him. "Ya did good, Boney..."

Monitor stroked his chest as she fell asleep...

Azuma sat up slowly and hugged her dragon close. "Thank you, Bonaparte..."

 

[darthcourt10]

Snippet 137: S0ngD0g13

They say "don't let them in"...

Kaylee sat in her bedroom, eyes red from tears and her teddy-bear, Rupert, clutched in a deathgrip. She was shaking in the aftermath of another nightmare; at least, she thought, she'd managed to muffle her voice and not wake the whole house...

...............................................

"... Just close your eyes and clear your thoughts again"...

Aso couldn't sleep; she kept remembering... The Incident... She tried meditation, but serenity eluded her, rest eluded her...

....................................................

I have no heart, just ice and stone...

Aso, unable to sleep or even relax, did as she always had and wrapped herself in a veneer of strength, burying her fears and inner demons under the strong, unyielding Warrior she had to be...

She rose and started walking outside...

...................................................

... Made up of nails and teeth and bone...

Kaylee wiped her eyes roughly and snarled at herself to get a grip; she told herself that she was stronger than her fears, harder than her demons...

She threw on her coat and went outside; her room was too close and she needed fresh air...

.....................................................

I can fake a smile; I can force a laugh...

Kaylee wandered without direction, and each person she met, she wondered if they could see through the false smile and fake cheer, to see the damaged, broken girl inside...

..................................................

I can dance and play the part, if that's what you ask...

Aso walked along under the moon, her feet carrying her where they willed as her mind twisted in circles and knots and her face betrayed none of her insecurities; if all the world were a stage, Aso certainly knew the steps to the dance...

..................................................

Weakness is a wound that no one wants to speak of...

Aso found herself sitting on the front steps of Houshou's house, of his house, in the silence of the night. No one was awake, and no one was around, so in silence, Aso let herself into the back yard and in silence let herself break down and cry, let her weakness out...

Before her eyes Aso saw the other Carriers, the Villagers, Houshou, and James. Aso saw the people she'd hurt, and the people she'd helped; there were more she'd hurt than helped...

.......................................................

... And cool is just how far we have to fall...

Kaylee found herself sitting against the side of the pilothouse aboard the Polly, tears streaming down her face and the grip of one of her LeMats in her hand...

"Look how far I've fallen... I'm too weak, too damaged... It hurts too much..."

Kaylee saw her friends and family before her eyes and smelled lavender and honeysuckle on the wind...

....................................................

You know it's gonna hurt so why would you want more-ore-ore?

You know it's gonna hurt so why would you want more-ore-ore?

You know it's gonna hurt so why would you want more?

Aso felt Houshou's arms, and James', enfold her in a gentle hug as James whispered to her...

Kaylee felt her pistol pulled gently from her hand and felt ghostly arms crisscrossed with razor-scars wrap around her, and heard a phantom voice whisper in her ear...

"I know it's gonna hurt, but you're worth fighting for."