[Fiction] [X-Over] What I end up writing when I should be doing something else...
09-21-2015, 02:25 AM
09-21-2015, 02:25 AM
I freely admit there are other and ostensibly better things I ought to be working on right now, but the hell with it. Let’s have a highly unlikely (yet oddly fitting) crossover story. I make no apologies.
Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, 2021
“You know,” Haruhi Suzumiya remarked, “there was a time when I didn’t have to pay for drinks in this town.” Her elder traveling companion only grunted at this, while the younger blinked in somewhat-innocent confusion.
Their reception at the base airfield was decidedly mixed. The JMSDF weren’t happy about it by any objective measure, but they had their duty and at least were willing to be correct about it. The small throng of civilians clustered near the gate on the other hand were clearly unhappy with the visitors from space and not at all shy about expressing themselves. SPACE GAIJIN GO HOME was the least inflammatory slogan on the small forest of signs greeting them, and the chanting protesters strayed into remarkably filthy Japanese about foreign interlopers.
“You know they think we’re responsible,” Dr. Deidre Griest said, brushing back a strand of pinkish hair.
“They’re morons.”
“Not disputing that, but it doesn’t make them less angry.”
“Be nice if it did,” Haruhi sighed. “So where’s our contact?” She looked around for an officer but found only enlisted. A slight tug on her sleeve interrupted her search and she looked down at the little redhead at her side. “Yes, hon?”
“Commander, could I be excused please?” SV Ciara, first (and so far only) of the Fen kanmusu fleet, looked a little embarrassed at the request so soon after they’d gotten off the transport, but pushed on regardless. “I’d like to get back in the water for a little bit.”
Haruhi raised a single eyebrow. “You are so much like Nagaru it’s terrifying,” she said. “Yeah, it’s okay, just keep your phone on and stick to the port area, okay?” Ciara nodded, smiling, and dashed off towards the docks.
“Shameful opportunist,” Dr. Griest sniffed. Haruhi turned her commander’s gaze on the scientist.
“Her, or me?”
“The both of you.” The two might’ve got into it a little more only for the argument to be interrupted by the arrival of officers. One was in the uniform of a JMSDF admiral, a bit young for his rank maybe but clearly a man who’d seen quite a bit. The other was in a modified schoolgirl outfit and carried a parasol, which meant that she was either a Fen refugee or one of the Japanese kanmusu.
The officer saluted. “Rear Admiral Ichiro Nogura,” he said. “This is our kanmusu liaison Yamato.” The tall girl bowed.
“Haruhi Suzumiya, Great Justice,” Haruhi replied. “Dr. Griest, my scientific advisor for this trip.” Griest nodded respectfully. Nogura looked around curiously.
“I was told that one of your kanmusu would be accompanying you here,” he noted.
“Ciara’s gone down to the docks,” Haruhi said. “She needed to get her sea legs back under her.” Nogura smiled slightly at that.
“Not very surprising,” he said. “Shall we retire to my office?”
Ciara stood at the end of the pier, looking out at the water. She hadn’t seen the ocean in years, not since that last landing in Sydney harbor before she’d been retired and subsequently returned in this tiny human package. It was Tokyo Bay even, a place she’d been more than once in her time as a cargo hauler and as one of Fenspace’s few purpose-built warships. Fuzzy memories surfaced, reminding her that she’d even picked Haruhi and her friends up from this bay—okay, it was in Chiba on the other side of the harbor but who cares about that?
All that history and memory, and here she was back again. She summoned her rigging and stepped off the pier, carefully damping down the instinct to fly in favor of the one to float. Cautiously at first, then gaining confidence as her kanmusu instincts took over, Ciara gracefully stepped across the waves.
“So,” Admiral Nogura said, once the little party was safely ensconced in his office. “What can JMSDF’s kanmusu project do for interplanetary security?”
“Well,” Haruhi said conversationally, “the guys in charge asked me to dissemble my way around the topic, but I’ve never been good at that so screw it. We need your help.”
“Our help?” Nogura sounded skeptical, not a good sign but Haruhi pushed forward.
“Fenspace is vulnerable to Abyssal attack. We’ve already seen several raids on Luna, but they know we’re out there and worse, they know we’re fragile. If their actual firepower shows up, the stuff you’ve been fighting the last year and a half? We can’t stop that with conventional weapons. We need kanmusu support. In exchange, we’re offering material support—asteroid mining, technical services, improved IT and communications—and research. The finest mad scientific minds are willing to put all their effort into understanding the Abyssals, just say the word. But we need ships to defend our main settlements.”
“Huh,” Nogura leaned back, a little surprised by Haruhi’s opening gambit. “I’m actually a little surprised that you need our help.”
Haruhi blinked. “How’s that?”
“Well,” Nogura waggled his hand. “You’re Fen. I’d have expected you to be neck-deep in kanmusu by now. The intersection of technology and magic... I always thought that was your wheelhouse.”
Griest twitched for a second, then sighed. “There’s, ah, that’s a matter of some debate.” Haruhi coughed delicately. “Actually rather a lot of debate yes thank you Haruhi. The point of the matter is, though, we have less hard data on the subject than you. Barely any good information on kanmusu at all, in fact.”
Yamato blinked at the admission, while the admiral straightened up a little. “Now that is unexpected,” he said. “Intelligence thought you had a reserve.”
“Of course they’d say that,” Haruhi snorted. “God forbid the Jack Ryan wannabees ever admit they don’t know something. No, we’ve got the one spontaneous manifestation, that’s Ciara, and that’s it.” She shook her head wearily. “Most of the factional navies have tried the summoning ritual, no dice. We don’t know what we’re doing wrong, or maybe we’re just too new to summon ship spirits.”
“You’ve only had Ciara to defend you?” Yamato asked, shaking her head. “One ship to protect so much... she must be exceptional.”
“She’s a good kid,” Griest said. “And we’re backing her up to the best of our abilities, and... we’ve been lucky so far. The Abyssals haven’t made a serious attempt on our colonies, only minor air-raids so far, and those attacks probably started from bases on Earth. But there’s a lot of water out there—some of our major settlements are on ice moons with subsurface oceans—and a lot of our interstellar colonies sit on the coast. Sooner or later...”
“They’ll come,” Nogura finished. “Because Earth isn’t easy pickings, because it prevents us from escaping, for any number of reasons.”
“Exactly,” Haruhi said.
It wasn’t like flight—nothing was like flight: the complete freedom in all dimensions, the rush of atmosphere as she crossed the transsonic threshold, the warm crackling of the Sun’s corona—but it felt right. The calm blue water resonated with something deep in her heart. Ciara was a creature of the sea and the sea welcomed her home with every step. She idly traced back and forth across the bay, taking in the summer air and generally enjoying the experience, right up to the moment when she was bracketed by a squadron of four destroyers.
“Oh hi! You’re new,” said the lead destroyer, a girl with lots of dark purple hair. “Welcome to Yokosuka!”
“Oh, um, thanks.” Ciara said, a little abashed.
“I’m Akatsuki, name ship of the Akatsuki class,” purple-hair said. “And these are my sisters in DesDiv Six!”
“Ikazuchi!” said the destroyer on her port. “Pleased to meet you!”
“Inazuma,” the destroyer on her starboard said quietly.
“I’m Hibiki,” said the destroyer behind her. “Are you American? We haven’t seen any new Americans around for a while.”
“I’m not American, I’m Irish. Well, I was British, then I was Irish but now I’m...” Ciara trailed off, trying to figure out where her nebulous “nationality” stood at that moment, before giving up with a shrug. “I just am, I guess. Peacock-class pocket destroyer SV Ciara, Great Justice Navy, at your service!”
“Pocket destroyer?” Ikazuchi asked. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Isn’t that like what Graf Spee said she was, a ship too little to be a battleship but shoots like one?” Inazuma replied. Ciara nodded.
“Yep! The Peacock class were built as patrol corvettes for Hong Kong’s waters, but I was, um, upgraded a lot when I moved over to Great Justice from the Irish Navy.”
“Oh hey,” Ikazuchi said brightly. “You’re a Hong Kong girl? That means you’re a returnee like Kongou-nee! That’s awesome!”
“Great Justice,” Hibiki said in a where-have-I-heard-that-before tone. “Isn’t that the people with all the funny flying cars and stuff?”
“Yeah,” Akatsuki said. “They’re the navy with all... the...” she stared at Ciara, eyes getting wider and wider as the pieces fell into place. “Spaceships.” she gasped. “You’re... you’re...”
Ciara smiled, big and broad.
“YOU’RE A SPACE KANMUSU!?”
“Let’s say, just as a hypothetical,” Nogura said, “that the government agrees to this. I understand that they probably already have and just didn’t bother to tell me or my secretary—” Yamato coughed “—because that’s the sailor’s lot, but just for the hypothetical the paperwork’s already done and filed away. How would we proceed to select ships for, ah, extremely detached duty?”
“We’re looking for volunteers. Not draftees, not girls who were voluntold to sign up. Volunteers only.” Haruhi glared at the admiral. “Because we are 100% damn sure than unless the original hull was already spaceworthy or handwaved prior to manifestation they aren’t capable of handling spaceflight and they’re going to need that just to get around, let alone fight space-Abyssals.”
Griest nodded in agreement. “Handwaving’s a difficult art even in the best circumstances,” she noted. “And honestly handwaving something as blatantly magical as kanmusu is so far out of our experience that we’re really skittish about it.”
“Your girl Ciara seems to have made the transition well enough,” Nogura said.
“Yeah,” Haruhi replied, “but her hull was ‘waved over a decade before she manifested. So we know that handwaved ships can manifest, but we don’t know how handwavium is going to react to an already manifested ship. We’re kind of sure that whatever weird juju the kanmusu run on is compatible with handwavium’s juju—”
“Juju?” Nogura said dryly.
“Yeah, very technical term, really popular in applied bullshit studies when ‘applied bullshit’ is considered poor form. Ciara proves that handwaved kanmusu can be effective—more than usual, since pre-wave Ciara was a corvette and now she can punch like a destroyer—but applying that to an existing one?” Haruhi shrugged helplessly. “Maybe it gives her a boost, maybe it just gives her cat ears, maybe it nerfs her. We don’t know.”
“Ano,” Yamato put in, sounding a little confused. “What does ‘nerf her’ mean? It doesn’t sound good.”
The three humans looked at each other. Haruhi motioned for Griest to explain it. “Well, handwavium... doesn’t like weapons,” she said slowly. “We call it the slapstick effect. If you took, say, a regular pistol and dunked into a bowl of handwavium you’d get back something that makes a loud noise and covers the target with soot, or a water pistol or... well, there’s a lot of potential effects. Some of them are useful, but it’s not a weapon anymore, not really. You and the others are frontline fighters against the Abyssals.” Yamato’s eyes tightened a little at that. “If handwavium took that away from you, that would be...”
“Then the world really would hate us,” Haruhi said. “And they’d be right to.”
Meeting new kanmusu was a revelation to Ciara. DesDiv 6 were friendly and approachable, and hung on her every word as she related stories of traveling across the solar system as part of her duties. The four destroyers listened, wide-eyed, as the Fen girl talked about walking across the red deserts of Mars, sailing the ice fields of Ganymede, fighting Abyssals in the airless skies over Port Luna and climbing the ice mountains of the Heart of Pluto. Tales of adventure and daring that made life on boring old Yokosuka seem tame in comparison.
A few things though got lost in translation. “Eeh?!” Ikazuchi said, horrified. “You don’t have an admiral!?”
Ciara thought it over. “Well, Commander Suzumiya is like an admiral, I think?” she ventured. “But she’s not just in charge of me, she’s in charge of, like everything in Great Justice, not just me. I just sort of do stuff, you know? I’ve worked for a lot of different commanders all over the place.” DesDiv 6’s heads all tilted in blank incomprehension at that.
“No admiral?” Akatsuki said. “That’s just weird.”
“Sounds lonely,” Inazuma said.
“It’s not like I’m alone,” Ciara replied. “I’ve got lots of friends, like Captain Garrett. He was my last skipper, he comes to see me when we’re in port at the same time. I like his new ship too! Macha’s really nice, she’s always bringing me stuff from the outsystem colonies.”
“What is she?” Hibiki asked. “If she’s nice she’s probably a cruiser or fast battleship like Tenryuu-nee or Kongou-nee!”
“Cruiser, duh,” Ikazuchi said. “If she’s going to other stars she has to have epic range.”
“Actually she’s a transport,” Ciara said. The other destroyers blinked.
“A transport?” Inazuma said. “I didn’t know transport ships could be kanmusu.”
“Maybe it’s a Fenspace thing?” Akatsuki said.
“It is, sort of? But she’s not kanmusu.” Ciara admitted. “It’s... it’s different for a lor of Fen ships, our spirits wake up but we’re still bound to our old hulls. Some of us don’t ever take human form—Miss Ptichka’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and she’s a bird most of the time. We don’t really know why I’m different, why I’m kanmusu and the others aren’t.” She sighed. “I don’t know a lot about any of this, really,” she said quietly.
They sat there for what seemed like an eternity, Ciara looking at the water, none of them knowing exactly what to say. Hibiki broke the tableau by reaching out and pulling the smaller Fen destroyer into a bear hug. “Then it’s a good thing you came here,” she said firmly. “Yokosuka is the best place for kanmusu to meet up and figure things out, and you’ve been without your sisters for too long. We’ll teach you what you need to know.”
“Yeah,” Akatsuki said. “Yeah! Destroyers look after their own! As name ship of the Akatsuki class, I hereby name SV Ciara an honorary member of Destroyer Division Six, the finest in the world!”
“I don’t think you can do that, Akatsuki,” Ikazuchi commented. Akatsuki stuck her tongue out at her wayward comrade.
“I take it you have a procedure in mind?” Nogura said.
“More or less,” Haruhi replied. “First of all we’d like to talk to the fleet, let them know what’s going on before we get started. Then we talk with the volunteers, figure out which ones are honestly interested or just bored, egged on by peer pressure or whatever. Once we get through that...” Haruhi reached into a pocket and pulled out a small vial of silvery liquid. “We apply the handwavium and we pray.”
Nogura and Yamato eyed the vial. “I see,” the admiral said. “Well, we don’t have any patrols scheduled for tonight. Everybody ought to be in dock for dinner, so we’ll muster the girls then and see who’s interested.” Nogura stood, his guests following suit as the meeting seemed to be concluded.
Until fate, in the form of IJN Yamato, stepped forward. “Asking for volunteers will not be necessary, Admiral,” she said coolly. “I, Yamato, will undergo this experimental procedure.”
Nogura blinked hard. “Yamato?” The battleship turned her head, keeping her face away from the admiral’s, eyes trying to focus on the walls but straying back to the vial of quicksilver in Haruhi’s hand.
“I wish to be useful, Admiral,” she said. “In my past life I only sortied at the very last because we couldn’t afford to keep my tanks full and my batteries stocked. Again I find myself in that position, staying a my berth while my sisters around the world risk their lives. While one ship defends ten more worlds! I, Yamato, cannot abide this any longer. If handwavium will let me fight again, make me worthy of being the Soul of Japan, then I will take the risk.”
“It might, Yamato-san,” Griest said softly. “But it might neuter you, too.”
“Then I am no worse off than I am now, Griest-sensei,” Yamato returned, the tinge of a bitter smile on her face. “And if it does, then better the hotel than our strongest fighters.” She turned to face Admiral Nogura, who was looking at his secretary like he’d never seen her before. “You are my Admiral,” she said. “You take care of us, and I love you for it. I follow your orders. I respect your decisions. But this is something I must do for myself.”
Yamato whirled, moving faster than any human and many robots could manage, nimbly plucking the vial of handwavium from Haruhi’s hand. Nogura barely had time to shout “YAMATO DON’T!” before she’d popped the top off and swallowed the contents in one gulp. For a moment there was nothing but silence in the admiral’s office. Yamato cocked her head to one side. “That’s strange,” she said, “I don’t feel any different... oooh no,” she corrected, a goofy smile blossoming on her face. “Oh there we go—” she noted as her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to the institutional carpet.
Gossip moves quickly on a military base, and when the gossip involves the brass it moves faster than light. Five minutes after Nogura had gotten the now-unconscious Yamato into a bed in the medical wing, the word had gone out that there was Something Wrong With Yamato. The news spread, and within an hour every kanmusu on base was milling around outside the base clinic, wringing their hands worriedly and waiting for news.
“How is she?” Nogura asked for something like the ten-thousandth time in the last hour.
“Still asleep,” Dr. Griest reported. “She hasn’t changed gender, her skin’s the same color and she hasn’t sprouted cat ears though, so right now I think whatever the wave’s doing, it’s doing it to the ship part, not the girl.”
“You think,” Nogura said flatly, only to get a shrug from the Fen scientist.
“We’re in uncharted waters, Admiral,” she sighed. “All I know right now is it’s not hurting her.” Nogura growled at that, then redirected his ire towards a more deserving target.
“You,” he hissed at Haruhi, fixing her with his best death glare. “You knew she’d do that, didn’t you?”
Haruhi for her part was happy to return the glare. “No, Admiral,” she said. “I thought she might volunteer. I hoped she’d be willing to take the risk. I didn’t know she’d grab the fucking vial out of my fucking hand and drink it in your fucking office because if I was fucking psychic I wouldn’t have PULLED IT OUT OF MY POCKET!”
“I ought to have you thrown off this base,” Nogura snarled. “Or maybe let the girls use you for target practice you jumped-up civilian bi—”
“WOAH! HEY!” Griest barked. “Stand down, both of you! None of this is helping in the slightest! If you want to kill each other then fine, but leave the damn room first!” It wasn’t the most diplomatic of things, but Griest’s tone managed to get through just enough that the pair returned to trying to hate the other to death.
“Teitoku?” One of the battlecruiser girls poked her head into the room. “What’s going on?” she asked, hand to her eyeglasses to keep them from sliding right off her nose. “We heard that something had happened to Yamato.”
“Oh, Kirishima,” Nogura sighed. “That’s, I mean, well, Yamato...”
“Is perfectly fine, thank you Admiral.” Yamato said primly, standing in the doorway. Her handwavium encounter hadn’t seemed to affect her at all, at least at first blush. She drifted into the room, tall and proud as always.
“Yamato...” Nogura tried to say something, faltered, then rebounded. “What the hell were you thinking!?”
“I, Yamato told you why already, Admiral.” Yamato regarded her admiral sadly. “If I have to explain it again, you didn’t understand.”
“That’s not what I meant—oh forget it, we’ll discuss this later.” Nogura said irritably. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” Yamato said. “Very good. Like I’m full of energy.”
Haruhi glanced at Griest, who was busy circling Yamato, looking for changes to her superstructure. “Are you pondering what I’m poondering, Pinky?” she asked.
“I think so Brain,” Griest said absently, “but if they called them Sad Meals nobody would buy them. Hm.” She glanced down and blinked. “That’s interesting... Yamato, you’re positively buoyant.”
“I should hope so,” Yamato sniffed. “I am a ship.”
“No,” Griest said. “I mean you’re floating.” Yamato gave the Fen scientist a strange look and looked down herself. Her feet were hovering inches above the floor, almost like she was on water but on dry land.
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Oh my.”
“I think we should take this outside,” Haruhi offered.
Outside the clinic two dozen kanmusu parted like the Red Sea as the admiral, the two Fen envoys and Yamato exited. “Okay guys, we’re gonna need some room for this next bit,” Haruhi called. “So give us a nice big circle, say six meters. Ciara? You here sweetie? Your presence is required.” The little Fen kanmusu broke off from a gaggle of destroyers and dashed into the developing circle, skidding to a halt in front of Haruhi and saluting.
“Reporting as ordered, Commander!”
“Good girl. Ciara, this is Yamato,” Haruhi said with a waggle of her hand. “Yamato, this is SV Ciara, pride of the Fen fleet.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Yamato,” Ciara waved.
Yamato bowed. “I, Yamato am honored, Ciara-san.”
“Now, Ciara,” Haruhi said, crouching down so she could look the girl in the eyes. “Yamato decided to be part of the experimental upgrade program.” Ciara’s eyes went wide in shock. “We’ve got an idea of how she was modded, but that’s as far as me and Deidre can go.”
Ciara looked at Haruhi, then at an increasingly-nervous Yamato. “What do you need me to do, Commander?”
Haruhi grinned. “Teach her how to fly.” she said. The assembled kanmusu murmured unsteadily. Teach Yamato to fly? The hell was that supposed to mean.
“Fly,” Yamato said dubiously.
“Yes’m,” Ciara replied. “Miss Yamato?”
“I... I suppose I shall trust you, Ciara-sensei.” Yamato sighed. “This is all very strange.”
“I know,” Ciara assured her. “But it’s weird in a good way. Now, a wise man once said that flying is the art of hurling yourself at the ground and missing, but for us it’s a little easier. You’ve already got a good start, so get your rigging and.” Ciara concentrated, summoning the guns and superstructure that marked her as part of the kanmusu family. She spread her hands and floated off the ground to the surprise of the girls around her, drifting up until her face was level with Yamato’s.
Yamato set her mouth in grim resolve. “As you say, sensei.” She focused on her little-used rigging, willing it into place as if she was going on patrol. She felt the ethereal armor close around her, then heard a startled gasp from her sisters. Yamato took a closer look at her rigging. The guns were still there, as was much of the superstructure, but it wasn’t the same. The superstructure was sleeker, streamlined and angular when it had been rough and studded. The old battleship gray paint had been replaced with a deep blue-gray, the red antifouling paint below her waterline changed to a brilliant red. Instead of the beltlike enclosure she used to have, Yamato’s prow had become a long gun-like sleeve resting comfortably alongside her right arm. Even her clothing had changed in the summoning, becoming a tight-fitting yellow coverall with black piping.
The rigging vibrated with untapped powerand a distinct longing. She needed to go somewhere. She could go to sea, but that wasn’t quite enough.
“There’s bigger oceans to swim in, Yamato!” Ciara laughed, booping the battleship gently on the nose before flying off. “C’mon! Come catch me!”
Yamato watched the little corvette fly away and smiled. She crouched, putting all of her will to this new ability, this new need deep inside her, feeling the power well up and she jumped—
--------------------------------------------------------------
Fun Tyrant’s Notes: That’s as good a place to end the story as any, I think.
This was the first Kancolle thing I started writing, because Fenspace has had a lock on my creative centers for years now and honestly my first thought on seeing any new media these days is “Hmm, how can I incorporate this into Fenspace?” The central concept of shipgirls dovetails beautifully with Fenspace as a universe, so I went for the straight fusion as opposed to trying to be too clever with the concept. As a first attempt it’s… okay, I think. I don’t have the voices down quite as well as I’d like, especially for DesDiv 6, but oh well. It is what it is.
I have some thoughts on what handwavium would do to the other girls, but the Space Battleship Yamato gag was so obvious and so ingrained that I think it’d be criminal if I didn’t go there, at least for the introductory period.![[Image: banana-dance.gif]](http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumimportfiles//banana-dance.gif)
Will there be more? Dunno. There’s certainly more adventure to be had involving SHIPGIRLS… IN… SPACE! but I’ve already got enough demented Fenspace crossover bullshit hanging fire as it is. We’ll see.
xoxo,
The Fun Tyrant.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
In At The Deep End
a Fenspace/Kantai Collection crossover fanfic
because I am milk left in the fridge too long
a Fenspace/Kantai Collection crossover fanfic
because I am milk left in the fridge too long
Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, 2021
“You know,” Haruhi Suzumiya remarked, “there was a time when I didn’t have to pay for drinks in this town.” Her elder traveling companion only grunted at this, while the younger blinked in somewhat-innocent confusion.
Their reception at the base airfield was decidedly mixed. The JMSDF weren’t happy about it by any objective measure, but they had their duty and at least were willing to be correct about it. The small throng of civilians clustered near the gate on the other hand were clearly unhappy with the visitors from space and not at all shy about expressing themselves. SPACE GAIJIN GO HOME was the least inflammatory slogan on the small forest of signs greeting them, and the chanting protesters strayed into remarkably filthy Japanese about foreign interlopers.
“You know they think we’re responsible,” Dr. Deidre Griest said, brushing back a strand of pinkish hair.
“They’re morons.”
“Not disputing that, but it doesn’t make them less angry.”
“Be nice if it did,” Haruhi sighed. “So where’s our contact?” She looked around for an officer but found only enlisted. A slight tug on her sleeve interrupted her search and she looked down at the little redhead at her side. “Yes, hon?”
“Commander, could I be excused please?” SV Ciara, first (and so far only) of the Fen kanmusu fleet, looked a little embarrassed at the request so soon after they’d gotten off the transport, but pushed on regardless. “I’d like to get back in the water for a little bit.”
Haruhi raised a single eyebrow. “You are so much like Nagaru it’s terrifying,” she said. “Yeah, it’s okay, just keep your phone on and stick to the port area, okay?” Ciara nodded, smiling, and dashed off towards the docks.
“Shameful opportunist,” Dr. Griest sniffed. Haruhi turned her commander’s gaze on the scientist.
“Her, or me?”
“The both of you.” The two might’ve got into it a little more only for the argument to be interrupted by the arrival of officers. One was in the uniform of a JMSDF admiral, a bit young for his rank maybe but clearly a man who’d seen quite a bit. The other was in a modified schoolgirl outfit and carried a parasol, which meant that she was either a Fen refugee or one of the Japanese kanmusu.
The officer saluted. “Rear Admiral Ichiro Nogura,” he said. “This is our kanmusu liaison Yamato.” The tall girl bowed.
“Haruhi Suzumiya, Great Justice,” Haruhi replied. “Dr. Griest, my scientific advisor for this trip.” Griest nodded respectfully. Nogura looked around curiously.
“I was told that one of your kanmusu would be accompanying you here,” he noted.
“Ciara’s gone down to the docks,” Haruhi said. “She needed to get her sea legs back under her.” Nogura smiled slightly at that.
“Not very surprising,” he said. “Shall we retire to my office?”
~***~
Ciara stood at the end of the pier, looking out at the water. She hadn’t seen the ocean in years, not since that last landing in Sydney harbor before she’d been retired and subsequently returned in this tiny human package. It was Tokyo Bay even, a place she’d been more than once in her time as a cargo hauler and as one of Fenspace’s few purpose-built warships. Fuzzy memories surfaced, reminding her that she’d even picked Haruhi and her friends up from this bay—okay, it was in Chiba on the other side of the harbor but who cares about that?
All that history and memory, and here she was back again. She summoned her rigging and stepped off the pier, carefully damping down the instinct to fly in favor of the one to float. Cautiously at first, then gaining confidence as her kanmusu instincts took over, Ciara gracefully stepped across the waves.
~***~
“So,” Admiral Nogura said, once the little party was safely ensconced in his office. “What can JMSDF’s kanmusu project do for interplanetary security?”
“Well,” Haruhi said conversationally, “the guys in charge asked me to dissemble my way around the topic, but I’ve never been good at that so screw it. We need your help.”
“Our help?” Nogura sounded skeptical, not a good sign but Haruhi pushed forward.
“Fenspace is vulnerable to Abyssal attack. We’ve already seen several raids on Luna, but they know we’re out there and worse, they know we’re fragile. If their actual firepower shows up, the stuff you’ve been fighting the last year and a half? We can’t stop that with conventional weapons. We need kanmusu support. In exchange, we’re offering material support—asteroid mining, technical services, improved IT and communications—and research. The finest mad scientific minds are willing to put all their effort into understanding the Abyssals, just say the word. But we need ships to defend our main settlements.”
“Huh,” Nogura leaned back, a little surprised by Haruhi’s opening gambit. “I’m actually a little surprised that you need our help.”
Haruhi blinked. “How’s that?”
“Well,” Nogura waggled his hand. “You’re Fen. I’d have expected you to be neck-deep in kanmusu by now. The intersection of technology and magic... I always thought that was your wheelhouse.”
Griest twitched for a second, then sighed. “There’s, ah, that’s a matter of some debate.” Haruhi coughed delicately. “Actually rather a lot of debate yes thank you Haruhi. The point of the matter is, though, we have less hard data on the subject than you. Barely any good information on kanmusu at all, in fact.”
Yamato blinked at the admission, while the admiral straightened up a little. “Now that is unexpected,” he said. “Intelligence thought you had a reserve.”
“Of course they’d say that,” Haruhi snorted. “God forbid the Jack Ryan wannabees ever admit they don’t know something. No, we’ve got the one spontaneous manifestation, that’s Ciara, and that’s it.” She shook her head wearily. “Most of the factional navies have tried the summoning ritual, no dice. We don’t know what we’re doing wrong, or maybe we’re just too new to summon ship spirits.”
“You’ve only had Ciara to defend you?” Yamato asked, shaking her head. “One ship to protect so much... she must be exceptional.”
“She’s a good kid,” Griest said. “And we’re backing her up to the best of our abilities, and... we’ve been lucky so far. The Abyssals haven’t made a serious attempt on our colonies, only minor air-raids so far, and those attacks probably started from bases on Earth. But there’s a lot of water out there—some of our major settlements are on ice moons with subsurface oceans—and a lot of our interstellar colonies sit on the coast. Sooner or later...”
“They’ll come,” Nogura finished. “Because Earth isn’t easy pickings, because it prevents us from escaping, for any number of reasons.”
“Exactly,” Haruhi said.
~***~
It wasn’t like flight—nothing was like flight: the complete freedom in all dimensions, the rush of atmosphere as she crossed the transsonic threshold, the warm crackling of the Sun’s corona—but it felt right. The calm blue water resonated with something deep in her heart. Ciara was a creature of the sea and the sea welcomed her home with every step. She idly traced back and forth across the bay, taking in the summer air and generally enjoying the experience, right up to the moment when she was bracketed by a squadron of four destroyers.
“Oh hi! You’re new,” said the lead destroyer, a girl with lots of dark purple hair. “Welcome to Yokosuka!”
“Oh, um, thanks.” Ciara said, a little abashed.
“I’m Akatsuki, name ship of the Akatsuki class,” purple-hair said. “And these are my sisters in DesDiv Six!”
“Ikazuchi!” said the destroyer on her port. “Pleased to meet you!”
“Inazuma,” the destroyer on her starboard said quietly.
“I’m Hibiki,” said the destroyer behind her. “Are you American? We haven’t seen any new Americans around for a while.”
“I’m not American, I’m Irish. Well, I was British, then I was Irish but now I’m...” Ciara trailed off, trying to figure out where her nebulous “nationality” stood at that moment, before giving up with a shrug. “I just am, I guess. Peacock-class pocket destroyer SV Ciara, Great Justice Navy, at your service!”
“Pocket destroyer?” Ikazuchi asked. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Isn’t that like what Graf Spee said she was, a ship too little to be a battleship but shoots like one?” Inazuma replied. Ciara nodded.
“Yep! The Peacock class were built as patrol corvettes for Hong Kong’s waters, but I was, um, upgraded a lot when I moved over to Great Justice from the Irish Navy.”
“Oh hey,” Ikazuchi said brightly. “You’re a Hong Kong girl? That means you’re a returnee like Kongou-nee! That’s awesome!”
“Great Justice,” Hibiki said in a where-have-I-heard-that-before tone. “Isn’t that the people with all the funny flying cars and stuff?”
“Yeah,” Akatsuki said. “They’re the navy with all... the...” she stared at Ciara, eyes getting wider and wider as the pieces fell into place. “Spaceships.” she gasped. “You’re... you’re...”
Ciara smiled, big and broad.
“YOU’RE A SPACE KANMUSU!?”
~***~
“Let’s say, just as a hypothetical,” Nogura said, “that the government agrees to this. I understand that they probably already have and just didn’t bother to tell me or my secretary—” Yamato coughed “—because that’s the sailor’s lot, but just for the hypothetical the paperwork’s already done and filed away. How would we proceed to select ships for, ah, extremely detached duty?”
“We’re looking for volunteers. Not draftees, not girls who were voluntold to sign up. Volunteers only.” Haruhi glared at the admiral. “Because we are 100% damn sure than unless the original hull was already spaceworthy or handwaved prior to manifestation they aren’t capable of handling spaceflight and they’re going to need that just to get around, let alone fight space-Abyssals.”
Griest nodded in agreement. “Handwaving’s a difficult art even in the best circumstances,” she noted. “And honestly handwaving something as blatantly magical as kanmusu is so far out of our experience that we’re really skittish about it.”
“Your girl Ciara seems to have made the transition well enough,” Nogura said.
“Yeah,” Haruhi replied, “but her hull was ‘waved over a decade before she manifested. So we know that handwaved ships can manifest, but we don’t know how handwavium is going to react to an already manifested ship. We’re kind of sure that whatever weird juju the kanmusu run on is compatible with handwavium’s juju—”
“Juju?” Nogura said dryly.
“Yeah, very technical term, really popular in applied bullshit studies when ‘applied bullshit’ is considered poor form. Ciara proves that handwaved kanmusu can be effective—more than usual, since pre-wave Ciara was a corvette and now she can punch like a destroyer—but applying that to an existing one?” Haruhi shrugged helplessly. “Maybe it gives her a boost, maybe it just gives her cat ears, maybe it nerfs her. We don’t know.”
“Ano,” Yamato put in, sounding a little confused. “What does ‘nerf her’ mean? It doesn’t sound good.”
The three humans looked at each other. Haruhi motioned for Griest to explain it. “Well, handwavium... doesn’t like weapons,” she said slowly. “We call it the slapstick effect. If you took, say, a regular pistol and dunked into a bowl of handwavium you’d get back something that makes a loud noise and covers the target with soot, or a water pistol or... well, there’s a lot of potential effects. Some of them are useful, but it’s not a weapon anymore, not really. You and the others are frontline fighters against the Abyssals.” Yamato’s eyes tightened a little at that. “If handwavium took that away from you, that would be...”
“Then the world really would hate us,” Haruhi said. “And they’d be right to.”
~***~
Meeting new kanmusu was a revelation to Ciara. DesDiv 6 were friendly and approachable, and hung on her every word as she related stories of traveling across the solar system as part of her duties. The four destroyers listened, wide-eyed, as the Fen girl talked about walking across the red deserts of Mars, sailing the ice fields of Ganymede, fighting Abyssals in the airless skies over Port Luna and climbing the ice mountains of the Heart of Pluto. Tales of adventure and daring that made life on boring old Yokosuka seem tame in comparison.
A few things though got lost in translation. “Eeh?!” Ikazuchi said, horrified. “You don’t have an admiral!?”
Ciara thought it over. “Well, Commander Suzumiya is like an admiral, I think?” she ventured. “But she’s not just in charge of me, she’s in charge of, like everything in Great Justice, not just me. I just sort of do stuff, you know? I’ve worked for a lot of different commanders all over the place.” DesDiv 6’s heads all tilted in blank incomprehension at that.
“No admiral?” Akatsuki said. “That’s just weird.”
“Sounds lonely,” Inazuma said.
“It’s not like I’m alone,” Ciara replied. “I’ve got lots of friends, like Captain Garrett. He was my last skipper, he comes to see me when we’re in port at the same time. I like his new ship too! Macha’s really nice, she’s always bringing me stuff from the outsystem colonies.”
“What is she?” Hibiki asked. “If she’s nice she’s probably a cruiser or fast battleship like Tenryuu-nee or Kongou-nee!”
“Cruiser, duh,” Ikazuchi said. “If she’s going to other stars she has to have epic range.”
“Actually she’s a transport,” Ciara said. The other destroyers blinked.
“A transport?” Inazuma said. “I didn’t know transport ships could be kanmusu.”
“Maybe it’s a Fenspace thing?” Akatsuki said.
“It is, sort of? But she’s not kanmusu.” Ciara admitted. “It’s... it’s different for a lor of Fen ships, our spirits wake up but we’re still bound to our old hulls. Some of us don’t ever take human form—Miss Ptichka’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and she’s a bird most of the time. We don’t really know why I’m different, why I’m kanmusu and the others aren’t.” She sighed. “I don’t know a lot about any of this, really,” she said quietly.
They sat there for what seemed like an eternity, Ciara looking at the water, none of them knowing exactly what to say. Hibiki broke the tableau by reaching out and pulling the smaller Fen destroyer into a bear hug. “Then it’s a good thing you came here,” she said firmly. “Yokosuka is the best place for kanmusu to meet up and figure things out, and you’ve been without your sisters for too long. We’ll teach you what you need to know.”
“Yeah,” Akatsuki said. “Yeah! Destroyers look after their own! As name ship of the Akatsuki class, I hereby name SV Ciara an honorary member of Destroyer Division Six, the finest in the world!”
“I don’t think you can do that, Akatsuki,” Ikazuchi commented. Akatsuki stuck her tongue out at her wayward comrade.
~***~
“I take it you have a procedure in mind?” Nogura said.
“More or less,” Haruhi replied. “First of all we’d like to talk to the fleet, let them know what’s going on before we get started. Then we talk with the volunteers, figure out which ones are honestly interested or just bored, egged on by peer pressure or whatever. Once we get through that...” Haruhi reached into a pocket and pulled out a small vial of silvery liquid. “We apply the handwavium and we pray.”
Nogura and Yamato eyed the vial. “I see,” the admiral said. “Well, we don’t have any patrols scheduled for tonight. Everybody ought to be in dock for dinner, so we’ll muster the girls then and see who’s interested.” Nogura stood, his guests following suit as the meeting seemed to be concluded.
Until fate, in the form of IJN Yamato, stepped forward. “Asking for volunteers will not be necessary, Admiral,” she said coolly. “I, Yamato, will undergo this experimental procedure.”
Nogura blinked hard. “Yamato?” The battleship turned her head, keeping her face away from the admiral’s, eyes trying to focus on the walls but straying back to the vial of quicksilver in Haruhi’s hand.
“I wish to be useful, Admiral,” she said. “In my past life I only sortied at the very last because we couldn’t afford to keep my tanks full and my batteries stocked. Again I find myself in that position, staying a my berth while my sisters around the world risk their lives. While one ship defends ten more worlds! I, Yamato, cannot abide this any longer. If handwavium will let me fight again, make me worthy of being the Soul of Japan, then I will take the risk.”
“It might, Yamato-san,” Griest said softly. “But it might neuter you, too.”
“Then I am no worse off than I am now, Griest-sensei,” Yamato returned, the tinge of a bitter smile on her face. “And if it does, then better the hotel than our strongest fighters.” She turned to face Admiral Nogura, who was looking at his secretary like he’d never seen her before. “You are my Admiral,” she said. “You take care of us, and I love you for it. I follow your orders. I respect your decisions. But this is something I must do for myself.”
Yamato whirled, moving faster than any human and many robots could manage, nimbly plucking the vial of handwavium from Haruhi’s hand. Nogura barely had time to shout “YAMATO DON’T!” before she’d popped the top off and swallowed the contents in one gulp. For a moment there was nothing but silence in the admiral’s office. Yamato cocked her head to one side. “That’s strange,” she said, “I don’t feel any different... oooh no,” she corrected, a goofy smile blossoming on her face. “Oh there we go—” she noted as her eyes rolled back and she crumpled to the institutional carpet.
~***~
Gossip moves quickly on a military base, and when the gossip involves the brass it moves faster than light. Five minutes after Nogura had gotten the now-unconscious Yamato into a bed in the medical wing, the word had gone out that there was Something Wrong With Yamato. The news spread, and within an hour every kanmusu on base was milling around outside the base clinic, wringing their hands worriedly and waiting for news.
“How is she?” Nogura asked for something like the ten-thousandth time in the last hour.
“Still asleep,” Dr. Griest reported. “She hasn’t changed gender, her skin’s the same color and she hasn’t sprouted cat ears though, so right now I think whatever the wave’s doing, it’s doing it to the ship part, not the girl.”
“You think,” Nogura said flatly, only to get a shrug from the Fen scientist.
“We’re in uncharted waters, Admiral,” she sighed. “All I know right now is it’s not hurting her.” Nogura growled at that, then redirected his ire towards a more deserving target.
“You,” he hissed at Haruhi, fixing her with his best death glare. “You knew she’d do that, didn’t you?”
Haruhi for her part was happy to return the glare. “No, Admiral,” she said. “I thought she might volunteer. I hoped she’d be willing to take the risk. I didn’t know she’d grab the fucking vial out of my fucking hand and drink it in your fucking office because if I was fucking psychic I wouldn’t have PULLED IT OUT OF MY POCKET!”
“I ought to have you thrown off this base,” Nogura snarled. “Or maybe let the girls use you for target practice you jumped-up civilian bi—”
“WOAH! HEY!” Griest barked. “Stand down, both of you! None of this is helping in the slightest! If you want to kill each other then fine, but leave the damn room first!” It wasn’t the most diplomatic of things, but Griest’s tone managed to get through just enough that the pair returned to trying to hate the other to death.
“Teitoku?” One of the battlecruiser girls poked her head into the room. “What’s going on?” she asked, hand to her eyeglasses to keep them from sliding right off her nose. “We heard that something had happened to Yamato.”
“Oh, Kirishima,” Nogura sighed. “That’s, I mean, well, Yamato...”
“Is perfectly fine, thank you Admiral.” Yamato said primly, standing in the doorway. Her handwavium encounter hadn’t seemed to affect her at all, at least at first blush. She drifted into the room, tall and proud as always.
“Yamato...” Nogura tried to say something, faltered, then rebounded. “What the hell were you thinking!?”
“I, Yamato told you why already, Admiral.” Yamato regarded her admiral sadly. “If I have to explain it again, you didn’t understand.”
“That’s not what I meant—oh forget it, we’ll discuss this later.” Nogura said irritably. “How do you feel?”
“Good,” Yamato said. “Very good. Like I’m full of energy.”
Haruhi glanced at Griest, who was busy circling Yamato, looking for changes to her superstructure. “Are you pondering what I’m poondering, Pinky?” she asked.
“I think so Brain,” Griest said absently, “but if they called them Sad Meals nobody would buy them. Hm.” She glanced down and blinked. “That’s interesting... Yamato, you’re positively buoyant.”
“I should hope so,” Yamato sniffed. “I am a ship.”
“No,” Griest said. “I mean you’re floating.” Yamato gave the Fen scientist a strange look and looked down herself. Her feet were hovering inches above the floor, almost like she was on water but on dry land.
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Oh my.”
“I think we should take this outside,” Haruhi offered.
~***~
Outside the clinic two dozen kanmusu parted like the Red Sea as the admiral, the two Fen envoys and Yamato exited. “Okay guys, we’re gonna need some room for this next bit,” Haruhi called. “So give us a nice big circle, say six meters. Ciara? You here sweetie? Your presence is required.” The little Fen kanmusu broke off from a gaggle of destroyers and dashed into the developing circle, skidding to a halt in front of Haruhi and saluting.
“Reporting as ordered, Commander!”
“Good girl. Ciara, this is Yamato,” Haruhi said with a waggle of her hand. “Yamato, this is SV Ciara, pride of the Fen fleet.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Yamato,” Ciara waved.
Yamato bowed. “I, Yamato am honored, Ciara-san.”
“Now, Ciara,” Haruhi said, crouching down so she could look the girl in the eyes. “Yamato decided to be part of the experimental upgrade program.” Ciara’s eyes went wide in shock. “We’ve got an idea of how she was modded, but that’s as far as me and Deidre can go.”
Ciara looked at Haruhi, then at an increasingly-nervous Yamato. “What do you need me to do, Commander?”
Haruhi grinned. “Teach her how to fly.” she said. The assembled kanmusu murmured unsteadily. Teach Yamato to fly? The hell was that supposed to mean.
“Fly,” Yamato said dubiously.
“Yes’m,” Ciara replied. “Miss Yamato?”
“I... I suppose I shall trust you, Ciara-sensei.” Yamato sighed. “This is all very strange.”
“I know,” Ciara assured her. “But it’s weird in a good way. Now, a wise man once said that flying is the art of hurling yourself at the ground and missing, but for us it’s a little easier. You’ve already got a good start, so get your rigging and.” Ciara concentrated, summoning the guns and superstructure that marked her as part of the kanmusu family. She spread her hands and floated off the ground to the surprise of the girls around her, drifting up until her face was level with Yamato’s.
Yamato set her mouth in grim resolve. “As you say, sensei.” She focused on her little-used rigging, willing it into place as if she was going on patrol. She felt the ethereal armor close around her, then heard a startled gasp from her sisters. Yamato took a closer look at her rigging. The guns were still there, as was much of the superstructure, but it wasn’t the same. The superstructure was sleeker, streamlined and angular when it had been rough and studded. The old battleship gray paint had been replaced with a deep blue-gray, the red antifouling paint below her waterline changed to a brilliant red. Instead of the beltlike enclosure she used to have, Yamato’s prow had become a long gun-like sleeve resting comfortably alongside her right arm. Even her clothing had changed in the summoning, becoming a tight-fitting yellow coverall with black piping.
The rigging vibrated with untapped powerand a distinct longing. She needed to go somewhere. She could go to sea, but that wasn’t quite enough.
“There’s bigger oceans to swim in, Yamato!” Ciara laughed, booping the battleship gently on the nose before flying off. “C’mon! Come catch me!”
Yamato watched the little corvette fly away and smiled. She crouched, putting all of her will to this new ability, this new need deep inside her, feeling the power well up and she jumped—
--------------------------------------------------------------
Fun Tyrant’s Notes: That’s as good a place to end the story as any, I think.
This was the first Kancolle thing I started writing, because Fenspace has had a lock on my creative centers for years now and honestly my first thought on seeing any new media these days is “Hmm, how can I incorporate this into Fenspace?” The central concept of shipgirls dovetails beautifully with Fenspace as a universe, so I went for the straight fusion as opposed to trying to be too clever with the concept. As a first attempt it’s… okay, I think. I don’t have the voices down quite as well as I’d like, especially for DesDiv 6, but oh well. It is what it is.
I have some thoughts on what handwavium would do to the other girls, but the Space Battleship Yamato gag was so obvious and so ingrained that I think it’d be criminal if I didn’t go there, at least for the introductory period.
Will there be more? Dunno. There’s certainly more adventure to be had involving SHIPGIRLS… IN… SPACE! but I’ve already got enough demented Fenspace crossover bullshit hanging fire as it is. We’ll see.
xoxo,
The Fun Tyrant.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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