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[Fiction] [X-Over] What I end up writing when I should be doing something else...
[Fiction] [X-Over] What I end up writing when I should be doing something else...
#1
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.
In At The Deep End
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. Big Grin

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]

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!"
Reply
 
#2
oh unholy hell mal, that was marevelous, if it wasn't for the needs of CitD i would say run with this, what i will say is throw a link in over at SV in the KanColle: The Greatest Generation thread and see if Sasahara will let you throw it in there as well
 
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#3
And I would have had to track you down and HURT you if you HAD passed up said gag, Mal.

:p
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-

NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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#4
Rajvik Wrote:oh unholy hell mal, that was marevelous, if it wasn't for the needs of CitD i would say run with this, what i will say is throw a link in over at SV in the KanColle: The Greatest Generation thread and see if Sasahara will let you throw it in there as well
I've already posted this & a couple other short non-Fenspace-related pieces to the Kancolle rec/idea thread on SB, so. Personally I don't think GG needs a Fenspace connection any more than Fenspace needs to incorporate GG. They're both perfectly cromulent works on their own. Smile
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#5
I think Destroyer Division 6 are all gonna volunteer after hearing Ciara's stories.

Edit: Actually, Hibiki doesn't talk as much as the other girls, keeping to short sentences and such, sometimes speaking entirely in Russian due to how often she peppers her speech with that language. To be fair, she limits her Russian to single words, like (and I'm probably misspelling this) horosho.
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#6
There's one or two obvious differences between Ciara and other fencraft...

She's decades old, and lived an active life, aquiring a lot of history and character.
She never had a shipmind.
And she's actually a goddamned warship. Of which there are very few - even fenbuilt ones.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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#7
Quote:Dartz wrote:
There's one or two obvious differences between Ciara and other fencraft...

She's decades old, and lived an active life, aquiring a lot of history and character.

She never had a shipmind.

And she's actually a goddamned warship. Of which there are very few - even fenbuilt ones.
If it's the first one that makes the difference, that's a problem. If it's the last two? That can be worked around.And the first one-to-one scale of Yamato to test the possibility will be, of course, the Argo.
Reply
 
#8
Quote:nocarename wrote:
Quote:Dartz wrote:
There's one or two obvious differences between Ciara and other fencraft...

She's decades old, and lived an active life, aquiring a lot of history and character.

She never had a shipmind.

And she's actually a goddamned warship. Of which there are very few - even fenbuilt ones.
If it's the first one that makes the difference, that's a problem. If it's the last two? That can be worked around.And the first one-to-one scale of Yamato to test the possibility will be, of course, the Argo.
And, even if she wakes as a ship-girl... she's banned all contact with Trekkies. Wink
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
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#9
Quote:Foxboy wrote:
Quote:nocarename wrote:
Quote:Dartz wrote:
There's one or two obvious differences between Ciara and other fencraft...

She's decades old, and lived an active life, aquiring a lot of history and character.

She never had a shipmind.

And she's actually a goddamned warship. Of which there are very few - even fenbuilt ones.
If it's the first one that makes the difference, that's a problem. If it's the last two? That can be worked around.And the first one-to-one scale of Yamato to test the possibility will be, of course, the Argo.
And, even if she wakes as a ship-girl... she's banned all contact with Trekkies. Wink
play rimshot.mp3
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-

NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
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#10
I just have this idea stuck in my head that the first time the improved Yamato goes into combat, this music blares out over all nearby speakers:
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#11
Yeah, at it again. I really need to get my muse some Ritalin or something, goddamn. Anyway, here we go...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grand Canal Park, Helium, Mars, 20XX

“Well,” Helen Scott said, “it’s definitely magical. Beyond that I have no clue.”

The whole trouble started earlier that morning, when persons unknown materialized a large doorway right in the middle of Grand Canal Park. Park workers immediately suspected shenanigans, closed the park and called in the cops. The mayor called in various favors and like manna from heaven a pair of specialists arrived to take a look at the damn thing.

The doorway itself was a good hundred feet wide and about the same tall, supported on a thick stone structure with fluted columns adding a little bit of embellishment to the otherwise austere facing. The whole thing seemed to be made of white stone foreign to Mars, which made it a good candidate for being Not From Around Here. “Well, that’s one thing we know,” the police captain who’d ended up in overall charge of the scene said. “Anything you can add to that, Dr. Hasegawa?”

Jade Hasegawa waved her laser screwdriver vaguely at the giant door. “There’s something behind it, allright,” she said. “Doesn’t look like a Thorne wormhole, could be a tesseract or a Sangnoir portal. If it’s magical then I’m pretty sure that it’s not local.”

“And not local means?”

“That it isn’t Fen-made or a Builder artifact. If I were a betting woman—and I am, imagine that—I’d put twenty sols down that this is a dimensonal incursion of some kind.”

“Really,” the captain said. Jade shrugged. “You wanted to know what it is,” she said. “That’s probably what it is.”

“Why here, though?”

“It’s a major city, probably the biggest city in Fenspace these days,” Helen waved at the topless towers of Helium just beyond the park’s environmental tent. “And the way Helium’s laid out this is the biggest open space available. If you mean why did somebody send a multiversal gate to us in particular, can’t help you with that.”

“Personally I blame Granddad,” Jade noted. Helen glared at her. “What?” she said. “It’s true! Granddad hosted that interdimensional glee club back in ‘13 and now we can’t go more than two years without some idiot dive-bombing us.”

“Dr. Hasegawa,” the captain said hastily, “what’s the likelihood of this being a hostile event?”

“Fifty-fifty? Sounds about right.”

“They haven’t opened the door yet,” Helen noted. “That’s suspicious.”

“Fair enough,” Jade agreed. “But suspicious doesn’t mean hostile. Could be there’s a time differential they need to compensate for, or maybe there’s actual distance between Point A and Point B and they’re still in transit.”

“But it could be hostile,” the captain pressed.

“Yeah, could be. I think the riot squad and the barricades ought to be able to handle most anything as long as it’s not too weird.” Jade’s screwdriver beeped sharply, then whistled. She pointed it back at the doorway. “And would you look at that.”

“Look at what?”

“Activity spike on the event horizon. I think the other side’s getting ready to open up. And... hell-O, that’s a pretty impressive spike.” Jade’s eyes widened. “Yeah, revising estimate to seventy-thirty on the ‘hostile’ end, captain.”

“Crap,” the officer growled, switching on his police-band radio. “All units, expect activity soon, foamers and shielders hot, people, this might not be friendly.”

“And on that note,” Jade mused. “Be right back, captain.” So saying, she grabbed Helen by the scruff of the neck, plopped her on her shoulder and jogged back to the impropmptu police barricade. “Wha? HEY!” Helen squeaked.

“Sorry auntie,” Jade said cheerfully. “Squishy human mages on the safe side of the barricade, cylon master race and trained professionals on the dangerous side!” She dropped a fuming Helen off, patted her on the head and dashed back to the front of the line. “Sorry about that,” she said as she got back. “Dropping off a noncombatant.”

“You qualified to be up here?” the captain asked. Jade grinned, pulling a phaser pistol from nowhere in particular.

“Starfleet Marines Reserve,” she said idly. “This isn’t my first dinosaur rodeo.”

“Hey! It’s opening!” Jade and the captain turned to see the huge stone doors slowly swing open with a terrible grinding noise. Bright sunlight streamed in from the other side, along with...

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Jade groaned.
GATE: Thus Great Justice Fought There
a Fenspace / Gate crossover story
coming sometime around fucking never

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fun Tyrant's Notes: This one will not continue. Not just because there honestly isn't a story here beyond "rehash of Gate but with Fen instead of the JSDF" but because Gate as a franchise manages to annoy me on an intrinsic level. I only wrote this, and am only posting it here, because it wouldn't fucking leave me alone. %P
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#12
"Aunt Helen, what are you doing this far back?"

"Your cousin Jade decided I was too 'squishy' to be on the front lines."

"I'll talk to her about that later. Right now," Vivio Fujisawa cocked her staff (a present from The Jason and A.C Peters), "I've got some Befriending to do."

As she left, Helen shouted, "Hey, don't you leave me here too!" With no reply forthcoming, she added "Nuts."



And that's as far as I'm going with this, as well.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#13
Well, at least the Earthside Arc isn't going to be as stupid as canon...

Far more entertaining, though, as the assorted girls' reactions to the wild and varied culture of Fenspace would be a treat.
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#14
Con weekend for me, and thanks to the miracles of 21st century portable computing I managed to get some stuff written between panels. This one I think I will be continuing, so only a teaser for now...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Log Entry: Surface Day 1

Goddammit. Just... goddammit!

I’m going to die on an alien planet. Always figured that was going to happen, but I’m actually kind of pissed that it’s happening now. I don’t even know why I’m recording this, or for whom. Maybe some bug-hunter will find it thirty years from now, or Starfleet. Maybe I’m just putting this down so I don’t just stick my head in the reactor core. Who knows.

Anyway, for the record, everything was fine on my last planned check-in on Flight Day 612, so I didn’t just vanish into subspace. I made it to my destination and that’s when everything went wrong. I’m still not sure what happened, the logs were partially corrupted during the crash and my memory’s... fuzzy... about the whole thing, but instead of doing an orbital survey like usual the Carefree Victory lost control and I ended up falling into the atmosphere like the Queen of All Idiots.

My next check in is in a week. A month past that and I’ll be listed as “overdue.” Six months after that and no sign of me, Starfleet will officially write me off as lost. It will be very sad, there’ll be a nice memorial service, I’ll get my name and maybe a picture on the memorial wall and life will go on. Jade Hasegawa, one of many glorious martyrs of the exploration of space.

And I’ll still be here for however long it takes for this planet or existential despair to kill me...
The Westerosi
a Fenspace / A Song of Ice and Fire crossover fanfic
coming... eventually
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#15
Huh. I was briefly imagining Jade in a Fenspace version of The Martian.
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#16
Well, kind of? A lot of the story-as-written (I've got about another 2,000 words at this point) is a pastiche of The Martian's epistolary style. I'd toyed with the idea of doing the idea straight but handwavium tech moots a lot of the man-vs-inhospitable-planet struggle that makes The Martian compelling, and stripping Jade of that edge, well... it just turns into The Martian, and there's already a perfectly good one of those, you know?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
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#17
This makes me wonder what kind of Mental Model Stingray would produce, especially after long exposure to the quirks of her crew. Might her chosen name be...Sylia? Hmm.
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#18
My money would be on "Marina" or "Atlanta", personally.
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#19
Okay, I get the Marina reference (ending theme), but Atlanta's on the wrong coast...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Reply
 
#20
Heh. I was referring to Atlanta Shore, the 'bridge bunny' with a massive and inexplicable crush on main character Troy Tempest, despite the fact that Troy was blatantly angling to shag Marina even though she was implied to be half his age and a probable abuse victim.
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#21
I am Werewolf, hear me howl.

James settled in behind the microphone of the live performance set in the music room aboard the FCS Werewolf and then settled the Third Eye headset linking him to the bridge. The enemy had wanted to be seen, they wouldn’t have shown up on radar or allowed the station in the outer belt to get off a distress call if they hadn’t. It wasn’t however like they could ignore the call however, lives were at stake and Ciara was on Earth with Haruhi hopefully getting the Kanmusu to where they could come topside. The result was a ragtag “Fleet” of retired fen-ships going off to fight. Two of them were Zig carriers with mixed complements of fighters with Infomorph pilots, two were Kobyashi Maru class transports with missle pods and the FCS Werewolf, a former Bay class Panamax freighter that had been changed into a Wing Commander style “Wake Island class escort Carrier” and cargo ship. The “enemy” was described as an enemy “carrier” with escorts, though that description was a bit lacking in substance.

Still though they had set out for the belt, her decks full of missile pods instead of spares and ammunition, the fighters and more importantly the torpedo bombers would only be making one sortie from her decks and the ships of the scratch task force would be joining them on the attack run.

“Attack wings are in position Colonel; we are ready to go on your signal.” The interwave radio crackled through his brain.

“Very well people,” he replied calmly. “Let’s do this,” and with that the band began to play and within a minute he started to sing.
Dry your eyes and quietly bear this pain with pride
For heaven shall remember the silent and the brave
And promise me they will never see, the fear within our eyes
(my eyes are closed)
We will give strength to those who still remain

***
The Abyssal fleet carrier looked at the remains of the ships that had come to fight it and its escorts, the broken bodies of fighters and bombers were scattered amongst the remains of the ships themselves, in fact only one of the ships remained under power. Severely damaged the oversized cargo ship was coming about once again, jettisoning the cargo pods it carried as it went. The pods, the Abyssal knew carried the local missiles, and while they were hard hitting when massed and covering the attacks of the fighters and bombers, each pod only carried nine and just the missiles alone wouldn’t be worth much.
***
James coughed on the acrid smoke that filled the performance bay. “Alright you bastards,” he muttered finally clearing his throat and getting a lungful of mostly clean air. “You want a fight, well now you have one.” In his mind James could see the upper and outer pods clearing away as well as the upper sections of the central forward cargo containers revealing something he had added in secret. “Deck guns prepared to fire” the central computer reported. “Forward torpedo tubes loaded and ready to fire, please select music file or start playlist.” At this he smiled, and signaled the drummer to start. It was the last song that would be played here, their last performance, their last fight. Drums backed up woodwinds as the song started and the entirety of the remaining crew took up the song all over the ship.

Grayson's lost its champion; to God she has returned,
To stand before the Tester, in the state her rank has earned.
Our Lady needs an honor guard, an escort, and a crew,
And if you're the best available, I guess you'll have to do.
No Quarter, NO QUARTER! You damn well earned your fate.
Give Harrington our compliments; we're sorry you are late.


And with a song upon their lips the ship came about and her crew prepared to go down fighting.
***
The Abyssal Destroyer looked at the wreckage in surprise. It had only been one ship, damaged and spewing parts in its wake. But then that wreckage turned out to be more of the damnable missile pods and the ship to their surprise suddenly was mounting a turret of two sixteen inch guns. Finally, the surprise was that all that firepower was not spread amongst the five abyssal ships as it had in the initial engagement, but initially concentrated on one, the carrier. A massive barrage of firepower had borne down on the carrier obliterating the commanding abyssal in a matter of seconds. The pair of cruisers that dove into rescue their commander fell to the same barrage while the two destroyers could do nothing but stand there and watch their destruction. Well, near destruction as both cruisers actually survived though were severely damaged.
***
Must protect as many of them as I can, have to kill as many of the abyssal fleet as possible.
She could feel the thought lance through her, over the pain of the damage she had sustained.
Must fight on, never quit, never surrender, not until death drags me kicking and screaming from the fight.
“Yes,” she thought, “fight on through the dying of the light, our last breath taken with our fangs closed about the throat of our enemy.” She could feel her legs take shape, her feet touch the deck plates, she could see the source of the alien thought coming from the stage in front of her.
***
James hacked and coughed for a moment, but didn’t spit out the blood that he tasted in his mouth as he opened his eyes. His face-shield was closed meaning that the ship had lost pressure, and he could feel the wound that would take his life, a meter-long shard of hull fragment had speared him to the bulkhead behind the stage, pinning him in a seated position. Through all of this though he could see her, walking across the performance room deck. In one hand was a heavy crossbow, probably an auto-loader by the mechanism that she held braced against her hip. In the other hand she held a sawed off shotgun/coilgun as if it were a pistol. Her knee length skirt was confederate grey while her midshipman’s blouse was union blue, her brown hair was brown while her furred wolf ears a slightly darker grey than her skirt. The shoulders of her blouse each bore a symbol, on her left the sun and spaceship of the Convention, on her right the full moon and claw marks of the Get of Fenris Tribal warriors Ahroun. She stopped and kneeled in front of him on her own deck, “Rest now father,” he heard her say. “For now it is my time to be the wolf.”

James lifted his hand to her porcelain cheek and looked into her hazel eyes, “Fight well my daughter.” He said before allowing his eyes to shut and his hand to drop.
***
Two abyssal destroyers were just starting to build a vector away from the combat zone when a voice called out to them, “And where do you bitches think you’re going anyways.” Turning around the foursome looked at the strange girl that now stood between them and the last of the human ships that they had just destroyed. As they stood there she continued to speak as her rigging deployed around her.

“My name is the Fenspace Convention Ship Werewolf; I am the only one of my class.” Over her left shoulder a turret with a pair of sixteen inch guns deployed, over her right, a carrier deck. “You killed my father,” at her hips boxes that could only be missile pods appeared. “Now prepare, to die.”
 
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#22
The Last line though. REALLY fits a fen ship. Big Grin
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
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