Chapter Text
June 7. 2018
Thursday, 05:27 hours
Undisclosed location in the Pacific Ocean, Earth
A world at war!
With the emergence of a new global faction calling themselves the Sirens, the major world powers have united into a web of alliances and truces known as Azur Lane and Crimson Axis to combat this new threat, and with these new alliances came a new generation of warriors capable of fending off the siren onslaught, but will they be enough to weather the oncoming storms?
“Three carriers, two cruisers, and a destroyer left camp in the middle of the night: sounds kinda like the beginnings of a ghost story to me,” commented the blonde carrier on her latest mission. Not that she was complaining about the outing, after all it was her saying that she wanted to see more action because she didn’t like sitting still for too long. “You know, I think anything is a ghost story when you’re involved, Enty,” she said playfully.
“You know why we’re here, Hornet,” began her older sister, Enterprise, who ignored the comment and just sounded like she didn’t want to be awake this early in the morning. “The new tools that command employed detected what they think is Siren activity and we were sent to investigate it.” Hornet knew this much already, it was in the mission briefing after all.
Hornet was assigned to a small yet strong group from the pacific base that could, theoretically, sneak past any defenses and scout out potential targets. She was mostly just miffed because she had a camping trip planned with friends. Due to the secret nature of the mission she couldn’t tell any of them why she disappeared at the moment, although she knew that once she got back she’d have some more stories to tell for herself, rather than having to recount some of her sisters’ exploits. The journey alone would’ve taken days or weeks by sea, but they bypassed some of the time by catching a lift on a seaplane.
“I get that, but it just doesn’t make any sense. We’re being deployed to investigate a supposed Siren wave, in the middle of dry land. They’re sirens,” she said, putting special emphasis on those last two syllables with air quotes, “meaning that they haunt the sea, not the land.”
“I must agree with Miss Hornet on this matter. It all seems rather strange,” said Unicorn with a little yawn, who was riding Yuni, her winged-unicorn plushie which could grow in size and move and act of its own accord, rather than gliding on the water like the other girls. The only other exception to that was Laffey, their assigned destroyer, who was also napping on Yuni’s back.
“It is rather odd, I must admit, but it needs to be investigated, nonetheless. Let’s hope that there isn’t any real danger there,” Enterprise said. “I just hope the island doesn’t have too many mosquitoes.”
“Since the bugs come after us for our blood, isn’t that kinda proof that we’re living beings?” Harbin, one of their cruiser escorts, asked no one in particular, reflecting a conversation from earlier. Hornet was about to say something when Laffey perked up suddenly, shushing them as she listened intently.
“Ambush!” she shouted as she jumped off of the flying pony, the drowsy girl suddenly wide awake as she hit the water and launched two torpedoes from her rigging. With two underwater explosions and a moment of delay, several armored tentacles rose out of the water and battered into the middle of the group, scattering the girls as they scrambled to avoid getting smashed. Around them, several hulking warships surfaced and started tracing their weapons on them, but had yet to fire.
“Sirens!” Shouted Enterprise as she knocked her bow and pulled the string back, ready to release a volley of hard light shots when she was interrupted.
“Down boy!” With a heavy sigh, a female voice spoke up, “What are you lot doing waaay out here?”
“We’re just out here on a routine patrol,” Cleveland, the other cruiser, lied unconvincingly.
“Now aren’t you an awful ways away from home then?” asked the siren in a somewhat aloof manner, who could now be seen hanging precariously off of a large tentacle that was easily out of harm's way with the others close enough to keep the girls preoccupied. “Pardon my conjecture, but you don’t seem like a normal patrol. With the exception of Enterprise, your carriers usually have a veritable fleet as a vanguard. This seems more like a reconnaissance party or special ops mission if you’d ask me. But then again, whoever does?” Hornet was stunned at the siren’s bluntness: she practically called out their entire ploy and seemed to be taking what would most likely turn into a hostile mess like banter between sports teams.
“Now, I know all about you all, so allow me to introduce myself: I am known as Purifier, although I’m sure Enterprise and Unicorn know plenty about me,” Purifier said, introducing herself.
“What do you want here, Purifier?” Enterprise asked the siren.
“It’s really a lot of boring stuff, really,” she replied with a yawn. “Observer sensed something arriving that’s interfering with her logistics, something about messing with her ability to study probabilities, breaching spatial-temporal boundaries we set up, causing general annoyances, and blah blah blah,” she said, using her free hand to mirror her mouth for those last three words. “So, I was sent to go remove the threat with my new amphibious toy here. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
“Amphibious?” Hornet asked, feeling as though that word changed everything she knew about her enemy. “Let me guess, you called it the Kraken.”
“That’s actually not bad,” the siren muttered to herself.
“Anything that has the Sirens this worried must be worth looking into ourselves,” Cleveland whispered in a hushed tone to her allies that Hornet was barely able to make out only a few feet away.
“Quite the contrary,” Purifier replied with a laugh as though Cleveland had said it to her directly. “I was informed that whatever this is could be genuinely dangerous. If the wrong individuals got their hands on it then it would become a problem for us all,” she paused, waiting to see how they’d react or if they would back down, but they held their ground. “Well, that’s too bad. I was hoping to get some help tracking the threat down and removing it, but since you seem unwilling to help me, I guess that I’ll just have to push you out of my way too. Have fun with my toys!”
With that, she pulled her free hand to her lips and whistled a shrill tone, and the tentacles resumed their attack, along with the assassin siren subs opening fire. Harbin, Cleveland, and Laffey scrambled out of the way of the giant, metallic whips as Unicorn took to soaring out of their reach and took the assassin subs’ attention away from the group by popping off shots from her rigging and launching a few planes to follow her lead. Enterprise charged the siren, followed closely by Hornet, only for another, smaller tentacled machine to surface and attempt to distract them from reaching their prize.
Seeing an opening, Hornet weaved through the tentacles and, despite Enterprise’s protests, moved forward alone and launched a volley of rockets at Purifier. Releasing hold of the tentacle she was hanging by to land on the main body of the metal beast as it fully surfaced. “Oh, so that’s how we want to play, fair enough,” she replied ominously.
In a flash of light, Purifier summoned her own rigging that resembled a hammerhead shark and shot a beam of light at Hornet as she shot another rocket at her, resulting in the rocket exploding before it reached its target. Seemingly distracting the siren with the smoke cloud from the collision, Hornet jumped onto the metal surface of what she called the Kraken and prepared to launch another volley only for a whip of light to lash out at her from the cloud, snag her leg and pull her off her feet. Hitting the hard surface and accidentally firing some shots out, they went wide and battered the ship instead, causing some of the metal to give way and apparently hitting some delicate locations on the vessel. Purifier took notice of this and hopped off the vessel, before there was a loud snap as the metal frame collapsed and a violent rumble shook Hornet, preventing her from getting to her feet.
“Stupid experimentals,” Purifier grumbled with a sigh, kicking the side of it. “There goes the only prototype,” she said, right before dodging a shot from Enterprise. Despite having ranged attacks, she zoomed over to her attacker to take advantage of her close quarter capabilities and her adversary’s lack of it to keep Enterprise on her toes, leaving Hornet frantically trying to abandon ship. Just as she got to her feet and was jumping over the side, a flailing tentacle snagged her rigging as she felt something painful hitting her foot on the way down as she was dragged under.
Panicking while trying to get free, she detached herself from her rigging and tried to swim up. She managed to get one last desperate gasp of air before getting knocked in the head by another piece of the wreckage as consciousness fled.
~~~—(? days later)—~~~
“Miss, wake up. Are you okay?”
Hornet slowly became aware of the hand placed on her cloaked shoulder and gentle voice urging her to wake up, as well as the semi dry sand she was laying on. Cautiously opening her eyes, she took a moment to squint as her eyes adjusted to the bright morning light. Eyes snapping fully open after realizing her situation, the first thing she noticed was the hat on the young man’s head.
“Hey, that’s my hat!” she exclaimed, trying to get to her feet to snatch it from his head before falling prone as a debilitating pain surged through her foot and shot up her leg.
“Whoa, take it easy,” he said in a way that showed he was genuinely concerned, taking the hat off and holding it out to her, which simultaneously blocked the sun and gave her a good view of him. His face was clean shaven and he had unkempt, semi-short black hair in contrast to his untanned skin. Despite looking young, he had a mesmerizing set of eyes that almost seemed to tell a long and sad story, and despite that, he seemed to have laugh lines framing them. “I found it down shore and was using it to keep the sun from microwaving my brain. I didn’t think it belonged to anyone.”
Taking a moment to gather her thoughts and gratefully receiving her hat, Hornet forced a smile to her face. “Well, at least it was doing its job. Mind telling me where I am?”
“The Island of Nunia.”
“Nunia, where the hell is that?” she asked perplexedly, having never heard of the place before.
“None-ya business,” he said. After getting a blank stare from the girl, he apologized. “Sorry, I don’t honestly know where we are and I thought that joke would help lift the mood.”
After breaking a smile at realizing the joke, she responded. “Nah, don’t be. At least if I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, I’m stuck with a comedian and won’t be bored to death.”
“Heh,” he muttered. “Hopefully we don’t die at all. How bad is your leg?”
“Hmm, oh. It only hurts if I try to use it so far,” she responded, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She was still relaxing prostrate on the sand, head propped up by her arms.
“Mind if I take a look at it?”
“Knock yourself out! Just don’t make it worse and help me roll over, would ya?” she said extending an arm which he grasped, following her request. After she was on her back, with her cloak no longer draped over her, her rescuer saw how she was wearing her usual outfit, which is to say that she was only wearing a bikini top and short, black denim shorts, in addition to the hat, cloak, and stockings. With a sharp intake of air and color touching his cheeks, he refocused his eyes on Hornet’s face, who was smirking mischievously at him. “What’s the matter, never seen this much of a woman before?”
“Truthfully, I can’t say. I don’t really remember anything really, aside from waking up somewhere further inland about two days ago,” he said, gesturing to the dense undergrowth not too far from where they were. “I woke up, with next to nothing but the clothes on my back, this nearly empty satchel, a carved stick, a rope, and several sharp things,” he said, and for the first time, she noticed the sword strapped to his side.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Hornet said as he unstrapped her boot and started to remove it, causing her to wince slightly.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed as he paused what he was doing, before resuming his slow, painstaking work.
After he removed her shoe, he was going to start removing her long sock when he hesitated. “Erm, I don’t suppose you could get it started?”
“Being a gentleman?” she said with a waggle of her eyebrows, eliciting another blush from him. “Sure, I’ll help ya out. The name’s Hornet, by the way.”
“Well, it’s nice to officially meet you, Hornet Bytheway,” he said, flashing a charming smile and winking after she got her sock down to just below her knee before he finished it for her.
“Now, the question is what should I call you?”
“Call me?”
“Yeah, you know, the sounds that I should make to get your attention. You don’t happen to remember that, or anything from before for that matter.“
“No, not really. I mean, I hadn’t really thought about that, but sometimes snippets of knowledge might come back to me, like knowing which plants are safe to eat or not. Conditional things mostly.”
“Just checking. How about John then?”
“John?” her rescuer asked incredulously.
“Yeah, you could be John Doe!”
After taking a moment to think that through, he replied, “Nah, sounds too generic. I don’t want to be just some John Doe in the crowd.”
“So, not generic. How about Romeo?”
After another moment of deep thought, he smirked.
“Only if I get to call you Juliette,” he replied cheekily with a grin, making her blush in turn.
“If you can remember that then why can’t you remember your name?” she said a little flustered by his blatant flirtation as she felt heat flood into her cheeks; she wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of teasing, at least not from a cute guy.
“I don’t know,” was the only lame response he could manage. “It’s almost like there’s something blocking it, but like I said, some things seem to get it working for a moment.”
“Alright, how about Chuck then?”
“Hmm, no. Just no.”
“Dennis?”
“That one isn’t actually half bad,” he replied, nodding his head in agreement.
“Good,” she said. “Dennis it is.”
“A name and a friend, not bad for a day’s work, don’t you think?” Dennis asked.
“No, not at all,” Hornet replied wistfully. “So, what’s the verdict, Doc?”
“One moment, does this hurt?” he asked as he poked her foot. She shook her head, and he tried moving it a tad bit. She felt some pain, but nothing like from when she tried and failed to stand up earlier. The slight wince on her face seemed to give Dennis the answers he was looking for.
“Well, it’s not broken because then it would be hurting absent of any stimulation,” he said thinking aloud, “and on top of that you aren’t in enough pain to inhibit you from teasing me. It’s probably just twisted, and at worst you sprained it, so you should definitely take it easy with your foot for a while. I’d try to stay off of it for for at least two or three days and give it a week before trying anything stupid. Maybe longer if things don’t change.”
“Stupid how?” Hornet asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe climb a tree, run a marathon, stressful stuff that wouldn’t help your foot heal.”
Hornet hummed her agreement with his words, and after another moment of thought, Dennis walked over to the water where he removed his shirt, leaving on his white undershirt, and soaked it before proceeding to return. He then gently lifted her leg by her calf and wrapped it around her foot. “That should help,” he concluded, wiping his hands on his pants as Hornet enjoyed the coolth from the water seeping into her foot.
“Thanks. Sooo, what now?” Hornet asked. As if on queue, her stomach growled in protest. “You said that you remember what plants are edible?”
“Well, I mostly just found fruit: I found several kinds of bananas. Oh, and coconuts,” he responded.
“Well then, if you found grapes then I could’ve called you Tarzan of the apes. I don’t suppose you could get some for me?”
“I really don’t want to leave you here in this condition. I know!” he said, snapping his fingers. “I found some abandoned buildings not too far from here, I could take you there and return with food.”
“I really think I’d be fine here, but if it’d make you feel better, then by all means,” Hornet permitted.
~~—()—~~
It took nearly an hour of walking, with the first thirty minutes being spent trying to figure out a good way to transport an injured person, in addition to making a makeshift splint for Hornet’s foot. The two finally settled on a piggy back ride being the easiest and one of the least awkward modes of transportation. Despite his lean frame, Dennis showed no signs of struggling carrying both himself and Hornet through the forest.
“Are you sure we aren’t lost?” Hornet asked. “It all looks the same to me.”
“I’m fairly certain of it. So far, I’ve had a great sense of my location, and I’ve learned to trust it. I found you that fruit tree on the way here, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes, but what if it was just a fluke? Or what if it was a different tree altogether?” She asked around a mouthful of banana before passing through some bushes, suddenly entering a small clearing revealing a few ruined buildings.
“Here we are!” Dennis announced. Much to her surprise, these buildings resembled old bunkers back from the Second World War that she and her sisters found in Iron Blood bases, despite the fact that the roofs had caved in, along with some of the walls. They continued onwards, following a trail deeper inland until they found the main part of the encampment, which had buildings in better states of repair.
“I’m never doubting you again,” Hornet said in reverence. “How’d you come across this?”
“I don’t know. I just stumbled upon it while looking for a safe place to spend the night. There are quite a few buildings still intact, one of which I made my basecamp.”
The two continued in silence through the eerie encampment. They passed a few old vehicles in various states of disrepair from the last century, many of which were coated in a fine layer of rust and some in shrubbery. Eventually, the duo found their way to a building not far from the center of the overgrown encampment and entered it. It looked to be a private home for a higher ranking officer, and despite the somewhat rundown look of the rest of the camp caused by time, much of the furniture in the building had survived. To her surprise, there were also several barrels intact, most of which were empty but some had miscellaneous items in them: some had coconuts, some had scrap metal and random pieces of junk, and most that were filled had pieces of electrical equipment.
“That’s quite the collection you’ve got there,” she said as he set her down on a wooden chair frame.
“You’d be surprised what you can find out there. I’m currently trying to figure out how to fix an old two-way radio to see if I can get off this hermit’s vacation destination.”
“You know, after my foot heals that might not be necessary,” Hornet commented.
“What do you mean by that? As far as I can tell, we’re on an island so we’re pretty much stuck here, unless, of course, you are a strong enough swimmer and know how to navigate by the stars well enough that you can get us both to civilization while fending off sharks and colossal squid,” he said in jest with a smirk.
“Something like that.” After the disbelieving look from Dennis, she further explained herself. “Well, since you are an amnesiac I understand that you’d probably have no clue what I’m talking about, but I’m actually a warship.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yep! I’m an aircraft carrier to be exact,” Hornet said.
“If that’s true then how on Earth was I able to carry you?” He asked, then face palmed as he realized what that question could imply. “That’s not what I meant! I thought… err, what I meant to say was…”
Before he could embarrass himself any further, Hornet interjected, “That’s all good, we’re still friends. I must admit that I don’t know all the details so I might not be the best person to ask about that, but me, my sisters, and others are basically the living embodiments of our ships.”
After taking a moment to mull this over, he shrugged his shoulders. “Alright, I can live with that.”
“Wait, so you’re saying you’d sooner believe that I’m a warship than that I’d be able to swim both you and I to safety?”
“I guess so,” he replied simply. “So, aircraft carrier, huh?” he asked, getting a nod from the girl. “How does that work? Are you able to turn into the ship, or do you create miniature airplanes? Oh! Or does the original ship still exist, and you can control it and turn it into some sort of… what’s that look for?” he said, interrupting his own questions.
“You’re getting a real kick out of this, aren’t ya?”
“What do you mean?” he asked with a slight, curious tilt to his head. It took a moment for everything to register with Hornet, and then it clicked.
“Wait, you actually believe me?” she asked.
“Well, why wouldn’t I?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“I… i-it’s nothing,” Hornet began, but stopped herself, amazed at how naïve he was, or trusting. “What was that last question you were asking? About if I could turn the ship into a…something?”
“Well, I was going to say something like a giant mech suit, but now I’m wondering how realistic that really is,” he said, sounding almost shy about what he was saying.
“Not any less realistic than reality,” she said, placing a hand on his arm and trying to reassure him. “I’m connected to the original ship, yes, but I am more of an embodiment of it brought to life by something the science types are calling ‘Wisdom Cubes.’ They’re what gave me life, and I absorbed its essence. The original ship still exists, although mine was sunk during the last great conflict between nations. But I’m able to use a rigging of sorts, giving me abilities like what my ship can do, and I can stand and ski across the water at insane speeds, although my rigging is probably also sitting at the bottom of the ocean now too.”
“That sounds pretty cool!” Dennis said, impressed. “But not the part about where your rigging is. So, does being a warship explain why you were washed up on shore like that?”
“I believe it does,” Hornet replied. “I was sent on a reconnaissance mission, along with some friends and my sister, to investigate what we thought could’ve been an advancement made by our enemy, but we were instead ambushed by them…” she started explaining the story when her mind started trailing off. She looked again at the young man: there wasn’t much unusual about him, aside from the fact that he had a very interesting looking sword strapped to his side, along with the semi-old fashioned clothing and odd equipment he carried. He claimed to have no memories, but at the same time made a comment earlier that didn’t sound like he had lost everything from his past life. In fact, to her it sounded like it was all still there, and with what he said it even sounded like he could tell something was preventing him from accessing it. On top of it all, it was originally about a day before her battle that she was sent to search for any signs of the enemy, and the siren she had encountered made it clear that she shouldn’t have interfered with her recovery operation. She doubted that she could’ve drifted too far from where she and the others fought the siren. Hornet was truly lost in thought when she heard Dennis saying her name.
“Hmm, what’s that?” she asked, trying to seem as natural as she could.
“You spaced out, is everything okay?” he asked, kneeling next to her chair with a look of worry on his face.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I got hit in the head in that last battle and am drawing up a few blanks myself,”she lied, smiling subconsciously and rubbing the back of her neck.
“How sweet,” she thought, “he has next to nothing and can’t even remember who he is, but yet his only concern is me.”
What she said next though, had nothing to do with those thoughts: “So, what’s for dinner?”
“Bananas, coconuts and grapes,” Dennis said with a cheeky smile.