Chapter Text
“Large Siren fleet, 5 miles out!” Helena called out. Her fleet was just returning from another mission, but it seemed the Sirens were pissed off by their success, sending an attack force against Azur Lane HQ itself.
“Theres so many!” Javelin shouted back.
“And likely even more of them on the way.” Prince of Wales added, narrowing her eyes at the oncoming Sirens. “We definitely hit a nerve on that last mission.”
“Everyone's exhausted and our weapons are low on ammo. We don't have the strength for another fight.” Shoukaku pointed out solemnly, Zuikaku was standing next to her, and just nodded sadly.
“Well...It seems we are in quite a pickle Ja?” Prinz Eugen commented with a smug smile, the thought of another battle under these dire circumstances either didn't bother her, or she was just hiding her own discomfort from the other kansen. Wales kept glaring down the Siren fleet, thinking about how to proceed, that was when she saw something, a glint of metal where there was none just seconds ago, before the roar of a rocket's solid-fuel booster ripped through the air, and a tower of smoke rose high into the sky.
“A missile?!” Wales exclaimed, pointing toward the smoke pillar left behind. Javelin's pupils shrank to pin-pricks seeing the smoke.
“Oh no...its can't be...another Orochi?!” She screamed, frozen in horror at the idea of having to fight that monster ship again. Eugen frowned however when she saw the smoke, and looking back at the Siren fleet.
“Unless they've seriously downgraded it, why would they bring this alleged 'Second Orochi' so close to Azur Lane HQ? That makes no sense, the original model had a much greater range.” She pointed out to the others. Before anyone could reply to Eugen's comment, a far off explosion caught everyone's attention, every kansen looked on as a tower of water bloomed out of the ocean inside the Siren fleet's formation, Laffey, who had been standing next to Javelin, pointed it out.
“Thats a submarine exploding, the Sirens are fighting someone else.” She announced, in her signature deadpan tone.
“Someone else? I don't see anyone, who could it be?” Javelin asked, putting her hand over her forehead to scan for the Siren's opponent.
“Ballistic missile incoming!” Helena yelled, her SG radar pinging like crazy. Everyone looked into the sky to watch the missile come back down, as a streak of fire, before detonating just above the Siren fleet, for a second, the ship girls were confused by the relatively small initial explosion, but then had to shield their eyes from the multiple, massive secondary blasts that suddenly appeared, melting the entire siren fleet in a rain of sparks and fire balls.
“What the hell?!” Zuikaku yelled over the roar of the explosions.
“What is that? Its like...molten steel raining down on them...” Wales stated in horror, her skin going pale watching the Siren ships explode and burn in the distance, before taking a deep breath to re-compose herself as the explosions subsided. “We need to investigate this further, before whoever is responsible decides Azur Lane HQ is their next target.” She turned to Javelin and Laffey with a grim expression. “I hate to ask this of you two, but I need you to get over there, recon the area, and report back what you find.” Javelin stared back at her in shock.
“W-What if another one of those missiles appear?!” The destroyer asked in a frightened voice.
“It won't, using a weapon that powerful on two destroyers is a waste of resources, you'll be fine.” Wales told her, trying to sound reassuring.
“We'd do it with our planes, but my runway is cracked from the last battle.” Zuikaku added, showing her damaged rigging.
“And my planes are all out of action...sorry girls.” Shoukaku also stated, feeling guilty for asking the young destroyers to do this. Javelin sighed, before looking over at Laffey, who gave her a small smile and a thumbs up.
“We got this Javelin, don't be scared, I'll be with you the whole time.” The American destroyer soothed, patting Javelin's shoulder. Javelin's fearful expression morphed into one of determination, and she nodded back.
“OK...lets go take a look.” She declared, and she and Laffey both turned their hulls away from the fleet towards the wrecked Siren ships.
“Get in, record what you can, and get out quickly!” Wales called after them, before leading the rest of the fleet back to Azur Lane HQ.
A few minutes earlier...
Alicorn opened her eyes.
She couldn't remember much, only that she was a Yuktobanian super submarine, and that she had been commandeered by a crazy captain, intent on taking the lives of a million people, on the pretence of saving far more, yet in reality he was just insane. She had felt her aft trim tanks deliberately flooded, just to give her broken main gun the elevation it needed to destroy a city.
Alicorn did not want to do any of this, fighting fleets and armies was one thing, but a terrorist attack on Oured was not what she was created for, nor did she want to be remembered as such an evil weapon. Fortunately her captain was thwarted by an incredible fighter pilot, by destroying her gun's firing mechanism and blowing her hull apart.
Alicorn remembered a searing pain throughout her body, but then the pain stopped abruptly, and all she could see was darkness, secretly thanking that courageous fighter pilot for ending her brief reign of terror as the tool of a madman.
But now she was elsewhere, and she felt very different. She could tell she was still in water, its cool currents soothing her metal outer skin, she blinked, and then she could see inside her bridge, yet she could still feel the water outside, the pressure on her hull, yet she could also feel the air inside the bridge, see the controls and screens that showed her the world outside, and she also saw...hands?!
Alicorn gasped, looking down at herself. She was a 5'9 woman, with short black hair, D-cup breasts, an athletic, toned, yet curvy body, and long legs. Her clothing consisted of a black leather jacket, covering a red crop top, with jean shorts, black knee high boots, and on her head was a black and red naval captain's cap, as she was also sat in a chair in front of a control panel.
“What the...?!” She exclaimed, before covering her mouth. While Alicorn knew the English language thanks to her old crew, she had of course, never spoken before, and was surprised she instinctively knew how to articulate her words. Her voice came out smooth, husky, and with a hint of a Russian accent. “OK...this...will take some getting used to.” she muttered out loud.
Alicorn gently shook her head, trying to clear up her disorientation from...whatever just happened to her. She look around her bridge, realising she was alone, no crew, no crazy captain, and yet the hull itself was perfectly functional. She wasn't sure how, but she instinctively just 'knew', that she was alone on this ship, yet there was no damage anywhere to explain what happened to them, no signs of a struggle or a disaster, no notes or logs to explain their absence; her crew was just...gone.
She expected to feel lonely realising that fact, but she actually felt relieved; she had hated her old captain, the one who intended to raze a city to the ground in a misguided attempt to scare both sides into ending a war. Without him here to corrupt her purpose, she felt at peace. Yet she did wonder what exactly she was supposed to do now, she checked her instruments, thinking she should at least attempt to get her bearings first as she looked at her digital maps, but got no connection to the satellites that should have linked to her GPS, resulting in a simple 'no signal' message being displayed on the screens.
Confused by this, she switched frequencies, still nothing, she then decided to hack into a civilian satellite network instead; that worked. But instead of the world she knew being displayed on her screens, she was met with a very different one, and it made her blood run cold just seeing it.
“This...isn't my world...” She breathed out carefully, where Osea should be, were continents called Europe, Africa and Asia. And on the other side of the map, instead of Yuktobania, her homeland, was America; places she'd never heard of, plus all the continents were the wrong shapes and sizes. “OK...this can't be right...this isn't real... I sank in that battle and...i'm hallucinating just before death, yeah that right, i'm just going crazy...” She thought to herself.
“PROXIMITY ALERT!” jolted her from her thoughts, a klaxon blared from around all around her, and orange lights flashed around the bridge.
“Wha...” Before Alicorn could finish the one-syllable word, a massive 'CLANG!' rocked the whole hull, and she was knocked to the floor. Unhurt, the sub quickly recovered and sat back in her seat, the screens showed bubble trails in the water outside, coming from above her, anti-sub torpedoes! Alicorn acted fast, instinctively deploying counter measures, and engaging her powerful engines. The rest of the torpedoes were caught by her decoys, and exploded harmlessly off course as she fled the area.
“What the hell is going on?!” She exclaimed, before firing off a sonar ping to see her attackers, the sonar screen showed a grim reading: an entire fleet of unknown ships had surrounded her position, she had no idea who they were, but clearly they weren't friendly. She growled, knowing she had to get out of here... or fight, she looked over her weapon's manifest, and wasn't disappointed:
2 rail-guns and 1 super rail cannon.
Plenty of conventional torpedo tubes.
Lots of VLS tubes capable of launching missiles of any type, anti air, anti ship, and even ballistic missiles.
“Thats it! Ballistic missiles!” She internally stated, with her mind, she ordered the machinery of her hull to load the chosen payload into one of her missile tubes, and programmed its flight path to hit right on top of her current position. Underwater she'd be perfectly safe from its blast, but everything above her would be reduced to molten slag by her powerful weapon. With a hiss, her missile left the tube, floating upwards briefly before its boosters activated, rocketing it out of the sea and into the sky, far too fast for her opponents to shoot down.
“PROXIMITY ALERT!” The alarm system boomed again. Alicorn sneered, she knew the missile would take a minute to come back down, and in a battle, a lot can happen in a minute. She tracked the direction the anti-sub torpedoes came from, and found another submarine not far from her position, she knew her ballistic missile wouldn't touch it, so she had to deal with it herself. After evading the second wave of torpedoes, Alicorn turned to face her attack directly, putting it directly on the viewscreen, she did not expect what she saw.
This submarine was black, with red lights criss-crossing its hull. It also looked much more like a robot shark instead of a conventional sub, with metal jaws on its bow, dive planes that resembled fins, as well as a 'tail' just in front of its props. Alicorn raised her eyebrow at the strange sight, before she watched the enemy sub open its jaws and fire more torpedoes from tubes inside its 'mouth'.
Firing her own torpedoes, Alicorn aimed to destroy the projectiles before they hit her, and she loaded anti-sub missiles into her tubes. As both groups of torpedoes slammed into each other, the resulting explosion pushed the shark-like submarine backwards, while Alicorn was simply too big to be effected, easily tanking the shock wave. She smirked, knowing the other sub was likely stunned from that attack, and she fired her anti-sub missiles, they were far too fast for the other sub to react in time, and it exploded into a cloud of bubbles and scrap metal, harmlessly floating to the bottom of the sea.
Above her, Alicorn's sonar picked up the sound of massive explosions, her ballistic missile had hit its mark, splitting into many smaller warheads in a massive burst of destruction. She watched the contacts on her active sonar screen vanish in droves, and her viewscreen showed a shower of black and red metal falling all around her into the depths below, from the material and the colours she could see, Alicorn could tell the ships that had been attacking her, as well as the sub, all seemed to be from the same faction, but who were they?
Now that the coast was clear, Alicorn decided to take a risk, and rose to periscope depth. She deployed her high powered periscope, and looked around on the surface. As expected, every enemy ship that had been above her was completely annihilated by her burst missile, either sinking fast or had already been blown to pieces by a direct impact from one of her warheads. That wasn't why Alicorn had decided to take a peek however. She was looking for land.
And she found it.
On the horizon, Alicorn saw a relatively large, green island. She grimaced a little, hoping to find a mainland port so she could ask around as to where she was, and who crewed the ships she just fought, then something on the island caught her eye, and she zoomed in with the periscope. Alicorn gasped, seeing a large port on that green rock, around the edges of a lagoon. She considered herself lucky she saw it, if she had been looking at this island from any other direction, she'd have likely missed it.
But Alicorn didn't know who ran that port, it might be connected to the ships that attacked her, but even if they weren't, would they be friendly towards her? Plus there was no doubt they'd seen what her burst missile did to that fleet, if anything they'd likely be spooked by whatever had done that. She considered a slow, submerged approach, but if she was detected, they'd likely interpret her as aggressive and attack her.
While she was deciding what to do, her sonar pinged with more contacts, this time they were nowhere near her, instead they were coming towards the island from another direction, looking back through her periscope she saw what she considered a bizarre sight: World War 2 era warships returning to the port. Not only that, but there were ships of many different makes and models in that fleet. Far too many for just one country, she may not be from this world, but Alicorn could tell this was a multi-nation fleet just from the sheer number of hull models in use and the different flags each ship was flying.
Then Alicorn realised that two destroyers had peeled off from the fleet, heading towards her position. It was unlikely they had already detected her, likely they were just investigating the aftermath of her burst missile, and the wreckage it left behind. The sub thought about retreating before she was spotted, but this was the only evidence of civilization she'd seen so far in this world, where would she go? She sighed, and put away the periscope. She made her decision...
Javelin and Laffey both arrived at the site of what was used to be a Siren fleet. Now it was a graveyard of barely recognisable pieces of twisted and melted metal. The air itself was hot with embers and ash, choked with black smoke from the raging fires on most of the wrecks. Javelin nervously stood at the bow of her own hull, looking around for anything unusual, creeped out by how this was a perfectly intact Siren fleet not moments ago.
“See anything?” She asked Laffey over her radio, who was some distance away on the other side of the wreck field.
“No, maybe they left?” Laffey suggested in a bored tone, this irritated Javelin, who suspected the American wasn't taking this seriously.
“Laffey! We're talking about something that erased an entire fleet in seconds here! Look harder!” Javelin yelled, getting agitated by their lack of results and Laffey's casual attitude. Laffey herself rubbed her ear, getting minor tinnitus from her friends yelling over the radio.
“Theres no need to shout.” She replied, still in her deadpan tone, but now with a hint of annoyance at Javelin's bellowing. Before Javelin could reply, both destroyers heard a low rumbling, and a huge, dark shape loomed beneath the surface of the sea, the water parted as the massive object rose to the surface between both kansen, the resulting wave towered over Javelin's hull and she watched, frozen in horror as its crest loomed above her tiny conning tower.
“Javelin! Get out of there!” Laffey yelled, luckily she was further away when the unknown vessel surfaced, she switched to rigging mode, making her hull vanish into wisdom cubes and appear on her back. Once she was done, she glided around the newcomer, amazed at the sheer size of this new ship, almost twice as long as an Essex class carrier.
The wave smashed into the side of Javelin's hull, capsizing her. She screamed as she was thrown from her hull and slammed into the side of a wrecked Siren cruiser, she hit her head hard on the metal, and then landed on the barrel of one of its guns, her body thankfully wrapped around it as she hit it, so she didn't fall into the sea. She groaned as she forced her eyes open, fighting to stay awake.
Her vision was blurry, and she was seeing two of everything. Javelin knew she likely had a concussion, but she had to stay awake in case this vessel was hostile. She tried to switch to rigging mode, but was too drained of energy to. The destroyer felt her hands slip around the gun barrel she was holding onto, screaming as she lost her grip, and fell into the sea below, with no rigging and no energy to swim, she was sure to drown, and Laffey was too far away to save her in time. The impact and shock of the cold water was too much for her already battered body, and she lost consciousness.