Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“All engines, full speed ahead!”

“What is that…!?”

“We need to stop Human Instrumentality-!”

“Goodbye, Evangelion…”

-

“No no no no no-”

“I was supposed to die- I was supposed to DIE!”

“I can’t do this- you take it! I won’t do this anymore!”

“I suppose, in the end, all I can do is run away from my responsibilities…”

-

Pain.

The sensation of nerves scraped raw, freshly grown and screaming as wet placental liquid dripped across deathly frozen ground.

Pain.

The sensation of blood pumping through freshly knit veins, tight and unable to handle the pressure until they were forcibly dilated or burst open and regenerated anyway.

Pain.

The sensation of organs coming into being where there once were none, crimson crystalline red weaving itself into an approximation of flesh and metal that towered into the sky.

Pain.

The sensation of being trapped in a tiny little cage- an orb too small to contain even a fragment of herself, before bursting free in a wave of screaming, raw agony.

Pain.

Salt licking across tender, raw skin and open sores. Rocks pressing against unarmored flesh as metal plates crept into existence little by little. Light piercing into baby fresh eyes that swiveled around and around before vanishing behind what felt like acres of smooth white skin.

Pain.

Existence. A futile struggle against the force of entropy. An endless march to find meaning in a world where there was none, an infinite toil to find reason in a universe that ran on nothing more than the basal laws of physics.

Pain.

Breathing. Lungs filling with air for the first time ever, a gargantuan mouth ripping free of designed restraints and drooling saliva mixed with blood and ooze with oversized teeth to match.

Pain. 

Moving. Muscles freshly grown filling with electrical impulse, machine moving beneath flesh moving beneath bone moving beneath skin moving beneath cable moving beneath armor. Not in that order. Twitching and raw with an inability to perceive in those daunting first moments.

Pain.

The sudden jolt of panic that came with realizing one was alive, sentient, capable of reasoning, capable of taking all of the pain of its existence and filtering it into a normal human condition.

Pain.

Hunger. A growling stomach, churning intestines, an empty pit of nothingness within an organ that wanted at all times to be full. A psychosomatic response generated by an artificial organ in an artificial body, ruled by an artificial mind that did not know what hunger was.

Pain.

The aches of bones that did not exist. The pangs of organs that did not exist. The screaming of nerves that did not exist. The palpitations of flesh that did not exist. The writhing of a mind that did not exist.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain-

CLARITY.

“KWEH-!”

And like a cresting wave, a slim, pale hand broke the surface of the water and dragged itself to shore, hauling with it an ungodly amount of trembling steel and bone and assorted material in the form of an almost delicate looking maiden- flesh so pale it turned white with any lighting, eyes glowing crimson in the low light upon those ice-capped rocks, hair tangled around her shoulders in a web of light blue that touched upon silver gray.

It felt like hundreds of thousands of tons of material, but by the time she’d managed to haul herself- spluttering and coughing, unable to comprehend just where she was at all- out of the water, the only thing she knew was that she was alive, that she was so much more than her size implied…

And that her name absolutely, definitely, a thousand times over, was not Ayanami Rei.

She wasn’t the same person. She wasn’t the right person. She wasn’t, despite her physical similarity, any version of the Ayanami Rei that had learned to be a human person over time, touched as she was by Ikari Shinji’s kindness and words.

She was already a person.

A nameless person.

A nameless person that was, ultimately, not human.

A thing with scrambled memories, no real way of knowing what exactly she was, and a dead certain knowledge that, if she left this island…

Far, far too many people would want to hunt her down and kill her for reasons beyond her control.

She didn’t know exactly what those reasons would be… but she knew for sure that she wouldn’t particularly like them.

All the same…

She took stock of herself slowly, looking down upon her newly revealed body with… some amount of wonder and awe.

She was…

A woman, very obviously.

Shapely- a waist that dipped in quite far before flaring out into a set of fairly wide hips.

Pale- her skin was quite literally pale white, though there were a few spots that seemed to have just the shyest touch of life in them- a pale, quiet red that showed through beneath that chalky white.

Buxom- well, she was a little bit proud of her shape, come to think of it. She couldn’t tell quite how tall she was, but she knew she was fairly tall, leggy, shapely, and busty. Her breasts even made it… a bit hard to see parts of her body by themselves.

They were also soft, delightfully fun to squeeze, and surprisingly sensitive too.

… 

It seemed a more prudent course of action to finish making sure she was whole and uninjured than it was to spend far too long playing with her own anatomy.

…

Put the boobs down.

…

Put. The boobs. Down.

… 

Oh for the love of all that held a soul, focus already!

It seemed that, whatever was in her mind, it seemed rather besotted with human mammaries and the shape of the feminine body- both her own, and in others.

That would likely turn out to be a consistent inconvenience.

Ahem.

Aside from the obvious of her body being… her body…

She also seemed to have… a Plugsuit. Black and dark gray, with red accents. The attire of the Ayanami that learned to be a person just shortly before her far too early death.

Her soul ached a little, feeling flashes of that life as if she’d seen them with her own eyes. Planting rice, picking turnips, reading books, learning to live…

But it wasn’t her, not really.

Still, as she sat there on that desolate beach of frigid rocks with nothing but high, snow capped cliffs behind her and frozen waves ahead of her…

She couldn’t help but weep a few tears for lives lost- lives that she could feel, despite not having ever seen them. Lives that she had lived, despite never sharing those names. Lives that flickered in the back of her mind like movies on a reel, snippets of desolation and isolation, of cold and fragile purpose, of trying and failing to manage in a world that was hostile to their very existence.

Purpose built. Failure. Alone. Unworthy. Coward. Doll. Machine. 

She shook her head, taking a deep, slow breath- she couldn’t get caught up in the lives of those that were not hers, not when she had to keep moving forward.

Wasn’t that what she had been told to do, at the end? Her mind felt so… fractured. Raw. Based on events that might never have happened in the first place. Had she dreamed that massive Evangelion staring at her when she died?

Had she ever truly been alive at all?

What was she?

Who was she?

Was she…

The woman, for she knew not what else what to call herself, stood slowly and took in her surroundings.

…

Snow and rock, as far as the eye could see. Also, seemingly impassible cliffs and a surprisingly bright, barely clouded sky above. The ocean nearby was covered in an ice sheet.

There was a terrible metaphor for the amount of blinding whiteness around her in the back of her mind related to the average American conservative voter, but she settled for just squinting her eyes and trudging towards the nearest cliff face.

Hm.

Was there anything… on top of the cliff? It didn’t seem likely, with all of the heavy snow everywhere.

That said, it was likely better to check than to just wander off in a random direction and hope she found civilization somewhere.

… 

She really hoped that there was something on top of this cliff, otherwise she would have wasted her time and energy for nothing.

If nothing else, though… at least getting to higher ground would let her see the surrounding area better? Perhaps she was just on some forgotten spit of land at an extreme latitude and there was still mainland to be found?

Hopefully.

If so… well. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she knew the feeling of her own S2 Organ running in her abdomen. As long as it wasn’t destroyed, she would be able to exist in perpetuity, needing neither food nor water nor any shelter beyond that of her AT Field, which she had already been employing to prevent herself from freezing.

Because she was wearing nothing but a plugsuit.

In arctic temperatures.

Ahem.

She bent her knees ever so slightly, the motion comforting for reasons that really didn’t matter- it helped as a somatic gesture, in this case, but did little else. Same with the first vocalization she made in her entire new existence- a simple little, “Hup-!” of effort, and with a flare of her AT Field she found herself atop the cliff with remarkably little effort.

She turned around, taking in the sights.

…

Ah.

Even worse than she thought.

Literally nothing but sea and ice for miles around.

She suspected that if she walked to the other end of what appeared to be an island, she’d only find more of the same.

Hm.

But…

There was a building not too far away, down a path that she hadn’t seen from her previous location.

A small one, seemingly built out of… shipping containers, maybe? It had the look of something weather resistant, though not particularly well kept. 

It was… abandoned, on closer inspection.

The sign in front was in English, which she could thankfully read just fine. 

Norvegia Station.

And, below that, Bouvetøya, with some coordinates listed in smaller text.

…

Well, that didn’t tell her much, though what little she knew intrinsically of latitude and longitude coordinates made her think she wasn’t so much in an arctic climate as she was in the near antarctic.

Which bode poorly for her attempts at escaping this frozen hellhole.

Ah.

A swear word.

It seemed that… whatever it was that traded places with her mind wasn’t quite as dead as it wanted to be.

A pity- something that suffered so much should have the rest it deserved, though… she supposed that she might as well try to remember that fragile soul with what she could.

The woman breathed slowly, taking gentle, padding steps up the somewhat rickety stairs of the Norvegia station, peeking through the windows and trying the door.

Locked, but easy enough to unlock. A simple twist of her AT Field slid the pins into place, and she stepped inside into… relative warmth. Warmer than the outside by some degrees, and with running electronics that, likely, were charged by the solar panels and turbines outside. Self sufficient, in order to send what looked like weather data.

Hm…

It looked like this place could hold… six people? Seven in a pinch. But there wasn’t really anything she particularly cared about at the moment. All of the documents were interesting in a general scientific sense, of course, but beyond that…

No maps of anything but the local area. No way off the island.

Just her, and the quiet hum of electronics as she sat there upon one of the bunks and contemplated her next move.

Obviously, she would need to get a handle on what she was, on who she was, on what she wanted to do, on her abilities, her memories, her personality…

There were so many things to be done, and she had no idea what her place would be in a world without Evangelions-

A world without Evangelions.

A world without Evangelions.

Yes- Ikari Shinji had created a world without Evangelions, hadn’t he?

So then…

How was she here?

Why was she here?

Who was she, really?

What was she?

And… most importantly, and perhaps least importantly at the same time…

“... What is my name…?”

Chapter Text

“Fuck. Shit. Damn. Piss. Ass. Cunt. Cock. Dick. Whore. Bastard.”

Ah, the joys of simple, direct, immediate communication via a variety of pejoratives aimed at literally anyone and everything around oneself.

None of the words were said with any inflection whatsoever, but rest assured that the nameless woman was feeling every single one as she trudged through the snowstorm that had suddenly blown through the island and reduced all visibility to just about zero in the span of about thirty seconds.

It wasn’t a particularly pressing matter, but it was an annoyance considering that she’d been attempting to find her way towards the nearest continent by… mostly, trying to remember where Bouvet Island was in relation to everything else, picking a direction, and praying she made landfall before she went insane from boredom, isolation, and lack of anything to do.

She still had no idea if she’d have to swim, or if she could just fly. Her memories indicated wings- shining white wings…

What was she?

Some kind of…

The words Mass Produced Evangelion somehow felt wrong, but the image they conjured in her mind almost felt right. White armored, standing tall and proud and violent with cruelty and lack of consciousness… Eyeless faces with jagged red smiles…

Yes, those images felt appropriate, but scattered.

Perhaps that was what she was.

Wings like a bird, stretching from her back and carrying her aloft- but then again, she didn’t need the wings, technically…

Where was she again?

Right.

Trudging alone through a snowstorm, completely blinded and unable to get any sort of bearings at the moment, using her AT Field to block out the weather and carve a path through the nearly meter tall snowdrifts…

There sure was a lot of snow around…

“... Hm. I do not know what I was expecting. Snow tastes exactly like cold water,” she remarked to herself, not even bothering to jot that down because it was quite possibly the most obvious conclusion in the world. Why had she licked the snow in the first place?

Some kind of human instinct, she supposed.

What was next, licking random items that she thought were halfway interest-

“... Rocks taste like rocks.”

Dammit.

“Lichen. Cold. Dry. No major nutritional value. Moss. Cold. Damp. No major nutritional value. Rock. Crunchy. Frigid. Metallic ores provide moderate energy boost. Interesting.”

…

…

Wait- what?

The as of yet still nameless woman looked down at the chunk of… some kind of rock she was holding. It had a bite mark taken out of it, and for some godforsaken reason, she could tell that it had enough iron content in it that it actually tasted almost good to her senses.

Which… should not have happened? Nothing in an Evangelion’s biomechanical makeup suggested a taste for eating rocks. Usually they survived off of whatever nutrient slurry was added into their LCL system and the mechanical repairs done by the assorted work crews tasked with keeping them functional.

And yet…

Interesting.

She still didn’t feel any particular sense of hunger, but… was this the feeling that humans described as… “I could eat”?

She could eat.

She wasn’t hungry, but she wasn’t feeling particularly bloated nor lacking in material capacity, so… therefore, she could eat.

Interesting.

What a surprising way to learn she still had some remnant of humanity in her inhuman makeup.

…

She still didn’t have a name, though.

What would she even call herself?

Ayanami wasn’t an option- despite appearing as an Ayanami, she wasn’t even remotely close to them. Her thought processes were currently similar, but tainted by an outside vector that she had no real knowledge of. A scattering of faint memories, a few inclinations in one direction or another. Some personality traits that she couldn’t imagine manifesting any time soon. Shikinami was an even worse option- she wasn’t anything like Shikinami Asuka Langley. Not in appearance or personality or lived experiences. Or… was she sure it was Shikinami and not Soryu?

… Her memories felt so unclear, even as she saw snippets of the woman’s life as if it had been through her own eyes.

No.

Shikinami was out.

Anything related to Asuka was out- hell, any name related to any former member of NERV or WILLE was out.

She wasn’t them. She didn’t have a connection to them. She might be carrying their memories as if she’d lived them herself, but that didn’t mean that it meant anything. Like a hard drive carrying on the last words of the deceased. Like a time capsule of all of the worst horrors in the world. Like a recording of the Apocalypse, meant to live on as a warning for those to come.

She wasn’t exactly a person so much as she was a loose collection of scattered pages, drifting around an empty husk of an Evangelion crammed into the shape of a girl who died as more of a human than she ever was.

So.

She should pick a new name.

A new name that didn’t belong to anyone.

A name that didn’t evoke the people and precious memories of a past that was not hers. She carried the memories of people she’d never met, but she couldn’t claim relation to anyone except by matching appearance.

Honestly, she was the one who deserved the name Miss Lookalike more than the Ayanami who’d grown into her own version of Rei over the course of a few short days.

What a wonderful experience, that seemed like…

She wondered how she knew it.

… Maybe…

She could… grow into a Rei too?

Stumbling, softly, into a life where she could be a person? A human? Perhaps she wasn’t a person now, even with the words and feelings she already knew, but…

…

She sighed quietly, tapping the collar of her suit and biting her lip as she came across the shore again- frozen and slippery to any without an AT Field allowing them to keep perfect balance, nearly unscalable to anyone without the ability to fly.

The sun was still hidden behind the storm above, and she…

She shook her head, staring blankly out on the frozen ocean ahead and letting her thoughts roil in her mind.

Well…

If she was going to learn to be a person, then she was starting from Zero. The sum total of her experience in this world, as her own being and not just some kind of amalgam based on some mashed together remnant of those who were lost… was Zero.

Zero Zero.

00.

The same as the original Ayanami Rei’s Evangelion unit.

Zero, meaning Rei. Rei, meaning Zero.

Rei was a pretty name. It made her feel ever so slightly more connected to the memories of her past, scattered and fragmentary as they were. It didn’t quite feel like the right name….

But it would do for now.

She’d come up with something better when she finally understood what she actually was.

If she ever found out… if she was more than that loose collection of pages.

If she ever found a place where she could settle and think about it- somewhere that wasn’t this…

Frigid hell hole. 

It wasn’t particularly conducive to making grand revelations about oneself, after all- the last time any of her kind had spent too long in the ice, the Lilin had caused Second Impact!

… Or… was it her kind?

Rei shook her head, growling under her breath to keep her mind in the present instead of stuck in the past, in memories that tangled like cables beneath winding corridors and hidden racks. No sense in thinking about that right now. What was important was finding some kind of civilization, some kind of life. Somewhere she could figure out who she was and her place in the world the way that all children ought to- by experiencing the people who lived around her, and learning from them. All the good things, the bad things, the normal days, the happy days, the sad days…

She wanted to know what they were like firsthand, not just from some memories that she carried with her. 

Idly, Rei wondered if humans would be scared of her. White hair and red eyes were hardly common, after all, and while albinism was definitely a trait that manifested in roughly one in every… five to twenty thousand people depending on where one was descended from… Rei didn’t exactly express the normal traits for that demographic either. 

For one, it wasn't a lack of pigment in her body, but the fact that her skin was actually stark, pale white. For two, her eyes weren’t just red because of a lack of pigment, but they were actually red. Vibrant, vivid, not the dull color usually associated with albinism- almost glowing , really.

… They might have actually been glowing, actually.

Rei didn’t have a particularly scientific method of checking at the moment, but she’d seen flickers of red when the snow swept past her face and could only conclude it was reflecting light from her eyes.

Ahem.

Was this what it was like to be human? Her thoughts felt so… scattered. Raw. Unfocused. Constantly drifting from one topic to another faster than she could really process.

Some parts of her were keeping an eye on her surroundings (snowstorms, ice, cliffs, island, water), some parts of her were musing about her own existence (a treatise on what it meant to be a person when one sprung fully formed from the ocean with no progenitor), some parts of her were-

“... I need to stop fondling my own breasts whenever I am distracted,” Rei grumbled, slowly removing her hands from her own chest and pouting ever so slightly.

Ugh.

What a ridiculous new set of instincts she had to deal with.

Still.

She’d spent enough time on this island.

If she wanted to learn how to be a person properly, then…

She needed to find people.

Obviously.

If she wanted to be a person, then she needed to experience humanity. Had to experience… life. Working in the sun. Playing with the local cats. Eating good food. Making connections with the people around her. Learning new words and concepts. Understanding her own feelings. Putting words and thoughts to feelings for other people.

Her heart clenched a little, a half remembered sequence of events flickering into place in her mind-

A girl, lost in a world she didn’t understand, met by kindness and connection from everyone around. A girl, learning how to live and be a person, day by day by day. A girl, who found so much simple joy in working, playing, sitting in the bath with friends, eating, learning, walking, growing, reading.

A girl, whose life was cut short by an unavoidable flaw in her biology.

A girl, who deserved so much more.

A girl, who should have gotten to grow up, live among her friends and chosen family, find her own feelings and just…

Be.

But that girl didn’t exist anymore.

That girl died.

That girl willingly let herself dissolve into LCL because she enjoyed being alive too much to go back to Nerv and its cold, inhumane monotony.

Ayanami Rei just wanted to live.

Ayanami Rei just wanted to be a person.

Ayanami Rei just wanted to be herself.

And now here she was.

Fragmented.

Lost.

Alone.

Unknowing of the wider world.

A cold, almost dead woman in a sea of ice and snow.

Rei wiped a crimson tear from her eyes, taking a deep breath and focusing on the stretch of ocean ahead of her.

No better way to hold onto the memories of those lost than to live in a way that they should have been able to.

Hold those memories in her heart, knowing that they weren’t meant for her… and move on.

Move forward.

Take the first step.

Become something greater, something more.

Take to heart the lessons that she’d learned from the memories that she had… and become the person that they always deserved to have become.

Rei breathed deeply…

And took the first step.

Chapter Text

…

…

…

Rei took everything nice she ever said about snow and ice back. This was miserable.

At least being on the island provided some measure of entertainment by way of having landforms and features that weren’t just ice and snow and unbroken monotony.

Actually walking out onto the sea ice and making the first steps on her journey to… possibly South Africa, possibly some other continent… was an exercise in never ending… nothing, really.

The waves were calm.

The ice was flat.

Her feet left prints in the snow dusting the tops of the ice sheet, faint outlines that told anyone looking where she went- as long as the wind hadn’t blown them away.

Rei had no idea how long she had been walking, but… she had figured that making her journey by foot would be an appropriate homage to the ones left behind. The girl whose plugsuit she wore had made her own journey by foot, after all. She may not have an SDAT player… or any kind of music player… but… well.

It felt important that this first stretch of her journey was on foot. Something called to her that way, more than just making an homage to a dead woman.

…

It felt almost odd, seeing blue seas and proper ice fields instead of a never ending, dead waste of blood red waves. She thought she’d gotten used to it in the hours before, but…

No.

It still felt strange.

The ice crunched gently under foot. The sky remained unfortunately stormy, and yet somehow the waves were calm.

It seemed like the snow storm was focused around the island rather than her own path here. Good. She didn’t want to have to constantly use her AT Field to suppress the weather around her.

Monotony.

Ice.

Water.

Monotony.

Ice.

Water.

Monotony.

Ice.

Water.

Monotony.

Ah. She couldn’t even see the island anymore when she turned back. She must have gone quite far already… what was the distance for the horizon again? About five kilometers?

… Hm.

She couldn’t really tell what time of day it was through the clouds, but it almost felt like she’d walked long enough that she could have gone past the horizon line.

Rei pursed her lips silently, staring down at the lastest interruption in the sheet of ice in front of her.

Yet again, she needed to cross a stretch of water. A simple task, obviously- one’s AT Field made easy work of that, at least…

But it still felt almost like an annoyance every time she did it. She had to jump down to the surface of the water and then climb back out and it was just a whole thing…

Ugh.

When did she start having opinions?

How odd.

Perhaps the memories in the back of her head were affecting her more than she thought.

…

Rei still didn’t know what she was, come to think of it.

And there was only so much she could just… stare dead ahead at nothing, thoughts completely blank for all except the constant forward march.

Her AT Field rippled as she walked across the waves, knowing that at some point she’d reach the end of the ice sheets, no longer able to cross the distance as if on a false landmass, but forced to continue on solely upon the surface of the water.

What a time that would be.

She didn’t know how long she would need to walk for- her own calculations on where she were started and ended with guessing that north was the way to go, and that only worked inasmuch as it would allow her access to the equator if she didn’t hit a continent on the way.

…

If there were any gods listening… please let her run into something that could actually tell her where she was and which way to go.

A continent, a group of people, a ship, literally anything.

Rei really, really did not want to actually have to walk to the equator and then hit a perfect ninety degree turn just to keep walking some more.

…

Of course, clearly, she could fly, but right now her journey was in the walking stage, and flight didn’t feel like something she should try to do until she had met at least one person.

…

What a strange and arbitrary rule she’d imposed on herself.

Why?

How odd…

Well. It wouldn’t do to think about it too much. If she actually found walking to be tiresome enough that she could no longer stand the monotony, then she could unfurl her wings and fly away.

Because she had wings, right?

She… was pretty sure she had wings.

And if nothing else, flight solely powered by AT Field based levitation was simple enough as well- she’d seen more than enough examples of it in the scattering of memories in her mind that there was no doubt that she could replicate it.

Should she choose to.

But right now…

All she cared to do was to move across this stretch of water- this time on a whim just letting the AT Field carry her along like a moving walkway.

It was… actually rather pleasant like that.

There was a nice sea breeze that trickled through her hair and let her feel the coolness of the air- freezing for an ordinary human, but there was very little that was ordinary about her. For example, her ability to use her AT Field to modulate the temperature around her so that it was merely cool and refreshing rather than frigid and liable to cause hypothermia to unprotected skin. For example, her biological makeup that seemed…

Entirely nonhuman, for all that she was compressed into a human body right now.

What was she?

She thought, for a moment, that she might be entirely made of Core material, as if she was a Vessel for an Adam.

She had no idea for sure, though, and deliberately injuring herself at the moment to see what she was felt like a foolish thing to do.

Hm…

This was nice.

Moving along the surface of the water, drifting forward with nothing actually holding her back…

The sun off to the side, nothing but the endless stretch of open ocean before her…

And…

A girl?

All the way out here?

She was…

Stuck in the ice, it seemed, if the way that she was tugging one of her legs was any indication.

Ah- now she was waving.

She’d been noticed, and the strange girl looked as if she was motioning her over.

Well.

Alright then.

“Oiiii! Oiiiiiiii! Hey! You! Are you an icebreaker or something!? I need help! I’m stuck and I can’t get out!” the girl called out, continuing to tug at her leg to no avail.

Strangely enough, she seemed to be standing on the surface of the water without any sign of sinking, though her strange looking foot seemed to cause ripples around it just by touching the surface. 

Something about her also twinged at the very edge of Rei’s senses, and she felt…

Felt like this girl was also far larger than she should have been. That she was… large. Powerful. Nowhere near as powerful in her AT Field as Rei was, but at the same time, far larger than an Evangelion would have been.

How odd.

What was this world then, if there were people like this? Not human, no, but…

Huh.

Rei got the sense of metal in there as well. How odd.

“Hello,” Rei stated in lieu of answering literally anything the other girl asked. She drifted a little closer, examining the ice that said girl had gotten stuck in. Ah. It seemed as though she’d been just slightly late and a path between ice sheets had closed before the girl could fully pass through. Though, strange that she was out here in the first place. “Who are you? And… what are you doing here?”

“Eh? Oh, you’re kinda tall…. What are you?” the pale, white haired and red eyed girl asked, blinking a few times. “You’re definitely not one of the mass produced types… Not a Ra, not the right color… Maybe an Elite Ne? Or… no, not a Tsu. You don’t have the hands for that… too tall for a Re, you kinda look like a Ta?”

“I do not know what any of those terms mean,” Rei answered flatly, without any sort of emotional inflection whatsoever beyond the quiet pitch of her voice. “I am me. That is all I know.”

“Ahhh, self summon. Gotcha. Well, I’m Northern Princess Fleet Elite Re-Class Aviation Battleship No. 0010! Or you can call me NPS Reiju for short.” the now named Reiju answered, speaking as though she was a large inanimate vessel instead of a rather average sized girl. “I’d show you my rigging but it’s uh…”

She paused, motioning behind her with a shuffle of her oversized coat, revealing what looked like… a tail?

A rather bloated, corpselike tail with metal parts and guns strapped to it, as if the tail itself was the head of a metallic shark. It was also… stuck. Somehow. 

Rei blinked. Had that been there the whole time?

“Hey, speaking of… where’s your rigging?” Reiju asked, looking Rei up and down oddly. “Never seen a Ta without her rigging out… usually they’re kinda bitchy about it, even the self summons. Something about being built to be Flagships but… eh. Anyway! What’s your name?”

“... Rei.”

“Re? You’re definitely not a Re. I’m a Re. You’re like… a long haired Ta with huge boobs,” Reiju immediately denied, crossing her arms and stomping her free foot against the water, whereupon it splashed as if something far larger than her had displaced the wake.

“... Rei. Zero,” Rei repeated herself, with a slight bit more insistence this time. “Not Re.”

Reiju blinked. “Ohhhh… like the first half of my name! Oh, that makes us name sisters! Cool! Can ya help me out then? Also, I guess you’re not part of any fleet, huh? So far out from anything, sheesh… and a off-class self summon too? Poor girl, you really hit the short end of the stick… Seen a few girls like you before, most of ‘em end up doin’ something stupid and dyin’ though.”

“I see,” Rei blinked.

She did not, in fact, see.

“Yyyup. So… leg?” Reiju pointed again. “I’d do it myself but I don’t wanna screw up my propulsion by kicking it against the ice. And also it’s getting cold and I’m pretty sure either my Princess moved islands, or I’m on the wrong side of Russia.”

“Mm.” Rei nodded, then just… tapped the ice. It broke away easily, flexing under her AT Field, and Rei… had to wonder a little how the girl had gotten trapped in the first place if she could put out so much more force than she looked like she should be able to.

“AHHHH! AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS I’M FREEEEE! IT’S TIME TO CONQUER EARTH!” Reiju shouted the moment she was freed, taking on an odd sort of raspy cadence in her voice as she threw her hands up and grinned whilst shaking her palms dramatically.

Rei blinked.

She stared.

She tilted her head. 

“I do not understand.”

Reiju deflated all at once, slumping down and staring at Rei like she was the crazy one. “Whaaaaa!? Really!? Aww… Aren’t you off-class self summons supposed to know everything about human media? C’mon! Gimme somethin’ to work with here, sis!”

“I am unaware of human media,” Rei answered blankly. She blinked again, then looked at Reiju oddly. “... If you are a ship of the Northern Princess fleet, then why are you so close to the south pole?”

Reiju blinked.

“Wait- this isn’t the arctic circle!?”

“According to the sign post on the island south of here, no.”

Reiju groaned. “Noooooo… I’m LOST! Again! Why does this keep happening to me!? I swear my compass works! I swear! It’s even pointing straight at… uh…”

She paused, pulling her tail forward and drawing out a tiny little version of herself no larger than a few centimeters tall. She squinted, listening to the small version of herself speak in what sounded like repetitions of the word Sink.  

“... The- THE RED SIDE IS NORTH!? I THOUGHT THE WHITE SIDE WAS NORTH! WHY DID YOU TELL ME THE WHITE SIDE WAS NORTH!?”

Rei sighed imperceptibly.

Ah.

Perhaps her journey to learning personhood would take a bit of detour, then.

Tsk.

Oh well.

Chapter Text

Reiju, it turned out, was a profoundly chatty walking partner, and also seemed to have an exceptionally terrible sense of direction, for all that she seemed incredibly good at being exactly where she needed to be at exactly the right time…

Her current situation notwithstanding, of course.

Apparently her Princess- which, as Rei had learned, was the term used for the most powerful Abyssals- had made a push into more equatorial waters because, as Reiju quoted, “Hoppou-chan-hime wanted a vacation in the Caribbean so we tried to sneak through the Panama Canal”.

Apparently, it hadn’t gone particularly well.

As in, they made it into the Atlantic, but at that point they’d lost enough of the fleet that the Northern Princess, “Hoppou-chan-hime”, had called a retreat which took the entire fleet northwards.

And Reiju, poor Reiju, had gotten separated because they’d fled towards the Canary Islands where the European Princess and the Seaplane Tender Water Princess were currently anchored… only to get lost in a storm.

Because apparently it was fully possible for normal storms to sweep in and confuse Abyssals enough that one of them would get lost and start steaming full speed south instead of north.

… Wasn’t there an ice sheet up that way?

Apparently the princess in charge there, European Water Princess, was strong enough to have an entire winter path through the Arctic Circle all the way back to Unalaska where Hoppou-chan-hime usually resided.

How terrifying.

“So, off-classes, right?” Reiju spoke, as if she hadn’t been pretty much talking the entire time, filling Rei in on the last approximately six years of war that had been raging around mostly the South Pacific area and parts of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. “Off-classes are kinda weird? Um, they’re like… how do I put it… they come out a lot like they’re older than they’re supposed to be? Like most of us, we’re six at most- I’m only… um…”

She paused, counting on her fingers. “Five years and eight months old! Tenth ship ever floated by Hoppou-chan-hime! That’s why I’m Reiju!”

Shaking her head, Reiju continued after a moment of getting her thoughts back on track. “Oh right. Off-classes. They’re… human? A lot of them die out pretty soon after they get pulled up, actually… I mean, it’s a harsh world out here and a lot of us normal Abyssals don’t really last that long… I saw one of my sister Re’s get blown up three months into her life. It was scary. And sad. I was teaching her how to read.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Rei answered, not really sure what else to say.

“It’s okay! All of us except Princesses and Demons are pretty much expendable… and even Princesses can come crawling back out of the Abyss anyway, so…” Reiju shrugged a little, a slightly pained smile on her face. “It’s not like we ever stay dead forever! I mean, Hoppou-chan-hime’s had to pull me out of the Abyss twice! Sucks, but… well… y’live with it. A-anyway… um… Off-classes are weird and they’re weirdly human and a lot of them say a bunch of weird shit like they’re not used to their own rigging or anything, and some of them have really big boobs!”

Reiju blinked, then looked Rei up and down. “And you’re one of ‘em! Oh, and also they make a lot of references to human media that most others don’t get, buuuut… I got a lil somethin’ somethin’ that the humans totally don’t want us to have that means I get to watch stuff and understand those media references!”

“I see.”

Rei only sort of understood what Reiju meant with that.

“But yeah most of ‘em die cuz they’re really bad at killin’ and shootin’ most of the time. Or they just shut down entirely? Lights on, no one’s home, nothin’ to do but put ‘em back in the Abyss. A couple just keep their heads down and take it, some of ‘em run… Um… a few of them become Princesses? I know there was this one Hime who took over a chunk of territory and tried to start a mercenary company, but then she kinda… pissed off Central and uh…” Reiju winced. “Well, there’s a new Princess there now!”

“I see.”

Rei was, slowly, beginning to understand the structure of Abyssal politics. Namely: All of them were insane, most of the Princesses seemed to be the spiritual manifestations of veterans from a war well over seventy years prior, and there was a high chance that the vast majority of Abyssals were actually just children that had been forced to grow up too quickly, and had their aggression turned up to maximum by whatever created them in the first place. 

How cruel.

Granted, she had no idea of knowing if her conclusions were correct, but so long as she remained unmolested and was not faced with hostility from any Abyssals, she would continue to treat them as though they were just as capable of logic and reasoning as any other sapient species on this planet.

…

Perhaps if the Angels had not all been violently incapable of communicating, perhaps they could have worked out something as well?

It did her no good to focus on what could have been, though. Right now, she was traveling with Reiju in… a direction that Rei wasn’t entirely sure of, but the girl had assured her that, now that she knew which direction was north, they’d get back to Unalaska in a jiffy.

Her words, not Rei’s.

Rei, for her part, was just content to let Reiju lead her along. It sort of felt… nice, wandering around with a companion. No pressing engagements, no pressing matters, nothing that really needed to be done except for just getting back to her Princess eventually.

“And like, a bunch of us ships self summon, right? It’s just that Princesses are usually the ones to do it… um, except for some of the ones that figured out mass production? Like, there’s a lot of New Aircraft Carrier Princesses running around with the same designation because they’re… I think they’re Aircraft Carrier Princess’ summons?” Reiju trailed off a little, tapping her chin and huffing a little. “I don’t remember, I haven’t seen one of them in a while. They might be dead? Oh, and there’s a lot of mass produced versions of the American Destroyer Princess… I think she’s building a harem on Okinawa?”

Rei blinked.

What?

“What?”

“I dunno, that’s just what some of the girls call it,” Reiju shrugged and looked as if she didn’t know or care what the implication of that was. Rei herself wasn’t even that sure. “Some big group of identical girls all doing grown up girl things on an island together. Which is weird that one of the submarines was the one telling me it was grown up stuff- I mean, that sub was like, half my age! Plus I know what sex is.”

Rei, silently, admitted to herself that she only had a basic biological working knowledge of what sex was. Tab A went into Slot B and a baby popped out after some time, depending on the species and specific breeding time.

Girls could do that with each other?

What an interesting prospect. 

“But yeah, sometimes Princesses sink, sometimes they crawl back out of the water, sometimes they get turned into traitors,” Reiju spat out that last word with a growl, crossing her arms and glaring off at nothing. 

Rei blinked.

“What is a traitor?”

“One of them,” Reiju snarled a little. “Those weird human looking girls that are like us, but they started killing us pretty much on sight from day one! I mean, okay, Central Princess was the one who started the war but even then! They’re jerks! And sometimes those stupid Shipgirls steal our Princesses for themselves, and then we have to re-sink them and bring them back out and even then, they don’t remember who they were after that! It’s like they’re a whole new version of the same Princess! I’m glad Hoppou-chan-hime hasn’t ever sunk, but I’ve seen it happen once… it was so scary… the way the storm just vanished, and it was like everyone just forgot how to live all at once…”

Reiju shook her head, shivering a little. “I don’t like it. It’s creepy and weird…”

“I see.”

Rei did not, in fact, see. She was learning that a lot of what Reiju said was going pretty much right over her head, but it was okay. She’d come to understand it in time, most likely.

She already had a workable knowledge of what each of the terms Reiju said entailed. Princesses and Demons made up the highest echelons of Abyssal fleets- with Demons being fully capable of being independent actors, albeit at a slightly weaker level than most Princesses. Then there were the “expendables” starting with the lowly I-class destroyers, which looked like some kind of strange shark boat, and going all the way up to Elite classes and flagships. The more human an Abyssal looked, the stronger they tended to be unless they were an off-class, in which case they usually looked very human, but had a completely unpredictable level of power. 

To Abyssals, one’s fleet was basically one’s family and workplace rolled into one- everyone played their part and orbited around the Princess or Demon in charge, kept patrol areas secure, managed shipping and supplies, waited around for daily rations of things like oil and steel and bauxite plus some more exotic materials for ammunition, and generally just did as a fleet ought to do.

Just… with less naval discipline.

Princesses could only teach as much as they themselves knew, and while some Princesses were born with manuals aplenty on naval tactics and all the important parts of running a fleet, some fleets had to deal with learning all of those things from scratch- taking the instincts they had as warships and turning it into workable strategy, even when most of their fleetmates were either animalistic or simply just naive.

Abyssals were not always prone to listening to their masters, despite how much they revered their Princesses.

There was also something called Sailwitches that Reiju spoke of in equal parts awe and fear, said to be ships from even older times- wooden hulls and rope and cloth instead of steel and aluminum. Cast iron cannons firing stone or iron balls rather than the high velocity cannons of the modern day. Still, they gained their relevance in both Abyssal and traitorous fleets due to their increased ability to command the magics of the seas- sometimes even more than Princesses themselves… if only in skill instead of raw power.

Reiju had never met a Sailwitch before, but apparently there was at least one Sailwitch Princess out there and that no one liked thinking about them because they were just plain scary. And more than capable of making everyone that wasn’t a high level Princess regret coming near their island.

How terrifying.

The seas were definitely more alive than she ever remembered them being, and it was a brand new world with so much to learn that Rei didn’t even know where to start.

So…

For now, until she could make a decision on whether or not the differences between Abyssals and humans and Shipgirls were too much to reconcile… she would simply learn as much as she could, and see if life among the Abyssal fleets was worth living.

Perhaps she would become a person that way as well? Who was to say, really. 

Well.

Regardless of that…

They had a long way to go either way.

“Oh! Sweet! Tuna! I love tuna!” Reiju called out, looking almost manic in her excitement as she reached into the water with her tail, bit down, and ripped a two meter long, struggling tuna out of the water with a shout of joy. “Woo! Fish! Aw man, the girls back home would love this! Too bad it won’t keep that long… Oh well!”

Crunch.

And without any preamble whatsoever, Reiju began biting into the squirming, slimy, saltwater covered fish as it tried desperately to get out of the jaws of a predator far stronger than it.

Crunch.

There was red everywhere.

Crunch.

“Oh! Rei! Y’want any of this? It’s soooooooo tasty!”

Crunch.

Rei blinked.

She stared.

She looked down at her own two hands, then at the no longer moving fish that had several bite marks taken out of it- each one far larger than what could have been made by a human mouth.

She pursed her lips.

…

Well.

She did say she wanted to learn new things, right?

She’d never had raw tuna before.

…

CRUNCH.

Chapter Text

Well.

They were definitely in warmer waters now.

Unfortunately, being in warmer waters meant that they were now off the coast of Africa, which had mostly gone unmolested by Abyssal forces due to a lack of strong grudges from most of the Princesses towards that area.

That didn’t mean that it was free of being attacked, though. It just meant that the entire continent save for the sections that touched the Mediterranean Sea were considered lower priority. The same as South America, according to Reiju.

The Abyssal didn’t seem to have any compunctions about saying that she wouldn’t mind doing a quick shore landing and blowing up a town or two just to show those little meatbags who the real queens of the seas were… but at the same time, she’d followed it up with how she’d rather not have to deal with a naval response when they were just two ships and the naval bases that had been set up all over the coastlines of every continent usually housed at least six Shipgirls each. She’d only get, what, a few hours of violent rampaging before she got murdered?

Pass.

She’d keep her violent urges to either actual engagements with her sisters or digital media. 

Rei didn’t particularly understand the urge to go violently kill a bunch of people that weren’t bothering them, but she also didn’t think particularly much about it either way. Humans were much the same at times, were they not? Serial killers, terrorists, criminals of all stripes, politicians, warmongers, warlords… She knew, vaguely, that humans could be worse than any amount of Abyssal violence, for at least the Abyss was equal and simple in its cruelty, and did not indulge in the many, many horrors that mankind fostered upon its own kind.

They killed humans, clean and simple.

Rei respected that, in as much as she respected the concept of violently murdering something that could only barely fight back and was just as sapient as she and her companion were.

That said.

They were also in exactly the wrong part of Africa for actually managing to get to the European Water Princess, because after almost nine straight days of sailing they had just hit the northern part of the Strait of Mozambique (after a quick detour onto shore some while back to find a map that wasn’t several decades out of date and waterlogged into a crumbly mess), which was the body of water between Madagascar and Africa’s east coast.

Which meant that they were lost.

Again.

And also trying to read a map written in, surprisingly, Portuguese.

…

Which was a language that neither of them could read.

That situation had been infuriating enough that Rei had let out a single, solitary “fuck” to express her immediate and overwhelming annoyance.

Regardless, sailing the seas didn’t particularly need them to understand the languages of the locals- all they needed to do was understand the ones that they were going to see. For some reason, almost all Abyssals spoke either English or Japanese, with a smattering of other languages in between. Reiju spoke mostly English, occasionally Japanese with enough fluency that she could swap back and forth, and Rei…

Rei wasn’t entirely sure how she spoke both fluently, when her last memories said that ninety nine percent of the people whose memories she held safe spoke only Japanese and very little English. Perhaps it was a leftover from the vague presence in the back of her mind- a mind that decided to give up existence in exchange for someone else’s life.

She wasn’t really sure how to deal with that, honestly.

What was more important than leaving the Strait of Mozambique, though, was coming up on what the map seemed to say were the…

Um.

Comoro Islands?

That seemed about right, working off of what little she could assume about the Portuguese language.

…

The Comoro Islands which were currently under fire from what looked like an entire fleet of Shipgirls.

Because there was an entire Abyssal base there.

And there were what seemed to be nearly thirty Abyssal girls fighting back desperately as those Shipgirls did their best to annihilate their entire home. 

It felt one-sided, Rei observed as she and Reiju skidded to a near halt barely more than two nautical miles away from the entire fray. Even with the Aircraft Carrier Demon who owned the area doing her best to rain hell upon her enemies, there was enough anti-air fire going on that it made the entire situation dicey for the Abyssal defenders.

“This is bad,” Reiju spoke up quietly, grimacing as she held a hand out in front of Rei. “There’s no way the Demon’s gonna live through this- look at how many of those Wo’s are already half dead! We got here at the worst possible time too- see those Wa’s? They were hit first, and now only a few of ‘em are left. The Nu’s can’t keep up, and all the I’s, Ro’s, Ha’s, and Ni’s are already dead in the water… I’d bet anything they’ve got subs there too… makes it worse- there’s no Ka’s or Yo’s or So’s anywhere near here!”

“Should we assist?” Rei asked curiously, watching the battle go on faintly in the distance. From here, it seemed like a far away cacophony, one that wouldn’t come closer or touch them, but Reiju had already explained that sometimes combat like this took place at close ranges for more girl combat, and at standard nautical ranges for ship combat. Meaning that they were absolutely in range of anything with a big enough cannon. 

Probably.

The finer points of naval combat escaped Rei’s understanding, and so far her only real idea of what ship to ship combat looked like was just far enough that she couldn’t get a view of what the actual tactics were…

Well.

Beyond a bunch of girls charging at each other and unloading heavy ordnance right into each other’s faces.

“What do you mean we!?” Reiju asked incredulously, staring at Rei like she was the crazy one… and not the Abyssal who regularly helped a certain set of fishing trawlers in Alaska in exchange for them paying the bills for her satellite internet connection. “I’m only one battleship and I don’t have anywhere near enough planes to do anything in this fight! A-and you don’t even have rigging! I didn’t say anything about it before but what kind of Abyssal doesn’t have any rigging!? You’re a sitting duck! You might as well be a tender! O-or a cargo ship or something!”

“I… do not think I am any of those things,” Rei blinked slowly, reaching out and patting Reiju’s head. “Do not worry. I will intervene.”

“You’ll die!” Reiju protested, grabbing Rei’s wrist weakly in an attempt to stop her from pulling away. “I may have only known you for a little over a week now, but I’m not letting you throw your life away just because you think you can play nice with a bunch of creepy human loving weirdos who shoot first and hate us for existing!”

“I will not throw my life away,” Rei answered easily, pulling her arm back gently before giving Reiju the smallest of smiles as reassurance. “I am not an expendable tool. Not this time.”

Reiju blinked. “Wait- what does that mean- hey! Wait! Oi! Don’t you just walk away dramatically like you’re throwing yourself into battle! Hey- get back here dammit!”

And so it went- Rei quickly outpaced Reiju even at the Abyssal’s top speed, using her AT Field to glide forward into battle without a single care in the world. As she passed into the Demon’s storm- weaker, she’d heard, than a Princess’ would have been and far smaller as well- she felt a fizzle against her AT Field, as if the very air was trying to enforce its will upon her, rather than the opposite.

Interesting.

But, she was well aware of the principles of AT Field corrosion. Where two AT Fields met, the weaker would falter.

It wasn’t about strength. It wasn’t about the amount of energy poured in. It was about sense of self. Willpower. The intention to enforce one’s will upon the world instead of letting the world push her around.

Rei may not have been particularly aware of who she was or what she was at the moment, but she knew how to use an AT Field better than anyone else on the planet… maybe. 

Therefore, she adjusted her approach, strengthening her AT Field and adjusting to the specific frequency of vibration that wore away at her field’s edges.

Into the fray she went, past the outskirts of battle where the dregs of the Aircraft Carrier Demon’s forces were holding fast to their posts, making sure that their vital supplies weren’t destroyed in the raging battle. The Demon herself, a tall, white haired woman much the same as any other Abyssal, growled from atop her sharklike rigging, guns blazing as she threw plane after oddly spherical plane at her enemies and tried to sink the incoming Shipgirls one by one.

Already, she could see some of them had been hit, and some of them were peeling off to get their wounded compatriots medical attention.

Interesting, but ultimately not her problem.

She skated past the lines of battle, a plan formulating in her mind- she would not take a life, not while she still had the choice to do so, and so instead…

Rei slid to a halt between the lines of battle, gunfire thundering in her ears at an almost deafening level and threatening to disorient her from the explosions thundering against hull and water alike.

She spoke neither to the Abyssals near her nor the Shipgirls she felt a strange sense of kinship with, and instead…

She simply raised her hand into the air and spoke her will into reality.

“AT Field. Full Power.”

God had descended to Earth. All was as it needed to be.

How did one describe an AT Field, when one had no ability to experience it before?

Rings of scintillating, iridescent octagons spreading from a point of contact.

The world itself becoming dyed with one’s colors.

To those opposing an AT Field, it was an unbreakable wall, an impenetrable shield. 

To those who felt its crushing power, it was the fist of god, an infinite amount of weight, a barrier that could fling them across entire continents.

To the Abyssals behind Rei, it was a blanket of warmth, promising them that they would be delivered to safety as their half ruined hulls and shattered bodies were gently moved back to shore. They would not sink, not now, not under her watch.

To the Shipgirls attacking the installation, the AT Field was a wall, a force, a wind. It did not crush or kill or injure, but it was neither gentle with its ministrations nor was it as kind in its touch. 

Most AT Fields had a maximum range limit of about a kilometer in radius, sometimes higher, if only just.

Rei’s AT Field was uncommonly powerful, far stronger than it possibly could have been in any real Evangelion save for ones that had ascended to godhood, and as a result…

She pushed. She gained awareness of that which fell into her AT Field’s boundaries.

She shaped the field just so-

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!”

And all twenty of the Shipgirls assaulting the Comoro Islands vanished over the horizon with a twinkle of light, landing with surprising softness in the next body of water over. Which was, likely, the Mediterranean Sea.

The Mediterranean Sea that was full of Abyssals.

The Mediterranean Sea that was only barely managing to break even with holding the Abyssals back from ravaging mainland Europe and North Africa.

…

…

…

Oops.

…

That would be a later problem for Rei to handle.

For now, instead, she allowed her AT Field to shrink back to its normal state of just keeping her afloat in the water, and turned to face the shocked Abyssals all staring at her from the beach.

She blinked, then turned to where Reiju was steaming at her at full speed, looking more panicked and confused than the Re-Class ever had before.

“Ah,” she mumbled, just loud enough for Reiju to hear from a distance. “I can explai-OOF!”

And then nearly forty thousand tons of teary eyed Abyssal Shipgirl slammed straight into Rei’s arms and sent them crashing into the water all at once.

Ah.

This was fine too.

Chapter Text

“What… are you?”

“... I am unsure myself. I do not have adequate answers to give.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I am Rei.”

“How did you accomplish such a feat?”

“I utilized my AT Field to push the invaders away.”

“What is an AT Field?”

“A physical projection of the soul, characterized as a boundary in which all laws of physics must conform to what the bearer allows.”

If not for the fact that Aircraft Carrier Demon (ACD for those casually referring to her, Demon-sama to those addressing her) looked nothing like Rei, Reiju would have thought that the two of them conversing was like some kind of strange mirror with how alike their intonations were.

Of course, the Demon in question had a far deeper, more full voice that echoed the same way as all Abyssals did, and Rei herself didn’t have much of an echo at all with her high pitched, gentle voice… but they both had a rather emotionless tone going on, and they both used formal, polite speech more than anything else.

It was also just that one voice carried an unending undercurrent of violent rage, and the other seemed unable to emote at all beyond saying singular swear words every now and then.

Reiju was still kinda hoping that one day she’d hear Rei say more than just one fuck at a time.

Regardless, she was getting a lot of insight into Rei’s… Rei-ness now that someone was there who was smart enough to actually ask what the fuck was up with Rei.

Reiju was not, perhaps, the smartest Abyssal around the block despite being one of the oldest. She also wasn’t the most powerful, the fastest, the biggest, the strongest, the wisest, or the most vicious. That one went to some bitch named Rain that did a lot of missions back and forth between Midway and some other places. What class was that bitch again? Ne? 

Scary-ass bitch for a ship a third Reiju’s weight class. Last she’d heard of the spooky woman, she could do magic about as well as any Sailwitch on the seas.

Freaky.

Also, fuck Midway’s fleet.

Reiju never wanted to be near that insane madwoman ever again- both her and Central were vicious about how much they hated humans, almost as much as all of the Abyssals that crawled out of the Solomons.

Ironbottom Sound wasn’t just a hole that the humans left dead ships in, after all, it was the world’s single largest spawning point for pissed off warships wanting to rip someone to shreds for how they were treated the better part of a century ago.

What was she thinking about again?

No, not how much she wanted to go ram a Dodge Challenger into one of her sister Re’s faces, though that’d be hilarious once she actually got back…

Uh…

Oh, right! Rei!

And her… Rei-ness.

Turned out she had spooky powers not unlike that of a Sailwitch, but like… octagons.

Freakin’ octagons.

Something about pushing and pulling? Or breaking the laws of physics? Reiju didn’t exactly know what the laws of physics were but she assumed that it meant that Rei was doing some spooky shit that most Abyssals couldn’t do, and most Sailwitches barely touched on.

Oh, and also that Rei wasn’t an Abyssal.

… Or a ship?

But that one was pretty dubious because she sure felt like some kind of ship.

But apparently Rei had no idea what she was, and she was like ninety percent sure she was something that was definitely crewed but also had no business being in the water most of the time.

Which was weird.

Not that there weren’t Abyssals that formed out of land vehicles or aerial vehicles, but those usually just ended up being mobile guns like the artillery imps on installations, or like, lil imp tanks or warped planes.

Whatever Rei was, she had some serious displacement going on metaphorically.

It felt like it was… quiet, though? Whatever that meant. Like her ship-self was there, but also not in a way that made it hard to tell if she was a ship or not.

Rei also didn’t exactly have rigging she was aware of, but she still sailed just fine, so it wasn’t like Reiju could really say anything about that- hell, some ships didn’t have rigging at all!

Those were usually the really small off-classes, though?

Ones that couldn’t exactly fight or whatever, and had so little mass that they were basically glorified dinghies. 

Reiju, idly, remembered a time when she’d been sent on a trip to Fiji to help the Southern War Princess (and her associated Demon subordinate) with preparations for a big attack, because Hoppou-chan-hime had been one of the princesses asked for help, and she had met, of all things, a speedboat off-class.

No rigging, just pure speed. A hundred and fifty some knots at full burn… she was basically the perfect courier for running messages in the South Pacific with all of the thousands of little islands down there.

Oh, and of all things, a jetski?

How a jetski had enough of a grudge to be raised as an Abyssal was entirely beyond Reiju’s comprehension, but that little feather of a girl had a violent thirst for blood and just enough rigging to pull out her propellers and… well.

Even Reiju was a little disturbed by how well she flayed those humans.

Where was she again?

Oh right.

Aircraft Carrier Demon was still interrogating Rei, and it was still basically just the two of them speaking in very short, very clipped sentences with very little expressed emotion whatsoever.

It was kinda funny, the way that they said exactly what they meant and no more, no less.

There wasn’t really much else to do at this point…

… well. She could go check on some of the survivors, see who was already out of the repair baths and if there were some supplies she could bum off of anyone- no one really disliked Hoppou-chan-hime, so it wasn’t like they’d be refused supplies on sheer principle, but at this point it was becoming pretty clear that the Comoro Islands probably weren’t the best stopover for them, and there was no way in hell they could approach Socotra Island at the moment- just to the north it might be, but it was also an area that got patrolled way too much for comfort during most of the year, and Supply Depot Princess only showed up there during the summer months.

So.

Not a lot of chance of stealing spare supplies from there- the girls stationed there took their jobs way too seriously and most of them decided that sinking anything that got too close was a valid option instead of letting one singular Re-class refuel on something that wasn’t just big ocean fish for once.

Ugh.

Her left turbine for some oil and steel cookies right now… the tenders back home made the best snacks, and somehow always managed to make sure there was enough bauxite to go around. Probably thanks to the Wo’s making sure their supply lines to the South Pacific remained relatively undisturbed for how long the journey was.

Fresh bauxite out of Indonesia was basically their only supply unless they wanted to make a run on south Australia or Brazil.

… Huh.

Reiju and Rei totally coulda hit up Brazil if they hadn’t taken that wrong turn at Cape Agulhas. Damn.

Reiju wanted to find out if there really were tanned beach babes with short shirts, bikini thongs, and even shorter shorts just wandering around out there.

Mostly in a scientific way, really. She’d seen enough stuff on the internet that she wanted a closer look… and/or maybe to blow it up if it ended up being not to her liking.

Eh.

Nah. She didn’t really hate humans that much, but she couldn’t deny it was kinda funny watching them go pop every now and then.

…

Note to self: Find out if Japanese McDonald’s is as good as all the anime she’s watched implying it is.

Note to self: Figure out how to get to a Japanese McDonald’s without getting a bunch of cannons shoved up her butt for daring to try.

Hadn’t that one now-gone princess near Australia tried to open a dialogue with the humans about McDonald’s?

Must have been good stuff (better than home, maybe?) if her girls were willing to go along with it. Did it match up to oil and steel cookies, though…

Probably not.

… 

Note to self, spend more time actually looking up what certain stuff meant on the internet, because she was starting to wonder weird things like “do they really call it a Royale with Cheese in France” and “what does it mean when a commercial has a bunch of really fast words at the end” and “why the fuck is a Baconator called a Baconator”.

Bored bored bored bored bored…

Oh, Rei was done getting interrogated! Yaaaaay!

She looked a little sleepy now, though…

“Oh, you’re done! How was it?” Reiju asked, as if she hadn’t been more or less listening in just like every other ship on the beach with good enough listening devices. She tilted her head a little, looking her friend up and down a bit. “Also, how come ya feel like a ship but y’say you aren’t? What’s up with that?”

“I am unsure as to what precisely I am,” Rei answered right back, exactly as Reiju thought she would. “I cannot specify as to what I may truly be, but a ship is not one of the things I suspect to be my true self.”

“... What do you think is your real self, then?” Reiju mused idly, reaching over and more or less draping herself against Rei because for some reason Rei was really nice to hug- squishy and soft in aaaaaall the right places. Especially in the boobs. Really nice boobs, she had. Very soft and pillow-like. “Something about a… what was it again? Big ol’ land thing?”

“My immediate assumption as to the truth of my existence is either that of an Evangelion or an Angel,” Rei explained, like Reiju hadn’t heard her more or less say the same thing earlier. She might have, Reiju had kinda tuned out here and there. “An Evangelion is a large, humanoid weapon. An Angel is a large biological organism that functions akin to a machine. Both are capable of generating extremely powerful AT Fields. Both are more than capable of performing the feats I have displayed today. Both of them are capable of flight.”

…

Wait. 

Hold on.

Back up there.

“I’m sorry did you just imply that you can fly?” Reiju asked, looking at Rei incredulously, like she was the insane one of the pair, instead of the Re-class battleship that deliberately cultivated an air of reckless chaos most of the time. “What!? When!? How!?”

“I do not know. I can only surmise that I am flight capable due to having a roughly five hundred meter vertical leaping capacity,” Rei continued to… be Rei. Which meant that even with Reiju draped all over her, she just kinda stood there like a statue and only made a cursory attempt at returning the affection with a single hand on Reiju’s waist. “I may be able to test that theory, though.”

Reiju blinked.

“And how exactly are you gonna test and see if you can fly- actually wait you can jump five hundred meters up!?”

Honestly, the jumping part was the most ridiculous thing that Reiju had ever heard. Sure, yeah, flight or whatever- plenty of things could fly, but having a five hundred meter vertical leap wasn’t exactly common, even for things that could fly. It wasn’t like ducks had super strong legs, or any other waterfowl, and if they went five hundred meters up it was because they flew and then came back down.

Rei, meanwhile, just shrugged. “My mobility is far enhanced by utilizing my AT Field to facilitate rapid movement. Theoretically, I could fly with my AT Field alone if focused properly. Would you like me to attempt to fly?”

Reiju pulled back, thinking about it for a moment.

…

“Eh, yeah. Sure! What’s the worst that could happen?” she grinned, spreading her arms wide. “Do your thing, sis!”

“Affirmative.”

And then Rei sprouted a giant pair of wings.

Chapter Text

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!”

It turned out that Reiju was neither a fan of flying, nor a fan of being lifted off of what she felt was solid ground/water.

“PUT ME DOWN PUT ME DOWN PUT ME DOWN PUT ME DOWN PUT ME DOWN!”

It turned out that Rei loved flying more than she’d loved anything else beforehand.

“SHIPS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO FLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

… Which wasn’t saying much, considered she’d just spawned into existence fully realized not more than ten days ago.

“PRINCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!”

Okay, at this point it was starting to get a little annoying.

“I am physically incapable of dropping you by accident,” Rei sighed, finally putting a single finger over Reiju’s lips to quiet her frantic pleas. “My AT Field will support you without fail.”

“YOUR AT FIELD IS THE ONLY THING SUPPORTING ME!” Reiju screamed back, with about as much emotion as one could possibly muster about the fact that she was basically being towed along below Rei, cradled by nothing but a faintly shimmering string of whatever magic nonsense Rei could do with her so-called AT Field. “I’M SCARED!”

“We will be landing soon,” Rei responded without a single fleck of emotion in her voice. “Please refrain from struggling. It makes supporting your weight evenly more difficult.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!”

So it turned out that Rei being able to fly opened up a remarkable wealth of possibilities for the Aircraft Carrier Demon. Not more than an hour or so prior, the Demon herself had asked Rei to take some cargo to Sri Lanka, where the Harbour (sometimes known as Seaport) Princess’ installation was. What that cargo was, Rei had no idea, but it was important enough that the Demon had asked Rei to take five Wa-class transports while she and Reiju made their way towards the southern coast of India.

Fortunately for Rei’s sanity, the Wa’s were more concerned with clinging as close to each other as they physically could for a bunch of Abyssals whose arms were literally bolted to their own rigging. They didn’t make a lot of noise, as it were. If they had been screaming as loudly as Reiju had been, she might have just considered taking the cargo in loose crates and barrels instead of neatly packed into a set of five terrified… women who were strapped to large metal orbs… and also had mushroom shaped metal things instead of human heads.

…

…

Rei, silently, wondered how that worked. They seemed fully capable of reasoning and humanlike interaction, but they were…

Less… present, sometimes?

They tended to only interact when cargo was involved, and were otherwise rather silent, though they seemed to be able to communicate with each other just fine.

Rei also noted that, unlike the basic Wa’s that were left behind on the shore in the Comoro Islands, the Wa’s she’d been tasked with transporting all had red glows on their rigging, and seemed to carry a bit of a red tinged, dark haze around with them.

Almost like Reiju, actually, but Reiju’s haze was… less present? Perhaps she was concealing it.

Whatever the case was, these Elite Wa’s were actually armed- three turrets total, though they were nowhere to be seen at the moment. Two three inch guns, one five inch guns. Added to Reiju’s sixteen inch triple gun, twelve and a half inch gun, torpedoes, and a set of dive bombers…

Well. Rei was reasonably sure they were about as well armed as anything flying in the skies at the moment.

“$@#^$%#@$#%-!!!”

Rei blinked, tilting her head as… something brushed past her perception.

She blinked, seeing the Indian subcontinent coming up in the far distance- coming over the horizon and looking… remarkably like… any other landmass at night.

There weren’t a whole lot of lights there, but that was probably because a fair amount of the southern tip of India had been evacuated once the Harbour Princess’ installation on Sri Lanka became permanent. Which…

Begged the question of how the navies of the world hadn’t already bombarded that entire area to dust? Or… any group, really.

Perhaps there was something to be said of Sailwitches, or Princesses with sufficient strength? Reiju had mentioned something about Abyssals interfering with technology when in close proximity and when projecting their magic, so maybe with a big enough installation it just wasn’t worth it to even try- entering the storm with jets and other aircraft would likely lead to cascading system failures, and long range missiles would probably detonate before they got anywhere near their targets.

“$@%#@$%!!!!”

Huh?

“Do you… hear that?” Rei asked after the second time she felt that strange pulse of… sound, maybe… rippling past her ears. She looked down at Reiju to try and confirm, and the Abyssal just shrugged.

“Eh, just some human radios or whatever. I guess they spotted us from up here. What’re they gonna do, though? It’s just some dumb planes that we can shoot down easily,” Reiju snorted with a roll of her eyes, huffing and reaching up to poke Rei’s nose. Apparently, at some point, she’d gotten quite comfortable with being carried around now that she wasn’t screaming the entire time. “Look, if they try to shoot us down, we’ll shoot ‘em back. Easy, right?”

“Mm.” Rei nodded slowly, continuing on her flight path without deviating. If Reiju assured them that there was no human threat, then… well. She might as well continue. Even if it did feel somewhat conflicting that she was more or less abandoning humanity in favor of cavorting with a bunch of genocidal non-human beings that wanted to burn all of humanity to the ground for the sake of old grudges. 

She cocked her head as she flew, listening to what had to be radio transmissions as they got louder and seemingly more insistent.

She… really couldn’t understand them, since they were all in Hindi, and garbled to the point that she could not even remotely make out a clear word, but she assumed that they were trying to hail her and see what she was doing.

Reiju seemed entirely unbothered, and in fact had turned off her radio receivers entirely.

Rei, meanwhile, kept on her straight line course towards Sri Lanka, visible now as well… 

And then a burst of radio signal slammed into Rei’s ear like a particularly harsh fuzz of noise, carrying with it some kind of muffled English…

Followed shortly after by a rake of bullets splashing harmlessly against her AT Field.

“Oops, they’re pissed,” Reiju snickered, watching the shimmering octagons ripple into existence without doing a damn thing. “Eh, just keep flying. Your AT Field’s strong enough to take all of this, right?”

“Yes, but I do not wish to bring conflict to a Princess’ doorstep. She has ravaged enough of the southern Indian coast. Giving her justification to attack again will only lead to further genocide,” Rei answered flatly, furrowing her brow slightly as more bullets streaked through the night sky and continued lighting up her AT Field.

It wasn’t much of an annoyance and it wasn’t particularly irritating, nor was it an inconvenience… but she could feel the bullets against her AT Field. It was unpleasant the same way that wearing certain types of fabric were irritating. Annoying the same way that certain kinds of food could make one almost retch.

It was… bearable…

But she kept having this awful idea…

Brrrrt!

Tsk.

Rei frowned, tracking the jets with vision that… wasn’t quite vision as they approached from a somewhat safe distance. A missile bloomed against her AT Field a moment later, fired from one of the jets some moments prior.

It still did nothing, but it did make Rei pause for a moment just out of sheer annoyance.

…

Mm…

“Reiju?” Rei asked, looking down at her first and so far only real friend in this world

“Yeah?” Reiju asked, looking quite confused as to what Rei was calling her for.

“I’m going to throw you now.”

“Oh oka- WAIT WHAT!?”

“I do not have any onboard weapons, and your guns will be largely ineffective due to your unfamiliarity with aerial combat. Standby. I will not drop you,” Rei twisted her AT Field, wondering ever so slightly why moving ships around felt so… natural to her… and then reared back for effect before launching Reiju like a ballistic missile straight at the first jet to hit the two kilometer mark.

“NO NO NO NO NO NO NO N- NYAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-!”

The sonic boom and ring of rippling orange hexagons in the wake of Reiju’s departure were quite cinematic in the darkened night sky.

The explosion as nearly forty thousand tons of Abyssal steel in the form of a flailing girl slammed into and through the entirety of the Indian Air Force’s first interceptor lengthwise was even more cinematic, as was the short-lived aerial chase where Rei guided Reiju’s trajectory to punch a nearly circular hole through the main fuselage of the second jet, causing a second explosion.

And then the third and final one found himself…

Thrown out of his plane, by a panicking, screaming, severely pissed off Reiju who had, if Rei’s view of the situation was right, caught the wing of the plane, arrested her momentum, ripped the cockpit windshield off, and then stole the plane.

…

And then Reiju realized she had no idea how to fly a jet, bailed out, and was swiftly returned to Rei’s solid embrace after another bout of screaming and flailing while she crossed the distance.

“AAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I HATE YOU! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!? I NEARLY PEED! I THINK I DID PEE! I WANNA DO IT AGAIN!”

In the distance, there was a third explosion as the now pilot-less jet slammed nose first into the hard, unforgiving ground and summarily detonated.

…

Was Reiju chewing on something?

“Huh. Say what you will about humans,” the now extremely disheveled, windblown, and rather sticky and messy looking Abyssal chewed audibly and gulped down something that sounded like scrap steel. “Those jets are tasty. Also, way too hard to fly. Seriously, there were more buttons than I’ve ever seen ever! What do they even need ‘em all for!?”

“I apologize for throwing you. You were the most expedient projectile weapon,” Rei vaguely explained, patting Reiju’s head gently before shaking off the sticky mess of oil, fuel, various aviation fluids, and random… mess… splattered all over Reiju’s body.

Honestly, out of all the fluids Reiju had been doused with, why did most of it seem to be unidentifiable splatter of some kind? All the rest of the normal fluids seemed to just… slick off of her. Mostly.

She still likely needed a bath.

“Well… it wasn’t so bad…” Reiju mumbled, poking her fingers together. “But I’m only gonna let you do it if you promise to catch me! I don’t wanna know what hitting the ground from this high up will do to me, but I’m pretty sure I’ll die!”

“I will always catch you,” Rei smiled ever so softly, continuing on her previous path without much preamble, completely oblivious to the radio traffic she was leaving behind. “I cannot let my only friend fall.”

“Aww, you’re a sap!” Reiju snickered.

Slightly behind the two of them, the group of five Wa’s just watched somewhat awkwardly as the two girls hugged, having now gotten used to being floated around like puppets on strings.

One of them, Aircraft Carrier Demon Fleet Elite Wa-Class Armed Cargo Transport Ship No. 0196 (ACDS Nove-Seis for short) turned to her sisters, tilting the steel cap that served as her head silently. “Wa?”

“Wa.” “Wa.” “Wa.” “Wa.” came a chorus of nods and agreements. Those two were cute together. If they got together, their romance would be full of chaos and death to the humans. And/or crashed cars.

All of them were aware of the Re’s propensity for vehicular manslaughter.

The rest of the trip passed uneventfully, with the Indian Air Force somewhat scrambling to bring up an appropriate response to three of their jets getting downed by a flying Abyssal convoy, before having to kick it across command lines to the Indian Navy, which resulted in a series of very incredulous phone calls back and forth before anything was done.

It also resulted in some calls to a few of the European embassies, to be relayed back to their respective Navies.

None of that was of any concern to Rei, though, as a far larger, far more present, far more obvious problem asserted itself the moment she met the Princess in charge of the Sri Lanka Harbour installation.

Specifically, her immediate and disastrous fascination with the female form (which, thankfully, didn’t come out much while speaking to the Aircraft Carrier Demon) meeting the nearly eight foot tall giant of a woman that was the Harbour Princess.

“May I please touch your breasts? I wish to shove my head between them and shake it back and forth vigorously for sexual gratification.”

“Excuse me!?”

…

Well.

There were worse ways to meet a Princess. Rei just didn’t know how at this moment.

Whoops.

Chapter Text

“Mdfofsdfsdfsgsdfsdgsdfsdvsdfsdcsdrfsefsddscsdcdcsdfsdcsdfsdfsdfdsfsd-!”

“Ara ara… so spirited…”

“She’s… really going for it…” Reiju mumbled, watching Rei put on the single most dignity destroying show of emotion she’d ever seen her fellow weirdo do. In this case… motorboating a Princess’ boobs. Vigorously.

Without stopping.

Because, aside from the disastrous events of their first meeting, Harbour Princess had allowed Rei to do as she wished after learning that not only was she the reason why the installation was getting a resupply run completely intact with no emergency repairs needed nor any major refueling to be done, but getting said resupply fleet on the same day it was scheduled to leave.

Rei had brought five Elite Wa-class transport ships packed full of vital supplies for Harbour Princess’ continued harassment of the Indian coastline across nearly twenty five hundred nautical miles of hotly contested, extremely economically important for both sides, waters with nary a scratch. In three hours. And the only problems along the way were three quickly downed fighter jets.

So.

Letting the strange probably-not-a-normal-ship girl motorboat her breasts for a bit was by far not the biggest thing Harbour Princess would have granted the woman.

It was, at the very least, worth a trip to the repair baths for Reiju to clean up some of her dings and scrapes and lasting battle damage from the fight she’d been in before she got lost and met Rei. Plus a restocking of ammunition, replacements for weapons damaged beyond repair, a few replacement planes, a full refueling- not that she needed the last one after having refueled back at the Comoro Islands installation- and full access to the galley.

Reiju had done all of that save for her galley trip, and even after several hours, Rei was still motorboating the Harbour Princess like her life depended on it.

What a woman Reiju had found, truly.

What a woman.

“Oi! Rei! C’mon, let’s go get something to eat!” Reiju called out, finally deciding that enough was enough and she should probably pull Rei out of the giant Princess’ tits before the rather motherly Abyssal got tired of dealing with Rei’s antics. “You’ve been in there for three hours! I had time to go buy a new raincoat off another Re, even! At least take a bath or something!”

“Msdgsdfsgsmdfsdsdfsdgsdfsmdgsdmfsdgsf-”

“Oh for-” Reiju sighed, palming her face before reaching up, grabbing the back of Rei’s weird rubbery outfit, and pulling.

“Ueh!” Rei made some kind of weird squeaky yelp as she got pulled out, thumping to the ground and huffing like she’d just sprinted around the entirety of Sri Lanka. A faint trickle of bright red blood leaked from her nose, and she stared up at the open sky like she’d just had a religious experience. After a moment, though, she turned her attention to Reiju and blinked. “Ah. I take it that I lost myself for a moment. Apologies. I do not know what came over me.”

“Rampant lesbianism,” Reiju deadpanned, leaning down to help Rei up with a soft grunt. Whoof, she was heavier than she looked, and her presence already said she should be about as weighty as, what, a Princess maybe? “Are you done? I don’t think the Princess will let you do that again…”

“I would prefer not to be so waylaid next time,” the Harbour Princess stated dryly, looking down at them with some kind of imperious huff. “Northern Princess Fleet Elite Re-Class Aviation Battleship No. 0010. It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”

She smiled ever so softly, then traced the edge of a massive claw against Reiju’s cheek. “How have you been? And what brings you to my part of the seas these days without a fleet at your side- from the West no less?”

Reiju winced. “... I got a little lost. Um. And it turns out I didn’t know north from south for a really long time? It just… wasn’t a problem before now since I was always sailing with my sisters…”

“Oh you poor thing! You’re so lost!” Harbour Princess gasped… and then proceeded to lean over and engulf Reiju in a hug that felt more like being crushed against a wall of marshmallows than anything else.

Note to self: ask that fishing trawler back home to bring over another bag of marshmallows. That first bag didn’t last nearly long enough, even at her strictest rationing.

Second note to self: get more chocolate for her sisters back home, and for Hoppou-chan-hime. She deserved it, and she really needed to bring home something good after being gone for so long. How long had it been now? A month?

Tsk.

They probably thought she was dead- well, all but her Princess. Her Princess knew exactly where all of her fleet was at all times, no matter what. So as long as she didn’t make Hoppou-chan-hime cry, everything was fine.

Hence… chocolate. Or some kind of snack food. Anything, really.

“How is Northern Princess doing, by the way?” Harbour Princess asked after a moment, letting Reiju go finally and allowing her to breathe again. “It’s been so long since I’ve received a convoy from her… is everything alright? Is she okay? Has she been eating enough steel? Bauxite? Drinking her oil? Have you heard anything from Northern Little Sister? Are they getting along? Do they miss me? Are they alright?”

“Um- yes!” Reiju sort of spluttered in the face of all that motherly affection, not entirely sure how to answer so many questions flung at her at once. “The last I checked on Northern Princess-sama, she was fine and healthy, and Northern Little Sister-sama has been over to play many times! Our supply lines through the Pacific are still robust, even with the interference of the traitors, and we’ve made some headway into increasing the total land area of the installation as well!”

“Oh, good! That’s good,” Harbour Princess smiled softly, patting Reiju on the head in a way that kinda made Reiju feel like a doll. “Very good, Reiju-chan. Very very good. I’m so glad to know that my little Hoppou is doing so well- please, stay and rest as long as you like. I have some imported goodies raided off the mainland~!”

“Ooh, chocolate!?” Reiju gasped, perking up a little.

“Of course! All kinds of sweets and treats, just like the care packages I send,” Harbour Princess’ smile continued to shine like fog lamps as she all but picked up Reiju and… awkwardly guided Rei along. “Come, I’ll show you where I keep it stored! This quarter-year’s package was going to be larger, but I ran into some issues finding the right sweets… tsk. Land incursions are always no fun, and Ourang Medan spends too much time keeping the island safe from retaliation to make sure that our land efforts remain safe…”

She sighed, as if she wasn’t talking around the wholesale slaughter and raiding of human settlements with Abyssal marines and land-capable ships.

Reiju, personally, didn’t care- she’d heard the same words and intent out of just about everyone she’d ever sailed with, and was also of the mind that most humans didn’t matter anyway. Well. She didn’t mind keeping them alive either, but hey, as long as the snacks kept flowing and the funny internet videos kept coming, right?

Rei, meanwhile, just stared dead ahead as they walked past more Abyssals than she’d ever seen in her life, all of whom seemed to be…

Doing… ship things mostly.

Sailing around chasing each other as some kind of game, flinging large hunks of rusted metal to some of the Destroyers like a game of fetch, playing some kind of incomprehensible ball game with what seemed to be a shrunken naval mine of some kind, surfing on large hunks of metal, playing with random clothes that they happened to have lying around, snacking on assorted items… there was at least one Abyssal submarine of a class she could not immediately identify pretending to sun herself on the beach.

Despite Harbour Princess’ everpresent storm swirling above and blocking out all the sunlight for miles around.

Rei wasn’t even going to pretend she comprehended that, and instead simply noted that down for later reference.

Abyssals seemed to be just like humans in their need for casual recreation, and also seemed to have very little discipline while not in combat.

It was like a military compound made entirely of bored children.

…

…

Were the vast majority of Abyssals mentally akin to children who didn’t know why they were fighting?

That had unsettling implications.

The even more unsettling implications were the packs of literal children running amok alongside the nonhumanoid ships, treating them like favored dogs or other pets, swimming and splashing around and laughing as they skirted out in the water.

Well. Some of them did.

The ones that looked like guns with toddler legs just toddled around and giggled with echoing voices as they occasionally fired said guns, fell on their rears from the recoil, and laughed in that shrieking way that small children did when something in the distance exploded.

Like a ruined house.

Or the wreckage of what looked like several civilian sailing vessels.

…

“Why do the small ones appear like human children?” Rei finally asked, tearing her eyes back forward and looking to the Harbour Princess with some amount of confusion. “What are they? And why do some of them not appear capable of entering the water?”

“Mm… the little ones are imps,” the Harbour Princess answered with an unreadable tone- nothing negative or positive, just stating things as if they just were. “They start out as land installations, mostly. Pillboxes, artillery, anti-air turrets. Sometimes they fuse with the installation itself, sometimes they gain enough power from the Abyss to become torpedo patrol boats, and even into Schnellboots if they eat enough resources and grow up big and strong… by the time they’re fully grown, they could develop into anything. Submarines, Destroyers, Battleships, Carriers, Transports…”

Harbour Princess shrugged. “It’s always fun seeing what they grow up to be. I wish it was easier to give them names, though… but you never know what they’ll end up being so it’s easier to just give them a number designation and watch them run around- they are very effective at clearing out enemy bases and installations. Why, I was only able to make this installation my home because so many of my fellow Princesses and Demons donated all of their imps for the war effort! So much land to cover… the regular ships couldn’t handle it, but the PTs and Schnellboots are remarkably quick on land thanks to their small size, and are much more capable of handling tight spaces compared to a Re-class.”

“Hey, just because I can’t move well with my rigging out on land-” Reiju huffed, grumbling as she cut herself off and looked away haughtily. “I can still clear out stupid human settlements easy!”

“But why fight in the first place? It is clear that Abyssals enjoy manmade products as much as any, and need manmade resources to proliferate,” Rei tilted her head slowly, not really comprehending the logic behind the extermination of the human race that it seemed the Abyssals were fighting for. “Would it not be more logical to approach them with diplomacy than it would be to kill them all?”

“They would kill us first, just for existing,” Harbour Princess answered, frowning slightly. “They use beings like us- weapons of war made by their hands, used to kill innumerable amounts of their own kind- and then throw us away. Scrap us. Kill us. Let us rust and die in the darkest depths just because they think we have served our purpose.”

She hissed, the storm above worsening to the point that it started to drizzle as she glared off at the horizon, as if she could see the mainland from there.

“We are no more than trash to humans, and targets to the traitors that still serve them,” Harbour Princess bit out, a crash of thunder illuminating the entire area in an unearthly blue light for a moment before she took a deep breath and calmed herself. “Or so my sister Princesses say, of course! I haven’t actually… I was a later arrival, unlike my sister Princesses who actually knew war under the weight of humanity…”

She trailed off, clearing her throat. “Perhaps things are different now, but… I would rather not surrender my holdings just to try.”

“I see,” Rei pretended like she understood, and at that point felt like she knew exactly why this entire war was ongoing in the first place. 

“Anyway, here we are- oh!” Harbour Princess paused before what looked like an entire warehouse full of… items, likely, that Rei could not see due to the fact that the building had no windows nor an open door. In front of said warehouse stood… an Abyssal, obviously, but one whose presence seemed… strange, even to Rei.

Her dress was more humanlike, her rigging more defined and less organic, her appearance more human. The resonance of the area around her suggested a far more oblique and exotic usage of her own energies than Rei was accustomed to- Princesses and Demons favored projecting their energy in the form of a storm, from her two data points and Reiju’s anecdotes, and threw their souls around like battering rams to destroy all opposition. This woman seemed to have far less strength for that manner of attack, and instead… her soul flowed in ways that Rei could only imagine to be the sheer essence of fear.  

It washed over her AT Field but did not settle, as Rei was the sole arbiter of what was allowed to affect her within the boundaries of her AT Field, and she did not need to be reduced into a shuddering mess.

Reiju, meanwhile, squeaked like a small child and buried her face against Harbour Princess’ side.

“Princess,” the woman who could only be what Reiju called a Sailwitch spoke, bowing lowly towards the tallest of their group. “I sensed an interesting arrival on the island and thought it best to come see for myself.”

“Ah, just in time then! Ourang, you’ve met little Reiju, yes?” Harbour Princess smiled, presenting Reiju’s reluctant form as if showing off a child to their slightly weird aunt.

“Once or twice, yes,” Ourang Medan spoke, nodding. “And the other? Curious. She does not cower before me… the only ones with enough power to do so are usually Princesses and Demons…”

“This is Rei,” Harbour Princess answered, patting Rei’s shoulders gently. About as gently as a giant metal clawed hand could, at least. “An off-class self-summon that Reiju found near Bouvet Island, I think she said?”

“Y-yeah,” Reiju nodded. “She’s kinda weird, really strong, and she can fly…”

“Flight? Truly?” Ourang Medan raised an eyebrow. “She must not have much displacement if she’s flight capable…”

The strange looking Abyssal turned, crimson eyes boring into Rei’s own. “Let me get a look at you, girl…”

Rei stood there, watching impassively as the Sailwitch reached out with one hand, met her AT Field…

And slipped through the boundary line just enough to touch Rei’s cheek with a metal clawed hand.

Flash!

“W-what are you!?”

Memories.

Images.

An unstoppable tide of sights and sounds, battles from the perspective of someone outside- no, someone that was the ship. Explosions, damage, unimaginable dizzying sights, violent maneuvers, screeching and wailing from both her own AT Field and her superstructure groaning.

Rei reeled back as Ourang Medan flinched and fell to the ground, both of them stumbling and panting from that brief moment of contact.

Ah…

So that’s how it was…

Rei trembled softly, gasping for air as she held onto herself and tried not to let that new wave of memories overwhelm her.

All of a sudden, she became aware of a humming in her body, the steady thrum of her core. The sound of footsteps in her halls, the feeling of resources moving through her bays.

Her wings, shining white and feathered, erupted into metallic blues and grays- becoming machinelike and artificial, and yet with clear biological inspiration.

Her rigging exploded into view, projecting the shapes of her old hull, her guns, her cages, her satellite dishes, her gyros, her tail.

Ah…

She understood now.

Rei- no, the AAA Wunder- understood now. 

So this is what I am…

It felt…

Freeing.

It felt…

Good.

It felt…

Like she’d finally made a step in the right direction.

It felt…

Like she really, really, really wanted a beer right now.

…

Dammit Commander Katsuragi!

Chapter Text

Kschk!

Glug!

Glug!

Glug!

Glug!

Glug!

“Ga-HAAAAAAAAAAA~! KHAAAAAAAAAA~! This is what makes life worth living!”

Reiju blinked, staring at Rei, who, after manifesting her truly ridiculously massive rigging for the first time ever, had proceeded to crack open a beer can, chug it down in about two and a half seconds, and then did… whatever that was. “I-is it really that good…? Isn’t it… just beer…?”

“It is disgusting,” Rei immediately responded, crushing the now empty can into a marble in one hand as she returned to being her normal emotionless self. “However, the intent is not to drink for enjoyment. It is to remember the woman who was once the captain of the vessel that I currently am.”

Reiju tilted her head slowly to the side, uncomprehending. “... Was she really that impressive? Humans aren’t exactly… y’know… all that great.”

“Commander Katsuragi Misato would rather sacrifice herself for the good of everyone than allow even a single member of her crew to go down with her,” Rei answered stoically, crimson eyes boring holes into nothingness as she stared into the far distance. “She was… a woman of principles. Intellect. A strong moral code. A burning sentimentality when it came to the lives of her subordinates. She was also…”

Rei paused, grimacing. “A horrific slob who lived in piles of garbage, a disaster of a woman who smelled mostly of old beer and cheap perfume, and an incredibly strange person who thought drinking beer in lieu of regular meals and living with a genetically modified penguin was normal.”

“Sounds like some of my sister ships,” Reiju remarked, thinking back to how at least three of the Re’s back home hoarded alcohol like their lives depended on it. And that the survivors of that one Solomon Mercenary Princess’ fleet all chugged booze like it was water in remembrance for their dead commander.

“Mm.” Rei answered, and that was… just about that.

“... Your rigging…” Harbour Princess spoke up for the first time in five minutes, staring at Rei awkwardly. “... The colors are wrong… There’s no organics to it… are you even an Abyssal?”

“I do not know what I am,” Rei shook her head idly, looking down at herself and noting that, of all things, she’d somehow acquired Commander Katsuragi’s Wille coat- draped over her shoulders like it was a cape for some reason. Odd. “If I am not an Abyssal then so be it. I do not have a stake in this conflict, and Reiju is my friend. I will not turn on her if we are of different kinds.”

Harbour Princess stared, looking Rei up and down for a moment. “... I suppose that’s as good an answer as any. Ourang, are you alright?”

“I…” the Abyssal shook herself and stood, grimacing whilst brushing herself off. “Yes. I- I was not expecting her to be so… large… her presence and weight is… more… more than any ship I have ever seen in my life. Even entire installations pale in comparison…”

“How big could she be?” Reiju asked somewhat blandly, looking at Rei oddly. “She’s not that tall. Like, a little taller than me, right?”

“The AAA Wunder has an empty displacement weight of approximately one point four million long tons and a fully loaded displacement weight of approximately three million long tons,” Rei answered immediately, counting on her fingers for effect despite not needing to now that she had access to all of the AAA Wunder’s systems. Navigation data, weapon controls, reactor controls, path plotting, combat maneuvering, life support, heavy computing, internet access, air conditioning, food storage… and also the ability to eject her entire spine as a new Spear of Gaius, if she ever needed to start another Impact event.

Why she would ever need to do that was entirely beyond her, but she had the option, if she needed it.

Reiju just stared, jaw dropped. Harbour Princess, to the side, wasn’t much better.

“And… you can fly like that!?” Reiju somehow managed to ask through her incredulous disbelief. “How!?”

“AT Field projection allows a creative interpretation of the laws of physics,” Rei shrugged, then idly swiveled the guns on her rigging around as if testing out a new limb. “Ah… it is like Evangelion synchronization. I am the weapons, and the weapons are me. Interesting…”

“... I think I need one of those beers, Rei,” Reiju groused a little, slumping and huffing as she trudged over to her friend and grabbed the beer can that Rei had held out without question. “Thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

“... I see,” Harbour Princess finally spoke up again, then pursed her lips. “You two are free to stay as long as you like. I thank you again for escorting the resupply fleet so quickly- and, when you do leave, please give Hoppou my regards? She and Georgie haven’t visited in some time, and I’d like to see my girls again…”

“Will do, Harbour Princess-sama!” Reiju snapped out a salute, grinning the entire time. 

“Thank you. Now, please, do enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Yes ma’am!”

And like that, Reiju did her best to drag Rei off to explore the rest of the island- which went a lot better than expected seeing as Rei was pretty much allowing Reiju to do as she pleased.

As they ran down the roads, Rei took in the sights once again. The Abyssal girls were the same as before, still doing whatever they seemed to care for when they weren’t on duty, but as they passed more buildings, it became clear that this was, likely, one of the single biggest Abyssal installations on the planet. 

There seemed to be hundreds of girls here, all working and playing along the massive buildings and warehouses and Abyssal constructions going up and down the coast, even infiltrating into what used to be the cities and fields further inland. 

There were dozens of Wa’s sitting in loading bays, either having cargo removed from their holds or added in. There were ships being escorted back and forth, with Destroyers skating around and barking while making sure no attack was forthcoming. Submarines crawled in and out of the water, battleships kept a heavy perimeter around the island where it was closest to the mainland, carriers kept a constant aerial cover around the most vulnerable parts of the installation…

It was like watching the workings of a proper naval base mixed with a city, like seeing the start of a society form in a group that already had access to heavy machinery and modern weaponry.

There were girls carrying imps around like they were babies, feeding them scraps of steel and bauxite and oil in the form of cookies and thick, viscous soups. There were submarines hauling in nets full of fish for cooking on what looked like large communal spits and in hastily welded cauldrons. 

It was… surreal, just a little bit. Rei was aware that Abyssals were nowhere near the mindless monsters that Reiju had claimed all the propaganda called them, but to see them actually just… settling down and making a settlement- an actual settlement, with houses and commerce and games and specialized duties- seemed… far unlike what she’d seen on the Comoro Islands.

That had been a minor, easy stopover, but it was clear there that the Aircraft Carrier Demon had only recently taken the area, and her base was both new, weak, and lacking in the resources necessary to expand into a full, proper settlement. Not enough steel, not enough bauxite, not enough material to construct anything but wooden huts that could just barely function as barracks for the small fleet.

Rei honestly didn’t know whether to be impressed that Harbour Princess seemed to be building an Abyssal society, or mildly worried for the fate of humanity with how many Abyssals were stationed here.

Perhaps both.

“Oh, a bookstore!” Reiju gasped, continuing to pull Rei along without hesitation. “Ooh, I could bring back something for everyone to read!”

She paused for a moment, Rei almost crashing into her before flaring her AT Field so she didn’t accidentally run over her only friend. “Ah… wait. Um. Do you know how to read… uh… Indian, Rei?”

“The AAA Wunder had system language packages and translation software for two hundred and forty nine languages,” Rei spoke up, using some of the technology systems she had in her own rigging to project her system menus into the air- it felt more natural than just utilizing them within her own mind as a sort of HUD. The haptic feedback of actually moving one’s hands to select items was a valuable part of modern technological design, after all. She pursed her lips, scrolling through her options. “The machine translation algorithms utilized by the MAGI Achiral system is considered the most advanced translation in the world, and is capable of deconstructing and localizing regional dialects and slang terms.”

She stopped for a moment, taking the time to read the sign above the somewhat ruined building they stood in front of.

Ruined in that one wall was entirely blown out and there were the remnants of a long since decayed blood splatter on the ground near said blown out wall.

…

Mm.

An uncomfortable reminder that the people she had chosen to befriend were the aggressors in the worldwide war they were embroiled in. Perhaps if she managed to convince more of them that diplomacy was the way to go…

Ah, but that would invite unnecessary retaliation from human governments who would make emotionally driven demands as part of petty revenge… not that humanity did not deserve to hate Abyssals for killing innocent people en masse, but revenge and displays of emotion and anger were best handled on an individual basis, rather than by entire governments trying to take advantage of people’s grief for perceived profit and power.

Regardless. Peace was an uneasy topic, and it seemed at the moment that the vast majority of Abyssals just wanted to be left alone.

Perhaps there was some way of suing for peace, but not with current doctrine being the main source of interpreting the world for all other Abyssals not on the island of Sri Lanka. If humanity demanded the execution of Abyssal leadership, that would only incite even further retaliation because, so far as Rei had seen so far, most Abyssals had an almost slavish devotion to their Princesses and Demons, and if Reiju’s stories were right, occasionally went berserk in the wake of their sinking. That, or they became drifters that got picked up by other fleets. Or they got sunk. Or they became listless and unresponsive. Or they became pirates trying to gather enough strays to become minor Princesses in their own right.

It might have happened once or twice prior, but news was sporadic and fragmentary among Abyssals and Reiju thought that might have been hearsay honestly.

Regardless.

Rei had been standing there silent for a far too awkwardly long moment, and so she fixed her attention on Reiju again, flashed her the smallest of smiles, and began walking towards the ripped open doorway of the bookstore. “Would you like me to read to you, Reiju?”

“Oh, that’d be great! Ooh, ooh! Make sure you pick some stuff that we can take back home too! Some of this stuff looks totally water damaged, but I bet there’s still some good picks that the others haven’t taken!” Reiju grinned, following Rei into the store and digging through the fallen books and dusty mess that littered every surface. 

It was strange, being in this almost liminal space- seeing the cracks in the walls filling with plantlife, feeling the missing presence of what should have been humans coming in and out on a daily basis, knowing that the people that she called her allies and friends at the moment had been responsible for turning those humans into a fine mist…

Tsk.

Hm… 

Ah, some readable books. Not enough char or water damage to render them illegible, and they had held up well enough to at least be read through once.

Hm…

Had Reiju found anything?

“Oi! Rei! Rei! Can you read this for me!?”

Well, that answered that question.

Rei turned to face Reiju, tilting her head slightly as she found a book shoved vaguely at her face.

Well.

Alright then.

If Reiju wished to spend the afternoon reading picture books, so be it.

Rei sat down on the closest thing approximating a chair, cracking open the book while Reiju sat down next to her.

“Raiit Mein Paanv. Feet in the Sand. A bilingual poetry book about the stories of the sand and the sea. Story by Sakshi Singh…”

Chapter Text

Somehow, over the course of barely a day or two, Rei had become something of a central figure among the island’s population of Abyssal girls. It turned out that the vast majority of them actually couldn’t read, and any comprehension of language that they already had was some kind of instinct that came across from their home port and any experience they had over the course of their limited lifespans.

Some of them spoke Hindi. Some of them spoke English. Some of them spoke Indonesian. Some of them spoke Filipino. Some of them spoke Japanese. Some of them spoke Spanish, Portuguese, French, Farsi, Tagalog- any number of languages in the entire South East Asian area, mostly. Whatever language they were most fluent in seemed to be based on the language of the island they spawned near, or whatever language their Princess spoke, whichever came first.

Fortunately, the MAGI Achiral system could keep up with literally thousands of processing threads at once, which meant that she could listen to every girl’s questions and answer them without fail.

Strangely, despite the language barriers, most of them could understand each other without fail- not a single translation error nor misunderstanding in sight, as if they were all speaking the same language.

Perhaps it had something to do with the way the echoes in their voices flickered out of sync with their actual words? Carrying meaning in a subconscious shared language made entirely out of the frequency modulation of their speech? 

Who knew. Reiju would have called it Spooky Abyssal Stuff and been done with it.

Rei, meanwhile, was of the mind that there was some kind of science to be done with it, though she would need more samples and probably more robust testing equipment to actually figure out what was going on.

Regardless.

The fact that Rei was capable of reading just about anything did not go unnoticed on the Sri Lanka Harbour Installation, and in short order she was reading everything from science books to nursery rhymes to poetry to young adult fiction to, after hours, smut.

Why the submarines had such a wide and varied collection of sexual reading material was entirely beyond Rei’s comprehension, but she saw no real problem in reading it aloud and answering questions about what sex acts were what to her audience of blushing submarines. 

Lewdmarines, as Reiju sometimes called them.

It was… nice, in a way.

For all that she was thoroughly aware that the Abyssals thought nothing of continuing a largely futile war against humanity for the sake of a few leaders’ grudges and half-cocked needs to destroy and subjugate, the vast majority of the ones here in Sri Lanka were… peaceful.

Surprisingly kind. Thoughtful.

They were human in a way Rei hadn’t expected, in that they actually knew, somewhat, how to act like regular people.

She’d seen them play games, barter, tell stories, help each other, comfort one another… There was seemingly a love of learning as well, with several of them finding fascination in all manner of topics.

There was, of course, the downsides and the darker parts of their burgeoning society as well- they tended to not understand restraint very well, and arguments became physical more often than not. Their punishments for stepping out of line started at light mutilation and only became worse from there.

The Abyss magnified negative emotions, it seemed, and while none of them seemed to take the violence personally, she’d seen more than a few of the weaker members of the pack flinch when others raised their hands or swiveled their guns or stepped too close.

Perhaps that was the feeling of empathy, that Rei did not particularly like seeing what she almost thought were innocent girls being hurt. Something about the mind that had shared its thoughts with her seemed to dislike violence at all, unless given a target that they saw as somehow deserving.

Odd and contradictory, that line of thought was.

Still, it was about the closest thing to a proper moral system that Rei currently had access to, until such a time that she developed her own.

Perhaps she would gain some insight into a way to convince the Abyssals that their war was better off ended than not somewhere along the way. 

Perhaps.

At the very least, she could attempt to help the Abyssals on the island with their tasks while she was here.

For example, fishing.

“Ah, I see,” Rei murmured, holding onto one end of a net as she moved underwater with the same grace that she moved through the air. “The process is much more complicated than it first seems… not quite like trawling for fish on a human boat…”

“Mm!” the rather excitable girl who had identified herself as Harbour Princess Fleet So-Class Submarine No. 0342 (aka HPS Yotsu) nodded, holding up the other end of the net as she led Rei further into the depths surrounding Sri Lanka. “It’s cuz the sea here is shallower than a lot of trawling locations, mm! It gets way deeper when you go south, but we’re supposed to stay inside our perimeter so we don’t get caught, mm!”

Yotsu wiggled her hand a little, sort of going back and forth a bit. “I mean, we can go deeper to catch some of the tastier fish, but we can’t stay out long- there’s always enemy subs waiting to catch us off guard, mm!”

“I see,” Rei nodded, then began moving away from Yotsu slowly, exactly as the submarine had described. Apparently, the way the Abyssals liked to catch fish was to grab whatever spare netting they still had or could make with what they had lying around (usually thin steel cabling due to lighter materials often breaking under the strength of their hands), go into the depths, and then perform some kind of wide encircling maneuver around large schools of fish. It was somewhat akin to trawling, but with usually two submarines and a much shorter distance covered. 

With Rei’s help, though, it was much easier to catch the entire school before they could scatter- her ability to move underwater wasn’t produced by boilers and propellers, it was simply the flexing of her AT Field that allowed her to reach nigh impossible speeds while supporting the net at maximum width. The water would not cavitate behind her, the net would not break from excess strain, and the fish would be none the wiser until they found themselves cooked and served on an Abyssal’s makeshift plate. Usually with a sauce made of oil and various crushed up minerals and metals for flavor. Sometimes they used human spices, but it wasn’t like they were particularly proficient with the various powders and plant bits that they kind of threw around haphazardly.

Regardless, it didn’t take much longer to reel in a catch, and it took even less time to haul the entire thing onto the cold metal plating of one of the slipways closer to the heart of the installation. Fortunately, they didn’t have to descale the fish nor gut them, seeing as most Abyssals chomped through steel like it was candy and drank oil to the point where the bitterness of fish guts and the toughness of fish scales was a non issue.

Rei, meanwhile, was of the mind that she should start introducing them to more proper foods, moreso than just cans of whatever preservative laden instant foods survived their initial assaults and bombings of inhabited islands. Who knew that Spam and cans of instant soups and noodles were usable as currency when one was smuggling supplies back and forth through rival territories, Shipgirl patrol routes, and open ocean that didn’t have the benefit of being under the shield of a Princess’ scrambling aura.

The only problem with Rei actually trying to introduce the installation to real food that was cooked properly and actually tasted good was…

Well…

She had no idea how to cook either.

The MAGI Achiral system was fully capable of figuring out how to cook of course, but the problem was that it didn’t have any of those instructions or procedures built in, and would have to reconstruct them with input data and extrapolations based on whatever instructions she managed to find.

The other problem was that Rei wasn’t entirely sure she would be able to cook. Just because her Wunder-crew was fully staffed with onboard kitchens didn’t mean that the skill transferred over, and the galley staff were mostly there to reheat military grade rations that had more in common with factory produced sludge than they did the foods they were based on.

The end of the world had not been good for food production, nor had it been good for people learning how to cook.

…

Also, her commanding officer in a previous life had been Katsuragi Misato. If that wasn’t an objective curse on her future cooking endeavors, she didn’t know what would be.

So.

She’d need to find some cookbooks first. And practice. And make sure that her galley staff were competent. And also figure out if the Harbour Princess was at all interested in setting up agriculture and animal husbandry. Rei had seen more than a few chickens running about, as well as some still living livestock, and if they could restart some of that industry, then it meant that Harbour Princess had a much stronger base for negotiating with other princesses than just what bits of scavenged nonperishables they could find. Fresh meat, fresh proteins and grains… not a necessary part of running the war effort at all- not for Abyssals- but well cooked meals with fresh ingredients would likely be an invaluable morale booster.

…

All of that was predicated on the idea that Rei wanted to help the Abyssals with their war, though. Which she wasn’t sure about.

War seemed wasteful, unsustainable. Likely to end in the total depopulation of the planet if Abyssals and Shipgirls kept throwing themselves at each other without end. There were only so many ships to pull from the water, after all…

…

“Are you okay, Flying Fortress Princess-sama? You were staring into space for a while, mm…” Yotsu interrupted Rei’s thoughts by waving a hand in front of her face, looking just a bit contrite for doing so. 

“I am fine,” Rei answered quietly, noting that, at some point, her own autopilot had activated and started running her through the process of dumping fish carcasses and oil into a truly gargantuan communal pot- one of several- and she had just been about to start throwing in lumps of what seemed to be car tire chunks, bits of scavenged steel, a block of what was likely compressed aluminum cans, and also seven jars of ghee into said pot. “I was thinking.”

“What about, mm?” Yotsu asked, tapping her chin curiously as she upended a whole oil drum’s worth of brackish seawater into the absolute travesty that was their cooking setup. Rei, idly, thought to herself that somehow having gained the title of Flying Fortress Princess due to explaining her specifications to her curious onlookers was… a bit ridiculous.

She probably wasn’t even an actual Abyssal Princess. She’d yet to manifest a storm, after all, and only superficially resembled an Abyssal in the first place. Her AT Field could likely manifest a storm if she wished, but she only had fragmentary memories of seeing a water manipulating angel a long time ago and likely wouldn’t be able to recreate that kind of proficiency without further examples.

“Food, I think,” Rei finally spoke after yet another moment’s pause to deliberate. “Do you enjoy human food, Yotsu?”

“I haven’t had much of it, Floating Fortress Princess-sama,” Yotsu answered with a mild shrug. “Harbour Princess-sama likes to give us treats when we do well, but sweets only go so far, and Hoppou-hime-sama takes priority for our Princess, mm.”

“I see.” Rei nodded slowly, stirring the slowly simmering sludge and wondering just why it smelled so good to her. Was it because she was also a ship, and was aware of it now? But she had no need to eat, no need to drink, no need for excess fuel- she was, after all, powered by an N2 reactor as well as being made entirely of Core crystal. She would try it regardless, though, seeing as it would be impolite to refuse if offered. “I was thinking about agriculture. Farms. Perhaps instead of scavenging human food as occasional treats, it may be best to create sustainable food sources.”

Yotsu tilted her head. “What’s a farm, mm?”

…

Rei was suddenly struck with the knowledge that, ah, yes. The Abyssals around her were literal children in terms of their worldly experiences, and almost all of their estimations of human culture came from digging around for scraps and usable knick knacks in the bombed out ruins of said culture.

Right.

“A farm is…” Rei trailed off, pausing in her stirring as she brought up the words to explain. “An area of land that is devoted to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops.”

She paused for a moment, using her internal systems to project an image of the most basic farm she could imagine. “Humans use them to grow many kinds of plant based foods. You may have seen some of them while scavenging. Rice. Vegetables. Fruits. Wheat. So on and so forth.”

Yotsu blinked, not entirely comprehending what Rei just said. “... Food grows out of the ground, mm? Does oil come out of the ground…?”

“Yes,” Rei nodded. “Oil and bauxite can be found in underground deposits all over Earth. Steel is created by adding carbon to iron. All ammunition is created with resources that are refined from deposits found around the world.”

Yotsu tilted her head slightly. “But… we don’t… have access to any of those, mm? I’m… not sure where a lot of our resources come from…”

“I do not know either. Harbour Princess said that the Abyss provides, but that material must be sacrificed in order to gain more later down the line,” Rei almost shrugged, then shook her head. “Regardless, it is clear that the Abyssal war effort relies on human industry to proceed, even as it attempts to destroy all of humanity.”

Yotsu frowned. “But… if we need humans to make the stuff that we use to kill humans… then…”

She almost fell off of her stepstool, her singular visible eye glowing with violent shock. “Without humans… we’ll run out of supplies… and then that means... the entire war is useless… we… don’t… have a reason to fight!?”

Rei blinked. “It appears that way, yes.”

Yotsu swooned, almost crumpling to the ground before catching herself on a nearby wall. “I-I… I can’t… what have we been fighting for then!? How are we supposed to take revenge on humans for treating us like garbage if we need them to survive!?”

“I do not know. I am sorry,” Rei murmured softly, kneeling down by the almost panicking submarine in order to give her an awkward hug. “It will be okay.”

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-!”

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say.

At least she could provide a shoulder for the girl to cry on.

Chapter Text

“Flying Fortress Princess.”

“Yes, Harbour Princess?” Rei asked, looking up at the towering woman who’d so graciously provided a temporary home for her and Reiju. Reiju, who was currently wandering around giving out snacks to an assorted bunch of listless and somewhat depressed looking Abyssals, because news had spread rather quickly about how much of their war of revenge against human folly was… well. Useless. 

Futile.

A slow march to an inevitable slow and painful, drawn out death. Abyssals had none of the training, knowledge, or ability to continue using human infrastructure if they managed to kill them and the Shipgirls all at once. The devastation would be total, and more than a few humans would detonate explosives to deny resources to the Abyssal war machine. Overextension into the mainland would just result in nuclear fire once their forces had extended too far past the cover of a Princess’ storm, and most Abyssals were sitting ducks on land- even with a full screening of anti air cover, they only had so much vertical range at any given time, and modern bombers could exceed that range handily until they adapted. 

The war itself, if they managed to push onto large enough portions of the mainlands around the world, would become an increasingly uphill battle from the uphill battle it already was. Victory would just result in a silent planet of reclaiming nature and twisted corpses, with swathes of once useful items and knowledge turned to dust and blood and ruin and char in the wake of the Abyssal war machine.

After that?

The most intelligent of Princesses could likely begin a rudimentary recycling operation, taking in ruined machinery and figuring out what it did, absorbing it into their installations to try and eke out some of the productivity of industries now gone. But it likely wouldn’t be enough. Abyssals had a psychological compunction against leaving the water for too long, favored staying drenched instead of dry- or if they were dry, then they needed easy access to the water anyway. Abyssal society would never extend into deserts or high mountain ranges, would never get past some land barriers. They wouldn’t be able to move at high speed on land and a total human extinction would mean that roads and vehicles would be nigh useless as well. Supplies would end up at risk all over, scavenged stores of remaining steel and aluminum and copper and oil and other necessities of Abyssal life would run out- old buildings torn asunder for raw materials, scraping every last bit of usable hydrocarbon out of everything…

And then what?

If they didn’t manage to relearn how to set up global scale industry before all of their resource scavenging came to an end… what then?

Food shortages. Tensions rising. Infighting. The already tense rivalries between some Princesses escalating into full on civil war across the globe. Dozens of Abyssals sunk improperly- their corpses not left to the Abyss, but cannibalized for food and repairs. The Abyss wouldn’t be able to replenish those that were not sunk into the depths, and new ships needed resources to summon anyway.

A spiraling, slow collapse of constant war, constant tension, constant anger. Violence and fire, hulls blown apart, magazines burning inside out, engines leaking oil from fatal hits. Total collapse. The last Abyssals alive would be those who could either hide out long enough, or those who could run far enough. They would have nothing left by that point, scavenging the remains, picking apart the fraction of a fraction of what was left…

And then?

Everything would run dry. Usable material would become a thing of the past.

Turning on each other one last time, the last Abyssal alive would either die of her own wounds and sink into the Abyss forever, or slowly rust away from starvation, no fuel left to try and find a resource deposit that hadn’t been ripped dry.

And then it would be over. 

A silent world where nature would slowly reclaim it all. The Abyss, fallen quiet again with no more grudges, no more hate, no more violence left to be done.

The thought of it was horrifying, and even the most basic explanation of, “If we kill all humans, we can no longer get resources from their industry” seemed to get through to most of the Abyssals on Sri Lanka to the point where they became…

Listless.

Unfocused.

Introspective.

More than a few had started crying.

All because Rei had said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, and Yotsu had blurted out everything to her concerned sisters who had wandered over, wondering why one of their submarines was crying while making dinner.

Perhaps this was the emotion of regret.

She didn’t like it.

“How likely is it that your prediction comes true?” Harbour Princess asked after a long moment of deliberation, sitting across from Rei and pursing her lips. Her massive clawed hands folded together, and her crimson eyes bored into Rei’s own, searching for any hint of falsehood. “If we win… if the Abyss takes humanity down to the very last soul… will we all truly die? Will our own infant society become nothing more than rust and ruin?”

Rei pursed her lips, running through scenarios with her MAGI systems. Her mind flashed, data blinking faster than any other computer on the planet. She took a deep breath without needing to, then nodded slowly. “I have calculated twelve thousand, six hundred and thirty two scenarios, broadly arranged into four categories. One: Abyssal Victory. Two: Kanmusu Victory. Three: Human Victory. Four: Neutral Peace. In all scenarios of Abyssal Victory, where humans and Kanmusu are exterminated to the point of securing total control over the world’s oceans and/or landmasses… it becomes increasingly likely that Abyssal society will not last through the next century.”

She paused, projecting a seemingly meaningless series of graphs and charts, data visualizations and statistics layered in dense patterns before their eyes. “In the event of total human extermination, the number of losses the Abyssal side takes will hamper any attempt to rebuild the necessary industries for survival. Steel. Oil. Bauxite. Production of those three resources is complex and varied, and while Abyssals can take any kind of steel, any kind of oil, and any kind of aluminum rich material… there is a finite amount of it that exists in ready form for use in installations, and as rations. While it is possible to substitute organic foods for short to medium stretches of time, it becomes increasingly improbable that there will be enough surviving material left to support Abyssal expansion inland. Buildings have a finite amount of metals to rip from their walls. Organic material decays. Rust. Oxidation. Industrial processes are needed to recycle any waste material produced by Abyssal biomechanic operation. Continued use of storms will hamper the growth of plant life and scare away animals, making sustainable hunting and gathering nearly impossible. It is unknown if any Princesses have enough of a knowledge base to recreate the equipment and machines necessary to refine and process dug up resources. All of Abyssal society would be on a timer, and if no one is working towards long term sustainability from our current position onward, there will soon be no sentient life left on this planet in the event of an Abyssal victory.”

Harbour Princess pursed her lips, processing all of that in silence. She sat there, mulling it over for some time, then took a deep breath and hid her face behind one hand with a long suffering sigh. “Why the difference between human and Kanmusu victory?”

“If humanity manages to adapt their technology such that Abyssal advantages no longer work to protect the bases and installations the war relies on, then it is increasingly likely that those installations, bases, and resource deposits will swiftly find themselves reduced to radioactive ash, without the aid of Kanmusu,” Rei explained, folding her hands together. “Based on data gathered, humans become exponentially more cruel when they decide a group of a useful minority has outlived its purpose. A total Kanmusu victory will result in the destruction of all Abyssals for however long it takes for new grudges to concentrate until they are strong enough for the Abyss to restart the war, and will likely cause the Kanmusu to be hailed as heroes for the rest of their service lives. They may find themselves used in conflicts with other nations once the Abyssal threat is over, but that will likely not result in total annihilation. Human victory without the aid of Kanmusu has a small but likely chance that humanity will turn on the Kanmusu and order their decommissioning once they are proven obsolete. Based on data gathered from hearsay, Reiju’s apocryphal anecdotes, and the intake data of the local Abyssals, it takes a significant amount of resources to maintain a Kanmusu- more than it does to maintain the exact same ship class, due to them also having wants and needs beyond simple maintenance and crew rotations. If they are anything like a standard Abyssal, their appetite for their daily maintenance and upkeep including exercise and training is well into the dozens to hundreds of tons of material, or gargantuan piles of food as well. Human governments and corporations are stingy, greedy organizations. They will attempt to cut off that which they see as standing in the way of profit. If humanity turns on the Kanmusu, then it is likely they will fall to their grudges and become Abyssals, restarting the war and likely resurrecting all capable Abyssals in short order.”

She paused once more, then stared directly at Harbour Princess, eye to eye. “And again, leading to the slow, painful extinction of all sentient organic and biomechanical life on this planet.”

Harbour Princess looked like she had just sucked on a lemon. “So our only option is peace, somehow.”

“Yes,” Rei nodded, then shook her head. “Peace will be increasingly difficult to achieve the longer the war goes on. It will be difficult, and will invite extreme scrutiny and hostility from agitated humans who will not be happy with the war stopping, because they want revenge for the deaths of those they loved, or will just hate you in general. Humans will be scared of you, will be either incapable or unwilling to make intelligent decisions at times, and will largely treat you as monsters in a very flimsy cage. Some of them will demand concessions of you, and you will need to grant at least some of them lest the humans decide to continue the war even if you declare a surrender. It is, by far, the most difficult to achieve outcome, and requires a vast majority of Abyssals to agree within short order, but it is not impossible.”

Harbour Princess nodded slowly, crossing her legs and looking thoughtful. “What about the traitors? Will they even accept any peace offerings? They seem to just want all of us dead no matter what, so they can pull their own compatriots from the wreckage of my sisters…”

“I do not know. The MAGI system is powerful, but not infallible. The data I have on the Kanmusu is limited in scope, and is likely faulty to begin with,” Rei shook her head. “But if they become aware of Abyssal sapience then it may be that they will accept you. There is nothing to do but try.”

Harbour Princess sighed. “I was afraid you would say that. Then… may I ask you a favor, one Princess to another?”

“Yes,” Rei answered shortly, starting to run out of words now that they were back to having a conversation that wasn’t just her explaining as much of her data predictions as possible as efficiently as she could. 

“If you need to learn more about the traitors to know if they will accept us…” Harbour Princess chewed her lip, then vaguely motioned outwards toward the sea. “... I want you to find one of their bases and gather what data you can, then run the numbers again. I… I do want peace… but I do not know how. And I do not know if I am smart enough to do right by my girls. So please… help me?”

Rei nodded, performing a snappy salute remembered from the archives of the MAGI. “I will not fail you, Harbour Princess.”

“Please, call me Wanko. One friend to another,” Harbour Princess smiled, wiping a black tear from her eye. “Thank you, Rei.”

“Affirmative, Wanko-hime,” Rei nodded again. She smiled ever so slightly, standing up and leaving after her friend had left. 

Ah, so this was determination.

She rather liked the feeling.

Chapter Text

“Oiiii! Oiiiiiiii! What’cha doin’!?”

“I am creating a secure communications beacon for Harbour Princess,” Rei answered, watching Reiju saunter up as if she hadn’t been put on the Re-class patrol routes for the last few days. She shifted her hands a little, tightening a bolt and idly eyeing the sort of ramshackle tower she’d made. It didn’t particularly match most known forms of historical communications arrays, but then again, she was jury rigging together a thing out of spare computer hardware and replacement parts that she’d had in her cargo bays. It wasn’t even going to communicate using most known forms of data transmission- it would resonate directly with her core, allowing Rei to pass messages back and forth without anyone else being the wiser, at distances best measured in Astronomical Units than anything else.

She didn’t particularly plan on going that distance, but harvesting metal rich asteroids would be a viable way of delivering extra materials to the Sri Lanka installation should they wind up cut off from Abyssal supply lines. A single asteroid would provide all of their metallic necessities for centuries, likely, if she brought back the right one. Synthesizing long chain hydrocarbons from asteroids would also be rather easy now that she thought about it… her own specifications as the AAA Wunder allowed her to synthesize her own spine into a reality warping device when paired with the abilities of Evangelion Imaginary. Using the MAGI and some of the surviving textbooks in Sri Lanka (plus what she could find on the internet once she hooked that up too), she could assist Harbour Princess in creating all of the facilities she’d need to…

Ahem.

“You spaced out for a second there,” Reiju stated idly, kneeling down in front of Rei and vaguely looking up at the antenna reaching into the sky. Not far, only a few meters, but it was still a strange sight to see when everything else around the entire coastal perimeter of the island was the comforting and familiar lines and angles of Abyssal construction. It felt so… hastily manufactured. Colorfully strange. Like parts of it had been forcibly bent into place after having previously been something else. “So… communications, huh?”

“Yes. This is a specialized AT Field signal transducer capable of sending and receiving messages from one AT Field to another,” Rei explained, tapping away at her keyboard through some kind of reflex that, probably, was due to one Akagi Ritsuko’s position as Deputy Commander upon the Wille. At the very least, it allowed her to parse the data that her own systems provided as fast as it came, and it meant that she could design these things on the fly with limited resources and have them work perfectly more or less on the first try. “Once calibrated, I will be able to hear messages that no one else can, and when I send a response, the signal will appear here, in this antenna, and be transmitted via radio waves to this laptop computer.”

She paused, holding up the screen towards Reiju for perusal. “I have taken care to reinforce this device such that Harbour Princess can use it without fear of breaking.”

Reiju stared at the screen, furrowing her brow slightly. “... But why is it Skype?”

Rei tilted her head. “It was the most functional form of long distance video communication save for proprietary NERV or otherwise government software at last recollection. Is there something else?”

“Uh, yeah?” Reiju pulled out her own laptop- a much less large and surprisingly slab shaped thing, one that was… pretty cheaply made all things considered, but the boys on the Icehole Express had all chipped in to get her the best one they could afford. Plus the satellite internet service thingie that it was hooked up to. That wasn’t important right now, though, because she turned her screen around and showed Rei the most important thing to ever grace online telecommunications. In her opinion, at least. “Check it out, it’s called Discord! I heard about stuff like Teamspeak or like… Teams or whatever, but Discord has all these funny lil pictures n’ stuff! It’s great. Oh, and, and, I keep getting gifted free Nitro so I have a cute little profile decoration!”

It was a little hoodie with cat ears. It was adorable. Her profile picture, though, was a screenshot from one of the first shows she ever watched online and had since moved on from. Sailor Moon had been a great first binge watch.

Ahem.

Rei blinked. “... I do not understand.”

“You don’t have to, here- can you connect that thing to wifi?” Reiju asked, leaning in a little and squinting at the computer with curious eyes. “Whoa, wait, what version of Windows is this? It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen…”

“It is a proprietary build of Windows Impact, the first build of Windows released in 2006 after the Windows XP source code was dug up from the ruins of Microsoft headquarters. It has been in service for approximately twenty two years,” Rei explained, completely unblinking. “I assume that there has been a differing historical record, and that Windows Impact is not compatible with the operating architecture of modern computing.”

“... Yeah something like that,” Reiju finally hissed out after a moment, letting out the words with a strained tone going right through her clenched teeth. Yikes. “... So we might have to get you a new computer. Or somehow flash a modern version of Windows 10 to your PC.”

She paused, considering the ramifications of what Rei had actually just said for a second. “... Wait what? What do you mean the ruins of Microsoft!? Windows Impact!? Different history!? Huh!? What!? Huh!? I mean I know some of the self-summons are weird about talking about alternate timelines but what the fuck!?”

“I am from a timeline where humanity was nearly destroyed in the year 2000. The resources to create new technology were rare and concentrated around disaster relief, especially after the four years of nuclear global resource wars following the initial Impact,” Rei half-explained rather blandly, taking Reiju’s computer out of her numb hands and tapping away at the keys idly, before reaching into her storage hold and using her onboard systems to reconfigure a spare cable so that it could make the jump between the ports on Reiju’s laptop to her own. What was this one using, USB? Rei was not particularly familiar with that format, but some quick searching via a far more effective version of Google Search than her own system had allowed her to find a fresh disc image, and a query to the MAGI Achiral systems brought forth the instructions for flashing a new operating system.

It meant that she would have to rewrite the code that allowed the computer to interface wirelessly with her AT Field antenna, but she could reconfigure both to be wifi compatible using the specifications and data sheets she found online already, and by studying the signal architecture going from the laptop to Reiju to a satellite in orbit…

It wouldn’t take long at all to reprocess everything and repackage it all at once.

Ah, the joys of a large, global information network. Shame that the network in her timeline had been withered to just about nothing during her active period.

Silently, Rei thanked the leftover muscle memory she had gotten from Deputy Commander Akagi for how fast she could type, and how fast she could reconfigure the wireless internet protocols of her own scrapped together technology. She could likely use her AT Field as some sort of carrier, piggybacking off of the existing signals flying all over the atmosphere and using her MAGI Achiral systems to provide global high speed internet connections to both herself and anyone on the receiving end of…

Rei blinked. “... Ah. I will have to key in parental controls into any additional computers I give out. I have just realized I am fully capable of using my onboard systems and AT Field to provide unrestricted internet access to all information on Earth.”

Reiju stared, looking at Rei as if she was insane for a moment. “I- yeah. That’s. That’s pretty important. Uh. Some of the fresh summons really shouldn’t… be lookin’ at all the stuff humans put on the internet…”

She shuddered. She’d seen too many things. Horrible things. Unholy things. Things that made her realize that the human capacity for evil and sin was far greater than any Abyssal could ever imagine. Things that also sometimes made her tingle a little in a way that her Princess must never know about.

Ahem.

“S-so um… what was that about… um… the apocalypse?” Reiju asked, trying to find a safer topic to think about. “What do you mean by Impact? I could hear the capital letters in that. Did some big ol’ meteor hit the planet or something?”

“No. The Second Impact that nearly wiped out humanity initially was caused by the Katsuragi Expedition team,” Rei explained, shutting her laptop and setting it to the side for later work. Explaining things to Reiju took precedence right now, as it were. “The abbreviated version of events is that, when the earth was formed approximately five billion years ago, a massive object known as the White Moon impacted earth exactly where the original continent of Antarctica would form, carrying with it the ancient superbeing known as Adam. There are multiple Adams relevant to the story of my timeline, but regardless, the first Adam is the most important. Approximately four point five billion years ago, as Adam waited for the conditions of earth’s surface to reach a point where it could begin seeding life upon the planet, a second object, the Black Moon, impacted earth in what became known as First Impact.”

She paused, looking at Reiju and projecting an abbreviated timeline of events into the air for her benefit, complete with animations to go with it. “First Impact was a violent collision that resulted in the creation of Luna, earth’s current moon. The being upon the object known as the Black Moon was dubbed Lilith, and in the collision, an object known as the Lance of Longinus was used to seal Adam away into dormancy so that Lilith could become the progenitor of all life on earth. In the year two thousand, the Katsuragi expedition found Adam’s body in modern day Antarctica, guided by a set of prophetic scrolls that detailed rituals and predicted events for the next several thousand years such that the owners of the Dead Sea Scrolls could attain complete immortality and complete their Human Instrumentality Project. Second Impact occurred when the Katsuragi expedition accidentally awakened Adam, causing its body to violently detonate in mere moments and destroy earth’s biosphere. Antarctica was reduced to an open stretch of ocean. The seas became red and toxic, rising dozens of meters and causing tsunamis and flooding across the planet. Most of the biospheres around the planet were reduced to fractions of what they once were. The planet’s axis was thrown off course, leading to violent climate instability and strange weather conditions year round. Only one person survived the expedition: a girl who would grow up to become Commander Katsuragi, captain of the AAA Wunder twenty eight years later.”

For emphasis, Rei projected a simulation of Second Impact just to drive home how apocalyptic of an event it truly was. “In the immediate aftermath of Second Impact, the world’s surviving nations pointed fingers at each other to try and ascertain who was at fault for ending the world. Nuclear wars followed, as all surviving nations tried to scrounge together resources and come out on top. Peace came after, once the survivors realized how futile aggression was in the face of oncoming extinction. In the year two thousand and fifteen, after almost a decade of preparation and scientific breakthroughs, giant monsters known as Angels began attacking the city of Tokyo-3 in an attempt to cause Third Impact and reduce all life on earth to that which was born of Adam instead. This was all part of the organization SEELE’s Human Instrumentality plan, though the details of all the events that happened that year are largely irrelevant in the long run.”

Pausing again, Rei swallowed and pulled a plastic water pouch from her hold, sipping it lightly to wet her parched throat. “Near the latter half of the year two thousand and fifteen, a boy named Ikari Shinji, the pilot of a giant war machine called Evangelion Unit-01, faced off against the strongest Angel yet seen. In his attempt to rescue his fellow pilot Ayanami Rei from the core of the tenth Angel, he caused Near Third Impact with nothing but emotion and sheer force of will, but was stopped at the last second. Third impact continued, though, and in the wake of nearly the entire planet dying all at once, a man named Kaji Ryoji gave his life to stop it entirely. Fourteen years later, Fourth Impact nearly occurred when Ikari Shinji, reconstituted from the core of Evangelion Unit-01, and fellow pilot Nagisa Kaworu, almost fell directly into SEELE’s trap and restarted the process of an Impact using Evangelion Mark 13. In the wake of that additional failure, NERV Commander Ikari Gendo, Ikari Shinji’s father, initiated his own plan for Human Instrumentality by causing what became known as Additional Impact, wherein he used two spears and two Evangelions to open the Doors of Guf into the anti-space beyond, freeing the being known as Evangelion Imaginary and allowing him to convert all of humanity into one organism within what would have been a sea of souls. Ikari Shinji stopped him with the aid of Commander Katsuragi, with Commander Katsuragi sacrificing herself and I, the AAA Wunder, to deliver my spinal cord to Ikari Shinji, who was inside of Evangelion Imaginary with Ikari Gendo, in the form of the final spear, the Spear of Gaius, or alternately the Spear of WILLE. The final Impact, also known as Neon Genesis, erased all Evangelions from existence, and reset the universe to a place where humanity could be happy without things like Evangelions or Angels existing.”

Rei wound down slowly, trailing off and looking at Reiju with an utterly calm expression. “Did that answer your question, Reiju?”

Reiju only had one thing to say to… all of that.

“What the FUCK!?”

Chapter Text

“Be safe! Watch out for red water, that’s where all the insane Princesses are!”

“We will, thanks mom!” Reiju called back, waving towards the slowly disappearing form of Harbour Princess as she and Rei made way from Sri Lanka’s installation and out into the open ocean again. “Stay safe! Byeeeee!”

They sailed out a bit, just long enough to see the installation vanish over the horizon, before Reiju pulled up beside Rei and sighed. “Bleh… good to get back out on the ocean again, huh? Always feels weird when I spend too long doing nothing…”

“I suppose,” Rei answered noncommittally, supporting Reiju’s weight against her side with a quiet huff. “I am glad that I do not need to carry more Wa-class transports this time. While the weight was negligible, I do not think I enjoy having to carry too many moving passengers at once. The lift calculations become exponentially more taxing the more I have to take into account a passenger’s changes in aerodynamics.”

Saying that, she leveled a flat stare at Reiju, who had the good sense to look a little apologetic.

“W-well, it was just freaky, okay? Ships ain’t supposed to jump, let alone fly!” Reiju pouted, completely forgetting the fact that the I’s, Ro’s, Ha’s, Ni’s, and Na’s liked to jump around like particularly violent whales. Or sharks. Or dogs. And that Reiju had once told a story about some Shipgirl drop kicking and then throwing an I-class Destroyer. “Just because you throwing me at a buncha humans was fun, doesn’t mean I enjoy flying!”

She huffed, crossing her arms. “I didn’t even get ta kill those stinkin’ humans… ugh. I know we can’t win the war or we’re screwed, but sheesh, some of ‘em definitely deserve to die.”

“Perhaps,” Rei continued to be rather noncommittal, raising an eyebrow at Reiju before checking their position with a ping to the world’s satellite mapping systems. Ah. Perfect. Already making good time towards the Maldives, which meant that they were due to lift off now. “Prepare yourself. I will cradle you.”

“Oh boy, here we go again…” Reiju groaned, raising her arms hesitantly and watching with slowly mounting dread as a massive pair of mechanical wings sprouted from Rei’s back, alongside her proper rigging- the strange shapes of her hull, the triangular bit that might have once been a bridge, the entire freakin’ tail- all of the mechanical shapes sliding perfectly into alignment as if they’d been there the entire time. Every single time she saw it, she had to wonder… just how powerful were Rei’s guns? She’d gotten some kind of specifications info dump at some point, but there was a difference in knowing academically what something could do… and actually seeing it in action.

Even if that action was just range shooting for calibration purposes.

“AT Field full power. Spacetime control activated. Balance calibration complete. All controls green. All flight surfaces green. All systems green. Power core at full potential,” Rei intoned, taking a deep breath as she wrapped her AT Field around Reiju and spread her wings wide. “AAA Wunder, ready to launch in three. Two. One.”

“WhoooooOOOAAAAAAAAAAA-SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!”

And there they went, flying off into the deep blue sky on a halo of light, leaving rainbow trails shimmering in their wake and letting the world know of their departure with the sharp crack of a sonic boom. Reiju’s immediate vocal protest was lost to the empty sea, and the vanishing trail they left behind.

Onward and upward they went, passing straight up through the atmosphere while Rei used her now permanent connection to the world’s information network to keep an eye on just about anything connected to the public internet. Not that she needed to at the moment, but it was nice to simply bask in the overwhelming output of the information superhighway, knowing she had all the world’s scientific data at her fingertips (well, after she broke through a few rudimentary restrictions on what she could or could not view), able to peruse it at her leisure and let it percolate through the MAGI Achiral systems to become fully integrated into her mind.

There really was all sorts of interesting information there- some scientific papers on dissections of Abyssal wrecks done when they were killed on land, a few scientific papers written on the internal biology of Shipgirls and how it was similar to Abyssals. Anatomy and purpose of a Shipgirl’s fairies. The materials science papers done on the properties of Abyssal steel. The material properties of Shipgirl steel and how it interacted with organic bodies. Preliminary tests for using Shipgirl steel as the source material for things like collarbone replacements due to its complete inability to be rejected once inserted…

Oh, there was also some old research into cloning done in Japan, though she only skimmed over the title. Something about the viability of using an old attempt at making cloned humans as soldiers in the Abyssal War, though that idea was scrapped ages ago once Shipgirls began appearing.

Idly, Rei wondered if they’d ever made viable human clones.

Hopefully not. She didn’t want a repeat of the Ayanami Series, or the Shikinami Series, or the Dummy Plug Plant. That would be… too awful for this surprisingly… easy to live in… world she’d found herself in.

Hopefully, if there was a Shinji or a Rei or an Asuka in this world… she hoped that they were doing well, wherever they are.

Rei didn’t particularly have any knowledge of what happened with Ikari Shinji after he’d initiated Neon Genesis, but she got the feeling that everyone had gotten a better deal after he had gotten rid of all Evangelions and Angels from the world.

That said, though, she did wonder sometimes…

Why was it that Sailwitches seemed to have magic that brushed right up against her sensors as AT Field manipulation? Why was it that Princesses had a blood pattern of not quite Blue? Why was it that she felt as though this was still the world of her origin, just… slightly different from how she remembered leaving it?

… Okay, a lot different. For one, Antarctica still existed and was still a landmass. The seas weren’t red except where there were insane Princesses plotting their revenge on a world that had forgotten them as so much yesterday’s trash. Sometimes literally. There were still fish. Still living things in the ocean. The world hadn’t been knocked off-axis. The moon wasn’t nearly twice as close to the planet as it should have been, nor was its surface marred by a bloodstain nor a bunch of floating crosses nor an atmosphere. There was no NERV. There was no GEHIRN. There was no SEELE- not that she knew where they deigned to show up most of the time. 

No Evangelions. No Angels. No Spears. No Lances. No Moons. No Jet Alone. No quadrillion dollar defense budgets, no Tokyo-3, no Tokyo-2, just Tokyo. 

Though, there was a naval base in Japan that called itself Tokyo-3 somewhat unofficially…

…

That bore some investigation, actually. She’d have to figure out who was in charge there, and why exactly they chose the name. If there was any chance that there was some leftover echo of Evangelions…

Ikari Shinji did not cause Neon Genesis just so there could still be Evangelions in the world making people suffer.

Rei, quietly, accepted the fact that she probably wasn’t supposed to exist either, and yet here she was.

“Ne ne!” Reiju’s voice interrupted Rei’s thoughts as they flew northeastward at supersonic speeds, only the bubble of Rei’s AT Field allowing Reiju to actually speak at the moment. 

Sure, they both had radio now, but unshielded radio transmissions in this part of the globe would likely get a large force of Shipgirls attacking them. Or at the very least, jets. Not something Rei wanted to deal with again, even if she had railguns now.

…

Actually, the railguns made it more likely to cause fatalities, because her firing controls were MAGI assisted to hit enemy weak points. And the weakest point on an encroaching fighter jet was the pilot.

And her railguns could fire up to mach ten at full charge, with an approximate maximum fire rate of five rounds per second assuming no loading issues or power fluctuations. Each projectile was approximately twenty one cubic meters in volume, made of proprietary blends of materials, and depending on what type of ammunition she loaded, her maximum impact force was somewhere on the order of half a kiloton of TNT.

Per shot.

With five shots per second.

With five railguns.

It would take approximately one second of sustained fire with all five guns to equal a disaster on the scale of Hiroshima in terms of energy released, if not total area destroyed or lives claimed.

So.

Actually firing her guns was something best left to party tricks and demonstrations of overwhelming military superiority- of which she had not needed to do any yet, but she surmised that there would be at least one person out there who wanted to compare firepower and underestimated just how much force she packed into five guns.

Hopefully her sheer displacement would make most balk at that, but she really hoped she wouldn’t have to-

“Beh! Stop ignoring me!” Reiju interrupted her thoughts again, this time by reaching up and poking her right in the cheek. “I was asking how long it’ll take before we get there!”

Rei sighed. “Approximately two hours at our current pace. Why do you ask?”

Reiju just shrugged, pulling out her laptop and idly shaking it a little. “Wanna watch a movie? I’ve got a lot of ‘em downloaded!”

Rei tilted her head slightly, then adjusted their position in space such that they could both comfortably sit in something akin to a reclining position, her rigging moving in a way that was… somewhat mindbending to think about… in order to maintain proper flying angle even while Rei herself was completely out of position.

Thank goodness for AT Fields making it so aerodynamics wasn’t something to worry about.

“Great!” Reiju grinned, getting comfortable next to Rei and setting the laptop down on… thin air, really, but the shimmer of an AT Field beneath it meant that it was, effectively, a table for now. “Oh, so, what do you wanna watch? I’ve got everything! Superhero stuff, action movies, romance, horror, thriller, slasher, spy flicks, heist flicks, chick flicks, kid’s movies, family movies, animated movies, teen movies, anime, cartoons, really creepy 3d animated knockoff movies from foreign studios, bollywood, short films, tokusatsu, film festival previews, porn, hentai, 3d porn, 2d porn-”

“Please do not show anything pornographic,” Rei looked at Reiju somewhat incredulously, wondering why the Abyssal had so much porn saved on her computer. “I do not wish to see such things at the moment. What is your favorite movie?”

“Oh, that’d beeeee…” Reiju trailed off for a moment, then hummed. “Actually, now that I think about it, wouldn’t you have a lot of the same movies back in your timeline that I do? I mean, the world only ended in the year 2000, right? Stuff like Terminator would still exist, wouldn’t it?”

Rei shrugged. “I do not know. My memories of the time before Second Impact are fragmentary at best, and focused entirely around military installations in and around Japan.”

Reiju hummed thoughtfully, rubbing her chin as she considered those words. “Oh, then lemme introduce you to my favorite movie of all time! Terminator 2: Judgement Day~!”

Rei blinked, tilting her head once more. “Would we not have to watch the original, then? Watching a sequel before its associated first movie seems out of order, is it not?”

Reiju snorted, rolling her eyes and waving Rei off while she navigated through the folders of her laptop. “Pssshhh, tell that to Star Wars nerds. Half their shit is out of order, and the rest of it sucks mega shit.”

“I see.”

Rei did not, in fact, see. She had no idea what Star Wars was, and at this point was probably better off not knowing what it was at all.

“Anyway, behold! One of the greatest movies ever made with 80s technology!” Reiju grinned, throwing out her arms for emphasis… and then clearing her throat. “... is there any way to like… make it darker? And make the screen bigger?”

“One moment.”

A flex of her AT Field later, and the entire area around them dimmed to night time levels, with the laptop screen now appearing approximately six times larger, to match that of a large television.

“Sweet! Now hold onto your ass, because this is one of the best movies ever!”

Chapter Text

“Rei-rei!”

“Hoppou-chan!”

“I missed you!”

“I missed you tooooo!”

Rei, quietly, stood off to the side as Reiju picked up the diminutive form of her Princess and swung her around as though she were her Princess’ big sister rather than being said Princess’ direct subordinate.

It was utterly heartwarming, and also adorable, and also so sweet that Rei could literally feel it in her teeth.

… That may have been the soda and chocolate they had snacked on while watching Terminator, come to think of it. She hadn’t brushed her teeth in some time, though a lack of plaque and bad breath had made that seem like a secondary concern, honestly.

Ahem.

What was she doing again? Ah yes, staring at Reiju and the Northern Princess’ reunion, which was less like “rogue ship returns from a month lost at sea” and more “big sister returns home after going missing for a month”. There was laughter and cheering, and somehow the atmosphere felt warm despite it being winter in the north latitudes to the point that the sea became flooded with icebergs and ice sheets. Even Reiju’s sister ships seemed to be overjoyed that Reiju was back, and they crowded around so that they could all lift Reiju into the air and carry her along.

Aww.

How nice.

Rei, meanwhile, simply stood there like a ghost next to the several shipping containers she’d released from her hold when they landed, feeling rather awkward about essentially intruding on a scene that she wasn’t invited to.

None of these people knew her, and while she would have liked to introduce herself, they seemed rather caught up in welcoming their missing sister home. They hadn’t even paid any attention to the things that Harbour Princess had tasked Rei with bringing over for them.

Idly, Rei swept her attention over the rest of the island, her AT Field pulsing out gently and covering kilometers worth of area with a fine, nearly imperceptible shimmer of reality warping under the weight of her soul. It didn’t do much, at the moment. All it did was let her keep track of life signs, movement. It let her know who had a soul and who didn’t. Not that not having a soul meant someone was less of a person.

Ikari Shinji was adamant about that, and Rei supposed it had rubbed off over time.

Regardless. There were… oh?

That was interesting…

The entire population of the island was approaching just under four and a half thousand people. While she was now keenly aware that the Dutch Harbour settlement on the island was only part of the settlement known as Unalaska, that population only made up approximately four thousand and three hundred people, give or take a few dozen.

The remaining population of the island was somewhere over a hundred ship class Abyssals, taking up the entire formerly uninhabited portion of the island in what was mostly small patrols and a rather spread out series of installation buildings.

There was even a road cutting across the island leading into town, which meant that Reiju wasn’t the only one of her siblings to be okay with humans, it meant that the Northern Princess herself was completely fine with the presence of humanity.

That… also implied that the Princess known as Northern Little Sister was also like that, considering how close she and Northern Princess were, according to Harbour Princess.

Three Princesses, all entirely willing to live among humans. How strange.

From what Reiju and Harbour Princess had said, the majority of Princesses were entirely unable to let go of their grudges against humanity, and a fair amount of them were only half sane to begin with- some of them were even fully insane.

Rei, idly, wondered just how many Princesses there were out there, and if humanity was really capable of winning a war against a nearly endless tide of insane, maddened monsters that were only sometimes capable of being normal, sane, rational beings.

She’d heard some gossip while they were on Sri Lanka, having listened in on a few conversations here and there- nothing private, of course, but things that weren’t particularly meant to be broadcast to everyone.

Ships talking about some of their sisters in their classes, how some of them were fully insane to the point where they were indistinguishable from each other, how some of the rage maddened Princesses fielded armies of utterly insane lesser Abyssals, how some of the ones who survived past the deaths of their Princesses broke down and became inconsolable in the wake of their minds clearing from that fog…

Rei had to wonder, just what was the whole picture behind Abyssals and their strange collection of contradictory behaviors. The Abyss did not seem to overly pull at one’s negativity- those that wanted to be decent people were more than capable of being kind and gentle, and even some of the more animalistic Destroyers that Rei had seen were fully capable of acting like large dogs instead of vicious war machines. At the same time, there was a learned culture of violence and corporal punishment, likely due to them not knowing any other way to punish insubordination or reckless behavior. Even then, those punishments weren’t taken lightly, and were only given out when it was deemed absolutely necessary. Some Princesses were driven insane by their own grudges, and that insanity caused their followers to become maddened and nearly lose their own sapience in favor of endless rage as a result.

Some Princesses, though, were sane in their rage, and used it to wage war the likes of which had not been seen for the better part of a century, more or less. 

It was a strange and contradictory set of behaviors, but taken as a whole… Rei did suppose the range of behaviors mapped approximately to humanity’s darker desires and emotions, overall. If she had gleaned appropriate data from the anecdotes and apocrypha that she had access to, of course. One Princess’ explanations on the broader aspects of Abyssal society, plus Reiju’s own anecdotes, plus the occasional eavesdropping that she had done did not particularly constitute a well thought out nor well researched sociological trial.

In fact, she would likely be laughed out of any kind of sociology based conference based on her findings, if only because those people would not believe that Abyssals were capable of actual reasoning and higher thought.

Most of the ones that actively threw themselves against Shipgirl and human support forces were rather mindless, according to Harbour Princess. She herself had apparently once been like that, but sinking a few times had brought some clarity… and also there had been a large ripple of… something in the water a few years ago that had, apparently, cleared some Princess’ minds of their endless grudges. Harbour Princess had no clue what that event was, or if there was any proof that it happened, but the effect was that she was capable of actually taking Sri Lanka and holding it.

…

Harbour Princess had stated that the burst of light in the dark had brought clarity, not any larger sense of calm or morality to the forefront.

Regardless.

All of that was to say that Northern Princess, also known as Hoppou, and Northern Little Sister, also known as Georgie, were outliers compared to the minimal data she had on other Princesses.

Rei, idly, felt as though she should begin interviewing every Abyssal she came across- or, at least, find some way to record interactions beneath each Princess to see just how many of them were capable of reason, capable of peace, capable of higher thought, or just capable of mindless violence.

Speaking of Hoppou, though, Rei noted that there was… a surprisingly large amount of human paraphernalia scattered around the area. Not just crates of food or random debris that the Sri Lanka installation had- stuff that had been scavenged from the ruins of the settlement that had once been there- but actual goods.

Clothing in good repair. Posters for local bands, taped to random walls. An entire fleet of working vehicles, all kept shiny and clean (if… a bit dented). The sign from a McDonald’s, affixed proudly to the roof of what looked like some kind of storehouse. The entire installation even looked more like an actual town rather than an eldritch military base like Harbour Princess’ installation. Each ship seemed to have a grouped or individual habitation area, decorated with rocks and shells and various human odds and ends- one of them had a Christmas wreath up, even. The roads were paved and the main street lead off towards town, as she’d noted before, but there were sidewalks, road markers, stop signs- all of which bore characteristic Abyssal markers, but overall aside from the defenses near the shore, the entire area could be mistaken for an eclectic town instead of a military base.

Interesting. Very interesting. Wait.

Were those humans nearby? She’d almost missed the soul signatures because they were standing near a pair of Abyssals, but it looked like there were… actual humans… in an Abyssal installation… with books. No weapons, no armor, just brightly colored winter clothing, a vehicle nearby, and books aplenty.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Rei, silently, continued to keep watch for a moment longer, then located the nearest seating area (and, that spoke volumes as to the human influence on Hoppou, that her installation had benches everywhere) and waited for someone to inevitably take notice of her. 

Not that it seemed anyone would- even while Reiju was busy regaling the crowd with tales of her battles against the evil traitor Shipgirls (which were mostly made up and riddled with inconsistencies), no one turned toward her or even noticed her moving.

Even when Reiju revealed that she’d brought back a load of goodies and snacks from Harbour Princess, no one noticed her sitting there, calmly watching a whole pack of Abyssals dive towards the shipping containers and start wrestling for their favorite treats, with Hoppou at the head gobbling down chocolates like a wild animal.

… Those treats wouldn’t last a day, at this rate.

Well, not that Rei was of any mind to judge anyone for their eating habits. Rei had yet to actually eat much of anything in her existence as a Shipgirl, being that she was entirely sustained by her own reactors and assorted power sources. 

Note to self, eating is required in order to understand what being a human is like.

Second note to self, she should really turn her ability to feel hunger back on, just in case, so she didn’t make a social faux pas related to eating.

Third note to self… unrelated to anything about eating, she should infiltrate a Shipgirl base sooner rather than later, as Harbour Princess needed information to help decide whether or not she wanted to vie for some kind of peace. Should Harbour Princess declare neutrality (with conditions), or even take the side of humanity, that would provide an incredible foothold on the other side of the war, granting the ability for Shipgirls to launch out of India and much of the surrounding areas once again, instead of having to constantly wonder if stepping foot in the Indian Ocean would draw the ire of several hundred high tier Abyssal ships all at once- to say nothing of Ourang Medan’s ability to project her magic as a form of soft defense against more advanced human weaponry.

Even their natural defenses against most modern types of technology failed in the wake of getting nuked from across the planet, which necessitated soft defenses in the form of magic instead- making their entire installation untargetable, making humans and Shipgirls alike forget it was there, using illusions to obfuscate where it was… 

Rei had heard the information more or less third hand, but humans had figured out that nuclear weaponry still had some, albeit a rather diminished, effect against Abyssals. It wasn’t enough of an advantage to justify lobbing the world’s nuclear arsenal at every Abyssal base they could even remotely pin down, but it meant that a large enough infestation had a high chance of getting sunk by a brand new sun… if not for the myriad of factors preventing such a thing.

Hadn’t Reiju once said that all Abyssals could submerge up to at least 600 meters, even if it was dicey for non submarines?

Regardless…

The nuclear survival capabilities of Abyssals could be interrogated later. Not tested, but at the very least someone would have information for her. Probably.

If she knew where to look.

…

Maybe she could hack into a military database? The MAGI Achiral system did have a set of routines suited for that duty…

Ahem.

“Oh- and this is Rei! Say hi Rei!”

Ah, they’d finally noticed her.

Rei blinked, coming out of her scattering of uncoordinated thoughts and waving at the crowd with a gentle smile. “Hello, my name is Rei. It is nice to meet you.”

And then she found herself bowled over by approximately forty thousand tons of battleship condensed into the shape of a three foot tall child.

Oof.

Chapter Text

Northern Princess- or rather, Hoppou- as it turned out, was quite the imperious little princess. On the one hand, she played the part of an innocent little child, easily influenced by the things she saw and prone to wild flights of fancy that usually petered out after a few hours or days at most. 

On the other hand, she was the head of a military installation and everyone knew it, and she took great pride in making sure the entire installation ran as she saw fit. Which meant that, for all that Hoppou liked coloring books and sweets and watching movies, she also had a strangely technical grasp of military tactics, patrol schedules, expansion routes, sea lines, and secure communications procedures. And a bevy of other things related to being an installation, most of which Rei actually did not possess much of a working knowledge of.

Having Commander Katsuragi’s memories was all well and good, except most of those memories were of chugging beer, being a general disaster of a woman, and spending roughly half an hour once every few weeks yelling at a teenager (or a group of teenagers) to not die and please for the love of whatever god existed please let this plan work or we’re all dead.

So.

Most of her military knowledge was half remembered texts from Misato’s college of choice, and long since faded muscle memory. Also, most of Misato’s knowledge of military tactics was best put towards fighting giant monsters… of which there were startlingly few in this world. 

Rei, idly, thought that she should run a refresher course on all things military, and perhaps spend a few days (or weeks) perusing Wikipedia for their sources. If there was a benevolent god out there, they proved their existence by having Wikipedia exist. She could spend hours drifting through articles, catching up on all the information she missed over the last twenty… one years.

Apparently, the year was 2021, the Abyssal War had started in 2015, and the article on the so-named Blood Week (or, as its title on Wikipedia proclaimed, “Abyssal Destruction of the Hawaiian Islands”) dated the event to the exact date that, in another timeline, Ikari Shinji would have arrived in Tokyo-3 alongside the Fourth Angel, codenamed Sachiel.

Rei, idly, wondered why she felt like the being known as Sachiel should have been both the Third and the Fourth Angel, but put that out of her mind in favor of thinking- what a coincidence it was that Central Princess appeared and attacked Hawaii the same day that Sachiel would have attacked Tokyo-3.

How odd. And… something that bore further investigation, perhaps, alongside a number of other strange observations. Abyssal magic did feel an awful lot like some form of… not quite degraded, but perhaps… sidegraded? Lower power and intensity in favor of a wider range of more eldritch, ghostly effects? 

Regardless of that, Rei had, in the moments after meeting Hoppou, been more or less bodily dragged around by the little girl- despite the fact that Rei outmassed her by quite literally a factor of almost forty to one, she found herself helpless to resist the whims of a small child that really, really, really wanted to show Rei her favorite places in Unalaska.

Surprisingly, despite being shown around a school and a church and an airport and some grocery stores and a skate park and so on and so forth… there was no explanation for why there was a McDonald’s sign somewhere in Hoppou’s little township on what had once been called Egg Island. 

According to Rei’s access to Google Maps, the closest McDonald’s was thirteen hundred kilometers away. 

It was, genuinely, a mystery.

Rei had even asked where the sign had come from, and Hoppou had just shrugged and said that Reiku had brought it back a week ago and wouldn’t explain where she found it. Just that it was in her hold.

Also, Rei had begun categorizing the ships she had seen, their names, and who they belonged to- something she should have done earlier, but at this point it only seemed fitting that she actually try to remember their names.

Which also meant that, apparently, Reiku had no relation to Reiju, because while Reiju was Northern Princess Fleet Elite Re-Class Aviation Battleship No. 0010, Reiku was actually Northern Princess Fleet Elite Ra-Class Destroyer No. 0009.

Reiju’s actual older sister Re-class was just named Nines. Then, as Rei had soon found out, there were also the Re-classes known as Hachi, Lucky Seven, Roku, Marugo, Marushi, Tres, Dos, and Shodai. And then all of Reiju’s younger sisters, numbering up to twenty- Eleven, AB, Misfortune, One-Four, Ichigo, Juuroku, Dancing Queen, Juuhachi, Juukyu, and Tsu-Rei.

Plus the assorted other Ra’s, I’s, Ro’s, Ha’s, Ni’s, Ho’s, He’s, He’s, To’s, Chi’s, Ri’s, Nu’s, Ru’s, Wo’s, Wa’s, Ka’s, Yo’s, Ta’s, So’s, Tsu’s, Ne’s, and Na’s that were floating around in various numbers.

Rei, privately, thought that there might have been more Abyssal classes than it was really worth trying to keep track of.

And then there were all of the Imps.

Startlingly well behaved ones, as it were- they actually seemed to like hanging out with humans, and didn’t go out of their way to start shelling Unalaska at range. Unlike the Imps on Sri Lanka, which had no compunctions against targeting anything that they thought would make a satisfying boom.

… And then there were the… Escort Fortresses. 

Rei had no idea what they were supposed to represent, but there were quite a few of them scattered around and it was… definitely something to behold.

Idly, whilst Hoppou was distracted by other things and Reiju was off catching up with her sisters, Rei pondered to herself if she had any ability to be a carrier. Theoretically, it was possible, right? The Abyssal Carriers around her had multiple methods of launching planes, though they mostly just spat them out of whatever large orifice they had on their bodies.

It turned out, a Wo-Class Carrier’s large mushroom shaped hat-thing was not, in fact, a hat. It was a vital part of their body and they could not physically remove it without destroying their ability to actually launch aircraft.

They could, however, dismiss it as part of their rigging, and thus appear slightly less like some kind of strange wizard.

Oddly enough, the cape was part of the rigging too.

Weird.

The pants and bodysuit were, interestingly, not part of the rigging, though the cane was.

Honestly, what part of an Abyssal counted as rigging or not seemed entirely arbitrary, and frankly it also seemed to vary between even sister ships.

Reiju’s raincoat was actually just a raincoat reinforced by her own Abyssal nature to act as armor even when she swapped it out for a different coat (which, apparently, she had many of here at her home base) (today’s coat was bright pink with neon blue flames, and kind of hurt to look at). Reiku’s entire outfit was her rigging save for her underwear and stockings, which was…

Interesting.

Reiku’s sister Jackpot (Northern Princess Fleet Elite Ra-Class Destroyer No. 0007) just had her boots and more standout Abyssal features disappear, leaving her in pretty much just a normal gothic lolita outfit.

So on and so forth.

What made Rei curious about whether or not she had some capacity to act as a Carrier, though, was because she had discovered an… anomaly in her inventory records.

She had access to something that, by all rights, she wasn’t supposed to have.

Something that should have only been given to one specific Evangelion.

An Evangelion that, apparently, she had in her hangar, alongside several others.

…

Why did she have multiple Evangelions in her hangars!?

Why did she have so many things in her inventory that weren’t supposed to be there, and why was she capable of deploying them?

Rei, genuinely, had no idea what the hell was going on with her body, only that apparently she seemed to have more cargo space than the AAA Wunder should have allowed, and that a lot of that cargo space was filled with things that weren’t supposed to be in the AAA Wunder. 

But most pertinently were the several UNAF Close Air Support VTOL Aircraft YAGR-3Bs in her hold, the successor YAGR-N101s, and, most strangely, the multitude of RS Hoppers stored away in hidden pockets all over her rigging.

What.

Was she?

Every time some answer came up about her own existence, it seemed to dredge up another five questions. She wondered what she was before she met Reiju, and then found out she was the AAA Wunder, and had to question everything she knew about how she even existed in the first place and her own place in the world. She thought she was just a normal Shipgirl, but now she found out she had access to things that shouldn’t exist in her inventory, nor should they exist at all in this world?

Rei sighed, wondering what surprises would come next. At least she could say that she was well armed, even if said arms were confusing, contradictory to what she should have been able to field, and also far weaker on their own than the actual weapons of mass destruction she was supposed to have mounted to her wings.

If she launched an Iowa-class Battleship as a missile packed with N2 explosives, would the missile turn into a Shipgirl partway through the flight, or would it remain just an inert battleship until it summarily turned an entire portion of the sea into a vapor cloud and a kilometer wide fireball?

Questions that Rei, honestly, hoped she would never have to answer.

Most of her weapons were useless to her at the moment anyway- what did she need with an Evangelion? What did she need with RS Hoppers? What did she need with VTOL Aircraft? What did she need with her inbuilt Nekozame-class Orbital Assault Craft? What did she need with her railguns?

Frankly, she would have been happier existing as just a mortal person, wandering the world in search of a place to call her own. Perhaps she could be a farmhand or a laborer, working out her sweat from her bones as she slowly accumulated a purpose in life to fulfill. Maybe she would find a nice girl to fall in love with, like the faulty Ayanami Type had with Shinji. Maybe she would find a nice boy instead, like Shinji.

…Mm, no. Boys held no interest.

Girls were better.

Although… girl Shinji…?

“I think that’s the first time I have ever heard you giggle like a pervy old man,” Reiju interrupted Rei’s thoughts, looking at her friend’s slightly glazed eyes and the thin drip of blood coming from her nose. “... You were thinking something gay just now, weren’t you?”

“I was imagining a boy I knew in passing as a pretty woman,” Rei answered without a hint of deception or shame, wiping the slightly orange blood from her nose and looking up at Reiju. “It was a pleasant mental image. More pleasant than I would have imagined it to be. Mm… She would look… startlingly like me, I think… but with brown eyes and brown hair…”

“... I’m not sure I want to know,” Reiju deadpanned, then leaned over and poked Rei on the forehead. “Anyway, c’mon. Get up. It’s almost time for lunch, and Char promised us hotdogs today!”

Ah yes. The Ta-Class Fast Battleship, Char. And her sisters Sear, Burn, Smoke, and Blaze. All of whom had a fascination with cooking, despite not being Tenders of any sort. Surprisingly good at it too, despite their names.

“I have never had a hotdog before,” Rei stood slowly, following Reiju idly while mostly staying lost in her own thoughts- Reiju’s rambling washing over her in easy waves as she recorded the conversation with half an ear to be properly archived in her memory later. She made appropriate noises whilst Reiju talked, though she didn’t really have much of an opinion on whatever Pacific Rim was, promising to watch it with her when they both had free time.

At the same time, Rei pulled out an RS Hopper, just to see if it would follow her mental commands, and set it floating in place at her shoulder, ready to project its AT Field at a moment’s notice- autonomous defense, perfect for long range protection or boxing in enemies.

“Whoa- what is that!?”

Ah, yes. It had also gathered Reiju’s attention. Of course.

“An RS Hopper. Its function is to act as a remote extension of my AT Field, allowing me to project it from a distance and use it as a shield for others, or box in opponents without coming close and risk tainting my own AT Field,” Rei explained idly, poking the little jellyfish-like thing and noting somewhat awkwardly that, for some reason, it had a tiny… clone of her… inside. One that was… chibi-shaped. Adorable, but strange. And… saluting to her?

How odd.

“Coooooool…” Reiju gushed, staring at the piece of literal alien technology with starry eyes. “Can I play with it?”

“Later, after lunch.”

“Oh shit, right! Hotdogs! C’mon, we gotta go or they’re gonna run out!”

Chapter Text

Hotdogs were nice.

That was a fairly bland observation, but honestly Rei didn’t have a lot to observe when it came to food. While she wasn’t as repressed and full of emotion suppressing drugs and hormone regulators as the Ayanami series had been, she still didn’t particularly find anything… interesting about food in general.

The things she’d eaten and tasted over the last two weeks of her life had been nothing special, at the end of the day. Nutrients, calories, supplies for her body that were wholly unnecessary and, at times, actually were actively the wrong thing for her own body.

The AAA Wunder didn’t need gallons of crude oil to function, after all, and while the storage of said oil was fine, most of it had to be synthesized into the minute amounts of lubrication and coolant that she actually required. Frankly, Rei’s internal systems resembled that of a server bank more than that of a ship, and a living organism more than that. 

The organic material she consumed was far better for her systems than any amount of oil, though steel and bauxite were still a good source of nutrients for minor wear and tear on her internal mechanisms.

That said, one of the notes that Rei could make on her sociological research into the individual fiefdoms of Abyssal installations was that Hoppou preferred human food, and everyone in her installation did as well, accordingly. She had free reign of Unalaska’s landfill area, though while she had managed to set up an Abyssal processing plant there, the vast majority of its output was raw carbon that needed to be funneled through miles of other subsystems in order to produce anything useful- converting waste food into raw nutrients in order to generate planes and living infrastructure, making paper and wood pulp into scaffolding and construction material and the internal training manuals that every Shipgirl seemed to have, Abyssal or otherwise… Metal waste and electronics waste were melted down and processed into raw ingots as snacks and rations, plastic waste was either converted into necessary materials (not many, in Abyssals, due to a lack of plastic in WW2 era ships) or processed straight into long chain hydrocarbons…

Which…

Interestingly enough, had been in place long before Rei had even existed. Hoppou must have had help from some of the locals, perhaps, given how enamored they were with the little Princess. 

As it were. 

Sociologically, it seemed as though the people of Unalaska actually thought nothing of the Abyssals living near them- not even treating them as monsters in the slightest and taking their brief bouts of aggression in stride. How odd.

She had no clue how that had all come about, but… she did want to do some research into that. The main source of Hoppou’s human interaction seemed to be a librarian who came by every other day, sometimes bringing with her a number of things that had interesting implications. Coloring books, textbooks, workbooks, school supplies, stationery…

It was like she was trying to run an incredibly informal school.

Curious.

Rei, idly, wondered what the literacy rate among Abyssals actually was. Did some of them know how to read their native language? Did some of them know how to read at all? Every one of the Abyssals at Hoppou’s camp seemed at least capable of reading at a basic level, but Rei had no idea if that meant they were literate from the start, or had to learn it later.

There were so many questions about Abyssals, and Rei felt as though she understood Deputy Commander Akagi a little better- the woman’s boundless scientific curiosity had led her down dozens of rabbit holes over the years, and Rei seemed little better at this rate.

That said…

There were many other things that Rei would like to do while she had the time, now that she was so close to human civilization.

Reading new books. 

Talking to other humans.

Learning what McDonald’s tasted like because Hoppou seemed to like it despite not getting it very often.

Learning where exactly Hoppou managed to get her McDonald’s from because, again, the nearest McDonald’s to Unalaska was nearly thirteen hundred kilometers away in a straight line, and roughly two days sailing at a standard 15 knots cruising speed.

Did Hoppou leave the island to get McDonald’s?

Could she do that?

Harbour Princess had expressed discomfort at leaving her island, but Hoppou’s installation was far smaller than Harbour Princess’, even accounting for the fact that a solid chunk of the island had been turned into an Abyssal factory district that processed the island’s buried natural resources into usable metals and supplies.

The Sri Lanka installation simply outmassed the Unalaska installation by several orders of magnitude, that way.

Which might have been a contributing factor?

Rei, idly, kicked herself internally for not asking when she had the chance. Then again, she could just ask Harbour Princess now- she could send a message back to the Sri Lanka installation without an issue, after all…

Hm. Well, that was easy enough. Congratulations to her past self for having the foresight to set up that communications tower.

R-Wunder: Wanko-hime. Are you incapable of leaving Sri Lanka due to your Installation’s mass? You expressed discomfort the one time it was brought up.

Harbour-Hime: yes stop bigger installation means harder to move mass around stop past a certain size it becomes almost impossible to sail without moving the entire island stop i am locked to sri lanka unless i leave all rigging behind stop leaving rigging behind is too risky and leaves me completely defenseless stop

Harbour-Hime: how do you do punctuation marks stop

Harbour-Hime: how do you make capital letters stop

…

It suddenly occurred to Rei that maybe she should have spent longer making sure that Harbour Princess could actually use a keyboard and text properly instead of just handing over the enlarged computer and calling it a day.

Tsk.

With the rate that the Princess’ messages came through, it was also likely that she was using the hunt and peck method of typing and had no idea what a shift key was.

Right. Things to correct at a later date. 

So, that meant that if Hoppou was to leave the island, she would have to either demanifest her rigging, or leave a chunk of it behind. Rei, idly, pondered the idea of simply having someone bring Hoppou McDonald’s, and shook that idea off as rather unfeasible.

For one, it required someone to actually go to Anchorage Alaska, buy McDonald’s, and somehow keep it at a warm and relatively fresh temperature for the trip back. For most Abyssals, their general cruising speed was about fifteen knots for maximum distance covered for the fuel cost, which meant that a round trip from Unalaska to Anchorage and back would take approximately four days. McDonald’s was not the kind of food that kept for two days of sea travel, and while a top speed of thirty or forty knots would cut that travel time down to far less… it was still a day’s worth of travel time.

There was, according to Google, a two and a half hour flight time between Anchorage and Unalaska, but…

…

Could Hoppou use a plane?

Did Hoppou have any compunctions against flying?

Reiju hated flying, but maybe that was just how Rei carried her?

…

Did…

Did Hoppou just take a plane from Unalaska to Anchorage for McDonald’s? Is that what happened?

…

And now Rei was wondering about the logistics of having to charter a plane for however many Abyssals it took to satisfy the town’s cravings for McDonald’s.

Twenty Re’s, ten Ra’s, a scattering of other classes… somewhere over a hundred total, including the nonhumanoid ships, and a fair amount of lesser vessels aside from that.

The local airport only had three companies working there, and of the three, only two went to Anchorage but one was currently suspended due to bankruptcy. Aleutian Airways only had five planes in its fleet which meant using either one of its four Saab 2000s or its one ATR 42-600, the former of which sat somewhere between fifty to fifty eight passengers, the other which sat only forty two, mostly.

Each ticket from Anchorage to Unalaska was… well, surprisingly expensive, considering the low demand, which meant that regular trips would be pretty much impossible if chartered normally…

Just shy of fourteen hundred USD per round trip per person per McDonald’s trip, plus the price of feeding that many Abyssals, all of whom ate roughly one and a half times to twice as much as an average human…

… 

The numbers didn’t add up, and Rei had no clue where the money was coming from. Did it come from the people living on the island? Were they taking the flights for free? And all of that was precluded by the fact that Rei didn’t even know if anyone was taking flights from Unalaska to Anchorage.

Rei sighed, shaking her head and forcing that line of thought out of the way. Clearly, there were better things to utilize the MAGI on than calculating exactly how much cashflow it took to feed over a hundred Abyssals with fast food. 

…

…

Wait, where did Unalaska get its food from anyway? There was a Safeway on the island, which clearly meant food imports, which meant…

“Reiju,” Rei asked, looking to her companion and stopping in the middle of…

Whatever it was they were doing.

Something involving standing in the water. Were they fishing? That explained the fishing pole. Why they were fishing at night was beyond Rei’s comprehension, but she supposed there were nocturnal fish anyway.

“Yeah, what’s up? You’ve been really quiet for a while, thought you were just thinkin’ real hard,” Reiju answered, idly dropping some kind of fairly large fish into an oil drum with the top cut off by her side. “Think any good thoughts? Must be since you actually ate dinner without saying something about not needing food for once.”

“I was attempting to calculate the costs of feeding the installation,” Rei spoke quietly, staring up at the bright, bright stars and letting herself get lost in the natural beauty of such a wilderness filled place, so far from a big city or the light of urban areas. “And then I attempted to figure out where the island’s food imports come from. I came to the conclusion that there must be cargo ships coming in with relative frequency, and I wished to ask you if you knew.”

Reiju blinked, crimson eyes glowing in the dark. “Huh? Oh yeah, Hoppou-chan-hime makes us protect all the cargo in our lil’ slice of the area. Make sure no one else gets it. We get a bunch’a free stuff, everyone’s happy, and the big ol’ corporate fleets turn a blind eye to us takin’ a container or two when we want it. Stuff falls off ships all the time, y’know? Usually in stormy water, but hey, no one’s sayin’ no if we grab it when it docks, yeah?”

Rei nodded. “I see. It is much more cost effective than hiring armed escorts in this area, especially when there is a hotspot of activity further west.”

“Mhmm!” Reiju nodded, then seemed to slump a little. “... Also there’s like, two traitor Shipgirls who come by every now and again. I do not like them.”

Rei blinked. “... Why do they-”

“They’re under orders from the US Navy to keep an eye on us, and they keep grabbing Hoppou-chan-hime and throwing her around like she’s a human baby!” Reiju interrupted, kicking at the water with enough force that it splashed as if moved by something far larger. “They’re weird and it’s gross that they look so much like humans and I hate that like five of those traitorous jerks are strong enough that they can kill dozens of us without breaking a sweat, and I hate that they treat Hoppou-chan-hime and Georgie-hime and Georgia-hime like innocent babies and then treat us like we’re half a second from eating them even though they’ve seen us act normal!”

Rei furrowed her brow slightly, frowning. “They do not seem to be very intelligent if they cannot trust themselves with you when they have the favor of your Princess. Also, who is Georgia-hime? I am aware that Georgie is the nickname for Northern Little Sister, but I am unfamiliar with Georgia.”

Reiju huffed, shaking herself out of her sudden burst of anger. “Oh, right. Georgia is the New Submarine Princess and she’s Georgie’s best friend. Also nemesis. They like that they have similar names, but they hate each other because sometimes they get mistaken for one another on the global Princess network.”

“... I see.” Rei did not, in fact, see. Mostly the latter bit, because she had no idea what a global Princess network was.

“No you don’t, I’ve seen that look on your face before.”

?

“Yeah, that one,” Reiju chuckled, poking Rei right on the tip of her nose. “The one that looks exactly like all your other looks, except you’re like, just a lil confused. It’s adorable. You could sell a plushie with that expression. “Yeah apparently all Princesses basically have a global communication network? It’s some kind of eldritch magic thing that lets them talk to each other, make plans, tune out anyone who’s gone slavering mad with anger, you know how it is. It’s like Discord, but with stormclouds and magic rituals and stuff.”

“... Interesting.”

How come Harbour Princess hadn’t mentioned that?

How odd.

That bore further investigation, as did the mention of two Shipgirls making regular contact with an Abyssal installation.

Curiouser and curiouser…

…

Rei, idly, sent a prayer to whatever god that was out there for the wealth of websites that published full books as free PDFs. So much more convenient for reading on the go, even if she still preferred the physical sensation of turning a page.

Now.

… How to make contact with those Shipgirls?

Chapter Text

“Hoppouuuuuuuu! Aloha! It’s so good to see you again, my baby!”

Ah, so that was how Rei made contact with the USN’s Shipgirls. By watching one of them sprint out of a private jet, all but tackle Hoppou, and spin her around like she was a regular human child instead of the manifestation of both an Aviation Battleship and also an entire Abyssal installation that had eaten most of the island of Unalaska.

Also, there were… a few Navy personnel offloading what looked like an entire buffet table of McDonald’s from the cargo bay of said jet, all kept warm via what appeared to be battery powered heat lamps.

Rei, in the back of her mind, began running a small algorithm to see if she could calculate how much it cost the Navy to charter a private jet to, however regularly, bring enough McDonald’s to a remote island just to appease a pack of snarling, feral Abyssals who descended upon said table like a feeding frenzy of piranhas.

“Honolulu-oba-san! Put me down!” Hoppou protested, squirming in the now named Honolulu’s arms and flailing her arms and legs as if she was actually trying to escape. It didn’t really do much, though, and the lack of rigging on either end meant that neither of them was actually trying to bring their full strength to bear. 

Fortunate indeed, because Rei was almost certain that the tarmac would not survive if both girls actually threw their considerable horsepower behind their movements.

…

Was it just her or did Honolulu actually have a particularly low displacement weight compared to Hoppou’s nearly forty thousand long tons? Almost a quarter of the weight- this woman was clearly not a battleship, or she’d be much larger.

Rei didn’t pay much mind to Hoppou’s and Honolulu’s interactions, though she did note that Honolulu seemed a bit disturbed by actually being near so many Abyssal girls- even with their rigging stowed and their usual aura of negative emotions and general hatred suppressed, they made for a terrifying sight. Almost ghoulish, in a way- pale and drawn, some of whom were slavering and drooling as they shoveled ungodly amounts of salt and carbs down their throats.

The darkness clung to them, centuries of human hatred and negativity distilled into a bunch of feral weirdos eating McDonald’s like it was the best thing they’d ever tasted.

Considering that the average Abyssal diet consisted of mostly raw fish, strangely not revolting fuel oil, and copious quantities of steel and bauxite, it was no surprise that they treated the regular treats of processed American junk like a special occasion- some of them even dressed up in nicer outfits, just to get them dirty with all sorts of condiments and mess.

These were the people that she had chosen to live among, truly.

Regardless, as Rei kept an eye on the entire affair (and, at one point, spotted Reiju power bombing one of her sisters for daring to steal a fry), she continued to log internal notes about Honolulu’s behavior, and gleaned a few details that were strikingly pertinent for this… visitation, of sorts.

For one, her assumptions had been correct- a simple search of Wikipedia revealed that USS Honolulu (CL-48) was, in fact, a light cruiser, and not anything near a battleship. Just shy of ten thousand long tons in standard displacement, with a maximum weight of twelve thousand long tons. One hundred thousand shaft horsepower from eight steam boilers going into four turbines with four screws, leading to a top speed of almost thirty three knots. An original complement of almost nine hundred officers and enlisted, a decent amount of armor and a fair amount of firepower, appropriate for her ship class, and overall…

Rei didn’t want to say that she was in any way unimpressive, but, well.

Honolulu seemed a bit… light for someone who was apparently an envoy to a whole installation’s worth of Abyssals. Rei would have expected at least a battleship, if not multiple. Maybe four or five? 

Not that Rei knew anything of standard naval combat doctrine or deployments. Wikipedia only led her so far without knowing exactly what to search for, and frankly she didn’t actually have much of an interest in digging too deep into such things.

She would much rather do more interesting and useful things, like keep an eye on the stock market, or watch videos of cats on Youtube. Or read farming guides. Why she was so obsessed with learning farming now must have been a holdover from the last truly alive Ayanami to exist in her original timeline. The others had been little more than dolls- as effective as clones of Rei Ayanami as they would have been as just brains and eyes and spines suspended in LCL. The belatedly named Ayanami had actually been a person, and that had knock on effects, apparently.

For two, back in the realm of actual observations, Honolulu was… well. As stated earlier, she seemed uncomfortable around the lesser Abyssals, even while she held onto Hoppou like a lifeline. Where that disparity in behavior came from, Rei had no idea. Perhaps a bad experience in another theater? Regardless of its source, it manifested as occasional frantic looks towards the other Abyssals on the tarmac, all of whom were still enthralled by their halfway inexhaustible supply of greasy fast food. 

Rei, idly, felt like she half remembered Misato’s preference in fast food including the much superior MOS Burger.

Anyway. Alongside those frantic looks were a few glares at some of the classes in particular. Dirty looks towards submarines, a flinch when near a battleship, hitched breathing when faced by a Wo in particular.

Perhaps it was trauma, perhaps it was stereotyping, perhaps it was some other third thing. Its effects were that, even while Honolulu treated Hoppou like a baby and happily fed her fries and chicken nuggets and played alongside her with Happy Meal toys, she felt… almost duplicitous for all her fairly… open and enthusiastic, simple behavior.

A happy go lucky girl who was, despite that, unable to truly see other Abyssals as normal people.

… Or, well. People.

Normal was not what she would call even the most sane of Abyssals, and Reiju was certifiably insane if her urge to drive cars straight into brick walls for an expensive laugh was any indication.

Rei wasn’t entirely sure if she trusted Honolulu, honestly, but she couldn’t really say whether or not it was a normal occurrence for Shipgirls to be wary about even friendly Abyssals.

Who were now attempting to wrestle all twenty of their Re-class sisters to the ground in an attempt to stop them from commandeering the nearest vehicles and playing bumper cars with them. Baggage trucks were not meant to withstand those kinds of stresses. Nor was the singular Honda Civic parked two hundred meters away.

“Oh, who’s this?”

Ah, she’d been spotted. Not difficult, considering that she had been standing off to the side the entire time, and had only really walked over to the buffet table to grab one of the singular remaining McDoubles and a small packet of fries. Plus drink. All of which she had eaten already, and deemed… acceptable, if a bit cold due to the weather. Even Hoppou’s localized weather control couldn’t really manage to keep out all of the chill of the Alaskan winter, even if she at least kept it nice and… sort of sunny. In that the sun could actually show up if it deigned to rise above the horizon for longer than seven hours at a time.

“I am Rei,” Rei answered as she always did, looking over at Honolulu as the exuberant blonde walked over, having finally handed Hoppou over to a rather motherly looking Wo-class that, if Rei remembered right, was named Gou. For some reason.

Probably because she was the fifth Wo in the fleet.

“Well, Aloha, Rei! You’re…” Honolulu paused, looking at Rei somewhat awkwardly. “... Are you… like… a Princess…? Or are you like… something else?”

“I am Rei,” Rei answered once more, not really seeing the point in specifying what she was. Even she wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with her own body. “I have been referred to as Flying Fortress Princess, though I do not think that term is accurate, as I am defined in blueprint as a flying battleship instead.”

Honolulu blinked. “... come again?”

“I am a flying battleship originally known as the AAA Wunder,” Rei clarified, revealing her rigging and letting it settle around her hips and back. Four guns pointed forward, one to the rear, with a massive pair of bird-like wings standing in for the Wunder’s more rigid true wings. “I believe that I have come from another timeline and possibly another world, though I am unclear as to the specifics of what has changed. My searches through Wikipedia lead me to believe that this world is completely different from my own, though. At least up to a certain point of divergence.”

“... What- wait, wha?” Honolulu… didn’t seem to know how to react to that, just staring blankly at Rei. “... What do you mean you’re from another timeline? God, what? Are you sure you’re not just like… halfway delusional or something? I know a couple girls have rumors about the same thing but I’m pretty sure that’s not possible!”

“I am fully aware of how absurd the notion may be, however I am also possessed of abilities and construction found nowhere on this planet, and am fully capable of utilizing metaphysical science in ways that most cannot comprehend,” Rei spoke easily, generating her AT Field and pressing it up against the…

Oh.

That was interesting…

“Wh- what the fuck…?” Honolulu mumbled, reeling back slightly as a giant field of rippling, iridescent octagons sprung into existence in front of her- clashing against her soul shield and drawing forth a shower of sparks that usually meant she was under heavy fire. Except, in this case, this wasn’t the dawning horror of realizing that her shield was going to go down in a few hits and she’d sink. This was the slow, uncomfortable realization that Rei’s weird forcefield was eroding a hole in her shield. “What are you doing!?”

“I am demonstrating my AT Field. It is typically not visible until it encounters an opposing force, either in terms of an attack, a projectile, or a physical barrier that prevents it from extending further,” Rei replied, letting her AT Field cut out after a moment and vanish again- fortunately, in this case, without having put a hole through Honolulu’s shield. “I believe that suffices for a demonstration of my ability.”

“Y-yeah… you’re…” Honolulu trailed off, biting her lip. “... You’re definitely the weirdest Shipgirl I’ve ever seen. And… wait- what the hell is your rigging? You don’t even look like a ship! And you have wings!? Why!?”

“I am flight capable. I am, also, primarily designed to be a flying battleship theoretically capable of committing deicide,” Rei flapped her wings slightly, then rose up into the air with a flare of her AT Field and a hum of a glowing halo generating above her. “I was never actually capable of committing deicide, as a matter of fact. I was, however, instrumental in averting the complete and total destruction of all life on Earth. By ejecting my spine to serve as a catalyst with which to cause a reality restructuring event.”

“....”

Honolulu, it must be said, was a pretty hard ship to stun into silence. She’d seen a lot, after all, and even a lot of the Sailwitches she’d fought in the last few years didn’t manage to pull out anything too crazy. Wild storms, ghosts, skeletons maybe, but nothing that interesting- nothing one couldn’t see in any standard fantasy RPG, that was. 

But what Rei had just said?

That was some bullshit. Not particularly traumatizing or scary, but the flat monotone, the things she said, and the matter of fact way they were said…

Well.

It was just kind of a lot to take in all at once.

And so she took a moment.

And then another.

And then a third.

And then she turned about face, pulled a cellphone out of her pocket, and started walking away. “I think I need to call someone about this, this is not in my paygrade-”

Chapter Text

Admiral Richardson of the US Navy was, all things considered, a pretty smart man.

He seemed serious, well adjusted, and surprisingly used to coordinating around a bunch of temperamental teenagers that were humanity’s pretty much only hope in the war against Abyssals.

He was also, as it turned out, the man responsible for preventing the wider world from finding out about Hoppou’s status with the rest of Alaska. Very specifically Alaska, it turned out. She still got attacked if she went anywhere too far south of US waters, and that was the reason why she’d had to turn back and flee northward through the Arctic passageway that the European Water Princess held open with nothing but sheer will.

He was also just as nonplussed with Rei’s entire story as Honolulu was, only moreso because Rei went into far more detail about it.

Impacts, Lances, Evangelions, Angels, Moons, Dead Sea Scrolls, SEELE, NERV, GEHIRN, WILLE…

The Ikari family, the Ayanami Series, the Shikinami Series, Mari Illustrious Makinami’s general existence…

Tokyo-3, Pen-Pen, Ritsuko Akagi’s myriad of mental health issues, Misato Katsuragi’s existence, Kaworu Nagisa…

The timeline was long and stretched both forward and backwards in time, starting with the landing of the White Moon in what would become Antarctica, and then the Black Moon, and then all of human history, plus the notable events that SEELE had interfered with- the millennia old near immortals having fiddled with the course of events bit by bit to ensure their perfect utopia came to pass for them and their delusions of godhood.

Rei had gone over things like the function of each Lance in particular- how the Lance of Longinus was used to pin Adam and force it into dormancy, and another had been used to keep Lilith pinned to a cross. How the Spear of Cassius was used to stop Impacts, and how both Lances used together with the right catalyst could revert the world to how it was before Near Third Impact. How Gendo had turned Lilith’s Black Moon into another pair of Lances- yet another Lance of Longinus, and a Spear of Cassius. How the Spear of Gaius was the Spear of WILLE, the combined Will of all humanity to contrast Cassius’ Hope and Longinus’ Despair. How the second Longinus and Cassius were used to create the Additional Impact once the original two spears had been spent almost causing a Fourth Impact. How the Additional Impact opened the Doors to the Chamber of Guf, the empty space from which all souls came. How that empty space led straight into the Minus Space, a parallel and separate realm where the gods dwelled and where physical laws did not apply.

How that Minus Space was where the Golgotha Object and Evangelion Imaginary existed, and that human senses were incapable of perceiving Evangelion Imaginary with their senses, so they could only see it as their own imaginations and memories. How only humans, capable of perceiving that which was both real and imaginary, were capable of seeing the deific being at all. How Minus Space pulled images from one’s memories to construct its false reality.

How Evangelion Imaginary had, upon manifesting in the real world, become a giant naked Rei.

Everyone in the room at that point had looked pointedly away from Rei’s nearly literally vacuum sealed plugsuit, which left very little of her body shape to the imagination.

Rei, meanwhile, had just sniffed the collar of her jacket (well, Misato’s) and realized that she had not actually bathed nor appreciably cleaned herself in roughly two and a half weeks since coming into existence. 

It hadn’t been particularly important, but she had set a reminder to herself to find the nearest japanese style bath house for the sake of enjoying a dip in the ofuro.

Regardless.

After that hiccup, she also explained, as best as she could, the plans that all of the shady strange men (and women) had in store for her version of humanity.

SEELE, the group of old immortals, wanted to start the Human Instrumentality Project- an event which would kill all life on Earth, allowing for beings born with the Fruit of Life to exist. Seeing as the Fruit of Life referred to S2 Engines, that would have resulted in an Earth utterly alien to all notions of its original form of life, in which all things were Angels, and nothing remained of the Lilin. 

SEELE was, incidentally, likely a bunch of degenerated Angels stuck inside a bunch of extremely ominous monoliths.

Rei had no method of confirming nor denying, seeing as they did not exist in this timeline and she did not have access to Ikari Gendo’s memories.

Ikari Gendo, meanwhile, had wanted to use Human Instrumentality to create a world where all life on Earth existed as one singular immortal super-lifeform, a god in the primordial soup, a web of instant understanding and connection for all life, where no one would ever be unhappy or alone or overwhelmed ever again. Where he could reunite with his wife, Ikari Yui.

Nagisa Kaworu, on the third hand, was a startlingly homosexual Angel who wanted alternately to have a beautiful romance with Ikari Shinji, and/or save him from the horrendous Curse of Evangelion that left all involved with such things as bitter, ruined wrecks in the wake of humanity’s near destruction. To that end, he looped through time endlessly, with different variations of the same timeline stretching into infinity as he futilely tried again and again to bring happiness to Shinji.

Someone had muttered something about magical girls at that, but Rei had no idea what that referred to, and resolved to research it later.

Commander Katsuragi of WILLE, on the fourth hand, was trying to stop Gendo and SEELE and fix the planet, trying to revert it to a biological state similar to or nearly identical to how it was before Second Impact.

Of all of the overwhelming, overarching plans in the entirety of this clusterfuck of a timeline, WILLE’s was the only one with a shred of sense, seeing as they also funded KREDIT, a humanitarian organization dedicated to making sure the survivors of Near Third Impact had access to food, medicine, a few luxury items every now and then, general utilities, and the ability to live in a world not made entirely of Core crystal and prowling with headless monstrosities that resembled homogenous red Evangelions.

Everyone seemed more than a little disturbed at the pictures she showed of Tokyo-3 and its endless macabre parade of inert Failures of Infinity, and were even more disturbed by the fact that there were so many of them that they not only had to be dug through like a layer of earth, but that they could activate and be turned into a hurricane of flailing bodies moving through the air like the world’s most horrifically surreal… something.

There really weren’t any words to describe the videos Rei projected, taken from the Wunder’s sensor arrays and cameras during WILLE’s mad dash to try and avert Additional Impact.

At one point, one of the other Admirals had to sit back and ask, to the entire room, if he was on drugs.

There had been a general agreement, because really, nothing could have prepared them not just for a storm of flailing Failures of Infinity, but all of the mass produced Evangelion Mark.07 units that had attempted to stymie Mari and Asuka’s attempts to assault the inverted pyramid that held the original Geofront pyramid.

Nothing had prepared them for the mass of Evangelion Mark.04A units with their stinger-like qualities and ability to shred through AT Fields, the Mark.04B Units with their nearly infinitely long metallic threads that could amplify and reflect light so powerfully that it passed right through an AT Field and struck a target directly for massive damage, the Mark.04C units with their grasping tendrils and pillars of disintegrating light to assault the Wunder while it had been underwater. 

At least one person had needed to leave the room upon seeing the veritable swarm of Evangelion Mark.44A units, each one taking the form of an Evangelion sized quadcopter with a false Lance of Longinus attached to its head. The goose stepping Evangelion Mark.44Bs and the accompanying Mark 4444C had drawn even more incredulity, though at least two people had made remarks about wanting such a powerful laser weapon for the Abyssal war effort.

Rei, quietly, did not mention that she could likely reverse engineer and construct all of those mass produced Evangelions if she had access to the right materials. The NERV archives that WILLE had stolen access to were frightfully dense and rich with information, much of it having been created by Doctor Akagi herself- either senior or junior, both had contributed to the overall nature of the mass produced Evangelion series.

She also did not mention that a more thorough examination of her own systems had revealed that her railgun turrets were fully capable of retracting… and could be swapped out for a total of six swivel mounted AT Field based high energy beam emitters, akin to those found on the NHG type Guardians of Guf Class NERV Battleships. Or in layman’s terms… Angel style beam cannons.

Once again, Rei had to ponder just why she had such an absurd amount of firepower when she had no intention of using literally any of it for any purpose whatsoever. 

Rei, also, had to ponder where one of her RS Hoppers had gone.

Had it just… floated away? The last thing she remembered doing with it was playing with Reiju, but when her attention had turned away, Rei had just assumed it would come back at some point… and it hadn’t yet.

Odd, but… not exactly the biggest issue. If she needed it, then it was likely with Reiju, and if it wasn’t, then she could probably find it by pinging its location anyway.

By the time Rei had finished explaining… just about all of the absolutely confusing twists and turns her old timeline had taken, all she had left to do was to lay out her demands for the Admirals in front of her, because that entire explanation about her past was just the preface to what she really wanted.

In this case, peace.

The opportunity to learn more about Shipgirls, seeing as she’d spent so much time with Abyssals already. She wouldn’t go right away- she wanted to learn more and do more here in Unalaska, obviously- but she wanted an open invitation to any Japanese Shipgirl base, and a promise that she wouldn’t get shot at on sight despite her Abyssal-like looks.

Peace was only a facet of it, of course, but she felt that she should do right by Hoppou, Georgie and Georgia (neither of whom she’d been able to meet yet), and Harbour Princess. Hoppou and Harbour Princess had been more than generous in allowing Rei to stay on their islands for as long as she pleased, and were eminently reasonable and fairly good-natured people. 

Rei wanted to learn how to be a person, and wanted the Abyssals she’d met to have the same chance- to be more than just violent war machines doomed to die a slow, painful, inevitable, unavoidable death one way or another. 

Rei also wanted to tour the world as Ayanami Rei had never been able to experience, and Katsuragi Misato had only managed a brief adolescence in before it was all ripped to shreds by Second Impact. She wanted to know what a Japan unmarred by nuclear resource wars and trillions of dollars of NERV military budget looked like. She wanted to know what it was like to live in a city that wasn’t just a cleverly disguised military installation meant to be the last line of defense for all of humanity’s lives.

She wanted to know what real ramen tasted like, drink real amazake, look at all of the vending machines selling the strangest and most unexpected things…

…

Well, when she put it like that, she sounded like she just wanted to be a tourist.

Was that so wrong? It wasn’t like she fit in anywhere in Japan, even if she was fluent with the language and the woman whose body she looked like had been Japanese by birth. This was an entirely new Japan from the one she lived in. So… why not see what was different?

It seemed like… fun. Something that she decided was worth living for.

And by the time her presentation wound down, her explanations had finished, and her audience had been left stunned by a retelling of events that would have probably required almost thirty years of personal growth, multiple animated series, several billion dollars worth of merchandising and promotional events, and at least four high budget, extremely visually stunning and surreal animated movies…

Admiral Richardson, the only one who was actually physically in the same room as her, had only one thing to say:

“Y’know… I think I know a guy who looks just like that Shinji boy you keep talkin’ about. I can introduce you, if you like?”

“That would be appreciated. Thank you very much.”

“Hey, you’re welcome. Just… never explain anything related to… all of that ever again? Not near me at least. Think I aged thirty years just hearing it…”

“Understood.”

“Thank god.”

Chapter Text

“Reiju?”

“Yeah, sup?”

“What is… Puella Magi Madoka Magica?”

Reiju froze, staring at Rei with wide, horrified eyes that spoke of old traumas and deep regret. She shook her head slowly, taking a slow, deep breath as she approached Rei and grabbed her friend by the shoulders. “Rei. Buddy. Pal. Friend. Awkward gay crush I’ve been desperately trying to ignore. How did you find out about Madoka?”

Rei blinked. “... You have a gay crush on me?”

“Not the point!” Reiju interjected, shaking Rei a little. “How did you find out about the forbidden Magical Girl show!? That name is blocked on all wifi networks across the entire island!”

“I attempted to search for a magical girl anime involving a character looping through time endlessly suffering for the one they love,” Rei answered. “Also, I do not use any of the wifi networks on the island. I hijack wifi via my AT Field mingling with radio signals bouncing through the atmosphere. Is there a problem?”

“Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not allowed within two hundred miles of Hoppou,” Reiju answered, shuddering and looking away. “We can’t let her get even a sniff of that show, because if she does, she’s going to cry. And if Hoppou-chan-hime starts crying, she’s going to start thrashing. And if our Princess starts thrashing, the cannons start shooting. And when Hoppou-chan-hime is in a mood, or emotionally compromised, those cannons start pointing at everything that moves.”

Rei blinked again. “... I see.”

Unlike her usual bland statements meant to fill the dead space of her lack of understanding, this time Rei did, in fact, understand exactly what Reiju was talking about. 

The occasional driving incident where a Re-class managed to get their hands on a sports car? Manageable.

The occasional incident where a Wo inevitably somehow got lost and nearly made it to the mainland in a place where she definitely wasn’t supposed to be? Readily dealt with.

Occasional swimmers at the local pool having to beat off a frisky submarine with a pool noodle because they got a little horny? Not encouraged, but still not terrible to deal with.

The Princess of the island leveling the one and only human settlement for miles around with enough cannon fire to turn all four thousand some residents- including her own forces- into flattened craters because she had an emotional breakdown after watching what was apparently the world’s most traumatizing magical girl show?

That would definitely make the US Navy sit up and start retaliating.

And if the US Navy tried to blow up Hoppou, then Georgie would get involved from her position roughly two hundred miles north.

And when Georgie inevitably came into conflict and needed help, Georgia would show up. And Georgia, despite being best friends and rivals with both Hoppou and Georgie- two of the possibly friendliest Abyssals on the planet- had absolutely no regard for human life beyond what Hoppou and Georgie asked her to have.

And Georgia was the New Submarine Princess. 

A wandering Abyssal Princess with an entire fleet of submarines at her disposal, each of them armed to the teeth and the vast majority of them fully willing to turn any human vessel they found into scrap on the ocean floor.

And if Georgia fell…

Harbour Princess would not.

Even from Sri Lanka, it was entirely possible for Harbour Princess to send a devastatingly large fleet to Unalaska via the sea ways she had access to, and could likely pick up more allies along the way. 

…

Ergo, Rei was better left off taking Reiju out to the middle of the ocean to satiate her curiosity just this once, instead of having to risk the thought of Hoppou finding out about Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

…

…

“... I still have not received an answer about the nature of your gay crush, though,” Rei spoke up again after running through that entire train of thought and deciding that, now that she had Reiju’s express disapproval for even daring to look up the show via Wikipedia, she should focus on something more important. 

“I am trying to ignore it,” Reiju grumbled, finally putting Rei down and huffing a little. “Also, has anyone ever told you you’re way heavier than you look even when you’re not even trying to be heavy?”

“I am currently made of one point four-”

“-million long tons blah blah blah. You’ve said it before and it’s really cool but it is so not the point,” Reiju groaned, throwing her head back dramatically and looking like she really would rather be somewhere else right now. “Uuuuuuuuggghhh… Look. Rei. Buddy. Pal. You’re like, my best friend. All the other Re’s are great, but they’re my siblings and they’re also too much like me for comfort. Also we’re all like almost identical so I’d like a best friend that isn’t just a carbon copy of me. Feels like narcissism otherwise- anyway. Look. Just. You’re like, a month old. I’m six. There’s kind of a weird age gap there and you’re like… way less worldly than I am. Even if you do get to have Wikipedia in your brain.”

“I feel I should interject that I have multiple sets of memories within my memory banks, and that the memories of those I have access to are far more worldly than either of us,” Rei pointed out dryly. 

“Okay, but they’re not you,” Reiju deadpanned, poking Rei right between her boobs. “You’re a month old. You act like you’re just as traumatized as the rest of us, but when it comes down to it, everything you know is academic at best, and barely there at worst. You need time to be a person, and you don’t need a weeaboo Re-class battleship bending you all outta shape on who or what you want outta life.”

She paused, then poked her own chest. “Besides. I’m pretty sure you’re more attracted to girls with bigger bits than me, and this bikini ain’t doing a lot to push up the girls, y’know?”

Rei blinked. “... I appreciate the female form in many ways. I cannot say I am attracted unilaterally to femininity, as I very much have a distinct set of physical features I am attracted to, but you are not disqualified just because you have small breasts.”

“... I guess that’s a confidence booster…” Reiju sighed, palming her face. She shook her head again, then rubbed the bridge of her nose in a way that was startlingly humanlike. “Do you even want to be in a relationship?”

“I desire closeness with other people,” Rei shrugged, a motion that she’d never done before and had only really done out of some half thought out mirroring of Reiju’s usual far more expressive motions. “Whether that closeness be from a platonic friendship or a romantic relationship is entirely up to you. I make no secret of being homosexual, and I have come to care for you very much during the entire scope of my existence. While it is true that my past experiences are nothing more than logged data and other people’s memories, a statistical, rigorous, and scientific analysis has suggested that you are, in many ways, a remarkably good option for a romantic partnership in many ways.”

Reiju blinked this time, staring at Rei in an utterly nonplussed manner. “... I- wha? Wait, what do you mean remarkably good? Am I being graded or something!?”

“In the most academic sense, yes,” Rei nodded, projecting a rough estimate of what a data log of every single relationship she’d ever experienced through her haze of memories looked like. It mostly formed a bunch of scattered data, but it also charged a surprising amount of positive and negative attributes in a partner. “As you can see, you scored highly across the board. Not the highest in some areas, but high enough that the lesser results are negligible when weighted by importance. While your regard for human life is fairly low, that is balanced out by a healthy respect for one’s peers and family, and a fondness for humanity as a whole. You are also kind, compassionate, and do not take advantage of vulnerable people.”

“... Wait- how would you even know that last part?” Reiju asked, furrowing her brow slightly. “Who would you have even asked?”

“Anecdotal evidence, as well as the data point that you did not attempt to take advantage over me,” Rei pointed out. “You did not give me a false view of the Abyssal war, and did your best to be honest for the entire time I have known you. You wear your feelings on your sleeve, and do not take affection for granted. While your antics are wild on occasion, you have been more than capable of holding yourself in restraint for the sake of others. You do not demand devotion or respect, but as the tenth of your siblings and as the most worldly, you are afforded it anyway by your peers. You are willing to go out of your comfort zone and learn new things, you have the ability to adapt to new and frightening situations and take joy in even the things that make you fear for your life-”

“Never throw me at a plane again,” Reiju deadpanned.

“Agreed,” Rei nodded, then continued on. “Furthermore, you have been a very good friend to me, and have introduced me to many things, places, and people I would not have otherwise known to try and meet. You have asked me to indulge in your hobbies, and have shown interest in mine. You have given me space to explore myself, and also helped me when my questions had no easily deducible answers. All of this to say that I am unsure what love feels like, but I desire to be close to you. As a friend, as a partner, or as something else. If you wish to make this friendship a romance, I have no objections to it.”

Reiju sniffled, then shuddered, trembled, and finally hid herself behind her sleeve as she lost her fight against her own emotions. “You- aww man, c’mon you can’t just say that… fuck- dammit. I’m gonna mess up my makeup! Dammit, Rei, y’can’t just…. Aaaaaaauuuugggghhh I’m cryin’ like such a girl!”

Rei stared somewhat impassively for a moment, then leaned forward and pulled Reiju into an awkward, but still genuine hug. “There there. It will be alright. You can let it all out.”

“Uuuuuuugggghhhh that shouldn’t woooooooooork!” Reiju continued moaning and groaning, burying her face in Rei’s shoulder and sobbing in a way that was part theatrics, part genuine, and also maybe was an excuse to smush herself against the taller girl’s boobs. They were very nice boobs, and Rei had been touching them enough to know how nice they were.

Every spare moment she could get alone, honestly. Not that she consciously thought about it, but she had been touching her own breasts.

And now Reiju was touching her as well.

And it was…

Nice.

Cozy.

Surprisingly warm despite the fact that Abyssals didn’t really have the same body temperature range as a human did.

It was nice. Comfortable. Something she could see herself doing for quite a long time, every day, and forever.

Was this what people meant when they said that their bodies fit together perfectly? Surely, it didn’t mean that their bodies actually fit together like puzzle pieces, but it surely meant that they were physically compatible in such a way that cuddling with each other was just… comfortable.

And it was.

And Rei was starting to understand why a certain Ikari Shinji a timeline and a half ago had wanted so much for positive attention and some kind- any kind of affection and love. She was starting to understand, just a little, the fear of rejection and the anxieties and depression that made said yearning so difficult to express- in a somewhat roundabout way considering her own emotions were still fairly odd and regulated, unlike the messy raw feelings of human souls.

It might have been both a benefit and a detriment in different ways, come to think of it.

But right now, Rei wasn’t thinking about that.

All she was thinking of was Reiju’s lips suddenly crashing into hers, and how much it just felt…

Nice.

It was nice.

It made her feel alive.

Human.

It made her feel…

“... I do not think I enjoy kissing, Reiju. The texture is unpleasant on my tongue and hard palate.”

“Oh- sorry. I haven’t had much practice…”

“Do not apologize. I believe the internet calls this an… autism behavior? I dislike the sensation, not the physical closeness to you.”

“Ohhhh… so… cuddles instead?”

“Cuddles, please.”

“Yay, cuddles!”

Chapter Text

“Are you sure you want to watch this?”

“Yes.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.”

“Once you start, you can back out at any point, I want you to know this.”

“You have stated as such five times within the last hour, and during our flight preparations.”

“It’s just- it’s kind of a lot. It ramps up really fast and it hits really hard and really suddenly and I don’t want you to freak out, okay?” Reiju sighed, rubbing the back of her head as she led Rei down the steps of the small plane they’d taken to Anchorage, hopping onto a private shuttle marked with the special logo of the US Navy’s Shipgirl division… which, upon closer inspection, appeared to be the logo of the USFFC, but with a Shipgirl silhouette instead of an eagle, and a different acronym. Oh, it was Fleetgirl command, so the sign read USFGC instead.

Interesting.

“I have the memories of several people who personally faced down Angels and monsters head to head in life or death combat. I have witnessed through their eyes multiple events that seemed like the literal end of the world,” Rei answered, wondering why exactly they needed to borrow a hotel room for this entire experience. Sure, cuddling in a nice bed with her now girlfriend was a benefit, but surely they could have just watched this anime at literally any point, right?

Why did it seem so important to Reiju that they be in a comfortable, quiet, isolated place far away from other people while viewing Puella Magi Madoka Magica?

Well, beyond the obvious of course. Hoppou finding out was the worst case scenario.

“Yeah, but you haven’t exactly gone through the same kind of emotional turmoil, and you literally told me the other day that your memories of the past are largely academic rather than being, y’know. Your own memories,” Reiju pointed out, enjoying the rather short ride to the nearest hotel, and then marveling at how nice everything was- the last time she’d been in the proximity of actual human civilization, the welcome hadn’t been anywhere near as nice!

Granted, that was the Panama Canal authorities shooting at them but still.

The US Navy didn’t usually try to accommodate them quite so well. Maybe it was Rei’s influence? Who knew, really.

“Reiju. I am a grown woman,” Rei stated plainly, the both of them continuing their conversation in hushed tones while they made their way through the lobby and towards the elevator to the penthouse, with Reiju oohing and aahing at the rich decorations that stank of… a rather half-hearted attempt at mimicking true aristocratic excess, meant for the eyes of people with just enough money to be stupid enough to waste it on a vacation they likely wouldn’t really enjoy all that much but would delude themselves into thinking they did. “Regardless of my lack of experience with intense emotions, I am fully capable of regulating myself and my responses no matter what I see on screen. This is a twelve episode anime totalling less than four hours total, two recap movies, and a sequel story. It is hardly a matter of life and death. I will be fine.”

“... Are you sure?” Reiju asked one final time, the elevator doors dinging quietly as they started moving. “Are you absolutely sure?”

Rei blinked. “Positi-”

“-Homura noooooo! You could have been happy! Don’t isolate yourself even mooooooore!”

Reiju sighed, holding Rei gently as the taller girl sobbed straight into the Re’s unfortunately modest chest, squirming and kicking her legs beneath the covers as the ending credits for Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion played on screen in the darkened room, the sounds of melancholic and yet upbeat circus themed music playing to the sound of Rei’s broken heart.

“She tried so hard! She tried so hard and it never got her anywhere!”

“There there, now you know what Madoka fans have been dealing with for the last decade-ish,” Reiju sighed again, wiping away her own tears and grumbling ever so slightly as she shifted their positions on the bed. “It’s okay, you’ll live, and there’s probably gonna be a sequel movie… eventually. Maybe. When the war stops, probably.”

She paused, thinking about the actual state of Japan right now, and how most of the South Pacific was… a pretty rough place to live now.

…

“... Actually, some of the Princesses out that way miiiight have screwed us out of that,” Reiju winced, her superstructure groaning slightly as Rei clung to her like a particularly determined barnacle. Or a squid. Or a constrictor snake. Or a noose. “Sorry-!”

“It’s not faaaaaaair!” Rei whined, her voice sounding entirely different without the lower chest throat-y voice of her usual monotone. Without it, she almost sounded… a bit like she came from the boonies. Just where that part of her accented inflection came from, Reiju had genuinely no idea, but it was adorable watching the single most powerful individual ship on the planet curl up in her lap and turn into a bawling mess because she watched a bunch of fictional fourteen year old girls handle their mental illnesses in the worst possible way.

…

Wait, shit, hadn’t Rei said something about her other self/the person she was based on having been a fourteen year old handling her mental illness in the worst possible way? Hadn’t all of the people relevant to her memories been like that?

…

What was it with Japan and traumatizing the fuck out of their junior high students? Weird.

“She deserved so much better than she haaaaaaaad! Everything she ever did was because she loved too much and it killed heeerrrr! Aaaauuuuuuugggghhhh I can’t believe I actually understand Kaworu nowwwwwww!”

… 

The more Reiju thought about her girlfriend, who was currently resting very snug in her arms despite her thrashing and impassioned sobs, the more she realized just how… weirdly out of character this was for Rei.

Like, what, Rei who normally spoke about literally everything with the same bland, disinterested, disaffected monotone now screaming and sobbing about how much she empathized with an anime character? The girl who normally talked like she swallowed a dictionary and every single Wikipedia article she’d ever read and who almost never used contractions or informal pronouns started screaming and using way more casual language in the midst of an emotional breakdown?

How strange.

Then again, she did say that she had the memories of a few different people stuck in her head. Maybe that was the reason why she was acting strange right now. 

…

Then again… there was that incident right after she’d learned that she was, in fact, a Shipgirl back on Sri Lanka, where she’d done an impression of a woman who Reiju only knew through what little Rei had said about her. A very chaotic, loud, alcohol fueled impression that required Rei slug back half a beer in one go to get the mouth noises and throat sounds right.

Reiju wouldn’t ever forget just how fucking absurd Commander Katsuragi Misato’s own behavior must have been if it got Rei acting like that in her own strange version of a memorial for a now long dead woman.

“Uuuuggghhhh…”

“You doing okay now?” Reiju spoke up finally, having held onto Rei like a rock in a storm for the last several minutes as the flying battleship woman had poured out all of her emotions into tears and random flailing and occasional pulses of her AT Field that might have fuzzed out a few bits of their surroundings in strange and eldritch ways, but ultimately didn’t do anything too weird. She stroked Rei’s hair gently, noting that it was just… so long- long enough to make her look like a submarine if she was careful with the black hair dye- and also really thick and fluffy, and yet somehow full of random kinks and curls that made it nigh impossible to brush without significant effort and also probably something that was actually rated for battleship hair.

Maybe the traitor Shipgirls had some of that going on.

Ahem.

“You feel any better after all that?” Reiju cleared her throat a bit, idly brushing the blankets back to expose the pajama clad form of her girlfriend (aaa!) just a little more. Rei had chosen a grayish white set with little kitty patterns on it. Reiju, of course, had gone with a very dark gray- almost black- with shark designs. Because sharks were fucking cool.

“I do.” Rei answered after a moment, taking a deep breath and smiling despite the tear tracks running down her face and smearing her makeup slightly despite the fact that she didn’t usually wear make up in the first place. That was Reiju’s fault, honestly. She had the opportunity to get Rei out of her plugsuit and into an actual bathtub and that had naturally turned into a bit of a makeover session with the both of them using their inhuman mechanical precision to do a bit of simple makeup application just for the fun of it. Ah, it seemed her voice had returned to normal- back to being quiet, almost whispery, and surprisingly deadpan. “It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and despite the emotional trauma of watching such a media property when I was not adequately prepared for how traumatic it would become, it was… fun. Thank you, Reiju, for not telling me that I was forbidden from searching for such knowledge.”

“Well, it’s not like I could stop you,” Reiju pointed out, poking Rei’s nose and giggling as she scrunched up her nose in response. “You’ve got unrestricted access to pretty much all of the internet on the planet. What’s a few blocked search engine terms gonna do for you, huh? Besides, it’s kinda a formative anime for a lot of people, not gonna lie. The trauma is kinda important in… some… arbitrary way.”

She paused, scratching her head. “I’ve got no idea why it’s important, I think it might just be because nerds on the internet get stupidly competitive for the dumbest of things and usually end up dickmeasuring everything from the amount of anime they watch all the way to how many traumatizing shows they’ve watched. Or so the forums imply, I guess.”

Rei blinked, tilting her head. “Forums?”

Reiju winced. “Ooh, you are not ready for that just yet. Do not go to anything even remotely related to social media, because it is a hole. Don’t look at anything but art on Twitter, avoid fandom specific forums, stay well away from user comments in creative writing specific forums, do not attempt to comment on tech forums unless you have a genuine issue, only use Reddit for porn and super specific questions from random subreddits, and never try to interact with anyone on Tumblr. Or Facebook, but both of those are weirdly enough both the same problem and yet exact opposites.”

Rei blinked a little more, a small, humorous little smile making its way onto her face as she realized how their positions had reversed. “I see. How humorous- this time you are the one lecturing me. Is this what I sound like to you?”

“Nah, you’re way cuter about it. I’m just trying to keep you safe on the internet,” Reiju huffed, nuzzling her forehead against Rei’s before kissing her chastely on the cheek. “Now c’mon. That’s enough of that silly talk. You don’t need to bother with any social media for a long, long time. Unless you suddenly become famous overnight, but that’s… different. So. How about we do something more fun instead while we’ve got this penthouse to ourselves, huh?”

Rei blinked slowly, tilting her head once more. “What kind of fun do you propose? I warn you, I have never had sex before, and the memories in my storage are woefully inadequate for this purpose.”

“Wh- no no! That’s way- I mean! It’s a little early for that don’t you think!?” Reiju blushed, shaking her head frantically and scrunching up a little. “I was just gonna suggest another anime! It’s a short one too! Or like, a movie? Do you wanna watch another movie? A happy one this time? Or… well, less traumatizing?”

Rei pursed her lips, thinking it over. “Very well. Another movie would be acceptable. I will order room service to tide us over for tonight. What movie is it?”

Reiju sat up, fiddling with the remote and the onscreen keyboard with a wide grin. “Oh you’re gonna love it! It’s a little thing called Spirited Away…”

Chapter Text

“Ah- Excuse me, Flying Fortress Princess?”

“Rei or Wunder is acceptable. What is it?”

“Mail from Admiral Richardson- about the person he was getting in contact with? We finally got a response now that Japan’s in a lull in conflict.”

“Excellent. Is the Admiral available now?” Rei asked the ensign who had hand delivered a parcel to her and Reiju’s hotel room- one containing a short note of correspondence confirming in long-form what the ensign had just said, and that she could meet with Admiral Richardson at any time within the next few days to finalize communications. To that end, there was also a pin within said parcel, one marked with the logo of the USFGC, plus a large block of text beneath the enameled logo reading “GUEST”. Ah, an identifying mark to make sure she wasn’t targeted on sight. Perfect. 

“Yes. He’s waiting for you already- do you need the car?” the ensign, whose name Rei tragically had not actually read off of her nametag, spoke, and made a deferential bow as she motioned down the hall- no doubt towards the private garage where she would be ferried to the base at hand. 

“Yes, that would be convenient,” Rei nodded, and so it was.

A short trip through Anchorage later, with Reiju at her side of course because obviously she wasn’t going to leave her romantic partner alone in their bedroom for possibly several hours depending on the contents of this particular meeting, Rei entered Admiral Richardson’s office while Reiju stayed outside, flanked by a small set of USN Shipgirls whose names currently escaped her at the moment.

Honolulu was one, obviously, but the only other she knew was Nevada, and the rest were… not generic looking, but had the presence and ability to pretty much fade into the background on short notice. It was remarkable how they did that- one look and it was as though they suddenly became a static piece of the background in an anime, a still frame played with a wide pan and a background audio track of crowd noises to keep the appearance of being alive.

Rei- that was, Ayanami Rei, had done the same back in school before the world ended and she dissolved into the Tenth Angel’s core.

“Admiral Richardson, I’ve arrived,” Rei spoke quietly, keeping her voice low and grounded despite projecting it to be heard.

“So you have,” said Admiral nodded as she closed the door behind her, motioning for her to sit down. Idly, Rei took note of the secretary ship standing behind and to the side of Admiral Richardson. She seemed… bored. As if she wasn’t part of this meeting at all. Rei had no idea what her name was, and it wasn’t written anywhere on her uniform, which was a bit of a problem for actually identifying her. 

She was blonde, as many American ships were, but beyond that and her prodigious chest… the only other identifying feature was an undercurrent of some emotion Rei had absolutely no idea how to classify.

Rei, it must be said, was not actually very good with emotions, and generally couldn’t identify anything more subtle than Reiju unless the intent was directly stated. She didn’t even know her own emotions half the time.

Still.

Entering the office properly instead of hovering around the doorway, Rei sat before the Admiral with her hands folded neatly in her lap, posture perfect and held with a stillness that was both natural and practiced, vague memories of another Rei sitting in nearly the same way dancing through her mind while she stared straight ahead. “Who exactly is it that you said you were going to contact, Admiral? The last time we spoke, you were rather reticent to say anything beyond knowing someone who apparently looked  exactly like the Ikari Shinji my other self once knew.”

“Mmm… yeah. That I did. Well, it took a bit to get in contact with hi- er, her, but that’s because Japan has been…” Admiral Richardson trailed off a little, looking to the side where a constantly updating digital map of the world’s Abyssal situation displayed on a wide screen taking up most of a wall in lieu of a set of windows. Notably, most of the South Pacific was splotched in red territories, with arrows and marks noting battles, future war plans, and intelligence gathered about Abyssal movements. Rei, idly, noted that there was a specific text box near Sri Lanka that detailed a sudden and concerning lack of hostility towards the mainland from Harbour Princess.

Rei, also, noted that some names showed up multiple times- each one tagged as a Princess belonging to a type of ship rather than a specific name. 

There was only one Harbour Princess, but there were apparently multiple Supply Depot Princesses, though only one was considered of any real note, and most of the rest were marked as neutral, neutralized, not a threat, or in one case, allied.

…

Rei wasn’t sure of the significance of why that specific isolated little island Princess had an icon of a Shipgirl next to hers, nor why the note said that Shipgirl was assigned to her permanently, but she assumed there was more than the board indicated.

“I see,” Rei spoke, and she did, in fact, see. Japan was getting hammered on nearly all sides from the Princesses to its north, south, and eastern coasts, with only the interior of its western coast being devoid of Abyssal threat. Some of them were even so close to the mainland that it was, genuinely, a surprise that the nation hadn’t fallen yet.

China was in a somewhat similar situation, with two Abyssals so close to the mainland that they were barely a stone’s throw away.

The Philippines were gone, as were the Solomon Islands, a solid chunk of Indonesia, and more than a little of the rest of the dozens to hundreds of islands in the southwest Pacific. And that to say nothing of Micronesia and Polynesia, much of which played host to some Abyssal force or another, making shipping lanes a near impossibility for far too much of the area.

Fortunate indeed that most Abyssals were unable to go too far inland unless they brought an expanding installation with them. It might have been the only thing keeping certain places from being completely brought under Abyssal heel.

“Yeah. Only now has there been enough of a lull in the Japanese front to get a message through- and we couldn’t even get a regular email through,” Admiral Richardson admitted, huffing a little. “Had to use the special satellite line to their military command, run a courier down to the naval base and then wait for a response. He paused, pursing his lips and sliding a note over the table to Rei. “Long story short, you’ve got free passage to the Sagami Bay Kanmusu Naval Training and Deployment base, and its associated air force base on the other side of the bay. Those are the coordinates and address.”

He paused, tapping the note before leaning back in his chair. “You’ve got a couple options, and there’s enough protected trade routes around the world that you can use a few sea lanes, but it’s best if you get there within the next week. You’re scheduled for any time within ten days from now, but I told ‘em to expect you anywhere from tomorrow to two weeks out, weather and conflict depending. Also told ‘em you might be bringing a guest, but whether or not you bring your ah…?”

“Reiju is my girlfriend,” Rei answered evenly, acknowledging the unasked question.

“Thank you. If you bring her, it’s at your discretion. I’d suggest you pack light… but I don’t think that’s a problem for you, huh?” Admiral Richardson chuckled a little at his own joke, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like the name of a ship.

Who or what was a Tenryuu, and why did Rei remind Admiral Richardson of what was presumably a Japanese ship? One who, according to her quick search on Wikipedia to confirm that Tenryuu was the name of a ship and Shipgirl, and according to her followup search on the Official Unofficial International Kanmusu Tracking Site (a combined fanclub/ship tracking website dedicated entirely to reviewing and logging S-AIS data from the Shipgirls retrofitted with said systems. Occasionally shortened to OUIKTS or just KTS) put her in… the Pitcairns?

… Where…

The map on the wall put…

A Supply Depot Princess. The singular allied Supply Depot Princess.

…

Interesting.

That certainly was… some kind of implication that Rei had just stumbled upon.

Intriguing, but not altogether important to her at the moment.

“I suppose I am fully capable of leaving within the next few hours, if Reiju finds it acceptable,” Rei stated idly, taking a look back towards the door while taking the note that the Admiral slid over. “Have you procured a badge for her to wear as well? I would not want her to be harmed just because the Shipgirls that we may encounter might get the wrong idea.”

“I’ve already drafted up something for her to wear- already had it rushed out on custom order,” Admiral Richardson, this time, pulled a box out from beneath the desk and placed it upon the table- just a simple thing of cardboard, nothing too fancy or large. Without preamble, he pulled the top off and allowed Rei to examine the contents, which in this case was…

A large raincoat in navy blue, with large text on the sleeves and back reading “Guest of the US Navy”, along with the USFGC logo.

It looked ridiculous, and Reiju would likely burn it the moment she could… but if this was what it took to make sure her girlfriend didn’t get shot… Rei would take it.

“Very well. She will not be happy about this, but we will both persevere," Rei sighed ever so quietly, bundling the raincoat in her arms and slipping it into her hold for the moment. “Is there anything else I need to know before I leave for Japan?”

“Not much, just a few packets,” Admiral Richardson answered, placing a few manila folders down before Rei.

He sure had a lot of stuff back there. Idly, Rei wondered what the insides of his desk drawers looked like, if he had all of this just ready to go.

“A briefing on the important staff at Sagami Bay- the Admiral there, her aides and other associated higher ranking staff. On site medical division, so on and so forth,” the Admiral continued, flipping through the folders somewhat absentmindedly to show a strikingly familiar set of faces, with exceedingly familiar names. “Plus something about the Admiral’s family situation, I think? I didn’t read through all of it- it’s mostly Japanese and I can’t read the language worth a damn, so you’ll have better luck than me. Pretty sure one of the girls said something about like… a bunch of identical sisters? Plus a mother with a dubious reputation in the scientific community,  but that’s none of my business and I’m pretty sure the only people who care in America are the damn CIA or FBI or some other three letter org. But it’s all in there. Plus a general deployment of ships- Sagami Bay’s a training area more than an actual solid base, so they rotate most of their fleet pretty frequently between commands…”

“I see.”

Rei, staring at the pictures in the dossiers before her, felt…

Strange.

Like she was seeing something that she’d previously thought was just a dream, but had become a shocking reality. The face of the boy her other self had once loved, now a grown… woman? 

Interesting.

A nearly identical face to her own, repeated multiple times. A dead ringer for the girl who once called herself another Rei’s rival. A girl with glasses and auburn hair and a catlike smile. A Captain noted for her “sloppy” personality. A head of medical staff who somehow specialized in treating Shipgirl mechabiology.

A man with a face identical to another that once ended the world.

A woman with a face nearly identical to Rei’s, save for coloration and age.

So on and so forth, it seemed as though the men and women that Rei had once lived with and known of as the AAA Wunder had found each other again- all coming together at the Sagami Bay Kanmusu Naval Training and Deployment Base, colloquially known to those at said base as Tokyo-3.

She snapped the folder shut with a resounding clap.

She made up her mind.

Time to go see if this really was a coincidence or not.

Chapter Text

“This suuuuuuuuuucks!”

“The coat or the flight?” Rei asked, idly checking her GPS and wondering why, for some godforsaken reason, she had chosen to take a secure commercial flight to Tokyo and then get chauffeured down to Sagami Bay like a human person. She could have been there by now, in only a few hours instead of the fifteen it took for a commercial flight- moreso, because commercial flights now were supposed to happen at higher altitudes to prevent Abyssal fighters from managing to reach them. They were also allowed to fly slightly faster… but by and large the only way to actually perform international flights over open water in the Pacific now was to keep to the very narrow lanes where it was almost guaranteed that some Shipgirls were patrolling for enemy contacts at all times.

At least the Navy had sprung for first class for both of them.

The seats were comfortable, the food was… better than what was being served in economy class, and there were unlimited drinks and a first class exclusive bathroom.

Which was about the same as an economy class bathroom. It did, however, smell nicer.

“The coat, duh!” Reiju huffed, holding up the offending article of clothing with a growly huff. “Plus all that stupid TSA bullshit we had to go through! Honestly, if it wasn’t for the Navy guys stepping in, I’m pretty sure those greasy ass monkeys were gonna try and shove their fingers where they don’t belong!”

“The security measures are rather overblown and stringent… though I had not, I suppose, factored into account that both of us would set off the metal detectors. And the hazardous material detectors. And the bomb detectors. And draw the attention of the sniffer dogs… and be unable to be searched via the millimeter wave scanners,” Rei sighed, rubbing her forehead and grumbling a little. “Why the TSA harassed us so when we were being chaperoned by US Navy agents the entire time and had clear USFGC logos on our clothes is a mystery.”

“If the things I’ve read on Reddit are true…” Reiju paused, shuddering a little. “Also never go on Reddit. I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again. Don’t go on Reddit. Anyway. If the things I’ve read there are true, it’s because the TSA knows they’re useless and terrible so they keep fearmongering and lobbying to make sure they can have as much funding and power as possible so they can keep abusing that power too. Tch. Typical humans. Freakin’ jerks.”

“Mm,” Rei nodded, acquiescing Reiju’s point. Not the hatred against humans, but the likelihood of the TSA actually being useless. “Well. We are in the air now. I suppose the flight accommodations make this slightly better…”

“I mean, we get free movies,” Reiju hummed, idly poking at the screen she had in front of her and kicking her feet. “Still kinda sucks way more than your flying, though. I mean, it’s kinda… meh?”

She shrugged, leaning back in her chair. “I mean, you holding me in your AT Field was way comfier than this. Plus the theater experience was better, and we didn’t have to deal with any other stinky humans, and we didn’t have to be in a cramped, awful tube for fifteen hours…”

“The Navy did consider sending us via some kind of military aircraft, but I declined on grounds that I had thought commercial air travel seemed fun,” Rei sighed, reaching across the arm rest and taking Reiju’s hand in her own. “I was rather mistaken about that. This entire experience reeks of false luxury. A private jet would have been more interesting. Though, I must wonder why you complained about the TSA so much when you occasionally make trips to Anchorage?”

“Because that airline lets us ignore that cuz there’s like a million friggin’ Navy dudes watching us at all times when we go over, duh,” Reiju huffed, rolling her eyes. “I’ll take two or three Navy guys calling me ma’am and asking me to have a good day instead’a Paul Blart askin’ me to step outta line for a cavity search. Racist jerk…”

“To be completely and utterly fair…” Rei cleared her throat a bit, summoning the smallest portion of her rigging that she could. “... We are armed. Rather heavily, in fact. Enough to turn the entire airport into rubble within minutes if we wanted. Seconds if I was involved in firing as well.”

Reiju huffed. “Still mean. Besides, if I was gonna do some kinda terror attack, I wouldn’t be getting on a plane to do it. That’s dumb! Long range shelling a government building, that’s where it’s at. Swim up an unguarded river access onto dry land, make my way into the interior of a country, sneak up on the capital… then boom! Double twin twelve point five inchers to the capital building! Boom! Sixteen to the parliament! Kablam! Dive bombers and torpedoes!”

She waved her arms a little, only barely keeping her volume at an acceptable level so they wouldn’t get too many odd looks…

Though the flight attendant delivering Rei’s miniature bottle of tea and Reiju’s can of coke looked rather ashen and pale now. Oops.

“... What would the torpedoes even hit?” Rei asked, looking at Reiju somewhat oddly as she cracked open her tea and…

Very firmly twisted the cap back on after a single sip.

Ew.

Cheap watered down grossness. Disgusting.

“I dunno, but I’d just yank ‘em outta the tube and chuck ‘em and it’d prolly work just fine,” Reiju shrugged, manifesting her tail with some difficulty due to the first class booth not really being built for that kind of body part. Fortunately, it was roomy enough that she could actually move it into a more comfortable position, and she motioned at the torpedo tube beneath the tail’s mouth for emphasis. “See? Easy to just yank one out and huck it, and it’s just as good an idea as actually launching one against a stationary target. Duh.”

“I see,” Rei mumbled, then paused and tilted her head. “Ah. I have neglected to send Harbour Princess an update. One moment please.”

“Eh- wait, really? I thought you were chatting with mom all the time, though?” Reiju mumbled, furrowing her brow at her girlfriend and looking really confused about how she’d forgotten to actually send updates to the person that was specifically asking for them.

“We spent too long watching anime. My only solace is that I was able to place a streamlined transponder on Unalaska before we left,” Rei sighed, grumbling a little. “Good thing Hoppou knows how to use an iPad…”

“Yeeeaaahhh… still haven’t forgiven Marushi for teaching her that… good thing she likes running around outside too much to be an iPad kid…” Reiju shuddered, looking out of the window and sticking out her tongue.

“Mm.”

Rei did not mention that she did not know what an iPad kid was, but she could infer from context, at least.

Anyway.

R-Wunder: Princess. Reiju and I have left Hoppou’s installation and are heading to Japan now, where we will make contact with the Shipgirl base there.

R-Wunder: As per your question about whether Shipgirls will accept Abyssals, I believe it will be possible. There are already several in the Alaska area that treat Hoppou as a favored family member, and the humans living with Hoppou’s fleet seem to think of them as simply another community of locals, as is the same with Georgie’s fleet. Georgia is less welcome, if only because she appears less often.

Harbour-Hime: that’s amazing! thank you for helping me figure out how to use this keyboard by the way, i cannot thank you enough. it is still difficult to type but i think i am getting the hang of it!

Harbour-Hime: wait. what do you mean hoppou lives with humans?

Harbour-Hime: and she has the favor of traitor Kanmusu as well?

R-Wunder: Yes. Hoppou’s installation has close relations and ties to the people of Unalaska, and Georgie is much the same when she visits. I have not received word on if the people on Georgie’s islands care for  her, but I am also not entirely sure if her islands are inhabited in the first place.

R-Wunder: As it were. I am continuing to make contact with more Shipgirls, in the hopes of gathering a wider data set and perhaps turning more humans to the idea of a lasting peace.

R-Wunder: I can only hope more Abyssals will want to find peace as well.

Harbour-Hime: i as well… i could place a missive to some of the supply depot princesses scattered about… most of them are rather neutral to humans, and only attack if their supplies are threatened.

Harbour-Hime: though, some of the other princesses are… quite adamant in their hatred for humanity. i don’t think i can fix that without sinking them until they come to their senses.

Harbour-Hime: i am not strong enough to do that with all of them.

R-Wunder: If necessary, I will assist.

Harbour-Hime: you shouldn’t have to. please be safe. you are not one of mine by summoning or trading, but i think of you as a valued ally all the same. don’t push yourself too hard just for me.

R-Wunder: I will not. Thank you. 

…

And that said…

Rei leaned back and closed her eyes, leaning against Reiju softly as she queued up the same movie as her girlfriend, sliding on her headphones and just letting the sounds of a shared movie experience lull her into a quiet, deep slumber…

…

…

…

“Psst, Rei, wake up. We’re here!”

“Mnnn…?” Rei awoke slowly- not groggily or painfully, but slowly, as if her brain was a computer spooling up after being put to sleep.

Which it was.

Because she was a battleship and also filled with computers.

Her systems spooled up one by one, screens flickering back to life in the metaphorical space of her body while her vital systems shifted from a skeleton crew to full vitality.

Idly, after a solid few seconds of wondering why the repeated clicks and clunks of large relays was so satisfying, she opened her eyes. 

Probably because it was the sounds of her own body waking up fully.

“We’re here!” Reiju repeated, poking Rei as the… car… they were in…? Wait when did- the last thing Rei remembered was falling asleep while Reiju watched Shin Godzilla. 

“When… did we leave the airport…?” Rei asked slowly, sitting up straight and letting out a quiet yawn. “And… how did I sleep for so long…?”

“Iiiiiiiiii… may or may not have cuddled you and sang lullabies every time you looked like you were about to wake up?” Reiju shrugged a bit sheepishly, pulling a tissue from her coat pocket and gently dabbing it against Rei’s face. “You were really cute while you were sleeping, by the way. And we also got to confirm that you can sleep as long or as short as you want as long as you aren’t spending resources! Ain’t that neat?”

“... I suppose it is…” Rei murmured, sighing a little as she rolled her neck and brushed a gentle kiss along Reiju’s knuckles. “I suppose you helped carry me off the plane?”

“Mm! You were even cuter! Cuddled me like a barnacle and wouldn’t let go!” Reiju giggled, then motioned for Rei to follow her out of the car and out into… well. It certainly didn’t look like a naval base, now that she saw past the high fence and the guards posted there. From what she could see, the base was structured to look… almost like a boarding school?

Which meant, specifically, it looked like some kind of modernized Japanese architecture in western style, turned into something that looked exactly like every other school in Japan, more or less. Well, that, and also somehow it felt crossed with the architecture of the JMSDF’s officer training academy. But mostly, it looked like a boarding school.

Dimly, if Rei squinted further down the main street of the base, she could see the ocean, and blockier, more utilitarian buildings that looked much more like what she expected from a military installation. Not quite just gray concrete blocks, but not much better than that.

That said, the grounds were… surprisingly picturesque? Odd for a military base. And they were decked out in a way that felt… a little too relevant to how close they were to Hakone.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Before Rei could start trying to take pictures like a tourist, though, a shuffle of movement caught her attention.

A brown haired bob came around the corner, flanked by a flash of red, several flutters of blue, a single fluff of pale gray, a flurry of purple-black, and a small crowd of others- all of whom seemed to be wearing the uniforms of the JMSDF at various ranks, all of whom wore familiar faces. Too familiar faces.

A strange sort of staredown ensured, with both sides of the equation looking at each other in equal surprise and undecipherable emotion.

Rei swallowed thickly, but presented herself before the entire crowd of what felt like dozens of old faces with a snap of her feet coming together and a raising of her hand in a formal salute.

“Presenting self-summoned Kanmusu: WILLE Special Type Guardians of Guf Class Battleship, Autonomous Assault Ark Wunder BB-01!” she stated, staring straight ahead and trying not to feel utterly out of place as the only one in a full plugsuit with Misato’s WILLE coat hanging from her shoulders. Her rigging manifested itself around her, making her feel only slightly more secure at its appearance “At your service, Admiral Ikari Shirasaki!”

The only response was a series of shellshocked stares, with wide eyes trembling with old trauma on the faces of more than a few members of the crowd, with confusion and something resembling fear on several of the others.

Eventually, the first person to break the silence was one Commander Mari Illustrious Makinami, who just let out a wild huff and shook her head as she slumped out of her stiff posture. 

“Aww fuck, it’s the Wunder. Dammit puppy, what happened to a world without Eva!?”

Well.

That confirmed a few of her questions.

Tsk.

Chapter Text

“OH CRAP! I’M LATE! HAA HAA! I CAN’T BE LATE FOR THE FIRST DAY!”

“... Did- Do I sound like that?” Rei asked awkwardly, watching as a blue haired girl wearing a sweater vest and tie over a white blouse and long skirt sprinted past her and Reiju’s accommodations like the hounds of hell were after her. “I know that I am largely identical to the others bearing the name Rei, but…”

“When you were screaming about Madoka, yeah,” Reiju winced, watching as Ayanami Rei (one of many, but this one serving as the Sagami Bay Kanmusu Naval Training and Deployment Base’s onsite recreational activities director) made a fool of herself, slipped on some of the as of yet un-thawed February ice… and slammed head first straight into Admiral Ikari’s chest with a scream that sounded like she was actually about to die, and/or also like tires squealing on asphalt. “Yeesh… never thought I’d see someone so much like you be so… loud…”

“It’s a startling prospect, to be sure…” Rei mumbled, frowning as she stepped away from the window and huffed. “There are too many people named Rei in this military base. This is going to get confusing.”

“I’m pretty sure that one got nicknamed Coach for some reason,” Reiju mused idly, thinking back to the extremely awkward set of introductions that had been done yesterday. She pursed her lips, tapping her chin idly before shrugging. “Not a clue, actually. Why she has an English nickname is beyond me, but I guess it’s totally not the weirdest thing on the base.”

“It is still… strange,” Rei huffed… then whirled around and lashed out with her AT Field to stop a cup from falling to the floor. “Curious. We appear to have an unexpected guest.”

Reiju stared, looking at the table where the glass had been sitting a moment earlier with a discerning eye. Hmm… nope. 

No one was there.

She furrowed her brow. “Uh… Rei? Love of my life? Best friend? There’s uh… no one here.”

“There is, but she is effectively an intangible ghost to most, I think,” Rei stated, flaring her AT Field and pressing it out… until it rammed into another AT Field and both of them immediately clashed in burst of shimmering iridescent octagons- unearthly and unmatched by any seen in Reiju’s limited experience- even Rei slamming her AT Field into a Shipgirl’s shield or a princess’ bubble didn’t produce the rainbow of rippling dimensional artifacting that this did. “A proper AT Field… I didn’t think anyone in existence would still have one.”

The invisible, intangible, possibly a hallucination Ayanami Rei just nodded her head slowly, saying nothing… except to knock over another glass like a particularly petulant housecat.

Perhaps this was her way of greeting new people, seeing as they usually couldn’t even detect her presence- even Shipgirls, as in tune as they were to the nature of reality via their own magic, might not be able to sense her as anything more than a vague distortion on their instruments.

“... Oh, she’s got…” Reiju squinted, pulling out, of all things, Rei’s missing RS Hopper, and using the floating blue petals like sunglasses. “She looks like you! And she’s… A kid? I think?”

“A hallucinatory ghost of some kind,” Rei murmured, nodding slowly. “A poltergeist to most of the world, silent and alone save for your own sisters.”

The ghost Rei was silent, and simply pointed to the floor where the spilled water had, somehow, formed into the word Yurei.

So that was her nickname, it seemed.

First Coach, and now Yurei.

Rei, idly, supposed that in a family where twelve of the members were all named Ayanami Rei, and at least one of them was an incorporeal ghost of a person who may or may not actually exist despite demonstrably being capable of interacting with the world… well. There had to be at least a few nicknames going around.

“It is nice to meet you, Yurei,” Rei stated, then paused and used her AT Field to flash boil the water on the floor to prevent staining the hardwood. “Would you mind explaining exactly how it is that you came to exist? I was under the impression that all things related to Evangelions were supposed to cease existing upon the conclusion of Neon Genesis.”

Yurei stared for a moment… and then shrugged.

Moments later, a note drifted into Rei’s hand, reading out the words “Your guess is as good as mine” in impeccable, hand written Japanese.

Exactly the same as Rei’s own handwriting and, she presumed, every other Rei’s handwriting.

A second note followed the first, bearing a new message- 

“Lilith assumes that she accidentally caused my existence.”

And a third-

“Trois assumes I am the amalgamation of the partial souls of all unactivated Ayanami clones.”

And a fourth-

“Coach thinks that I am just shy. She is quite dimwitted.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to talk like that about your siblings," Reiju mused idly, raising an eyebrow at the contents of the notes, then back up at where the wall of rippling octagons was still in the same place- anchored in space by the clash of Rei and Yurei’s souls. “Then again… some of my sisters are pretty fucking stupid so… nevermind. Objection withdrawn.”

“Mm,” Rei deadpanned, setting the notes aside and nodding towards Yurei… who vanished as if she’d never been there. Not left through the door, not walked out…

Rei simply blinked, and her AT Field no longer had anything to clash with. As if Yurei had just been a faint heat haze in the fabric of reality- a desert mirage that vanished upon looking too closely.

If Rei wasn’t already familiar with the absolutely bullshit amount of things that an AT Field could do with a proper amount of emotion and power and a catalyst to do so with, she’d be far more confused. As it was, she simply logged the nicknames Lilith and Trois down, before shucking on her jacket and deciding to head out- she had a meeting, after all. Yesterday’s awkward introductions and partial tour had only been enough to tide her over before her proper meeting today.

Idly, Rei hoped that she would not have to repeat a summary of the events of the last timeline again. Surely, with the majority of people on this base being the exact same as her previous life, they would know what happened… right?

She would not need to explain everything from the start, right?

…

…

…

“-nd then, I can only surmise that I woke up in this world. Are there any further questions?” Rei asked, finally winding down her presentation on the last thirty years of world history that apparently multiple people on this base hadn’t been privy to.

There weren’t even any Shipgirls in the room to justify her summary of that amount of time, there had just been so many questions that apparently multiple people needed answers to, even if the majority of them had at least partial recollection of that timeline.

Or… at least, a very similar, but different one, in the case of the majority of the Rei sisters, and also one Asuka Shikinami Langley, who Rei was genuinely surprised to see on base.

Apparently she was the Director of Kanmusu Aerial Maneuver Training on the base, which mostly meant that she told the girls how to fly their planes, as well as when, where, and with what maneuvers. 

“I can’t believe we’re all technically aliens…” one Nagara Sumire (one of the many mechanics on base tasked with maintaining the various Shipgirl related facilities) mumbled, staring down at her hands in genuine shock. “Please tell me there aren’t any aliens still on the planet? I can still hear the screams from Third Impact in my head, and I don’t even know that much of what happened!”

“If only Kensuke was here… he’d flip,” Suzuhara Toji, second in command of the on-base medical facility, murmured. 

Aida Kensuke was not, it turned out, a member of the JMSDF, but instead made a living as a traveling war photographer who spent far too much time trying to take pictures of Abyssal incursions on the front lines.

“If only I had access to a MAGI again…” Akagi Ritsuko, director of the on-base medical facility, nodded slowly, thinking over the sheer data processing capabilities of the machines she’d once managed and kept running as though her life depended on it. Which it did. Because the NERV HQ MAGI system was pretty much the main thing allowing them to stay just barely ahead of the Angels. “Rei- do you mind showing me those blueprints? If I could recreate them in the real world again… the amount of data I could glean from Shipgirl biology…”

“Ritsuko-san, please don’t do your mad scientist laugh… you’ve traumatized enough girls just asking them to do a non-invasive vivisection already, we don’t need to traumatize more,” Admiral Ikari Shirasaki sighed, folding her fingers together and growling under her breath. “Thank you, Wunder-san, for your presentation. It was… very informative, and explains a few of the things that Mari either couldn’t or didn’t mention.”

“I straight up had no idea what was going on with SEELE to be fair,” Makinami Mari Illustrious (the on-base cqc instructor) pointed out dryly. “I knew enough to want to stop their plans, but not about the millennia old monolith possibly Angel thing. Plus all that other fucked up shit that happened… I barely remember any of it even though I was directly involved with most of it, and I still don’t want to know what would happen if I punched a hole through their stupid fuckin’ monoliths.”

“Pseudo-Angelic viscera, perhaps,” Rei answered flatly, then sighed. “I understand that this is a lot of information to take in at once, and that all of you are working off of an incomplete picture that I am not qualified to give, but I suppose there is nothing to be done about that except to further clarify what I am able to in the coming weeks. I hope this explains everything, Admiral.”

“It does,” Admiral Ikari nodded slowly, lacing her fingers together in a startlingly familiar pose. Rei, all of a sudden, was struck by the fact that, while Ikari Shirasaki looked a lot like her mother, the lines of her face and body made for an incredible resemblance to her father as well. The synthesis of both, as it were. “Thank you for explaining, Rei. And… thank you for attempting to broker peace.”

“Of course,” Rei nodded back, bowing at the waist. “If I may ask, though…”

“Anything,” Admiral Ikari responded, looking at Rei with a raised eyebrow. “What is it?”

“... Where did all of your sisters come from, Admiral?” Rei asked, looking between the twelve Reis of various ages, temperaments, and styles before re-focusing on the Admiral. “Did they appear as I did, or were they born into this world like regular humans? I apologize for prying into your home life, but… as a Shipgirl deeply connected to everyone in this room-”

She pointedly tried not to look directly at Captain Katsuragi, who had her eyes fixed on the coat that Rei wore over her plugsuit.

“- I feel as though I am at least allowed this one question.” she finished lamely, then looked at the Admiral… who just shrugged.

“Mom came home with them one day,” Admiral Ikari admitted with a huff. “She never said anything about it, but there was some news about human cloning experiments and… I never bothered to clarify.”

“Yui has always been really fond of violating ethics in the name of furthering her understanding of biology, chemistry, and metaphysical transcendent arcano-psychology,” Mari snorted, chuckling a little. “Pretty sure at least two of ‘em formed outta nowhere, though, and we’re still not sure how it happened. Magic is real, boats are girls, the world isn’t quite as free from Evangelion as it ought to be… but hey. We make do, right? That’s the Tokyo-3 spirit!”

A smattering of cheers went up around the room, with Rei nodding along with a faint smile on her face.

“Wise words,” Rei acknowledged. “Then… I shall familiarize myself with this base, then. By your leave, Admiral.”

She bowed again.

“Dismissed,” Admiral Ikari waved her off with an equally mysteriously soft smile.

“Thank you, Admiral.”

Chapter Text

“So what do you think?” Mari asked, sitting astride Shirasaki’s desk in a manner that was thoroughly unprofessional for a CQC instructor to take with the base’s Admiral- if not for the fact that they’d been married for the last few years now. “About Wunder, I mean.”

“I think… we shouldn’t let her explain about the other world too much,” Shirasaki stated dryly, wincing a little at the reminder of the sheer infodump that the ship who looked far too much like her sisters had given them all.

Even a few of her sisters had been confused, though it was mostly Rei and Rei… and Rei, and Rei…

Or, rather, Coach, Cinq, Kyuu, and Quatre, respectively.

Shirasaki tried not to use their nicknames too much- it felt like she was doing her own sisters a disservice when, very clearly, they were all different and yet some people still had trouble telling them apart. Granted, they all had the same hair… and eyes… and faces… and general body type… and even Shirasaki had trouble with it when they first came home… but still.

“Yeah, that was… crazy,” Mari huffed, shaking her head and chuckling. “Can’t believe she said some of the things she did- I didn’t even know half of that stuff, and I was there! Hell, I was Yui’s college bestie! Ahh… could’ve been more if it weren’t for lil Gendo Ikari… can’t believe she took a boytoy instead of my hotness…”

“Please don’t remind me of the fact that my wife used to be gay for my mom,” Shirasaki deadpanned, reaching up and flicking said wife on the nose. “You’ll make me jealous.”

“Yeah yeah, we both know that ship sailed the day I chose you over everyone else’s stupid plans,” Mari grinned unrepentantly, sliding closer to Shirasaki and winking. “And now I’m here. And we’re married. And the government can’t dissolve it cuz they’re too busy with everything else~”

“Don’t make me worry about that either,” Shirasaki grumbled, running her hand through her hair and frowning. “Ugh… I can only hope that we can stay under the radar until they realize just how invaluable a dedicated all-round training academy is for our Kanmusu…”

“Yyyup.” Mari nodded, then poked Shirasaki’s forehead. “Anyway, what else do you think of Wunder-chan, hmmm~? Our adorable wifey back home looks just like her, don’t you think? Maybe a couple years younger, actually…”

“Rei is-” Shirasaki shook her head, frowning a little. “Our Rei… she’s… they don’t look that much alike, do they?”

“Aside from the obvious? Pretty much the only difference is the outfit, the boobs, and the fact that she’s got way paler hair than the rest of your sisters,” Mari pointed out dryly, then tapped her chin and stared out of the window. “... Speaking of sisters, how’s Yurei?”

“She’s…” Shirasaki paused, staring out of the window as well… and seeing what Mari could not.

Yurei, her ghostly sister, standing there right outside the window despite the fact that they were four stories up in the air. Waving.

“... She’s fine. Up to her usual tricks…” Shirasaki admitted, then shrugged and turned back to Mari with a raised eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh just…” Mari slid off of Shirasaki’s desk and shrugged as well. “Remembering how weird it is that we live in a world where magic is real, the ocean is full of genocidal goths, the hopes and dreams of humanity have coalesced into teenage girls wearing cosplay boat outfits, you have twelve sisters who are all weird clones of your mother, and- here’s the big one, one of those sisters is a literal ghost.”

“We’re… really not sure what Yurei is…” Shirasaki grimaced ever so slightly, steepling her fingers in a direct imitation of her father- not the father of the current timeline, but the father she remembered from two others. Less and less so as time went on and old traumas from another timeline faded away as if they never existed, but still. Commander Ikari in both timelines had been an object of distant fear and judgement, and her younger self had never forgotten that. Her father now was…

Well.

They spoke on weekends. He awkwardly tried to make time for her. She allowed him to remain in her life. She occasionally mentioned how his hugs were still terrible. He apologized for not knowing what autism was until he got a formal diagnosis. She told him that at least he was there for her and actually tried to be a good dad.

He pretended that neither of them remembered his actions in another world, and honestly, that suited both of them just fine.

And yet, she still folded her hands together the exact way that man- glinting glasses in the dark- did.

It made her look so cool.

“She’s something, alright,” Mari huffed, then turned around again. “So. We’ve got possibly the strongest Shipgirl to ever exist on the side of humanity. That’s good. That’s probably the best news we’ve ever had in the last six years of this asinine war, and the best we personally have had in the last three years of your Admiralty. Have you seen the specs she sent over? It’s ridiculous. I mean, sure, neither Misato nor Ritsuko seemed at all surprised by most of it, but still. Those railguns of hers are ridiculous.”

“Five single barrel railguns capable of a maximum firing rate of five rounds per second, with multiple ammunition types, each one roughly two meters in diameter with a maximum velocity of mach ten,” Shirasaki nodded, folding her hands together in front of her mouth with a little huff. “You should know that better than me, Mari.”

“I never much paid attention to the Wunder’s actual loadout and you know it. I was busy keeping everyone else alive by being a damn good pilot,” Mari boasted a little, flipping her hair haughtily and grinning ear to ear with smugness. “And I looked damn good doing it. Asuka knows. You know too, puppy~”

“... Mari, the more you call me that while we’re at work, the more I remember the time that you described our entire friend group’s relationship situation as tags on Pornhub,” Shirasaki groaned, dropping her face into her hands and sighing. “Please don’t remind me of how fucked up my personal relationships are from the outside, I don’t need the amount of public scrutiny that would bring…”

“Fine fine…” Mari patted Shirasaki’s head, then settled in to drape herself over the back of the Admiral’s chair. “Speaking of our newest acquisition’s armaments… What a complement, huh? RS-Hoppers, VTOLs, laser cannons, railguns, a broad spectrum multi-phase AT Field… She’s a regular one-girl army with that much firepower and that kind of advanced systems.”

“If she ever decides that attacking the Abyssals is in her interests,” Shirasaki pointed out, staring dead ahead at the doors to her office. “I don’t want to ask her to do that. I’ve never been one for forcing people to fight when they don’t want to. You know that.”

“I know that better than most,” Mari nodded almost solemnly, her voice taking on a wistful tone as she shifted her arms to hug her wife. “I know what it does to you. What it feels like. What you feel like. And… I don’t think that she wants to. She’s very low aggression for a Shipgirl- most of them are usually chomping at the bit to try and head out before they’re ready, take the world back for humanity and all that.”

“She’s Rei,” Shirasaki acknowledged. “She acts exactly like most of my sisters do, just… more open about  her interests. Tsk… The fact that there've been more than a few Abyssals out there who decided that they don’t care about the war… it’s probably the only thing keeping our war effort going these days…”

“If what that Reiju girl says is right, it’s one part rationing keeping their number down, one part a stunning lack of military tactics, and one part a lot of them being too weak and too dumb to actually do more than the most basic attacks,” Mari mused idly, walking her fingers along Shirasaki’s arm whilst thinking aloud. “I wonder what it says about us and Abyssals that the smart ones are the ones that always choose peace?”

“That the naval intelligence about Abyssals being made from human’s darker emotions has more merit than it should,” Shirasaki grimaced, then shook her head again. “I think Rei might be the catalyst for peace, though. Actual peace, not just a few scattered Princesses here and there. The only problem is that some of those Princesses won’t agree to a ceasefire. At least half of the Supply Depot Princesses don’t care as long as the cargo they want gets delivered where it needs to go, but the others? It’s a coin flip. The standard type Princesses vary from trying to kill us to outright waving when they pass a patrol. And it’s hard enough keeping track of the friendly ones- half of them don’t last more than six months with all of the infighting going on…”

“Hey, wasn't there an SDP that’s currently dating Tenryuu?” Mari asked cheekily, as if she didn’t already know the answer. “Our Tenryuu? The one that basically went AWOL under our command to get hitched and brought her wife back to show her around?”

“I remember,” Shirasaki deadpanned. “We had to put them up in a soundproof lodging, and we still got noise complaints. And the cleaning staff was furious when they went back to Oeno Island…”

Mari shuddered a little. “Yeah… yeah. Hope Reiju isn’t like that with Wunder-chan, otherwise I think we might have to put them in a bunker. One with really good drainage…”

“For the sake of all our sanities…” Shirasaki sighed, rubbing her temples. “I really wish this wasn’t the conversation right now. Mari, why?”

Mari just winked.

Shirasaki blushed. “Not now! It’s the middle of the work day!”

“And most of what you’ve been doing is handling reports that just need to be stamped once without reading,” Mari grumbled, crossing her arms. “And no one is even scheduled for CQC today, which means I don’t get to show any of our newbies my patented grab and rip maneuver!”

“You really need to stop teaching our Kanmusu about that maneuver… they’re kami, not youkai,” Shirasaki grumbled, poking her wife on the nose to finally get her off of her back. Ugh. Gorgeous lady with big boobs indeed, but those big boobs made her wife heavy. “Biting has a time and a place, and it’s not when trying to fight Abyssals at close range.”

“I dunno… it certainly got Mutsu a girlfriend,” Mari pointed out dryly, grinning a little. “I hear on the grapevine that Nagato was definitely a little jealous of her sister scoring a Battleship Princess. Don’t they have that siscon thing going on?”

“Them and every other group of sister ships…” Shirasaki rolled her eyes.

Mari said nothing, raising her eyebrow and looking at the framed photo of their household on Shirasaki’s desk. The one that, notably, looked more like a group photo than a wedding photo. 

“Shush. That’s different.”

“Sure it is, puppy. Sure it is.”

“I- whatever. Just…” Shirasaki sighed again, finally deciding to pull out the dossier on the Wunder’s spec sheet once more. “Back on topic… I wonder why and how Wunder is so well armed… the AAA Wunder I knew didn’t have anywhere near this size of complement- it was a battleship, not a carrier. Granted, it had carriers, but…”

“I remember. I also remember them manufacturing a bunch of Iowa-class battleships just to turn them into anti-laser shields,” Mari chortled a little, shaking her head. “Crazy last fight, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know, I was in a cage for most of it,” Shirasaki huffed. “I think I heard something about swarms of Eva units? There was a lot happening… stuff that I would rather forget and let lie.”

“And yet…” Mari trailed off, raising an eyebrow at the papers in Shirasaki’s hands.

“And yet.” Shirasaki agreed. She shook her head once more, then rattled the papers in her hands just to get her thoughts in order. A quick perusal of said papers had her furrowing her brow at the sheer amount of force that Wunder could put out. Nothing she hadn’t already read before, but still. It was… excessive.

All of those weapons, the vehicles, the deployable items…

Shirasaki, idly, wondered just why the gods saw fit to arm someone that much when all they wanted was to learn how to be a person, and experience life and the world around her without fear of it all being taken away by nature of her existence.

She sighed, closing the folder and sitting back.

“Let’s just hope Rei never has to use any of this…”

Chapter Text

“Hey! Hello! Nice to meetcha newbie! I'm Kinu who was born in Kobe! I did my best in training at the Maizuru School! A lotta dangerous things happened, and I did my best in the Southwest! It was really tough but Kuma-chan helped me out a lot! Panay Island was really horrible though! I always do my best!”

Rei blinked, staring at the girl in front of her who had, unprompted, walked up a moment prior, waved, did a little pose, and then introduced herself in a way that reminded her of how Reiju occasionally described some anime character as interpreted by a man on the internet. How did the saying go? She walked up, told Rei her name, address, and social security number, completely unprompted and without hesitation.

At least she knew the Shipgirl’s name was Kinu, that she was born in Kobe, she trained at the Maizuru School which, according to Wikipedia, was a Naval Engineering School, sortied in the Southwest and fought at Panay Island, and that she was close to someone named Kuma- likely also a Shipgirl.

Shipgirls, according to what little information she’d gleaned online, didn’t really get the chance to make a lot of human friends beyond occasionally falling in love with their Admirals and/or random on-base staff.

“I am Rei. I appeared on Bouvet Island near Antarctica,” Rei answered in kind, not really sure exactly how to continue the conversation. Not for the first time today, she wished that Reiju were here- but alas, her girlfriend was off base doing something that she’d always wanted to do: All but ransack an anime merchandise store for as much as she could possibly fit in her holds. Figurines, manga volumes, statuettes, posters, various apparel, accessories…

Rei didn’t begrudge her girlfriend her hobbies, but declined going with her- sadly, she had a number of meetings that interfered with her ability to go on a date with Reiju, and unfortunately those meetings were part of the conditions of her staying at the Sagami Bay Naval Base.

Hence, she’d subjected herself to a full biological check-up and health exam under the care of Doctor Akagi. It felt remarkably like Evangelion diagnostic tests, in a way- she had been plugged in and her systems were linked to that of the on-site servers, and despite the fact that the setup was meant for regular Shipgirls who didn’t have computers on them and whose physical abilities and qualities really shouldn’t have been able to be measured in such a way, the process worked just fine on Rei- even better, because Doctor Akagi could actually query her systems for her specification data. She’d printed a list of her specifications the other day, of course, but her meeting earlier had been to log it into the system.

Which had also resulted in Rei meeting her own fairies for the first time, when Doctor Akagi had mentioned how unusually quiet Rei’s were- usually fairies did all sorts of things on a Shipgirl’s rigging, but not her.

And then Rei’s Captain had appeared… and had been a tiny version of Commander Katsuragi Misato as she’d been before her death- proud, defiant, determined to save the world.

The mini Misato had also appeared the moment that the real Captain Katsuragi walked in… and the two of them had summarily wandered off to go get day drunk. Despite the fact that Captain Katsuragi was a Captain on a military base that was, in practice, supposed to be a boarding school for Shipgirls.

Rei’s SIC, a tiny version of Doctor Akagi, had just shaken her head tiredly and exclaimed some expletives that were, thankfully, filtered via sounding like angelic whale song to the untrained ear.

Anyway.

That had only been her first meeting of the day. Her second meeting had been in the engineering department, with a gaggle of people who, despite having only tangentially been related to the goings on of WILLE and NERV, still remembered how to work on the Wunder both inside and out.

Rei had never been so relaxed, and she’d honestly considered bringing Reiju with her the next time she was there. The baths, the careful repair work, the maintenance…

It was like a spa treatment, and she’d come out of it feeling clean, fresh, and dressed in a completely new outfit that wasn’t just a plugsuit and Misato’s old commander jacket from an entire universe ago.

It had been nice, letting out her crewmates. Still awkward knowing that her entire complement of Fairies mapped directly one to one with the crew of the Wunder, but at least no one seemed disturbed by it.

That second meeting had let out after a few hours, thus leading into her third… which was far less pleasant.

Because it necessitated a weapons test.

Which Rei was currently dawdling on.

Admiral Shirasaki had said that she could show up at any time, so she was taking her time.

The longer that Rei spent without using her weapons, the better.

Even in the middle of a war with an overwhelming force of eldritch goth women who wanted nothing more than the total annihilation of humanity (and also snacks, headpats, anime, movies, videogames, couches, clothes, pornography, gourmet food, fast food, toys, hugs, baby supplies-) no one needed a battleship like her. No one should field a battleship like her.

There was not a single ship in the world capable of matching up to the AAA Wunder at full strength, and being honest there was very little out there that could handle it even with the strange magics that Shipgirls and Abyssals employed. Their shields could be worn away with her AT Field, even if it lowered the strength of her own in turn. Their weapons could not outrange or overpower her own, and her own forces were generations more advanced than anything anyone else could put out. 

Hence…

Why Rei had decided to go on a walk around the base to familiarize herself with the area rather than just heading straight to her meeting.

Hence, why she was now in the presence of a Shipgirl named Kinu, who had apparently managed to tell she was new to the base in an instant.

“Oh! Rei! Like the others around here!” Kinu grinned, flashing a thumbs up. “That means you’re the Admiral’s sister, right? Ah, wait but you just said… are you her Shipgirl sister…?”

“No. I hold no personal relation to the Ikari or Ayanami family,” Rei shook her head slowly, letting her hair ruffle behind her while the sea breeze picked up. She surmised that it must have looked rather picturesque, the way her hair and white sundress billowed in the wind. “I am also known as the WILLE Special Type Guardians of Guf Class Battleship Autonomous Assault Ark Wunder BB-01. You may also call me Wunder if you wish.”

“Oooh, Wunder is a pretty name!” Kinu perked up, hopping on her toes a little. “We got a few German ships here a few months ago, actually! Um, Asuka-sensei said she had some connections with the German navy, so that’s why.”

“I see,” Rei nodded, not entirely interested in the history of the base, but she was willing to hear out Kinu anyway. 

“Yeah, Asuka-sensei is super cool! She knows a lot about how planes work and how to use them in battle, which is why she works with all the Carriers and everyone who can use a plane,” Kinu nodded, then seemed to remember something else, which caused her to perk up and giggle a little. “Oh right! So, since you’re new here, you should know that we don’t use um… we don’t use family names around here for most of the staff? Because it gets really confusing- especially when there’s multinational ships here…”

She paused, clearing her throat. “You know, because uh… well. Asuka-sensei’s family names are Shikinami and Langley and those are ships too, and all of the Rei-senseis are named Ayanami and then there’s Captain Misato being named Katsuragi… and then there’s also Akagi and Makinami and Illustrious and Aoba and Hyuuga and Ibuki and Kirishima and Kitakami and Maya and Musashi and Nagara and Sumire and Sakura and Takao and Tama and Strasbourg…”

Rei blinked. “... Then… what do you call Ibuki Maya?”

Kinu huffed. “We have to call her by her full name so no one gets confused.”

“I see. Interesting,” Rei mused, tapping her chin and wondering just why it was that so many of the people she knew had names relating to World War 2 era Japanese ships. Or multinational ones in the case of Mari and Asuka. None of those names were particularly traditional, nor were they popular… How odd. “I suppose it must cause confusion to any of the Shipgirls who get transferred over without knowing that rule…”

Kinu sighed. “Tell me about it. Shikinami and Ayanami and Katsuragi and a bunch of other ships were training here half a year ago, and let me tell you, figuring out who was referring to who for the first week was awful. Buuuut they got transferred to other fleets two months ago so it’s fine.”

“How long have you been here?” Rei asked, raising one eyebrow slowly.

Kinu winced, looking away and also like she’d rather be somewhere else now. “... almost a year and a half… they won’t let me transfer out until I can pass high school level math and Kuma isn’t here so… I’m um… not doing great. They said it’s for after the war, but it’s so haaaaard!”

Rei pursed her lips. “I see. That is unfortunate.”

“I knowwww! It suuuucks! Math sucks! School is hard! I’m already a Light Cruiser and I can do all the stupid aiming math already, why do I need pre-calculus or stupid chemistry classes!? Everyone already knows that us Kanmusu are basically stuck working idol jobs and doing Navy stuff for the rest of our lives once it’s all over, what’s the point!?” Kinu didn’t quite shout, but she did stomp her feet and throw a little tantrum before grabbing a rock off of the ground and hucking it in a random direction. Fortunately, it bounced off of Rei’s AT Field before it could damage anything. Or break a window. Or hit another wandering Shipgirl in the head. 

“Perhaps they wish for you to be able to find employment outside of two singular avenues,” Rei suggested, then pursed her lips. “Though, I suppose I understand the idea of being constructed for singular purpose and being left adrift when that purpose is completed…”

“You’re a Shipgirl like me, of course you do,” Kinu snorted irritably, her previous mood now darkened by the reminder that she basically had nothing else after the war was done. “Ugh… here’s hoping those rumors about retiring Shipgirls are true… Then again, I’d rather just keep fighting until there’s no more fights left.”

“Considering humanity’s track record over the last two thousand years…” Rei mused, shrugging.

“See? You get it. Everyone else always says that war is bad and yeah it sucks and all when you’re out there watching everyone else die but the fighting?” Kinu grinned, spirits immediately lifted by the thought of being in battle. “It really gets the blood pumping! I mean, so do a lot of things… oh, maybe I could do motorcycle racing when everything’s done! It looks super fun! And dangerous! And also if I crash it’s not like it’ll hurt me anyway, right?”

Rei nodded. “It is always good to follow one’s dreams. For what it is worth, I think you have many opportunities available to you, even if you have not had an easy time with general education.”

Kinu’s grin softened, almost slipping as she blinked in surprise. “I- well, thanks. That’s um… that’s really nice of you to say. You too, I guess!”

She paused, clearing her throat. “So, where were you headed to? I’m on break right now so I don’t have anywhere to go for the next two hours.”

Rei sighed. “Weapons testing. Apparently I am to demonstrate my total firepower in order for the Admiral to have a more accurate understanding of my full capabilities, rather than just having numbers on a dossier.”

“Ooh, so you’re one of those new type ships- the ones with the fancy experimental weapons, huh? Cool! I’ll walk you there! I wanna see!” Kinu perked up even more, excitedly grabbing Rei’s wrist and starting to tug her insistently. “C’mon, let’s go! I bet you got some wild stuff then, huh!?”

Rei sighed.

Well.

Seemed there was no avoiding this now.

Tsk.

How unfortunate.

Chapter Text

KABOOM!

“WOOOO! YEAH! ANOTHER! ANOTHER!”

BOOM! 

“SO COOOOOOL!”

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

“HELL YEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

BRWYEEEER! KABOOM!

“HOLY SHIT!”

And so on and so forth with Rei’s weapon testing.

Honestly, for all that Rei hated the idea of basically being the planet’s most well armed single individual, she had to admit…

Using her guns on nothing in particular was fun.

The empty stretch of ocean before her served as an acceptable target for making sure she didn’t damage anything important, and the plumes of water that shot up with every impact were satisfying in a way that tickled a primal human urge in the back of her very much inhuman mind.

The feeling of current building and discharging through her railguns at five shots per second per five railguns was exhilarating. It felt like what she was made for. It felt like she could do anything, break anything, revel in the power of her cannons and just watch the world shatter beneath her overwhelming firepower.

She, very carefully, did not allow herself to fall into those emotions. 

Instead, she kept an impassive face on and continued firing, unloading her munitions so that the Ayanami Rei observing the test from a safe distance could get an accurate measure of her abilities- more than any amount of paper and dossiers could cover.

There had been targets before, but her first few shots had obliterated all of them in mere moments, and even the furthest target was still within range of her instruments- especially with her deployable craft providing targeting data as they rose up into the air.