The 1st Fleet had no scheduled training on the next day so as not to tire them out, and thus Shigure could sleep in as long as she wanted.
She woke up to the sight of her beloved sister ship Yuudachi, who greeted her with a kind and patient smile, leaning in to give her a small but passionate peck on the forehead.
That was all that was needed to invigorate Shigure, who pushed herself up from her messy bed despite still feeling dead tired, the blanket hurled back as her feet made contact with the wooden floor, changing into a newly-ironed uniform as she lumbered over to her bathroom to do the usual song and dance that all girls did in the bathroom to get ready for the day.
After she exited the bathroom, having at least brushed her teeth and fixed her bed hair and used a wet towel to wipe away any sweat that might have accumulated on her face or body from last night's beauty sleep.
She exited the bathroom to find that Yuudachi had left a note on her bed, saying she'd make her way to the canteen first, in order to get her some breakfast, so that she wouldn't have to waste her time waiting in line. There was even a Poi at the end of her sentence.
God bless Yuudachi.
Shigure made her way over to the canteen, some of her muscles still aching and sore from the training yesterday.
Even though she was rather passionate about training as it was a means to become stronger, she was glad to have been granted a day off.
After Akashi's counselling session yesterday, she found that she had just missed her teammates' training session and was rather dispirited at not having gotten any training which was considered rather valuable to her as she had little actual combat experience and needed all the training she could get.
So she accepted Akashi's offer to make it up to her.
Akashi then ran her through an exercise regime that could help train up her physical condition and improve her flexibility and stamina, explaining to her that Shigure's muscles weren't as developed since she was created recently, and Akashi's exercise regime would make it much easier for her to catch up to her peers in terms of physical stamina and minimize the risk of muscle cramps or any sort of human setback that might occur.
Only that this exercise regime took place in the sports hall, Shigure being put through the muscle grinder as she was ordered to assume all sorts of obscure poses and do repeated motions to train up her body, having felt her muscles all throughout her body burn up as Akashi made good on her word to train the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer by stretching and straining her muscles to their limit.
Several times, like when she was attempting to do a split, Akashi would step in to "help" her assume the pose as she felt her body get stretched and contorted in ways she never thought possible, and eventually wished she had never known as her joints creaked and her muscles ached.
She teared up a little at times, but kept silent as she knew that one needed to endure hardships to achieve great things, and Akashi was dead serious about improving her physical condition despite not being obligated to do this did touch her heart and made her feel a need to complete this without complaining too much.
Besides, Akashi was a repair ship and was thus knowledgeable about the limits of a ship girl's body and how to loosen up the muscles and joints within a ship girl's body to reach that limit without significant risk to one's body, Shigure never actually feeling much legitimate pain despite her muscles experiencing the strain of going through Akashi's grueling exercise regime.
And after the rigorous training session, Shigure had collapsed on the hall floor, desperately gasping for breath while feeling utterly exhausted and feeling as though every muscle group in her body was burning up after having been stretched and pushed to the absolute limit, Akashi wordlessly carrying her back to her room and plopping her back down on her bed before she almost instantly fell asleep.
She didn't know anything about the repair ship's past, but having seen her up close, Shigure could feel that something was terribly wrong with her.
While riding on the repair ship's back, Shigure noticed the red rims and slight eye bags that plagued her eye lids, along with her pink hair forming shadows over Akashi's face, likely from having to deal with critically injured ship girls around the clock.
Along with the pressure of being the head of an entire medical division, she had to evaluate the mental health of her comrades and play "counselor" to the ship girls on their base while maintaining patient confidentiality, along with dealing with God-knows-what else from her past.
Now, Shigure knew she wasn't the role model of perfect mental health, but she would like to personally talk to the repair girl sometime, and offer her a hug and a shoulder to cry on.
But back to the present.
Each step and every swing of her arms as she walked sent a pang of discomfort throughout her sore muscles, causing her to wince upon feeling like this even after resting up throughout the night.
This was the one thing that was a significant factor in their ship girl lives and how it factored into their battles and lifestyle, and that was their humanoid bodies.
While it made for easier maneuverability and made interaction between ship girls possible, having the best of both worlds with the power and armor of ships contained within the bodies of humans, essentially making them superhuman, it also had some drawbacks as well.
Their bodies required fuel to power their ship girl modes, and although their ship girl bodies could recover quickly with the help of nano-machines in the bathwater, there were other wounds that no machine could repair upon granting them sentience and recreating them as humanoids with their World War 2 memories intact, with emotional and psychological pitfalls abound and could pull them into a quicksand of despair where it was difficult to pull them out of.
They also possessed considerably shorter lifespans than the average human as they lived life on the edge, and were constantly being sortied and sent into life and death battles which not all of them returned from.
Some of them needed to be fed with gratuitous amounts of food, they all had to sleep in order to prevent fatigue and also needed to be clothed, things that they never needed as ships.
And when one considered the fact that they were often shot at and their clothes were often damaged along with sustained physical damage, it was no wonder that the tailoring industry was flourishing as they fixed or replaced shredded or burnt uniforms.
The ache that echoed throughout her body was one indication of such a problem.
In her ship days, even though she felt the "pain" of being shot at and the strain of the ocean pushing against her as she raced across the ocean, there never was a nervous system that transmitted the sensations to her soul, or her mind, if she ever had either of those as a ship.
Sailors maintained her hull, and all she ever had to do was to do everything she could and leave the decision making to her captain.
Not now.
Now, she had a mind of her own along with a humanoid body to fight battles with and could use to communicate with her teammates, and was now able to form coherent thoughts of her own.
There were also smaller things in life she had to learn, one example being the morning rituals like brushing her teeth and eating breakfast along with downing her daily fuel and steel intake.
She also had to wear fabric that barely served as protection against what the enemies threw at them, instead wearing them to cover up their humanoid bodies to protect this thing called "modesty".
Not that these things mattered, especially when a gunshot from an Abyssal could blow off an entire shoulder, or when she could lose a leg from a torpedo coming her way and ensuring a painful trip back to the docks if they didn't outright die from these wounds.
Sure, they could recover from it far quicker than any human, but then, who'd want to survive excruciating pain, rather than die quickly and painlessly?
Shigure could now sort-of understand the many desensitized ship girls that were tired from the endless sorties, the never-ending suffering and the countless losses, and decided to end it all by taking their lives or were institutionalized after failing to do so.
No one wanted to live forever, especially when you were stuck in a perpetual cycle of violence and loss.
Shigure sighed, the drooping of her head causing her neck muscles to act up as she moved away from the barracks, wondering if something was wrong with her to start thinking about such morbid stuff this early in the morning.
Sometime in between the stroll over to the canteen, Shigure met up with her sister, Samidare.
She had sapphire blue hair and eyes, her long hair stretching down and nearly touching the back of her thighs as she wore a sleeveless, collared dark-black and white sailor uniform, bangs hanging over her forehead, the same dark blue hue shared by her elbow gloves and her black thigh-highs gracing her legs.
She was graceful, yet kind, as she bowed to her sister in greeting, and her smile brilliant as she regarded Shigure warmly, with a look of familiarity as she conversed with Shigure along their path to the canteen.
Shigure was relieved that another one of her sisters was on this base, and from her interaction with her, she didn't want to wake Shigure up after seeing her sleep so soundly after Akashi's stretching session.
Samidare seemed to be a kind ship girl, who personally wanted to meet up with her sister Suzukaze, and didn't have the best of eye-hand coordination, stating that she sometimes dropped items and tripped over herself while walking, but she did her best to cover up her mistakes, explaining that she had trained and developed faster reflexes to catch objects that she dropped.
They chatted about their time in the base, where Shigure listened attentively to Samidare going on about the happenings on the base, sharing the time that she sortied with some of the ship girls.
She had acquainted herself with the ship girls of different classes, along with learning about their lives and experiences, and how she had been learning about the art of knitting and embroidery from the internet, having quite a fair bit of spare time as a bench warmer on the base.
When Shigure asked her how she felt about being side-lined, Samidare smiled down, acknowledging her intention in asking such a question, and replied serenely that she understood her limits as a low-tier destroyer.
She knew that she wasn't in the priority list of girls to sortie, despite the Admiral trying to include everyone in the fleet roster, cycling its members as often as she could without interfering with the fleet's teamwork.
She listened to Samidare chat about her little adventures a bit more before they reached the doorway of the canteen. There, Yuudachi had already queued up for their meals, and she waved at them to get their attention, the two Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers making their way. Yuudachi had on her usual carefree attitude, especially now that she was going to eat with Shigure and Samidare at the same time.
"Oiiiii, Shigure-chan, Samidare-san! I waited in line to get your breakfast, so you'd better be grateful, Poi!"
Samidare and Shigure bowed in appreciation of the gesture, as Yuudachi simply gave them a wide grin that exposed her pearly-white teeth, happy that she was able to help her sisters in any way possible.
They sat down on the benches to recite "Itadakimasu" before picking up their utensils to dig in. The meal was modest, the classic miso soup coupled with a bowl of cooked rice, and a hearty serving of salmon and eggs.
Samidare even had a cup of coffee in lieu of the usual fuel can that was served, Samidare explaining that she wanted to break away from the norm a little as she tried coffee in the morning to keep her awake.
Shigure talked to her sisterships, Yuudachi talking to her about her own training with the 3rd Fleet and recent global events concerning the ship girls.
Shigure nodded as she looked at her happy-go-lucky sister, known to a lot of ship girls as the Nightmare of Solomon due to her stellar performance at the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and Shigure wanted to see her grow into the headstrong Kai Ni destroyer she knew her sister ship would be.
Yuudachi looked back at Shigure, and asked affectionately.
"Ah, but I'm likely talking a little too much, Poi. A penny for your thoughts, Shigure-chan?"
Shigure blinked, but she gave Yuudachi a tired smile as she admitted.
"Nothing much, I'm just a little tired from training with Akashi-san yesterday."
Yuudachi's smile drooped a little at that, expressing her opinion on the repair ship candidly as she leaned in.
"Maa, I don't want to talk bad about Akashi-san behind her back, I feel that she's bad news, Poi..."
Shigure's interest was piqued at that, asking with a little more concern as she thought about Akashi.
"That's interesting, Yuudachi.
How's she 'bad news', and before you ask, no, I just want to hear my beloved sister ship's opinion on this."
Yuudachi blushed a little at that, shaking her head adorably to clear her mind as she gave her honest opinion.
"Well, I'm not sure how, but I can almost smell the blood on her hands, and it made me really uncomfortable the first time I had to shake her hand. And she's a doctor with the smell of antiseptic, medical things and death, you get me, Poi?"
Yuudachi leaned down as she elaborated, picking up small amounts of rice with her chopsticks to eat as she did so.
"I mean, I don't have anything against her as a person, since she's nice and wants to help heal and repair everyone. But her and the 8th Fleet are..."
Yuudachi shivered upon recalling something, and Shigure was now interested in the enigmatic 8th Fleet that had spooked Yuudachi so much, almost wanting to learn what was it about them that spooked Yuudachi so much to fear them all, despite the blonde Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer being friendly to everyone.
And now that she thought about it, although she had seen quite a lot of ship girls populating the canteen, where ship girls of various fleets had come and gone, she had hardly seen the 8th Fleet's members entering the canteens, Shigure hypothesizing that they may not want to eat with the majority of the Yokosuka Naval Base's ship girl population for some unknown reason.
Shigure looking back at the concerned Yuudachi and patted her head affectionately as she pointed out something that endeared her to her sister ship.
"Well, thanks for the heads up, Yuudachi.
I feel that I can trust you to detect the trustworthiness of other ship girls, much like a faithful hound would, hmm?"
Samidare giggled upon hearing that as she sipped on her coffee, and Yuudachi was pouting with her cheeks puffed out, exclaiming.
"I'm not a dog, Poi!"
Shigure calmed her down as she ate her breakfast, sharing her thoughts with Yuudachi as she originally intended.
"I just remembered that you're the Nightmare of Solomon, and I was thinking how wonderful that you'd eventually be strong enough to attain Kai Ni and hold that title proudly."
Shigure expected Yuudachi to start boasting about herself or start accepting Shigure's praise sheepishly, thinking that she had her sister ship all figured out.
The last thing she expected was for Yuudachi to drop her chopsticks and clasp Shigure's hands tightly, looking into her eyes as she admitted.
"I-I don't want to achieve anything without you, Shigure-chan! I admit, I don't think about all these complicated things like you do, but I know one thing."
Yuudachi looked into Shigure's eyes, and Shigure could almost see into her sister ship's green irises, which were actually aperture lenses cleverly disguised to look as human as possible but unable to completely hide the mechanisms underneath their humanoid bodies, Yuudachi exclaiming.
"I want to be with you all the way, Shigure!
I remember feeling so bad when I was revived, since I learnt about what you had to go through after I left, and how you suffered in the nighttime where I shined, which made me feel a little ashamed about my accomplishments..."
Shigure flinched upon hearing Yuudachi say that, and looked away at that, unsure of what to say about that.
But her sister ship wasn't having any of that as she let go of Shigure's hands and clamped her face, causing her lips to pucker up and feel a slight sting upon her sister slap her palms on her cheek, continuing.
"I'm going to live on, Shigure! I want to protect you at night so that you wouldn't have to feel afraid anymore! I want to survive this war and live life with our sisters in a world where there's no more war. So please look after yourself, alright, Poi?"
Samidare leaned in to lean in next to Yuudachi to explicitly state the support that they would always be able to provide for a sister ship.
"Shigure, I know that we can't change the past and replace those whom you've lost.
But I also want you to know that we're still here, just like you are, and it doesn't hurt to admit to us that you're afraid and allow us to carry some of the burden for you. We're warships that have been through our share of war and death, and come back stronger because of it."
Shigure looked at their heartfelt expressions, blinking and seeing that they were absolutely serious about helping her out in any way they could.
Shigure lifted her hands to slowly pry Yuudachi's hands from her face and feeling the slight sting of the cold canteen air hitting her face, but she looked to the both of them as she gave her response.
"I appreciate you all being here for me.
And I want to say, I understand that our lives are fleeting and that we may sink at any time."
She looked into Yuudachi's eyes as she unflinchingly continued despite them wincing a little at the blunt admission of their own mortality.
"But I now know that those aren't the things that we should allow to cast a shadow over the fact that we can spend the present as the Shiratsuyu-Class sisters again. I want to take the time to slow down and appreciate every meal that we eat together, every sentence that we speak from one sister to another, and every second that we spend together."
Gesturing to the trays of food that were left partially uneaten, Shigure gave them her best smile as she tucked in, feeling better about today despite her sore muscles still acting up as she let the fact sink in that she was eating a meal with her sisters, and took in the moment as her sisters brightened up and followed suit, the three of them merrily eating their breakfast as reunited sisters.