Dragging the Wo-Class back into the island into the small cave wasn't the hard part, especially since there were six of them.
The important part was doing so in a way that wouldn't upset the injuries of the ship girls, who had certainly sustained casualties.
The second most important part was the tight schedule they were on, when you considered that they had likely sent out an SOS signal to the Abyssal home base, and reinforcements were on the way if that were the case, estimated to be about half an hour from now and likely half that time since they had discovered the secret Abyssal facility.
They came here to gather intelligence, not to do battle with an armada.
The Infiltration Fleet was busy dressing the wounds of those injured in the skirmish, including the injured Wo-Class that they captured.
They didn't want her bleeding out on them, after all.
The Wo-Class was regarding them with surprise, especially when she saw them dressing her gunshot wound.
She was silent the entire time, looking as though she was holding her tongue to avoid setting them off.
She didn't resist the cable ties that doubled as makeshift handcuffs on her wrists, the vial having taken effect and rendering her unable to fight back temporarily.
The silence also meant that she wouldn't give the ship girls any extra reason to make the ordeal worse for herself even though the Abyssal seemed as though she had already prepared herself for the worst.
Finally, Chitose had recovered enough to barely send out and oversee one recon plane as the bullet had hit her collarbone, and repairing the wound was the higher priority of the Fairies than reconnaissance.
Goya was patrolling the ocean, keeping out for the reinforcements that might approach the island from either the depths or the surface of the ocean, Goya's underwater scouting abilities watching out for the former as the refueled reconnaissance plane took care of the latter.
Kagerou had returned to the fallen Abyssals to reinforce the "double tap" rule, and emptied another shell into them to make sure they were well and truly dead.
She single-handedly completed the required minimum to help the Fairies clean and prepare the ship girl sortieing equipment for them all to sail home safely.
Right now, she was patrolling the ocean surface for signs of the Abyssals and as a second pair of eyes.
The cave that they sat in was lit up by some glow-sticks, carried in Sendai's pockets in preparation for the sortie.
They were sorted out and evenly spaced to maintain a certain level of luminosity in the near pitch-black cave, the glow-sticks glowing a sick green and casting eerie shadows as they prepared for the eventual interrogation.
Arare sat across the Abyssal, looking down at the laptop and pulling up the correct files for the interrogation, since there were a few things that happened around the world that were confirmed to be the work of the Abyssals.
Shiranui sat beside the Wo-Class, who was sitting further into the cave, Shiranui holding up her 12 cm Single Cannon pistol while Sendai completed the ship girl trio in the cave, wielding a rare Anti-Abyssal knife for them to protect themselves should the need arise.
Sendai decided to get the ball rolling, as the clock was ticking.
She opened with,
"You understand us, don't you?"
The Wo-Class simply stared, before replying.
"Wo."
Causing Shiranui to snap, and ramming the handle of her pistol into the Wo-Class's temple with vigor, the Abyssal falling to the ground.
She straddled the Wo-Class and pointed the barrel at the affected area, demanding with an intense stare that promised nothing but pain if the Abyssal refused to comply.
"Don't mess with us. We listened in on some of your communications, and you speak in various human tongues, wherever you're stationed at. If you say "Wo" again, this bullet is going into your skull."
Pointing the muzzle of the Cannon into the left eye of the supine Wo-Class, Shiranui continued.
"I know my shell can't penetrate your armored skin, but I don't think your eye possesses the same armor to protect it from my cannon. So that means I can, and will, pull the trigger to get you to talk. Don't test my patience."
The Wo-Class wasn't exactly injured from the blow, but she seemed to consider Shiranui's glare, Sendai's face palm, and Arare's blank look finally deciding to choose wisely and to open up communications by stating,
"… I understand. And don't do such pointless things, little destroyer. It'll do nothing but hurt yourself in the process.,"
The enraged destroyer closed her eyes, counted to 10 to calm herself down out of habit and got off the hostage, pulling her up back to her original sitting position to resume their interrogation.
The Wo-Class decided to take her chances by asking,
"Why aren't you torturing me? You even dressed my wound, and even though it made sense to ensure that I would not die in the middle of the interrogation, this seems to be a risky move, due to the fact that I could fight back."
The three ship girls simply stared, Sendai was cringing with the mere thought of torture, Shiranui furrowed her eyebrows, and was looking as if she was trying and failing to decipher the words of the Abyssal.
Even Arare had an eyebrow raised in question.
Sendai tried to make sense of the previous statement, asking.
"I-Isn't that what you Abyssals do, experimentation, torture and the like?"
The Wo-Class shook her head, clarifying.
"No, we simply interrogate to obtain information, and stop when we are done.
Experimentation is only done when we need something tested, nothing more.
Torture is a clumsy and ineffective method of information gathering, we would rather have you work for us as prisoners-of-war with bomb collars to enforce compliance, or Abyssalization to turn you into one of us."
The Wo-Class continued, the buzz of the recon plane still barely audible from outside the cave.
"We have studied up on your human masters, and it is known that they torture and violate the dignity of their fellow beings and us Abyssals outside of official duty as a means of self-gratification. And you ship girls do so to us out of the concept of revenge, which is almost alien to us. The corpses we recovered, and your combined history, were enough proof of your… savagery."
The Wo-Class delivered the last line with a hint of venom that leaked into her monotonous voice, her usually-impassive eyes narrowing and taking on a flinty look, clearly indicating the works of man and ship girls in the past.
Shiranui noticed her change of tone, and held her pistol closer to herself to warn the Abyssal not to try anything funny.
Sendai tried to cut in to clarify the situation, stating,
"B-But you know, there are rights that were given to us, to protect us from harm by them humans, you know?"
As the Abyssal shot back calmly,
"Yes, but that only protects you ship girls, no? We Abyssals are not protected by the human Geneva Conventions, because, by definition, we are not human. Hence, we would rather kill ourselves before surrendering and being at your mercy. And even humans do not stand by their Conventions all the time, so we saw no reason to hold back against any of you."
Shiranui sighed, creased her eyebrows in anger and raised her weapon to point at the ship girl's head, cocking back the trigger and announcing,
"Look, I know that stuff happened, and that we did shit in the past that would get us court-martialled and scrapped by today's standards. But I'd go ask you to cry yourself a river, build yourself a bridge and get over it. We've suffered losses and abuse, too. Now, we're not going to do anything bad to you, but don't think of our compassion as a weakness. We're here for answers, and unless you want to suffer before answering, I suggest you just tell us what we need to know, and we'll be on our way."
The Wo-Class regarded her with interest, answering,
"Very well."
Shiranui simply stared, with her cocked gun still in hand, nonplussed.
Arare turned the laptop to face the Abyssal, the screen displaying digital photo on its screen, depicting a ruined island with cracked and upturned earth radiating from the epicenter of an unknown blast of sorts that resulted in a small crater being formed on the ground, web-like crevices formed by the detonation at ground zero.
The island was barren and devoid of life aside from a few flattened and uprooted trees in the next few photos, lying parallel to the ground and their leafless branches stretching towards the sea that surrounded the island, as through the plants themselves were attempting to reach out and crawl towards the sea, blown down by an immense shock wave that rocked the island at some point in time and blew off their leaves with a mighty huff.
Sendai narrated the situation to the captured Abyssal,
"A few months ago, Australian government surveillance detected one hell of a shock wave from this island off the Tasman sea, near the South-Western end of the Pacific Ocean, and a sound wave that resulted from it threw off their radar and wireless communications in the area for a good couple of hours. The subs we sent there to investigate found no ignition source nor any charred earth, which meant that this wasn't a conventional explosives test. What was it that you were testing here? Some sort of super-sonar and radio wave jammer of sorts?"
Sendai waved the torpedo that was in her hand around, to gesture to the Abyssal to answer.
And after a short while, the Wo-Class replied.
"My best guess is that this might be an acoustic weapon of sorts. I have nothing more to comment on the matter."
Holding her "Thinker" pose, she nodded for Arare to move on to the next picture. Arare leaned forward and pressed the Right Arrow Button on the laptop, the next picture showing a blurred satellite shot that showed the bird's-eye view of an island on the left of the screen.
On the right was the same ocean, except the island had disappeared, the barest hints of a few rocks jutting out from the ocean, as though the island had been the focus of a Houdini-level disappearing trick.
Another explanation was that it had been wiped off the face of the earth.
Sendai explained the sight on the laptop.
"This was from 2 years ago. At around 1050 hours, energy levels spiked around this particular island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There was an insane security detail that surrounded the test site, like, 4 princesses and several dozen battleships at the time of this event. What were you testing, some kind of bomb? Or…"
"Not a bomb, a gun."
Another heavy silence filled the air as the Wo-Class deadpanned.
Everyone tried to wrap their head around the Wo-Class's statement, about an experimental island-destroying gun being developed by the Abyssals.
Even the Yamato-Class Cannon turrets, unofficially crowned the most powerful guns in the world, could only severely injure battleships and one-shot them if lady luck was smiling down on them.
Sendai had her eyes widened in shock and near disbelief of the words coming from the mouth of the Abyssal, if not for the all-too-real reality of the Abyssal's enigmatic means of achieving anything they set out to do.
Arare and Shiranui were starting to sweat, the latter looking as if she was calculating the odds of such an experimental weapon being completed ever since the test in the Pacific Ocean two years ago.
Shiranui narrowed her eyes in expertly-contained fury, and gestured with her gun, warning in a growl.
"Stop trying to stall for time. How do you know that? For all you know, it could have been a fusion bomb, isn't that the more powerful version of an atomic bomb?"
Their hostage simply shook her head, adamant about her point as she tried to explain.
"No. We already have nuclear bombs ready to be deployed. We simply didn't see the need to, since we are still at an impasse in terms of progress in the war and we see that things are going in our favor."
A shudder ran down their steel spines, as the three ship girls wondered what would happen if the Abyssals had decided to use the nukes to wipe them out.
No more ship girls, no more civilization.
Sendai rubbed the bridge of her nose, wondering how to proceed with this new information, that they all reminded themselves, was not entirely reliable.
Shiranui tried to remind herself that it could be a scare tactic, to try to intimidate them into submission.
Seeing how the Wo-Class seemed so nonchalant about their side possessing weapons of mass destruction, like
"Hey, for your info, we got a few nukes lying around, we just didn't see the need to use them."
And seeing how they were holding her hostage and forcing her to tell the truth, the ship girls didn't find themselves doubting the information they heard, although the opposite could also be true and that she might simply be bullshitting them to buy time for the Abyssal backup fleet.
The Abyssal continued,
"There was quite the buzz about a few new classified weapons in the works, and there were talks about their true nature and potency. But it is definitely not a bomb, as that wouldn't be worth our attention."
Sendai held up her palm to signal the Abyssal to pause, looking wearier by the minute as she asked:
"If you all have nukes, why didn't you use them? You can just shoot them at us and boom, battle over. So why not? And how the fuck did you guys develop them?"
"We stole them from the American nuclear facilities near the East Coast, when we invaded America in a land invasion back in 2007 and improved upon their design.
And besides, we seek to conquer all ship girls and wipe out humanity, not simply reduce everything to radioactive rubble and leave everything as an unsalvageable mess."
"So when you say 'conquer', you mean..."
"We want to capture all of you to turn you into us through the process you call 'Abyssalization'. The humans do not deserve you."
They had no response to that, wondering how true the adage was now, that they were indeed "the last line of defense" against the saving of mankind and complete annihilation.
Arare clicked on the laptop to change the displayed picture, Shiranui taking the initiative this time and asked about what they had uncovered here in the abandoned facility.
"You Abyssals are hoarding a lot of resources to build something far larger than anything we've seen. You building more Princesses? And what's with the partial picture of that rudder and the 'Fl'?
Has it got something to do with the fact that you Abyssals haven't been developing anything new in the last five years?"
The Wo-Class blinked, trying to think about the myriad of questions as she finally decided on an answer.
"I believe that the creation of something large in the deepest sections of the ocean which is highly classified. I have nothing to comment about the partial name reveal. There have also been many rumors of a new Abyssal being created as per the next Five Year Plan."
"A new Abyssal?"
Sendai was now very interested, and also very worried about this new revelation, but whatever the Abyssals have created, they clearly kept a tighter lid on this development program than they did about the Princesses, the Wo-Class not exactly confirming anything as she continued.
"Nothing concrete that our leaders would dare reveal to us, for fear of leaking information like we did the Princesses. But thank you for showing me that this much resources are being used for something. At least I now know that there might be some truth behind those rumors."
Arare slammed the laptop closed, eyes narrowing as she finally commented on the Wo-Class's statements.
"No. Whatever you throw at us, we'll learn to beat it, no matter what."
"The predicament you now find yourselves in does not support that claim. We have far more resources, manpower, and all the time in the world to maintain our assault for decades to come. These three factors will ensure your demise sooner or later."
The Abyssal decided to get a little philosophical, in order to stall for time.
"Besides, even if you defeat us, so what? The humans will eventually learn to fear your powers, your nigh-immortality outside of sorties, which are almost akin to godhood to them. And fearing a possible insurrection, they will likely start a manhunt for you all to be put down by scrapping you all."
"You say that as if it's already a foregone conclusion."
"And you sound as if you blindly believe it isn't. And even if that wasn't true, even now, when a global threat exists to wipe them all from the face of this earth, there still exists terrorism, infighting, wars in less-developed countries, anti-war unions who protest. We do listen in on your mass-media channels, you know."
The Wo-Class's head leaned forward, casting a shadow over her face as she continued.
"They will return to fighting each other in full force, as the cycle of violence that has been perpetuated throughout the course of human history cannot, and will never be stopped. What happens then? Would you fight and kill your current allies in the future, should they order you to?"
Shiranui pressed the muzzle of her pistol at the Wo-Class's head, seething as she whispered into her ear.
"Shut up. Anything you say, it's just sophistry to make us doubt our cause, even if it makes sense. Stop stalling."
The Abyssal, her head tilting due to the Cannon pistol pressed to her temple, didn't even look fazed as her unblinking and emotionless eyes looked into Arare's calculating pupils, stating her cause ominously, every word reverberating and echoing within the cave as she spoke.
"Know that I'm telling you this, not because I fear you, or your powerful fleets. Not even the Cannon in the hands of the Kagerou-Class Destroyer, pointed at my head. It is the simple fact that no matter what you ship girls do, no matter what I say, even if you gathered every ship girl from all four corners of the earth to fight us, you cannot ever hope to defeat us.
You can kill me, but you cannot kill us."
Her pupils darkened, causing the temperature to seemingly drop in the void of the cave, her voice lowering as she tilted her head ever-so-slightly forward as the glow sticks started to dim, casting a shadow over her face and barely hinting at the unfathomable forces at work deep down in the Abyss, where the light dared not reach.
"Here we were, paranoid that you ship girls were looking over our shoulders and that you may learn of our secret projects. Yet here you are, asking a mere carrier these questions and clinging to every word I say, which proves that you don't even know half as much as I do. And my sources were from what you humans would call 'through the grapevine', which makes things even worse. Despite all your databases, your knowledge of our ecology, our weapons, our tactics , you really don't know anything about us, do you?"
Nobody had anything to reply to that, being too shocked by the hard truth that the Abyssal dropped on them, of their ignorance, and their inability to prepare or even understand what was to come.
Finally, with the mental beeping of the timer that rang in Sendai's head to remind her of their new escape schedule, she snapped out of her trance and stood up to pack up everything for the escape as her hand hovered over the Anti-Abyssal knife strapped to her thigh, gesturing to the chilling Abyssal and shakily remarking,
"W-Well, you tell your boss, whoever it is, that we're coming for them. We may not know everything now, but we will learn of them and we will win with superior tactics, like we always have."
Only to earn the petrifying and unyielding stare of the Abyssal, and Sendai eventually turned away in distress as the trio attempted to gather up their equipment in the cave to begin the long trek home, their thoughts whirling as they tried to decipher the warning made by the Abyssal and everything that had transpired thus far.
A slight mumble escaped the Abyssal's lips, the sound caught by the sharp light cruiser, who whirled around to address the hostage that they were going to let her go, and that she could signal for the Abyssal fleet from the shore with the glow-sticks if she tried.
Only to find the Wo-Class standing before her, her empty green eyes piercing through Sendai's horrified expression, the shadows in the cave cloaking her and her eyes almost luminescent in the quasi-darkness.
The cable ties lay on the floor, broken with sheer force.
The terrified Sendai whipped out her Anti-Abyssal knife, only for the Abyssal's hand to shoot out from beside her body to intercept her weapon with equally blinding speed as the two destroyers quick-drew their Cannon pistols to form a stand-off to deter the frozen Abyssal.
However, the Wo-Class only seemed interested in getting through her final speech to the three wary ship girls, as the darkness of the cave's interior seemed to seep into and blanket the Abyssal through the cape draped around her back, along with her jet black cape and pale head making her seem like a living Reaper.
"As a human once said, 'If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.' Rejoice in ignorance of your enemies and people, for death is upon you all."
She dropped her hand to passively observe the ship girls packing up and exiting the cave without glancing back as they tried to escape the incoming Abyssal Fleet that were bound to appear soon.
She simply stared from the beach as she observed the ship girls hurriedly gathered their equipment and sailed away, their minds trying and failing to comprehend the sheer scale of things to come.