The day was clear as today's weather was cloudless, the light blue sky indicative of warmer than average weather today.
On the harbor, there were several tall females surrounding the Admiral, who had her signature white Admiral blazer draped over her shoulders as her Admiral's cap was being twirled around her right index finger.
She had a folded umbrella in her left hand held like like a cane to shield herself against the afternoon sun as she talked to her ship girls.
Now, the Admiral herself wasn't exactly short as she was a respectable 1.79 meters tall.
But she was surrounded by the tallest ship girls in her base, and even Hiei, one of the relatively shorter battleships present, was already taller than her as she stood at 1.85 meters while Nagato and Mutsu stood at 2.03 meters, and Yamato was a whopping 2.35 meters tall.
But Admiral Haru wasn't exactly concerned with height, not when she was without question the most powerful person on the base.
She could order anyone to kneel before her if she ordered them to. (not that she'd do that to her girls) Right now, she was rather relaxed as she looked around her to take in the collective might of the battleships.
Kongou and Hiei were there, Haruna and Kirishima pursuing different career paths to help out the base in ways other than just fighting battles.
The two Kongou Sisters that were present were fired up for the practice session, fueled on even further by the powerful allies that surrounded them.
Yamato and Musashi were there, eager for what was essentially their introductory lesson to naval warfare and despite their calm demeanors, they were fidgeting about, eager to hit the ocean and fire off a few practice rounds in a sparring session.
Yamato was calmly looking down at Hiei, smiling serenely as she listened to whatever it was that Hiei was talking about, the superstructure of the Kongou-Class battleship having been constructed somewhat similar to the Yamato-Class, and that caused a bond to form between them.
Musashi was discussing something with Nagato and Mutsu, her high heel occasionally clacking in impatience as the Yamato-Class battleship tried not to draw any attention to her impatience.
Kongou was trying to out-boast the German battleship Bismarck, the German wearing a bottomless gray, black and red uniform along with a chest plate held up by an anchor between her collarbone and a metal collar around her neck.
Bismarck had black thigh-highs that led to steel high-heels that were the default footwear of most battleships, detached sleeves primarily black in color and doubled as brown-black gloves for her hands.
Her shoulders were bare, and her silky blonde hair flowed down her back as she stood proudly. Her cerulean blue eyes were prideful, yet respectful towards the battleship whom she was debating with.
She was shielded from the elements by her peaked cap, and her black underwear barely peeked out from underneath her uniform as she didn't wear pants or even a skirt.
Admiral Haru was standing in their midst, appreciating the moment.
The base often went through calamitous times, Admiral Haru quietly observing one of the turret pods that lined the base to shoot at Abyssals should they ever attempt a land assault, which they pulled off once on a national scale and cost the world dearly.
She wanted to protect her ship girls despite her impotence and inability to join them on the battlefield.
And as she had discussed often with Kiyoshimo, she wanted nothing more than to sail the seas with them and be out there on the field to participate in battles and give out orders.
But she sometimes felt as powerless as the king in a game of chess, being the most valuable piece that needed to be protected by her own girls, but not possessing the potential of the destroyers like pawns who could be promoted or the raw power of the battleships like the queens on the chessboard.
But she finally looked away from the turret pod, reminding herself of the responsibility that came with being an Admiral, being able to command and sortie the fleet en masse, not being held down by too much bureaucratic bullshit that she despised dealing with, and she had the potential to see the big picture.
She would send her ship girls on sorties that would best utilize their abilities while planning for the future, where extensive training with senior ship girls, fleet drills, practice matches and field experience would prepare them to fight this war indefinitely.
She had the clearance and power to obtain almost anything she needed and could account for everything on the battlefield to either influence, take advantage of or avoid completely.
From allies that would join them and improve their odds of winning to the weather conditions that were impartial to their suffering and influenced the battle whenever and however they wanted, like heavy rain and bad weather that would cause the ship girls to miss more often.
She hated depending on things that were beyond her control, like waiting for the Abyssals to make their move before she could make adjustments to her plans, often considering many plausible scenarios and preparing accordingly.
And even then, she wasn't able to even promise, much less guarantee that they would win every battle that they fought.
She raised her hand to get their attention, and the battleships all stopped their conversations to listen to her.
She began.
"Alright, so your objective today is to learn from each other. There are several things that you all can either learn or train up on, and I want you all to try and spar with each other in order to learn something today and to keep yourselves combat-ready."
Admiral Haru could see the battleships nodding in response.
The battleships were outclassed only by the Abyssal Princesses, requiring the might of one or more fleets to take down and were abundant in types with new models being churned out every year ever since their debut in the latter half of the war.
Ammo shortage was a legitimate concern on the battlefield, where the ship girls and Abyssals sometimes had to resort to fighting tooth and nail just to survive.
It wouldn't hurt to learn about some defensive close-quarters combat maneuvers to make sure that they'd survive in such situations.
Admiral Haru reassured them with a wave of her hand, making sure they got the point that this wasn't going to be the last lesson for them.
"This isn't going to be the last lesson for you all. Instead, this is more like an introductory lesson for some of you, and a lesson for others to keep their skills sharp.
We're planning to have another training session for you girls a week later, since the upcoming Pacific Assault requires massive firepower from you all to soften up anything that gets in our way. You all need the training required to fight them in close-quarters combat should our naval battles stretch into prolonged fistfights.
So Yamato and Musashi, you two don't need to worry about our resources, we got a stockpile to invest in your lessons, so learn as much as you can from everyone."
Yamato and Musashi both nodded in acknowledgement, before Admiral Haru waved and signaled for them to disperse and suit up for battle while she stood alone on the harbor, overlooking the ocean as she saw the fast Kongou battleships already strolling towards the harbor.
She couldn't fight like the ship girls could, but she was going to do everything that was possible to maximize their chances of winning.
From the introduction of submarines to mine-laying, a once-illegal practice that was now widely accepted as a way to deter the Abyssals from attacking certain locations, to being the most selfish Admiral in Japan, bullying bureaucrats and corporate heads with Yamato behind her to barter for extra resources and watched as they caved in from the innocent demands of the revered battleship.
She used their "donations" to fuel the war effort, and was building up her base to become one of the largest and strongest armadas in the world.
And if the "Reincarnation" theory was true, and that sunken ship girls were "Abyssalized" to be turned them into Abyssals, then she was going to starve them of ship girls as best she could as she brought her ship girls up to be the best of the best and had relatively low losses despite their enormous fleet roster.
She valued every single member of her base and was going to pull out all the stops to win this war, although she wasn't going to fall into the trap into believing that all the ship girls were going to be alive at the end.
She knew that losses were inevitable.
But even then, she wasn't going to give them any more ship girls than they already did if she could help it.
And right now, she had done everything in her power to prepare to greet the Abyssals at their doorstep with a barrage of cannon fire and a hail of explosions.
She understood the risks of micromanagement, history proving that being too controlling of your troops and logistics would lead to the whole command structure breaking down.
That was why she delegated the issue of management of ship girl fleets and logistics to the Coordinators, as they, being ship girls, would understand what was needed to best help the ship girls under her command.
She wanted her ship girls to be independent should she ever die, and she wasn't under any sort of illusion that she was safe on land and was protected by her ship girls like a king was behind his soldiers and subjects.
The Abyssals have attempted land assaults in the past, the most successful one being in the United States of America in 2007, where they invaded from the Atlantic Ocean onto the Eastern front, pushing far inland due to the element of surprise and countless reserves as they occupied the eastern seaboard from New York to Florida.
The Americans had to resort to using everything short of a tactical nuclear strike to flatten the Eastern front and drive them back.
And even then, the Abyssals made off with almost all of the nukes on the eastern coast of the United States that were placed there in the past to launch at the Soviets as the ship girls entered and secured the nuclear bases that were thankfully spared from the aerial bombardment, and found that all of the warheads were stolen by the oceanic invaders as they retreated.
At that time, the United States Ship Girl Navy was nothing to sneeze at since being the industrial war machine that they were, they had already summoned powerful ship girls like Enterprise and Iowa several times and had hundreds of bases lining both coasts.
But even then, the Eastern bases were devastated, being overrun by the sheer amount of Abyssals that spawned from the depths that numbered in the tens of millions after a long lull in their movements.
And that wasn't even accounting for the sheer firepower they brought.
As the Abyssals assaulted the Eastern front with astounding speed to overwhelm the American bases in a manner reminiscent of the German Blitzkrieg by bombarding the coast with carriers, battleships and Princesses stationed off the coast to soften everything up for the admittedly ill-equipped ground troops, where ship girls and civilians alike were forced into an exodus as the Abyssals stepped ashore.
The ship girls were overwhelmed by the sheer manpower and firepower that the Abyssals brought, with wave after wave of Abyssals throwing themselves at the ship girls while being harassed by Abyssal bombers and Abyssal battleships taking pot shots at them.
They were unprepared for land-based combat, and were eventually forced to abandon their unwieldy ship girl weapons that couldn't be reloaded or maintained without the tools and resources in the bases that they left.
Their heavy sea-based weapons only served to slow them down on land, heading inland while evacuating the entire Eastern seaboard at the cost of their lives.
Whatever survivors were left after the inland push barely held the line while only armed with ineffective human firearms until the Western front airdropped the other half of the American Ship Girl Navy with extremely expensive and hastily-crafted Anti-Abyssal weapons made from scratch.
And along with a few tanks to turn the tables, they turned the tide of the war with a few B2 Spirit Stealth Bombers performing bombing runs that thankfully didn't destroy too much of the infrastructure as the ship girls took back the Eastern coast.
They finally pushed the Abyssals back into the ocean, although the unspoken consensus was that it was more as if the Abyssals themselves decided to retreat like a receding wave, having already done extensive damage to America's naval bases and not wishing to hold onto territory that they knew they couldn't occupy for long.
The assault was infamously named the "American Blitzkrieg" after the Nazi invasion into France, the invasion carried out with deadly efficiency and with blinding speed to take the ship girls by surprise, the enemies retreating just as quickly and taking their nukes with them.
After that fiasco, the world decided that Anti-Abyssal weapons be made readily available to be crafted at a heavy cost of resources, creating weapons that could be wielded whatever the situation.
Most of their naval maneuvers were carried out by their powerful boat slippers, hence why ship girl weapons were created to be heavy as they didn't need to run while carrying them.
Even for destroyers, their weapons would only slow them down as they brought their sea-based weapons onto land, the reduced speed a result of their ship girl armor, battle backpacks and weapons weighing them down.
The worst offenders of this were battleships who could essentially bring down entire buildings at the cost of moving at the pace of a snail.
Thus, an alternative was to use resources to create an Anti-Abyssal weapon that could naturally be used on land by creating a weapon based off of an existing human weapon design.
The most common kind were knives or swords that could be carried around easily by ship girls to be used in times of emergency, and when the option of using ship girl weapons were unavailable, for example, due to ammo shortage.
They were either crafted by the Fairies and human engineers or was a weapon that was crafted to accompany the construction of certain ship girls, Tenryuu, Tatsuta and Murakumo being a part of that group.
One thing that users were warned about was that an Anti-Abyssal weapon was perfectly capable of killing a ship girl just as they could kill an Abyssal, as both parties were created from the same steel and thus could be hurt just as easily.
Strangely enough, Admiral Haru thought, the Anti Abyssal weapons required a certain level of skill to be wielded effectively as they were based off of weapon designs not meant for conventional ship girl warfare, but were absolutely devastating in the hands of a veteran who knew what she was doing.
Admiral Haru sighed and looked towards the ocean, the wake of the last few battleships barely visible over the horizon.
She loved all of her ship girls, she really did.
And if dumping all her resources into creating the best weapons meant that they would all survive this war, she'd do so in a heartbeat and haggle every single corporate head out there to do the same to end this horrid war once and for all.
She never wanted to lose another ship girl in her life, for it felt as though she lost another daughter to this neverending conflict, and there was nothing she could do to stop it for good.
But like she said, she wasn't so naive to believe that there would be no casualties in war.
She simply didn't want them to be the girls that she had fallen in love with, and whom she treated like family in lieu of her real one.