In the Admiral's office, Admiral Haru was looking through all of the collected information of the Abyssals' recent movements, the opened folder that was "Apocalypse" showing several blueprints and receipts for materials used to build some sort of new Abyssal weapon to be deployed in battle.
This would likely herald a new age of warfare, and even though Admiral Haru tried her best to put the pieces together and uncover their plans, she didn't have enough puzzle pieces needed to form a credible lead.
Mutsu sat on the couch as she sorted through some of the paperwork and was fielding a call from Central, the Nagato-Class battleship called in to help divide the workload between them to finish the paperwork in half the time.
Admiral Haru looked weary after spending a whole afternoon contemplating possibilities that had gotten her nowhere except giving her a splitting headache that she could use as an excuse to get out of anything if need be.
Several things were set in motion by the Abyssals, and she was hoping that she and the Admirals of neighboring bases were prepared enough to face what was to come.
Mutsu tapped the Admiral's shoulder, urging her to relax with the following argument.
"Admiral, it's time for you to rest. You can't keep this up forever. Even if you were a ship girl, I would still give the same advice."
Admiral Haru sighed, nodding slowly as she tried to let go of the documents she held and tried to explain herself.
"I know, but it's just…"
Haru took off her Admiral cap, and tossed it back towards her desk, the officer's cap barely making a "plop" sound as it landed on her laptop, Haru scratching her head as she considered the well-being of her girls.
"You girls risk your lives out there, and I can't be sitting here cooling my heels. I have to pull my own weight and figure out the enemy's motives so as to end this war and prevent any more losses. I won't settle for anything less."
Mutsu's face darkened, leaning in to whisper to her frustrated Admiral.
"Is it about the fallen girls? Is that why you're pushing yourself so hard?"
Haru, now no longer regarding herself as an Admiral when addressing Mutsu, nodded solemnly, sighing resignedly.
"Look at me. I ask for you girls to be brave in the face of losses, and here I am, barely able to face the girls that I've sunk, either directly or indirectly."
Mutsu reflected upon that, finally answering the Admiral, who slouched and suddenly looked several years older due to the stress from commanding the fleet.
"You can't protect everyone all the time, Admiral, especially when you're commanding the battle from so far away. Besides, this is war, and I think everyone has come to terms with their own mortality. No one can blame you for losing a few ship girls in such turbulent times. But, if I may ask, why is it that you drive yourself beyond what a normal Admiral would do to ensure the safety of each and every ship girl?"
Haru plopped down on her seat in order to relax, Mutsu standing adjacent to her and listening to her Admiral as she explained.
"You know I was in a gang, back in my youth, right?"
Mutsu nodded, not surprised to find out that the Admiral had been a rebellious teenager, running away from home to join a biker gang.
Haru sighed and continued,
"Well, the reason why I left them to join the Navy and to serve as an Admiral was because I wanted to protect you all. Bear with me here. This stemmed from an encounter in my youth, back when I was maybe, like, 5? I was in a small town, and this was back when we didn't know about you girls, when the government still thought that they could end this war without breaking the news to the world about this alien menace. I stumbled onto a pair of ship girls in disguise as civilians in the town I lived in, and when I saw you girls, and seeing how you gave off a vibe that was different from any human's, even when you looked human…"
Haru scratched her head sheepishly, and ducked her head in embarrassment at what she was going to say next.
"I went up to you girls and asked if you were angels, seeing how beautiful you were."
Mutsu simply stared for a moment before snickering at her Admiral's revelation, Haru smiling tiredly as she tried to defend herself.
"Hey, man. That was before I knew I liked girls, and all of you ship girls have perfect looks, so give my five-year old self a break."
She looked away, continuing.
"I remember telling one of the 'Onee-chan's that I liked her, and the other ship girl invited me to talk with them by placing me on her lap and resting her breasts atop of my head. I used to wonder why my neck ached that particular night, and now, thinking back on it, it wasn't much of a mystery, eh?"
Mutsu gave her a winning smile, happy that her Admiral was finally opening up and relieving her stress by talking about her past.
"The ship girl who had me on her lap told me of their secret powers, like how they could walk on water and how human bullets couldn't hurt them, despite the other ship girl's insistence that such information was classified, although my look of amazement was enough to dissuade her from persisting, and they both made me swear to an oath of silence.
I suppose telling a five-year old girl wasn't much cause for alarm, since no one would believe a child. Fast forward to when I was in a gang as a teenager, I was there watching my afternoon television when they revealed the existence of the ship girls to the world. Amidst the uproar of the humans attending the conference, I saw the faces of two ship girls that had almost faded from my memory."
Haru looked to Mutsu, her eyes unreadable, but with hints of slight happiness with a nostalgic smile, Mutsu unsure of how to respond.
"It was you who told me of the superpowers of the ship girls, and it was Nagato whom I confessed my feelings to that day."
Mutsu's eyes widened, but when she thought about it, it wasn't so surprising seeing that she knew herself to be the type of ship girl to indulge in a child's curiosity.
The cute look of shining amazement would likely soften Nagato's heart and allow her to continue amazing Haru with their incredible abilities, since her Admiral was a child back then.
And besides, she thought.
If the Admiral had feelings for Nagato ever since she was a child, then maybe their relationship was always meant to be as it seemed to be a form of love that spanned lifetimes, Mutsu feeling rather glad that her Admiral was able to find Nagato again, even if it was not the one she met in her childhood.
She heard the Admiral continue on.
"Back then, my heart fluttered upon seeing Nagato, and I was a teenager then. I knew I was into girls then, but I guess on that day, I thought hard about the revelation of the Abyssal threat, and I kinda came to a conclusion, y'know? Like an epiphany. That if angels were to exist, surely demons should exist out there in the world, you get me?"
Mutsu looked away at that, no longer sure how to face the Admiral, who sighed and reclined back into her seat and looked defeated.
"And that we were on the brink of being destroyed so many times without even knowing what hit us, it scared me. But what made it even worse was that they revealed that the only line of defense against complete annihilation was a bunch of teenage girls, some looking barely old enough to graduate from preschool. It scared me even more, to think that you girls had to shoulder this burden without telling anyone just because you were created by us as instruments of war. This was a choice that you never had the privilege to choose for yourselves, which really hit me hard back then, thinking of the countless number of girls that had to live short, violent lives before dying and having no one know about and appreciate their contributions and existence, as if they were ghosts…"
Haru shuddered and inhaled sharply, as if afraid of how she would fare as a ship girl before sighing and finishing her story.
"And from then on, I took it upon myself to enlist myself in the Navy to protect you all, and lead a fleet that would end this war so that none of you would have to fight anymore. I'd marry the girl of my dreams AKA Nagato, my teenage delusion of messiah-hood and being a grand leader pushing me on as I was accepted into the Admiral waiting list."
Haru breathed out from her nose in what was a feeble attempt at a laugh at her younger self, almost looking as if she would break down at any moment.
"Look at me now. Several dead ship girls that are on me, no idea of our enemy's plans or movements and always having to be on defense…"
Gesturing to the "Apocalypse" folder on the table in front of her.
"... and no end to this fucking war in sight.
Some messiah, huh?"
Mutsu stood up and walked over to her Admiral, resting her gloved hand on the Admiral's shoulder and taking extra care not to break her relatively frail human body as comforting her with a sad smile on her face.
"Like I said, none of us blame you for the mistakes you made. You try your best to be there for every single one of us and treat us with the care a mother would for her offspring, something that goes above and beyond the call of duty. And for that, we are eternally grateful."
Haru looked up to the caring and reflective eyes of her battleship, finally breaking out into a small smile as she nodded.
"I guess so."
Mutsu nodded in response to Admiral Haru's improvement in her attitude and stood back as Admiral Haru pushed herself back up on her Admiral chair, taking in a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself as she chirped up.
"Ahh, this is why I like talking about serious shit with you, Mutsu. You always know how to cheer me up when I get too emotional."
Mutsu only sighed at that, replying,
"Yes, and you tease Nagato-nee because you want to 'soften her up for the marriage' as you once said, and because you love her. You hang out with Kongou to relax, flirt with Ashigara in your free time and bring Yamato as your wing-man when going anywhere out of the base."
"Exactly. I'm glad you know me so well."
"Regrettably so."
Haru smirked, putting on her Admiral cap as she leaned over to reach for her phone to dial the extension number to the engineer block, where Akashi and Aoba were working with the human engineer duo to create a machine that allowed a ship girl to communicate with her soul, the entire project code-named "Psyche" for future reference.
She waited for someone at the other end of the line to pick up, finally hearing Akashi's voice through the speaker as the repair ship asked.
"Admiral, is that you?"
"Yep, just wanted to check up on the progress of Project Psyche on your end."
She could hear the voices of Akio and Kousuke in the background as Akashi's voice drowned them out, speaking up about the few problems they've encountered.
"Well, Akio and Kousuke say that the interior of a ship girl's mind may be similar to that of a human's, but we've been actively trying to determine what those differences are by checking our records and making calls to Central to confirm.
They've also been trying to simulate how to form and stabilize an 'inner world' for the mind and soul to be transported into with help of the Fairies here, a platform that won't collapse from within and can be maintained as the ship girl is in 'sleep' mode."
Admiral Haru took the time to open her laptop and check up on the weather forecast that was in her favorites tab as she clarified.
"So, like we all know, the soul is summoned and is installed in the ship girl's body as it creates a predetermined personality. Are you saying that you're trying to draw the soul out safely and allow the ship girl to reach a deeper consciousness, thereby finding a middle ground for the two to meet without complications?"
Akashi gave a huff of agreement, Admiral Haru seeing that the weather on the 12th was bad, with a very high probability of extremely heavy rain around the Kanto region and the Izu Islands.
Damn.
The Abyssals always took advantage of adverse weather conditions to utilize guerrilla tactics and strike quickly, since the effectiveness of their detection equipment would be severely limited on the field, which allowed the Abyssals to travel a little more freely beneath the ocean while the ship girls had to battle with the Abyssals as well as the weather.
"Akashi, how long do you need before being able to give me reasonable odds of surviving this procedure?"
"When you say 'reasonable', you mean..."
"I mean , at least a 30% of survival. And I want that to be your most pessimistic estimate, not your most optimistic."
She could hear an audible sigh on the other line, but there were signs of a discussion being held as she guessed that Akashi covered the mouthpiece of her phone, Admiral Haru waiting for about fifteen seconds before Akashi spoke into the mouthpiece to give their answer.
"About the time when you fight the Abyssal armada in a few weeks."
Admiral Haru exhaled, glad that they were able to make some progress while maintaining reasonable odds of survival.
And to put it in perspective, she'd never have considered 30% remotely close to anything she'd consider "reasonable odds" 10 or even 5 years ago.
Two things that convinced her that the first test subjects would survive the procedure was the fact that she had pulled a lot of strings to get Central to cough up relevant information pertaining to Project Psyche and anything they had learnt about the ship girl mind throughout the two decades.
The second was that Akashi, a very experienced ship girl who had lived for slightly over 16 years and was pretty much a centenarian in ship girl years, was on the case, and despite the repair ship's shady past with Central, she trusted the repair ship's expertise and knew that she would deliver.
She uttered out a simple yet genuine,
"Thanks, Akashi."
To which the repair ship only huffed in response and hung up on her, Admiral Haru tossing her phone onto her desk, sliding down to slouch in her chair as she closed her eyes and pulled her Admiral cap down to summarize things thus far.
Akashi, Aoba, Akio and Kousuke were working on Project Psyche, and the submarines were out stealthily laying the Anti-Abyssal naval mines for the large-scale battle that was to come in the near future.
She didn't know much about "Apocalypse", but she couldn't help feeling a sense of dread that this upcoming battle was but a distraction for something far more destructive than anything they had faced thus far, seeing the sheer amount of resources poured into it for so long.
This feeling of dread may be dismissed as an unfounded fear by some, but for her, there was too much riding on the line for her to dismiss anything as an unfounded fear out of hand.
This rain, too...
She leaned forward to reach for her touch-phone again, allowing her Admiral cap to fall onto her lap as she planned to call up the Admirals of the neighboring Miura and Tateyama Naval Base through both the casual and official channels, Mutsu raising her head temporarily to regard Admiral Haru before looking back down at her paperwork.
There was something big that was about to go down, and Admiral Haru wanted to make sure that her ship girls had enough strength and numbers to protect each other on the battlefield.
Fujiwara and Konishi would understand her concerns, especially if she let them in on the loop about "Apocalypse" and had at least one fleet ready to be deployed at the drop of a hat should the Abyssals really try to attack them under the cover of heavy rain on the 12th.