An empty, rain-soaked Abyss before her.
That was what Shigure was looking at as she pushed her boat slippers to their limit to try and reach the two capital ships that were stuck in the heat of battle.
As to their identities…
The poor destroyer's mind was in a whirl as she tried not to let her morbid flashbacks to Surigao Strait try to confuse her.
However, she couldn't help but see eerie similarities in her fear and paranoia-driven mind as she tried to shield her face from the heavy rain and the cannon shells that flew past her at terrifying and outright lethal speeds.
The Flying Dutchman had crossed their "T" and was firing all thirteen large-caliber cannons at them in an attempt to wipe them all out, and that wasn't even counting the missiles it had launched to devastate the cruisers of the Combined Fleet.
Two of her battleship teammates that were Hiei and Haruna, albeit one being from another naval base, had been pinned down by enemy fire as they took it upon themselves to protect the fleeing Combined Fleet.
And what did she do in the meantime?
Run like the coward that she was before she stopped herself and ran back into the fray, driven more by her resolve to make it up to her fallen fleet mates that haunted her past than actually trying to accomplish anything.
Because if she knew anything, it was that there was nothing she could do to turn the tide of the battle, lucky ship or not.
But that wouldn't stop her from trying.
Oh no.
The Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer could now see two distinct silhouettes off in the distance, periodically illuminated by the incessant flaring of the Dutchman's 35.6 Cm cannons off in the distance as well as the harsh glow of the spotlights that were pointed at the duo, forcing Shigure to cover her eyes to even attempt to look in their direction.
Shigure had concluded that the searchlights from before hadn't exactly went out; Rather, when the ship girls had started running away from the battlefield while Hiei and Haruna stayed behind to cover their escape, the Abyssals had temporarily followed the bulk of escaping ship girls before changing their minds and instead trained their spotlights on the two Kongou-Class battleships before them.
Namely, Hiei and Haruna.
Shigure could see the flash of one of the Abyssal cannons going off, and the instant she registered the brilliant flash from its muzzle, she dived towards the ocean surface just as the 35.6 Cm large-caliber shell hit one of Haruna's cannon mounts and caused it to burst into a blinding fireball beside Haruna's left elbow, Shigure barely hearing Haruna's horrified scream as she shook the seawater out of her ears.
She felt the shell pass by her harmlessly as it created a deafening shock wave upon flying past her head, Shigure getting a little more used to these life-threatening experiences as she spat out the salty seawater in her mouth, pushing off of her feet to run towards the two battleships.
Hiei was the first one to notice her, partly because Hiei and Haruna were the only two ship girls who remained behind to distract the Flying Dutchman due to their status as battleships and were the only ones whose armor stood a chance against the Dutchman 's cannons.
The second was that Haruna was trying her best to snuff out the flames that erupted from her defunct cannon mount, the blaze threatening to engulf her bare skin as the raging flames licked her wet skin and tried to set her uniform on fire.
Hiei turned behind to attempt to look at Shigure, key word being attempted, as Hiei's eyes and apertures were damaged after being forced to stare at the blinding spotlights despite having used her hands to try and shield her eyes, and also had to directly face the barrage of cannon fire as she shouted in Shigure's general direction.
"Shigure! What the hell are you doing, get out of here!"
Shigure shook her head, almost possessed by her drive to protect her teammates as she shouted back,
"No! I have to save you, Fuso…"
Shigure caught herself in time, hoping that Hiei didn't pick up on her slip of the tongue as she corrected herself immediately.
"I have to save you, Hiei! I won't let you sink!"
Hiei shook her head, slowly sailing towards her as she tried to rub her eyes with the back of her hands as though she could bring back her eyesight by rubbing her eyes hard enough, trying to persuade Shigure as she positioned herself between the barrage of cannon fire and Shigure to protect the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyer.
"You're going to get blown to bits if you stand out here, you need to retreat!"
"Not without you two!"
Another shot rang out, Hiei and Shigure both flinching and ducking as another shell hit a little too close to their position, about twenty centimeters left of Hiei's position and threw up buckets of cold seawater that soaked the both of them as they brought up their arms to protect themselves as best they could.
Shigure held up her hand in an attempt to shield her eyes from the Abyssal spotlights, trying her best not to look directly at the source of the light for a chance to shoot out the spotlights when her internal programs had already estimated the positions of the spotlights on the deck of the Flying Dutchman due to the orientation of the beams of light hitting them, having caught a glimpse the Dutchman's hull and putting two and two together.
She held up a 12 cm Single Gun Cannon in an admittedly pathetic attempt fire back at the Flying Dutchman as she heard a fuming Hiei trying to make herself heard over the roar of the Dutchman's cannons, the Kongou-Class battleship leaning in to both shout at and shield Shigure.
"You can't do anything here! The 3rd Fleet is already here to help us out, and no matter how hard you've trained, as you are now, you can't go up against an unknown enemy when you aren't even remodeled!"
Shigure wanted to argue with her, but a reverberating roar, sounding like a mix between a sharp, mechanical cry of a great leviathan and a loud ship horn drowned out the world with its intense volume as the world was once again shrouded in darkness, the Abyssals turning off the spotlights yet again to confuse them as the ocean around the Flying Dutchman started to shift menacingly.
Shigure fared little better than Hiei as her eyes adjusted to help her see in the darkness, Hiei hardly reacting to being plunged into darkness as she had been overwhelmed by the sheer brilliance of the dreaded searchlights and was now pretty much blinded by them, only shifting her head a fraction as she prepared herself for the enemy's next move.
Although Shigure's eyes were now used to shifting between the eerie and rainy darkness and the incandescent glow of the searchlights that threatened to blind her, it was still extremely disorientating to try and get used to one extreme end of the spectrum amidst a heated battle, and be temporarily thrown off-kilter as her world was plunged into the other extreme in an instant.
Still hearing the slight echo of the Dutchman's monstrous roar, Shigure could see the oceanic behemoth throwing up massive waves and displacing the water beneath it as it attempted to submerge, the entire process being quite slow due to the sheer size of the aviation battleship.
Shigure could feel the already rough waves get agitated by the sudden intrusion of the aviation battleship, the waves now reaching almost 1.5 meters in height and were a bit more forceful as Shigure tried her best not to get flung onto the ocean floor as the Flying Dutchman submerged and retracted its cannons.
But Shigure and Hiei detected the unexpected presence of enemy signatures in the area as Shigure and Hiei blanched, Hiei sailing back towards the smoking Haruna and attempting to warn her.
Shigure noted that Haruna was burnt by the now-extinguished cannon on her rigging, the few Fairies that had worn life vests and jumped off her rigging to escape the flames were quickly scooped up by the compassionate battleship as the other Fairies wore fire-retardant suits and were equipped with fire extinguishers and fire hoses to put out the remaining flames that plagued the rigging.
Shigure took a slight step back to observe the two Kongou Sisters, and found that they looked absolutely miserable.
Taking into account the fact that they had to contend with staring into the beams of several searchlights that eventually blinded them, they also had to withstand the impact of incoming cannon shells lest they hit their retreating teammates that were behind them.
They had to fire at an enemy that they could hardly see, and had to look right into the series of bright explosions that were caused by several large-caliber cannons going off sequentially to ensure a constant rate of fire.
Their uniform was in tatters and was pretty much unrecognizable due to the rain and blood ruining its appearance, and the battleships themselves were bruised in several places where their normally-flawless skin was marred by the blue-black bruises where the 35.6 Cm cannon rounds had hit them hard, some of the wounds having broken through their skin and caused them to bleed on their uniforms.
Haruna's left arm was charred, having suffered first to second-degree burns before her Fairies successfully put out the flames. Her hair was smoking as wisps of her long, cascading hair must've caught on fire, likely relying on the environmental downpour to put it out.
Both of them were exhausted, in pain, and looked pretty much defeated at this point in time, the only thing driving them on was the hope that their teammates could escape the battlefield safely as they both moved rather sluggishly despite their status as relatively nimble and fast battleships, their movements betraying the amount of damage they sustained as they struggled to talk to each other.
She could see the 3rd Fleet approach them on the radar, and Hiei looked in their general direction as she mustered whatever was left of her strength to command the 3rd Fleet and give her orders.
"The Flying Dutchman seems to be retreating via submerging, but there are now Abyssals in the water! Be careful, and be thorough when you try to take out as many of them as you can to ensure the safe escape of the Combined Fleet!"
Hiei exhaled sharply after that, her eyes dulled as she felt the physical strain of having to attract enemy cannon fire, especially when they were using life-sized large-caliber cannons.
Shigure estimated that the significantly larger shells would contain more kinetic energy, because even though it would be harder for them to get the shell to fire at the same velocity that the ship girl and Abyssal cannons could due to the drastic difference in size, when the life-sized shells traveled fast enough, they hit hard.
Their cannons and ammunition had been downsized to allow them to be carried by ship girls of different classes, but no matter how hard they tried, the Fairies simply couldn't replicate the destructive power that the life-sized cannons possessed despite increasing their muzzle velocity due to the reduced size of the cannon shells.
But this was neither here nor there, as Shigure saw Hiei and Haruna tense up from the number of Abyssals that lurked underwater, Shigure mimicking their reaction of shock and genuine, unadulterated fear as Shigure identified no more than eight battleships, roughly fourteen light cruisers and heavy cruisers each and about a dozen destroyers surfacing.
They were all right underneath Hiei and Haruna.
And they were surfacing.
Hiei turned towards Shigure, screaming,
"RUN!"
Before a hand attached to a mechanical cannon shot out from the depths, an Abyssal Ri-Class heavy cruiser popping up from the ocean with a sick-looking cannon on her left arm to shoot Hiei.
Shigure didn't even think twice about launching her torpedoes, having done so reflexively out of a desperate desire to protect her teammate, Hiei understanding her move as she bent down to throw a punch at the Ri-Class's cannon, completely crushing the snout of the beast-shaped cannon and compromising the cannon's ability to fire.
This caused her to reconsider her situation as she was stuck within arm's reach of the fast battleship, while Shigure's torpedoes were streaking towards her as she attempted to dive back down into the safety of the abyss.
Hiei was a split second late as she tried to catch the retreating Ri-Class, her tired fingers barely scraping the smooth surface of the Abyssal skin before the Abyssal slipped from her grasp.
She tsked under her breath and stumbled away from Shigure's incoming torpedoes to avoid succumbing to friendly fire while regrouping with her sister, using her status as flagship to order Shigure.
"Go! Get out of here! That's an order as your flagship!"
And that was when the world went to hell.
The Abyssals that were hiding underwater all surfaced at the same time, their cannons pointed at Hiei and Haruna as Shigure was forced to watch from the sidelines, frozen with shock at the very real possibility of losing her two battleship friends via Abyssal firing squad while she watched helplessly.
But the whistle of an incoming shell was barely enough warning for the Abyssals, a Ri-Class heavy cruiser instantly blown to smithereens as two large-caliber shells ripped into her body and cannons, punching through the Ri-Class with ease.
One of the shells, upon messily exiting her shoulder whilst carving a hole of gory destruction through the Ri-Class's upper torso and heart, likely caused the explosion that put down the Ri-Class for good as she sank in a flaming heap, the Abyssal failing to respond to such a quick execution by a powerful cannon.
The battlefield's attention was instantly drawn towards a figure standing in the distance, a towering ship girl that had two antennas sticking out of her headgear.
She was standing to the side of the Abyssals' formation such that while Hiei and Haruna were in front of them and Shigure was somewhere to their rear, this mystery battleship was standing to their left.
Her head was angled a little lower so that she could glower at them, her calm and cheery attitude washed away by the rain and leaving only bitter, smoldering resentment that was punctuated by her unnatural lack of words and a surfacing passion for combat that was usually well hidden as her clenched, white-gloved fists cracked menacingly.
Her cannons were all pointed at the Abyssals, and one of them had two smoking barrels that indicated its recent use in putting down the Abyssal heavy cruiser.
A flash of lightning lit her tall shadowy figure and headgear amidst the darkness and almost made her seem as if she were the devil, what with her imposing height, horned headgear and lean physique showing off her coiled muscles and legendary cannons.
Mutsu had arrived. And she wasn't alone.