Shigure went through the motions of suiting up and exiting the harbor as though she were brushing her teeth by this point in time since the motions were pretty much the same and she had memorized them.
The briefing was the only thing she paid attention to, having hand-waved everyone's concerns earlier by lying and explaining that she accidentally startled Akitsu Maru upon leaving her toilet stall, causing the IJA ship girl to draw her katana Kagutsuchi in a panic and threatened her before confirming her identity.
Like what she told Akitsu Maru, it wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the complete truth either, since she didn't tell Akitsu Maru about the sensitive topics that Admiral Haru, Akashi and Aoba discussed, and likewise, she didn't tell the backup fleet about them either.
It was something that gnawed at her heart, but her rational mind brushed those concerns aside without a second thought in order to focus on the sortie.
Shigure could see that a few of the ship girls didn't fully buy her story, like the Ise sisters and Kawakaze, and Hatsuharu narrowed her eyes before nodding slowly while Maya just accepted her story at face value, nobody choosing to question her story as Admiral Haru returned and started her briefing.
According to her, they were to intercept the Southern War Abyssal Princess that was deviating from her usual movement patterns.
The soldiers posted off of the coast of Guam reported that the Southern War Princess was headed towards mainland Japan several days ago instead of loitering around Savo Island near Iron Bottom Sound.
This was corroborated by the few unfortunate expedition and battle fleets of other bases that encountered it on its way here, and everyone thankfully had the common sense to avoid engaging them and retreated, resulting in little to no casualties.
But that meant that the Abyssal Princess and her fleet went unopposed thus far, and she had quickly assimilated smaller Abyssal fleets into a sizable armada.
There was quite a debate amongst the Admirals as to whether a full-scale counter-assault should be planned, but Admiral Haru proposed sending in Yokosuka's 8th Fleet, which promptly shut everyone up and made things very awkward as everyone was reluctant to sortie their fleets with them, leading Admiral Haru to form her own backup fleet and ordered them to sortie with the 8th Fleet.
See, the thing about being infamous was that it worked both ways, and while it could make your opponents hesitant to fight you at best, it also made things difficult when trying to form a Combined Fleet with other bases when you're known to utilize savage methods and left a trail of messy Abyssal corpses behind.
Shigure was wondering just how messed up the 8th Fleet was that no one would want to work with them, and Admiral Haru had to order the assembled backup fleet to sortie with them to ensure an increased chance of success.
But those questions would soon be answered as she heard Admiral Haru give the usual "watch each other's backs, and stay safe" talk, grateful that she worked for such a caring Admiral who ultimately wanted them all to be safe.
It was quite a long sail to the fated battleground that was on the edge of the Safety Zone established around Japan, where backup could arrive reasonably quickly within it.
This was also where their space satellites and sailors posted on islands could accurately keep track of things and keep tabs on any Abyssals that entered the Safety Zone in order to redirect merchant and civilian ships in time.
Beyond that was something resembling the uncharted oceans of old, where the ocean was too vast for sonar and satellites to keep track in its entirety due to its sheer size, along with sonar blocking capabilities of the Abyssals in the deep sea, and remained a dangerous place for anyone to enter recklessly.
Most of their sorties were based in or near the border of the Safety Zone as the Abyssals sent fleets to engage them just as often as the ship girls attempted to sortie into the heart of the Pacific Ocean to take down tougher Abyssal Fleets.
But an Abyssal Princess had nothing to fear, and the fact that small islands reported its abnormal movements back to the mainland didn't matter to her when she could engage entire fleets by herself.
The two fleets were to engage the Southern War Princess at the designated coordinates where they were projected to cross paths and try to sink her if possible.
Shigure was sailing with the backup fleet as they followed behind the 8th Fleet, Shigure talking to her sister while she kept a wary eye on the fleet before her.
Akashi, Akitsu Maru and Unryuu she knew well enough, or at least the amiable sides to their personalities, but she was almost certain that they'd transform into unstoppable killers when the battle began.
She didn't know Hatsuzuki well enough about to form a concrete opinion of her, and Shigure could see that although Hayasui was nice to everyone, she could see that she was actively trying to restrain an urge much like how a smoker or a drug addict tried to suppress their desires, so much so that it made their gleeful expressions hold a hidden layer of imperceptible pain to them as she couldn't indulge herself in something freely.
And despite carrying a significantly thicker flight deck-looking equipment strapped to her shoulder, it was clearly anything but a flight deck, spotting the well-hidden seams in the flight deck that resembled gaps in a suit of armor, a pistol grip which obviously didn't belong there, and a few heavy-duty rubber tubes connecting it to the steel barrel on her back that contained the fuel used to refuel them.
Akashi's rigging was shaped like a semicircle, with an elongated smoke stack to the left of her rigging.
Four metal cranes were mounted on it as they all possessed menacing steel hooks along with an assortment of wires to maneuver the crane and hook into the desired position, with a steel antenna positioned at the rear of the rigging to receive radio waves.
The cranes and hooks were shining with an unnatural metallic gleam, as though the regularly-used metal hooks and cranes were cleaned regularly in order to get rid of the blood before it eroded her rigging.
Her rigging possessed a 12.7 Cm Twin High-Angle Gun Mount and a 25 Mm Twin Auto-cannon Mount for self defense in order to deter anyone who wanted to tussle with Akashi out on the field, but Shigure was certain that the repair ship had a few nasty surprises hidden away to spring on the enemy if they got too close.
Akitsu Maru was sortieing with lightweight equipment much like Junyou, her green rigging surrounding her waist as she saw that her scroll and shotgun was stored on the sides of her backpack while her sheathed katana was on her hip, ready to be quick-drawn at a moment's notice.
Kiso had her four quintuple torpedo launcher mounted on her, being a torpedo cruiser and all, while Unryuu's rigging was flashier as it was designed more for aesthetic rather than practical purposes, Unryuu's lightweight rigging also surrounding her waist and colored a navy green like Akitsu Maru's.
Hatsuzuki was carrying her two Rensouhou-chan into battle, or as Kawakaze told her, the Chou-10 Cm-hou-chan, to which Shigure's mind blanked out a little upon hearing that and resolved to mentally call them Rensouhou-chan out of convenience, the destroyer carrying a quadruple-torpedo launcher on her back with the four launch tubes sticking out behind her left shoulder.
Hatsuharu's rigging resembled Tenryuu's despite being a destroyer, her superstructure rigging shaped like a large box and was attached to her lower spine, while mechanical arms that held her weapons were sticking out in a non-intrusive manner, the ends of said mechanical arms styled after ship bows.
Maya's equipment was lopsided like Kako's, where a twin-cannon and tons of Anti-Air cannons were stuck to her right arm, either on an armband on her upper arm or on a superstructure-shaped armlet on her forearm.
Her half-rigging was sticking out from behind her left hip, which had more main and Anti-Air cannons attached to it to make her an Anti-Air tank that was the bane of Abyssal carriers everywhere.
Kawakaze's rigging had her smokestack sticking out above her rigging as a wide, net-shaped antenna was located behind it.
Her rigging was different in that she had two mechanical arms that carried her cannons and torpedoes, Kawakaze carrying spare ammunition on her with two quick-load torpedo racks strapped to her thighs and wearing a sling that contained Anti-Sub depth charges.
She also had some sort of single-barreled hand-cannon on the back of her right hand, and when she asked her sister about it, Kawakaze told her that every Shiratsuyu-Class Kai Ni would carry a variant of this, recalling that Kai Ni Yuudachi carried a twin-barreled hand cannon.
Shigure could see that everyone here was strong in their own right as she felt the air shift around them, from the goofy Ise to the stoic Hatsuzuki and Unryuu as they were all mentally prepared for the upcoming battle, Shigure failing to find any words to add to the conversations that no one was really interested in, but kept alive so as not to spend the entire time sailing in absolute silence.
Shigure spent this time brooding over what she had learnt about the situation at hand, and how fucked they were on a scale of "Pyrrhic victory" to "Unstoppable" end-of-the-world scenario' and everything in between.
Since the Abyssals operated on a "Five-Year Plan" basis, where the first five years had the basic classes of Abyssals, with the next Five-Year Plan introducing the Elites as well as auxiliary Abyssal units.
The Five-Year Plan immediately after revealing the existence of ship girls to the world introduced the Abyssal Princesses, a rather logical leap in terms of technology from Elites to an Abyssal unit so powerful, it could take on entire fleets as a one-Abyssal-army.
The disturbing thing was that the last five years saw no progress save for new Abyssal Princesses being createds, some postulating that the Abyssals had reached some sort of technological plateau, as it seemed impossible to create something even more powerful than a Princess.
But it seemed like the Abyssals had already been developing, or God forbid, finished developing a new batch of weapons in order to push them closer to the breaking point by bringing the fight to them.
But Shigure temporarily halted her thoughts to notice that Hayasui and Akitsu Maru were distributing chilled drinks and field rations to feed everyone, suddenly feeling thankful that they wouldn't fight the Abyssals on an empty stomach even though they were ultimately machines and could live without food or water for extended periods of time.
Hayasui had unpacked her boxy sling bag, revealing a small Styrofoam container that contained chilled fuel cans for everyone and a few liquor bottles for the seniors, kept at low temperatures via small chunks of dry ice.
Akitsu Maru provided the field ration to Shigure and winked conspiratorially at her, unsure of how to respond to that while in full view of everyone and settled on giving her an awkward smile in return, which seemed to satisfy her.
Shigure tore open the field ration to eat the contents within, noting the chocolate bar, sandwich, biscuits and a few small steel tins that they could easily rip apart with their superhuman strength and eat.
Eating while remembering to get a can of fuel from Hayasui later, she noted that it was now 1.23 p.m. as they continued sailing on while Akashi and Ise led them to their destination, E.T.A. 7.10 p.m when the sky would still be a summer-orange tint.
Shigure resumed thinking, considering possible scenarios should the Abyssals mass-produce human weapons in order to kill ship girls.
That might mean fighting a full-on World War on sea, land and air, which involved many problems that humans and ship girls alike had to overcome in order to stand a chance of survival, and developed countries like America, Japan Europe and Russia would likely be their prime targets.
Not that the less developed countries wouldn't be targeted, as they possessed abundant natural resources and were valuable areas to occupy like Africa, India, the Middle East, South America and Southeast Asia, the last one placing them within striking distance of the Japanese mainland.
It would no longer required just the ship girls to win this war, since a land conflict would directly involve the humans that were previously almost powerless, as their less maneuverable warships were easily sunk by the relatively nimble Abyssals that could surface and strike fast while their cannons struggled to aim at them, and missiles weren't an efficient method of wiping them out as they dived underwater to avoid the brunt of the missile detonation.
But a land assault meant that they were fighting a war which favored the humans, since no matter how crazy-prepared the Abyssals were, humanity had developed all kinds of devastating weapons that could handle anything the Abyssals threw at them.
Missiles launched at them? The humans likely had missile defense systems to shoot them out of the sky.
Tanks had come a long way since World War 2, and so had firearms and weapons of war. And she was worried that the Abyssals might no longer play by the "World War 2" motif and decided to utilize modern weapons in order to level the playing field.
The Abyssals would know that if they stuck too closely to a particular theme, it might handicap them in the long run, since they would be armed to the teeth with modern firearms which outclassed World War 2 German MP 40 sub-machine guns or Russian Mosin Nagant rifles; They simply couldn't rival a modern firearm no matter how much you upgraded it.
Urban warfare in the streets of America, Europe and Japan, along with jungle and desert warfare in parts of Asia and Africa while the Russian front would mostly consist of winter warfare, something that gave the Abyssals an advantage since the Abyssals were impervious to the cold and would not be susceptible to problems that ship girls would encounter in freezing conditions.
All this would happen while they had to protect their bases in order to sortie and defend their oceans.
But Shigure munched on her chocolate bar, feeling the solid bar melt in her mouth and forming a sweet, viscous liquid as she swallowed the deliciously sweet, pasty mixture of chocolate while brainstorming.
The Abyssals might utilize modern weapons to fight them on land, while they stuck to their guns while on sea.
She wasn't sure about the skies, since Shigure had no idea how they were to defend themselves against fighter jets, having read up on history and noting the significant developments that occurred after World War 2, like stealth aircraft, automated missile guidance systems, supersonic flight and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles amongst others.
It would be remiss of them to neglect a vital aspect of warfare that could change the tide of a battle or even a war, remembering that air superiority was why carriers and warplanes existed.
But she shook her head free of such idle thoughts, reminding herself that she was a simple soldier tasked with fighting a war, not scheming to protect all of mankind.
That was Admiral Haru's job, and she had to focus on the battle before her.
She finished her military rations, pocketing her trash and walking towards the fleet oiler to request for a chilled fuel can, Shigure eventually learning to suppress these now-useless thoughts that would only hinder her in battle, the air shifting around her as she mentally prepared herself for the battle ahead.