FoL Possible Refits
darthcourt10
Well worn.
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Savato93
Okay, I've been sitting on my ass for long enough. Time to wrap up this arc...
XXXXXXXXXX
"Hmm." Hoppou brought the end of the pencil to her lips, offhandedly nibbling on the eraser. She looked up to the Abyssal sitting across from her. "Hoppou struggling to come up with any ideas. Does Regalia have any thoughts?"
"I… I'm not sure." The young Re-class tilted her head. "This is nothing like the stuff you've gone over with me…"
Two piles of documents were laid out on the kitchen table between the two Abyssals. One cluster of papers showed familiar blueprints and layouts: designs for a Ri-class. The rest of the papers displayed similar designs… but those Ri-class blueprints were missing key components. They lacked the majority of their forecastles; there were large gaping holes in their deck where their main guns should have been; many important parts of their superstructure were gone. The one thing they did have over the normal designs were two sets of reinforced cranes set at the fire and aft sections.
Today, the two were taking a break from mentoring. Instead, they were brainstorming solutions to Carrie and Sherri's self-dismantled hulls.
"Have you considered… I dunno, reclassing?" Regalia suggested. "Like, converting them to tenders, or armored ammunition ships?"
"Easier said than done," Hoppou replied with a huff. "Converting to ammo ships would be simple enough—armor over turret holes, rebuild cranes into permanent fixtures, and replace defensive armaments—but then, if they ever got pushed into battle, they'd be so much more vulnerable. Carrying so much more ammo that could be hit and blown up." Regalia flinched at the thought of that. "And becoming tenders? That would require MUCH more extensive refits, which Carrie and Sherri have already said they don't want."
The Re-class sagged a bit in her seat. "Oh. Right." Thinking for a few seconds, she spoke again. "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. They like how they are now, right? Pretty much normal on the outside, no metal bits sticking out anywhere?"
"Yes… Hoppou believes that is so."
"Could you not just redesign their rigging, then? Give them back their turrets and torpedoes and stuff, but give it a different form that isn't constantly visible, like the shipgirls have?"
Hoppou sighed. "...Hoppou tried that. Couldn't find an angle on it. The issue is that Abyssal rigging isn't designed by a Princess; it forms by itself, based on designs of the hull. Hoppou doesn't have the faintest idea of what has to change, to alter how their hulls express themselves."
"Surely, it can't be THAT hard for you, Grandma…" Regalia said. "I mean, you made the new bodies for the destroyers, right? That should mean you already know how to alter us physically."
The Princess shook her head. "Just puppets for the puppies to control… Hoppou is still working on the actual conversion process. Even then, it's not the same thing." Sighing, Hoppou leaned forward and rested her chin on the table. "Honestly...? Hoppou is worried if operating on Carrie and Sherri is even safe for them."
"Safe? What do you mean?"
"Carrie and Sherri have… changed. Hoppou is afraid that, by denying everything they were for so long, they've put themselves in a unique and unnatural state."
"Like hybrids?" Regalia asked.
"No. Hybrids are a mix; not Abyssal or human, but something in between. But Carrie and Sherri? As far as Hoppou can tell, they're both human AND Abyssal… at the same time."
Regalia sat back in her chair, head tilted in bafflement. "...what? How can you be two separate things at once?"
"Quantum science stuff. It's confusing to explain. Like, normally something can be in one state or another... but then, it can also be in both states at once while nobody's looking right at it, or something…? Uhh." Hoppou pressed her hands to her temples, like she was squeezing her skull. "Big Brother tried to explain it to Hoppou with a flash drive—said that it has just two sides to it normally, but unless you actually check it it won't fit in a slot either way because it's somehow face-up AND face-down. I think."
Regalia rubbed her forehead. "You're right, that is confusing." She looked back down at the schematics. "So you're worried that if… if you were to try and operate on them… it might cause them to stop being both human and Abyssal?"
Hoppou nodded slowly. "They could revert back to ordinary Ri-classes… or they could lose their hulls completely, and become normal girls."
The Re-class was quiet for a little bit, thinking. "If… if what you're worried about is true… then what can we hope to do? Are they just stuck the way they are for good?"
"Po… I don't know. And I hate that I don't. Carrie and Sherri seem happy and healthy now—but what if their condition causes problems later? I can't even put them under to help them, if there's a chance they would transform completely in the process."
Regalia noted her grandmother's switch to first-person—this was obviously stressing her out. "Maybe leaving them alone is the only option… for now, at least," she reasoned. "I doubt this is a one-Princess job… you might need to call in help from Aunt Wanko, or Uncle Harry, or even the shipgirls. Find some other people who can look at it a different way. Don't you think?"
After several seconds of silence, Hoppou finally picked her head up and nodded slowly. "Regalia is right. This is too complex for Hoppou to handle alone; it's stressing Hoppou out. But what can Hoppou do to take her mind off of it…?"
There was a knock on the wall. The two Abyssals perked up, turning around to find Nagato standing a few feet away with a concerned look on her face. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything too important… but, Admiral Goto's office received a call from shipgirls stationed at Pearl Harbor. They wanted to speak with you immediately, Hoppou-chan…"
XXXXXXXXXX
The first thing the Tsu-class felt was the sensation of her body being steadily lowered into warm water. It had an oddly soothing feeling to it… everywhere it touched, sank in, she could feel years' worth of accumulated wear and tear on her hull start slowly bleeding away. She opened her eyes, blinking several times as they adjusted to the brightness of her surroundings. There was now a tiled roof overhead, instead of clear skies.
"Wha… where am I?" She asked groggily.
"Repair bath."
Her gaze fell to see two other Tsu-classes sitting cross-legged at the edge of the tub she'd been laid in. She recognized them by their older designs—Tsunami and Tsubasa, two of Mother's only dedicated anti-air ships at the time of the siege. "You had a panic attack, a bad one. All but fainted on the water." Tsunami said. She gestured to the room around them. "The shipgirls let us bring you two back here to recover. Lord knows you two needed it." As if to punctuate her sister's statement, the Tsu-class felt and heard a muted crack, as the plating bolted to her arm was broken open by several imps with cutting torches.
The Tsu-class rolled her neck to the side. Tampa was laid back in the bath next to her, surrounded by at least a dozen more imps. One of them, the head of Sunny's damecon team, was angrily babbling about how everything in Tampa's body was wrong or out of place; Tampa herself could only sit back and nod numbly as the imp listed off her numerous abnormalities. Undersized boilers, set too far astern; countless stress fractures in the steel around her A turret, lacking the proper bracing for her higher-velocity Ru-class guns; woefully-inadequate fire control systems that more than halved her effective firing range; and not least of all her mess of an armor belt, which had all the consistency of Swiss cheese but masked an inexplicably intact interior.
And several of the imps swore that her steel was growing back.
Turning her attention away from Tampa, the Tsu-class looked over her surroundings… and in doing so, she realized it was just the four of them in the room. Sunny, Nuri, everyone… they were nowhere to be seen. "Where are the others?" She asked.
"Our group was about to set out on a diplomatic voyage before you showed up and the shipgirls raised the alarm," Tsubasa answered. "The Fleet needed to get moving, but we couldn't leave you here alone; with the reduced air presence in the Atlantic, we were the best choice to stay behind and look after you."
"Diplomatic…?"
"Some Abyssals in the Atlantic sided with the humans. Wanted to build their own nation or something." Tsunami waved a hand. "But we can discuss that later. Right now, there's something more important for us to work on."
Before the Tsu-class could ask what she meant by that, a nearby door creaked open and a human man stepped in, a flat black square in hand. "Alright, the call's set up. Just try not to drop the thing in the bath—it's water resistant, not waterproof," he said simply, handing the phone over to Tsunami.
"Thank you," Tsunami said with a nod, carefully pinching the phone in her oversized fingers as she brought it to her ear. "Hey. We all made it to Pearl in one piece… it's alright, the locals have been pretty nice to us." A few seconds of quiet chatter on the other end of the line. "Nuri? She and the others moved ahead, actually. It's just me and 'basa here now… why? Well… we found a couple of girls here, that we think you should talk to." Looking down, Tsunami offered the phone to the Tsu-class in the bath. "Here."
The Tsu-class hesitantly reached out with her unarmored hand, awkwardly gripping the flat rectangle, and brought it up to her own ear. "H-hello…?"
"You… that voice!?"
The voice on the other end of the call was small, soft, uncertain… and all too familiar. "...Mom?" The Tsu-class gasped quietly.
"Hatsumo…? Is… is it really you, Hatsumo?"
The tsu-class was suddenly struck by a wave of powerful emotions, hearing her long-lost mother speak. Disbelief, relief, wonder, joy, love…
And overwhelming guilt.
"Mom… Mom, I'm so sorry…!" Hatsumo choked out.
Okay, I've been sitting on my ass for long enough. Time to wrap up this arc...
XXXXXXXXXX
"Hmm." Hoppou brought the end of the pencil to her lips, offhandedly nibbling on the eraser. She looked up to the Abyssal sitting across from her. "Hoppou struggling to come up with any ideas. Does Regalia have any thoughts?"
"I… I'm not sure." The young Re-class tilted her head. "This is nothing like the stuff you've gone over with me…"
Two piles of documents were laid out on the kitchen table between the two Abyssals. One cluster of papers showed familiar blueprints and layouts: designs for a Ri-class. The rest of the papers displayed similar designs… but those Ri-class blueprints were missing key components. They lacked the majority of their forecastles; there were large gaping holes in their deck where their main guns should have been; many important parts of their superstructure were gone. The one thing they did have over the normal designs were two sets of reinforced cranes set at the fire and aft sections.
Today, the two were taking a break from mentoring. Instead, they were brainstorming solutions to Carrie and Sherri's self-dismantled hulls.
"Have you considered… I dunno, reclassing?" Regalia suggested. "Like, converting them to tenders, or armored ammunition ships?"
"Easier said than done," Hoppou replied with a huff. "Converting to ammo ships would be simple enough—armor over turret holes, rebuild cranes into permanent fixtures, and replace defensive armaments—but then, if they ever got pushed into battle, they'd be so much more vulnerable. Carrying so much more ammo that could be hit and blown up." Regalia flinched at the thought of that. "And becoming tenders? That would require MUCH more extensive refits, which Carrie and Sherri have already said they don't want."
The Re-class sagged a bit in her seat. "Oh. Right." Thinking for a few seconds, she spoke again. "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. They like how they are now, right? Pretty much normal on the outside, no metal bits sticking out anywhere?"
"Yes… Hoppou believes that is so."
"Could you not just redesign their rigging, then? Give them back their turrets and torpedoes and stuff, but give it a different form that isn't constantly visible, like the shipgirls have?"
Hoppou sighed. "...Hoppou tried that. Couldn't find an angle on it. The issue is that Abyssal rigging isn't designed by a Princess; it forms by itself, based on designs of the hull. Hoppou doesn't have the faintest idea of what has to change, to alter how their hulls express themselves."
"Surely, it can't be THAT hard for you, Grandma…" Regalia said. "I mean, you made the new bodies for the destroyers, right? That should mean you already know how to alter us physically."
The Princess shook her head. "Just puppets for the puppies to control… Hoppou is still working on the actual conversion process. Even then, it's not the same thing." Sighing, Hoppou leaned forward and rested her chin on the table. "Honestly...? Hoppou is worried if operating on Carrie and Sherri is even safe for them."
"Safe? What do you mean?"
"Carrie and Sherri have… changed. Hoppou is afraid that, by denying everything they were for so long, they've put themselves in a unique and unnatural state."
"Like hybrids?" Regalia asked.
"No. Hybrids are a mix; not Abyssal or human, but something in between. But Carrie and Sherri? As far as Hoppou can tell, they're both human AND Abyssal… at the same time."
Regalia sat back in her chair, head tilted in bafflement. "...what? How can you be two separate things at once?"
"Quantum science stuff. It's confusing to explain. Like, normally something can be in one state or another... but then, it can also be in both states at once while nobody's looking right at it, or something…? Uhh." Hoppou pressed her hands to her temples, like she was squeezing her skull. "Big Brother tried to explain it to Hoppou with a flash drive—said that it has just two sides to it normally, but unless you actually check it it won't fit in a slot either way because it's somehow face-up AND face-down. I think."
Regalia rubbed her forehead. "You're right, that is confusing." She looked back down at the schematics. "So you're worried that if… if you were to try and operate on them… it might cause them to stop being both human and Abyssal?"
Hoppou nodded slowly. "They could revert back to ordinary Ri-classes… or they could lose their hulls completely, and become normal girls."
The Re-class was quiet for a little bit, thinking. "If… if what you're worried about is true… then what can we hope to do? Are they just stuck the way they are for good?"
"Po… I don't know. And I hate that I don't. Carrie and Sherri seem happy and healthy now—but what if their condition causes problems later? I can't even put them under to help them, if there's a chance they would transform completely in the process."
Regalia noted her grandmother's switch to first-person—this was obviously stressing her out. "Maybe leaving them alone is the only option… for now, at least," she reasoned. "I doubt this is a one-Princess job… you might need to call in help from Aunt Wanko, or Uncle Harry, or even the shipgirls. Find some other people who can look at it a different way. Don't you think?"
After several seconds of silence, Hoppou finally picked her head up and nodded slowly. "Regalia is right. This is too complex for Hoppou to handle alone; it's stressing Hoppou out. But what can Hoppou do to take her mind off of it…?"
There was a knock on the wall. The two Abyssals perked up, turning around to find Nagato standing a few feet away with a concerned look on her face. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything too important… but, Admiral Goto's office received a call from shipgirls stationed at Pearl Harbor. They wanted to speak with you immediately, Hoppou-chan…"
XXXXXXXXXX
The first thing the Tsu-class felt was the sensation of her body being steadily lowered into warm water. It had an oddly soothing feeling to it… everywhere it touched, sank in, she could feel years' worth of accumulated wear and tear on her hull start slowly bleeding away. She opened her eyes, blinking several times as they adjusted to the brightness of her surroundings. There was now a tiled roof overhead, instead of clear skies.
"Wha… where am I?" She asked groggily.
"Repair bath."
Her gaze fell to see two other Tsu-classes sitting cross-legged at the edge of the tub she'd been laid in. She recognized them by their older designs—Tsunami and Tsubasa, two of Mother's only dedicated anti-air ships at the time of the siege. "You had a panic attack, a bad one. All but fainted on the water." Tsunami said. She gestured to the room around them. "The shipgirls let us bring you two back here to recover. Lord knows you two needed it." As if to punctuate her sister's statement, the Tsu-class felt and heard a muted crack, as the plating bolted to her arm was broken open by several imps with cutting torches.
The Tsu-class rolled her neck to the side. Tampa was laid back in the bath next to her, surrounded by at least a dozen more imps. One of them, the head of Sunny's damecon team, was angrily babbling about how everything in Tampa's body was wrong or out of place; Tampa herself could only sit back and nod numbly as the imp listed off her numerous abnormalities. Undersized boilers, set too far astern; countless stress fractures in the steel around her A turret, lacking the proper bracing for her higher-velocity Ru-class guns; woefully-inadequate fire control systems that more than halved her effective firing range; and not least of all her mess of an armor belt, which had all the consistency of Swiss cheese but masked an inexplicably intact interior.
And several of the imps swore that her steel was growing back.
Turning her attention away from Tampa, the Tsu-class looked over her surroundings… and in doing so, she realized it was just the four of them in the room. Sunny, Nuri, everyone… they were nowhere to be seen. "Where are the others?" She asked.
"Our group was about to set out on a diplomatic voyage before you showed up and the shipgirls raised the alarm," Tsubasa answered. "The Fleet needed to get moving, but we couldn't leave you here alone; with the reduced air presence in the Atlantic, we were the best choice to stay behind and look after you."
"Diplomatic…?"
"Some Abyssals in the Atlantic sided with the humans. Wanted to build their own nation or something." Tsunami waved a hand. "But we can discuss that later. Right now, there's something more important for us to work on."
Before the Tsu-class could ask what she meant by that, a nearby door creaked open and a human man stepped in, a flat black square in hand. "Alright, the call's set up. Just try not to drop the thing in the bath—it's water resistant, not waterproof," he said simply, handing the phone over to Tsunami.
"Thank you," Tsunami said with a nod, carefully pinching the phone in her oversized fingers as she brought it to her ear. "Hey. We all made it to Pearl in one piece… it's alright, the locals have been pretty nice to us." A few seconds of quiet chatter on the other end of the line. "Nuri? She and the others moved ahead, actually. It's just me and 'basa here now… why? Well… we found a couple of girls here, that we think you should talk to." Looking down, Tsunami offered the phone to the Tsu-class in the bath. "Here."
The Tsu-class hesitantly reached out with her unarmored hand, awkwardly gripping the flat rectangle, and brought it up to her own ear. "H-hello…?"
"You… that voice!?"
The voice on the other end of the call was small, soft, uncertain… and all too familiar. "...Mom?" The Tsu-class gasped quietly.
"Hatsumo…? Is… is it really you, Hatsumo?"
The tsu-class was suddenly struck by a wave of powerful emotions, hearing her long-lost mother speak. Disbelief, relief, wonder, joy, love…
And overwhelming guilt.
"Mom… Mom, I'm so sorry…!" Hatsumo choked out.