Prelude Two: Shattering Glass

The wave of noise emanate from the mess hall hit me before anything else had the opportunity to; the clamorous din temporarily sending my brain into overstimulation mode before I forcibly tore my attention away from the source of noise and refocused on the anchoring presences Owari’s hand gripping my own. Noticing a mildly concerned glance from Yamato, I caught her eyes and gave a minute nod to let her know I was okay; I hadn’t exactly had a chance to figure out how to shipgirl yet, and I didn’t know how to send radio messages.

My more attentive and dutiful elder sister reassured, I returned most of my attention back to Owari just as the wave of scents hit our collective noses, the distinct and strong smell of salmon overpowering the more subtle notes of miso, with another distinct smell assaulting my nose, this one familiar yet not one I could quite place. The answer was on the tip of my tongue, and it was going to bother me until-

‘Natto. At least, I think so. We didn’t exactly have a crew historically, so I’m going off your memories here.’ The me that wasn’t me supplied, the voice in my head as it were answering my own question. Briefly, I wonder if I could be classified as insane as a result, but honestly, given what oddities I remembered having before all of this, I doubt this was a leap into insanity, more of a significant but relatively tame step towards it.

I tried not to notice the little souls I could metaphorically feel running around in my hull. Because, frankly, I wasn’t exactly used to that aspect of being a shipgirl yet, and having noticed it was happening, I couldn’t not notice it anymore. Blehg, autism.

“Oooh, Natto~.” Owari cheered both confirming the answer I had supplied myself and snapping me out of my internal musings-slash-existential crisis, refocusing my attention on reality. “I’ve always wanted to try natto!” She continued, pulling on my arm harder as she began to practically jog towards the mess hall, her right hand still wrapped around my left in a vice grip that I didn’t think I could escape from at this point even if I wanted to. Sighing with perhaps worrying fondness for my newly discovered neesan, I shrugged and upped my pace to match her, tossing an apologetic look behind me towards Yamato, who simply held her right hand to her lips demurely, presumably to hide her own fond smile. That or her giggles. Honestly, with what little I knew of Yamato-nee, it could be either.

Before long, we had entered the mess, Owari skidding to a stop; I just barely avoided slamming into her back as she (presumably) stopped to gawk at the alien (to her) construction of a modern mess hall, though I genuinely wasn’t sure how much had changed from her time. Presumably, a lot, given the sharp intake of breath I could hear, followed by the gasp of surprise. Moving carefully around my elder sister and tugging her to the side (as not to block the doorway, that was just rude), I pulled her into a hug of my own, “A lot’s changed, hasn’t it, Owari-neesan?”

Nodding woodenly, Owari pulled herself out of the hug, forcing a smile onto her face, “Yeah… It was just a shock, that’s all. I should be good now, thanks Kyoto.” Her reply was shaky, filled with doubt and a sense of woodness that had me worried, but for now, I’d let her pretend to be strong. She seemed to need it.

“A lot can change in eighty years, nee-san. A lot…” I whispered in reply, turning around only to find our oldest sister raising an eyebrow at us, “Yes, can I help you, Yamato-nee?” I snarked, completely on autopilot. Yamato, perhaps unsurprisingly, simply sighed and gave me a pat on the head, nodding towards Owari with a tilt of her head, “Ah, Owari-nee is okay. I think she just needs some time to process how different things have become…” I trailed off, realizing I was speaking for someone else and flushed in embarrassment. Ah, my complete lack of social graces, how I hated thee…

Thankfully, my (second favorite) big sister hadn’t taken offense, stepping out from behind me and giving a quick vocal and nonverbal affirmation to what I had said, looking a lot more cheerful than she had a few seconds ago. Looking relieved that her sisters weren’t having (another) breakdown, Yamato smiled at us,

“Alright, then we should get in line; the lunch rush should be picking up just about now, so we’ll want to get as much food as we can as early as we can.”

I could most certainly get behind that statement. Especially given the near overpowering din of various JMSDF personnel chatting and making conversation over their food, though the mess was at most a third full; which made sense, Yamato had just said that the lunch rush had just begun around now. ‘I wonder if it’s around time for a shift change… Does the JMSDF even operate on the classic three eight hour shifts, I wonder?’

I briefly debated consulting my internal clocks, before deciding it wasn’t important at the moment. Nervously; because new people, new place, old-yet-familiar-yet-annoying societal customs weren’t something I particularly enjoyed dealing with, especially after a fairly recent breakdown and my still rather emotionally raw state hidden behind a facade of “I’m okay!” that was going to make my often mercurial temper even more temperamental… And there was nothing I hated more in the world than my own temper, and the horrid and stupid shit I did while under its cursed influence. Pushing those rather lovely thoughts to the side, I quietly stepped towards the mess line, following my much more confident eldest sister as she took her place, striking up an idle conversation with the sailor standing in front of her; a female NCO, if I was reading the rank patch right.

I wasn’t exactly familiar with JMSDF ranks, okay? Fucking sue me.

And with the obligatory mental snarking done, I did my best to stay quiet and unassuming as the line rapidly moved forward. Soon enough, it was Yamato’s turn, my sister politely chatting and interacting with the sailors on mess duty as she grabbed her food tray and stepped out of the line, moving me forward into a position where I had to interact with people that my brain hadn’t immediately marked at “trustworthy” or “family”.

Joy.

The practiced ease of someone who had been doing this shit for far too long (Was I a former retail worker? This felt like a customer service smile mixed with a truly deranged level of deceptive masking. Probably retail. I knew this smile too well for it to be anything but earned from experience) I politely asked the gentleman manning the counter for what I wanted, then some more of what I wasn’t sure I wanted or not because something in me insisted that I should always go out of my way to try something new.

‘Seriously, who… who was I? This is going to bother me until I figure it out, damnit.’

Firmly but almost imperceptibly shaking my head, I refocused and rerailed my train of thought as I stepped out of the line and watched Owari grab a rather standard meal of rice, miso, salmon, vegetables, and a glass of milk before stepping out of line and joining us with a mildly confused look on her face, looking at the various foods arrayed before her.

“Why… is everything so high quality?” She asked, looking somewhat confused, “And why is there so much foreign vegetables and western food available?”

It took me a frankly embarrassing few moments to realize that my darling nee-san probably didn’t know about globalization and the wonders of the modern economy (I’d have to check how this world was bypassing the omnipresent problem of having your ports semi-blockaded and your trade interdicted, but I had several guesses), and seeing that Yamato wasn’t answering quite yet, I decided to answer as we followed her towards what was presumably our table, “It’s because everything in the world is globalized; trading between nations, economies, everyone relies on everyone for their supply train to some extent. Sure, some countries are theoretically capable of being entirely self-sufficient, but the costs for them to shift towards it significantly outweighed the profits of the status quo.” Pausing, I mentally debated the costs and benefits of snarking about goddam short sighted capitalists, but decided against it. I didn’t currently remember exactly why I was a leftist of some description, but frankly it wasn’t worth the effort nor the drama right now. I’d snark when I was around people that’d actually appreciate the joke, thanks.

“... Oooh. So that’s why. That makes sense.” Owari stated, nodding her head as if she totally understood everything I had said despite the clear confusion on her face as we reached our table and sat down, Yamato looking between us in amusement as Owari and I sat down next to each other.

“A full course on adjusting to the modern day will be included in your training, Owari, you don’t need to worry about it all that much yet.” Yamato interjected in a soothing voice, glancing towards her food before tilting her head to the side minutely, seemingly listening to something only she could hear, “Musashi and Shinano just entered the line; they said to go ahead and start eating so our food doesn’t get cold.” Our eldest sister continued, shooting my train of thought straight into speculation,

‘Radio communication? Phone? Some kind of sisterly telepathy we don’t have access to yet? Probably not radio since it’d get way too busy comms wise with a good chunk of shipgirls chatting with each other casually, but I don’t see Yamato pulling out a phone… Maybe it’s in her hull and a fairy is operating it? I need to know…’

“Itadakimasu.” Yamato finished, my train of thought dismissed in favor of echoing her along with Owari and digging into my food, starting with the food I didn’t know if I’d like, picking up a bite of natto with my chopsticks, operating them with surprising grace, though I wasn’t exactly sure why I was surprised that I was operating them so well. A question for later, when I had the time to dig into all the oddities I had noticed about myself.

Questions upon questions continued to burn through my mind as we ate, the din of the mess fading into a pleasant background buzzing as I hyper fixated on the quiet yet comfortable atmosphere surrounding our table as we ate our food, all of us enjoying it in different ways. Yamato was obviously savoring what food she did enjoy while already having rapidly consumed that which she didn’t, while Owari was barely managing to keep her table manners intact as she blitzed through eating, fascination on her face with each bite as she experienced flavor and texture for the first time in her ‘life’. Meanwhile, I felt like the happy medium between the two, eating quickly and efficiently, yet also taking the time to enjoy the familiar and not so familiar tastes of the varied foods I had picked out, quickly deciding that while natto had a strong flavor and even stronger smell, that I was largely ambivalent, and would probably eat it but not exactly be seeking it out. Various other veggies and side dishes were similarly placed in the same category. I was, of course, slowly picking away at my salmon, using the flavor I adored above all else to wash away the tastes I didn’t necessarily like, but when it was just miso, rice, and sake remaining, I couldn’t help myself and started quickly (yet still slowly enough to appreciate the flavor) wolfing it down, barely noting the sound of a pair of voices walking towards us as we did so, and only because my name was mentioned;

“Kyoto and Owari, huh? What do you think they’ll be like, Shinano?” A familiar yet not yet even more familiar voice stated conversationally, her deep contralto voice projected with the confidence of a woman who knew herself down to the most intimate level.

“I think that we shouldn’t make any judgements that may affect our first impression of our sisters, Musashi-nee. You know better than that, don’t you?” This voice, still familiar yet oddly still not one I was as familiar with (seriously what the fuck), filled with snark and hidden yet largely resolved bitterness in a way I was somehow intimately familiar with replied, this one mezzo-soprano, “Speaking of, we’re here. Good afternoon, Yamato-nee. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kyoto-chan, Owari-chan.” She continued, the two women bearing their respective voices coming into my line of sight as they stepped out behind a throng of passing sailors, moving to sit by Yamato at our table, flanking her sides, “I’m Shinano, and I’m sure you can deduce who the other is, imoutotachi.”

Her hair was short, silky black, with two thin strands of hair longer than the rest framing the sides of her face, tied with red and white ribbons. Her eyes were a deep sea-green, hard yet containing an inner warmth that I doubted she directed towards many. She shared a similar body type to the rest of us, tall for a Japanese woman and with a bustline that would make even the bustiest women green with envy, and a lithe yet powerfully built frame that somehow remained feminine to the extreme, shaped in an hourglass figure. She was wearing a getup similar to my own, with the only major notable difference being that of coloration; hers lacked the white and red of my miko-inspired outfit, replaced with the Kure Grey standard to the IJN’s steel hulls.

But most of all, Shinano was smiling as she sat down, regarding us already as sisters, given how she introduced herself. If I had to guess, her outwardly projected bitterness and snark was there to conceal the pain she felt over her fate, and more than likely as a way to process the betrayal of being sent to die at sea while not even fully completed.

The woman beside her was unique among us, her skin mocha and her hair white in a way wildly different from the standard ethnicity of a Japanese woman, with warm brown eyes concealed slightly behind frameless glasses. She was dressed similarly yet different to Yamato, her clothes colored in the same Kure Grey as Shinano, and while most of her lower outfit was the same as her elder sister, the upper outfit resembled a military uniform far more than that of Yamato’s, and like Yamato, she too wore an admiral’s coat, hers Kure Grey with a white interior.

Musashi was confident. The feeling radiated from her like an ever present aura, yet it wasn’t the confidence that one often associated with arrogance. No, this one was warm, as if simply by being beside her one should be assured that everything would be alright, that Musashi’s mere presence would assure their victory.

It was humbling, and I frankly couldn’t even be assed to conceal that I’d been staring at them both, mouth slightly agape.

It was Owari that broke the short silence that followed with a whispered, “So cool…”

I giggled, Yamato concealed a giggle behind a convenient napkin, Shinano offered a more honest smile, though I supposed it could also be considered an amused smirk, while Musashi broke into boisterous chuckling. Being the first to recover from my short burst of amusement (though Shinano was most certainly capable of interjecting if she wanted to), I added onto my sister’s assessment, “You two are very cool, neesantachi, just like Yamato-nee.” With that, I bowed as best I could while seated towards my elder siblings, raising my head as I came up, “I’m Kyoto, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ll be in your care.”

Remembering her manners, Owari followed suit, her voice containing a note of embarrassment that was genuinely adorable, “Owari, I’ll be in your care!” She managed to get out without stuttering, cheeks red with embarrassment as she glanced down at the table, finding a particularly interesting bit of wood to look at for a bit. I stifled my instinctive snark; Owari didn’t need that at the moment.

Besides, it looked like Yamato was about to speak anyway, “Now now everyone, let’s not tease Owari-chan too hard.” Pausing, she took at look in the general direction of Shinano and Muashi’s plates, raising an eyebrow, “Now, I do believe you have food to eat before it gets cold; we wouldn’t want to be unthankful towards our chefs, right Shinano-chan, Musashi-chan?”

There was an air of danger around Yamato in that moment, and given that my sisters were evidently not idiots, they rapidly chanted itadakimasu and went to work on their food, our eldest sister smiling in a slightly unhinged way that was both terrifying and cool to the extreme.

‘I want to be just like that.’

Doing an internal double take at the errant thought, I concealed a smirk behind my napkin, dabbing my face with it in an effort to “clean” whatever crumbs I might have missed in a previous pass. Today might suck, but hey, at least I had the companionship and comradery that came with having siblings. I just hoped that I’d be able to get my act together for when I was inevitably deployed to the front lines…

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I looked at the reflection that wasn’t mine, studying the contours of my new body with a (overly?) critical eye, painfully aware of the differences I noticed but couldn’t even remember the reasons for.

Before me stood a young woman clad in truncated miko outfit combined with some aspects of kyudo gear, most notably the muneate protecting my chest and the gloves on my left and right hand; a yotsugake and a oshidegake respectively to protect my hands while I fired (presumably) the bow that would come with my rigging. Over all of the other clothing I wore a white and red jinbaori lacking any real decorations or identifying marks. Dispassionately, I tracked my eyes as I looked over my body, noting that my skin tone was similar to Musashi’s, a tanned mocha that was unlike most of the other men or women I had seen at the base; perhaps like her I would have been built at the Nagasaki yards, had I actually been ordered and started, though I discarded that thought a moment later, focusing on finishing my brief visual assessment. I had hair of a similar length and color to my eldest sister; a warm chocolate brown that cascaded freely down my back, just reaching my hips at the lowest point. Given what I had felt of it so far, it was eerily similar in texture to the hair I had in my prior existence, though how I knew that was still frankly beyond me.

Sighing, my dark brown eyes stared back at me as I slowly stripped off each piece of clothing piece by piece, silently noting that I knew exactly how to do so despite having never worn most of this gear in my prior life, professionally storing them or otherwise folding them and placing them to the side so that I could either wash them later or put them on tomorrow morning; Yamato hadn’t exactly been clear when my training would start or what the hell I would be doing in general starting the next day. Putting that thought and the other errant thought (white, eh?) to the side for now, I fished a shirt and shorts out of the pile of clothes that Yamato had shoved into my hands when we’d finally split off for the day, my oldest sister having stuck around the longest of my siblings (sans Owari, who I was dorming with for now while we adjusted), I gathered them into my hands and headed for the futon laid out for me, collapsing into it with a groan of contentment and frustration, my hair splaying out behind me as I stared blankly towards the ceiling.

Today was… It was a day. I would say it had gone horribly, but I wasn’t in the habit of lying to myself (anymore? Seriously brain, context please?!) and being introduced to my new (They’re not new!) siblings and generally interacting with them had lifted the haze of grief and depression from both the lack of my memories and the patched the hole in my heart; I wouldn’t be drowning or wallowing in grief for now, at least. So it was a day that existed. Owari, Yamato, Shinano, and Musashi, all of them had made existing bearable, given me anchors to latch my reasons to persist onto so that I wouldn’t do something stupid when I was inevitably placed into a combat situation (like not valuing my life in the slightest).

And yet to some extent, a small part of me resented the ease at which I had clicked with the- my sisters and considered the anchors that bound me to them more chains than steady rocks I had willingly let absorb the burden of existing in this strange new place without anything connecting me to the life I knew I had lived, yet could largely not remember.

“Fuck this” I swore in English, because I mind as well use my knowledge of the other somehow more familiar language for something actually productive today, “I just don’t want to think of this right now, but I can’t sleep.” I continued, this time in Japanese, screwing my eyes shut and driving back the tears that were starting to gather in my eyes with dogged determination.

I needed a goal. And thankfully, Yamato had already provided me with one. Do well in training, and I could start taking my general frustration and anger at my existence on probably the most acceptable target in existence: The Abyssals.

But first… First, it was time to decompress and deal with the shite that was my current life.

It’s always good to laugh.

Funny Cat Videos it was; followed by rediscovering the rabbit hole of funny videos. And well, if anyone wanted to judge me for sitting in front of a computer desk while I watched videos while my comrades died out there…

Frankly, they could suck my nonexistent dick.

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Prelude Two: Shattering Glass, Notes

Translation Notes:

• Imoutotachi: Younger Sisters, specifically referring to the speaker’s collective younger sisters.
• Neesantachi: Older Sisters, specifically referring to the speaker’s collective elder sisters.
• Muneate: Chest Protection to prevent a bowstring from hitting a female’s mammaries. Worn by Kyoto, along with quite possibly every IJN Kancolle Carrier sans Taihou (Who is wearing actual armor, afaik. She also uses a repeating crossbow instead of a Yumi)
• Yotsugake: Four Fingered Glove used for the hand drawing the bowstring. There is a reason Kyoto is wearing the less common variant over the Three Fingered Glove worn by most kyudo practitioners and the KC carrier girls. Generally made from deerskin.
• Oshidegake: Hand protection glove for the hand holding the bowstring.
• Miko Outfit: Shrine Maiden Outfit
• Jinbaori: A sleeveless jacket generally worn over armor. Decisive Battle Zuikaku wears one in Kancolle, though I don’t believe any other girl does (I could absolutely be wrong).
• Natto: A type of fermented bean, generally breakfast food.
• Sake: Japanese word for Salmon. (It’s also the Japanese Word for Sake, the alcoholic beverage, but that’s a different word)
• Itadakimasu: “Thank you for the food/Let us Eat” Traditional and general thanks for the food, done before eating.
• JMSDF: Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force

Historical Notes:

• Yes, there is an actual reason that Kyoto is committing kyudo heresy by drawing and firing her bow with her left hand, as implied in the final scene. No, I am not going to explain. Deal with it.
• As Kyoto stated, Musashi was built in Nagasak, which is a potential reason she’s so tanned, as it is (outside of Okinawa) one of the southernmost areas of Japan. It could also just be that the artist just liked the idea of a mocha woman, but honestly who the hell knows.

General Notes:

• As implied in the mess sequence, (food) supplies do not seem to be an issue for Japan, which is absolutely something you should take note of. There are reasons for this, and they may not necessarily be what you think they are.
• Kyoto was initially intended to look almost identical to Yamato, but that was actually somewhat of a holdover from a previous idea that this ended up evolving from, so she looks like an odd mix between Yamato and Musashi now, with elements of a certain crane thrown in. This may actually end up being brought up in interludes and chapters from characters with more crude senses of humor.
• There is a reason I do everything, and there’s a reason Kyoto didn’t really react to the size of her bust or mention it at all. Yes, this is relevant for her character, and I would highly recommend my readers pay attention to how I described prior characters. It's a good way to get some insight into Kyo’s state of mind and general thought process.