The Iceberg

It was about ten years since I last knew a world without shipgirls in it. They came in force in the back half of the first year of the War, and my association started with just after I'd been drafted. It had started with working details around the barracks, females in the units vouching for my character and discretion. Then I was called away to ordnance school, and it was a blissful year before I had to deal with the personifications of madness again. I had just started as a shell inspector when it turned out my past record meant I was considered acceptable to work on the handloaded fixed shells for the small girl's target practice. For three hours a day, I dumped antique cordite into a bin, and sifted it out in minute amounts to create weaker shells so as to simulate long range engagements. The other five hours were spent making sure it was all shot, and the rest of my time was consumed in paperwork. I escaped this job with a tour in the welding school, and landed right back in the hot water as being a Shipgirl Recovery Asset.

The enemy, the Abyss, was nigh suicidal in their determination to take our ships down with them, and in shore assaults they would pollute the beaches and waves with as much snarling and choking debris as they could. My mission was to go in while the battle was ongoing and after it to recover girls stopped up in the near-sentient waves of trash, and perform emergency care along the way.

This was how I met Tripitz- four years into the War, off of the Little Belt islands. Copenhagen had fallen and we were retaking it with fire and sword, but battle damage and heavy hawser cable had tied her into a collision on the banks of a sandbar. She was, in a word, stuck. I was the only person to make it to the site, and there were still Abyssal infantry on the island connecting to us. All I had were my tools- angle grinder, wire cutters, shovel, cement saw; just basics. Tirpitz had access to her small-arms locker, though, and I had access to it by proxy. In between cuts and salvaging, I had to beat back scattered raiding parties with an old Krag and my wits. It took five days to pull her out, and by the end of it I had beaten myself and my equipment to bits. Her commendations were critical in getting me a medal for the incident, however, and the rifle I ended up using was shipped home as a souvenir of the war.

That's when my name first showed up to the world, Daniel Inman, Seaman of the United States Navy. After that, Petty Officer, third class. It was a nice recognition for what I did, as well as getting shuffled out of theatre to avoid some probing German questions like "why are Americans rescuing our ship spirits" and "why are Americans showing up on national TV in a kitbashed Kriegsmarine uniform with old Nazi weapons in hand", which was perfectly reasonable to ask and I told them that Tirpitz had given them to me. Since that didn't seem to fly very far, though, it was decided I needed to exit stage left.

Nakar, the second big rescue I was involved in, was more complicated. The Philippines had been a battleground since the first days of the War, and defections on both sides seemed to happen there more than anywhere else. There were rumors of a Seaport Hime who was getting ready to turn her coat, though, and I was assigned to the mission team- as a Chaplain, because of my record in working with shipgirls. The fact I wasn't actually a Chaplain initially rankled, but it got me on the boat and keeping me off the combat roster would hopefully prevent the press from sniffing me out. I still packed my rescue kit, though, with an Iron Cross dangling off the side as one last good-luck charm from Tirpitz.

I needed it, because it turned out the enemy had figured out that the Seaport Hime was defecting, and they came in with rolling thunder. A spirit tied to dozens of acres of base like her was not only metaphysically tied, but physically captioned as well, with the Seaport Hime bound into her chair dozens of times over, intravenously fed and powered. My concrete saw made quick work of the chair, but disconnecting her from the meat of the retention system was a longer task since it could be rigged to self-destruct or kill her on exiting. With cluster munitions landing in the courtyards and dozens of wounded piling into friendly landing ships, I finally got the Seaport Hime out and left most of kit behind in the rush to drag her out. After hauling her collapsing form to the LVT, she awoke momentarily in a fit of rage for being taken from her home as I attempted to calm her, at great injury to myself. A Seaport Hime had few notable features aside from being a beautiful, full-figured woman, but her long ebony horn and terrifically sharp claw-hands both stood to mention as she tried to rend into me in an instinctive rage at being seperated from her home. In the process she gored me, but I had slowed her down enough to let rational thought take back over and let her realize we were helping her.

Once I woke up from the comma, got my medals, and figured out what happened, I found myself in possession of a pair of claws from a Seaport Hime, as well as a well-worn Mauser pistol next to my bed- gifts from the now-named Nakar, and another from Tirpitz with a message to be sure to carry a piece of her that would be more useful this time. The claws-cum-talons I worked into my gloves as protective finger guards and cutters, while the Mauser became my defacto sidearm for the rest of the war. I did more work, often being slotted in as the "Chaplain" when no other option came up, and I like to think I helped the units I was assigned to. By this point we had started to figure out tradition had almost as much an affect as quality in terms of powering through mystical bullshit; thus why I could take out in one pistol-shot what often took three or five rounds of more modern bullets. Tirpitz's gift made it's mark many times, and I loved her for it.

Tama was my last memorable encounter, not in that she was a dramatic rescue, but in that she always needed rescue. Off Taiwan, I was with three Marines in a yellow dinghy working on her scrap pile. Near the Yangtze, a stolen rowboat as one of the sailors worked on cutting her loose as I dueled a machine-gun nest and somehow won. Rammed up on the sands of Woody Island, requiring a requisitioned bulldozer and a lot of work with a rope. The last straw was the Liaotung Peninsula, though, in which she had run aground to control a list and asked for me by name. Rumors of shamanism had been spreading through the fleet, and my organizational oddity were starting to draw rumors onto me. When Tama kissed me on the cheek after we dug her out that time, though, that was too much for rumors to stand.

The fact the War ended later that year didn't change things- I was now The Shaman, a boat-whisperer and performer of insane feats. Others had done things too, but I was the most... erogenous. Nobody could argue with my record or growing collection of booty and medals, so I looked into retiring before I got stop-lossed. Retirement was out of the cards, though- the Pentagon had gotten my file, and I was too important to loose and too hard to keep in covertly. Thus, the compromise: I'd become a Shipgirl Handler, part of the large post-war drawdown designed to keep the defenses ready, but also out of sight. A few million dollars and a yearly stipend was my new budget, and I had a threefold mission to go with it.

Keep the girls out of sight.

Keep the girls ready to fight

Keep the girls from starting a disaster.

I already knew who I was going to pick, of course, and it wouldn't take too long to have the house built. Until then, things would continue as normal. After? Well, who knew?