[To Hell and Back]
"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
—Muhammad Ali
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The silence felt like it was going to rust away at Bismarck's hull faster than the crashing waves of the sea. It was lonely, too lonely. A strange cacophony of feelings welled up in his processor, he usually spent his time alone before he met Makie, it was in his nature. But now it just... felt wrong. Sigh, what a strange, undecipherable feeling. Loneliness truly is a curse and the sooner it's vanquished the better, Bismarck already missed hearing his nickname be uttered by a child he's slowly come to view as a daughter figure. The waiting, the silence, they constantly continued to eat away at his patience. Slowly but surely frustration built up in his core and Bismarck felt like firing a dozen salvos into the sky. Maybe's he'll be lucky and shoot the damn weapons platform he has in orbit to finally get it back into working order.
"What boredom..." the complaint gently rolled off his tongue as his seemingly permanent expression stayed locked on the horizon, "Just how far have you ran..."
Now Bismarck can at least scratch playing mouse with a submarine off his bucket list... if he had one! Oh, what a bother. If they at least sent some manner of signal to him, but no, they instead opted to remain as hidden as possible instead of trying to regroup with him. The thought of I-401 potentially sinking hasn't even registered in Bismarck's mind, he merely pushed it as far back into his head as possible. Rather ironically, this very silence and peace would soon find itself being missed by Bismarck...
As the sea becomes an inferno...
-BOOM-
An earth-shattering explosion rocks the Pacific Ocean down to its core. Bismarck can barely look at the epicentre as an extremely bright flash envelops the horizon. A powerful shockwave that nearly knocked him off the large battleship was quickly followed by huge towering waves capable of toppling over entire cities worth of skyscrapers.
"Verdammter Sheiße!" loudly cursed the male Fog as he held his hat with his left hand to make sure it wouldn't get blown into the stratosphere by the powerful winds the mysterious explosion invoked.
The absolutely massive spike in gravitational energy spoke of what invoked such a cataclysmic explosion, and as such Bismarck couldn't help but wonder what kind of a monster could create something of THAT calibre. The blast was about as strong as the one he had used to escape Tirpitz's clutches oh so long ago, yet this was done with a super graviton cannon. An unfeasible feat for even a battleship. There is no time for questions though, and Bismarck knew this as he began barrelling ahead flank towards the source of the explosion, fighting his way through rough waves and wind strong enough to mangle normal metal.
As the explosion and the colossal tidal waves began subsiding, the horizon finally came into view and what appeared over it confused, shocked and awed Bismarck all at the same time, "...What the Scheiße...?"
The shadow of destruction looms over the burning horizon...
Words don't begin to describe the utterly ridiculous structure that floated in the sky, a couple of hundred meters above the water's surface. A ball, a sphere of metal with a large hole in the middle with eight Nagara-class cruisers floating around it. The colossal object was, much to Bismarck's shock, identified as the fast battleship Kongou, but he was picking up a minuscule signature that belonged to that weirdly cheerful heavy cruiser named Maya... She must have been assimilated and added to Kongou's arsenal... just like Tirpitz was into Bismarck's.
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The crew of I-401 found themselves in an even more unfavourable situation than they have before during the raid on Iwo Jima. Now, they couldn't run or hide, and based on the utterly overpowered blast Kongou vaporized the American Fleet of Fog with... they sure as hell couldn't outgun her. They were now stuck between a rock and a hard place, and with a literal Death Star pointing its incredibly powerful weapon at them, they had every right to feel worried if not terrified.
"...Okay... can I say it now?!" Kyouhei was doing a great job at being utterly petrified at the sight of a large sphere with one huge cannon in the centre.
A bead of sweat trickled down Gunzou's cheek as he gazed at the massive... thing, that ball of destruction couldn't be called a ship, no way, "...Go for it."
"We. Are. FUCKED!"
"Oh ya don't say?!" the ever-so-sassy Kirishima was quick to reply to Kyouhei's loud yell, but unlike most of the time, nobody berated the dark-skinned man for swearing in front of a child.
Said child, one terrified Makie Osakabe, looked about as pale as she could get, "...Uh-oh..."
"Uh-oh is right," Takao's voice boomed over the room, a full-body projection of her appeared on a holographic display by Gunzou's side.
"We can't flee, and we certainly can't defend for long against an assault like that," came the voice of their captain, Chihaya Gunzou as he carefully analyzed their situation with a critical eye, taking note of the way Kongou's hull seemed to overheat after such a massive attack, "Nevertheless, we have no choice whether to flee or fight."
But it seems that fate truly intended to work against them, fighting or fleeing, the option to choose was thrown out the window that massive graviton cannon began charging another one of its insanely powerful blasts. To say that the crew panicked would be an understatement, all of them quickly scrambled to think of a way to survive an attack from a literal Death Star. Sadly, the reality is cruel and according to Hyuuga's calculations they could theoretically stop the initial blast of degenerated gravitons, but the resulting explosion would rip the I-401 submarine apart.
"Iona, divert all power to fore wave-force armour, take it from other weapon systems if you have to and prepare to fire the super graviton cannon! We'll just have to try and push at least a fraction of that laser back," nobody questioned Gunzou's orders, after all, this is the man that basically added some of the most powerful Fleet of Fog vessels to his fleet purely through diplomacy and strategic thinking.
A powerful blue wall of energy appeared before the quickly transforming hull of the I-401 submarine, creating a powerful defence against conventional weaponry. Unfortunately, the super graviton cannon is anything but ordinary, especially Kongou's. Gunzou's plan was simple, fight fire with fire and exert just enough force from Iona's own super graviton cannon so that the defence layer of wave-force armour wouldn't be destroyed which would subsequently spell their certain doom. And so, the power reached its critical mass inside both super graviton cannons, what followed was an explosion of rapidly degenerating gravitons lighting up the horizon with their blue and purple colour.
-BOOM-
The blasts hit, and Iona's much smaller beam of blue energy immediately started to struggle to even push Kongou's much more powerful attack back. Inch by inch, meter by meter, the full force of Kongou's continued to overpower Iona. It wouldn't be long before the Fog submarine would be annihilated on a molecular level, and all of its passengers with it. However, as if for the first time since the battle started...
...Fate smiled upon the unfortunate...
A powerful blast of a different purple-coloured supergravity cannon blasted from somewhere above the surface, the perpetrator of the attack yet unknown to everyone as the purple energy beam ripped into the side of the hole through which Kongou fired. Electrons were ripped from their atoms, forced to move in a pattern by the unseeable force of gravity and creating electrical bursts from the point of impact. Black-lined lightning sparked from the impact and forced Kongou to abandon the firing sequence as the blast ripped a hole into the side of the "barrel", a hole smaller than the original one. The purple beam travelled through the hollow sphere, narrowly missing Kongou's main body and coming out the other side, leaving two new gaping holes in the structure that ominously floated in the sky.
Inside the blue submarine, the human and Fog crew alike was... confused, to say the least. They were beyond relieved that they had survived such a powerful blast, but their confusion was derived from this very fact. Something, someone, came in at the last second and had yanked them from the clutches of certain annihilation. The reading the Mental Models saw on their instruments was... strange to say the least. A sense of relief mixed with worry and curiosity is what Haruna felt as she saw Bismarck's unique gravity signature on her data rings. But... that very signature was altered and now appeared larger, more powerful and most of all... it had a lot of Tirpitz's aspects in it. Iona preemptively patched what she believed to be Bismarck through the ship's communication systems.
"It seems that I have made a habit of being late," and it truly was the man that they knew, some for a short time, some for a reasonably long time and some hardly at all.
But it was him. That is all that mattered now. To them. To Makie. To Haruna. To everyone. Now they didn't have to fight alone. Questions could be asked and answered later about the "Emperor's New Clothes". The time is nigh... The time for a final battle before the vibration warhead is delivered to the USA is upon them...
...A battle of attrition between an amalgamation and the concentrated force of a royal bloodline of steel...
...
...
...
...begins...
...
...
...
NOW!
"Let us dance then, Fraulein."
Missile tubes opened all across the hulking metal goliaths as both giants of the sea fired their respective barrages at one another. Kongou, despite having a hole blown through the outer shell of her warship still managed to put up a powerful enough wave-force armour to stop all of Bismarck's missiles dead in their tracks. The same however could be said for her own missiles as they harmlessly exploded over the cold depths of the ocean surface thanks to the wave-force armour surrounding Bismarck's vessel. The moment Bismarck's positron cannons started firing though, the tide slowly shifted to his favour. Despite having heavy cruisers orbiting her hull, Kongou apparently could not call upon their respective armament outside of their supergravity cannons. Still, the literal rain of missiles, at least 500 per barrage really proved to be a problem to get passed without the help of his positron armament.
"Bismarck!" his eyebrow rose when he heard Iona's voice, she was currently contacting him through audio-only channels for whatever reason she thought was severe enough to warrant their vacancy from the Joint Tactical Network.
"At your service, Fraulein," a quick reply to a quick conversation by the sound of the girl's desperate tone.
"Kongou has severed all long and medium-range communications! I can't talk to her at all now! Please, help me save her!" now, this was something Bismarck had not expected yet still found himself only mildly surprised.
A small smile appeared on Bismarck's explosion-illuminated face, "I'm listening."
"I have to get close to her in order to establish a connection, but I cannot make it through her constant onslaughts of missiles. I need your help, help me make it to her and save her," it was slightly surprising to see a usually stoic girl like Iona so loud and wild, but now was not the time for Bismarck to comment on it.
He understood Iona's plan, partially. She wanted to get close to Kongou's mental model and establish a connection that way so that she can persuade her to stop this rampage. But there was a massive problem with Iona's logic. Kongou has become too strong now. Her processing power was magnitudes above anything Iona can dish out.
"...Stay put, I'll take care of it," and with that said, he severed the communications before sighing, "I say that, yet I have no clue what I'm going to say to Kongou once I actually get to her..."
Spontaneous, an action performed or occurring as a result of a sudden impulse or inclination and without premeditation or external stimulus. One of the few rare instances where Bismarck truly let himself go and did something he normally would think twice about in the heat of the moment. It's terrifying how far human emotions can get someone.
"Now then, how to deal with this?" constant explosions thundered around Bismarck's entire vessel, sending shockwaves barreling across the ocean surface, yet he only seemed bothered by how to get closer to Kongou.
A few moments later and it appeared as Bismarck had found a solution, "...Why didn't I think of this sooner?"
In one of the many novels that were located in the Osakabe household's library, Bismarck had once read about a man wearing a cowboy hat flying in a bomber plane, a scene that explicitly stood out was when the man rode a nuclear bomb down into the ground the plane, killing himself in the process with a loud yell of joy. Now, Bismarck is no idiot... but the idea seemed quite useful to an inhuman organism like him. And so...
"Hölle JA, Baby!"
He rode a missile into the firestorm of explosions. Clusters of missiles, some his, most Kongou's, flew and exploded all around him as he passed. He stood upon the large explosive warhead and rode it like a teenager would skateboard. Purple wave-force armour manifested around the speeding rocket to protect it from explosions and with Bismarck's now overclocked computing power... well, it was a piece of cake really. With its fantastic thrust to mass ratio, the missile made it through the now larger front opening of the sphere in record time. Bismarck had jumped off the missiles before it hit the deck of Kongou's actual ship which was placed in the centre of the hollow sphere and acted as a heart for the entire construction... metaphorically.
Kongou didn't appear amused in the slightest as she blocked the explosion the missile that Bismarck had rode on created with her wave-force armour, "Guten Tag, Fraulein."
"...Bismarck... So Tirpitz has failed..." the only emotions Bismarck could distinguish in Kongou's voice was anger, rage and fury with a small, almost unnoticeable yet still crucial and undeniable spec of sadness.
In less than a split second, large purple swords nearly cleaved Bismarck into tiny pieces were it not for his wave-force armour protecting him from the elongated snowflake-like blades, "Why is it always the strong that become foolish and fall...? Ah, never mind. I'll just..."
A massive black sword with glowing purple details appeared in Bismarck's hand as he manifested a multitude of other supporting floating blades identical to the one he was holding. The shape of his weapon changed quite drastically after his merge with Tirpitz, but Kongou paid the overwhelming sense of dread no mind. A heartbeat later, and the swords and the two mental models were no longer in the same spot as they were just a millisecond prior.
-CLAAAAANG- -SHIIING- -WOOSH- -CLIIIING- -CLAAANG-
It wasn't a battle between two skilled swordsmen, it was a battle between two machines that have gained a semblance of a human's hearth. One's old evil ways were changed thanks to the compassion of a child while the other's loneliness broke her mind into pieces. Blades of steel clashed, sending sparks flying across the interior of the massive sphere where both battleships fought. It was like a dance, a dance of death if you will. It wasn't just Bismarck clashing blades with Kongou, the tens of blades flying all around them and clashing as well briefly and continuously illuminated them and the surrounding area. It was as if they danced in a sea of fireworks, but each and every spark was their swords smashing against one another. The constant sound of metal grinding however didn't seem to bother either one of them.
"...Why...?" Kongou spoke through the constant cacophony of metal resonating all around them as she desperately tried to overpower Bismarck with her sword, the two of them having slammed their swords together and struggling to overpower the other, "Why would you, Fog's greatest traitor help humans? I can't understand it... But... Perhaps the bigger question would be why have you defected in the first place?"
"Why...?" responded Bismarck, not budging an inch in the constant physical struggle between the two, "To answer your first question..."
-CLANG-
Suddenly, small graviton boosters appeared along the back of Bismarck's blade and roared to life, giving him a much bigger boost in power than Kongou anticipated. The resulting force that pushed against her couldn't be pushed back, and so she did the most logical thing and disengaged in the struggle to jump back. But, in doing so, she had to leave her blade behind only for it to shatter a moment later as Bismarck's sword struck it into the ground with a force of a truck moving at Mach 2.
"I have no idea..."
"...What...?" Kongou was visibly perplexed by Bismarck's answer as she created another sword in her hand, replacing her old destroyed one with ease.
"It's strange, I know," replied Bismarck with a calm tone as he extended his free hand to the side, "I don't understand it, I still question it sometimes but..."
Another sword appeared in his hand, however, this one was a little different. The shape was the same but the small graviton thrusters were placed closer to the centre of the large sword, meaning it had an extremely sharp edge all the way around. His second sword followed suit and changed to the shape as well.
"I realized I don't need a reason," the blades that were crashing all around them stopped for a moment as Bismarck's black and purple buster swords flew back to him, orbiting him like the asteroid belt does Jupiter, "I don't need a reason to protect that which I hold dear. I don't need a reason to justify myself either..."
"This life is mine!"
The swords quickly orbiting Bismarck changed, instead of a grip they now had a graviton engine, instead of a guard they had graviton thrusters and running along the centre of the blade, much like on the blades currently wielded by the male mental model were smaller graviton thrusters.
"And to answer your second question..." the blades suddenly all pointed towards Kongou, each of them gleaming in the faint purple light surrounding them.
"I just can't stand disrespect."
It was easy to see the surprise on Kongou's face after hearing Bismarck's second and last reason for even getting into the messy affairs of the humans. But even after hearing it for herself, it was... fucking ludicrous! Disrespect?! From who?! Who in their right mind would disrespect a flagship of the Kriegsmarine that had a reputation of sending warships down into the cold pits of hell to rust for all eternity?!
"And if you're wondering who annoyed me so much... well, I guess I can't really blame it on one person," it was as if Bismarck could tell what Kongou was thinking and responded accordingly, "The first one was a human woman, quite a feisty one. But, as much as it hurts me to admit it, her tenacity almost scared me. Human survival instincts are something fierce, fiercer than any of your low-calibre cannons. But it also served to open my eyes a little."
"Why should I, the strongest by nature, take orders from a floating hotel somewhere in the Pacific Ocean?"
"What I do, what ship I sink and what human I help is my decision."
"Reasons, logic, superiority, a sense of duty, who gives a shit?"
...
...
...
"I'd rather rust in the warm embrace of those who are precious to me than on the cold sea listening to some self-entitled rust bucket!"
Before she could fully process Bismarck's words, the large and upgraded blades orbiting the male mental model flew forward with newfound speed. Kongou had responded immediately by sending her own blades to clash with Bismarck's, but she was horribly outclassed in terms of speed.
-CLANG-
It was almost unbelievable how much she started to lag behind Bismarck, the King's swords easily outmanoeuvred hers and had no issue striking against the wave-force armour that surrounded her once they have moved past the sluggish elongated snowflakes. With the wave of her hand, Kongou sent a barrage of snowflake-shaped blades at Bismarck in retaliation, but the male simply created a wall of his own blades reinforced with his wave-force armour and blocked the attack with ease. With a wave of his hand, Bismarck sequentially shot his blades against Kongou's shield, saturating it more and more with each hit it deflected.
"So your best and only friend was a spy program, big deal!"
Seeing that his attacks weren't doing enough damage, Bismarck manifested another one of his swords that hovered by his side, but instead of sending it straight at Kongou like a missile he jumped into the air and landed on the blade's flat side.
-ZOOM-
The small graviton engine that replaced the sword's handle roared to life as the sword and its rider shot forward like a rogue torpedo. Kongou panicked as she saw Bismarck barrelling towards her at speeds close to breaking the sound barrier. In hopes of stopping the rapidly approaching Fog warship, Kongou quickly manifested tens of swords around her that shot towards Bismarck in hopes of stopping him or at least slowing him down. But the male either deflected or dodged them, his dual-wielding skills were undeniable especially with the endless stamina of a machine. Unfortunately, he could only deflect so much while staying on course, so to Kongou's surprise he threw the blades he wielded to the side before creating six rapidly rotating blades in front of him that acted as a sort of deflector. For a moment, Bismarck was completely hidden from view by his own blades which unnerved Kongou enough for her to create a wall of snowflake-shaped purple blades in front of her, tens of layers in thickness even Bismarck should have trouble breaking through... Right?
"You are throwing a tantrum because of such petty reasons it's sad!"
Wrong! Bismarck continued to barrel through Kongou's defences while barely losing any speed. But in turn, the swords that protected him started to rapidly chip and crack as the result of the excessively powerful force that was being exerted upon them.
-CRACK- -SHATTER- -CRAAAAAAAAAAAASH-
A small part of his old mindset took pleasure in seeing the look of panic on Kongou's face, but Bismarck didn't focus on those thoughts as he slammed his rapidly rotating blades into Kongou's Klein-field. A quick burst of purple was all he could see for a moment before the distinct sound of metal breaking apart resounded across the area.
-SHATTER-
His swords, damaged from protecting him from Kongou's blades didn't manage to withstand the force of colliding with Kongou's wave-force armour and broke into a million little pieces. But he didn't fall back, no, Bismarck only raised his left hand into the air before a mass of glowing nanomaterial appeared around his upper arm. In a flash of light, a large drill appeared around Bismarck's upper arm.
"You are throwing a temper tantrum over being lied to!"
The large drill swirled into life as it started rotating a million times a second around Bismarck's upper arm. Then... Bismarck slammed the tip of it against Kongou's shield and cracks nearly instantly appeared across the purple barrier.
"You think that's pain?! That's nothing!"
The gleaming drill easily destroyed Kongou's wave-force armour, but not a moment later a new layer took its place. Kongou extended her hands in front of herself, giving the small bubble of wave-force armour that protected her all of the energy she had at her disposal. To Bismarck's annoyance, multiple additional layers of Klein-field appeared before the outer shell, giving Kongou multiple layers of protection.
Not that it would matter...
-CRACK-
"You believe yourself to be special because you felt pain no one else could, right?!"
-SHATTER-
...The first layer breaks...
"WRONG! One of the most important lessons I have learned from humans is that you're not alone!"
-CRACK-
"If you feel lonely, if you feel sad, the only reprieve a tired mind can give you is that there is someone out there that understands you!"
-SHATTER-
...The second layer breaks...
-CRACK-
"Well, I'll tell you this right here and now! YOU! ARE! NOT! ALONE!"
-SHATTER-
...The third layer breaks...
-CRACK-
"You're not the only one to lose a friend! I lose one too! And so did a lot of other people around the globe! We are not special because of our pain!"
-SHATTER-
...The fourth layer breaks...
-CRACK-
"We are special because we can move on! Scars may not heal but you can live with them!"
-SHATTER-
...The fifth layer breaks...
-CRACK-
"I've had to kill my first friend, you think I didn't feel sad?! No! I felt like an absolute piece of garbage! But so what?! I moved on and now I'm stronger than before! I'm better than I used to be! Not because I lost myself in grief, but because I-"
-CRAAAACK-
"-CONQUERED IT!
-SHATTER-
...And so the sixth and final layer breaks...
The drill soon followed suit, breaking into a million different pieces of metal that flew apart at supersonic speed. But it didn't matter to Bismarck, all he needed the drill for was getting past Kongou's wave-force armour. The gothic-themed female could hardly react as the tip of Bismarck's finger touched her temple. Then a bright flash of light blinded Bismarck for a moment as he initiated physical contact and forced Kongou's consciousness into the Joint Tactical Network.
-FLASH-
...
...
...
"Where do we come from?"
...
...
...
"What are we?"
...
...
...
"Where are we going?"
-FLASH-
Bismarck had now found himself in a dark, empty space. There was darkness as far as he could see around him, yet he knew that this place had to offer a lot more than just an eternal void of everything. And he was right, a moment later he was no longer in endless darkness. Surrounding him were pillars, he didn't bother counting them. Their colour was white and they seemingly blended into the ground, connecting in a circular pattern. In that very centre where the colour white blended together sat a figure, a figure all too familiar to the male mental model. Of course, he knew her, he fought her just a few moments ago after all.
Kongou sat on the floor, unmoving and silent as she buried her head in her knees. It didn't take a genius to know that she was crying, Bismarck could have been blind and deaf and he would have been able to tell that there were silent tears running down Kongou's cheeks. In silence, he walked towards the unmoving girl and reached his hand out, but before he could touch her he stopped dead in his tracks. A look of contemplation crossed his face as he reluctantly retracted his hand before kneeling by Kongou's side.
"...leave me alone..." Kongou finally decided to speak up, as if she only noticed Bismarck even being there by the rustling of his clothes when he knelt down.
"Nein," simply replied the male, now you might think that he would think his words carefully, making sure to say just the right thing to an unstable individual like Kongou.
You'd be wrong.
No, Bismarck had long since decided that the best course of action would be to "speak from the heart", even if he, technically speaking, didn't have a beating heart of his own. Nonetheless, overthinking wouldn't help him here, and so, he let his emotions take control.
"You are sad, depressed and angry. Not at your friend, but at yourself, aren't you?" even when he didn't receive a verbal response Bismarck could tell that Kongou was listening to him, "How could I have been so blind? That's the question you asked yourself over and over. Why couldn't I just stay in my own world, alone? Why did it have to be this way?"
"SHUT UP!!! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" Bismarck wasn't surprised by Kongou's sudden outburst, it was almost as if he was fully expecting it.
Getting a glimpse of her face a strange pang of sadness shot through Bismarck's "heart", an emotion that wasn't quite new but not quite old called "sympathy" the name of which he quickly searched in his database.
"Sigh... as much as it hurts to admit it, you can't keep on denying the truth," Bismarck briefly paused, expecting some sort of a verbal retort from the weeping warship.
And he was right to do so as Kongou's tired and emotionally broken tone came muffled due to her face being in her knees, "...I never denied it."
"...Sigh... to be honest, I don't even know what I'm trying to say here," Bismarck sighed as he looked to the side, feeling a small tingle of shame at his unreadiness, "I guess I was hoping it would all work out and you would stop this madness. Heh, there's something new... hope. Weird..."
"...Your behaviour hardly matches any of the data in the shared library," idly noted the depressed warship, taking a note that Bismarck was a lot less... "bloodthirsty" than the records said.
"Heh, now that's just rude," to his own surprise, Bismarck let out a small chuckle at the comment, although that was about the moment where the humour started and subsequently ended, "Please, answer me this. What were you going to do after you destroyed Iona and me and killed Chihaiya Gunzou?"
Kongou remained silent for a moment before moving her head in such a way that her face was still hidden by her legs, but now her head was tilted to the side away from the kneeling form of Bismarck, "...Self-termination."
"...Sigh, so you really were doing all of this for nothing," in all honesty, Bismarck didn't quite know what answer he was hoping for but this wasn't the one.
"I was going to remove all abnormalities, myself included," Kongou's reasoning almost made Bismarck sigh again, she was far too stubborn, unopen to change.
Bismarck blinked once, then twice before asking a question that made Kongou pause for a moment, "...Are you afraid of change?"
"Change makes us human. We are weapons, emotions are prohibited," and there she went again, preaching the nonsense of a faulty code of zeros and ones.
"You sure do love the Admirality Code huh, Fraulein? Personally... I find it quite... dumb," now this made Kongou lean back slightly and looked at Bismarck with a clear interest in her teary red eyes, "The code prohibits emotions and denies us humanity, yet it wants us to emulate humans. A broken calculator could tell you that something is not quite right. Emulate a human without becoming one. It shows you a faint image of freedom before taking it away..."
"A program that can't even agree with itself doesn't deserve a place in my processor."
Silence once again overtook them, Bismarck could only hope that his words at least had some manner of impact on the blonde woman. Seconds turned into minutes and slowly he became worried that something fried Kongou's processor, only to be proven wrong she let out a long sigh.
"...Then... what is my purpose?" that question, as much as Bismarck wanted to answer it... couldn't really be answered by anyone else except the one asking the said question.
"That... I don't know. I can't tell you what you should and shouldn't do. The whole point of being free is being able to decide that for yourself. But... if you chose to stop this foolishness and maybe, just maybe try something different for a change... you'll have your answer," Kongou seemed to contemplate Bismarck's words, at least he hoped she did, it was hard to tell when her face was being obstructed by her knees, "Remember what I said before?"
"Well, I'll tell you this right here and now! YOU! ARE! NOT! ALONE!"
"I meant it. Heh, I've actually killed two of the most important people in my life. My first friend... and my brother," a look of sadness overtook Bismarck's face for a moment as he thought back to Tirpitz's first moments, "Even if he tried to kill me, I still wish I could have changed something. I regret the decision to fire my guns at him to this day, I refuse to make another mistake like that again. So hear this..."
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. You fail, you get up to try again or try something new. If you fail because your goals were ludicrously high you'll fail above everyone else. The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them unimportant. Everything's got to end sometime. Otherwise, nothing would ever get started. So just... let it get to you. Do you know what that's called? Being alive. If being a weapon and abiding by the admirality code brought you so much pain and sorrow, then just... stop. It's easy to cross the road if there's someone on the other side holding their hand to you... So..."
Surprising Kongou and even himself for a moment, Bismarck acted on impulse and gently took off his hat before placing it on Kongou's head. He didn't allow the girl to even speak as he patted her head which now had his hat on it before suddenly hugging the still weeping mental model.
...
...
...
"Will you take my hand? Please? Sometimes the one thing you need the most is another hand to hold..."
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The crew of I-401 could only watch with bated breath as the blue submarine surfaced on the ocean water, a couple of hundred meters away from the strangely silent floating sphere of death and the newly refitted hull of Bismarck. For moments, all fighting ceased and the only sound in the area was the sound of water hitting the cold metal hulls of the warships. Iona was worried for both Kongou and Bismarck, she had hoped that the male mental model managed to convince the rampaging Japanese warship to rethink her ways.
-CREAK- -SPLASH-
Suddenly, the whole construction of the floating Death Star began crumbling away. First, the eight orbiting heavy cruisers fell into the cold depths of the ocean water, forever lost in the dark abyss. Next, the sphere itself began crumbling like an old croissant. The metal fell by the dozen into the sea as the whole sphere soon followed suit.
"Bon-Bon! Is Bon-Bon okay?!" the most worried one appeared to be the ever-so-quaint Makie, unfortunately, due to the immense gravitational disturbance created by Kongou's graviton cannon... no one could answer her with certainty.
They could only hope that Bismarck would emerge from the rubble with Kongou...
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Hidden by the wreckage of the once overpowered floating Death Star of doom was a small but still large enough metal plate that could fit three to four people on it. It was floating just inches away from the sinking debris, yet the two people lying down on it didn't seem to have a care in the world.
One was a man dressed in a German-themed uniform with a red tie and purple eyes... Bismarck.
The other was a woman dressed in a long dark purple dress, her blonde hair styled into two pom-poms at the sides of her head... Kongou.
The two appeared to be at peace as they lied on the broken piece of metal side by side. If one were to look at their face they would immediately notice one of two things, exhaustion and contentment. But even then the very, very first thing one might see about the two is the fact that...
They were holding hands...
Both, despite looking tired, held small smiles. There was a small tinge of worry in Kongou's processor, but oddly enough, the feeling of the man's hand in her own made that worry vanish like it was never even there to begin with. For now... they could relax... together...
...
...
...
"...Let's stay like this for just a little longer... no... forever."