Alright. I got tired of the Roman numerals so this one’s just Silent Service. I’ll go back and edit the titles and stuff later… *yawn*
Hey. Trout. You ever notice how everyone is in a Bikini?
Yes. What about it?
Don’t you think that’s a little weird?
How so?
It’s like, 40 degrees out? I mean, that’s not freezing but I wouldn’t call it warm out either.
Your point being?
Are people here incapable of wearing a jacket?
Tog, the girls can wear whatever they want. If it’s a bikini then it’s a bikini.
But why is “bikini” the iconic representation of a subgirl?
Plenty of subgirls don’t wear bikinis. Bats don’t. Pam doesn’t either. Neither does Lori –
HEY GUYS. HOW DO YOU LIKE MY NEW LOOK?
…
…
…
I… see what you mean, Tog.
‘Sup guys! K9 here. Tonight’s been pretty hectic with delays and uncertainty, so I decided to poke some fun at Silent Service. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to laugh at your own creation. As any team member will tell you, at the end of it all, we just want to enjoy creating and sharing ideas. Pacific doesn’t have to be WORK WORK WORK.
Yes, that goes for you too, Je – I mean, Morgane. Anyways! Here’s Lori. Don’t worry. She still have her catsuit too. 😉
How’s your day going, Lori?
Great! Can I have the keys?
The keys to?
Ammo dumps #2-18.
Uh, okay…
Yay! *twirls*
Today was a great day! It’s my day off so I had a lot of fun slacking off. I got up by dawn’s early light, did 300 pushups, then headed to the kitchen and made myself breakfast. There is something intensely patriotic about frying a dozen eggs while fending off Colbert’s hungry talons, but he’s getting too fat to steal bacon and sausage from me these days since Chester kept on trying to feed him that FREEDOM powder Cusk rigged up. I tried it myself and it was bleh. Tasted like fish paste. Definitely not for American consumption.
Then I cleaned up, did the dishes, and headed out for range day with Trout & Tambor & Tautog. Well, more like two hours, and as usual Dolphin was yelling at all of us. I like it better when Narwhal’s teaching. She’s nice! She doesn’t yell! I get nervous when people look at me! Then I ate like, eight double cheeseburgers and drank a gallon of coca-cola for lunch. Took a nap. Woke up. Went for a swim. Didn’t find any sharks to punch today but I did end up suplexing a blue whale that got too curious at Hata’s fishing lines. Can’t have critters stealing our dinner, you know!
Then I came home, tuned into my favorite afternoon talk radio, and started working on my all-new leather outfit. I think if I do this properly I just might be able to imbue that thing with the same quality of powers that my current outfit holds! Stars and stripes are nice and all, but a girl’s gonna want a change in wardrobe at some point. The way I think about it, if I worked on it for an hour every day, in ten years I’m definitely gonna become an expert if the war doesn’t start up.
But, even if it did? Well, I’m just going to pick it right back up once the whole thing boils over. We shipgirls are gonna have to fight, but what are we gonna do once the Abyssal War’s over? Just disappear? I wouldn’t like that.
Oh. Also! You are coming to the dance tonight, Mike, right? Better hope you can swing!
Lori, it’s a busy time around now, can’t I –
You really think an excuse involving work is going to fool a German-American shipgirl? Ha! Look here. You’re free. See? I’ve even helpfully blocked off the next day so you could recuperate.
Wait a minute. My schedule is generated and maintained strictly using the highest classification protocols, how did you –
Chester said if I sleep on an ENIGMA machine every night I’ll be able to break any encryption if I stared at hard enough.
… Seriously?
She also said that you can learn Japanese by watching those silly cartoons, so, yeah. Do you want one too? I think we rigged up a spare the other day.
Thanks, but I like my pillow just fine…
This is an emergency message insertion from Tautog.
Sleeping on top of an ENIGMA machine will not magically cause the commander’s schedules to become decrypted. At most it may give you a very mild headache for the next day. STEC also does not condone the harm of species protected under International law. As the unofficial spokesperson of this organization I am obliged to comment in order to minimize any potential misunderstanding or misinterpretation of STEC’s activities.
Tell me a bit about your namesake?
Sure thing, sir! The Type XXI U-boats were highly advanced for their era. They were definitely the best German submarines the Kriegsmarine had to offer. Tautog’ll probably have a sub corner on this, so I really don’t think I need to say more.
Downsides? They were pretty badly engineered in the sense that they weren’t really mass-producible. Dracha always say that if Admiral Donitz had his way and swarmed the Atlantic with A MILLION U-BOOTS the war would have been won before 1941, but I, um, somehow doubt that’d be the case. The Kriegsmarine, while professional, had very little actual naval combat or design experience prior to the invasion of Poland. Germany were simply outmatched by the Allies at every turn. Nevermind the fact that they were up against the British Empire who had been doing this “seapower” thing for the last several hundred years on the high seas. It was a disaster waiting to happen.
To put things into perspective, Hitler didn’t think to seriously seize the U-boat as an offensive weapon until the Sixth Army fell at Stalingrad. There’s a reason why the Type XXI were so different from the other U-boats. It was basically wunderwaffen, like the Toi-ga, the V-2 rockets, or the Me 262.
How do you feel about the Abyssal War?
Courage is the thing that keeps us free! Hella yeah! Something freedom something fighting for the rights of every man!
Eagles?
Hey, Lori here!
If my daily life sounds awesome, that’s because it totally is. As you may or not have been aware in the Action Report series, I’m an immigrant in every sense of the word. Much like the actual Type XXI U-boats that joined USN service, I willingly choose to become American after escaping from a very hostile situation that was developing between West and East Germany in Pacific’s universe.
Morgane likes to say this is for thematic reasons, but for someone like me? Of course America is the greatest planet on earth – er, I mean, the greatest country on the planet. I naturally seek out things that are “American” in nature, and I love everything there is about it! Be it going fast or riding horses or pro-wrestling or outdoor sports or shooting stuff, I want to experience everything there is that the country who had adopted me could offer. Sure, I might not be the most mature of the girls we have here in Pacific, but they say I’ve got a big heart!
Don’t let the team’s optimism fool you. The world isn’t automatically made a better place because we’re here. If anything, the tensions have receded somewhat, but they’re replaced by very concrete matters that the various countries of the world has to ask themselves if they are to survive. What happened to my country of origin – Germany – is one such example.
Do you really want to hear it? Well, okay… Here I go. It’s not a happy story, but it does have the happiest of endings.
Fractured after World War II, the two halves never truly evolved as they did in the “real world.” Even today, East Germany has very little reason to want to be whole again – while poor in comparison to the West, the USSR is prosperous enough and its rule functional enough that many of those in the East consider themselves to be citizens of the Soviet Union first, and Germans second.
Meanwhile, the … situation that resulted in my escape to America? Let’s just say, unlike your world, the shadows of Nazi Germany and the Vier Mächte never departed from West Germany. I couldn’t blame them, either. There is a growing sense that many German politicians did not truly have the interests of the German people at heart. Decades of stagnant economic polices coupled with scandal after scandal, alongside pressures coming from France and the United Kingdom created a hotbed of civil unrest. Germany was growing. She was alive. Yet she wasn’t healthy.
…
For years, I wandered alone. I had no friends or family to count on. I survived not because of dumb luck, but because I was one out of billions of individuals who were gifted supernaturally. Street hooligan or gopniki, I had to deal with them myself. I thought I’d be cursed to wander forever, like the heroes of those old stories, until one day governmental people tracked me down.
I played dumb, of course. I didn’t trust them one bit, and sure enough, they wanted me not because of who I am, but because of the strategic benefits that would come with having someone like me on their side. They were interested in a machine that could do their bidding. At no point did they ever consider if I even wanted to go along with their plans.
I just wanted a warm meal and a safe place to sleep. Maybe a real bed. I wasn’t interested in spy-rings or meeting politicians from East Germany. But the latter was exactly what they had me do. Someone higher up wanted to stir up rebellion in East Germany, and they needed someone like me to be the focal point for the rebellion.
“For Germany,” they told me. To them, it meant unifying with the East. With war if necessary. They know full well the weight of the Soviet Union stands alongside a heavily fortified battle line, ready to move – and respond – at a minute’s provocation. Naturally I was to balance the odds. The Soviets had no shipgirls (that was a lie, as I learned from STEC much later), so I would have been a decisive factor that would bring them victory.
How many would die? How many Germans would die in the crossfire? I was sent here to protect humanity. How many millions would die in a conflict between the West and the East?
For disagreeing with such a plan, they threw me in prison. Laughable. You know? I could have broken out at any moment I had wanted, but I was so shocked at the betrayal that I just cried in that tiny dark cell for days on end. I’m a good German – until I’m not. I’m a good girl – until they say I’m not. One minute I was destined to be a hero, and the next I’m now a Soviet spy.
Then the Soviets came, and I was buried beneath fifteen tons of rubble. They had heard news that West Germany might have a shipgirl of their own, and decided to take matters into their own hands.
“She is probably a Nazi, if she is indeed a German shipgirl.”
The Soviets knew of my existence, but that was what they had concluded based on what their own agents – some of those politicians I had met – told them. I, I said nothing during any of those meetings at all! I was silent because they told me I should say nothing. Am I a Nazi just because I’m German? I-is this what all German shipgirls have to d-deal with?
I, I’m sorry. *sniff* It’s just not fair. It’s not right. This isn’t supposed – this wasn’t …
…
*sniff*
T-they asked me if I wanted to retaliate. Surely I now understand the evils of communism now, right?
They didn’t ask me, hey, are you okay? Are you hurt?
They just wanted to use me as an object to further their ends.
Was this what it is to be German? Then I wanted no parts of it. I could not and did not want to be German anymore. I speak the language. I know the culture. I love our traditions. But to be German meant also to be the citizen of a particular state, and I could not support the actions of that country.
I, I just had to get away. But, where?
I had nowhere to go. I could not go to East Germany. They just tried to kill me. I could not stay in West Germany. They just wanted to use me.
They brought me to a new cell and told me to think about it seriously. So I sat in the darkness and cried. My cell had no windows, you know? You didn’t think the U.S. Embassy out of all places would have a concrete windowless bunker in the basement, but thank God they decided to lock me up there. Never did figure out why they did it either.
Anyways, I sat there. By now, I was used to hearing the footsteps of the patrolling guards. My old guards did theirs methodically without a break, always in double-time and rotating every four minutes. Here, in my new prison, I heard something different. These new sounds were loud, heavy, and uncoordinated. They were so very different. They were singing, too, and it wasn’t German.
At first, I wondered if I was hearing things. But, the next day – roughly an hour or so after they drop food in my cell, the footsteps would come back. With it came the song, too. Slowly, over the course of a week, I figured out what the lyrics were. It took me a while to realize that they were singing along to stuff playing on the radio.
I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God bless the U.S.A.
I was taught that the Americans are a bunch of fools, and that they were dim, arrogant, and undisciplined. Yet, at the same time, there was one thing above all else they valued.
They yearned to be free.
And you know what else?
They believed in something greater.
… The rest of my story, I’ll tell you some other time. It’s no good for any of us if I just dwelled on the bad things that happened in the past.
But, I will tell you, at last, I found a place where I belonged.
I found home.
