Georgia let out a low whistle, arms crossed as she sat on her bow the rubble from the drydock blocks which had given up on life the firing of the rockets being the st thing they needed to give way. m. Smoke still curled from the VLS tubes on her back, and the scent of scorched metal lingered in the air. The battle was won, Clevend, Laffey and Javelin seemed to be escorting a captured eugen while the rest of the girls ran.

  Vestal stormed across the ruined drydock, her usually calm demeanor shattered like the debris strewn across the harbor. Her white coat billowed behind her as she marched toward Georgia, her steps echoing with authority and barely contained fury. The cng of her boots against steel was drowned out only by the groans of stressed metal and the distant arms still bring from the unexpected missile unch."GEORGIA!" Vestal’s voice cracked through the air like a whip, instantly silencing any lingering chatter. The shipgirls who had been gawking at the destruction quickly found other pces to be, scattering like frightened mice. Even the ever-reliable yet heavily injured Arizona took an instinctive step back letting the repair ship pass. wisely avoiding the incoming storm.

  Georgia, for her part, remained seated on the bow of her hull, arms crossed, looking more amused than concerned. "Afternoon, Doc," she drawled, exhaling slowly as if she hadn’t just sent an entire drydock into disrepair.

  "Don’t you 'afternoon' me, you oversized, reckless—!" Vestal stopped herself, pinching the bridge of her nose before taking a deep breath, clearly trying to compose herself. It didn’t work. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You—!" She gestured wildly at the wreckage behind her. "You unched ordnance from a drydock! A repair facility! Do you know what that means? It means half the base thought we were under attack! It means the entire emergency response team was mobilized! It means—!"

  Georgia lifted a hand zily. "It means we won the fight?"

  Vestal’s eye twitched. "IT MEANS YOU NEARLY SANK ON LAND!”

  Georgia finally stood, rolling her shoulders. "Look, Doc, I get it. Mistakes were made. Maybe I shoulda checked the structural integrity of the dock before lettin’ loose with thirty Harpoons. But in my defense, it worked."

  "Worked?! Oh sure, it worked!" Vestal threw her arms up. "And now I have to expin to command why our drydock looks like a bombed-out ruin, why half the shipgirls on base went to battle stations, and why—" she pointed a trembling finger at Georgia’s VLS tubes, "—YOU thought it was a great idea to unch an entire rocket barrage from a position designed for REPAIRS!"

  Georgia rubbed the back of her neck, gncing at the ruined dock. "...To be fair, I did warn everyone to take cover." In truth she hadent, the took the moment to taunt Eugen… However, it was pretty funny.

  Vestal let out a strangled noise that was somewhere between an exhausted sigh and the deep, guttural growl of someone rapidly losing their st shred of patience. "Oh, you warned everyone to take cover, did you?" Her hands went to her hips, white gloves stained with soot as she gred up at the battleship who towered over her. "And I suppose that makes everything just fine, huh? Never mind the fact that the shockwaves from your unch rattled the entire drydock so hard that IT IS NOW TAKING ON FUCKING WATER!!!!”

  Georgia held up a finger. "Now, in my defense—"

  "NO. No ‘in my defense’ from you, Miss ‘Let’s Fire A Full Rocket Barrage From The Goddamn Drydock!’" Vestal’s face was turning a rather impressive shade of red as she jabbed a finger into Georgia’s hull pting. "You broke my drydock, you sent half the fleet into high alert, and you definitely made my blood pressure hit levels I didn’t even know were possible!"

  Georgia shifted, resisting the urge to grin. "You sure you don’t wanna sit down, Doc? Maybe take a deep breath before you pop a gasket?"Vestal inhaled sharply through her nose and then exhaled, her nostrils fring. "Oh, don’t you start with me. You are officially on repair duty until this entire dock is fixed. No excuses, no skipping out, no sneaking off for ‘training exercises’ that somehow involve more rocket strikes!"

  Georgia opened her mouth.

  "And before you ask, yes, I will be watching!" Vestal shot her a gre so sharp it could’ve cut steel. "You so much as think about pulling something like this again, I will personally strap you to a workbench and make you learn every single bolt that holds this base together!"=========Hornet leaned against a stack of supply crates, arms crossed, as she watched the controlled chaos of the fleet returning to port. The new arrivals—Clevend, Laffey, Javelin—were keeping the formation tight, escorting the exhausted fleet back home. Among them, one stood out like a sore thumb—Prinz Eugen, her hands bound behind her back with specialized restraints, her usual smug expression repced with something more unreadable.

  Enterprise stood beside Hornet, her piercing gaze following the retreating figures. "We pulled it off," she said, her voice even, though there was a weight behind it.

  Hornet let out a breath. "Yeah, but damn if that wasn’t one hell of a brawl. Didn’t expect the Sirens to just show up like that." She gnced sideways at her sister. "And I really didn’t expect Georgia to turn the drydock into a bathtub."

  Enterprise sighed, shaking her head. "Vestal’s going to make her pay for that one."

  "Yeah, no kidding," Hornet smirked. "Still, gotta admit, she saved our hides. Even if she scared half the base doing it."Enterprise remained silent for a moment, watching as Prinz Eugen was led onto the dock, a couple of security escorts keeping a wary distance. The Iron Blood cruiser had put up one hell of a fight, and despite being captured, she didn’t seem particurly bothered by her situation. If anything, she was studying her surroundings, her crimson eyes filled with curiosity rather than fear.

  Hornet noticed Enterprise’s expression. "Something on your mind, Big E? Sis?"

  Enterprise folded her arms, her brows furrowing. "Misidentification. The reports said Bismarck, but that was clearly Prinz Eugen."Hornet clicked her tongue. "Yeah, I caught that too. Mistakes happen in the heat of battle.”

  Enterprise’s frown deepened, her sharp eyes never leaving Prinz Eugen as the cruiser was led further innd. “Maybe,” she admitted, “but it doesn’t sit right with me. Hornet, you know as well as I do that misidentifying a battleship as a cruiser isn’t a small mistake.”

  Hornet shrugged, adjusting her cap. “Look, I get it. Intel was shaky, we were caught in the middle of a slugfest, and Eugen fought like hell. It’s not crazy to think someone called the wrong name in the heat of things.”

  Enterprise didn’t respond immediately, her mind still turning over the possibilities. Misidentification was a common battlefield error, but something felt… off. If the reports had been wrong from the start, where had the bad intel come from? And why had the Sirens appeared right when things got messy? Why had the sirens helped teh sakura empire?

  “We should check our sources,” Enterprise finally said. “If someone fed us false intel, we need to know who and why.”

  Hornet exhaled, hands on her hips. “You’re thinking sabotage?”

  “I’m thinking someone wanted us chasing Bismarck,” Enterprise replied, eyes narrowing. “And instead, we got Eugen. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  Hornet let the thought settle before nodding. “Alright, Big E. I’ll back your py. But first, let’s get these new girls settled, and—” she smirked, jerking her thumb back toward the docks, “—maybe stop Vestal from strangling Georgia.”

  Enterprise finally allowed a small smile. “Agreed.”