1485/Automated Assassin VI

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Automated Assassin VI
Date of Scene: 03 February 2015
Location: Great Ocean - Northern Loop
Synopsis: Kongou is targeted by the sixth of the Collective's mysterious assassins.
Cast of Characters: 596, 637


Kongou (637) has posed:
    Early evening on the open sea, the only land in sight is on the distant horizon, to the east. Through the gently rolling waves of the ocean cleaves the distinctive dark gray hull of the fast battleship Kongou. With no foes on radar, she cruises at a leisurely 25 knots, all guns on standby but not on alert. Up on the compass platform, mounted binoculars rotate almost lazily, as if lookouts were manning them.

    The Fleet Daughter is on her way back to Boston after paying a visit to her comrades at Hikari Harbor. In good spirits, her thoughts drift to the meats currently occupying her galley freezer. Steaks and ribs, Admiral will enjoy these!

    Though the unmanned vessel is a ship, it almost seems happy, the radars twirling while a disembodied voice hums a cheerful song audible everywhere on board.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Nothing quite ruins a happy outing on the water like the sight of something under the waves; like the back of a crocodile bumping the underside of a boat, or the dorsal fin of a shark just barely grazing past the side of a life raft. Kongou is treated to much the same sensation as a shadow flits beneath her hull, momentarily rising close enough to the surface to be seen as a patch of inky dark blue, before fading out of sight again. For the few seconds it is visible, the general sense of its profile that she gets is that it is much longer than she is. The briefly visible shape doesn't conform to a straight line of any sort, seeming to twist and contort like an errant piece of floating seaweed under magnification. Its passing stirs the water underneath her, creating a momentary swell that causes her to bob ever so slightly over the next crest.

    Strangely, nothing immediately follows. The shape disappears, and the sea returns to its calm as if nothing had happened. It's definitely there though, and keeping pace with her. Call it instinct.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    It's never a good feeling when one notices they are being stalked by something unseen. The sensation, and particularly the displacement as water rocks over thirty thousand tons of steel, guns, and armor puts an abrupt end to Kongou's cheerful humming. There's a quiet "Eh..?" and the spyglasses on the lookout platform swing down, scanning over the water closer to the hull.

    Submarines make her nervous. The idea that one could have gotten that close immediately puts her on edge. With the spyglasses checking closer, the amidships secondary guns and machine guns unlock and start sweeping over the water further out, searching for potential targets. Even the main turrets, the 35.6cm twin gun batteries, start their transversal in opposing directions, scanning the surface with the lenses of their 3 meter rangefinders.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Even without her humming to distract her, whatever noise Kongou's stalker makes is invisible under the sounds of the breeze and shifting waves, so deep has it resubmerged. Its shake is equally as invisible under so many meters of ocean water, leaving the spyglasses almost useless for scanning the surface. It's a small wonder why Kongou doesn't experience an attack right at that moment, or rather, why she hadn't already, but nothing happens until several, long, tense minutes of utter silence has passed.

    The water near her bow suddenly swells up, and then bursts into an explosion of white foam as something breaks through from underneath, moving at great speed. An elongated hulk of black metal, glistening with runoff in the sunlight, twists into the air before her like the arc of a leaping dolphin, though it is so long that the end of it hasn't surfaced by the time the front has submerged. It appears to be made of innumerable, discrete segments, like that of a centipede, but its sleek shape suggests something more like a convoy of personal submersible turbines, each affixed with a set of strangely organic fins. Its head is barely visible before hitting the water again, but appears to be vaguely arrow shaped, like a sea snake. The entire thing could wrap around Kongou several times with length to spare.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    An object surfacing right in front gets the instant reaction of a hard portside turn. The wheel on the warship's bridge turns wildly, the entire vessel leaning outboard from the water as Kongou struggles to redirect her weight and inertia to avoid a collision. This also puts the B turret on an almost direct firing solution while the colossal machine is breaching.

    The A turret swings over from port, though it's B's two 35 centimeter guns that fire first. It's a quick shot from the hip, with little time to calculate range and only running on estimates.

    The assumption is hostile. If it were friendly, it would've announced its presence by now--but why did it have to be a submersible?!

    Nervous, Kongou's midship batteries start going off, though the mechanized sea serpent's body is bound to be underwater by the time the shells arrive. Only the main battery's gunfire even has a chance.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    In the middle of boldly announcing its presence for some inscrutable reason, the enemy -- the one and only Type-6 anti-Daughter model Arma -- seems to have no plans for evasion. On the other hand, it might not need them. Sending Kongou practically spinning out on the water, only the rear third of its body is present for the first few shells to hit. Despite its relatively slender frame, it is of such a size that it would be difficult for a decently experienced battleship crew to miss, and so even the almost blindly fired shots find their mark.

    Finding the mark and leaving one turn out to be two different stories. The shells both explode a couple of meters away from the target, their detonations sounding faintly muffled as a barely-there screen of distortion appears in the air around the Arma's body for that split second. The energy shield is easily recognizeable to someone who had already fought against the same technology before, and has already been forewarned of possible ambush. The hail of energy weapon fire that responds should therefore be no surprise either. Tiny points of gold light up around the arch of the serpent visible above the water, which immediately translate into searing white bolts that rain down on the battleship's deck from above, pummeling her with a high angle salvo of low 'calibre' rounds.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    A shield system that Kongou recognizes immediately, even if the sight is fleeting when the vessel dives underwater once again. The fact that it can dive is going to be a huge problem. Somewhere on board, a sleeping girl's teeth bare themselves in a tense frown while the battleship accellerates mid-turn, ramping up to her top combat speed. The wheel on board halts, then starts spinning the other way, as Kongou initiates high speed evasive maneuvers that abruptly reverse her turn.

    Arcing lasers are what she's trying to avoid, and the sudden change in speed and heading causes a good deal of them to miss, though particularly the superstructure and aft armor both take a beating. Wood splinters and metal delts, getting a "--Tch!" out of the disembodied voice on board.

    There's nothing she can do..!

    The only option Kongou has available to her is to make herself a harder target. The battleship's hull shimmers and then erupts outward. Water rushes in to fill in the displaced water, and from the mist and light Kongou skates out in her Land fit-out, trailing streamers of smoke from the left (aft) end of her equipment. She's doing her best to mask the panic from appearing on her face.

    How did they know to send a submarine?!

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Reducing her target profile was about the smartest thing Kongou could have done. Her decision is vindicated almost the instant she makes the shift between fit-outs, as the surface she had just occupied explodes into a hurricane of whirling steam and blowing mist. All along the length her hull had previously occupied, like pegs in a game of battleship, a row of vertical launch missiles spear forth from the water, vapourizing it on the way as they burst into the open air. Obviously designed to function more as torpedoes than anything else, they get only a short distance skyward on their original momentum before they go off, immediately blotting out the sunny skies with a blinding wall of conjoined fireballs. The surface of the ocean craters again from the blast wave that hammers down on her, forming sharp valleys in her path directly beneath each explosion. Had those all hit her from underneath, there's no telling how much damage she would have taken.

    Unfortunately, that now increases the size difference between her and her enemy massively. The Type-6 would now be large enough to swallow her whole, had it a mouth. She can see the dark shape rising up from the depths again, coming dangerously close to surfacing, before simply shooting while still under water, as its weapons care nothing for the medium through which they are fired. The area around her suddenly becomes a maelstrom of raiser fire; vertical columns of automatic energy bolts peppering the waves like an aircraft strafing done in reverse, aiming to catch her in sheer volume of fire if she's too small to accurately hit with a torpedo salvo.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    A person with a large backpack is significantly smaller than a two-hundred-plus meter warship. Vertical launch torpedos erupt all along where Kongou's profile had been, and she immediately appreciates her decision to shift fittings, covering her head with both hands and sleeves. Digging her heels in, she sharply banks away from the centerline she had previously occupied, hearing but not seeing the rockets exploding behind and above her with enough force to billow her clothes in the direction she's going.

    Considering the foe is not surfacing, she's not too concerned about size difference, and even if it did, she'll just have to cause enough damage that it can't submerge again without sinking itself. The much smaller size in this situation makes her a much, much more difficult target for such precise anti-ship weapons.

    This combined with her speed and maneuverability, weaving from side to side amidst plumes of steam and lasers, gets Kongou through the initial barrage with no further damage. Her turrets transverse around, however, aiming backwards in a spread pattern. They don't fire. What does leave her, however, is her seaplane, sharply ascending. A tiny aircraft to act as a spotter, searching the waves for the vessel's subsurface profile.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The continued fire of rapid guns lasts for almost a full minute, forcing Kongou to dodge and weave for a considerable length of time before it is safe to launch her seaplane. Said plane however, is such an incredibly puny target that it's incredibly unlikely her assailant will go after it, never mind shooting it down by accident. From high up in the air, it's much easier to spot the Type-6 from further down, as the darkened shape against the water, even when extremely faint, is much easier to pick out with a greater, uniform expanse visible around it. As such, Kongou has a moment's warning before the water fifty meters behind her explodes outwards again, letting loose the head of the snake.

    Previously arrow-like in shape, the leading unit of the strange submersible war machine unfolds into a strange, triple array of segmented pincers, suddenly giving it the appearance of some horrifying alien worm rather than a deep sea beast. Water vapour streams from their joints as bolts of plasma coruscate between them, steadily increasing in speed and frequency until they collapse into a single point, blazing like a miniature sun. To call what happens next a 'beam' would be inaccurate, as it fires all in one pulse, but the streaking afterimage of the hypervelocity fusion arc sure makes it look like one in the split second before the expanse of water directly in front of Kongou flash converts into a towering nuclear fireball.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    You don't have to be familiar with modern technology to recognize a portable volcano cannon readying a shot. Kongou maintains her course for just a half second, giving her guns the time to zero in on the massive serpent's exposed head and fire a full broadside of armor-piercing shells before she swerves sharply aside. Her guns already transverse, even as the sea immediately to her left explodes into a towering inferno. Shielding her face with her sleeve, which rapidly turns black on the side facing the impact, Kongou lets out a cry of surprise and pain. Her outermost turret, seared by the blast, grinds to a halt mid-transversal as the bearings deform in the heat.

    Swerving sharply away, Kongou banks herself back towards the enormous sea creature, trailing smoke from her damaged kit, teeth bared, "You've surfaced, now you're in <My Territory!> If you think shells are all I have--" Accellerating to her full speed, Kongou only adjusts course for evasive maneuvers on what could only be a ramming attempt. Except for the size difference. She starts trailing silvery motes of light on approach until that familiar metallic glow engulfs her. By the point of no return, the full sized Kongou class battlecruiser erupts from the sphere of light that signifies her transition from Land to Ocean fit outs... at a sharp, upward angle rather than straight forward into the water. She's not just ramming, she's using her entire body as a projectile!

    "I'm not <Finished> with you yet!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The Type-6's 'jaws' glow cherry red as the blinding light fades, leaving behind an enormous crater where the dilatant shock of the initial explosion had turned the water into a solid obstacle, trapping the hydrogen inbetween into the pressurized state that allows a chain fusion reaction. The design is fairly obvious, in that it is meant to cool from the current of cold water while moving beneath the waves rather than using any kind of on-board heat management unit. This means that it has to dive again before taking another, presumably bigger, shot with the fusion coil. This also gives Kongou a fairly wide opening in which to make her move.

    In keeping with the corvette from operation Black Seas, it's annoyingly difficult to gauge just how close or distant the enemy's shield is from collapsing. Armour piercing shells have already proven more effective than purely explosive ones in past, but as the volley ripples across the shivering, translucent barrier, there's no way of judging just how much damage Kongou is doing. A basic knowledge of physics however, is all that is required to know that the subsequent ramming attack must have done a ton of it. Or rather, several thousand tons.

    The gigantic machine careens backwards as Kongou's bow smashes against its frontal barrier, likely crumpling the metal badly, but sending her colossal enemy smashing back into the water hard enough that an additional flicker of its shield is required to blunt the impact. Knocked out of firing alignment, the Type-6 improvises by simply rolling with the blow, accelerating downwards to build up more speed, and then curving back around to launch itself straight over top of Kongou. It completes a second full circle before the end of its tail emerges from the water, coiling around her like the tendrils of some metallic kraken. Anchored against her hull, the guns studding its body -- as many that can traverse enough to face inward -- begin firing on her at point blank, aiming to fill every deck and battery with a deluge of explosive bolts.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    The forward knife of the bow caves in on impact, though the sheer mass behind it carries Kongou forward upon her serpentine foe. As it starts wrapping around her armored body, every secondary battery picks a target and opens fire. Several are destroyed in the exchange, many more are too small to have much effect on penetration--such as the anti-air cannons--but that doesn't deter them from unleashing their collective payloads.

    The Z turret discharges its final armament when the snake-like monster passes in front of its disabled cannons, the impact so close that the backblast destroys the gun barrels.

    Kongou strikes the water, wrapped in the Type 6, hurling up a cascade of seawater in all directions. She goes low in the bow, though bobs back up as watertight doors keep the flooding in check. The armored belt preserves the rest of her watertight integrity, though lesser armored sections of the superstructure start to chip away. Smoke pours out of portholes. The second aft turret, Turret Y, transverses until the guns locate main body and fire--again, destroying one of the barrels though the other survives.

    The A and B turrets up front also transverse, as Kongou throws herself into a sharp starboard turn and accellerates again. All that water should make it harder to hold on to her and, as soon as she has an opportunity, fires 'over the shoulder' with both forward guns at the first piece of monstrosity they can get a bead on. The backblast shatters what few windows remain.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    It should be considered a good thing that the Type-6 doesn't have the necessary body configuration to constrict around something, because the effect of literally two hundred guns spraying all at once is devastating enough as is. She may have little choice for the moment other than a knock-down-drag-out point blank gun brawl with the giant Arma, but it's clear that it has an advantage in close quarters, due to being specifically designed to function where a battleship would be at a loss. Gunfire tears through wood and steel alike, perforating the upper decks and outer hull with hundreds of holes and filling the rooms immediately adjacent with howling maelstroms of non-stop explosions. The energy shield, in stark comparison, absorbs Kongou's return fire seemingly without limit, eating the mixture of shells like sand guzzling up water. It seems as if Kongou is going to be hitting the bottom of the ocean within minutes right before she throws herself into that turn, which coincides almost perfectly with the shield collapsing and thus leaving the body of the serpent a couple of meters removed from the ship, letting her slip its coils.

    Of course, splashing back under the water results in cooling the Arma's main weapon back into an operable range. Its body can be seen breaching the surface just ahead of Kongou shortly before it rears out of the water like a land-based snake getting ready to strike, opening its jaws wide with another crackle of diffuse lightning. Secondary missile ports open along its back, discharging a screaming curtain of micro-explosives over the battleship's deck to try and take its main guns offline in the few seconds needed to fire the fusion coil.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    Water pours into ruptured compartments where armor had finally failed, but Kongou has pulled herself free and also destroyed its shield system. As she turns, presenting her full broadside with three turrets rotating into position, it's clear the warship is hanging lower in the water than before. Smoke pours from holes in the structure, the deck, and the aft-most Z turret. Inside, systems normally operated by crewmen fight against both spreading fire and flooding.

    "I won't lose to you..!" Kongou's voice booms from somewhere within the vessel, as her main battery elevates. The forward turrets, blinded by destroyed rangefinders, must use calculations from the single remaining lens on the Y turret's port side. The girl's usual jovialty is gone when the guns open fire, a staccato of cannon fire from forward to aft, slinging a total of five full sized high explosive shells straight for the Arma's gaping maw and charging main cannon.

    "All guns! FIYAH!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The missiles arrive a little too late, having misestimated Kongou's ability to calculate firing solutions with so much of her rangefinding equipment destroyed. Shortly before the swarm of tiny warheads finds her, the tips of her cannon shells find the Arma, striking in direct sequence between its slender 'jaw' array and exploding agianst the back of its 'throat'. The direct hits punch holes through its carapace and out the back of its head, blasting blue-white flame from the gaping wounds and spalling metal fragments into the ocean below. The damage seems significant, but not immediately fatal, until the fusion coil reaches critical mass without the required hardware to safely discharge it.

    The silhouette of the rearing black serpent is instantly swallowed by a tower of rumbling flame that shoots miles up into the air and rips through the lowest clouds, kicking up a solid wall of water that races outwards in every direction like a miniature tsunami. The blast wave itself is likely dangerous to most of Kongou's remaining shipboard equipment, but the way it pushes the water along with it mostly saves her from direct harm by simply rolling her along with the wave. Suffice to say, as the flames clear, revealing an empty vertical column that reaches all the way to the shallower parts of the sea floor, the Arma is nowhere to be seen, annihilated utterly by the runaway fusion reaction that had just backfired down its body.

Kongou (637) has posed:
    Both seacraft are engulfed in explosions, smoke, and flame at nearly the exact same time. One from swarms of missiles and the other from a self-created thermonuclear detonation. A few tense moments pass before Kongou's bow breaks through the smoke, sailing from the cloud, trailing smoke and various parts of her decks aflame. Huge chunks of her structure and hull are gone, and she's several meters lower in the water. But, she has the satisfaction of watching the Arma hoisted by its own fissionable petard.

    There's a glittering across the ruined hull before it disappars, compressing into the humanoid shape of the girl people know as Kongou. She doesn't skate, but rather, stands knee-deep in the sea now, her legs shaking and her kit smoldering. Even her outfit is torn all over, blackened, burned. Panting with exhaustion, she stares at the mushroom cloud that used to be the Type Six Anti-Daughter Arma for a long moment.

    "...Admiral..." When she starts to move, she sinks a little lower in the water, to her thighs. After a few moments, wobbling, the girl flops onto her back amidst the waves. Stunned at first, Kongou simply floats there. Helplessly, she smiles, "...I-I can't move..." Eyes opening, she stares at the blurry sky, "...I did my best, Admiral... But I couldn't make it..." Eyes closing, she murmurs, "...I'll watch over you from <Valhalla...>"

    Unable to move any longer, Kongou's body slips beneath the waves. As her vision goes dark, she reaches for the fading sun on the surface.