You.
Yes, you.
Sit down, shut up, and don’t touch anything in this office unless you want Tōkaidō to politely ask what you’re doing while Vestal decides whether your bones can be arranged more educationally.
This is an intermission. Non-canon. Which means I’m allowed to talk directly at you for a minute instead of pretending I’m not aware of the pile of nonsense currently trying to become my future.
And yes, before you ask, I’m annoyed.
At everything.
At the base.
At the Coalition.
At the Admiralty.
At the fact I apparently can’t hold one Princess-killing island together without the universe deciding what I really need is more transfer paperwork.
You’d think nearly dying, defending a front, surviving a civil fracture in progress, and trying not to accidentally start a maritime independence movement by being too honest would buy me one quiet week.
It did not.
Instead, I have a stack of incoming personnel files.
Some are girls.
Some are boys.
A few are walking political incidents.
At least two are probably Iowa’s fault.
And one of them looks like if guilt learned how to wear armor and glare at religion.
So.
Since these idiots are going to be relevant later, I’m going to go through them now before they physically arrive and start affecting my blood pressure in person.
Think of this as an advance warning label.
Or a threat assessment.
Same thing, really.
Classification: Minesweeper Kansen
Factional Entanglement: Joint-claimed legacy asset, disputed between Ironblood and the Northern Parliament
Nationality: German
Status on Paper: “Transfer under shared operational discretion.”
Status in Reality: Someone else’s treaty mistake is about to become my problem.
First: Fuchs.
Minesweeper.
Small hull.
Quiet temperament.
Absolutely the kind of girl who looks like she should be background support until you realize she remembers every route, every hazard, every lie, and every time somebody decided she was expendable.
I don’t trust “shared legacy asset” as a phrase. It sounds like something two governments say when both want custody of the same person and neither has the decency to admit they’re treating her like a signed-out tool.
From what I’ve got here, Fuchs started as an Imperial German M1916 minesweeper remnant dug up from a Baltic salvage zone, then got yanked half-awake and passed around like an ugly family heirloom with military value. Northern Parliament used her. German interests claimed her. A compromise treaty made her everybody’s responsibility and no one’s home.
Which means, in practical terms, she’s spent decades doing dangerous route-clearance work for people who were never planning to love her back.
That usually creates one of two outcomes:
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complete emotional collapse, or
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a woman so dry and so competent that everyone around her becomes deeply uncomfortable.
She’s the second one.
Given Horizon’s current situation, Fuchs makes awful political sense.
Mine warfare.
Chokepoint denial.
Harbor-mouth defense.
Route sanitation in contested water.
Punishing anything overconfident enough to try and enter a lane assuming it’s safe.
You know. Exactly the kind of thing a semi-independent, politically inconvenient island fortress would suddenly find useful.
Also, with the way the Coalition and Admiralty are going to start watching Horizon after recent… developments? Sending a disputed joint-claim specialist here is the sort of thing bureaucracies do when they want to look helpful while also making sure three separate flags now have administrative reasons to poke into local affairs later.
I hate that I understand that.
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quiet
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dry humor
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territorial about tools
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obedient by habit, not by trust
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remembers hazards and betrayals equally well
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likely to look at Horizon and immediately clock that we are one bad month away from becoming an international incident with a seawall
If someone tries to “borrow” her equipment without asking, they may discover that small support hulls can in fact radiate murder.
She and Wisconsin River will either become terrifyingly efficient friends or engage in a silent territorial war over storage order.
Tōkaidō will probably be nice to her.
This will matter more than people realize.
Classification: Heavy Cruiser Kansen
Faction: Royal Navy
Nationality: British
Operational Flavor: Authorized privateer with too much freedom and exactly enough charm to make that dangerous.
Drake is, apparently, what happens when the Royal Navy digs into old design archives, decides “what if we made audacity into a woman,” and then gives that woman legal permission to roam.
She comes from a projected armored cruiser study rather than a fully built hull, which is not actually unusual in this world once you realize how desperate post-collapse navies got. If the design was named, doctrinally shaped, archivally preserved, and spiritually stubborn enough, somebody eventually tried to wake it up.
And Drake woke up mean in the fun way.
Fast.
Bold.
Physically confident.
Battle-hungry without being stupid.
Likes long patrols, aggressive scouting, interdiction, and generally acting like the edge of the map is a personal challenge.
She’s also one of those Royal Navy girls with licensed freedom—which is another phrase I distrust on principle. It means she gets more operational latitude than most, but only so long as every success still loops neatly back into Crown and Admiralty utility.
In other words, she knows what conditional freedom tastes like.
That usually produces either recklessness or a very specific kind of bright-eyed resentment.
Why would Drake come to Horizon?
Because after the Princess kill and the near-break with Coalition authority, Horizon is exactly the kind of politically awkward strategic point the Royal Navy would want eyes on.
Not just military eyes.
Privateer eyes.
A girl who can smile, scout, test waters, run interference, and decide whether the base is becoming a useful frontier fortress or a problem with a flag.
She’ll probably like Horizon more than she expects.
That is also a problem.
She’s a hard-hitting, fast heavy cruiser built for range aggression and lead-position pressure.
If she’s the farthest deployed hull, she gets nastier.
If she’s close enough, she gets bolder.
If she starts winning, she snowballs.
So yes, she’s one of those.
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will probably flirt with danger professionally and personally
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likely to get along with Iowa in exactly the way responsible adults hate
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may think Kade is “interesting,” which is already irritating and she hasn’t even arrived
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would probably have a great time exploring wreck lanes with Shoukaku or Akagi if nobody stopped her
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absolutely the sort to end up with Salem’s curiosity and Fairplay’s suspicion at the same time
Classification: Heavy Cruiser Kansen
Faction: Eagle Union
Status: One of Iowa’s usual rotating idiots
Additional Status: Apparently rotated back in because Iowa told them to get their asses back.
Des Moines is a problem in the way I respect.
Late-gun heavy cruiser. Rapid-fire 8-inch brutality. Dense AA. Fleet-anchor temperament. CQC capability because apparently somebody saw a heavy cruiser and decided, “What if it also carried a scythe?”
Her weapon is called Tenet Grigori, which is exactly the kind of name that tells me I’m not dealing with a normal person and should perhaps not ask follow-up questions unless I want the answers to become theology with sharp edges.
Post-Horizon, Des Moines makes perfect tactical sense.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The island is no longer just a support base. It’s a statement. A fortress. A pressure point. A target.
You don’t reinforce that with only fragile or polite things.
You send someone who can stand in the lane where the fighting gets worst and turn it into a grinder.
That’s Des Moines.
Also, given the simmering internal trouble here, having another Eagle Union heavy hitter with absolutely no patience for being bullied may be either stabilizing or incredibly funny depending on the day.
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severe
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composed
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not joyless, which somehow makes her worse
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intensely protective of allied lines
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trusts her own violence more than anyone else’s restraint
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probably sees arguments the same way a butcher sees soft fruit
She and Bismarck are either going to respect each other instantly or create a local pressure system.
She’ll fit into Horizon frighteningly fast because this base likes girls who can take a bad situation and make it the enemy’s problem instead.
If she sees someone threaten Salem after bonding with her? That person may become a weather report.
Classification: Submarine Kansen
Faction: Eagle Union
Status: Iowa-adjacent knucklehead number two
Operational Truth: Sneaky little gremlin with torpedoes and selective obedience.
Salmon is the undersea version of “what if mischief passed its exams.”
Aggressive.
Sharp-tongued.
Happy to treat orders like suggestions until she finds someone she actually respects.
Excellent at ambush, timing, and high-value target hunting.
Not excellent at being told to sit still and behave unless the person ordering her can back it up with personal gravity.
Which, apparently, Iowa can.
That tells me a lot about both of them.
Horizon absolutely needs a submarine like Salmon.
Contested sea lanes.
Retaken island chains.
Abyssal retreat routes.
Supply interception.
Watching for anything ugly trying to circle back toward the atoll after all this political smoke.
Also, if Horizon actually does start drifting toward semi-independent operational behavior? Submarines become very important very quickly.
You didn’t hear that from me.
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she will be trouble
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she will think it’s funny
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Wilkinson might either adopt her as a fellow waterline menace or get tired enough to threaten her with ballast
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Reeves will either be fascinated or terrified
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Iowa having both Salmon and Des Moines back at the same time means the local chaos index is going up on purpose
Classification: Destroyer Kansen
Faction: Eagle Union
Status: Tiny patriotic landmine.
All right.
Evans.
Small. Loud. Fast. Smug. Nosy. Too good at sneaking into places she is absolutely not cleared to be.
Visual age puts her young enough that every responsible instinct in a room starts trying to put guard rails around things, right up until she begins talking and you realize she’s got enough Eagle Union military mythology rattling around in her head to weaponize morale by accident.
She likes Marines.
She likes being noticed.
She likes proving people wrong.
She has the energy of a child who found caffeine, doctrine, and a torpedo rack in the same afternoon.
She is going to be a nightmare.
Sending Evans to Horizon is either:
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a clever decision to give the island a highly energetic screen destroyer who thrives in messy close-in fights, or
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a test by God to determine whether I’ve learned patience
There is no third option.
The “Code Name: Waldo” skill note tells me she gets weird if left too idle for too long.
That fits this base about as well as gasoline fits a warm engine block.
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Atlanta will either parent her or punt her
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Hensley may accidentally become one of her favorite authority figures, which would be extremely funny
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she will absolutely eavesdrop on things she should not
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if she starts calling Horizon “home base” too early, several people are going to pretend not to be moved by it and fail
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if she finds out about the rebellion embers before she’s supposed to, I am going to age ten years instantly
Classification: Ship of the Line Kansen
Faction: Royal Navy
Status: Ancient broadside gremlin disguised as a polite little lady.
Now this one is weird.
Not bad weird.
Just “the old world refuses to stay buried and brought binoculars” weird.
Duke of Kent is an age-of-sail line-of-battle Kansen preserved into the current era through pendant resonance and Admiralty desperation. Which means yes, the Royal Navy looked at the drowned post-collapse world, looked at static fortress warfare and maritime lawlessness, and went:
“Perhaps what we need is a very polite old ship-of-the-line who becomes homicidal around piracy.”
Honestly?
I respect the commitment.
She doesn’t like modern noise.
She likes old charts, tea, veteran company, lawful convoy order, and being left alone with the horizon.
She absolutely despises pirates, smugglers, wreck-jackers, rogue privateers, and “salvage princes.”
You know. The sort of people who thrive when coastlines break and central authority gets thin.
If Horizon’s growing importance starts drawing unauthorized scavengers, black-market opportunists, reactor hunters, or political vultures pretending to be traders, Duke of Kent actually becomes ridiculously useful.
She’s not a fast modern fleet hunter.
She’s a fortress-adjacent law-of-the-sea hammer with old-fashioned broadside spite.
Also, thematically, sending an ancient Royal Navy line-of-battle girl to a base trying not to become a revolutionary sea-state is the kind of irony history likes.
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she and Shinano would probably have terrifyingly peaceful tea conversations
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older ships and veterans will get along with her much more easily than newer arrivals
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she may think Horizon is disorderly and still decide it deserves defending
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if anyone tries pirate-adjacent nonsense near this base after she arrives, they are going to have an unbelievably bad day
Classification: Pennsylvania-class Super Dreadnought KANSAI
Faction: Eagle Union
Status: Recently recovered, emotionally haunted, partially wrong in the soul, and absolutely not subtle about it.
Pennsylvania.
Or Penn.
Or “The Ghost of Pearl Harbor,” which tells you almost everything before I even start.
First, yes, he’s Arizona’s older brother.
Second, yes, that means whoever approved this transfer either has incredible faith in the therapeutic potential of family reunion or the emotional delicacy of a depth charge.
Penn is old by spirit and older by damage.
Pearl Harbor never let go of him.
Operation Crossroads made sure of that.
From the looks of the file, his soul came back rough. Contaminated around the edges in ways no official note wants to say too clearly. Partially Abyssal-touched, not in the theatrical corruption sense, but in the “war and betrayal and nuclear cruelty dug a hole in a person and something black still echoes in it” sense.
His eyes apparently glow red when he’s upset.
Which is not ominous at all.
He’s armored all the time.
Doesn’t like taking it off.
Keeps away from people, especially Arizona, because guilt and self-loathing are apparently his favorite hobbies after surviving the twentieth century.
Penn on Horizon is explosive in every possible sense.
Tactically?
Fantastic.
Heavy battleship. Strong CQC. Hard to kill. Can rage-state into brutal output. Can keep fighting through things that should end other ships.
Emotionally?
A disaster waiting for weather.
If Arizona is still recovering when he arrives—and she will be—then his presence alone could be enough to crack open several sealed emotional compartments across this base.
Which means, naturally, the paperwork says he’s on transfer.
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Arizona will matter to him more than he wants anyone to see
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he will keep distance because he thinks he’s poison
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Horizon will absolutely notice that and probably refuse to let him self-exile cleanly
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Kade may understand him more than is comfortable for either of them
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if anyone insults Arizona within his hearing, I expect structural consequences
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Bismarck and Nagato may be among the few who instinctively understand his age and weight
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his partially Abyssal nature on a base already flirting with political breakaway? Very normal. Very healthy. No risks whatsoever.
Classification: Iowa-class Fast Battleship KANSAI
Faction: Eagle Union
Status: Tall armored battle addict politely pretending he is more emotionally stable than he is.
Wisky.
You know how some people are cold and quiet because they’re empty?
Wisconsin is cold and quiet because if he actually starts talking about what he wants, it’ll mostly be combat, doctrine, gunfire, and the exact location of whatever idiot spent years keeping him tied to a dock because they were terrified of losing an Iowa and the career damage that would cause.
He’s one of the completed Iowas.
Fast.
Dangerous.
Valuable enough that commanders kept him restrained.
Which means he arrived at adulthood professionally starved.
He reads war books for fun.
Boxes.
Shoots.
Plays games.
Probably listens to music in full armor just to keep people from asking what’s under it.
Uses an officer’s saber, a 1911, and an M2 like he’s personally offended that not every fight is naval enough to justify a main battery solution.
The second Horizon gets Wisconsin, every tactical conversation on the island changes.
We’re already hard to assault.
Add another Iowa-class male KANSAI with monstrous firepower, superior damage control, and a temper-trigger retaliatory main barrage, and suddenly anyone eyeing the atoll starts having to do math with fear in it.
Also, and this matters more than people think, Wisconsin actually wanted Horizon.
He requested transfer.
He wants to fight where he matters instead of decorating some rear-area admiral’s conscience.
That means he may take to this place faster than Penn will.
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Iowa is going to have Opinions
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Minnesota is probably going to like him instantly
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Des Moines and Salmon rotating back in at the same time means Eagle Union local energy is becoming illegal
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Wisky will likely respect competence first and affection second
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if he sees Kade actually uses his ships instead of posing with them, that respect is going to lock in hard
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if anyone from Coalition command tries “keep the Iowa out of danger” nonsense here, they are going to discover Horizon does not answer well to that phrase anymore
Glad you asked.
The problem is not that these people are useless.
They are, in fact, dangerously useful.
The problem is that every single one of them arrives with baggage, political meaning, doctrinal friction, emotional instability, or some specialized flavor of personality that guarantees my office becomes even more of a war crime against peace and quiet than it already is.
To summarize:
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Fuchs is a treaty-dispute mine witch with abandonment issues and excellent route memory.
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Drake is a licensed privateer who will absolutely test the edges of my patience and probably maritime law.
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Des Moines is a heavy cruiser execution engine with a scythe.
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Salmon is Iowa-adjacent underwater mischief with torpedoes.
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Evans is a patriotic destroyer child gremlin who thinks eavesdropping is cardio.
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Duke of Kent is an old broadside grandmother who may commit lawful violence over piracy.
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Pennsylvania is a haunted armored battleship brother with partially Abyssal soul damage and a guilt complex the size of Pearl Harbor.
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Wisconsin is a battle-starved Iowa with a temper counter system that sounds like someone weaponized road rage.
And these are the ones on the current stack.
This does not include whoever else some bureaucrat may decide to “temporarily attach” once Horizon’s new political reputation starts drawing every ambitious officer, idealist, exile, salvage wolf, and freedom-hungry KANSEN in the Pacific.
Which it will.
Because of course it will.
Horizon was once a dumping ground.
Now it’s a symbol.
Those are worse.
Dumping grounds only attract the forgotten.
Symbols attract everyone.
Will these newcomers help the base?
Yes.
Will they complicate my life?
Yes.
Will at least half of them somehow fit into Horizon in ways that are either heartwarming, strategically beneficial, or deeply alarming?
Also yes.
Will Iowa be insufferable when Des Moines and Salmon get back?
Without question.
Will Arizona’s future become emotionally catastrophic when Penn arrives?
Almost certainly.
Will Wisconsin start looking at the island like it’s the first real battlefield that’s ever deserved him?
Probably.
Will Evans end up somewhere she is not supposed to be within forty-eight hours?
I’d bet money on it.
Will Drake flirt with operational boundaries?
Absolutely.
Will Fuchs quietly memorize every mine lane and secret weakness on the island in less than a week?
Probably before she unpacks.
Will Duke of Kent judge all of us and then defend us anyway?
That feels depressingly likely.
So there.
Now you know.
I know.
The paperwork knows.
And somewhere out there, the future is loading these idiots onto transports and aiming them at my base.
Wonderful.
If you need me, I’ll be here.
Trying to decide whether this stack goes into “incoming reinforcements,” “emotional disasters,” or “things Iowa absolutely had a hand in.”
Spoiler: it’s probably all three.