People, humans, hadn’t much come up in the Abyssal's conversations. There was the Abyss and The Enemy. Taylor had assumed humans were part of The Enemy. It was something of a relief to learn that The Enemy didn’t have to be people. Less so that humans weren’t seen as people.

It took two hours of what Taylor could only call careful, almost preternaturally cautious prodding to figure out the shape of the issue. Because just listening to the words coming out of Wakumi mouth didn’t work. She had to actually listen to what she wasn’t saying, the feel of her. Because all that came out of Wakumi’s lips was hateful bile, once Taylor started looking at the danger zone.

Worse, Wakumi looked like she’d been put through the wringer by the end, slouched and miserable.

“I’m glad I thought to take us aside.”

This had gotten terribly personal and private, fast. Heavy as all hell.

“I just don’t understand it. They’re just nightmares, but they aren’t. They actually do this to each other.” Wakumi sniffed.

“The Court caught them and showed everyone in the joint Fleets. There are smugglers off the coast of Singapore. Humans, packed into metal boxes. I mean, I’m not in trouble. I can handle it. I got used to it, in time. But it’s hard. Every time I close my eyes I can see them.” Her eyes were muddled, dim.

“They’ll be packed in like cattle in a metal box. Or some bare basement, with nothing but threadbare beds and shackles and filth. And for what? Their fucking-“ she choked.

“Their Abyss damned animal urges? To the frozen hells with that.” Wakumi cursed.

“And always laughing at them, tearing it all down, with fake smiles. Smile, because if you don’t, you aren’t good merchandise.” She spat.

“Humans are scum. Worse than scum. Most of them. Some of them. Not all. But some.”

Taylor could almost see Wakumi wrestling with what felt like an oil spill in her spirit. Like a crack that bleed nightmares right into her. Looking at it, Taylor began to wonder.

Because all that disgust? For all the hate in it? It was like listening to one of the Empire Nazis talking about ABB eating habits. After the subhuman talk. Not like eating bugs, or sushi made them subhuman, but more in the tone of “Well what would you expect from filthy animals?” Like the animal part wasn’t even a question.

Like Wakumi was a normal girl and slavers were creepy-crawlies, something ugly and nasty to be exterminated. But not evil. Not people. Just…bugs. Nasty and ugly and filthy, to be swept away and exterminated. And Taylor had far too good an idea how bad the world might get if more Abyssals felt humans were just bugs. People could be cruel to insects, even without meaning to. What super-powered children with monstrous, hateful urges might do was the stuff of nightmares.

Wakumi’s experience, the way she saw the war? It didn’t match what Sapphire had said. Or what She had told Taylor in Acapulco. Because that cold hearted bitch knew humans were people, She just didn’t fucking care one bit.

So what was the difference?

Was it the Abyss? Their history, experience? Taylor gazed deeply into Wakumi, but the only thing that stood out was the black spilling into her. She gazed at that crack in Wakumi-

“Why does it look like its growing?”

A heart-beat later Taylor threw herself away, both in the aether and in the real. But she couldn’t turn fast enough to build distance. Like a bullet shot from a gun, Wakumi took her flinch for permission and practically fled herself. Her hands wrapped around her stomach, whole body shaking and shuddering.

Taylor’s heart was in her throat. Her mouth was dry but she tried swallowing anyway.

“What was that?” She asked, trying to keep the question is soft as possible. Because the questions and tone that really wanted to rip out of her throat might just make the whole thing worse.

“Like why the hell she stuck around or didn’t say anything.”

Small mercies that the rest of the fleet was talking in the distance, but Taylor could almost feel their concern even as they pretended they weren’t watching.

It took four minutes for the answer. Four minutes spent stewing over if she’d seriously injured one of her charges. They really weren’t fun, but Taylor stubbornly stuck it out. She didn’t want to make it worse.

The answer was nonsense. “I volunteered.” Wakumi said.

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t speak up if you’re in pain Wakumi.” Taylor softly berated her.

“I volunteered. You needed to see it. Not just know, but feel it. It’s important.” She insisted, still shaken.

“I’m a Flagship. I can take it. I was the best choice.” Wakumi continued.

“Best choice for what?” Taylor asked, dreading the answer.

“You’re a Princess, Miss. Not proclaimed, not yet. But you’re a Princess. And it’s like you woke up without even the basics of how to be a Princess. You have to be careful, Miss,” her flight instructor said, using the same tone she did to talk about crashes and emergency landings.

“You’re not that heavy, but being a Princess means you have real weight to throw around. And yours is terribly sharp.” She explained, explaining nothing.

Taylor looked at her, trying to what? Soften her own eyes, look? How? She’d never thought being fully healed and able would come with this many complications.

Seeing the growing discontent, Wakumi sped up:” You’ll get it Miss. If some of those seaweed brains and even some Demons can, you’ll get it too and quick. But you need to be careful right now. You just got it and you’re throwing your weight around like a newborn.” Wakumi said, visibly bracing for something unpleasant. Causing Taylor to brace as well.

“You almost popped Shun, Miss.” She finished, gently.

“Popped?” Taylor got out, feeling her throat trying to close.

“I’m a Carrier, a Light but still a Carrier. We’re much bigger, tougher. And a Flagship. Those are built to be around Princesses, to take on burdens in the Fleet. She’s a base Yo-Class model and those are incredibly fragile.” Wakumi’s eyes widened a bit.

“I was careful in how I hit them Miss, they’ll be fine.” She rushed out.

“But pressing your weight against her like that? You twitch wrong and Shun will pop, Miss, just like that.” The sentence was followed by a helpful visual clue, as Wakumi snapped her fingers.

“No, that was the opposite of helpful,” Taylor concluded, doubling over. Trying to keep the nausea in as sickening images danced through her mind. It was ludicrous. In under a week she’d gone from being abused and at the bottom to “Move, no. Even look carefully or you’ll break people.” It was just a bit much.

“Thank you for the lesson. Will you be alright?” Taylor asked, worn down by the long hours of effort, eager for at least a short break.

“Yes Miss. Just need a bit of rest to recover. I was rebuilt for it. Even if I never thought I get to use it to teach a Princess how to be one.” Wakumi answered with a morose grin. A moment later she realized the second half had slipped out and hung her head.

“I’m going to go now.” The cracked carrier said/asked. Taylor waved her away.

She could use some alone time to digest this new…what? Danger, infirmity? She wasn’t sure what to call it. Except badly timed.

“Brand new super-powers! But careful not to pop girls with them.”

The sound of a balloon echoed in her head and she could almost see afterimages of the aftermath of one of Bakuda’s bombs dancing in her vision.

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“Fuck.”

Thing was? The more she used her new senses, powers, whatever; the more aware of them she became. It didn’t feel like discovering or mastering a new limb. It felt like finding one that she’d been laying on all this time, and it was firmly asleep. Familiar, but terribly numb. Eager, aching to be used. So whenever she moved or worked it, it swung around without balance. With poor aim or twitched in ways she hadn’t meant to.

Just this bit of exercise left her feeling like pins and needles in her head and all down her spine. It was eerie, more than a bit horrible and she just wanted it to end already.

Taylor could believe that in a few days or weeks of practice, this would all be behind her. None of the other Princesses had this problem, so she’d get over it too. She just needed to enjoy the clear sailing, relax a bit and recover.

***

Damn it. Even the scenery was depressing. They’d made it into the channel while she was distracted with Wakumi. Taylor could see the two islands with her own eyes. It wasn’t pretty. Or maybe it was, in an abstract way. Not pretty, but maybe some horrible kind of art. Beautiful despite the horror, maybe.

The shores of Ni’ihau and Kauaʻi were teeming with life. Crabs, birds, seagulls. Her sonar could hear dolphins in the water and sea turtles dotted in the beaches. The shallows and the waters of the channel were full of marine life and fish.

“None of which makes that line any less creepy.” Taylor murmured.

The waterline was clear. More than clear. All life ended at it. Where the waves touched, there was still life. Beyond it? The islands were dead. The sparse coastal trees frozen, every leaf gone, the trunks ashen. Not one blade of grass grew on it, no green. The soil was a pale brown and looked more like a scene from the Midwest than an island. Deeper in, the forests formed pale labyrinths sticking up like gravestones. Like the whole island was some massive graveyard.

Her plane could see small towns, villages, scattered over the larger island. The roads had cracked in places, but still remained mostly intact. Cars and some boats remained where they’d been left, rotting, rusting. Some of the boats were past the town, inland. Like some massive wave or flood had carried them inland and the houses were near total wrecks. Most completely flattened. Only a few, what looked like government buildings done in concrete or shelters were still standing. A couple of intact buildings and broken roads the only true signs of civilization.

For a moment, her heart tugged at her to see if one of those surviving buildings wasn’t a school or a library, but she resisted the urge. She’d be back, soon enough. Taylor was pretty sure there were supposed to be actual living people here.

Acapulco had had signs that people were still there. Scavengers, but people. These two islands had none. No footprints, no traffic, no nothing. It was like the aftermath of Leviathan, except on a bad day, with no survivors and no one to clean up afterwards.

“All the bodies are missing. That isn’t ominous at all.”

It was hard to put into words. Even beyond what she could see, it felt to Taylor like she was at the edge of some invisible ravine, sailing towards it. A cut, a wound in the very ocean. And only now she’d noticed the incline. The land felt…tainted. Like merely walking on it would darken her spirit. And oddly inviting to her. Almost homey. Taylor had no idea why she had such a visceral reaction to it. But the weirdest thing was that the whole experience was vaguely familiar. Like Taylor had felt it before in this life.

She didn’t want to deal with it right now and simply adjusted her course as much as she was able, away from the dead islands. It wasn’t much, to further irritate her. One of the things Taylor really wanted to fix, if it was fixable, was her terrible turning radius. But it would do for now.

She had hours still to Oʻahu, Honolulu and Pearl Harbor, before she reached her official Anchorage off the coast of Maui. Her planes were not so limited.

“I really hope all the islands aren’t like this or this break is going to suck.”

***

While her planes flew to Kauaʻi, Taylor had slowly drifted back to her fleet. Or had they drifted to her? She wasn’t sure, but at some point chatter had again filled the air and she wasn’t on her own. She felt just a bit like a selfish ass, but tried to treat it like a medical thing. The risk of her lashing out and hurting one of them was less than the dangers of what might happen if she let herself wallow. Wakumi had not been ok talking about whatever had happened after she blacked out in the lunchroom, only that it had been bad. Really bad.

“So let’s not do that again.”

“Taylor?” Shun asked, her voice concerned even as Itchy was trying to sneak up on Taylor.

“Nothing,” Taylor dismissed, before glancing back at the giant shark. He gave her a massive grin, before yipping and then he was gone.

Taylor blinked, several times even as the other girls broke out in giggles. Still running, she craned her neck back. Itchy was scrunched up, low, small and quiet. Trying to hide behind one of her sandbars. They were not big enough to fully hide him but he’d almost managed to disappear from her line of sight. The image of a massive shark, half submerged and huddling behind her sandbar. His giant blue eyes looking at her in surprise as her head rose over the sands. The whole scene ran down her parched and strained throat, past her aching spine and clenched gut and forced a snort out of her.

A moment later the destroyer exploded from the waters and Taylor got a face full of slobbering shark as Itchy started playfully chewing on her good hand. It tickled.

“Stop! Stop you silly thing!”

He didn’t. Taylor got a massive lick right to the face, before Itchy forced his way under her arm for scratches. Her hand started giving them entirely on its own. She huffed, but couldn’t find it in herself to be mad.

“Thanks. But how do you keep doing that?” Taylor asked the destroyer, shaking herself, feeling joints pop.

The conversation around her crashed to a total stop as Wakumi mouth clicked shut and she almost stumbled.

“I... am a very, very stupid Flagship and I’m going to stop making assumptions.”

The carrier gave Taylor an almost pitying look. “Miss, have you been using your [Fleet]?”

“You mean [Fleet-sense]?” The other girls turned away, blushing. Shun was embarrassed. Not herself, but for Taylor.

With her enhanced hearing Taylor could barely hear the repair ship mutter: “Bertha strikes again.”

Itchy just wiggled against her harder.

Wakumi? She inflated, taking a deep, full breath, readying for a rant.

Then let it out in a slow, dejected sigh that took almost fifteen seconds.

"This. This I can explain, Miss. I was trained for it."

She squared her shoulders and lifted up the helmets visor to give Taylor a reassuring smile, her eyes losing focus.

To Taylor? It at least hinted that whatever this was, it wouldn’t be as horrible as the last revelation.

“Ok. Hit me.” Taylor asked her. That brought Wakumi back, but she looked a bit confused by the request.

“I mean shoot me; No, I’m ready.” Taylor rephrased. English phrases in Japanese didn’t work right. And she didn’t want some to actually shoot her.

“So lower those guns Four!”

The Heavy Cruiser blinked. “But. You asked for it?” she said, slowly lowering her cannons.

“Great. Just fucking amazing. Kill me now.”

Taylor started. “I didn’t say that out loud, right?” She asked.

Multiple uncomprehending eyes met the question.

“Never mind. Where were we?”

“I was going to shoot you?” Four asked, totally confused on what her orders were.

“Not that.”