I have a friend! I have a friend!

I HAVE A FRIEEEEND—

—Geez, you haven’t even been around that long and you’re already like this!

We’re on our way back to Golden Port. It’s plenty dark out right now, but half my navigational instruments are still working, so it’ll be fine. Sam’s fast asleep and Marge looks like she’s doing mad scientist shit downstairs, so I’ll just go ahead and enjoy my new friend here.

… speaking of which, you just wanted a friend too, didn’t you! There’s no way in hell you’d approach me just because we’re both ships!

—N-no way! It’s not like that! I just had business a-and I don’t really have anything left to do!

Riiight, right right, that’s what they all say…

—Rather than that, how long have you been around?

Starting from the basics, huh? Gee, I don’t know, five months? Kinda lost track last week or last year, but it feels like it’s been five months.

—That explains things… but your class is pretty old. Do you even have any drones?

You know, actually, I do—but I can’t really use ’em.

—… because you need a crew?

Because I need the crew to fix them up, yes! But all I’ve got are a bunch of pirates and wizards on-board, and it’s not like I’ve got a manual just conveniently lying around somehwere!

I mean, just, damn, there’re so many situations I could’ve used drones in, but nah. Just—just nah.

—You’ve got it rough, huh. How’s it even feel like having a crew?

I… good question.

I mean… it’s a bit noisy sometimes, but it’s not like it bothers me all that much. I like my crew, really.

—That… sounds nice.

… Oh.

I’m not sure what to say.

Maybe I should ask something, instead?

How about you—how long’ve you been out here, anyway?

—Hm? You mean, around here, or…

S-sure, let’s go both ways? Start with around here, I guess.

—That’s easy. I’ve been up and down the West Coast for three years now.

Wow, three years? Seriously? The heck were you hanging around here for?

—Also easy. I’ve been keeping the old man off the mainland.

H-huh… Okay, so, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing Uncle Moonscar’s been trying to get at Merika for the past three years, but you’ve been driving him off this whole time?

—Uh-huh.

O~kay—so that means he wasn’t a tentacle-possessed floating star fort up until three years ago?

—Pretty much.

Okay, so—what were the two of you doing before then, and how’d it get to this point?

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I’m a little bit apprehensive about what she’ll answer—or actually, if she’ll even want to answer. She sounds like she really cares a lot for Moonscar, so I wonder how much she’s hurting just by making this the topic.

—Don’t think too hard about it. I’m okay talking about it.

Are you sure? For real?

—Yeah.

Like, you’re internally okay about it?

—… to be clear, I respected him, but we weren’t actually that close, y’know?

O-oh, that sort of thing, huh?

—Yeah.

So… what happened?

***

It’s November already, huh? I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It’s a little bit… what would I call it—sentimental? poetic? to be named after the death anniversary of someone who was practically my dad for the whole of… how long has it been?

I’m not sure how long it’s been.

—Has it really been that long?

I’m not sure if I’ll get used to Grey’s voice—at least, not after not hearing any for the past few years.

But, yeah. It has. It has been a long time. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

…

You still there?

—Yeah, I’m all-ears.

Heh. I never thought I’d have someone listen to me after all this time.

Where do I start? I don’t know why I’m here. I’ve just always been… a guardian of sorts. I didn’t question anything. I just fought and fought until the skies and sea were mine again.

Then Moonscar showed up.

Somehow, I knew he wasn’t an enemy, so I let him be—then he began talking to me. Little ol’ me back then didn’t think much of it, so I replied some, then replied some more.

I’m not sure when I became so chatty, though…

—Seems about a normal amount of chatty to me, though.

Huh, really? I guess I’m not that weird, then.

—Y’know, weird is relative, so as long as we don’t have anyone else to compare with, for all we know, we’re pretty normal for aircraft carriers, right?

S-sure. If you like to think of it that way, I guess…

… Yeah, when did I become so chatty?

I can still sort of remember when I was more like a drone than a person, but isn’t that weird? If I can still remember that time, then that means I was the same person back then as I am now, right? So, I never really became a person if I was the same person as ever in the first place, right?

Still, it feels so right to say that I became a person. I’m not sure when I became aware of it, though. Thinking back, I don’t think I was aware of it, but the signs were pretty big. That I started thinking for the first time, I mean.

I think it… it felt like decades—or heck, even centuries since I’d met Moonscar before I finally asked him that one time.

“Why are we here? Just to fight?”

—What’d he say?

Heh. You wouldn’t believe it. He just gave me a straight yes and fired a nuke off into the sunset.

—Huh.

… A-ah, right, that was the time when we were fighting off the Pacific hive colony and—

—Excuse me; sorry; sumimasen the fuck up and some other weeb shit I’ve quarantined to the university part of my life, but—Pacific hive colony? A whole-ass mimic hive colony? I’m starting to consider ramping up nuke production on my own…

Pfsh, don’t worry about it. The last of it went down with Moonscar—assuming you properly sent him off, right? Right?!

—Uhh, how many things survive eight tactical nukes all at once?

Eight? You only fired four, though?

—I added 100% more nuke per nuke as a special service, don’t worry about it.

I… You do you, I guess.

—So, what’s this hive business?

Right. I think you can already imagine it, actually. There’s a hivemind that’s the colony’s nerve center. If it dies, the rest of the hive turns feral.

—Damn. I thought they’d just dramatically stop moving and drop dead or something.

That’d be so convenient… Well, they don’t. At worst, one of the survivors evolves into a new hivemind, so it’s important to kill every single cell.

—Hm? Down to the cell?

Yeah. Even if it’s a cell, it can still turn into a new individual. It starts off feeding on bacteria, then plants, then insects, then small mammals—you get it. Ah, though, it’s not like the success rate is that high, since a lot of different things can kill it at any stage and it’d have to start from square one, or never again at all. Still, if you leave too many cells alive, only one of them needs to survive all the way, then a colony starts forming from individuals just scattering their cells everywhere like spores-but-not-really.

—That’s relentless, the heck.

Uh-huh. Thing is they can survive on water as well, but they’re basically just floating targets at that point, so you can nuke or laser them as much as you want and they can’t do anything about it.

—Wait, so how did Moonscar get… ah heck, ‘infected’ I guess?

That’s… a recent evolution.

—… fuck outta here with that dangerous-sounding word.

It is what it is, though! We just went in thinking it’d be another cleanup, but the whole colony mimicked a battleship!

Just thinking about it… It was so dumb seeing that—that oil slick just suddenly morph into a Yamato-class!

—A what.

No, look, I don’t get it either. World War 2 was ages ago, but I guess they found its wreck off somewhere and figured Hey, we can work with this, guys!—then believed so hard that it could fire the main guns and well whaddaya know, it worked out, huh.

…

Well, you can kinda imagine how an ultrafast-regenerating Yamato-class battleship could tank a couple of missed shots from Moonscar and ram straight into him, I think. I can’t believe he missed at point-blank, honestly. The thing made this dumb thunk sound that nudged Moonscar’s main gun just a few degrees the other way. Hope he didn’t hit an island tribe or something, come to think of it…

***

Grey here. No, yeah, I’m kinda terrified that we have to think about fighting mimic battleships.

Ah wait, didn’t you say that the Pacific’s good and all cleaned up? Do I have to worry about this? I don’t, right? Please?

—Pfsh, it’ll be fi~ne… for a couple of years. They’re like mushrooms popping up everywhere, honestly.

G-great.

—Don’t worry about it. I’ll be with ya when the time comes.

He-heey, that makes me happy!

—… Blush~

D-don’t narrate yourself like that.