Chapitre 2: [Last Dying Breath]
"An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts."
—Otto von Bismarck
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A gentle breeze blew across the calm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. There was not a single cloud in the beautiful ocean-blue sky to block the sun's warm summer rays from shining down onto the watery depths. Not too far from the coast of the United Kingdom however was a different story. The waves were calm, but the serenity of the ocean was disturbed by the sound of guns being fired, bombs being dropped and torpedoes exploding. Aircraft carriers, cruisers, and even frigates all fired every last drop of ammunition they had at a lone ship in the distance. The planes of the two aircraft carriers did their best to deliver their payload, but they hardly stood a chance against the anti-aircraft defence of the large goliath they so hopelessly tried to sink. But all their efforts were in vain. Their target, a massive battleship, simply didn't care about their pathetic attempts and shrugged off their attacks with its highly advanced Wave-Force Armour.
"I want every damn shell, rocket, torpedo, I don't give a shit about what you shoot just shoot! If you have to shoot at it with a pistol just shoot!" a stern female voice echoed through the bridge of one of the aircraft carriers.
A British female commanded their entire fleet which was in rapid decline in strength. She was an admiral, she was trained for naval combat. Even when faced with an adversary clearly superior to her, she hadn't felt even an ounce of fear. She didn't have time to panic, to bother with insignificant feelings like that. She was ordered to sink at least one Fleet of Fog vessel. Unfortunately for her, she found the worst possible candidate for such a mission.
Bismarck
A name still heavily etched into the minds of anyone who even vaguely remembers studying World War 2 in school. The most feared battleship of that era now stood before her fleet, and to make matters worse it was a highly advanced version of the said warship. Shields that nothing could hope to penetrate, even nuclear warheads were hardly effective. How in the hell is she with her already half-destroyed fleet supposed to sink the flagship of the Kriegsmarine? How?! It's an impossible task to sink even a destroyer, let alone a cruiser, and now she's supposed to sink a battleship?! This whole mission was a suicide from the beginning, but now it was certain death. The female admiral could only stare with a stern gaze as their weapons were easily blocked by Bismarck's Wave-Force Armour, she was very lucky that it didn't decide to just completely annihilate them in an instant with its 380mm Photon Cannons. Just a single shot out of a single battery was enough to sink their most formidable ships if it hit correctly, and it always had so far. Their aircraft were already low in numbers, and the black-coloured Fleet of Fog battleship left no stragglers in the sky with its AA.
"Admiral, this is HMS Prince of Wales, we've been hit, power's down!" she could only grit her teeth at report a fellow captain screamed through the radio.
The only other aircraft carrier in her fleet has just been rendered useless and already started sinking. And while it was pretty much useless without its arsenal of aircraft, it was still a very valuable asset to her fleet. But now, it was only her and two-
-BOOM-
-One cruiser left. Sweat started to rapidly trickle down the side of her face. Her mind raced with ideas on how to get out of this situation alive, but ultimately she could only draw blanks as every single one of her ideas resulted in her and her crew being brutally annihilated by the Fog battleship. Their escort frigates were all but destroyed and their crew was surely dead by now. The woman never felt so utterly defeat as she does now, no amount of training can prepare someone for the feeling of certain death waiting just behind the corner. But nevertheless, she must remain strong, it's not over yet!
"Dammit, we'll ram it if we have to!" yelled the admiral, but she wouldn't even get an opportunity to do such a thing.
A salvo of photon beams blasted her ship and split it in half with a large explosion. HMS Queen Elizabeth had two bridges, one for navigating the ship and one for the aircraft. But now it had only one. The bridge for navigating the aircraft was completely destroyed in the blast, and the main bridge looked like it would give out any second now. The only remaining cruiser was quick to explode by a small group of rockets fired by the black-coloured battleship. A painful ringing echoed through the British admiral's head, she was completely disoriented. The bloody and burnt bodies of her comrades laid on the floor, motionless. Blood trickled down the side of her head and her right eye became blind. She was pretty sure her arm was broken as well, and both of her ankles were strained at best. One of her ribs was definitely broken as well, she was lucky it didn't puncture her lung. She looked at her surroundings and came to a realization that she really was going to die. Everything was lost... And it was all done by a single ship... She grits her teeth as the bridge began tilting back, the split body of HMS Queen Elizabeth began to quickly sink into the cold depths below. The glass on the bridge was gone, which gave her a clear view of the intimidating battleship that stopped its onslaught of photon beams. Before the bow of her ship could completely face the sky, the admiral climbed out of the bridge through the broken window and collapsed on the superstructure. With a grunt, she forced her body up into a sitting position while holding her broken arm in pain, glaring at the black-clad figure she could see standing on top of the second fore turret of the Fog battleship.
She knew damn well who that was, "Huff, huff... You... PIECE OF SHIT!"
But the figure didn't seem to react to her screaming at all. Despite the fact she couldn't see their facial features she could tell it was a male just from the body shape, and quite frankly she couldn't give a toss right now about a Fog warship's gender.
"CAN'T YOU HEAR ME, YOU DAMN COWARD?! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO REPLY WHEN SOMEONE SPEAKS TO YOU! What, can't compute a single response?!" the woman screamed her lungs out, hoping that her voice was loud enough to reach the mental model of the Fleet of Fog battleship.
She let out strained gasps, her one remaining eye hurt like hell and her vision was becoming blurry. Was she really going to die like this? Screaming profanities at a goddamn robot that probably couldn't give a rat's ass about her feelings? What a disgrace...
"Why is it that you humans can never die quietly?" the admiral's one remaining eye quickly darted up, she could vaguely see the very same black-clad figure standing in front of her.
She was right, the mental model of Bismarck really is a male. She could feel her body start to tremble just from the mere tone of his voice. It was cold, lifeless, yet stern and deep at the same time. The admiral could easily tell that the man was looking down at her, like a bug waiting to be squashed.
"Heh, so you're not deaf, huh?" this probably wasn't the right time to be saying such things, but she couldn't care less, she was about to die anyway, "What can I say, we humans are stubborn."
"Annoyingly so. Just die peacefully, why is that so hard to understand?" irritatedly questioned Bismarck, despite the female's slowly fading vision, she could make out the man's glare directly right at her.
"Well, unlike you, we value our lives," angrily replied the defeated admiral, doing her best to stay conscious.
"Do you? Why would you venture out into the open sea if you knew we were here? No matter what you throw at us, at me, it's all a fruitless endeavour," sternly replied the Kriegsmarine flagship.
"That's precisely why we don't give up just because you're better than us. Just wait, one day you'll understand," the man rose an eyebrow at the woman's words, intrigued by her words and her smile despite being in a state of pain, "We are stubborn, headstrong and very, very persistent. We'll sink you, all of you. It might not happen soon, maybe in a year, even a decade, or a century, we won't give up!"
A sigh escaped Bismarck, he was all but done with this conversation, "And I'll crush you each and every time."
"Hahaha, it's a bit ironic don't you think?" the man gave her a look of slight confusion, "Remember what happened to you during WW2? You sank our flagship, and then we sank you. It won't be different this time."
"Sigh, what an annoyance. Every single one of you vermin is the same. I am not the battleship from WW2. I am superior in every sense of the word. I was designed by the Kriegsmarine to rule the sea, and rule I will," the admiral remained silent at Bismarck's words, listening intently to what he will say next, "You humans have clear hatred for the time my design hails from, I despise it too, on that we can both agree. We merely adapted our historic names, but our goals are vastly different. Your race, status and whatever else you mongrels use to place yourself in your unstable hierarchy, I'll kill you all the same if you enter my waters."
The female admiral remained silent, her expression unreadable as her long, bloodstained hair covered her face and prevented Bismarck from seeing what she was thinking, but he didn't have to wait for long. The injured woman started... giggling... and then burst into full-blown laughter.
"Hahaha! You-HAHAHA-You are one hilarious bellend, aren't you?!" Bismarck's expression remained stoic, although she could see she was starting to get a rise out of him, he was becoming more and more furious by the second, "If you really think that a dickhead like you will make us cower in fear you really must have a couple of screws loose in that head of yours!"
Even with her bad eyesight, the admiral could clearly see the displeased if not downright irritated expression, a low, barely audible growl escaped the male as he extended his hand to the sight, white nanomaterial flowing into his palm and beginning to form a large shape.
"You can kill me but you can't kill a human spirit. A king, please, a king of cowards is all you are!" the nanomaterial began shaping in Bismarck's hand, forming a sort of large sword with dull tip, "You think that you are better than us, but in the end, you don't even understand your own feelings do you?! An emulator will never amount to the original! No matter how great you think you are, in my eyes you are nothing but a coward! An egoist just waiting to be kicked down from his high horse!"
The mass of nanomaterials finally finished forming, and in Bismarck's hand was the largest sword the female admiral had seen. Yet, even when faced with such an intimidating weapon held in the hands of an even more terrifying war machine, she hadn't had an ounce of fear in her body. No, all she felt was shame and self-disappointment, and perhaps, deep underneath the hatred she harboured for the Fog was a small speck of pity.
"Any last words, Du blöde Kuh?" Bismarck's words were laced with venom, and despite not knowing much German at all, the woman could roughly translate what he said.
"Just two. One: I almost feel bad for you, living in that stupid bubble of yours. And two..." her voice trailed off, and with a grunt, she let go of her broken arm before mustering up her remaining strength to give Bismarck the middle finger with her good arm and a shit-eating grin, "Fick dich ins Knie!"
-SPLATTER-
And with a simple downward slash of the oversized blade, the body of the British admiral had been split in half in a very gruesome way. Bismarck stared at her dead body with clear anger visible in his eyes as he simply left his blade embedded into the sinking wreckage of the now-deceased admiral.
"...What an utter waste of my time," the Kriegsmarine flagship cursed under his breath as he retreated back onto the deck of his vessel with the help of some neatly placed Klein-field platforms.
With his back still facing the sinking tomb of the British admiral that so boldly insulted him, he glanced at it for the last time over his shoulder just as the carcass of the captain sank below the waves along with his sword. And once again, the waves were calm. Like none of the previous events happened at all. The ocean simply didn't give a toss about the tragic loss of the British fleet, and quite frankly neither did Bismarck. But the words of the admiral managed to crawl under his skin, their irked him to no end. King of Cowards... an utterly defeated enemy has no right to throw insults at someone like him. Nobody has that right. And if someone does then he will simply blast them to kingdom come. However cruel, cold or terrible he may look, he is the flagship of the Kriegsmarine. The only rightful king of the sea, and that is an indisputable fact. Yet there was but one ship he had to kneel to, and it made him furious.
Yamato
That oversized piece of scrap metal had no right to command him. Bigger calibre and heavier displacement be dammed, she was no ruler. Her failure to recognize defectors in their early stages has cost the Fleet of Fog valuable assets, one of which was a person he considered "friend", Scharnhorst was her name. A fellow battleship like him, a little on the hyperactive side but a good person. Her curious personality led her to be one of his few friends, people he viewed close to equals, but just a little less. But that very same personality ultimately became her downfall. She, much like him now, encountered a human convoy. Passenger cruisers, nothing heavily armed. Her orders were simple, sink them. But she didn't. Sympathy clouded her judgement, and she allowed the cruiseliner to pass. When the Supreme Flagship heard of it she ordered an immediate CPU reset. But Scharnhorst resisted, she didn't want to become someone she knows she isn't, and that... led to her death. By whom you may ask? By Bismarck himself. He was the one to aim his guns at her, and to conclusively end Scharnhorst's tale then and there. Bismarck was many things, some would consider him an egoist, others would consider him a bellend with a screw loose, but he was not a liar. And he couldn't deny that he, even after all this time and his cold nature still misses his dear friend. After all, she was one of the few ships that had the guts to talk to him normally, without honorifics or annoying titles. With a deep sigh Bismarck pushed those memories away from his mind, he refuses to delete them for his drive.
"What a bother this has been," and with that, the flagship of the Kriegsmarine began sailing back to his fleet, completely unbothered by the atrocities he just committed.
A couple of seagulls flew by, and almost all of them ignored the large warship, all except one that perched itself on the railing that runs around the bow section. Bismarck merely stared at it with n indifferent expression, but then all of a sudden the seagull was reduced to an explosion of feathers, courtesy of one of Bismarck's AA cannons.
...
...
...
"I hate those sea pigeons..."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone