The adventures of Prinz Eugen and the young engineer Volume 1.

No. 2 Chapter 11

Landing on his back the young engineer got his breath knocked out of his lungs. Scrambling to his feet he lifted the welding goggle from his eyes and tried to catch his breath. He saw Z-12 standing in front of her rigging with raised fists. The three recruits had run away from the rigging and scrambled for safety. Seeing that the small Shipgirl was defending her rigging from the young engineer and the recruits, he gathered his courage and slowly walked up to the destroyer which had burning fury in her eyes. "It's all okay. We are trying to help and repair your rigging." He tried to explain. "You are hurting it. Why would you hurt it that much. It suffered so much and got hurt badly to protect me and you strapped it down and hurt it. I won't let you hurt it anymore!" Z-12 screamed. "I know that it hurts the rigging. But we can't help it without taking off the damaged parts. We are trying to be as quick and painless as possible to help it and fix it up again. We do not want to hurt it at all. We want to help it feel better again Erich Giese. He explained in a calm manner. The Shipgirl looked at him, the glow of her eyes was similar to that he had seen in Ganguts eyes when she got angry. It looked like the opening of hell, a gaze full of hate, death and destruction. The young engineer knew that the destroyer was apparently still in what the Shipgirls considered warmode. Where they forgot their rational thinking and morality and became pure killing machines. "Please, we are trying to help you. I fixed you up so you would not bleed anymore and now we are trying to heal your rigging. Please let us help you and your rigging Giese." He appealed to the destroyer. The destroyer still looked at him but her posture changed. Her shoulders sunk and she dropped her fists to her hips. Apparently thinking about the words of the young engineer, she seemed to calm down. "You are going to fix it? You promise that even though it hurts it will feel better afterwards and will be fine again?" She asked the young engineer. "I do. All we want to do is help." He promised. The stare of the destroyer changed and the flaming fire in the eyes of her changed back to their sky blue color. The young engineer walked slowly to the destroyer and took her by her shoulder. "It's good to see you snapped out of it Giese." He said to her while he led her to the side next to her rigging. If you like to help us you could try to comfort your rigging so it won't feel so much discomfort during the procedure, if that is possible." He offered. The destroyer looked at him and nodded. "I will do that. It will calm it down for sure." She agreed. The young engineer returned to the right head of the rigging. Looking at the frightened faces of the recruits he had an embarrassed smile on his face. "Yea, that can happen as well I guess. But you can normally always reason with the Shipgirls." He explained. After a couple of moments they went back to work more carefull than before.

After some time they had managed to cut the armor plate of the nose in two and managed with some help, from other recruits from the second team, to lift both armor plates off the head of the rigging. Below it there was the mechanism to load the guns and move the jaw as well as the cables that resembled the nervous system of the rigging. A lot of the cables in the nose as well as some of the structural elements had suffered from the impact of the dent as well, but all the pistons and mechanisms seemed to function well. They unbolted the structural elements and replaced them with replacement parts and placed all the systems at their right place and checked their functionality.

Taking a break to get something to drink and to let the recruits rest, the young engineer drank some water from his bottle and looked at the rigging. It was halfway stripped and all of the damaged and destroyed parts had been removed. They had taken off the restraints on the left head upon the plea of Z-12, which was hugging the head and stroking its lower jaw line like that of a puppy. Looking around the young engineer realized that a repair kit was placed on the workbench next to their repairstation. He grabbed it and walked over to the injured destroyer. "Here you go. Now you can fix yourself up." He said while handing Z-12 the repair kit. She nodded and took the repair kit. Upon opening it the young engineer saw what looked like splinters of Wisdomcubes inside of it. They were absorbed upon contact with the Shipgirl. Z-12 appearance changed immediately. Her injuries vanished, she no longer bled her bright blue blood trough the bandages and all the scratches on her vanished. Her tired look changed back to the typical expression of the energy filled and over enthusiastic mood the destroyers always seemed to have. "Thanks, I feel A~okay now. And soon my rigging will be fine as well. We did manage to hand that Siren her ass for a while at least. For what we went through we did well." She said in an now energetic and enthusiastic way and with a broad grin. The Destroyer then went off towards Fritz and seemed to talk to him. Astonished over the rapide an radical change of the destroyers physique and attitude, the young engineer once again realized that even though he studied that topic and worked together with the Shipgirls. He knew still so little about how they were made, functioned and behaved.