Commander's Rounds

Entry 2: Hawaiian Pizza

"...And that's when Prinz put a level on my chest, commander!"

The commander put his head in his hands. Admiral Hipper certainly had a volatile relationship with her younger sister, and he sometimes ended up in the blast radius of the explosions resulting from that. Still, taunting someone with engineering tools was a very Ironblood thing to do, and Admiral Hipper was a tempting target for her notoriously laid-back sister. While everyone had their buttons, hers were somewhat larger and redder than most.

He sat back in his chair. "Have you tried at least talking to Friedrich about this?"

"Oh, like that solves anything. You go to her and she's like, oh, my poor child and then squeezes you against those oversized euters of hers, and last I checked, I'm not a baby!" She huffed a bit. Well, a lot. And the commander knew that, as far as other senior ships went, no one talked to Graf Zeppelin if they were looking for comfort.

The commander nodded. "All, right I'll talk to her and see what I can do."

"That's what you're supposed to do, obviously!"

The commander realized that he had, in some strange way, gotten approval. "Thank you for letting me know, and I'm glad you feel you can come to me with these problems."

"Huuuunhh!?" She blurted, the green-eyed blonde doing a good job of looking incredulous. "I-It's not that, it's just that I needed to yell at someone, and being yelled at is one of the few things you're good at!" She then left, muttering to herself about a great many things.

It was a light day- not much was expected to get done because of the storm rolling in, so what little work the commander had left was easily accomplished. With the day's work done, he was able to send people home early, and then decided to take the rest of the day off himself- there was nothing he could do today that wasn't better done tomorrow.

He set some water for boiling and got ready to make some hot chocolate- the dark chocolate being a gift from Bismarck for looking after Tirpitz. Even though it was windy and was pouring buckets, there was little worry about the power going out, and he wasn't really worried about anyone. After all, there was plenty of warning that the storm was coming, and anyone who got caught out in it would have to be seriously unlucky.

THUMP WHUMP BUMP

That was too loud and insistent and repeated to just be the wind blowing something into the door. The number of persons it could be was a rather small number.

THUMP WHUMP BUMP

He opened up the door and found Honolulu there, soaked to the bone and looking absolutely miserable. While she was very unlikely to suffer a sickness from this sort of thing, an involuntary drenching was never any good for the person involved- and Honolulu looked like she was just done with just things in general. "...Commander....!" was all she said, in the most plaintive way he'd heard from her.

He immediately stepped back. "Oh! Look, just get inside, you can dry off in my room. Don't worry about dripping anywhere, I'll get you a towel." He let her in and closed the door, not caring that she was dripping all over the carpet, and came back with a beach towel for her to wrap up in while he shuttled her to his room. He stayed outside the door, and soon enough, she tossed out a soaked pile of clothes.

The commander picked them up and took them over to his dryer, tossing them in while trying not to think about which of Honolulu's articles he was handling, though he did notice that her hat was missing. He just considered it all "clothes" to not stop and stare. He slammed the dryer door shut, and went back to the kitchen, beginning to very aggressively get back to his hot chocolate. And decided that a second mug would probably be in order, under the circumstances.