Commander's Rounds

Entry 18: The Odd Fox Out

One of the things it took some time for the commander to notice was that his photo albums had been put back very neatly. Hm.

While the matter of Incomparable took up most of his time, he did sort out some of the business that occurred while he was away. Z23 had managed perfectly well as his administrative stand-in while he was gone, and apparently she had been assisted by King George V- and the fact that Z23 still smelled faintly of King George's saffron buns told him that the royal gave her the same sort of assistance that she gave him.

Enterprise's exercises went off without a hitch, which meant that entrusting Bataan to successfully coax Taihou out of her room was a gamble that paid off. The report of the exercise was filled with notes about how Taihou went off specifically to hunt down and sink Akagi as the first thing she did in the exercise. While she did succeed and sent Akagi off to sit out most of the exercise in a grumpy huff, it wasn't orderly behavior. He was going to have to keep an eye out to make sure things didn't blow up even bigger between those two.

But catching up with all of this meant a lot of time indoors- and that meant he was going to get a visitor that wanted him out of those doors. And that afternoon, he got a visitor who was determined to drag him into something enjoyable, or at least something that didn't involve sitting.

"Commander, you've been inside all day- let's get you out and doing something!"

And that was Kii, in a nutshell. A big, bold, and friendly fox-woman who... Well, she wasn't as focused on the actual "training" part, at least not in the same scientific way as someone like Tennessee of Massachusetts, but was rather of the opinion that if you weren't doing something vigorous, exhausting, or fun for at least part of the day, you were wasting your time.

He had been aware of Kii ever since Shinano showed up, but his first real encounter with her was when Admiral Hipper decided to run her mouth at him at the most wrong place at the most wrong time. He couldn't really blame Kii for concluding that Admiral Hipper was picking on him and just generally being a bully, and people picking on others was a thing that Kii couldn't stand.

Thankfully, for Admiral Hipper's sake, what followed next was broken up pretty quickly. Kii was let off with a minor infraction because Bismarck was willing to let the matter drop, and Admiral Hipper received a short but very hard lesson on the problems of letting her temper run away with her mouth. Prinz Eugen was oddly sanguine about the incident, telling him that "It was probably the only way she'd learn, really."

Being lifted off of the ground after telling a tall woman to "Say that to my face" leaves quite an impression.

But what left quite an impression on him was the fact that there was someone willing to defend him from being picked on. This was in no supply at many points in his life, so any time Kii wanted him to come out and, well, play, essentially, there was only one worthwhile answer.

"Sure, whatever you like."

And that was basically his relationship with Kii.

She never really browbeat him into joining her on whatever escapades she had in mind, and it's not like she asked it every day- she was the sort of person who could make her own fun by dueling Takao or King George V or Le Mars whenever she felt the urge to do such a thing (and she preferred a variety of opponents), or just find some other thing to do.

But Kii was just plain fun to watch.

The thing is, the other foxes, like Akagi and Tosa and Shinano and so on never seemed to exert themselves all that much outside of exercises and battle, but Kii always had this sort of overwhelming physicality about her where it would feel strange if she wasn't having a good time or exploding into action or whatever. That just extended into everything, even just the way she moved, and also how it seemed that her very generous form was always on the verge of winning a war it was fighting against her own clothes. Her sarashi was always just on the edge of being catastrophically overpowered by a bust it was straining against all hope to contain, and the way the rest of her clothes moved around her legs and hips occasionally showed more skin in places that the designers probably didn't intend.