The lost battleship of the southern trench

Chapter 8

Southern POV

After we had met Sunken, we started to travel southward in what I believe from the map we have, would be towards a place called 'Southeast Asia" days had gone by with nothing much happening. We decided to travel at a slower speed, because Sunken said it takes more energy to travel everywhere at top speed.

Occasionally while sailing we would pause for a few hours and practice using our weapons so that we were in tip top shape. Sunken actually showed herself to be quite skilled with her aircraft, and also the sheer numbers she held, she had almost the same number of aircraft that Blue and Xia had combined, which made her a force to be reckoned with.

After a while of sailing Sunken had invited me to join her on her riggings. So I did and sat next to her, we talked about our lives so far as Abyssals and from what I can gather from Sunken, ship girls aren't supposed to be reasoned with. She already told me the story of the princess who tried to make peaceful contact, but she also said that there was one other princess that was captured and was able to escape. Apparently the humans tortured her for information and showed no mercy to the princess, even when she admitted that she admitted all information she knew, they still tortured her. There were other stories as well about Abyssals that were sadistically killed by the humans and ship girls.

Altogether from what Sunken had described it seemed Abyssals are all thought of as monsters that need to be exterminated, even the princesses, and onis that show no aggression to the humans.

The information made me regret helping the ship girls at Midway, and made me rethink my stance on attacking the Plains Abyssals. Sunken did admit that the Abyssals did sometimes attack first, but that most of those Abyssals had lost something valuable from ship girls attacking them, either belongings that were destroyed, or friends that were killed.

I couldn't tell how Blue or Xia thought of this information but, I could sense that Xia seemed to dislike Sunken. I think it is because Sunken is a Plains Abyssal, and those were the Abyssals that sunk her friends. Sometimes I could see Blue and Xia whispering to each other, while I was riding together with Sunken, but I couldn't hear what they were talking about. And even if I could I would try not to, because well they probably wouldn't like me to hear it if they're whispering.

Though after a while, when most of the stories were finished, we mainly talked about what we were going to do down south. Sunken said that when she was originally planning on going Midway to the base to see if they could help her out, since her old base had been destroyed by the ship girls.

She said that going near The Trench would be dangerous, because the Plains Abyssals there were hostile to the Trench Abyssals. She said the reason why was because of the three Trench Princesses and the fact that they control Ra-class. Apparently the monster we saw at Midway was a Ra-class and that it was quite odd seeing it so far from the Trench. But Sunken said the three Trench Princesses are very hostile to the Plains Abyssals for no apparent reason, and that they commonly use Ra-class to attack and EAT the Plains Abyssals nearby. So the Plains Abyssals also act hostile in case any of the Trench Abyssals that appeared are secretly working for the Trench Princesses.

Blue asked why Sunken hadn't attacked us upon realizing we were Trench Abyssals. Sunken repeated the reason she had said before, that Abyssals like her didn't really see Trench Abyssals, so they weren't used to attacking them on sight. And that she was hopelessly outnumbered, and we could easily be able to sink her if she tried to attack us, and the third reason is that the Trench Princesses don't normally send their underlings far from the Trench, so she assumed that we weren't working for the Trench Princesses.

After the massive information dump of why we shouldn't go to the Trench, she said the best place we should try going next is a place the humans call Leyte gulf, which is apparently Abyssal dominated. The humans who used to live in the so-called 'Philippines' seem to have fled to mainland Asia after the Abyssals showed up and the Abyssals moved in afterwards. Though she said if Leyte isn't an option then a place called Iron Bottom sound would be another good base to go to.