Azur Lane: Story of the Blind Battleship Rewritten

Chapter 8: A Choice

The sounds of gun fire is all around, the smell of gunpowder as well. A crystal morning, blinded by the smoke of our guns... my guns...

Arkansas was looking through his binoculars at Iwo Jima, an island he heard another sailor remark as being a fortress disguised as an island. And it certainly looked like it. The Navy has been bombarding the island for over 2 days now, it was constant, sleep was a luxury with how many guns were firing around the clock.

Arkansas sighed and then lowered his binoculars, he then turned over to his captain, "Island looks like shit." he says. His captain laughs and says "No kidding." Arkansas only chuckles a little and says, "I'll be joining the first wave, that way I can guide in our salvos better. We don't want to be like the crazy dreadnought during our last bombardment." The captain nods and says "You're authorized, just be careful, the Japanese are holding that island tooth and nail."

Arkansas leans against the railing of his ship and says "Then we'll just rip them out."

Arkansas wakes up breathing heavily and looking around. He starts calming down and realizes that he overslept a bit, he feels around before coming across the radio. Arkansas tunes it to one of the local stations and listens for awhile. Then it comes across a network from the Eagle Union

He looks down, about halfway through the song, he turns the radio off and starts panting. Unpleasant memories start surfacing up again. He gets up and starts getting ready, grabbing his cane, he walks out of his captain's cabin and walks on deck. 

He leans against the ship railing and is looking out towards the horizon. "We never truly ripped them out did we?" He then turns back towards his ship and says "All we got was nightmares."

"Nightmares?" someone says.

Arkansas then turns back towards the voice and says "Ah, Vestal. It's... nothing important." Vestal just looks a little confused and says, "Well, I cleared you medically for orders, and Azur Lane is sending you on a practice sortie to scuttle an abandoned Siren facility."

Arkansas just nods and says, "I understand. What time?" Vestal responds with "1600. You got a couple hours." 

Arkansas says "Alright. I'm gonna leave early then." Vestal nods and then walks away. Arkansas' ship raises anchor and his ship starts moving out of port. Arkansas' ship sails at a steady 23 knots, and when he inspects the boilers, he finds that they're no longer coal ones.

Arkansas just chuckles and thinks they replaced them when they were repairing his ship. He walks back up to the top deck and looks out ahead of him and sighs "Consulting maps and location given... the facility is on Iwo Jima." The dreadnought still maintains it's course, however he can feel the ship be slightly... hesitant with it's engines. He looks over towards the ocean and says "Won't be long, will... be like.... old times..." Arkansas then sighs.