The Hospital Ship of Azur Lane (Slow Updates)

Convoy X part 2

As the convoy navigates through the calm sea, Doctor Solace walks around the bridge of his ship with his shotgun at his hand. For some reason, he just can't stand still from the moment they left the harbor. Something has been bugging him lately. He can't tell what it is, but for him to be this anxious, it's not something good. It's as if he's waiting for something, or someone, but what? He and the Bulin sisters are the only ones in this area. And his radar isn't picking up any contacts. Could he be overreacting? Possibly, but his instinct isn't usually wrong. Last time he ignored his instinct, he was nearly struck by an Exocet missile, and given how powerful and destructive that missile is, it nearly sent him to the bottom of the sea. Luckily, he was able to intercept it in the last seconds, though some shrapnel did wound a few of the medical crew on the exterior deck. Ever since, he's made sure not to ignore his instinct for whatever reason. Safety always comes first in his naval and medical terms.

-'Are you going to relax?', says Universal, fed up with DS walking all the time. 'You've been walking left and right since we left port'.

-'I know, but if I sit I can't relax', replies DS. 'Last time I was so relaxed I nearly sank'.

-'How so?', asks Bulin, curious to explore his personality even further.

-'Well, I thought that by relaxing a little bit I could forget all my troubles', replies DS, starting to explain. 'When I did that I nearly had a missile stuck to my port side and it nearly cut me in to two pieces'.

-'Oh my, that's horrible', says Universal. She can't imagine the horrors of being cut in two, but it's not very difficult. There's literaly nothing worse than being cut in half from either a torpedo, a rocket, or any other weapon. Being cut in two is probably the worst of the worst ways to die, either in combat, or from an accident.

-'In comparison to what I've seen in the three years of my career, horrible is just a word', says DS, begging to disagree. Sure, he has seen bodies cut in half, but he has seen worse than that. Victims of torture from both sides of Austronesia, victims of prostitution, orphans, poisoned civilians and soldiers, victims with their tongues cut, people macheted to death, you name it. Being cut in half is just one of the many horrors of the civil war. 'For that reason, I make sure not to let my guard down again'.

-'What sort of horrors?', asks Universal, keen on finding out more about DS.

-'You don't want to know', replies DS. 'If you did, it would be too much for your brain to process. All I can say is that you're lucky that you weren't built the same year as me'.

-'What do you mean by that?', asks Universal, seemingly concerned.

-'You might not believe it', replies DS, still in his usual low voice tone. 'But the year I was built was 2019'.

-'What?', the Bulin sisters yell. The answer shocks them to their bones. They just can't believe what they are hearing. 2019? How is that possible? That's just absurd. Time travel is just not possible in this era and year.

-'Yeah, that's the truth', continues DS. With what he has seen and experienced so far, there are no other possibilities as to what's happening around him. He has travelled back in time, in the middle of the Pacific War in 1942. He did try to deny it at first, but none of his other theories made sense. He's been attacked by old propeller aircraft, the Bulin Sisters are warships dating back to the 40s and 50s, so what other theories could explain this? None. And while time travel is technically impossible, it probably has something to do with the storm that brought him here. 'And I'm not even the real hospital ship. I'm just a copy of the original ship'.

-'Oh my, that's terrible', says Universal. 'Sorry to hear that'.

-'Nah, don't be', says DS, stll in his low voice. 'Being a copy is nothing new in my universe. Shipbuilding companies nowadays have run out of ideas for designs, so they take an already existent ship and modify it to their standards'. The way he says it though, makes it seem as if he's either frustrated or otherwise jealous. Probably the former, as DS never had anything to be jealous of. Who can blame him though? After all, he's just a copy, a replica, a fake, that's what he is. He's not as powerful and capable as the original ships. Maybe that's why his crew never saw him in positive way. To them, being a copy equals poor maintenance and poor construction. These are two reasons nobody wants to own a copy ship.