Flame Of War | Azur Lane

Chapter 2 | The Discussion

A mix of emotions seem to cross over Bismarck's face, as she prepares to speak. Relief, mixes with regret, as she rolls her wheelchair closer to the hospital bed side, she reaches out taking my other hand, and squeezing it like she did with the other. Her lip seems to flutter and wobble as she spoke with shame. She opens her mouth to speak, and nothing comes out. Weakly, I sit up, and speak rather selfishly putting the topic of discussion onto the routes I wanted. "Let's talk for a bit. There's no need to jump into the thick of it. Let's just start with this, can you tell me where I am? Am I back in Prussia?" I ask, speaking, again, with upmost formality. She nods releasing my hands, and raising hers to her face, wiping her eye and face of tears. "Yes, but. . . It's not the Prussia you remember. It's changed, and. . . truly had many revolutions since you sank. The people are struggling to find a cause worth standing behind" She answers, deeply troubled by the fact. She stops wiping her eye, and speaks a question of her own, rather selfishly, but it was acceptable... I saw it as... I ask a question, in return for answering, she gets one of her own answered.

"Y-You are SMS Kaiser.... R-Right?" A silly question, but basing on the fact that I've never met this woman... Or anyone I've seen since I awoke on the seabed... It's a understandable question to have. Instead of answering verbally, I nod with no hints of hesitation. Only then after do I speak. "I am the Flagship of the once grand High sea's Fleet of Prussia. A dreadnought, designed with the goal of being far stronger than Dreadnought herself... Proven relatively outdated by design in comparison to British Battlecruiser designs and battleship designs at the battle of Jutland, and doomed with in docks for eternal refits ever since. I paved the way for the inspiration that led to the design of the later SMS Bayern class. I have only a handful of confirmed kills in battle, and a limited number of ships successfully sunk in combat." I explain, assuring her of such. Following my answer, Bismarck, once more appears mixed, relieved, but desperately troubled. I ask my own question now, as I sit up more, and give her a clean look of pity, and concern. "May I ask what happened to you Bismarck... May I ask who you are to these people... I don't know you... But I feel that I want to." I ask, it's amongst some of the deeper questions on my mind, that hadn't pertained to myself, and the passage of time. She stammers a bit, her eye contact breaks considerably, and it's noticeable.

They drift off to the corner of the room. "I am the Flagship of the Iron Blood Navy, the ship who took your place after your death, and the restoration of our navy. I was the strongest battleship ever built in our land, and the strongest still to today's standards compared to most. My name is KMS Bismarck, the head of my ship class, of which I have only one sibling. My sister Tirpitz. Earlier in the year I was-" She pauses, and it's a long pause, she begins to fill with tears in her only uncovered eye. I reach out taking one of her hands, the same way she had mine not minutes ago, comfortingly squeezing it. She continues with a choppy voice of pain, and remembrance. "We've been at war with Azur Lane, for years now. My mission was to destroy the Royal Navy's convoys, and starve them of supply, starve them out of the war. Me, and a friend, a close friend we're tasked to do comers raiding. An encountered two Battleships of the Royal Navy, Hood, and Prince of Wales... I would ultimately sink Hood with my 5th Salvo in 7 minutes of combat but would then take enough damage from Wales to need repairs and need to return to port. I cut my friend loose, aware that the British would be tracking us down.

Allowing her to escape, that decision saved her life... But it nearly costed me my own. I got ambushed, I was surrounded, attacked by aircraft with Torpedoes Day and night, shelled from all directions, from battleships, battlecruiser, Heavy cruisers. if it was Azured, it was there, and it was blowing me to pieces. I fought through the pain, I fought, I really did-" She begins to break down, the clear reliving of trauma in her eyes, it was like the events we're replaying around her for her, the fact only brought rage into my heart for the Royal navy once more, the lust for pure, vengeance was on my heart. "They blew my rigging off, they blew chunks off me, at one point I wasn't even able to stand anymore, let alone speak, and yet they didn't stop firing Kaiser... I just wanted it to end, and yet the end never seems to come, endless torture... Hours... It took hours... To finally slip beneath the waves, surrounded by my own oil slick, and blood. With chunks of flesh, and rigging sinking all around me. I was so broken, that I wasn't even aware of myself being alive anymore. The pain was too unbearable. As I sunk to the sea floor, a young, relatively newly and recently launched U-Boat was around and saved my life. She rescued me from reaching the sea floor and took me to the safety of a dry dock in Kiel. I. . . I'm sorry. I-I can't say anything else, it's to hard to-" She then interrupted, I speak respectfully, but with a hint of authority.