Where Your Core Rests

Iwoto

The human still hadn't recovered from their embarrassment a few days later and had decided that it was really unfair that Kongō wasn't bothered at all.

Instead, the fast battleship more often than not had to hide very amused smiles behind a hand whenever said human buried their face behind their hands.

Click click

"I didn't even understand you and I can tell you that it was exactly as bad as I'm making it seem", the human peeked over their hands and looked at Nagara, whose deck they were sitting on, Luigi lazing in the sun close by.

Click?

"Because... because... because that woman legit thought we were gonna bang right there on the floor!"

Nagara didn't say anything for a while and then made another questioning sound.

"Huh?"

"It's a synonym for having sex", supplied Kongō from her deck, making the human wail and hide again.

"DON'T SAY IT LIKE THAT!"

"Why are you so embarrassed about that?"

Truth be told, no idea. Like, yeah, it's something completely natural, nothing to be ashamed about and all that, but still! The whole situation had been so embarrassing!

By the end of the month my favourite word will be "embarrassing"...

Kongō almost rolled her eyes and then chose to be merciful and changed the topic: "How good is your Japanese?"

"...You do know that there is a reason as to why I'm speaking English with an obviously Japanese person, yeah?"

Well, they could've been speaking every language, really, and Kongō and Nagara would've still been able to understand them, but still.

"Then you're lucky", she smirked over her shoulder, "the Blue Fleet should be able to speak English."

They blanked: "The Blue-what-now?"

The Blue Fleet, as it turned out, was made up from:

- 1 heavy cruiser

- 1 fast battleship without a ship, which apparently was a wild story

- 2 fast battleships who shared a ship, which was an even wilder story noone elaborated on

- 1 cracked Union Core

and of course human crews.

It was an especially wild moment when it turned out that one of the fast battleships, due to reasons , was a walking pink teddy bear.

"Kongō!", a cocky voice called as Kongō was helping "her" human and cat down on the beach, "I see you retrieved Nagara!"

Already emotionally done, Kongō made a face while her back was still turned and schooled her features again when she finally turned around: "Hello Hyūga."

Hyūga had her lab coat bound around her hips, burying her hands in its pockets and smiling in that usual cocky way: "Now now, don't be so cold – it's been so long since we've seen each other."

Takao, who had been part of the welcoming committee as per Gunzō's orders, scoffed lightly at the other's antics: "The captain sends his regards. He will join us later."

"Thank you", Kongō said and looked around, "you returned to Iwoto?"

"Yep", Hyūga nodded, "it's still fortified, after all. Until we find something new, Iwoto is our base."

"I see."

"Also, you got yourself a captain?"

The human beside Kongō was watching Luigi like a hawk, afraid that he would either run off or that someone could overlook and hurt him by accident and therefore didn't look up when all attention turned to them. Luigi was big, impossible to overlook and resting his head on Kirishima – no way would anyone trip over him or anything like that.

They hummed in acknowledgment, though.

"They're not my captain."

Hyūga made a face and sound as if saying "yeaaaah, sureee".

Before Kongō could answer anything to that, the human in question spoke up: "I'm really not her captain. I don't even know for sure what a bow is."

Either front or back of a ship, but they didn't know which and everytime they thought they did they ended up confusing themself.

Luigi meowed in confirmation, to which he got a betrayed look from the human.

They cleared their throat and spoke to Hyūga: "She's just indulging me. I'm very grateful for that."

"Oh? Indulging you?"

"Mhm", they whipped the nanomaterial shard out of a pocket and held it up, "we're hunting a little mystery."

Now, Hyūga's scientific curiosity was of course running on top speed and she came closer to take the shard from the human, turning it this way and that way, doing first scans and analyses: "Nanomaterial? Where did you find that?", she handed it back.

They tugged the shard back to where it came from originally and closed the zipper: "We found it by Nagara's Union Core, do you know who it belongs to?"

"I will need to analyse it further to determine that", the fast battleship had not forgotten Kongō (to her chagrin) and smiled at her, "how about we drink some tea?"

She didn't wait for the answer, instead turning around and walking towards the building a few metres away, Kirishima sweat dropping at the comment.

You really want to see the world burn, don't you!?, she thought.

The other three looked after her in varying degrees of confusion and irritation.

"...There's a longer story to that, isn't there?"

Kongō took a long suffering breath and let it out: "Indeed. Kirishima", the eyes of the two sisters met, "are you going to stay in that form?"

"For the moment, yes. It's better for Makie."

Either the human was straight up mad, or the freaking bear was legit blushing .

"W-we should hurry up", Kirishima was a bit flustered at the admission of her love for the child and rushed forward.

"...I have so many questions."

"She's my sister", Kongō revealed with the exact knowledge of only creating more questions.

"Pardon!?", they almost screamed.

"Meow!?", Luigi meowed.

Well, admittedly, Luigi didn't look shocked in any way and was most likely just mimicking his friend for... reasons, but it was a nice comedic effect nonetheless.

The blonde relented and moved forwards as well now: "Come. I'll introduce you to Haruna."

"And who's that?", they and Luigi ran after her.

"My sister."

"Oh, so I'm meeting the family?"

There were a few minutes of silence in which both pretended that that sentence didn't have a certain double meaning – then the human's face went tomato red and was hidden in their hands while Kongō laughed at them.

Not my month! , they wailed on the inside, absolutely not my month!