New Day, New Beginning (An Azur Lane Story)

Unto the breach, dear friends.

(Author's note: Apologies for taking a bit longer. Life stuff happened. That said, get ready. This chapter is big.)

Taihou feels as though she were swimming in air. The paradox of feeling weightlessness, yet being able to move to easily. She can feel the world around her coming to life. Sounds of digitized code working their magic, the structure coming together like a tree growing in fast motion.

She feels her weight coming to her, her descent to the ground slow and steady. Her feet touches the ground. The digitized sounds slowly begin to fade in volume, before silence greets her ears.

She opened her eyes and was not ready for what her eyes are showing her.

She is standing on an island of sorts made out of concrete and earth, put together in a uniform state. From a distance, about a football field away, a large arena can be seen. She turned around to see that she is way high up, about a mile above sea level. She looks out to see nothing but ocean, stretchingn as the eye can see. The "island" she is standing on is floating, as if the greek gods themselves have created this space for their own means.

She turned around to see Enterprise, Laffey, Belfast, Friedrich Der Grosse, and Sheffield taking in the scenery as well.

"Oooh, it's like we're in a video-game...", Laffey is mesmerized by the power of their new training. 

"Akashi can do great things when she's not being so greedy. Isn't that right, Sheffield?" Belfast says as she looks to her fellow stoic maid, who gave a nod of apporval.

"Such a magnificent display..." Friedrich could only look in awe.

Enterprise looks to the horizon to watch the endless still blue water. She would sometimes look at the ocean to put her mind in a calm state.

She takes a deep breathe, closes her eyes, then opened them. A serious look on her face has formed.

"Alright Alpha. Our mission is clear. We must rescue Commander Cade and eliminate the enemy team."

Her team members nodded at her, and are prepared to follow her lead. With that, Enterprise led the charge by dashing to the distant arena, her team in pursuit.

The island seems to respond to the team's movement because as they go further, turrets appeared from afar, on top of a metallic wall.

"Take cover!"

Enterprise commanded her team, and they hid behind rock formations big enough for cover.

The firing soon stopped, giving Enterprise a chance to analyze the situation. She slowly gets a peek to see what they are dealing with.

"4 turrets...big enough to cause some damage if we're not careful... guarding what seems to be a barrier of sort. Could be our way foward."

She lowers her head back down, and looks at sheffield, whose on another cover opposite of her.

"Sheffield, disable those turrets so we can gain ground."

The stoic maid nodded and hid behind the surrounding trees and bushes. As she got closer to the barrier without being spotted, she noticed that there's a terminal on the wall next to the barrier. She deduced she can hack into it and disable the barrier, along with the turrets.

Sheffield pulled a chaff grenade from her pouch, pulled the pin and waited.

1... 

2...

3!

She threw the chaff high into the air. It exploded in front of the turrets causing them to malfunction.