February 6, 1942.

Morning arrived gently over Fukuoka, casting a soft golden hue across rooftops still damp from the night’s mist. The air was cool, touched with the scent of the sea and faint traces of brewed tea drifting from the hotel’s open kitchen. Zumwalt stepped out of her room without hurry, her uniform crisp as ever, but her demeanor noticeably different, much more calm, almost serene. There was a rare lightness in her step, a subtle warmth in the way she greeted the passing hotel staff with a small nod or a faint smile. It wasn’t joy, exactly, but a quiet kind of peace, the kind that slips in through the cracks after a long storm.

She turned a corner near the hotel’s central lounge and paused. By the old upright piano standing beneath a bay of tall windows, Lexington stood motionless, one hand resting gently on the polished wood, her other gloved arm at her side. The piano itself was an artifact, rescued from the ruins of a local concert hall, its internal damage painstakingly repaired by Manjuu engineers who somehow understood that beauty had its place even in war. It wasn’t the sight of the instrument that stopped Zumwalt, it was Lexington’s expression. The usual firebrand, known for her no-nonsense attitude and her habit of putting Hornet in her place with a mix of tough love and dry humor, now wore a look Zumwalt had never seen on her. Hollow. Quiet in a way that suggested something deep inside her had cracked.

She approached slowly, her footsteps muffled by the smooth wooden floor. "You look like you’re about to play something tragic." Zumwalt said.

Lexington didn’t answer at first. She stared at the keys as if waiting for them to speak. Then, almost as an afterthought, she whispered. "Saratoga. She was escorting a supply convoy in the Atlantic. U-boats hit hard, ambush in the Black Pit. She took multiple torpedoes. They managed to limp her to Scapa Flow, but…" Lexington’s voice trailed off. Her hand curled slightly on the piano lid, as if trying to hold onto something that wasn’t there anymore. "They said she’s alive, but it’s bad. Real bad."

Zumwalt had never met Saratoga, only heard passing stories, spirited, reckless, full of life. But she knew what Lexington needed in that moment wasn’t a litany of sympathetic noises or empty words. It was about understanding what it meant to almost lose someone who felt like part of your hull. She stepped closer and placed a hand on Lexington’s shoulder.

"I’m sorry." Zumwalt murmured. "No one trains us for this part. Not for when the fight reaches the ones we can’t protect.'

Lexington’s lips twitched upward in the faintest imitation of a smile, tired, worn around the edges. "She always acted like she was bulletproof. Never stopped to think before jumping into the next mess." A pause, then a slow exhale. "Guess I was always the one watching her back."

"And now you’re the one left waiting." Zumwalt said with soft voice. "That’s the hardest position to hold."

Lexington looked down at the keys. Her fingers brushed them, not playing, just feeling. "Used to play for her. Back in the earliest days. She laughed when I butchered the chords. Then cried when I finally got Chopin right. First time I saw her cry that didn’t involve spilled milk or a snapped hair tie."

Zumwalt gave a subtle, encouraging nod toward the bench. "Then maybe it’s time to play again. For the sake of old times."

Lexington didn’t move for several seconds. Then, without a word, she sat. Her hands hovered, hesitated, then pressed down on the ivory, soft, unsteady, before settling into a slow, aching melody.

Zumwalt sank into a chair nearby, folding her hands in her lap, her gaze fixed not on the keys or even the pianist, but on the space between the notes, those long silences that said more than words ever could. She didn’t speak again, didn’t need to. The music filled the room, spilled into the lobby’s corners like light through cracks in old wood, blending with the soft rustle of cherry blossoms outside, stirred by a wind that carried the chill of winter and the first hints of spring.

As Lexington’s fingers traced the worn ivory keys with the tender familiarity of someone playing from memory rather than sheet, the notes of Clair de Lune rose gently into the air, soft and slow like sunlight filtering through the mist. The melody, delicate yet deeply evocative, carried with it an ache that spoke more clearly than words, a longing wrapped in elegance, a sorrow softened by time. Her playing wasn’t flawless, but it didn’t need to be. Each note held weight, breathed with restraint, and shimmered with unspoken emotion. The music moved not with grandeur but with quiet power, flowing through the hotel lobby like the first warm breeze after winter. It touched the room in waves, a balm on weary hearts.

People began to gather, as if drawn by the melodies. West Virginia appeared first, her calm presence settling near a column in the corner. San Francisco leaned against a doorframe, arms crossed, head tilted, her usual cocky demeanor soften a bit. Maryland stood barefoot and bleary-eyed with a mug of coffee cradled in her hands, her red hair an unruly mess from sleep. Marines on guard duty wandered in from the courtyard, their boots quieter than usual, helmets tucked under arms, rifles slung casually over shoulders. They didn’t speak. They simply stood and listened. Even Japanese hotel staff paused in their duties, folding hands in front of aprons or uniforms.

By the time the final chord faded into silence, a hush had settled over the lobby like a gentle snowfall. No one moved. No one dared to. For a brief and impossible moment, the war outside seemed suspended, as if the world itself had stopped to listen.

Then came the applause. It swelled slowly, spreading from hand to hand, heart to heart, until the entire room was filled with it: gratitude. Lexington blinked, startled by the reaction. A hint of pink bloomed on her cheeks as she stood, brushing her skirt with one hand and laughing softly, sheepishly. "That wasn’t supposed to be a performance." She said with an awkward smile, clearly caught off guard by the attention, but touched all the same.

Among the small crowd clapping stood a young woman in an aviator jacket and boots scuffed from too many base transfers. Lieutenant Geena Preddy, all smirk and swagger, popped her gum with perfect timing. Her short, wind-tossed hair and that unmistakable air of too-smart-for-her-own-good confidence marked her as someone used to managing chaos. She was part of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ public relations wing, a master of logistics, morale, and spinning stories into propaganda. But more than that, she was a born observer, and what she’d just seen was gold.

"Well, damn." She drawled with theatrical appreciation. "You’ve been hiding a lot from us, Miss Lex."

Lexington groaned under her breath, rubbing the back of her neck. "Don’t start, Geena…"

"No promises." Geena replied, grinning. "You don’t know what that just did for these folks. You gave them something more powerful than orders or speeches. You reminded them what peace sounds like. Just for a minute." She gestured around at the room, at soldiers standing a little straighter, civilians whose shoulders had relaxed, at faces that seemed momentarily younger. "This is the kind of thing that holds people together when everything else is falling apart."

Lexington chuckled with unfamiliar bashfulness. She had never wanted to be a symbol, but for once, she didn’t mind being part of something that made people feel lighter.

Zumwalt gave a small, satisfied nod as she watched Lexington ease back from the piano, the music’s echo still lingering faintly in the lobby air. The weight she’d been carrying seemed lighter now, if only slightly, and that was enough to draw a quiet sense of relief from Zumwalt herself. She turned to leave, her duty to presence and empathy fulfilled for the morning, only for her stomach to betray her in spectacular fashion with a guttural growl that echoed down the hallway. Pausing mid-step, she glanced down, one hand instinctively resting on her midsection. "Right." She muttered under her breath. "Time to feed the abyss."

The hotel’s modest restaurant, requisitioned and staffed under the watchful eye of Azur Lane’s expeditionary command, still retained the charm of civilian normalcy. Local Japanese workers bustled behind the counter, joined by a few sailors in aprons, logistics personnel doing double duty as cooks and waitstaff. But the moment Zumwalt entered, the air shifted. Conversations halted. Knives paused mid-chop. Heads turned like compass needles to true north. She sat and was given a menu book.

Then came the order.

And it was colossal. (That what she said)

One dish turned into three, then five, then a dozen. Rice bowls, grilled mackerel, curry plates stacked with pickled radish, yakitori skewers, udon, tempura, sashimi platters, and, because her stomach was clearly insubordinate, a double stack of buttered pancakes and a vanilla milkshake. The staff behind the counter froze, glancing nervously between each other like they were being pranked. A young waiter approached again, clutching his notepad as if it might protect him. "Ma’am... confirmation?" He asked hesitantly in broken English. "All... For one?"

Zumwalt glanced up from her tablet with a mild expression, then offered him a lopsided grin that bordered on playful. "That’s right. Shipgirl metabolism. You’re feeding a war machine kid."

The poor man nodded, face draining of color, and shuffled back to the kitchen like someone reporting to the captain of a sinking ship. The kitchen burst into immediate motion behind him, orders flying, pans clanging, burners flaring. Somewhere in the back, someone shouted "She asked for how many eggs?!"

Unbothered by the chaos she had wrought, Zumwalt leaned back in her chair, tablet in one hand and laptop open before her. Duty came first. Even on mornings like this. She combed through incoming combat logs and forward reports, ship damage from the last Siren skirmish, casualty summaries from the Osaka push, logistics spreadsheets from Sasebo's overworked docks. The 25th Infantry was bogged down in urban rubble and calling for more artillery support. She fix several weird looking numbers, flagged a faulty supply route near Kyoto, and sent a brief message to Commander Brandon requesting clarification on an allied fleet's last-known position.

When the reports were cleared, her hands moved toward something quieter, something older. She opened her diary.

It was a personal file, just her thoughts and the blinking cursor. She hesitated, fingers poised, then began to type.

She wrote of her strange and unreal journey, of a life that had defied erasure. Before Pearl Harbor, she had awoken in a human body, Zumwalt, a forgotten experiment, a ship that had been shelved and discarded in another world. Once deemed a failed project by her own creators, left to rust in obscurity. Then, summoned again to fight in the Third World War, before suddenly appears in another world with another war. Given new purpose in a war that didn’t belong to her old history. Reforged to fight not just in her world, but in another, against threats human and otherwise.

She chronicled the battles: the chaos of Pearl Harbor, where she helped turn the tide mere minutes after her arrival; the firestorms over Singapore, where her railguns cracked the sky as the Marines advancing, the burning forest of Indochina, where she flattened airbases and pulverized supply depots; the bloodied waters around Taiwan, where the fighting felt endless and the cost too steep. She’d make sure to remember the great sacrifice Thracian made in Hong Kong. And now, in the ashes of post-Downfall Japan, its cities torn between liberation and infestation, she’d found a strange sort of peace. There were still Sirens lurking in ruined Honshu or hell, freaking Hokkaido, still fires smoldering in places the world had forgotten. But between it all, there were quiet mornings, companions who understood, a bond forming with someone unexpected... With Thomas.

Her fingers slowed. The words came softer now.

'I was meant to be forgotten." She wrote. "A failed design. A miscalculation. But I’ve stood in places no ship was meant to sail, faced things that crawled out of nightmares, and I’m still here. Still me. Whoever brought me here, whoever decided my story wasn’t over, thank you. Because I have lived."

(Your welcome darling, you ready to fight Nazi?)

"Huh? Who says that?" Zumwalt see around and find nothing, then just shrugged.

She saved the entry and closed the diary just as the waitstaff returned, staggering under the weight of platters balanced with battlefield precision. It was less a breakfast and more an operation. One waiter whispered something about calling for reinforcements. Another carried a full rice cooker like it was a holy offering. Zumwalt looked up, eyes sparkling with anticipation, and smiled the kind of smile that made quartermasters lose sleep.

Then came the unmistakable thud of boots and the loud screech of a metal chair being dragged like it owed someone money.

She didn’t even need to look up.

Geo.

The tall, red-haired wreck of a woman stumbled into the chair across from her like a ship missing half its hull. Her uniform was half-buttoned, showing her cleavage and a bit of her breasts, her eyes glassy, and her posture a miracle of imbalance. She looked like she’d lost a fight with a distillery and then gone twelve rounds with a hangover turn human. "You alive?" Zumwalt asked dryly, not even pausing her scroll through a weather recon report.

Geo groaned as if the words physically pained her. "Just had a chat with the Reaper. He says hi. Think my liver’s defected to the other side."

Zumwalt raised an eyebrow. "And who told you to drink like you’re trying to forget the Mariana Trench?"

Geo just flopped her head onto the table, voice muffled by wood and regret. "My past decisions were made under the influence of optimism and bad ideas. Shut up."

After a beat, she tilted her head slightly, cracking one eye open to glance at Zumwalt. 'So... how’s the corruption?"

Zumwalt let out a slow breath. "Skip the part where you ignore my question and pretend we’re back on track, huh?'

Geo groaned again. " Just answer, railgun girl."

Zumwalt leaned back, arms crossed, expression unreadable for a moment before softening. "Couple sharp stings. Pulses of something like static crawling through my arms. Some days it burns. Other days, it’s just noise in the background. Nothing that knocks me out, yet." She offered a wry smirk. "Thomas says it makes me look ‘exotic.’ Like some tragic noble lady from a pulp novel."

Geo snorted through her elbow. "Yeah, real sexy. Black veins and enough radiation to boil coffee. Very tragic. Very noble."

Zumwalt narrowed her eyes. "You and your little circus almost ruined my date, you know."

Geo made a vague gesture that could’ve been an apology or just muscle failure. "We were rooting for you two. But someone had to break the will-they-won’t-they loop before it got embarrassing."

Zumwalt muttered something sharp in another language, possibly cursing her entire lineage, then flicked a paper chopstick sleeve at Geo’s forehead. It bounced off with a soft plip, and Geo didn’t even flinch. She was too far gone to care.

Still, there was no heat behind the exchange. Only the familiar rhythm of friendship, the kind forged in bunkers, bolstered by shared trauma, and maintained by insults sharp enough to cut steel. And as the kitchen doors swung open and tray after tray emerged, their surfaces piled high with enough food to supply a company, Zumwalt finally sat up straighter, letting the scent wash over her like a second sunrise. For a moment, even Geo lifted her head, sniffing the air with slow reverence.

Zumwalt cracked her knuckles and grinned.

...
.....

Up in the mist-veiled hills overlooking the outskirts of Kyoto, the campaign had long since shed the structure of formal warfare. What was left now was raw attrition, grimy, cruel, and unforgiving. Rain mixed with blood in the muddy trenches carved between ruined shrines and shattered stone lanterns, and every inch of ground was a battlefield. Polish volunteer companies, hardened by years of insurgent warfare in a Europe that had long since burned, fought shoulder to shoulder with weathered Gurkha units, their movements sharp, deliberate, and deadly. Their opponents were no longer just Imperial diehards, but fanatics and aberrations, Japanese troops twisted by Siren influence, and the Sirens themselves, lurking like phantoms in the urban sprawl of a city that once stood as a symbol of serenity. Now, Kyoto was a fractured corpse of its former self, riddled with booby-trapped alleyways, sacred temples repurposed into kill-boxes, and sanctuaries turned slaughterhouses. Combat here was neither glorious nor distant; it was personal, brutal, and fought at breath’s length, ambushes in burnt-out monasteries, mines planted beneath cherry trees, and knife fights waged in the shadows of collapsing pagodas.

At the center of this sprawling resistance network stood Lieutenant Commander Duncan, the SEAL Operator from the future. In the span of months, he had carved a reputation among the Expeditionary Forces, first during the savage defense of Bangka Belitung, then in the bitter fighting across Sumatra. Now, he commanded one of the most unconventional operations in the theatre, a ghost war, waged in the haunted heart of Honshu.

Caked in grime and ash, Duncan stood atop a mud-slicked ridge, his uniform indistinguishable from the terrain, save for the faint sheen of sweat on his brow. He stared into the shifting feed of a hovering recon drone, lobster-shaped and barely larger than a lunchbox, as it crawled along the shattered edge of an ancient pagoda. Its adaptive camouflage shimmered faintly as it adjusted its position, offering him a clear, panoramic view of the city’s ruined arteries. What he saw made his jaw tighten. Kyoto was no longer a city. It was a maze of traps and fortified pain, a place where beauty had been sacrificed on the altar of desperation. The Sirens had infested it like a cancer, threading their machinery through its bones, and their sympathizers, brainwashed remnants of the Imperial military, had laid kill zones with such cruel precision that even his seasoned combat engineers hesitated to advance.

"Fucking fortress." He muttered, biting the inside of his cheek. Cities like this unsettled him, places that once held peace and meaning, now reduced to tombs with walls. Ancient stones and modern death, welded together by madness.

Down below, the Gurkhas moved like wraiths through the mist, their kukris whispering death in the dark. They struck with such terrifying silence that only the aftermath gave proof of their presence, fallen bodies, slit throats, and blood painting the walls. The Polish volunteers, meanwhile, brought with them the weary fury of soldiers who had already lost one world. Adaptable, fierce, and unrelenting, they laid explosives with surgical intent, held impossible positions with grit alone, and whispered prayers to saints that no longer answered. And though many didn’t know where Duncan came from, or how he could speak Polish and Nepali with native fluency, they followed his lead without hesitation. He was one of them. He fought like them. And in a war like this, origin didn’t matter. Effectiveness did.

In truth, Duncan didn’t fully understand this world, not yet. The girls who wielded naval firepower on their backs, the talking birds made of metal and attitude, the surreal presence of creatures that looked like mascots but flew reconnaissance like professional scouts, it all felt like a hallucination carved from the fever dreams of a tactician. But war? War was his language. War was his life. Whether it was insurgency in an urban wasteland or clandestine strikes beneath alien skies, Duncan understood the rhythm of violence and the calculus of survival. And here, in this strange and broken timeline, that understanding made him invaluable.

As the low rumble of distant artillery drifted through the trees and the drone picked up movement near a Siren-occupied shrine, its ornate torii gate now blackened and cracked, Duncan keyed his radio. He transmitted coordinates in a calm, clipped tone, calling in a precision strike from a nearby support unit. The response was brief: a single, distant thoom, then silence... then a brilliant flash and the collapse of a structure that had once held prayers. The enemy strongpoint was gone. Duncan watched the smoke coil upward like a ritual offering and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

They were close now. Kyoto loomed just ahead, half-rotted, half-defiant. The prize was within reach, but it would demand clever hands and iron will to take it intact. One wrong move, and they’d reduce it to rubble. But with the right pressure, the right momentum, the right balance of strategy and sacrifice, it could be liberated.

Duncan squared his shoulders and checked the feed again, eyes scanning for the next soft spot to press.

Days slipped by, each one dragging behind it the weight of worsening conditions and frayed nerves. The war around Kyoto had ground into something cruel and unrelenting. Duncan, never one to flinch in the face of escalation, had already turned the outer districts into smoldering scars. He’d unleashed a symphony of destruction, napalm rains, cluster payloads, seismic bunker busters, obliterating Siren strongholds with a level of aggression that made even veteran commanders flinch. Entire hillsides had been reshaped into craters, sacred grounds turned into fire-blasted kill zones. In one particularly savage episode, when a Siren armored battalion managed to push through a breach in the western perimeter, Duncan had radioed in a Broken Arrow. A full saturation strike on his own grid square. The decision was instantaneous, the effect was absolute. Fire rained down, metal screamed, and the battlefield went silent, just long enough for his battered units to hold the line. It was hell, but it worked. For a moment, it felt like progress. For a moment, victory seemed possible through sheer brute force.

And then the ceasefire order came down like a thunderclap from an indifferent god.

The Japanese delegation within Azur Lane, composed of traditionalists, scholars, and battle-hardened moderates, had pleaded with High Command to stay their hand. Kyoto, they argued, was not just a strategic node but the cultural soul of Japan. The city’s temples, shrines, and ancient relics weren’t merely stone and wood, they were the living history of a people. Flattening it would not just win the war but salt the earth from which the future was meant to grow. High Command, after what Duncan could only imagine was a yelling match full of questionable metaphors about each other’s maternal ancestry, reluctantly agreed.

That was the moment the nature of the campaign changed, from a war to a puzzle, from annihilation to a slow, bleeding chess match.

Now Duncan, a war dog from a timeline that had nearly torn itself apart in a three-way deathmatch between the U.S., Russia, and China, was being asked to fight with one arm tied behind his back. Every step had to be measured, every target vetted, every strike justified in triplicate. Meanwhile, to the south, none other than General Douglas MacArthur himself, was spearheading a parallel advance through the Kansai Basin. The plan was to link their forces near what remained of the Imperial Palace, ideally surrounding the last Siren redoubt within the city. But both commanders were handcuffed by preservation protocols. Every ricochet was a risk. Every misplaced mortar could become a political firestorm. The war hadn’t become less deadly, just more fragile, more exhausting. And far more personal.

In the shattered skeleton of what had once been a shrine-turned-command post, Duncan stood hunched over a table cluttered with drone captures and intercepted transmissions. His eyes scanned grainy infrared stills and annotated maps, the flickering light of an oil lamp casting long shadows across the war-worn tent. The frustration radiating off him was almost tangible. He hadn’t slept in over forty hours, and the static of field comms was grating on his nerves like sandpaper on bone. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, scowled, and muttered through clenched teeth as he lit a cigarette with the same hand that once strangled a Siren operative with her own rigging cables.

"Now we gotta win a damn war with kid gloves on." He said, exhaling a bitter stream of smoke. "Great. Just fucking great."

Then, like a miracle wrapped in diesel and steel, salvation arrived.

The distant hum of engines soon gave way to a thunderous roar as tanks crested the icy ridgeline, Shermans and Hellcats, some retrofitted with newer gun after taking technology blueprints from Zumwalt. They rolled forward, their armor bearing graffiti and slogans, some boasting rows of painted kill marks, others sporting pin-up decals and scrawled names of hometowns. Marines and Army regulars hung off the sides, howling into the cold wind, their boots thudding against hulls in rhythm with the heartbeat of war. The vehicles were battered but alive, carrying not just firepower and ammo but medics, rations, and a badly needed shot of morale.

And they didn’t come alone.

Perched atop several of the tanks were Japanese nationalist fighters, resistance holdouts loyal to Kaga, the proud and enigmatic former carrier who now stood as one of Japan’s strongest voices in the Azur Lane coalition. Clad in a mix of Imperial and modern gear, these men and women had the look of people who had lost everything and were ready to take it all back, one blood-soaked district at a time.

Duncan stepped outside into the icy air, the wind biting at his skin as he watched the armored column snake down the mountain pass. He took one long drag of his cigarette, then flicked the smoldering stub into the snow.

"Well... looks like the cavalry’s here." He murmured, a rare smile breaking across his face.

...
....

February 10, 1942.

The air inside Admiral Halsey’s temporary headquarters in Fukuoka was thick with smoke and strain, the kind that settled into the skin and stayed there. The once-ceremonial government building, now converted into a field office, had become the nerve center of the Allied advance into Japan. Its walls were papered with maps annotated in pencil and grease marker, red rings for confirmed Siren fortifications, blue arrows for advancing allies columns, green dots for Japanese resistance cells sympathetic to Azur Lane and old Government. Amid it all, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey stood behind his desk like a statue carved from sea salt and wrath, fingers rhythmically tapping a folder labeled "Kyoto, Priority Operations."

When Zumwalt entered, the room was already steeped in tense conversation. She saluted crisply out of habit, but her posture relaxed just slightly upon spotting General Maxwell of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division at the far end of the room. They had summoned her not for ceremony, but for insight. Already, the talk was shifting between troop redeployments, reconstruction planning for reclaimed towns, and the diplomatic minefield of administering a post-occupation Japan.

But before the conversation could gain momentum, the door creaked open again, softly, but with enough presence to halt all discussion.

In walked a girl no older in appearance than a junior high student, her small frame seemingly out of place amid the towering brass and steel of Allied command. Long black hair, pristine and symmetrical in an hime-cut, framed a porcelain face. Fox ears twitched atop her head, and twin tails swayed behind her in time with her steps. She wore the traditional red-and-white garb of a shrine maiden, the miko robes of a forgotten time, untouched by soot or war. It was not merely anachronistic, it was symbolic. She was Nagato, the Guuji of the Japanese Empire's Shipgirls, once hailed as a living war god, now walking into the heart of her former enemy’s command unguarded.

She bowed deeply, her voice calm and clear, tinged with the archaic elegance of classical Japanese. "Mine presence hath been summoned. I come to lend mine counsel, should it be welcomed."

No one questioned her entrance. They all knew why she was here. Nagato had been instrumental in negotiating the partial surrender of the Japanese Empire’s remnants, a process that began not through diplomacy but through her own capture, ambushed by a combined elite Azur Lane strike team and forced into negotiations under duress. The terms had been desperate: shipgirls of the Japanese Empire would not be tried for war crimes, provided they aided in the campaign against the Sirens. It was a bitter pill, swallowed out of necessity. But now that Azur Lane occupied Japanese soil, that agreement was beginning to wear thin.

General Maxwell stepped forward, arms folded, a permanent scowl etched into his weathered face. "Every atrocity, intentional or not, demands consequence." He said, his tone clipped and cold. "We lost good men. Pearl Harbor didn’t bomb itself. Nanking didn’t burn itself to the ground. Someone pulled the trigger."

Nagato didn’t flinch, but a flicker of pain crossed her face, gone as quickly as it came. Her tails stilled, and she lowered her gaze, voice quiet but steady. "We hath not denied our trespasses, General. Yet I beseech thee, know that not all who fought bore willing hearts. Some were slaves to madness, others to duty. The Sirens sowed chaos deep within our souls. Still, we stand here not in defiance, but to atone... Not through chains, but through service."

Her words hung in the air, a fragile offering in a room full of men who had seen too much to believe in easy forgiveness. The tension spiked. For a long, charged moment, it seemed the conversation would collapse under the weight of bitterness and grief.

But then Halsey stepped in, his voice rough like gravel dragged across iron but strangely composed. "That’s enough, General. We’re not here to rewrite the past, hell, we’re barely holding on to the present. The Sirens twisted more than steel. They twisted minds, turned friends against kin. This isn’t about who gets the noose, it’s about ending this war before there's no one left to hang."

His words cut through the atmosphere like a cold wind, not erasing the anger in the room, but at least giving it form. Silence followed, but not the kind of silence that killed conversation, this one let things settle.

Maxwell’s jaw clenched for a few more seconds, then he exhaled and gave a reluctant nod. "We’ll proceed. But this isn’t the end of that conversation. There’s still a reckoning to come."

With that, he turned and walked out, boots striking the floor with sharp finality as the door clicked shut behind him.

The room breathed again.

Zumwalt glanced at Halsey, giving him a subtle nod of acknowledgment, not agreement, but understanding. He returned the gesture with a gruff grunt, already turning his attention back to the maps. Nagato remained still for a moment longer, her expression unreadable, but her spine a little straighter. She said nothing more. She didn’t need to. The war was far from over. But so long as voices like hers still fought for peace, there was still something worth saving.

TBC.

Sorry for not updating for a long time, got caught up with College and all.