Azur Lane Chronicles

Chapter 1

 It was a cold day to be standing outside. It was the midst of the winter season, and the weather was making that very clear. Any of the cliches of the cold weather were very evident as I stood there. I could see my breath, it whipped around me, I could feel the chill creep closer and closer to my skin through my leather jacket. Had the rain begun to come down, it would've fallen to the earth as powdered snow. Thankfully that it had been a clear day, with the sun trying its best to warm up the area as it struggled to keep the temperature even close to freezing point. Everything suggested I should've gone for somewhere warm or for someplace that at least had an outdoor heater that would've been plugged in.

But it was tradition to stand out by the port and wait. It was a sign of the fact that I was one of them. Like a dog staring out the front window as their parents come home, it also has a symbolism of the fact I missed them and that I was happy that not only they were back, but that they were safe and unhurt. In fact, I had bought the leather bomber jacket from a shop in town with the thought of waiting for them in any weather. Cold, sleet, or blizzard I would wait for them to come back into port.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket with my gloved hands and checked the time. I had been told they should be back by this time. A very small worry began to grow in the pit of my stomach. The mission had been a very simple and non-dangerous job, but out on the seas these days, anything could happen. I still remember the day the news broke all over the world when a group of aliens arrived on Earth, calling themselves Sirens. It was something I genuinely felt like the end was truly near as if the book of Revelations began to glow in every Bible on Earth. I had immediately begun to look into them, as they had a familiarity not many people would see. As I did my research, I found out that they had been a carbon copy of the game I played on my phone. Just like in real-life and in my game, they were the enemy of humanity. With the transitive property in mind, I decided to look if the weapon humanity had used in the game also was around. Sure enough, the Sirens had been countered since the first day they had landed on Earth with a navy of highly trained weapons.

It was weird realizing that ship girls were real and not a figment of my imagination anymore. I had spent years and thousands of dollars on the game that had become a way for me to truly feel at peace when the world began to turn on me, nearly daring me to go into the grave they were digging for me. I had spent so much time with them, it was almost as if it was real to me despite them being only 2D sprites and lacking any true emotion. But the day I figured out they were real, I immediately began to push hard to try and see if I could do my dream and join their cause.

It was the most grueling four weeks of my life, and I saw many people not make it through the rigorous process. I would be a flat-out liar if I didn't think that at moments during the training, I felt like my dream was falling through my fingers right in front of me. But the last two weeks I worked my ass off, and I did it so hard that I was able to finish near the top of the class and was given the ability to pick my shipgirls that I would be with.

I had thought that the job was going to be as it had said on the form. I would be the guy to help repair and update the girls with their rigging as they fought in battles, where they would inevitably receive damage and need repairs when returning to port. But as I had gone through the training and the conversations I had with those already through the training, it was half mechanic, half boyfriend.

With only mechanics and the higher naval personnel the only ones past the walls where the port, dorms, and restaurants were for those in the base,it was no surprise the girls had gotten lonely and needed the love and care of the opposite sex from time to time. There was more than one story from those I had spoken with of the length some girls had gone to try and woo certain mechanics to pick them or to try and do extracurricular activities on the side of their other jobs.