Our Bonds (A Kantai Collection Fanfic) (Remastered)

Chapter 32: Exercise #1

"Ooyodo, start the exercise."

"Roger. Blue 1 and Red 1, begin the exercise!" (Ooyodo)

A green signal flare flew up high into the sky, signaling the start of the first exercise.

"Alright! Follow the great me!" (Tenryuu)

"Ufufufu~ Tenryuu_chan, let's do our best." (Tatsuta)

A total of twelve fleets, blue team and red team, will face off with one another. Only the winner will advance up the bracket. For simplicity's sake, the fleets will be named based on their assigned color and exercise number. Of course, two teams with the same assigned color can fight each other if they meet up the ladder. Although the purpose for this district-wide exercise was just to collect data on their current prowess, it's not fun fighting for the sake of it. So I made it a tourney. The top 3 teams will get a prize.

Blue 1 consists of Tenryuu, Tatsuta, Mogami, Kawakaze, Miyuki and Satsuki. Red 1 features Tama, Kuma, Fubuki, Kamikaze, Mutsuki and Yuudachi. Apart from fighting each other, both fleets will have unexpected encounters. I say 'unexpected', but all of them know what is going to happen. Since there are only two things that can occur, either an air raid or a submarine encounter.

"Picking me was a good choice-kuma!" (Kuma)

"You want Tama to lend a hand? Can't be helped then-nya..." (Tama)

Both fleets advance towards each other. The rules are simple. The fleet to take out most, if better, all of the opposing team wins. The training rounds they are using are filled with paint. The amount of paint on each shipgirl represents the damage they received and where they were hit. For example, if Tenryuu's head gets covered entirely in paint, it represents destruction to her bridge. A shot to the leg represents damage to their rudder, heart means engine room, and so on and so forth. Depending on where they were shot, they colored flag raised determines their current status. They have to slow down or shut down their engines whenever Ooyodo says so. Ooyodo is on-site, refereeing the battle and giving out the status of the shipgirls.

"Mogami, time to launch a bird!" (Tenryuu)

"Now we're talking!" (Mogami)

Mogami pointed her flight catapult to the front and launched a Type 0 recon seaplane. On the other side of the field, Tama and Kuma both launched their own Type 2 Seaplane Fighters. As expected, both sides are using seaplanes to scout out the enemy's location. A standard tactic. Mogami will obtain Air Superiority this round. Mogami has 5 Type 0 Recon Seaplanes and 6 Zuiuns while both Tama and Kuma have only 1 Type 2 Seaplane Fighter Kai each.

"Enemy planes discovered!" (Mogami)

Mogami's Recon plane got shot down by the 2 opposing seaplane fighters.

"Hey! You will pay for that!" (Mogami)

"Satsuki, you're up!" (Tenryuu)

"My battle is starting!" (Satsuki)

The two Seaplane Fighters entered their firing range. Aiming upwards, Satsuki fired her machine guns. She managed to take both down. Now Red 1 is plane-less.

"How nice. That looks fun." (Zuihou)

Zuihou looked at the monitor in envy. She is still sulking.

"Oh come on. It's not like you won't get to fight. Just need to wait another 5 rounds. And you get to launch some planes during the third round."

I placed Zuihou in Blue 6 and put her on bomber duty to assist Blue 3 for the 'unexpected encounter that round. She is not happy with this arrangement. She kept bugging me to put her in the earlier brackets so that she can have fun earlier but I rejected it.