Legends

Chapter 9~Normandie Discovers Fanfiction

Normandie would admit she was still new to this whole shipgirl thing. Emphasis on "girl!" There was still so much she wanted to discover and was discovering about herself every day! One of the first things she did was research several books on how to best be a girl and it devolved from there. Now her room was stuffed with shelves and shelves of books, like a miniature library. She had a bit of everything, from Titanic novels to the entire Warrior series and anything in between. Her current project lay with the Harry Potter books. She was currently working on Order of the Phoenix. But reading out of a book was the last thing she had in mind today. Because in her research she had come across the most wonderful website! It was called FanFiction and Harry Potter fics were quite popular there. Normandie didn't want spoilers so she set the filters accordingly. So far, she had gotten through the entire angst, friendship, and humor sections. And today she was going to delve into romance. She set the perimeters accordingly, not realizing that because she was considered an adult that a certain set of filters were off.

The first twenty results compromised something called a slash-fic. Normandie had never come across a word like that before and she loved solving a mystery. Curious, she clicked on the first result and began to read.

...

2 hours later and she was still at it, dumbfounded, in awe and what was that collecting on her keyboard, was that drool. She wiped it away, making a mental note to bring napkins the next time she logged on. "This is-wow!" She breathed. "I wonder what the art is like?"

Another 2 hours and Normandie still had only barely scratched the surface. She would have loved to just stay in here and continue her 'research' but a knock on her door put an end to that fantasy. She logged off and closed her computer, grabbing her stuff and meeting Tegran on the shooting range.

The captain noticed her drifting attentions. "Normandie, are you alright?"

"Hmm, I'm fine Captain." Normandie offered a grin that she hoped was more confident than she felt. Inside she was squirming. "Tegran would not be pleased if she knew what pleasures I had discovered." The captain was old fashioned, much like the handful of ocean liners from the previous generation that Normandie had known, Aquitania notably among them. "Grumpy old granny. Who put a stick up her..." Normandie muttered.

"What was that?" Tegran asked curiously.

"Nothing!" Normandie quickly readied her rigging for shooting.

Her first salvo wasn't the best but it was an improvement over last time. When she'd seen the battleships go out on firing exercises she'd thought "that's easy. I could do that in my sleep." She no longer thought that. Gunnery practice was HARD! It was harder than backing into your dock in the middle of winter with ice all around without the help of tugs!

Grumbling, Normandie readied her guns again. Range was difficult for her, despite her impressive finders. She was having a hard time learning it, despite the fact that all her instructions had been given to her in French, to make it easier for her fairies to read. She adjusted her position and fired again. Three targets went up in smoke.

"MMMOOOOIIIIII!" "OOOIIIIIII!" Cheered two fairies simultanously! One was standing on Tegran's shoulder and looking across at the other fairy with some kind of conspiratorial grin. Judging his position nicely, he leaped from Tegran to Normandie and the two fairies exchanged notes. Then the British fairy returned to Tegran who face palmed, grumbling something under her breath.

"Nice shooting." She said. "I hope you can keep that up for the exercise tomorrow." With that she walked away, the fairy on her shoulder lowering himself down for balance.

Normandie looked at her own fairy. It was her designer Vladimir Yourkevitch and he was going through the notes he'd received, every now and then making a "moi" grunt. He looked contemplative and Normandie could only wonder what he was looking at. "May I?" She asked. He looked at her, gave her that same conspiratorial grin and disappeared back inside. Normandie grumbled, not used to being told off by her own crew. Just what were fairies up to?! She figured the only way to find out was to talk to Tegran. "Moi!" And apparently her fairies agreed... were they playing matchmaker?!

Normandie would admit she did have some interested in the captain. And if her fairies approved, well. She'd need to go on the offensive. A pretty lady like Tegran would not remain single for long. As she brainstormed for ideas she remembered that a certain American holiday was coming up. Well, it was time to go back to her room and conduct some research into this "Valentine's Day".