Kantai Collection: Death Throes

Prologue: Guideline Changes

"So, Yo, Ka, where are you right now?" Miss Lycoris asks through her communicator as she waits at the docks alongside Felicia and the others.

"We're near the Japanese docks. We're surfacing right now!" Yo's voice crackles and a few seconds after the three Abyssal submarines surface and they flop onto the docks. Ka takes off her respirator as she slowly gets on her feet, and Yo and So tiredly climb out of their riggings, lacking the strength to even sit up.

"Oh my god..." Ka mumbles as she nearly collapses, and Felicia catches her.

"What did you guys see?" Felicia asks.

"We found your admiral and Kongou..." Yo begins. "But there was something just... Wrong. Once we can regain our strength we'll explain in full... Oh god I'm so exhausted... How about you?" She asks So.

"Not faring any better than you... We all had to split up to make sure that... THING didn't follow us..." So replies.

"...Thing?" Vinh asks, but he cuts himself off to allow the Abyssal submarines to recover. Fortunately it only takes a few minutes, and once the submarines have recovered they find themselves sitting in the fleet admiral's office, with Yo and So carrying their riggings like backpacks.

"I'm glad that you three made it back safely." The fleet admiral says. "What did you find?"

"Well, we found the admiral and Kongou but beforehand our sonar couldn't even detect them." So begins. "We only found them by this sheer coincidence." She continues, showing everyone the broken off radar wing she found.

"That's a part of Kongou's headband..." Hiei says. "You said you found this floating nearby them?"

"That was our only clue." So replies. "But it was enough of a clue to successfully find them."

"Once we found them though... We sensed a strange, evil aura coming from their bodies." Yo adds. "We found them in a tight embrace, like they had hugged one another for dear life."

"That's exactly what happened before they completely sunk..." Vinh says, their last words echoing in his head.

"Teitoku... I'm scared... I don't want to let go..." Kongou's last words words seem to echo around the room as the bitter memories and the tragic visions flood Vinh's mind: her teary eyes, how tight they had hugged each other...

How proud Bismarck looked knowing she had gotten her "revenge"...

"Vinh? Are you okay?" The fleet admiral asks.

"Oh... Uh, yeah I'm fine." Vinh replies. "Just some thoughts plaguing my mind."

"Are you thinking about what happened that day?" Miss Lycoris asks, gently putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess I am." Vinh replies. "Please continue Yo."

"Are you sure? You don't look all right..." Yo asks, concerned for Vinh. "I guess I'll continue... Anyways when we found Jack and Kongou, this aura... I'm not sure if I could completely describe it, it was like a whole flood of emotions like anger and whatnot, and then we heard it."

"Heard what?" Linh asks.

"I though it was a trick of the ears but we heard a pair of strange voices out of nowhere, and the three of us were dead silent at the time." Ka replies. "The first one sounded something like "Teitoku... Don't let go..." And then the second one came literally seconds after, something like "I won't let go..." And then after THAT we saw them changing..."

"Changing?!" Miss Lycoris asks. "You mean to tell me they turned right away?"

"No, it was nothing like what we're familiar with..." So replies. "It was much worse... Kongou's body started to drip, like she was melting into Jack... And then he started melting into her and the last thing we noticed before we scrambled was their eyes... They glowed with a strange glow that we had never seen before... Something is down there and it wants nothing more than to kill..."

"Dear god..." The admirals say, and an uncomfortable silence permeates the fleet admiral's quarters, nobody sure of what to say next.