Redemption

Lost And Found (Old Version)

Normally when I'm woken up by someone this early there's usually gunshots going off and impact tremors being felt from just a short distance away and the other times are usually when the commander wakes up the base to give out some important information on a future attack, and when neither occurs he's fair and lets us sleep in an hour longer than most commanders would allow.

So imagine my surprise when his maid Belfast shows up at the dormitories and asks three of us to get ready and report to the docks at 0800 to receive further instructions and only us three.

I stretched my arms behind my back once again, feeling them strain with the tension and I let out a slight moan as I heard a few satisfying pops sound off before bringing them back to my sides.

I looked over our small company, my hair was a little frazzled from the quick seven minute shower I took and my uniform was a little ruffled but I could fix that later, Washington let out a bit of a yawn as her hands buttoned up the only one on the shirt giving her any sense of decency while she had the belt usually wrapped around her torso hung on one arm and the jacket she usually wore loosely around her shoulders on the other.

And Vestal, she looked like she had just gotten out of bed, she had her eyes barely open as she wiped at them weakly and she was still dressed in a nightgown and slippers with her normal uniform folded and tucked under the arm she held across her chest, clearly she had been woken from what was a very deep and comfortable sleep.

Which was a sight more than what I could say for my sleep had been restless over the past couple of days, there hasn't been an attack from the Iron blood or Sakura Empire factions for over a week and a siren ship hasn't been seen for even longer than that and that left me worried and uneasy, they usually didn't pull something like this unless they were planning something and I would rather rest easy than live in fear of the unknown.

We continued our way across the base until we spotted the commander and Belfast waiting for us at the entrance to the harbor through the fog, both in their usual uniforms, we made our way over to them and stopped in a line in front of them where I stood at attention and saluted him, Washington quickly tied her belt tight and raised to attention with her coat still in the other arm.

Vestal raised her hand to her forehead very limply before dropping it back down again, commander looked at her very sternly and she seemed to consider it before sighing and reluctantly standing at attention, he then looked satisfied and saluted back at all of us before putting us at ease.

"That'll do for now, I guess," he said before asking "Alright, now you're all probably wondering why I called you three specifically here before everyone else."

I scoffed and said "Darn right, I just don't see what it could be that didn't require everyone to be here when you could have just waited till everybody got up at eight-o-clock?"

"Well under normal circumstances it wouldn't but it just so happens that these are not normal circumstances," he paused, "We have a new ship girl on our hands."

That grabbed my attention and by the looks of things it grabbed the others too but it wasn't anything new, "Ok, so? What about there being a new ship girl would require us to be here before anyone else?"

He looked over at me specifically, "From what we understand, she's a VC2-S-AP1 Victory Ship, a cargo ship," well that's not that special save for-.

"Wait, what?!"

I looked closely at his face to see if there was any humor to it to see if it was all just a big joke, there wasn't any, I looked back at the other two who were looking at me with the same confused look including Vestal who had any sleep wiped from her face as her eyes were wide and questioning, I looked back at the commander.