Putting the frazzled Sirius to bed turned out to be surprisingly easy.
Stress had finally knocked her out.
Ulyanovsk had to fuss a bit to find her something to sleep in, eventually settling on a plain white T-shirt.
Even though it was baggy on him, it clung tightly to the girl’s chest.
Still, it was a lot less constricting than her maid uniform.
The cruiser gave it two, maybe three days before the fabric stretched out completely and he wouldn’t be able to wear it anymore.
He could have given her a standard button-up shirt, but he didn’t want to wake up to the sound of popping buttons flying across the room like shrapnel.
Leaving the Kansen to sleep under the watchful eyes of a pair of Marine-sprite snipers, Ulyanovsk returned to the care package from Command.
Thanks to his nuclear propulsion plant, his endurance dwarfed that of normal Kanmusu.
He could easily skip sleep for a couple of days with zero side effects.
So, he decided to put the night to good use.
“Alright, what’s the verdict?” he asked the pilot-fairies of his air wing.
The sprites, dressed in tiny orange flight suits, swarmed around the twelve assembled and painted jet models, squeaking excitedly.
“What do you mean, ‘it won’t fly’?” Ulyanovsk raised an eyebrow.
“These birds flew just fine off the carrier training rig.” The commander of the first bomber squadron stepped forward, poked a tiny finger at the cruiser, and squeaked a highly important-sounding lecture in her native tongue.
“Yeah, I know those catapults used dummy weights.
Excuse me if the country’s fresh out of live anti-ship missiles for target practice.
They won’t give us the Oniks missiles until they figure out the suspension nodes.” The fairy squealed again, jabbing her finger at him.
“What do you mean, why do we need a stealth fighter?” Ulyanovsk sighed.
“With the same weight parameters, it carries way more payload!
The low radar signature is just a nice bonus!
So I’m asking you again: will it fly or not?
I already know we’re going to dunk a couple in the drink figuring it out.” The fairies burst into an indignant uproar, waving their tiny arms frantically.
“Look, I already know there’s no point launching these off a ski-jump ramp like the good old Su-33s.
And I have zero desire to sit in a tactical classroom listening to retired Air Force generals and historical reenactors tell me how to launch carrier aviation.
You can throw all their lectures in the trash the moment you hit the open ocean.” Ulyanovsk dragged a hand down his face.
“Just activate them.” The flight crews and deck crews took their places around the prepped Su-57s.
After a meticulous final inspection, the fairies gave their carrier the green light.
Focusing his mind, Ulyanovsk tried to manifest the sensation of the jets resting on his flight deck.
It felt a bit like forming his very first air wing—back when he had to visit the rusting, rotting hull of his sister-ship in a Murmansk drydock to get a feel for it.
But this time, he wasn’t weighed down by the depressing aura of a dead giant.
This was a brand-new fighter-bomber.
“I have a link,” Ulyanovsk said, feeling the phantom weight of twelve machines settle onto his shoulders.
The tiny pilots scrambled into the cockpits.
The jet engines whined to life, the tail fins twitched, and one by one, the plastic models were enveloped in a blinding white glow.
A few minutes later, the jets were gone.
In their place on the workbench lay twelve plastic cards, each bearing the image of an Su-57 in flight.
Right as the metamorphosis finished, a loud female yelp echoed from the bedroom, followed by the muffled thud of something soft hitting wood.
“Don’t tell me someone else fell out of the wardrobe,” Ulyanovsk muttered, rushing down the hall.
He found his guest sitting on the floor, frantically looking around like a cornered animal.
“Morning,” he greeted her.
Thankfully, she quickly remembered where she was, sparing the cruiser from having to pacify a panicking British warship.
“Everything okay?” Ulyanovsk highly doubted the faint whine of miniature jet engines in a closed workshop could have woken a sleeping Kanmusu.
And even if her radars worked differently, WWII-era sensors wouldn’t pick up micro-targets over the massive, blinding radar return of his own hull.
“I…” The girl dropped her gaze guiltily.
The cruiser’s eyes followed hers, landing on the torn blanket.
The pieces of the puzzle clicked together.
“Your handiwork?” he sighed, pointing at the shredded bedding.
“I will fix it!” Sirius scrambled to her feet.
Apparently, she had woken up tangled in the blanket, panicked when she didn’t recognize her surroundings, and decided to free herself using the most direct and violent method available.
Ulyanovsk couldn’t really blame her for anything other than property damage; he would have done the exact same thing.
“Just don’t flash your stern, please,” Ulyanovsk said, walking over to the cursed wardrobe to find her something for the day.
The Kansen hastily pulled down the hem of the T-shirt, covering her exposed thighs.
Considering how the T-shirt had morphed overnight, Ulyanovsk approached the wardrobe with a bit more caution.
Not that he had much to choose from.
“Blue or black?” he asked.
“But I have my uniform…” “You seriously planning to strut around the house in that?” The guy shot a look at the maid outfit folded on the desk.
“Save it for when the portal takes you home.
Besides, it’ll save us both a lot of awkward questions if a courier in a black SUV shows up unannounced with deployment orders.” He tossed her one of his Adidas tracksuits.
“Bathroom’s where it was yesterday.” Sirius nodded, looking down at the black tracksuit with its three iconic white stripes.
“Perfect.
I left some toiletries for you on the washing machine.
Holler if you need anything.
I’ll be in the kitchen making breakfast,” Ulyanovsk said, shutting the wardrobe.
“Any preferences?” “Something light, if possible.” Nodding, the guy grabbed a small wooden lockbox from the shelf and left the room.
Sirius was left alone, completely unaware of the two Marine-sprites hidden in the juniper pot on the windowsill, currently operating a fully functional observation post.
*** Once alone, Sirius let out a long breath.
She placed the tracksuit on the bed and approached the wardrobe with a glimmer of hope.
Unfortunately, her dresses weren’t inside.
Neither was the missing back panel that had dropped her into this strange, yet familiar world.
All she saw were standard men’s clothes, the kind she usually saw when cleaning the commanding officers’ quarters.
Falling asleep last night, she had desperately hoped it was all a bad dream.
She had wanted to wake up in her own bed and return to her duties as an obedient, responsible maid.
But waking up on the floor of an unfamiliar room—and feeling a strange tightness across her chest—confirmed that her wish hadn’t been granted.
She had no idea how or why the Sirens would isolate her from the Royal Navy.
All she could do was hope her sisters wouldn’t declare her AWOL and would dig up the truth.
Her Majesty’s fleet never abandoned its own.
Knocking lightly on the solid wood of the wardrobe’s back wall, Sirius sighed sadly, closed the doors, and sat on the bed.
There was no point starting the day with negative thoughts, and keeping her host waiting was simply bad manners.
“It seems some things truly are universal across parallel worlds,” a faint smile touched the Kansen’s lips as she took a closer look at the tracksuit.
Avrora from the Northern Parliament used to wear something exactly like this when visiting Scapa Flow.
For some inexplicable reason, this legendary brand of clothing—originally from the Iron Blood empire—granted the Northern girls almost artifact-level powers when worn.
As one of the oldest Kansen used to say: “Three stripes and hardbass, drown the enemy in kvass.” The first time Sirius heard that, she chalked it up to the bizarre mentality of the former northern empire.
That was until she personally witnessed Avrora one-shot a Siren by smashing a bottle of vodka over its head.
For some reason, Lady Belfast strongly advised the other maids—especially the Dido class—never to ask the old light cruiser about that incident.
And now, a Royal Navy subject was holding an item that practically radiated mythical energy.
Which naturally brought her thoughts back to the other glaring anomaly.
Sirius knew that during rare Mirror Sea convergence events, guests from other worlds sometimes gained Kansen-like abilities until the conflict was resolved.
But learning that this world actually had its own equivalent to Kansen was a shock.
She hadn’t believed him at first.
But the miniature helicopter flying around him, and the way he lit up her radar, left no room for doubt.
His hull signature dwarfed every ship in the Royal Navy, slightly edging out titans like Friedrich der Große and Shinano.
Even stranger was meeting a male Kansen.
He had clarified he was an experimental anomaly, and that the rest of their girls shared normal biology, but he still behaved far better than most of the experimental Kansen Sirius had met.
And—she admitted to herself reluctantly—better than a vast majority of the human officers and grunts who served alongside the Shipgirls.
‘Maybe we do dress a bit too provocatively for the male gaze,’ Sirius thought as she pulled off the T-shirt.
‘But a uniform is a uniform.
And girls like Ajax and Ark Royal certainly don’t help our reputation.’ Taking a deep breath, relishing the freedom as she pulled the tight fabric over her head, she couldn’t help but remember a story about Enterprise that Belfast had shared.
The legendary Eagle Union carrier could never wear her overcoat properly.
No matter how hard she tried, it always slipped down to expose her shoulders.
Enterprise swore she kept hearing a voice in her head telling her to “look sexy.” Every faction had similar rumors.
Mostly they were just wardroom gossip, entirely unfit for proper Royal Navy ladies to discuss.
[image here] But looking down at the T-shirt she had slept in, Sirius couldn’t figure out how it had become so tight across her chest.
Ulyanovsk had given her the largest one he owned.
Just yesterday, she had practically drowned in it.
Now, it looked like it had shrunk two sizes, perfectly molding to her figure.
She couldn’t blame anyone but the “M-Factor”—the field that allowed Kansen to adapt and use equipment that their historical hulls never possessed.
Apparently, it applied to civilian clothes too.
“There is no way I am subconsciously desiring to wear skin-tight clothes,” Sirius said aloud, eyeing the tracksuit warily.
She had no other choice.
The locals might react to her exactly as her host had warned.
With a sigh, the girl put on the tracksuit and cautiously made her way toward the kitchen.
She almost reached her destination when something metallic rammed into her foot, throwing her off balance.
“Watch it, bitch!
Move, meatbag…” Sirius reacted entirely on her battle-hardened, anti-Siren instincts.
With a sharp clack, the zipper on the tracksuit jacket burst open, the metal tab flying off like a bullet.
A familiar, comforting weight materialized in her right hand.
A graceful pirouette, a lightning-fast thrust—and the steel blade impaled its target.
“What the hell did Fyodor ever do to you?!” Ulyanovsk’s shout snapped Sirius out of her battle trance.
She looked down at her vanquished enemy.
It was a robot vacuum cleaner.
It let out one final, pathetic beep and ascended to digital heaven.
“And where exactly did you pull THAT out from?” *** When Ulyanovsk heard the customized voice lines of his robot vacuum followed by the sounds of a scuffle, he fully expected to find his guest on the floor.
Maybe she tripped on the unfamiliar pants, or just tripped over the hardworking little droid.
He was absolutely not prepared to witness the brutal murder of his electronic slave by an interdimensional maid.
The second the vacuum started voicing its programmed complaints, the guest flinched.
The zipper on her jacket gave way under the strain.
The surviving fabric tore with a loud rip, and the zipper tab shot across the room like a 9mm round.
Ulyanovsk had deliberately given her his baggiest tracksuit so she wouldn’t bust it with her anti-torpedo bulges.
He was wrong.
Sirius straightened up, her chest thrust forward.
The zipper parted completely.
She reached a hand toward her heart, as if trying to hold her clothes together, and smoothly pulled a massive hand-and-a-half sword with a golden guard straight out of her own chest.
Ulyanovsk honestly wanted to applaud the follow-up strike.
Clean, blindingly fast, zero wasted movement.
A perfect thrust that pinned the pride of Chinese engineering firmly to the floor.
“What the hell did Fyodor ever do to you?!” the cruiser yelled, deciding he needed to stop the rampage before any other appliances or furniture became collateral damage.
He felt bad for the vacuum.
Two years of loyal service, only to die in a lopsided duel against an actual kaiju.
Sirius blinked.
She looked down at the robot.
Then she blinked again, processing what she had just done.
Letting out one last dying squeak, the vacuum powered down forever.
“And where exactly did you pull THAT out from?” Ulyanovsk asked, even though he had a front-row seat to the magic trick.
He said it to draw her attention to her current state of undress, rather than making another joke about the world’s oldest profession.
Materializing rigging out of thin air was standard operating procedure for Kanmusu, even if seeing a British girl pull a broadsword out of her cleavage was a new one.
Ulyanovsk always thought licking katanas was exclusively a Japanese Shipgirl trope.
Then again, the things high-tier Abyssals could do with their aura—which scientists theorized was just an alpha-predator phenotype—were far crazier.
Anyone who actually witnessed an Abyssal reality-warp usually didn’t live long enough to tell the tale.
Ulyanovsk tried very hard not to think about why he had been allowed to walk away from his encounter, lest his tinfoil-hat paranoia act up.
“Huh?” The girl looked from the robot, up the blade of her sword, and finally down at herself.
Seeing her half-exposed chest, Sirius took a sharp step back, desperately trying to cover up.
Losing her balance, she dropped the sword.
The heavy blade clanged against the floor, further mangling the round chassis of the little droid that failed to conquer humanity.
Suddenly, reality decided to avenge the fallen synthetic: the sweatpants, held up by sheer willpower and a stretched elastic band, slowly began sliding down the girl’s legs.
“Just…
go put your maid uniform back on,” Ulyanovsk sighed.
He made a mental note to stop by the base chapel for some holy water later today.
He wasn’t superstitious, but he was starting to think Sirius was genuinely cursed.
Red as a tomato, the girl fled into the bedroom, muttering frantic apologies.
While she changed, the cruiser picked up the dropped blade.
It looked like a ceremonial prop, but the gold-inlaid steel was shockingly high quality.
The tip hadn’t even dulled after punching through the droid and into the old Soviet oak parquet flooring.
Prying the carcass of the robot vacuum off the blade took actual effort, even with his Kanmusu strength—something he didn’t expect from a piece of cheap plastic.
He had to pin the vacuum to the floor with his boots just to yank the sword free.
He was about to toss the casualty of British aggression into the trash but changed his mind, carrying it into his workshop instead.
While he was at it, he inspected the metal zipper tab embedded in the door frame.
“Not bad,” he muttered, trying to pull the metal piece out of the wood.
It wouldn’t budge.
“I thought this kind of stuff only happened in cartoons.” Nodding to Sirius as she emerged from the bedroom—now back in her maid outfit and casting an unreadable look at her sword in his hands—the guy headed back to the kitchen.
He had to feed her, and more importantly, calm her down.
He had absolutely zero ideas on how to achieve the latter.
“I…” the Kansen began apologetically.
He cut her off.
“Don’t even worry about it.
Not your fault.” “But—” “Forget it.
Nothing serious happened,” Ulyanovsk waved her off.
“I hope this isn’t Excalibur?
Because it did not want to come out of that vacuum.
Took some real elbow grease.” He handed the weapon back.
“No,” she smiled weakly, taking the hilt.
“King George V wields Excalibur.” With a casual flick of her wrist, she dismissed the weapon into glowing dust.
“About the clothes…” Sirius started again.
“I said—” “But I have to explain!” she interrupted, holding up a palm to demand his silence.
“Take a seat then,” the guy pointed at the table, refusing to stay quiet.
“Pardon the stereotype, but oatmeal was the only ‘light breakfast’ I could think of.” He placed a bowl of porridge in front of her.
“And here.” A small saucer with a cream pastry landed next to it.
“I think the M-Factor is to blame!” the Kansen blurted out, eyeing the dessert hungrily.
“It’s the field that allows us to adapt equipment that doesn’t match our historical prototypes.” “Equipment in what sense?” Ulyanovsk sat across from her with his own bowl.
“Kansen can use any weapon suitable for their class, thanks to the M-Factor field.
For example, all heavy cruisers can equip the Iron Blood’s 8-inch SK C/34 gun turrets.” “So a British cruiser can mount German turrets?” the guy asked, surprised.
“Does it work for battleships too?” The girl nodded affirmatively.
“Then how does an American Mark-6 fit on a British battleship?
A single triple-gun turret weighs almost as much as the Queen Elizabeth’s entire forward battery!” “The M-Factor,” Sirius shrugged.
“We don’t know how, but it works.
Is it not like that here?” “As far as I know, no,” the cruiser tried to process the information.
He was also trying very hard not to think about how this sounded exactly like the anatomy-ignoring logic of certain adult anime from the Land of the Rising Sun.
“Well damn,” he muttered, lacking better words.
“Does this ‘M-Factor’ read civilian clothes as equipment?” “It seems so,” the girl nodded.
“And you didn’t know this because you literally only wear your maid uniform,” Ulyanovsk pointed his spoon at her, earning a disapproving glare.
“Pointing utensils at people is impolite.” “Critiquing your host at the breakfast table is doubly impolite.
Good thing I’m a northern barbarian, so I get a pass,” the guy deflected smoothly.
“But I’d like to clarify something about the clothes.
Your wardrobe was full of casual wear…” “Sometimes a girl wants to wear something pretty, but Akashi’s shop is far too expensive,” Sirius muttered quietly, turning away to hide her lingering resentment toward a certain greedy cat.
“Alright, topic closed.
M-Factor it is,” the cruiser dropped the interrogation.
“Enjoy your breakfast.” “Enjoy yours.” The two humanized warships polished off their porridge quickly.
Just as the girl reached for her pastry, she noticed the guy placing several green-wrapped ration bars with a black teardrop logo in front of her.
Sirius literally felt the blood boil in her veins.
Her eyes began to flash crimson.
“There’s fifteen SFUs in each of these.
As far as I know, a light cruiser needs anywhere from thirty to fifty,” Ulyanovsk tapped the nearest bar.
He had no idea that offering a Kanmusu combat rations would act like a red cape to a bull for the seemingly clumsy maid.
“Fifteen what?” the girl asked, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness.
“Standard Fuel Units.
I don’t know how it works for you guys, but our Shipgirls can’t fight without the equivalent of naval fuel oil.
Figured you might need it,” the cruiser explained.
“So I grabbed some from the emergency fuel reserves.” Sirius abruptly stood up, leaned over the table, and slammed her hands down onto the guy’s shoulders.
Her burgundy eyes bored unblinkingly into Ulyanovsk’s teal ones.
The cruiser suddenly felt very uncomfortable, entirely unsure where to look.
The open top of her dress, straining under the weight of two creamy hemispheres, blocked almost his entire field of view.
The pastry they had just crushed against the table was a tragic casualty.
“Please do not consume this garbage,” the girl ordered in a tone that brokered no argument.
“Dry rations are for extreme emergencies only.
You should not abuse them.” “I told you, our Kanmusu can’t operate without fuel.
And the dietary equivalent to just one fuel unit—just one—takes up my entire fridge.” “Well, look at that,” Sirius smiled warmly, letting his words go completely in one ear and out the other.
With a lightning-fast swipe, she gathered all the ration bars and chucked them blindly into the sink.
“To ingest the equivalent of one fuel unit, you’d have to eat the entire contents of a fully stocked refrigerator,” Ulyanovsk smirked back.
“The whole thing.
And a light cruiser, I repeat, needs at least thirty.” “Kansen do not require that volume of food,” the Kansen frowned, recalling that a similar unit of fuel consumption did appear in Command’s logistics reports.
Except the Manjuu usually handled the cooking, and no one force-fed the Kansen dry rations for ‘fuel’.
Sure, some girls loved junk food, but Command actively tried to rehabilitate them.
“Different world, different rules,” the guy shrugged.
“And you completely ruined your pastry for nothing.” He reached out, scooped a dollop of cream that had ended up on her exposed cleavage, and casually wiped it onto the girl’s lips.
Sirius jerked back, looking down at the ruined dessert smeared across her bodice.
“Who was just lecturing me about food abuse?” the cruiser couldn’t resist a final jab as the girl reflexively licked the cream off her lips.
Moving stiffly like a wooden doll, Sirius turned and marched toward the bathroom.
Once she was out of sight, Ulyanovsk used his rangefinders to take her precise measurements and stood up from the table.
Since his guest was staying for the foreseeable future, a trip to the supply depot was completely unavoidable.
He needed to get her a change of clothes—especially since she had just ruined the one outfit she owned that apparently didn’t shrink to fit her perfectly.
“There’s a shirt and pants on the chair outside the door,” Ulyanovsk knocked on the bathroom door.
“Use them, don’t be shy.
I need to step out for a bit.” “Thank you,” the girl called from inside.
“But you don’t have to, my dress will dry in five minutes…” Hearing her voice, the cruiser somehow pictured a soaking wet kitten.
“Don’t trust the timer, it lies,” he advised.
“Even on the smart washing machines.
Don’t sweat the clothes, it’s no trouble for me.
You’re obviously uncomfortable sitting around in just your underwear.” “Thank you,” the girl repeated a bit quieter, but sounding noticeably more relieved.
“There’s another pastry on the table, so don’t take too long,” the guy added, and left the house.
Inside the bathroom, Sirius stood in front of the mirror in just her lingerie, her face buried in her hands.
“Why can’t I be flawless when it counts, like Lady Belfast?” the girl whimpered.
“This is so embarrassing…” Catching sight of the remaining cream on her chest, the Kansen couldn’t resist scooping it up with her finger.
“Such a waste of a good pastry,” she muttered, licking her finger, her face turning an even deeper shade of crimson.
“So embarrassing…”