“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ulyanovsk blurted out.
Another maid stood in the center of his bedroom.
She was armed with a massive two-meter trident featuring a thick metal shaft, holding it single-handedly like a pointer.
The broad blade hovered inches from a groggy, barely-awake Sirius.
Shifting his gaze to the wide-open wardrobe, the cruiser immediately spotted his guest’s familiar black-and-white dresses.
He would have been thrilled that his theory about the Abyssal trophies acting as a portal key was right, if not for one glaring problem.
The new intruder was dressed far more modestly than Sirius.
A dark blue skirt fell past her knees, exposing a pair of silver boots.
A small white apron was tied slightly off-center over the skirt.
Like Sirius, her white blouse featured exposed shoulders and cleavage, but the neckline was covered by a translucent fabric connecting the collar to the bodice.
A blue corset draped in delicate gold chains completed the ensemble.
[image here] Overall, the newcomer looked far less scandalous than his current resident.
Largely because her chest was noticeably smaller, and she was slightly taller.
But it was her long, bright blue hair that truly commanded attention.
“And who might you be?” the blue-haired girl asked, not moving the trident an inch away from Sirius’s face.
She wore a sweet, good-natured smile that wildly contrasted with the eyes of a starving predator who had just been interrupted during a hunt.
“I live here.
Care to explain how you broke into my house?” Ulyanovsk asked, already knowing the answer.
“Through the door, obviously.
How else?” the girl giggled.
“Her Majesty’s Light Cruiser, Neptune.
I apologize for the intrusion…” Bringing the trident upright with the blade pointing at the ceiling, she dropped into a flawless curtsy.
“…But my search for a certain idiot led me here.” Neptune’s brown eyes locked onto the guy with clear amusement.
“Care to explain how she ended up here?” She leveled the trident directly at him.
“Neptune, calm down!” Sirius pleaded, suddenly wide awake and dead serious.
She reached up to push her colleague’s halberd away, but Neptune expertly parried her hand.
With a sharp tug, Neptune pulled Sirius close, then swept her legs out from under her with a lightning-fast kick.
Sirius hit the floor hard, ending up on her knees with her arm pinned painfully behind her back.
“Hush now, quiet,” Neptune sang cheerfully.
Looking up at the guy, the blue-haired cruiser finally noticed the twelve black attack helicopters hovering menacingly in the air right above his head.
Her anti-air radar immediately began screaming about an imminent aerial threat.
“Aviation Cruiser Ulyanovsk.
A pleasure,” the guy answered Neptune’s unspoken question.
“Now lower the weapon, or I open fire.” If Ulyanovsk had doubted the utility of keeping Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters glued and ready a few days ago, he definitely didn’t now.
They were the perfect deterrent.
He desperately hoped this could be resolved peacefully.
He had zero desire to lose his freshly assembled squadron, and the bedroom didn’t exactly have the square footage for his heavier ordnance.
But make no mistake—he was fully prepared to unleash a point-blank barrage of anti-submarine mortars and his AK-630 rotary cannons before she could even spool up her anti-air guns.
Neptune narrowed her eyes, giving the guy an evaluating once-over.
Ulyanovsk’s onboard systems immediately flagged that he was being painted by an unidentified radar sweep, one entirely uncharacteristic for WWII-era British warships.
“How fascinating,” Neptune sang with a strange mix of relief and disappointment, glancing at the open wardrobe.
She took the liberty of sweeping the portal with her strange radar too.
“I thought it was going to be the Sirens,” she pouted, giving her trident a casual twirl.
She let go of Sirius.
The moment the weapon left her hand, it shattered into a cloud of glowing blue cubes and melted into thin air.
“A little birdie told me you were kidnapped by Sirens,” Neptune pouted at Sirius.
“And here you are, sleeping…” “Are you having another one of your Goddess-complex episodes?” Sirius grumbled, picking herself up off the floor.
“I take it we have a truce?” Ulyanovsk asked.
“For now…
yes,” Neptune smiled at him.
“Unless, of course, you were planning to keep this idiot around as your personal sex slave.” She covered her mouth to hide a giggle.
“She is an official Waitress to Her Majesty,” Sirius interjected, completely ignoring the jab at herself.
“They probably sent her to find me because of a potential Siren threat.
She’s a specialist in dealing with them.” “You bet I am,” Neptune straightened her back proudly.
“Please don’t tell me you guys also have a Waitress Corps.
Or are you on the same team?” Ulyanovsk sighed, dismissing his helicopters.
“What exactly is going on over there?” “I am not in the Maid Corps,” the blue-haired girl shook her head.
“I am a waitress.
Please do not confuse the two.
But now I have a few questions of my own…” Ulyanovsk looked at Sirius, who was staring longingly at the open wardrobe.
“Are you heading home right away, or would you like to stay for tea?” he asked out of sheer politeness.
As much as Ulyanovsk considered himself a warship first and a human second, having Sirius living in his house was a logistical and psychological nightmare.
“Thank you for your hospitality.
I would absolutely love to take you up on that offer…” Neptune replied, shooting Sirius a withering glare that instantly silenced the white-haired maid.
“…If I had any guarantee that this wardrobe,” she pointed at the anomaly, “wouldn’t randomly dump me into a land of brightly-colored talking ponies in the next five seconds.” “I hope the doors are open on your side?” Ulyanovsk asked.
“I jammed the door closer,” Neptune replied, winking at her colleague.
“And I highly recommend you ask the Manjuu to recalibrate it.” “So that’s what hit me,” Sirius groaned, burying her face in her hands.
“Too much information,” the cruiser smirked.
Sirius shot him a deeply betrayed look.
“So this is why you ended up in that…
position two days ago?” the guy asked Sirius.
The girl turned her back to him and began frantically searching for her things, pretending she didn’t know him and that she was the only maid in the room.
“Two days?” Neptune looked genuinely shocked.
“She’s only been missing for twelve hours…
Well, this just gets more and more interesting,” she drawled thoughtfully, turning back to Sirius.
“It looks like we’re going to have a very long chat.
At home.” “Let me just change—” “At home!” Neptune repeated, her voice dropping to sub-zero temperatures.
“Understood,” Sirius surrendered, her shoulders slumping in defeat.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” she told the guy.
“Don’t mention it,” he waved it off.
“You can come back for your clothes later.” “Assuming the portal opens a third time,” Neptune answered for the Kansen.
“Or were you planning to do something weird with a Royal Maid’s undergarments?” “Do I look like a pervert?” Ulyanovsk cracked his knuckles menacingly.
“You look like a man,” the blue-haired girl shrugged.
“Forgive my caution, but past experiences with your gender speak louder than words.” “And here someone was just telling me that the Kansen are the ones harassing the admirals,” the cruiser jabbed at Sirius.
“That too,” Neptune sighed in disappointment.
“So I am afraid I must decline your generous invitation.” “Farewell,” Sirius said quietly, reaching for the maid uniform resting on the chair.
But Neptune grabbed her colleague by the collar and literally shoved her into the wardrobe.
“Apologies for any inconvenience Sirius caused you,” Neptune said with a sweet smile.
“And thank you for taking care of her.” “I couldn’t exactly throw her to the wolves…” “You mean Internal Security, I assume?” the girl smirked.
“Something like that,” Ulyanovsk nodded.
“On behalf of Her Majesty, you have our gratitude,” Neptune offered a final curtsy.
“Have a wonderful day.” She stepped backward into the wardrobe, pulling the doors shut behind her with a soft click.
“What a woman,” the aviation cruiser muttered in sheer awe.
*** Sirius’s quarters greeted their owner in the exact state she remembered from two days ago.
Her bed was neatly made, and the bonsai tree Ping Hai had gifted her last year rested peacefully on the desk.
A neat stack of freshly laundered clothes still sat on the chair—the same clothes she had intended to put away right before she fell through the floor of reality.
The girl still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that for her sisters in the Royal Navy, barely half a day had passed.
Hearing the magnetic lock of the wardrobe click shut behind her, Sirius turned to face Neptune.
Instantly, she felt the crushing grip of the prototype cruiser’s hand around her throat.
“Listen to me very carefully,” Neptune hissed, her voice dripping with ice.
“Not a word about this to Belfast.
Or anyone else.” The maid tried to object, but the waitress’s murderous glare forced her to swallow her words.
“I found you hiding in a wardrobe no one thought to check.
I don’t care how you got in there.
We’re going to blame the door closer and your legendary clumsiness.” “No one will believe that!” Sirius choked out indignantly.
“Sheffield probably already searched this wardrobe!” “I have faith in your creative storytelling abilities,” Neptune smiled.
Her trident materialized in her free hand.
With an elegant, effortless flick of her wrist, she hurled it toward the bathroom.
Piercing the door like wet tissue paper, the two-meter spear slammed into the porcelain sink, instantly reducing it to a pile of rubble and a geyser of spraying water.
“Oh, what a shame.
It looks like a plumbing malfunction will force you to temporarily vacate your room,” Neptune sang, pretending she hadn’t just vandalized her colleague’s living quarters.
“Are you serious?!” the maid gasped, shocked by the sheer audacity.
“No, you are,” the blue-haired Kansen retorted smoothly, finally releasing her victim’s throat.
“That joke got old years ago,” Sirius rubbed her neck.
“But why all of this?” “An interdimensional portal, you idiot.
Do you not understand?” Neptune asked incredulously, resting a hand on her cheek.
“Her Majesty has a right to know,” Sirius stated firmly.
“I think this information will either drown in the ocean of paperwork passing across Her Majesty’s desk,” the Kansen waitress chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the sheer horror creeping into the maid’s crimson eyes.
“Or it will result in a royal decree to burn every single wardrobe and nightstand on this base.
We shouldn’t bother the poor girl with trivialities.
Her fragile shoulders might not bear the weight.” “But—” “Besides, who understands Siren technology better than me?
Monarch?
The Lady Battleship is too busy at sea.
Drake?
Maybe.
Cheshire?
Don’t make me laugh,” Neptune listed them off.
“So, I repeat: it’s best if you disappear from this room for a while.” “But where will I live?!” “I’m sure Dido will be thrilled to have her little sister over for a sleepover.” Neptune snapped her fingers, and her trusty trident reappeared in her hand.
Sirius shuddered involuntarily.
As much as she loved her older sister, Dido could be…
overwhelmingly intense with her affection.
“Anyway, figure it out,” the blue-haired Kansen concluded.
“For now—pack a bag and get out.” She waved dismissively toward the hallway.
Sirius could only sigh in defeat.
Arguing with an Elite Priority-class light cruiser over a matter that theoretically fell under her jurisdiction was a losing battle.
Neptune had extensive experience countering Sirens, both as the first prototype of the ‘Siren Killers’ and through her unique abilities.
“Just promise me you’ll call the Manjuu immediately,” Sirius pleaded, nodding at the shattered bathroom door.
Water was already pooling into the bedroom.
“Don’t worry, your room will be fine.
You’ll be back in a few days,” the waitress reassured her.
The moment the room’s owner left, Neptune stepped into the bathroom and shut off the emergency water valve.
She had no actual intention of flooding her colleague’s quarters, but she needed Sirius out of the picture.
Thankfully, she hadn’t needed to resort to more…
physical arguments to make her leave.
Now she needed to ensure Sirius couldn’t blab about the portal.
Double-checking the wardrobe to confirm there was no longer a doorway replacing the back wall, Neptune hurried outside.
There was no time to lose.
There was only one Kansen on the entire base who wasn’t currently tied down with duties and had the authority to handle this.
She found her target sitting in a gazebo near one of the decorative ponds in the base park.
A tall, platinum-blonde Kansen with an imposing bust was melancholically watching the ducks, casually tossing them pieces of cake.
Her black dress with a white corset shared a similar aesthetic to Neptune’s uniform, but this blonde had absolutely nothing to do with the maids.
“Lady Formidable,” the Kansen waitress approached with utmost respect.
“Neptune,” Formidable greeted her with a nod.
“What’s the rush?” “We need to keep Sirius busy so she doesn’t have time to gossip about trivialities.
And I need someone to intercept her written report, assuming she drafts one,” Neptune whispered, stepping close enough to avoid eavesdroppers.
“Warspite won’t be pleased,” the blonde frowned, raising her hand above the gazebo table.
In a shimmer of blue light, a tiny Fairey Albacore biplane materialized over her palm.
With a low hum, the sprite-plane took to the air.
“Report,” Formidable commanded.
Her eyes, similar in shade to Sirius’s but a much deeper, richer red, locked onto the self-proclaimed waitress.
“Somehow, the wardrobe in Sirius’s room connected to another world, where she spent the last two days,” Neptune explained quietly, making sure the area was clear.
“A world that appears to be a mirrored reflection of ours.
At the very least, their Kansen are male.” “Sirens?” “No, it doesn’t look like them.
It felt more…
natural,” the girl mused.
“Like comparing synthetic rose perfume to a living flower.
Crude comparison, but it’s definitely not Siren handiwork.” “Is that so,” Formidable tapped her finger against the table.
“Are you absolutely sure about the two days?” “It was morning on the other side.
And judging by how our lost sheep looked when I found her, she had already settled in nicely,” Neptune smiled, recalling the groggy maid.
“Warspite received a message.
I’m meeting her at 1300 hours,” the carrier Kansen said, glancing toward the HQ building.
“Right when Prince of Wales returns.” “I will be there,” the blue-haired girl nodded.
“Keep an eye on that portal,” Formidable said, turning back to the pond and tossing the rest of her cake into the water.
“I have no desire to receive a visit from a Kansen boy.” “I checked the wardrobe before I left.
It’s empty.
For now, I’ll go fetch your tea,” Neptune said, picking up the empty cup from the table.
“Would you be so kind,” the carrier thanked the light cruiser.
Dropping into a curtsy, the prototype Kansen departed, leaving Formidable alone with her thoughts.
“Time dilation…” the aircraft carrier murmured thoughtfully.
“You did well to report this to me.” *** Five days had passed since the guest from another world went home.
Not once had the aviation cruiser been distracted from his duties by constant reminders that he was not just a warship, but a man.
Especially since those reminders had come in highly illicit forms.
Skin-tight clothes that did nothing to hide—and everything to accentuate—a girl’s outstanding assets, combined with a sweet, naively innocent face, had naturally triggered standard biological responses.
More than once, the cruiser had to mentally recite the military oath just like he did when executing shady orders, convincing himself he was merely a weapon—a machine of steel meant only to obey.
It was a relief not having to invent cover stories just in case Internal Security found unauthorized personnel in his house.
To ensure he wouldn’t face a repeat of the interdimensional incident, Ulyanovsk moved the lockbox with the Abyssal remains into a desk drawer in his workshop.
The new storage location virtually guaranteed that no unwanted portals would open up.
Unless the invaders happened to be the size of a fairy.
All in all, Ulyanovsk spent the rest of his shore leave productively, right up until he arrived at HQ for the next round of wargames.
The syllabus largely met his expectations, but the actual scenario…
“Target in grid 12-4.
Blue marker,” Ulyanovsk received the transmission from HQ, wiping sea spray from his combat rigging.
It felt as though Command had deliberately waited for the weather to turn nasty.
Battling heavy swells, the guy was violently pitched up and down, periodically getting drenched head to toe in freezing water.
Still, despite the miserable conditions, he was fully capable of executing his mission.
“I take back what I said about fewer storms,” Ulyanovsk grumbled, pulling two decks of plastic cards from a specialized compartment.
With practiced ease, his hands snapped out, flicking the pieces of plastic across the starting positions of his flight deck.
With a sharp wave of his hand, four blue sparks tore away from the waist-mounted mock-up of the Project 1143.7 carrier hull.
The cards shot forward.
As they gained distance, the sparks elongated into wedge-shaped fuselages, rapidly increasing in size.
Moments later, the sky tore open with the roar of jet engines.
A flight of pitch-black MiG-29Ks, their nose cones painted with snarling shark mouths, took to the air, fully loaded for air superiority.
Counting out the remaining twelve cards from the first deck, Ulyanovsk tossed them into the air above him and swiped his hand toward the first flight.
Following the same transformation, sixteen predatory silhouettes bolted toward the combat zone, ready to shred anything foolish enough to violate their airspace.
“Falcons are airborne, launching Hawks,” the cruiser reported to HQ, simultaneously laying out the second deck of cards on his deck.
“Eighteen and a half seconds,” the admiral’s dry voice criticized over the comms.
Meanwhile, the brand-new Su-57s he had just assembled that morning began taking off.
Contrary to Ulyanovsk’s expectations, his air group size hadn’t decreased, but his strike potential had nearly doubled.
However, the prep time to get the stealth jets airborne was unacceptably long.
“Hawks are in the sky,” the guy reported, laying in a hard starboard turn to change his heading, pulling away from the projected engagement zone.
Around him, two flights of ASW helicopters clattered through the air, meticulously babysitting their carrier while he focused on air traffic control.
The exercise scenario dictated destroying strictly designated targets while they were in close-quarters combat with friendly forces.
For Kansen, that meant point-blank range, practically hand-to-hand.
Radar-guided terminal locks were strictly forbidden; per the rules of engagement, any collateral damage to friendly units resulted in an instant fail.
To make things worse, the airspace was heavily saturated with simulated enemy aircraft.
Ulyanovsk could only guess whether Command was seriously exploring the possibility of their sole nuclear carrier operating in close tandem with other Kanmusu.
They could just as easily be wargaming a scenario where they wiped out the Shipgirls of, say, England, while they were busy fighting the Abyssals.
“Good thing they didn’t put selective-fire restrictions on the dogfights,” Ulyanovsk sighed, splashing one drone after another.
While the air battle raged, his strike wing—packed to the tail fins with anti-ship missiles and guided bombs—moved into attack position, staggering their altitudes.
The carrier’s plan was simple: unleash the missiles on the simulated heavy ships, then mop up the small fry and stragglers with precision bombing.
The Su-57’s flight characteristics allowed them to practically hover over a target while remaining safely out of anti-air range to drop their payloads.
The only catch was that this maneuver required absolute zero enemy air presence.
The eggheads calculated that even a primitive Abyssal equivalent to an ancient Japanese ‘Zero’ had a high chance of catching a ‘Sukhoi’ mid-bomb drop.
The very first training flight confirmed this.
Losing a state-of-the-art 5th-generation stealth fighter to flying plywood was a humiliation Ulyanovsk refused to suffer.
That was exactly why he launched a mixed air wing.
It was a massive headache to micromanage, but Ulyanovsk preferred the migraine over blushing in front of Brass officers.
Plus, the interceptors were doing a fantastic job visually ID-ing targets.
Given how tightly packed the friendly and hostile markers were, calculating the optimal strike vector for each target took the cruiser a considerable amount of time.
But the payoff was worth it.
The very first salvo wiped out every priority target on the board.
HQ, however, saw things differently.
“Damage sustained to friendly markers A4 and B9.
You need to be more careful,” Admiral Volkov’s mocking voice echoed over the channel.
“I assess the damage as superficial,” Ulyanovsk replied.
The cruiser had seen it clearly: a miraculous surviving tail fin of an intercepted missile had ricocheted and embedded itself into a red-striped pyramid marker.
The second friendly pyramid had been clipped by shrapnel from an exploding target, spinning it like a top.
“But damage was done,” the comms barked back.
“What if those markers had been Avrora or Stalingrad?” The cruiser felt an overwhelming urge to pay his respects to the fat pig in admiral’s epaulets by burying a fist in his jaw.
Unfortunately, that violated military regulations, so he had to settle for a verbal jab.
“That didn’t seem to stop you last October, Admiral, sir.” Ulyanovsk would have bet money that the Brass bastard on the other end of the line was currently turning blue with rage.
Immensely satisfied with himself, the aviation cruiser ordered a second missile volley, lining his fighters up for their bombing runs.
From a distance, the bombardment looked like a storm of steel hail.
Ulyanovsk practiced not just vertical drops, but laser-guided munitions guided by the fairies.
Only when there wasn’t a single blue-painted pyramid left afloat did he order his planes to RTB.
During the landing approach, the fighters morphed back into spheres of light, sliding across the mock flight deck before converting back into plastic cards.
They dropped neatly into a specialized hopper located near the aft elevators, a system that allowed simultaneous launch and recovery operations.
After carving a few anti-submarine zigzags into the waves and listening intently to his sonar arrays, Ulyanovsk set a course for home.
He didn’t rush to land his ASW choppers—he knew Command loved to throw surprise submarine ambushes at the end of an exercise.
This time, however, the seas remained clear.
He later found out the operators had simply lost track of the training drones.
The exercise was followed by a grueling debrief in the tactical classrooms.
The cruiser couldn’t exactly call it useless—the armchair tacticians occasionally dropped genuinely good advice, even if their complete detachment from reality made them hard to listen to.
He sometimes wondered how the artillery and torpedo Kanmusu handled these endless lectures, but quickly banished the thought, crossing himself mentally.
Unlike them, he actually got to watch his real-life armament perform in real-time, which made the classes somewhat tolerable.
Same with chatting with actual carrier pilots, even if they had only ever launched from the ground-based ski-jump simulator.
After digesting the mountain of intel dumped on him, Ulyanovsk headed home.
After a long, hot soak in the tub, he fully intended to rot on the couch watching a dumb movie with a bucket of ice cream.
But as he walked down the hall, the wardrobe door in his bedroom let out a traitorous creak.
Stopping inches from the kitchen, Ulyanovsk stared warily at the bedroom door.
“Check it out, or hope it goes away on its own…” the guy muttered aloud.
Standing there in nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, he weighed the pros and cons.
A day after his interdimensional guest had departed, the cruiser had dismantled the wardrobe and returned it to the base warehouse.
He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Sirius had tumbled out in front of Warrant Officer Gudko, the quartermaster.
The man was a notorious skirt-chaser and definitely would have abused the situation.
So, the fact that a potential interdimensional portal was acting up again raised alarming questions.
There were no artifacts hidden inside the new piece of furniture.
He had even moved it to a different wall to avoid hitting any weird ‘Qi energy lines’ mentioned in the Feng Shui books he’d skimmed.
Ulyanovsk thought he’d taken every precaution to prevent otherworldly tourists.
Clearly, the wooden box with doors wasn’t the only factor at play.
“Guess I’m shoving the interdimensional tourists back where they came from,” Ulyanovsk steeled himself.
“I’ll figure the rest out later.” He violently threw open the door.