Hey there. USS Dick here.

Yep. Found out my name’s Dick. I was poking through the manifests when I saw a bunch of “nuclear devices on-board USS Dick,” which can’t possibly be anyone else other than me. Kinda sucks that all the dates are blacked out, though. Who’d go through the trouble to do that, though, really?

Anyway, the dragon fucker and dragon-fucker are lost.

Instead of going up to the bridge, they went down and got themselves fucking lost. I’ve been trying my damn bestest to get ’em back topside again, but apparently my English is too shitty (Mrs. Henderson, I’m sorry for not paying attention in class).

I even tried closing off some doors and leave others open so that they’d find their way back, but they still somehow manage to find a manhole or something and one of ’em goes “Aha! A secret passage!”

No, you shits, that’s a maintenance hatch!

So now they’re starving and freezing down there. I even have to turn down the A/C for you, huh?! They don’t even know how to use a remote control, goodlordinchrist.

Alright. That’s it. I’ll use that.

There’s a bunch of functions on this carrier that’s just wack, I’m tellin’ ya, but I’m leavin’ that for when it crops up.

The thing is, one of ’em’s a fully-automated canteen.

So anyway, I’ll go and do ’em a service this once and let their noses guide ’em to the holy land. They look hella deflated just lying there in the hallway, it’s kinda depressing.

“P-princess, I-I think Valhalla is real.”

“F-fool, w-what are you saying.”

“A f-feast. I… I smell a feast!”

Dragon-boi picks up the princess in a princess carry and zooms around the hallways. Guy’s got a sensitive nose, huh? But man, that’d suck if I had to have a Rumba just chugging along all like “Hey, fuck me, I’ve got food on a plate ye fuckers, come here” as my only strategy to guide these shits out to fresh air.

They almost pass the canteen, but the dragon-boi’s nose is too powerful, and he skids to a stop and makes a double take all cartoon-like.

This should be the part where they eat and praise me as the god of food service, but—

“How suspicious.”

“P-please let me eat! Princess! I beg of you!”

She’s holding him down and not in a fun way. C’mon guys, it’s perfectly good food!

… Even if it’s been in deep cryo storage for God-knows-how-long! It’s been cooked, so it should be fine!

Oh, she caught a rat. Oh, she’s feeding it with the food.

…

See? The rat’s fine. Now eat, goddamnit.

***

“Princess—does this mean we have passed its trial?”

No it has not, dickhead. Y’all just got fuckin’ lost.

“It was indeed difficult, but do not be so conceited as to think that this was the last leg.”

Oh-hoh yeah, y’know what, y’all are makin’ me itch to give y’all a hard time.

Alright. This is perfect. I’m putting these guys through OJT.

I use the PA system to get them to do some chores.

{Hey ya fuckers, I need something done down in 13/A. There’s a bunch of rats and a god-awful something going on down there. Check it out.}

Cold sweat breaks out across the dragon-dude’s face.

“… Aureos?”

“We have been issued another trial. Rats, and… an unknown.”

The princess drops her bread. Guys, it’s just rats and a weird shadow-blob, okay?

“Rats are simple, but—an unknown? It’s that freedom-forsaken combination, is it not?! Rats and an unknown?!”

The heck’s going on here. Look, I’ll help ya all out with the fire suppression system if things get a bit dicey, okay?

Actually, I’ve also got sentry turrets in a bunch of important corridors, especially the ones going to the reactors. I just didn’t want to riddle things with holes if I didn’t know what they were, y’get me?

***

“Demon!”

Ayyyy it’s a fuckin’ demon.

The princess’s doing flashy sword shit with it, and it’s fighting back. Actually, that thing’s a mimic, ain’t it? The fuck’s it doing in me?

The dragon dude is somewhere off to the side being useless. C’mon man, that princess smacks your face into the deck ten times and you don’t even look like you feel it! Why’re you failing now?!

The princess dispatches it after a few more blows. She shoulders the dragon-boi and helps him stand up.

“Come on. Aureos. Do it.”

Aaand he breathes fire in my hallway. I mean, I guess I can wait ’til the mimic’s ashes, then I’ll hit it with the fire suppression.

I guide them to the medical bay after that. Looks like the dragon-boi’s taken a hit to the knockers. Yeah, I’m sorry for saying mean things to you. Rest easy, sailor.

Doesn’t mean I let ’em take it easy from now on, though.

***

How long has it been? A week? Two weeks? They haven’t seen the light in so long. I kept up running them around on errands all around the ship, cleaning up messes and figuring out the heck’s going on with me.

We also settled with using a Rumba as a guide. Thankfully, I didn’t need to put a plate of food on it.

They understand that they can drop by the canteen three times a day now, so they’ve been timing the pacing of their errands to match breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course, I just had to be a bit mean and somehow teach ’em to eat fast, so ’round breakfast, I closed the canteen door after 10 minutes and locked ’em in. ’Course, I opened it up for lunch, so they quickly understood that you get to eat three specific times a day.

Hmm. This time is 9 minutes 31 seconds. Cutting it a bit close there.

I also absolutely needed to get across that I’m not a bad aircraft carrier, so I’ve been popping out sentry guns to help ’em out against mimics sometimes. I could totally just get all the mimics right now, but bullets aren’t unlimited, so it should be fine for me to just help out sometimes.

Well, there’s that, and the fact that the dragon dude makes sure to thoroughly incinerate ’em. No telling what’ll happen if I just off one and leave it there overnight.

Princess complained about taking a bath at some point, so yeah, they’ve got a spot in the officers’ quarters now. Oh, and apparently they ain’t fuckin’.

“To share a bed with the princess? I can’t!”

Like that. Had to pop open a different door after that. Somehow I feel like the princess caught on and is now pissed at me. Just a little bit.

***

They’re chowing down on their breakfast. Today, though, I wanna make an announcement.

{Ya two’ve been nice. Wanna stay?}

Yeah, that’s all.

“W-what was that?!” The princess is spooked.

“Nice… Nice… Nice?!” The dragon-boi is spooked. “Princess, I believe we’ve been desired!”

“What was that?!”

“I believe the Holy Island has declared us ‘nice,’ which is to mean that we are desirable!”

“Ohhh! Wait, then what was the last part?”

“That is—wan… wanna… ‘want to’? ‘Want to stay’?!”

“OHHHH! Have we been truly accepted by the Holy Island?! Then, thou shalt aid us in securing our allies’ freedoms?!”

Oh, right, I forgot about that.

{Ahhh wait wait, about that, we gotta talk about that.}

“I believe the Holy Island wishes to negotiate.”

No—well, close enough.

“Ohh! What is it? Land? People? Money? Stocks?”

You guys still have stocks?!

{No no no no—no. The fuckin’-uhhh-Kingdom. Tell me ’bout the Kingdom. And the demons.}

“Princess, it seems that the Holy Island is not aware of the Kingdom and demons.”

“Understandable. ‘The Holy Island slumbers,’ is what my father has always said. Ah, Aureos, thank you for becoming more fluent in Holy Islandese.”

“I must do as much to expand our menu choices!”

“And I am forevermore grateful. Now, O Great Holy Island, please listen to my story—”

The princess shoots a glance at the door, “—and I implore you not to entrap us.”

Yeah okay, fair enough, lady. I engage one of the perma-lock mechanisms to keep the thing from swinging closed. I guess she understands the noise as a ’kay?

***

Okay, long story short.

Portals. It’s the fuckin’ portals.

Humanity gave up on expanding using spaceships and just went full sci-fi with the portals.

Pretty sure the princess don’t even know what a spaceship is, but damn well everyone knows that if ya open a portal to hell, it ain’t ever closin’ no more.

Where’d it happen? Russia. Kinda sucked for them though since it looked like everyone was doing it, but it was the Russians who’d just fucked with the worstest coordinates.

The vodka-drinking fuckers actually went and won against the demons that came through, though, and fuckin’ charged right in (the madlads, I swear). Even held a bit of territory on the other side, but eh, it’s literally hell, y’know?

So yeah boom now the whole of some continent across the sea from Merika’s at war with demons. Sounds familiar, huh? Sounds like it’s been going on a long time though, since everyone’s back to using swords and fuckin’ dragons, apparently. What, they’ve got snails, too?

Princess says the situation’s actually been kinda okay up until 3 years ago. I mean, go figure, if ya got literal dragons, you’d fuck up mostly anything that came out of another dimension, right? Kinda scary to think that suddenly there’s something that can fuck up a dragon—I mean, I’d imagine that’s why they can’t fight back, right?

Apparently all that was top secret. The dragon dude didn’t even know, so now he’s reeling from being casually exposed to national secrets—and I guess the fact that there’s something on this earth that can actually do him in (other than me). She’s hard on ya, huh, buddy?

Oh, by the way, pirates to our starboard!