It was a nice and chill 0917H when my radar turned more fucky than a tube TV and I started wondering if Marge was messing with the instrumentation again.

“Huh? Y’know I’ve been busy with the magic cannon, right?”

{Huh? Weird. Thanks, I guess.}

It reminded me a lot of that bit during Pearl Harbor when the radar operators didn’t think the screen was real—coz haha who’d actually dare to attack, right?

So anyway, I’m not gonna be those idiots.

Normally, I’d cycle through the CCTV’s, but I can’t be bothered right now. I make a ship-wide announcement.

{SAM! BOGEYS 200 MILES WEST AND CLOSING!}

“Abvf’chya! What! Where! Who! Nani.”

The heck kind of sound was that—now’s not the time! I find her noises coming from the officers’ quarters. Sounds like she’s ruffling through clothes and armor.

{Sam Sam Sam—my radar’s picking up a lot of something coming from the west. I don’t wanna call it, but—}

“T-those can only be demons, can’t it?!” She bursts out of the door in full dragon rider armor. “I will rally the troops! Sir Grey, activate the signal!”

I go ahead and fire off a bunch of flares into the sky with my newly-installed magic cannons. I only have two of them right now, but they’ll have to do.

Against a whole-ass demon tsunami, though? Can we make it through this?

Within minutes, there are dragons in the air, and the city alarm bells are making a ruckus. The entire seven ships of Merika’s Pacific Fleet start to stir to cordon off the mouth of the port. I can’t imagine the ground troops aren’t just sitting around, too.

Hm? Tiny dragons? Ahhh wait, no—they’re called wyverns? There’s hundreds of them flying over the city, and heading over here. I didn’t think we had a small air force.

One of the wyverns land on my deck. There’s a Texan with a bandoliers making an X on his chest, smokin’ a cigar and pointlessly twirling around a six-gun.

“Ey. Not shure if ye can ’ear me. Name’s Billy. Don’t shoot at us. Thanks.” He tips his hat and flies away, rejoining the rest of the wyverns. Amazing.

After about 30 minutes, we start to see tendrils of the approaching wave, which is kinda looking like an Arizona duststorm. The Japanese battleships open fire, and the horizon’s lit with flames. Looks like they’re getting some hits in, huh?

Ehhhh—sure I’ll join in, too.

The enemy’s too small to hit with my railguns, so I just fire blindly with the magic cannons. Marge says I can fire off fire, ice, lightning, and force magic with them, so I’m just alternating between all of them like a dumbass. I mean, there’s no fuckin’ way they’re not weak to at least one of them, right? They’re all different colors, too, so it’s pretty entertaining.

Each one can fire off 20 rounds per minute, so I’m pretty happy just sitting here and making magic rainbows ending in pots of gold. Yeeaaah, the target impact looks pretty.

… Ah, is this how Marge got into cannons? H-huh.

The approaching swarm’s looking a lot more distinct now. The tendrils’ve started to reach the mouth of the port, too, but too bad for them—all seven of the Merikan ships open fire.

Each ship has a literal hundred cannons. Merikaaa. Fuck yeeaaah. Man, that was a weird song…

At some point, the swarm got so dense that the Merikan cannons got a guaranteed hit each time. That’s good for the kill-shot ratio, but the fuck, that’s a lot?!

I see a green death laser just punch right through one of the Merikan ships.

Well. That ain’t good. It’s not sinking, but I can’t imagine the dudes inside are having a nice time right now.

One of the UFOs manage to get past the cordon—only to get knocked out of the sky by a wyvern rider stabbing it with an explosive spear. Jesus.

The UFO bounces across the water and I catch a glimpse of it before it finally sinks.

It’s… it’s a death ball. I’m not sure what I expected.

The swarm’s getting a lot denser. The Merikan ships are getting lanced with disco lights and the Japanese battleships aren’t firing fast enough. The wyverns are helping to distract a good bunch of them, so lots of lasers are firing skywards and wherever which way. Guess I’ll help out a bit.

There’s a particularly dense part of the swarm, so I aim at it with the SAMs and loose one. It streaks across the water and carves a hollow in the swarm—but it just closes back in. Jesus.

I keep firing, aaand—I’m all out of SAMs.

A whole bunch of death balls are buzzing around me and my Phalanxes have been taking care of them for a while. It’s just kinda hard not to accidentally hit the wyverns. I’ve also got some laser point defense, but they don’t have enough output to take out damn near enough to get the buzzing out of my metaphorical ears.

Looking closely—they’re not even all the same size, the heck. The smaller ones have smaller lasers, and the smallest ones are like fastballs that just straight up kamikaze into us—which is sort of surreal considering the Japanese are right here on the receiving end.

Six dragons are circling overhead—man, that’s so awesome—though, they’re busy crushing various enemies with their claws, so I gotta do my part, too. They breathe fire and the riders shoot off impressive magic that makes me wanna imagine them shouting “FOX TWO TWO TWO TWO TWO—” whenever they do that spamm-y fireball attack.

There’s even a dude with an oversized cleaver jumping off his dragon, cutting clean through the medium-sized ones, and slotting himself back into his seat in mid-air.

I spot a green and particularly bright fireball being shot off into the horizon. That one’s probably Sam’s. She uses it to say “Sir Grey! I’m not fuckin’ with that one! Go take care of it!” whenever a really big one shows up.

It’s about the size of a three-story building. Y’know, maybe there’s a literal Death Star somewhere in the demon-side of the portal?

Anyway, I shoot off two railguns at it for good measure.

After barely just a second of travel… It fucking survived that?!

The fuck, that’s scary. My shots definitely fucked it up, but it’s still limping its way here despite spewing molten metal into the sea.

A-anyway, it’s probably on its last legs, so I use the two magic cannons and shoot off alternating magic types.

The magic projectiles aren’t as fast as a railgun’s, but you gotta trade off something if you’re getting infinite ammunition, y’know? Completely abusing this fact, I decide to rapid-fire the magic cannons straight at the mega-death ball.

The nice thing with the magic cannons is that they don’t overheat—like, at all. There aren’t any structural components, though there’s a bunch of shielding in case someone was standing nearby. It didn’t even need the shielding, really—those are for people, not cannons.

The death ball evades the first few shots, but it gets smacked by a fire round, and then another fire round. Molten metal is pouring out of it like it’s bleeding. Some sort of light starts to accumulate near its laser iris, but it gets hammered by an ice round and something creaks and it just cracks like a fuckin’ egg like wow I didn’t think something like that was possible!

Honestly, I’m still kinda miffed that I couldn’t one-shot it.

I guess it’s still cool that there aren’t any enemies that we can’t actually destroy, even if it took some effort. Whoop, I almost stopped firing for a moment there~

***

Everything’s fucked by the time we won, but it’s a shitty win, really.

Pretty sure there was a fancy word for it, but a shitty win is a shitty win.

A bunch of harbors were destroyed and we’re down to three Merikan ships and two limping Japanese ships. My deck’s also a bit singed and my hull’s taken some dents, but that’s not really a problem.

Seriously, how amazing are those Japanese battleships? They’re full of goddamn holes but they’re still not sinking.

Sam and Oreo land on my deck.

“Sir Grey! We must have a conference! Please allow us to use your Operations Room once again!”

{It’s technically yours, y’know?}

Oreo looks plenty tired, but Sam looks more panicked than tired. The battle’s over, so I’m not sure what she’s so worked up about.

***

“Everyone! We must assume that the length of the west coast has been attacked all the same!”

The tired generals, captains, dragon riders and knights, all tense up as if waking up from a nightmare just to find out that it was real.

“This was an attack on all of Merika, with no distinction for our petty factions! That said, this is also a good opportunity to show what the Holy Crusade stands for—Sir Ironheart! Sir Bulletneck! Create a combined expeditionary regiment!”

She takes a deep breath, then directs herself towards the closest PA speaker.

“Sir Grey, I must ask to burden you with a critical role once again.”

{Standing by, ma’am.}

“I expect the expeditionary regiment to utilize you as their main mode of transportation. We cannot do anything about the cities and states further inland, but with your aid, the coast is our domain. We will assess, relieve, and liberate those that we can along the coast.”

{Uhhhh ma’am—with all due respect, but I’m an aircraft carrier. I can’t land troops on my own.}

“That is true. I was about to address this issue—but I am not wise enough. Are there suggestions among the commanders here?”

Another Texan raises his hand. He wears a stereotypical cowboy hat, and a bandolier crosses an X across his chest—oh, it’s that guy.

“Very good. Your name?”

“Aye ma’am—I’m the ol’ Captain o’ the 2nd Sky Riders. Free South.”

Texas Red in the corner scoffs. “Billy, son, don’t go about fakin’ yer age to the princess.”

Ol’ Captain scoffs back. “Ser, with all due re-spec, twenty’s considered a midlife crisis for a Rider.”

A company of daredevils, huh. Makes just about sense, considering how many of them just got lased out of the air around me just a while ago.

Sam cups her chin. “Hmm. A force of wyvern riders, isn’t it? How well will you be able to adapt to life in a ship? And servicing your mounts?”

“Won’ be too bad, ma’am. Wyverns can eat shit and stay alive that way in the deepest, darkest, dampest pit in hell, damn easy. ‘Course, same won’ fly for me and my boys. We a bit more gentleman-like, y’see.”

“Very well. And what was your suggestion?”

“Yes, ma’am—if the boots on the ground don’ mind not touchin’ ground for a bit, we can fly ’em in, two at a time.”

“That will not suffice.” The royal general’s speaking this time. “The new magical artillery that Miss Colada has developed can be easily transported by wagon or ship, but I doubt that a wyvern would be able to bear the load.”

“Heeeyyy—about thaaat…”

Everyone goes quiet. Oh no, Marge did something again—yeah, we all thought that.

“… So I was watching the battle earlier and I found some of Grey’s weapons fascinating, like the ones that go SWISH SWISH and then pop—like that!”

{Oh, you mean the SAMs?}

“Huh? Sorry, why am I included?”

{Wait wait—missiles. They’re called missiles. Surface-to-air missiles. S.A.M.}

“… and you are certain you did not fabricate this to poke fun at me?”

{A-absolutely not! Ma’am!}

“She’s tamed the Holy Island.” “Absolutely. As expected of the princess.”

“Hmm. Very well. Continue.”

Sam looks to Marge, then Marge, taking this as her cue, continues. “S-s-so the missiles! Yeeeaah, hahahaaa—they were fascinating… so I decided to copy them!”

“Of course she did.” “As expected of the infringement princess.”

I think I heard something a bit un-American there, but let’s ignore it.

“A-anyway! Missiles versus cannons—cannons are really heavy, and missiles are really expensive. I think in this case, we can afford to pay a little bit more and haul in the same firepower with less weight!”

“Ermmm, and missy—what sort-a firepower we talkin’ here?”

“Hmmm you all saw Grey’s missiles earlier, right? Exactly that! I’ve got other sizes too, so don’t worry~”

“And those ain’t heavy?”

“Nope! My magic missiles weigh half a man!”

Marge looks to Sam with sparkling eyes, and the latter sighs. “Yes, yes, I’ll get you your royalties…”

Hang in there, Sam.

… Hm? Wait a sec. Wyverns, rapid deployment forces… So I’ve got aircraft and troops? I-I’m being an aircraft carrier? Finally?!