Part 1: Faith

Midway was buried in her ritual chamber. A place so warded Raven would struggle to enter it. Well, enter without it blowing up in her face at least. She still had no idea how that little Japanese shipgirl pest had snuck in and stolen her designs, but she was fairly out of it at the time. Starvation under siege will do that to you. Maybe she hadn’t armed one of the wards? She didn’t want to dwell on all her failures and that was getting easier now that That Girl was out of her hair. It was like an itch that just kept picking at her.

Midway knew from experience dealing with her twist that more time and distance would make it easier to deal with, even if the root problem never went away fully. And yet she couldn’t focus. That didn’t happen to her. Something was disturbing the environment. It took her a moment to find it. Her secret escape tunnel was open. They’d opened it from the other side and were now rolling around in the sand, the silly things.

“Well. I do have an hour to spare this week. I can indulge myself for a bit.”

She left the books and designs open on her reading table. The first jets could wait an hour. It was a project months in the making and probably with months more to go. Being a Court Researcher was hard, if important work.

“And I like just fiddling with things. Machines, artifice, they make sense. Have clear rules, best practices. Not like people. And when they break, nothing important is lost.”

The last thought hurt all the way down to her core, like it always did. The price of her failure was never far from her heart. At least this time, her failure hadn’t cost anyone anything important. Wounds and lives could be fixed, minds and souls not so much. Midway found them at the end of the tunnel, half beached. The two ships that had been with her since she was just a repair shipgirl, wandering the ocean. Unknowing of the weight of the world.

Itchy and Scratch had gotten Midway out of more trouble than she could clearly remember or see.

“I’ve never been good with people, but even at the start, the two were talented at spotting mean girls.”

Midway scratched Itchy just the way he liked it, under his jaw, while inspecting Scratch. The fix that had left the distinctive line on his side was holding strong. A part of her wanted to replace and repair it. It wasn’t perfect. But Midway never did accept that. Perfection was a lie. She was Midway, and for all they called her one of the Six? She was Peerless. So was it. The scar was a legacy of love. Midway would never take it away from the destroyer, when it was so proud of saving her life.

She’d given them a safe home and a lot of girls to play with, even if they sometimes saw things she didn’t. And that thought? It stopped her, wheels spinning as she looked into their big blue eyes. After a few years of being Midway she’d gotten to know most of her girls and didn’t need their help anymore, so she let them patrol around the island and enjoy themselves. They’d earned it. Every now and again, they’d expose some thief, or a girl who was breaking Court rules.

Now Midway looked at them again, peering at the links they’d forged in [Fleet-sense]. As she studied them, her heart was filling with bitter vindication, broken laughter erupting to echo off the tunnel walls.

“Contingencies, always have contingencies Midway. For everything. Because no matter how good you are, the world will throw something completely crazy at you. That’s why perfection is impossible, but it doesn’t mean we don’t try.” She told herself.

“Where have you two been?” She asked for the sake of it. Midway didn’t need the answer, though confirmation was always best, no matter how obvious the proof. And she could see it, feel it. Never had their bonds wavered. Not to each other and not to her. Or some of her girls, the rare few they found deserving after years of watching one of the largest gatherings of Abyssals in the Pacific. Even back when she was a repair ship, Midway had trusted them more than her own ability to judge if a girl was mean or nice at her core.

And they’d picked That Girl. They had Bonds to Her. Except as she looked at those bonds, something deep within her unclenched and she could finally face it. She’d failed, utterly. Midway could clearly remember the moment they told her.

“A Princess just tried to commit suicide on your island Midway. How in the lightless hells didn’t you know about it?” The Empress had cursed her out. Nearly broke her all over again.

The second coming of Katharine? On her island. Every girl on it would be pulled so deep into the Abyss they’d never come back, never come out. Just their mad, Abyss filled Shells running berserk on the ocean. And it all would have been her fault. Midway had wondered, when she heard about it. How a Princess could commit to suicide and do it not out of despair? Because if she had despaired…

“Deep breaths,” she told herself and a moment later was buried in blubber and tongue baths. Whatever the description of the Graveyard, they paled to a full blown repeat of Katharine.

Yet it wasn’t some quirk of fate. Some accident of… of Taylor’s birth. It wasn’t blind luck that had saved them all and that made all the difference. Midway had failed. In the now. But past Midway had known she’d get distracted with a position like Court Researcher and sent an arrow into the future. Two insightful, observant, loyal destroyers. To be there, when she couldn’t or forgot to. She could feel her eyes leaking while she hugged them fiercely.

“My dear heroes.”

Because she hadn’t failed. Because it wasn’t going to happen again. No more girls would go mad on her watch because she figured her work was “good enough”. That her preparations were sufficient.

“No more. No more.”

She wasn’t a failure of a Princess.

***

It took Midway a while to gather her composure.

Now that she could finally think straight? She had no intention of letting future Midway be a failure either. No matter how hard it was to say goodbye or how unfair it was. That Gr-Taylor.

“Deep breaths girl, you know it helps.”

Taylor had already stolen one ship from her. But in the grand scheme of things, Taylor needed Itchy and Scratch much more than Midway did. With how her life up till now had been, Midway would be surprised if she’d bonded with more than five ships. So every bond was precious. They were retired here, but now needed again.

“How much more must I give up to live up to the ideal of a good Princess?” The two wiggled their fins. It was easier, she supposed, that at least they were willing.

***

Taylor was still there. Two hours later four ships still stood in place where she had stopped and all conversation ceased. She was trying. Trying to leave. Taylor understood that there was nothing she could do to convince Midway or trade with her. Midway just wanted her gone. Giving Taylor her oldest ships? Even if there wasn’t some fucked up reason why they were actually important, the woman would deny her just to spit her right now. The smart option was to leave, and come back later. Pretend they aren’t important so she could buy them cheap next time. But just the idea of it?

Of buying and selling Itchy and Scratch as if they were toys, things? It sickened her. Only now, that the possibility was staring her in the face, did she realize just how much she’d come to depend on them to be there, waiting for her when she got back. Their support was silent, innocent and pure as only a simple pet could be. And Taylor missed the giant monster sharks all the more for it. Because they didn’t have issues or problems for her to worry about. They fought, played, ate and slept. That was their whole world. Wasn’t it?

“Why is this so hard? Can’t I just come back later?”

Yet a part of her knew, no matter how much she didn’t want to face it. Until Shun crawled into her bed, the Imps had helped, but not enough. Not enough to sleep, to breathe. She didn’t want to be alone. Taylor was already cut off from everyone and everything she’d ever known. So each bond she’d made here was all the more precious for it. Taylor had a feeling that if she ever lost them all, she might just stop moving and never start again.

“What would be the point?”

A part of her shied away from the other option. That without them, she’d become a monster herself.

So she stood there and delayed, thinking, scheming of a solution. One dropped in her lap as her overseer Ra and the two came bounding over the horizon. They were snapping at each other’s flanks, tails, playfully dancing across the waves as the repair ship tried to keep up. Kaede, Taylor dragged out of her memories. That was her name. A smile slowly took over her face as the two large lumps of blubber and steel accelerated towards her, bowling her over.

The Ra was talking but it was a distant thing as Silence wrapped around them. Taylor could feel the intent woven into them, into their coming. She was an amateur at using her more esoteric powers, but even she could see they’d been served up ready to cut. She wasn’t sure if this was Midway’s idea of an apology, but she’d take it. Oh how she’d take it. Half remembered time in that deep pit slowly let her shape the Silence around her into a blade to cut, to sever. To free them from Midway’s grasp, now and forever.

Every thread linking them to that damn island had been separated and bound together so even a toddler couldn’t miss. Some cynical part of her wondered if there were other hidden connections that she’d have to scour them for, concealed links or orders. The rest was just happy to claim them.

And yet? Something stayed her hand. Maybe it was the slight whimper from the two when she squeezed the rope leading back to Midway to better hold it for the cut. Maybe it was the itching at the back of her head that something about this wasn’t right. Words echoing in her Silence, relayed from Midway by the repair ship and ringing hollow.

“These two are really obsolete. So why don’t you take them off my hands, they are no good to me anyway.“

Because if Taylor could see the links to Midway, she’d have to be blind to miss Taylor’s own connections. And Midway was blind in many ways, but this? This was her field of expertise. Taylor could feel it in how carefully each strand of the rope was woven. With exquisite attention. She’d been sewing for weeks now and Taylor couldn’t believe how fine the weave was. She’d never made anything like it. She wasn’t sure she’d seen anything like it even among Parian’s works. More than anything it reminded her of her own fabrics, woven by individual spiders, each thread placed just so to create a greater whole.

Taylor wondered:

“What are you hiding behind such a precise weave Midway?”

She peered into the fine weaves, trying to separate them and see inside, her fingers feeling entirely too blunt and lacking, like the entire thing had been made so she couldn’t figure it out. But Taylor knew fabric and threads. And something else. Something pulsing inside her head, in an empty place, coming out. There was care in these bonds. Care and love. From both sides. And that?

“That made no sense. Why send them away if she loved them?”

***

They watched the Silence wrap around their Princess. Watched her still and stand. Watched her crane lower her one seaplane and it fly off. And all through it, she paid them no attention. Her hands gently rubbing the heads of the two destroyers. Wakumi and Sapphire felt jealous of them. Almost as one they thought:

“What did they do to deserve such closeness from the Miss?”

One was immediately ashamed of thinking it. The other wanted to interrogate them to figure it out.

Shun? The subgirl just smiled.

***

{Far Sight}

Taylor watched the island. There was a mien of normalcy to it, but looking closer? Everywhere girls were retiring. Getting out of the open. There was a weight to the air. A feeling that staying outside was dangerous. It led her to an out of the way place. The reef most distant from the main compound and the docks. Shallow pools filled with shoals and a pale tree under which Taylor had spent so many nights.

Midway was there, scowling, looking right back at her. With her hands on those very threads linking them? Taylor wasn’t a half-blind cripple anymore. As Midway reached out she haltingly reached back, like a child learning to stand for the first time, in that place beyond the real. They spilled into each other’s eyes, flowing through the Abyss in them.

*

She was small and it was hard to stay herself. But this was hard enough already. Important enough to try, struggle. To be sure. Taylor was eight and trying so hard to stay big. To be the mature one, responsible. She raised her eyes and glimpsed The Mountain. A behemoth rising out of the sea, a peak unimpressed by the ocean trying to swallow it. A mountain of metal bristling with airfields, cannon and so many wards carved into its very bones that it could swallow the sun and not blink.

Covered in rivers of red and white flowing steel, living steel, forges, factories and machine shops churning out weapons and gear as at its base the entire edifice ground at the seafloor, digging up more ore for the war. Unfeeling, untouchable and perfect. Unmarred by any troubles and unmoved by the shaking of the world. A stoic and distant overseer over the fleets that fed and clung to its skirts, the dock from which the lifeblood of war flowed. Standing before it, was its personification, Midway herself.

Clad in flowing white, her hair flowing in an invisible breeze, like some ghostly demon risen from the sea, come to drag her down into the Abyss. Unimpressed, quickly growing furious but for all the mountain looming over her? All Taylor could see was that scowl. Those teeth. Her hand ached. Not the one that she’d just got back, but the fingers of the other. Until she was cradling them against her chest from the phantom pain and the memories.

“Teeth, grinding down, breaking, snapping, cutting, chewing on her.”

On the last few fingers she still had, that worked.

A curtain of curly hair had taken the nightmare from the world. Obscured it enough that Taylor could feel anything but echoes of pain and hate. Hate for the callousness, for the empty eyes that didn’t even care they were torturing her. Her mind knew better now, at least a bit. But the heart didn’t care.

“I’ll never forgive her.”

Whimpers from her hands drew her back outside her pain. Two felt shark toys were wigging in her hands in pain. She struggled to relax her aching fingers enough not to hurt them. It was so hard. But it wasn’t about her. What kind of superhero would she be if she hurt those who’d done nothing but support her?

So she looked up at The Mountain, the Dragon of Steel and Fire and faced, like some Princess from a fairytale. And that at least, brought a bit of relief to her heart. Stories? Stories she knew. Books were a familiar friend. So she gathered up her courage and asked:

“I’m not very good at this yet. But all these threads, they go into them. They are woven through them, a part of them. If I cut all these, would they even still be themselves?” She rambled.

“I don’t want to hurt them. They don’t deserve that. So I want to do it right. Please help me do it right.” Taylor hated it. Hated having to ask Midway for help. But they were hers and Midway was had woven the rope. So what choice was there? The scowl shuttered into blankness as clouds came to bury the mountain in obscuring fog and Midway’s face became a mask made of stone. As unmoving and unfeeling as a mountain whose winds were quietly whistling in Taylor’s ear.

The island bent over. Her teeth close enough to rip Taylor’s throat out in one lunge. Then she’d eat the rest of her.

“So be it. This is the last favor I’m doing you.”

It was like diving into the cold ocean, the voice, the breath freezing. She wilted before the onslaught.

Long fingers uncurled and struck like liquid lightning. Taylor was blinking, flinching, trying to keep up. Then awed at how none of them came for her, but what they did. Each slipped between threads and found knots and lines to pull, ring, snap, until the entire rope was vibrating like guitar strings, singing of pain and loss. Until the vibrations grew to a pitch that had something inside snapping. The rope unraveled and impossibly precise and determined hands gathered the two ropes, one in each, as they unraveled into dozens of threads laid over Midway’s palms, hanging from fingers, each separate, clear and singing a different song.

Here was loyalty, there shared pain, joy. Warm gentle brushes and hard commands trusted to carry them all through. She wasn’t looking at links, but parts of their souls, for the bond had grown so deep it was a part of them. Just glancing at them so bared, Taylor could almost read years of Midway’s early history. Even as her face remained totally impassive, as though she was just waiting for the opportunity to strike. But it didn’t tell her enough about who Midway was now.

The temptation grew. Taylor could cut now. Cut out the loyalty. Trim some shared pain, a bit of the love so that they wouldn’t choose Midway over Taylor. Shed suffering, wash out the colors of sacrifice to weaken the other bonds. Undermine the awe and worship and happiness that linked them enough that she could be sure. Sure that they wouldn’t betray her.

“Wasn’t it enough? This is already hard. They’d still be themselves. Mostly.”

Yet what had Itchy and Scratch done to deserve such suspicion?

Of every Abyssal Taylor had met, nothing and less than that.

And still she hesitated. Because she couldn’t. Because it wasn’t about them, it was Midway. Her servants, her ships. Taylor couldn’t let Midway have a spy in her ranks if even half her plans were to be viable. Was Midway an enemy? Or just another horrible misunderstanding made worse by the nature of Abyssals? Taylor couldn’t tell.

And until she could, she couldn’t trust them. She’d have to hurt them, just enough to be sure. Sure she was finally safe. A new beginning couldn’t start on shaky grounds, filled with suspicion. Taylor just couldn’t, when full freedom had been a step away. Was this how they got her, on emotion? Her mind argued reason and restraint but the heart wouldn’t stop seeing those teeth. Hearing the abuse. Feeling hunger gnawing at her stomach.

For all that Taylor could push her emotions around, she couldn’t hide them from herself. Not with that creepy blank face so close, the teeth in her face. She saw no way out, and only grew more certain there would be no true victory here. No matter how much she wished otherwise. How Taylor wished she could sidestep their issues and just talk to Midway. That wish? It was almost a prayer.

“Please, let there be a better way.”

Part 2: Ancient

An Abyssal is never truly alone. Especially not a Princess, not so far from the real. In that place between where they were so close to the True Abyss that each could just reach out and touch it. Taylor’s Captain’s cloak, the floor of this place?

It heard her and tried to help.

*

There was a gurgle, somewhere in her head, as a loud whistle right in her ears nearly deafened her. The first sound ate itself and slid right out of her memory even as the whistle lingered, but that wasn’t what drove her. A hum, a howl echoed down her bones right out of her skull. It boiled out of her lips into the dead, impassive mask before her. The sound that was Silence was caught by flaring sigils that burned to look at on Midway’s dress and the pulse flung away, the Island untouched.

Yet even as Midway recoiled, the pulse of sound reached Taylor’s boots. Words from a lost dream boiled out of her lips as Taylor stomped, like any child unhappy with an unfair world. All her indignity, disgust and refusal to accept that world wrapped into one step protesting existence itself.

It struck the floor of a place that wasn’t and echoed through it like a wave on the sea foam. Foam made of forgotten nightmares. Slipping through the endless black beneath them and into Midway’s mines. Echoing right past her wards. Climbing from the inside out as it Resonated with the True Abyss inside Midway.

The ping rose until Taylor could see everything, map every twitch, almost lift the thoughts from her head. Hearing the heartbeat ram into overdrive as Midway’s impassive mask shattered into a dry river begging for relief. For she’d been silently sobbing beneath the mask, her eyes bone dry because Midway had long since run out of tears. Trying to carry her own burdens and the entire world on her back for so long it had become habit.

Anxious that if she couldn’t, others would see her imperfections and worry. That the worry would be too much for them on top of everything else and they’d fail to carry their own burdens. So everyone would be buried in the end, useless. So Midway suffered in silence, because she had long since learned there was no one else, that everyone had their own problems. It was alright. She was used to it.

But on top of all that, she was afraid to show it here, now. To show weakness, to be anything but at her best before a girl she’d said such horrible things about not a day ago in Court because that’s how the game was played. A Princess she hurt so bad but couldn’t see as anything but an enemy. It was too soon.

Midway was terribly pained and afraid that she’d fuck this up as well because she was bleeding. Her twist was a livid, bleeding scar running from her hip to high on her ribs on the opposite side. The bleeding gut wound hidden by her dress, torn open by Taylor’s existence and exacerbated by her closeness. A weeping red line carved across her stomach Midway was hard pressed now not to keep picking at and scratching until it gutted her. And only recently bandaged, treated. The dressing so fresh Taylor could sense Midway feel it soaking in the blood.

It was where the mines met the seafloor, for even as she ate the world to feed her fleets she was eating away at her own foundations and future as well. Blaming herself for every mistake, every failure.

The wound was failure carved so deep it would never heal. Could never be undone. It was felt every moment of every day. Midway had spent years learning to handle and manage it. Until she was good enough to keep it stable. So used to the everyday effort Midway didn’t even notice it until the wound flared up.

She just lived with it. A mistake, to think the bunkers full enough for the unveiled rage of the world in the wake of Raven’s progress. For a war going hot. Until the siege. The starvation. Until she was scuttling and carving up girls to feed the rest and tearing out pieces of herself as well because it was her fault. She failed to plan for a world gone mad.

A mistake that had driven girls so deep into the Abyss they drowned and sank beneath its burbling surface into the True Abyss itself. Where she’d never find them, reach them. Never get them out, no matter how much she dug and tried. A wound she had learned to carry and manage, but freshly torn open by everything around Taylor. How did she not see it coming? How was she that stupid, that arrogant? The Perfect Princess.

So she blamed herself. For them and for Taylor. For not being able to forgive her, instruct her properly. For not noticing her. Because it still hurt so much just to look at Taylor. The fears of what could have happened if she had turned into the second coming of Katherine dancing before her eyes as she lost girls again.

None of this was helping. It was agony, as Midway felt exposed like few times in her life and helpless to stop it. Bound by her duties and wishes until she and Itchy and Scratch were at Taylor’s mercy. And Midway was desperate not to show it, for she no more trusted Taylor than Taylor trusted her. Midway barely knew anything about her, and all she did felt like a lie. All that? On top all the bad blood spilled between them.

To do any less than her best would be failure and Midway couldn’t fail. Not without tearing herself open all over again. Yet there were few things she wanted less, than to so hurt and cripple her oldest friends. Except maybe lose them, or be helpless to protect them, as she was now that Taylor had seen through her.

Midway was recoiling, making the monumental effort to push aside her failures, trying to fail as a Princess, because anything was better than this torture of being exposed and helpless with some of her oldest friends on the chopping block before another Princess that hated her and with no one to help her.

“Where’s her Princess?” Taylor asked herself, faced with yet another mess. One that couldn’t wait.

So no matter how her hands shook, how large the teeth loomed and she wanted to run, Taylor tried.

***

The little menace had returned. One of her planes was buzzing around Midway’s island.

“What is it with that girl? I warned her not to stay and she comes back. Didn’t Kaede explain?”

Midway felt the plane circle around to her and looked right at it. “What?”

The beginnings of a primitive connection were trying to form. So primitive and basic they disgusted Midway. Almost on reflex she spun the threads into being, forming a two-way link. Nothing that shoddy would be allowed to exist in her presence. They spilled into each other’s eyes by the same base principles the Court used to hold sessions: that each Princess was a point that touched the True Abyss. It didn’t care about such petty things like mere distance.

*

The girl was taller. Midway had been deeply engrossed and distracted during the Ritual, but that much was obvious. The girl was taller, older. Not quite as a Light Cruiser in the real, but more like some of the children they saw on TV shows. Someone just starting school, in a white blouse and dark blue pants that stopped halfway down her calf. Ending just above her black little ankle booties.

She wore a backpack with two straps going over her shoulders. It was an ugly thing. A large plushy spider, its head with many pale lidless eyes bobbing over her shoulder. Six long floppy legs bounced around loosely as she moved, the lowest pair reaching just below her knees. The backpack was done in shades of a black outer side and white underside, one shifting into the other at the edges.

Midway’s eyes snapped to Taylor’s hands as Itchy and Scratch whimpered in pain. Static filled her mind. The girl was talking but Midway couldn’t hear any of it. They were still hers and they were in pain. She was failing them, right now. Tension filled her whole frame, the cold deepening until the she could feel the Abyss ready to boil out of her to freeze the little upstart solid. Midway had warned her. Warned her to stay away and like a glacier suddenly calving, Midway was ready to fall upon her for daring to hurt her ships right in fro-

“So I want to do it right. Please help me do it right.”

The line, the words? They exploded into her mind past the static, echoing down to her core. Because Midway always did everything she could to do it right. To get it right. To never fail. So how could she not understand another wanting the same? That wish, that desire? Midway felt it to her core. It resonated, ringing through her hate filled mind. Like hitting a sea mine, the polluted ice shattered as fractured glass. Thousands of broken, sharp fragments carving Midway inside as she was left in the ruins of her hate.

Empty, but for the pain and loss. It was so much easier to just hate her.

“But what kind of Princess would I be if I did? A failure and no more.”

There was no way out. Only through. So she would bear it. As she had all along. The lack of choice at least made the decision easy. She threw out some excuse to save face and tried to hide her bleeding heart, but probably only succeeded because the newborn was so new.

“I doubt this poor a mask would fool many at Court. Look at me, wallowing.”

Midway chided herself as she opened up a simple triresonanant seal. It was an old trick.

If the present hurt too much, don’t think about it.

“This too shall pass. Don’t think about how you’re baring all your souls to a girl who has every reason to hate you so she can cut out the parts she doesn’t like.” It wasn’t working so well, but she was trying. The jet plans played behind her eyes as she waited for the blades to fall, for judgment to finally end so she could make her excuses and bury herself in her research for a week.

Out of nowhere power coalesced in the Princess before her, a scream ripping its way out of Taylor’s lips. Some kind of targeting pulse that caught Midway entirely flatfooted. But not unready. Wards potent enough to delay even Raven herself flung the attack away as Midway recoiled.

“What in the Abyss?”

She didn’t get far. Taylor’s hands closed around her own even as she retreated, Itchy and Scratch trapped between them, so that if either pulled they’d tear them apart.

Midway gathered her will to unleas-

A second pulse shook the very Abyss they were standing on. It travelled in that space Midway could and did wield in Ritual with peerless skill and did so at almost no apparent effort from the newborn. Slipped by all her outer wards and somehow bypassed all the internal protections meant to stop harm and accidents.

Midway could feel it ringing in her, mapping every last part of her.

“Was this not enough? You greedy bitch! Aren’t you happy taking my ships now you want to steal my secrets as well?” Midway screamed in her face, beyond done with this. Beyond tired. The bitches face was clouded, like she couldn’t even hear the words, like she was listening to something else.

For the second time in her life, Midway felt violated. Someone was rummaging around inside her again.

“What, does she want to know how best to hurt me? Was this it, the moment she took vengeance? Was she always going to be a Court hussy? I won’t allow it. Not them. If I must fail, I’ll pick my own poison!” Midway swore.

No one else would pay for her mistakes, not again.

Images of her fleet starving danced before her eyes.

“Not again. Never again.”

Yet before she could act, Itchy and Scratch whimpered. On the wings of their pain, an ocean of emotions flooded into Midway through them that pinned her feet to the ground. A ghostly window hung in the air behind Taylor as the legs of the spider all went rigid and straight, each supporting an image. All were monstrous, but Midway only had eyes for one. Through it she saw terror.

*

The monster had unnaturally wide teeth. Its eyes were dull and utterly devoid of humanity, of any care for others. Almost disinterested in the horrors it was casually committing as the Cannibal chewed on her fingers as she stayed still so the monster wouldn’t have some excuse to do worse to her. This was already horrible enough. Not as much as some vague memories, but up there.

Taylor could already imagine she’d be having nightmares about this for weeks to come, and that’s if she survived being permanently crippled without her last few fingers. Taylor tried not to watch and couldn’t. It was impossible. That was her hand as the monstrous teeth went snap as liquid fire flooded her mind, already filled with an ocean of bitter helplessness and pain.

She was an even worse cripple now. If she lived.

If the monster didn’t suddenly decide she liked the taste and ate her alive.

*

That thought? Those fears? That she’d be crippled!? Like fingers were once and never again, like Taylor couldn’t heal, regrow, rebuild. Like those were the only fingers she would ever have, and the last ones at that. Disappearing down the gullet of some uncaring monster. Or worse, one amused by the pain it inflicted. If it wasn’t just playing with her until it grew bored and ate her alive.

Midway recoiled from that more than twisted, alien visage of herself. Like living in a world where [Fleet-sense] didn’t exist. Like she could ever do something as horrible as scrap a girl for fun. Her gorge rising, mind spinning, churning alien thoughts, invaded by foreign understanding. No, that wasn’t her.

“I didn’t do that. I didn’t. I don’t. None of it was true.” That was distorted. Mad.

It was sick. Bile fell from her lips. In that moment she was even thankful for the other Princess gently pulling their joined hands out of the way so she didn’t despoil the open souls in her palms. But they were a truth. Her truth at the time. She knew it. Felt it.

“How could it be true?”

Crippling. It was like some alien kind of madness of the body. Harm that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard anyone tried. Like the loss of a limb was permanent and any scratch life threatening. How could anyone live that way? How could anything so frail survive? How could an Abyssal ever believe something that alien? The body was just a shell. They were not just metal and oil and bauxite. They were Abysssals.

It was the earnest innocence that convinced her. That this wasn’t a trick to hurt her, some vicious lie or manipulation. The other Princess had opened her own connection wide and was beaming everything down the link. Hiding from Midway when she could see the other so clearly wasn’t possible. Not here, not this close.

“I refuse to believe a newborn could play me so.”

Midway raised her eyes to meet Taylor, to look into her soul. There she found only the Abyss. But this close, this connected? She could glimpse something else. Sharp, wicked points poking at the underside of the Abyss. Wreckage of a soul the Abyss had consumed barely glimpsed beneath the dark waves. The bits glimpsed scrambled, distorted by the ocean. Unrecognizable and alien.

When she came out of it Midway found herself paralyzed at the look she was facing. The depth to those dark waters.

“I know those eyes. I know that look. Like she’s lived a life before being born to the Abyss.”

In those eyes, Midway saw an Ancient. How long had Taylor lived to Midway’s short six years? What did she remember, know? Even now Midway could see, feel, that ancient judging her. Weighing the worth of her soul and all her works. It was a familiar feeling. Frederic had approved. Raven pitied her.

Midway hated that. She hated pity. It did nothing to help.

“Raven isn’t better than me.”

In the ancient before her? Midway found enough pain to drown the world. She found a thread so worn by fate it cared little for itself. This was how, why. The secret to how a Princess could commit suicide and not punch a hole in the world in doing it. Taylor did not run from her own death. She’d embraced it. Accepted it. She deserved it. Taylor was still here because there was still work to be done, things, people to fight for. Because she was needed.

But Princess Taylor? She carried her own graveyard with her and one day they’d bury her in it.

In that alien feeling, Midway found comfort. Because all this? This wasn’t about the pain. It wasn’t for suffering. Taylor had had enough of it to fill entire oceans and had no desire to mete out more. Though she would.

“Oh she would if she had to.”

Midway shuddered at just how much violence was hidden behind the clouds of her spirit world. A giant serpent promising oblivion even as the waters cradled the ruins of her past.

It was about disgust with the world. About fear and understanding. About doing the right thing. Trying to reach Midway through Taylor’s own twist so hard it was flaying her soul. Taylor acted like the pain was an old friend, stopping by for some drinks and to catch up. Like the reaper Raven pretended to be, weighing her soul.

And despite the ocean of pain and not one iota of forgiveness?

Hate did not bloom for Midway on those sunken shores.

“You are terribly, horribly wanting. Flawed and insufficient. Self-destructive and just not good enough. But we’ll work with that, one way or another.”

Not something to just accept or pity. It was something that could be worked on, improved. No matter how hard it might be, Taylor was going to try.

That? That Midway understood. Improving on past works. Building something better. She couldn’t see the deficiencies in herself, or she would have fixed them by now.

“But they are there anyway. Waiting to ambush me so my girls pay for it. If this can help?”

Midway surrendered to the current and let it carry her away. What else was there?

(I’m sorry.)

Midway understood now how a child could grow that fast. She wasn’t growing. She was catching up.

She knelt before the ancient child and awaited judgment, instruction. Whatever it was that promise of oblivion and a better world actually meant. Watching the ancient watch her, and trying to catch a glimpse of that understanding. Straining to hold out because none of this made it so Taylor’s very presence wasn’t fire in an open wound.

(I can’t forgive you.)

Freddy was wise beyond her apparent age. Raven was a powerhouse. The powerhouse at Court. What was this ancient like? Midway needed to know. It was gnawing at her.

“I just want to understand. How are you here? Who were you before this? Why you? Why here? Why now? Why?”

(It still hurts too much.)

No answers came as she returned to her position. Able to accept it.

Helpless and holding the souls of her friends, laid bare, trusting Taylor not to hurt her.

After a minute of carefully going through them, the ancient child made her choice.

(I’m sorry)

From all the threads she took only two. They were thin, frayed, shriveled things. The marks of authority every Princess had over her fleet. Unused for years, because Midway had long since not needed them for these destroyers.

Threads that encouraged obedience, deference. Enforced order. Those two only, Taylor took, and in her fingers snapped.

(I can’t forgive you.)

Relief flooded into Midway. Relief and vindication. A hand extended. Trust, unpunished. Rewarded.

Even if she was still losing them, she wasn’t losing them.

“Itchy and Scratch always could tell, who was mean and who was nice. I should have trusted them from the start.”

Taylor’s hands fell on Midway’s and they both gathered them up, rebuilding Itchy and Scratch. Almost untouched. New threads snapped into being as Midway surrendered them back into Taylor’s hands. The same ones they had cut, now to a new master. A new Fleet.

“Finally, this ordeal is over.”

(I never meant for any of this.)

Without a word, Taylor turned and fled, her little feet carrying her over the cold, dark floor, the two toy sharks grasped to her heart. Unable to bear it any longer. Floppy spider legs wobbling all over. The spider head turned around to watch Midway. A single leg came up and pointed at its eyes, before pointing at Midway. Because it still didn’t trust her.

Without the closeness, without the connections? The bond was fraying, closing.

(But it shouldn’t, it doesn’t have to be this way.)

Her flight slowed. Stopped. The ocean had retreated but Midway could still almost feel the pain. The disgust. So vivid were the fresh memories. Taylor didn’t turn around but thrust a single hand back, Scratch in it.

“I don’t want him.” Taylor claimed and even Midway could tell it was a lie. Or no.

“A face. A front.”

“This repair is amateur and won’t hold up. It isn’t worth the cost of trying again so he might as well stay at a port where someone can keep an eye on him. And didn’t you tell me not to come back? Might as well use him as an envoy. Get at least some benefit out of it. So take him.” Taylor said, her voice dismissive.

Midway didn’t care about the excuse. Or remember crossing the distance. Only the feel of having her friend back near her heart, checking him over. She was drawn out of the warmth and happy wiggling by the sounds of running feet. The Island looked after her retreating back and wondered.

(Someday?)

The Mountain silently asked in the beats of giant hammers, the flowing of steel rivers.

Wondering, curious of the things she could not speak aloud.

And in the fading patter of the running feet of an ancient child, she felt the unspoken answer echoing back to her.

(Someday.)

***

The two brothers waved each other goodbye with their fins, grinning happily even as the distance grew. The feud pruned, its roots pulled before they could be watered with resentment, distance and hate until they grew to choke both Princesses. They’d call that a success. Sometimes the big girls were blind and silly. With stupid big people rules. So they needed a clever destroyer to watch out for them.

For all is well that ends well and in the Abyss?

A clean wound; one that could heal?

It would. And that was good enough.

***

Midway came out of it rubbed raw and beyond tired. Had she been this worn down before all this? Or was this whole series of terrible events so hard to bear?

“I don’t know, but I can’t go on like this. There’s no point in being there for them if I undermine myself doing it. Sooner or later, I’ll break too.”

For in the reflection of those ancient eyes, she’d seen herself more clearly than in any mirror.

“When’s the last time I really stopped and looked at myself, my own soul? I’ve been working for so long, so hard, I forgot. Always too much to do.”

Midway wandered in a daze. Her feet brought her to the center of her lagoon. There she gazed into her own reflection, the storm above her. There, she finally let go.

Rain fell on Midway. Not the whipping storm of anger, nor the terrible promise of vengeance. The cold, freezing waters of warning and threat.

No.

Soft, warm rain patterned over the beaches, homes and trees as the heavens cried, overflowing.

Regret fell from the skies. Regret and pain washing away the hate.

Within minutes, the entire island was in hiding, huddling in their homes.

From behind that warm, wet curtain, crossing the silent sea of pain they came.

Freddy came first, her bow breaking the still waters, beaming. She crashed into Midway and hugged her so hard Midway felt screws popping, her walls flexing. Until Freddy was almost hanging off her right shoulder, her head resting right against Midway’s cheek, lips to her ear.

“I’m so proud of you Middy,” she whispered.

Sachi came next. She was a tiny ship in a storm far too big for her and terrified of being wrong. Of intruding.

But she came called by the rain, a shining star of courage in her heart to ward away the anxiety and fear. Sachi burrowed her way under Midway’s left shoulder, curling into her chest for warmth and safety. Radiating gratitude and a deep and unshakable wish that she could do more.

Amelie trailed in her wake, worried. In the end, she dared not be so direct with two Princesses, but still placed her hand on Midways left shoulder, pumping support into the still waters.

An image of The Empress rose out of the waters, made from the sea. “Frederic, what is it now? Oh.”

She shook her head. “Oh Midway. You weren’t supposed to defrost for another two weeks. I wanted to be there,” she pouted, before hugging both Princesses from the front. Sachi giggled as she was sandwiched between two Princesses.

“Hush you.” The Empress chided.

There was a dot on the horizon. Quickly growing as Scratch screamed his way into the Lagoon at full speed and crashed to a stop before the gathered girls, spraying them all with his waves. The giant shark panted happily in place, before its tongue gave Midway a massive lick, catching all three Princesses in the process.

The image of The Empress was disrupted; “So uncouth!” while Freddy rocked back:

“Not in the face, not in the face!”

Midway? Midway found her heart swelling with warmth. It pulsed into the Fleets, through the rain.

“Thank you. Thank you all.”

To that Echo, that missive? The ocean, the joint Fleets answering to Midway from all across the Pacific?

They answered as one:

“No Princess. Thank you. For everything you do, for everything you are. Thank you.”

***

Three woman sat around a fire in that place beyond the real. The heads of the Pacific Court. Midway sat on a stool while the Empress coated her weeping wound with medicines and Freddy stood behind her, wrapping her up in bandages. Both fondly berating her for letting it get so bad again.

“Why don’t you take better care of yourself Midway?” they asked, almost in tune.

Around them, dozens, hundreds of toys and dolls played and cheered, some dancing around other, less important girls. Dancing, racing, and drinking. Eating special food that spoils and celebrating. For the ice and snow had melted and the warm rains were back.

Looking at it all? Midway felt her eyes fill. She didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. But here, today? Surrounded by her Fleet and friends and more than friends? Today was a good day. For the first time in weeks, her eyes were wet.

“Us against the World?” Midway asked.

“Us against the World.” All three agreed.

The happy tears that fell fed the floor. It liked them, they were zesty. There was that tiny spark to them. A Promise from one Princess to another. That it could be better. That it would be better. Someday.

Midway didn’t know how. But she kind of wanted to see it.

***

Taylor? Taylor sailed away. Towards Hawaii and her future.

She went with Itchy, Shun and Wakumi, warm and basking in their presence. Bittersweet.

Her Fleet, her people. Her little monsters. Still reeling from the experience in the beyond, dazed.

Running while the others skated across the waves, her Imps hanging off her.

Kaede the repair ship came with them, to map the new Princess and help plan the remodel.

Resigned to it, since Taylor didn’t actually have her own plans.

”It’s lot of work, ok? And I had to leave the docks. Do you know when the last time I sailed was?”

Itchy lapped them all, dancing around the formation, cheerfully splashing everyone to Shun’s irritation.

Shun? The subgirl kept an eye beneath the waves while warding off the giant shark, looking for trouble. Smug at her own contributions.

Wakumi carefully watched the skies and stole glances at her new Princess. Unsure what her future would be. Only certain that it will be interesting.

No trouble found them.

None, but a burning footprint in the sea.

But that? That’s another story.

***

“We make it work Taylor Hebert. When their twists drive them to despair, we are there to lift them up. We care for and guide them, quell their ills and fend off their fears. We pick them up when they fail and clean up after them when it goes badly.”

“Because that’s what it means to be a Princess of the Abyss.” Taylor murmured.

Book 1: “They Called Her Bertha”

Outro Music

Fin.

Soundtrack:

1) Acceptance (Wonder upon horror upon wonder upon horror):

-Don McLean - Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

2) Prayer (Abyssal Echoes)

-Katelyn Tarver - You Don't Know Cover– Chino(Nightcore)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQk9Wc20y1c

3) Birth of a Fleet (A World Our Own)

-Starset – It has begun Cover – HaelCius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4qrve0lDZU