"That would seem to match up with the hypothesis. If it's not very targeted then it could be... I don't know, showing up on whatever spiritual dimension the spirits exist on and attracting whichever one is closest and attuned to the call, and only ships with some degree of history have a spirit in the first place... I don't know, I'm spitballing here." 

"Let's back up for a moment. What was that you said about fairies? I thought this was a ship-based magic system." 

"A ship needs a crew, yes? Every shipgirl is crewed by tiny fairies, representations of the crew she had in her first life. They can step outside and do things on occasion, and run her systems from within."

"Huh. That's funky. I wonder what it's like for a shipgirl to have a tiny crew inside her..." 

"Sorry, I'm getting distracted. Has anyone tried to talk to a fairy independently of their shipgirl before? Are they smart?"

"Somewhat. A lot of their personhood and identity seems to be tied up in serving as crew to their shipgirl. It's rare for them to express other interests or desires. But within the scope of their duties they're as smart as you or I. You get the liveliest responses out of the engineers, though understanding any fairy is a bit of a challenge."

"Have you tried... recertifying the fairy engineers on new technologies and then giving them an example to install? I imagine the language barrier might be an issue, but if they understand you, you might be able to communicate to them...?"

"They certainly understand us, yes. That might wind up being a part of the process. Shipgirls can move objects in and out of their holds, which function as a form of pocketspace. That may allow the engineers access to it. We may need to help the process in other ways, however. We'll have to discuss it with some engineering fairies when one of the girls has enough downtime."

"Yeah, I imagine they're very busy right now." 

Rider taps her thumbs together in her lap. "Do you think I'm missing anything important on the situation still? If so, please go ahead and explain, but if not, then we should discuss how I'm deployed, whether I enlist or not, and so on."

"We work with the JMSDF regularly, along with some European navies, especially the British. What languages do you speak?"

"Oh, uh —" 

Rider visibly flushes a little.

"Sorry, I completely forgot to mention because I'm so used to it — I can read and write english, and speak and understand anything spoken aloud. I have a trio of translation charms anchored in my larynx and eardrums that let me understand and speak anything that's transmitted as vibrations in air as spoken English. I wouldn't be able to read a non-english console in real time, but I'd be able to take vocal orders in real time. Come to think of it, I might be able to understand your fairies better than most."

Edwards blinks. "I don't know why translation magic is throwing me after everything else, but regardless. That translation magic may make you invaluable next time we need to work with fairies and don't have a shipgirl available. Shipgirls can understand fairies instinctively, of course. I think that's everything, though, apart from the question of whether you enlist."

"Alright, then let's discuss the question. I'm a foreign national, effectively, which means I probably shouldn't be swearing any oaths to defend a local nation or what have you; this isn't my home, and while it might someday be once we solve all this, I'm not in a rush to settle down. Is there provision for auxiliary units of some form? I don't know how you're handling the shipgirls, but I imagine they come from local nations so it's less likely they have issues. I'm willing to work with a military chain of command if I have to, am a little less keen on becoming naturalized, and would actively appreciate being deployed in a combat situation, but am willing to serve a more advisory role if you need me strategically more than tactically or if it's bureaucratically easier. My OTC citizenship is unlikely to be renounced if I settle here, but is likely to be if I swear to a foreign military body so I'd like to avoid that."

"We do have some options, there," Edwards starts with a thoughtful hum. "When the JMSDF girls are on detached duty here, we have auxiliary procedures to integrate them into our chain of command. Similarly, when we were first discussing how to integrate shipgirls into our command structure, before we settled on giving them all commissions, one of the proposals was for... affiliated consultants, you could say. That's what we're integrating our civilian summoning experts under currently, as a matter of fact. We could use something like that for you. You would have a rank on paper, to fit you into the structure, but no one would use it in practice, and you would report directly to the admiral in charge of the local shipgirl fleet. Likely get quarters in their wing, as well."

"That sounds like it'd agree with me. I'd like to see how it works out in formal language but it seems like the right shape, more or less."

"Probably we'll arrange a mix of active combat and talks with the research and engineering teams, see what you can teach us about your tech."

He starts typing something into his computer, probably setup for her consultant contract.

She waits patiently.

... Well, as patiently as she can. She's not really wired for sitting around waiting. 

She keeps her mouth shut and instead bounces her foot beneath the table. 

"You're as restless as one of the little destroyers," he comments with a laugh, still typing away. "You can ask questions. A lot of this contract work is very boilerplate."

"Sorry, the reflex and sensory adjustments do come with some side effects... or you could say they're a side effect of me being this way in the first place. Like, you have to be a very specific kind of person to give up reliable agelessness to go wander the wild frontier, yeah? I'm wired to hunt mammoths and dragons, not to sit around waiting for the action to happen. It helps that I know I'm going to be building things and breaking things soon, but action's in my blood in more than one way and fighting it only works so much." 

She stretches. "So yeah, what's the boilerplate like?"

He turns his monitor around so they can both see it. It's normal English legalese, seems to cover all the stuff they talked about in terribly boring and formal language. He's doing a mix of selecting options from various dropdowns and buttons, and manually writing in provisions. "It covers your pay, quarters, duties, and where you fit into the command structure." He points at a particular line.

"This bit here I modified to cover your formal allegiance remaining with your OTC, and that line there got adjusted to cover that you're only expected to follow orders in combat situations. I also mixed in combat provisions in general, because our civilian consultants are typically not expected to ever see combat."

It all looks normal.

She looks it over, then nods. "Looks solid."