It's a hard ride. Worse than she's had in a long time. The void between worlds is turbulent, struck through with pockets of terrible energy that would vaporize her in an instant. 

She lives for this. 

She controls her bike, all instinct and training, faster than her brain can think, just riding the way she should, dancing with a dragon that wants to destroy her. A meshwork of plasma and buffeting stellar currents flashes past her faster than she can even be afraid.

The bike's fighting her. For an instant, she's out of control, and an instant is all she needs to become far behind the bike. She dips almost too slowly to slide under a final pocket of plasma, the void weather trying its best to kill her personally, and careens out of the slipspace with the bike not quite under control —

She falls, careening out of the sky towards a city on a coast. She recognizes the shape of it at a glance — probably Seattle, or at least a Seattle — but she's got to stop the damn bike before she plows into the ground —

The world blurs away as the reactor whines beneath her. She forces every rev she can from the engine, barely dodges plowing directly into the side of a skyscraper, and turns her fall into a controlled stop as pedestrians dive out of the way of her bike — 

She comes to a screeching stop in the middle of a busy square near a fountain, and puts down her bike's landing gear just in time to settle neatly onto the earth with a clunk. 

She pulls off her helmet, shakes out her hair, and lets out a triumphant whoop, pumping her fist in the air. 

"Fuck yeah!" 

It's only after that that she bothers to look around. 

International Fountain is recognizable, but deactivated and surrounded with sandbags. There are more sandbags against low-enough windows, and around some entrances to buildings. Other windows are boarded up. There are scorch marks on the side of the Children's Museum, and signs of newly-filled holes in the pavement in suspiciously crater-ish shapes.

The pedestrians are looking at her with a mix of curiosity and wary resignation, and there's a palpable tension in the air, along with a hint of faded shock. People's motions are furtive and cautions, their laughter just a little more stilted, sooner to be cut off.

A few people have phones out to take pictures or video of Rider. A few others are making phone calls while eyeing her suspiciously.

Ah. She's touched down in a warzone then. And one used to weird things. 

Chaos? Surely not, or nobody would be staying to take pictures. Something else. 

It's a little hard to hide her smile, even though it's clearly not the time. She taps a finger against her lip and tries to think of what to say.

"Sorry for the sloppy landing, folks, usually I'm better than that." She does a little bow and waves to the cameras. 

She looks over at the filled-in holes. "I take it there's a war on of some kind. I'm no military woman, but my heart goes out to you all. Hope things go better." And if they're fighting a war against something like Chaos then maybe she'll throw her hat into the ring; there's a reason ones like her don't get sent to the front lines, too vulnerable to the Thirster, but not all threats fight for the soul like that. 

A blond man in a light blue polo and khaki shorts steps closer, hesitantly, despite his companion — husband, judging by the rings on their fingers — pulling at his shoulder. "Yeah, there's a war on, lady," he replies, his voice tired, and tight with old anger and pain. "You haven't heard of the Abyssals?"

"No, I'm not from this universe. Know some other nasty bad things but not Abyssals specifically. What are they?" She leaves off the "here" — there's worlds with Abyssals she knows, but they're more animistic and not so urbanized. Different kind of Abyssal. 

He runs a hand through his hair, eyes wide, reeling a bit. "God, really? Not from this universe?"

"Is it so strange, Chris, after getting invaded by demon boats and the navy fighting them off with shipgirls?" his husband asks him, an eyebrow raised, hand on his hip.

Chris laughs sheepishly. "Suppose not. Just not used to the idea. Had to get used to a lot of shit, though, so guess I'll get used to this, too. Think that fancy bike of yours could put a hole in a demon's hull?"

"Yeah, probably. It's got a dragon gun down its axis from the reactor. These demon boats, are they smart or more like animals?" 

"They're pretty dumb, like animals, but there has to be something smart coordinating 'em. Blood Week was too well planned to be done just by animals." Chris replies with a scowl, shoulders tensing.

His husband suppresses a shudder at the memory.

A master behind the scenes? If it's a war of one against many she's probably gotta be on the side of the many. Especially given that the Children's Museum was apparently shelled; that's just wanton destruction. Terrible things happen in war, but she'd rather be fighting on the humans' side in this one. Call it speciesist of her to assume, but she's always had a weakness for humans. 

"Where can I get in contact with the military as fast as possible without alarming them too badly? The hoverbike's gonna put the wind up them I'm pretty sure but I gotta talk to whoever's coordinating your defense."

One of the people who'd made a phone call when she landed raises a hand and volunteers, "I called the Navy when you landed, ma'am. Some MPs should be arriving any minute."

Another person says she called 911, who forwarded the request to the Navy on account of flying bikes being similar enough to "magical shipgirl bullshit" to be their problem.

Chris' husband speaks up again. "You want to talk to someone up at Everett. That's the nearest major naval base, and where the Pacific fleet's based out of. If you want to talk to the highest brass on the west coast, that's where you'll find them."

"With any luck," Chris adds, "the MPs'll wanna take you there."

A question rises to Rider's lips — You think they'll let me keep the bike? — and dies. 

Then a grin comes to her lips. 

If she stays, anything could happen. 

She likes the sound of that. 

She flips down the kickstand and dismounts the bike. "Then I'll wait here for 'em. Hope they don't take my baby from me, but some things are more important."

Chris nods. "Damned right. Fate of the world and all that shit."

Sure enough, the naval MPs roll up in a pair of squad cars momentarily, flashers on, but no sirens. They get out and walk toward her in two pairs, hands on their sidearms but not drawing them yet.

The lead officer, a man whose uniform identifies him as CWO. Dalton, gives her a cautious look. "Ma'am, are you the unknown visitor with the flying bike?"

"Yes, I am." She gestures to it, careful not to touch it. "It's a long story, but the key points are that I'm not from this universe, I want to help with the war against the abyssals, and I have foreign technology and expertise y'all could probably use. I go by Rider. I'd appreciate it if you could keep the bike within my eyeshot, it's my only ticket home, but if your orders make that impossible I'll deal."

Dalton's partner, a woman with blonde hair in a tight bun, mutters, "More sparkly bullshit," under her breath, but falls silent at a glare from Dalton.

"As you're coming in voluntarily, and you don't seem to be a threat so far, you can keep the bike," he replies. "We'll lead you to Naval Station Everett, where Lieutenant Commander Edwards will talk through the state of the Abyssal war with you and figure out how you can help. Keep to street level and stay between our squad cars, please, ma'am."

"Yes, sir." She doesn't salute — she's not in his command chain — but she gets back on the bike and nods to Dalton. "Lead on."

He nods crisply, gestures sharply to the other MPs, and everyone gets back into their cars. Dalton rolls out first, followed by Rider, with the other squad in the rear. Chris and his husband wave as they go.

Dalton turns his siren on as they go, and traffic parts before them. What would normally be an hour and a half's drive is reduced to forty minutes, though they have to swerve around a few cratered stretches of highway. Along the way, they drive past some bombed out buildings, and a collection of prefab metal buildings people have set improvised grills in front of. The overall impression is one of life finding a way to continue amidst heavy destruction.

They slow down for a checkpoint as they reach the base, but get swiftly waved through, and soon park outside of one of the offices. The MPs all get out.

Rider follows along, of course. She could do a lot of other things, but none of them are things she wants to do. 

She stops, parks the bike, and gets off. 

A little frisson rolls down her spine at leaving the bike behind again, but she supresses it. This is fate-of-this-world stuff. Not fate of the world but fate of a world, and that matters pretty damn much. 

"Where do you want me?", she asks CWO Dalton. 

"Right this way, Miss Rider," he replies, leading her into the building. "No one will mess with your bike on base, and if you work with us more regularly we'll get you a parking pass sorted out."

"Very well." She follows CWO Dalton into the building.

A little ways into the building, CWO Dalton knocks at a door labeled "Lt. Cmdr. Edwards," then opens it. "I have Miss Rider here, Sir."

He waves them inside. Edwards is a reedy, tired-looking man with sandy brown hair sitting behind a metal desk covered in reports. "Welcome to Earth, Miss Rider," he greets her. "Have a seat.

"That will be all, CWO Dalton," he adds to the MP. "Thank you for getting her here so promptly."

Dalton exits, shutting the door behind him. 

She takes a seat. "I imagine you must have an armload of questions."

He nods, smiling thinly. "I do. I imagine you do as well. Chief Warrant Officer Dalton tells me you have technology and expertise that could be relevant in the defense against the Abyssal Fleet. What do you have, what are its and your capabilities, and what do you need to know to convince you to join humanity's defense?"

"First of all let me back up and give you a little more context. I'm from a multi-universe trade conglomerate called the Origin Trade Consortium, a little like the EU if you have that here but with technology that allows them to transfer between universes. I'm a private citizen and don't represent them, but that's important because in the long term if you're able to join they have the necessary infrastructure to guarantee agelessness to your citizens. 

As for me, I'm a member of a group called the Society of Sensation. We travel "wild" universes getting ourselves into situations of one kind or another and return home to share the memories via advanced technology. I encountered multiversal turbulence and pockets of plasma on my way in and made a near-crash landing.

I have...

Firstly, the hoverbike outside, which has a working miniaturized arcane-fusion reactor based on nudging the ignition point of H-11B so it's less hard to sustain, and two, a dimensional folder that's capable of making transit between worlds. It also has three, a spinal cannon for taking down big game, which fires balls of contained witchfire, which is essentially plasma. It's designed for dragons, basilisks, that kind of thing, but it should be capable of taking down your Abyssals as well. 

Secondly, the contents of the pack in the hoverbike. I carry one technological sidearm — a laspistol — and one magical sidearm — a kinetic slugthrower enhanced with accuracy and power boosting runic formations. I also carry a food synthesizer, which is not intended to be able to be used for synthesis of things other than hydrocarbons, but if its DRM was cracked would become a full nanoforge capable of almost arbitrary synthesis of war materiel. There may also be a few spare magical components left over from my old hunts that I've yet to sell, but I don't know what all I might have held on to, I'd have to check my pack itself. 

Thirdly, I have the contents of my body. I'm not a baseline human; my reflexes in particular are far faster than they should be due to modifications performed on me, as well as all my senses being sharper and sensations such as pain being less aversive. I have the ability to regenerate and my bones are stronger as well. What of that technology is duplicatable at your tech level I don't know, but I'd be willing to make survivable donations of tissues for you to try culturing. 

Fourth, I have the contents of my mind. I have a special interest in maintaining and being able to repair my bike in even the worst of circumstances, so I intimately understand all the principles and techniques that go into its manufacture. I'm not broadly read — I'm a gearhead, not an engineer — but I have enough in my brain to teach you how to build bikes like mine. 

Fifth and lastly, we have the possibility of my running the truly terrible astronomical weather to go do a shopping trip in the OTC. This would seriously risk both me and my bike, so I don't recommend it as a starting step, but the OTC has many civilian-available technologies that would make this look even better. The OTC could also just win your war for you if you caught its attention hard enough, but that would be a complex problem because the OTC is presently in the middle of a refugee crisis as it's evacuating a heavily inhabited galaxy due to unlivable conditions within it."

"As for how to convince me, to be frank, I'm already convinced, but I would like to hear the history of the war and what you know about the Abyssal leadership."

The Lieutenant Commander takes detailed notes as Rider explains. His eyes widen slightly at the mention of dragons and basilisks, and widen further when she mentions turning the food synthesizer into a nanoforge.

Finally, he nods. "We need to test all three of your weapons against an Abyssal, but I expect your magical sidearm and your bike's cannon to have the most interesting results, the former because the accuracy magic may get around a major limitation in our ability to fight Abyssals with anything other than shipgirls, and the latter because we may be able to refit some of the girls with it. I'm not aware of the current state of genetic engineering research after the shift to wartime priorities — I know some groups switched to trying to understand how shipgirls even work, and there was a significant increase in food-related research — but I expect some team or another will be interested in your samples. 

"To properly understand the context of our requests and the current state of the war, however, we need to start about six months ago. An amateur archaeologist in Turkey uncovered thousand-year-old writings, documenting a ritual. Detailed photos of these writings and the site where they were found were uploaded to an internet forum called Reddit, and an ad-hoc translation team was assembled from users around the globe. They got the instructions finished before they got the accompanying warnings, though, and when they finished the translations — revealing that it would summon a 'Princess of the Abyss', who would scour the Earth of all but her faithful — they tried to quarantine all of it.

"Unfortunately, they were too late. As best we can tell via forensics, some group of college students in the Midwest had already performed it, and the Abyssal Princess killed them and headed for the coast. No one realized that murder was relevant until weeks after the invasion. 

"We caught her on a few security cameras on her trip to the ocean: bone-white skin, white hair, tar-black coating on her hands. Easily strong enough to bunch a tank across a field."

He sighs tiredly. "Wish we'd realized any of this before it was too late." He clasps his hands and takes a slow breath, then continues.

"That violence on her escape to open water was the last documented sighting of her, and the last sighting of any Abyssal before the invasion. A bit over a month ago, large raiding parties of Abyssal ships struck every port large enough to host a military vessel, simultaneously. It turns out that mortal fire control can't reliably target Abyssals, and they devastated us. They landed companies of tar-soaked marines with inhuman proportions and rictus grins, and pushed inland. Each Abyssal marine was more durable than a human, not dying despite wounds that would have killed one of us several times over. Each Abyssal ship is a quarter the size it should be for its armor and firepower, and we can't hit them properly. It was a massacre.

"We call that first week Blood Week, now. It took five days and immense bloodshed to finally repel their marines, and by the end of the week all human navies were sunk. They started patrolling, after that, blockading all our ports to prevent shipping.

"Then we finally caught a break. Someone in the JMSDF figured out that the ritual that got posted online was possibly involved in summoning a leader of the enemy forces, and manages — with a lot of help — to rewrite it into an inverted form, trying to summon the opposite of that. They managed to summon the spirit of a decades-sunk IJN battleship, Kongō, in the form of a young woman."

Rider holds up her hand for a pause. "A few notes in reply..." 

"Firstly, I don't know how the accuracy magic in the sidearm works, but I do know that it's theoretically scalable to larger weapons, it's just that that kind of weaponry isn't considered civilian by the OTC. Strictly speaking the bike is a grey area, I'm able to have it because I have connections and I'm not hunting with it in OTC space."

"As for this abyssal princess... I'm sorry that's how you learned magic was real, if the OTC had contacted you even a year earlier things might have turned out better for you."

"As for summoning magic — I have a friend who works in dimensional folding and I bet she would know a summoning specialist, but she's on the other side of some truly awful weather and I don't know if whoever she'd get would be willing to risk their life for strangers. If you could work out a banishing spell you might be able to send the abyssal princess back to wherever she came from, but that might just make her someone else's problem."

She sighs. 

"Please go on about the shipgirls. They're based on the reversed summoning ritual — how many of them are there?"

"It'd be great if you could get a specialist, but we'll find a way to manage with what we've got," he replies. "As for the shipgirls, there are currently a bit over fifty, across the various navies of the world. The JMSDF were the first to summon more, swiftly followed by the British. Our shipgirls didn't appreciate the 'imperial fealty' garbage, and we didn't really count as being at our 'hour of direst need', so we had to tweak the ritual a bunch before it worked. At this point the Japanese have sixteen across various classes, the British fourteen, and we have twelve. Each shipgirl can summon her guns as 'rigging' that floats around her, can basically skate across the water, and is durable enough to laugh off heavy machine gun fire. Kongō says it tickles." He chuckles at that.

"Kongō was able to single-handedly demolish an Abyssal patrol fleet on her first sortie, the day she was summoned. Watching her do that is when we started to figure out why we can't hit Abyssals with normal weaponry: they're half in some kind of spiritual plane, and that plays merry hell with our targeting computers, and even normal human aiming. Shipgirls are also on that same spiritual level, and so they can compensate. That's why I'm so interested in your sidearm, because magical targeting might be able to compensate the way shipgirls can."

"The kind of enhancements I have aren't wholly mundane as well, so it's possible I personally would be able to hit an Abyssal even with mundane armaments, but duplicating that would be a much more complex research project than reversing the aiming enchantments, so it's probably smart to focus on that first. The witchfire cannon is more dubious; if it could hit I'm pretty sure it'd sink whatever it hit, but it's only as accurate as the person aiming it.  Most of the enchantments on it go into containing and channeling the witchfire."

Edwards nods. "If we manage to design handholds for one such that a shipgirl could carry it, or better still figure out how to give a shipgirl a refit, it could make quite the difference."

"Yeah, I imagine it must be pretty hard to figure out how to — spiritually interact with the battleship that's on the other plane, represented by the woman. Or at least, I'm guessing that that might be how the shipgirls work, as some kind of... investiture of a spirit into a physical body..." 

She tilts her head. "We're going to have to talk about what you know is possible with shipgirls, but probably the details are need to know right now so it's more complex..." 

Then she blinks. 

"— These shipgirls, they take the spiritual character of actual battleships and so on, yes? And they're drawn from the history of this world somehow. It occurs to me that if you could target a summoning ritual at the OTC you might be able to pull something from their navies or space services. The issue is really 'would they come', you know? Spiritually none of those ships have actual duties here, and I don't have the authority to command them..."

She frowns.

"... But I do have one vehicle that answers to me personally, that's physically present in this plane, and that might come when called. Do you think it might be worth trying to develop a ritual to summon the spirit of my cycle?" 

Edwards boggles at Rider for a moment. "That... It's absolutely crazy, but in a way that I can't dismiss it out of hand. You'd have the authority over her, to call her. But... we've never summoned a single-person vehicle before. Never one with a complement of less than fifty. We haven't done a specifically-targeted summoning before either, but that wouldn't be a problem, since you only have the one. I... I'm not sure. The one thing I do know, however, is that every ship we've summoned was sunk first, or sent to the breakers. We tried to summon a museum ship, but Jersey couldn't answer the call until an Abyssal torpedo sent her to the bottom."

"So it might be a ritual that calls back the spirits of dead ships specifically... or... I'm guessing at this point, but it might be that if the spirit has a 'body' already then you can't rip it free from its present duties, it's already serving as best it can." 

She shakes her head. "Then I'd say we should try it if and only if my cycle's destroyed somehow in an engagement, and till then we should have her serve as best we can in her current form. I'll not betray her just to get more fighting force from her." 

He nods. "Smart. Wouldn't recommend you risk it unless she's already sunk. Doing otherwise would just be cruel."

A frown crosses his face. "As far as refits... what I know is that when a shipgirl is damaged in battle, you see metal and oil within, steel ribs, and machinery instead of organs. We haven't had a case bad enough that her fairies couldn't patch her up themselves with just long sessions in the repair baths, but I imagine if we did it might be a cross between surgery and engineering." He shakes his head.

"Part of the reason why I suggested Cerulean — my cycle — is that I'm her owner and her caretaker, I've dedicated a lot of my life to being able to keep her running in harsh conditions, and I feel that might transfer to skill at knowing how to work with her spirit specifically. But I don't know; it's a foreign magic to me, and I don't know how much the skills would transfer. Do you have anyone who actually served on the crews of any of your shipgirls?"

Another headshake. "No, a couple descendants at best. Don't know how that kind of connection would manifest, once a shipgirl was summoned. It would be interesting to see."

Rider nods. "A pity. Have you tried to summon back the spirits of the more modern ships that were sunk during Blood Week — wait, you don't know how to target a summoning. So my guess is that you're getting back — the most spiritually potent ships, the ones that are the most direct antithesis to the Abyssal Princess. They might be 'bigger' somehow, easier to call back. More history. I'm assuming this world had a world war that these ships are from the era of?"

Edwards nods. "We're mostly getting ships who carved out pieces of history for themselves: New Jersey and Missouri, some destroyers that punched well above their weight class, carriers, a few subs... It varies."

"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."