Azur Lane: Dragon Rising

Ch2: Rebirth

The thundering sound of a nuclear explosion is the last thing I remember hearing before there's complete darkness. I feel a sense of weightlessness and then...nothing. I am all alone.

BOOM

A thunderous sound awakens me sometime later. The sound of water rushing by brings me to my senses mere moments before I emerge from the depths displacing tons upon tons of water in the process. For a brief moment, I'm weightless once more before falling back into the surrounding ocean.

BAM

My head slams against the flight deck. Pain ripples through my body, a feeling I've never experienced before but quickly grow to hate. Still, it takes a moment to realize that I am no longer merely a ship, but a human as well, or at least I think I am human. As I slowly get to my feet, I take in every visible inch of my body in utter amazement. What twist of fate is this?

Looking around, I half expect to see the admiral or any of the other crew but I'm all alone. Right...they abandoned ship. I sunk. Now slightly dejected, I walk up to the bridge and collapse in the captain's chair. Leaning forward I rest my head on the monitors in front of me but quickly straighten as one, in particular, catches my eye. For a split second, an unregistered flying object is detected entering range but it quickly leaves. Still, this minor incident alerts me to the fact that I'm aware of everything occurring with the ship as though we are connected.

Now curious, I stand and head out to the balcony. From there, I have a clear view of the entire flight deck. To test my theory, I order 2 Shenyang J-16e's to take off through my thoughts. To my delight, the jets are soon on my deck. I watch in utter amazement as they align themselves as though my old crew were here moving them into position. As the blast fence rises, a feeling of glee rushes through me.

As both jets are launched, I lean onto the railing taking in the experience. All at once, I'm aware of what each jet can see along with all the carrier' current defence systems, radars, etc. It's as though I am the aircraft and the carrier all at once and everything runs off my thoughts. It's admittedly too much to handle and I collapse to the ground as my mind overflows with information.

It takes a moment to recompose myself but once I do I decide that I need to practice before doing anything else. Still stationery miles from where I sunk, I start by doing practice runs with the various aircraft on board. There are a few mishaps here and there but ultimately, it proves successful with no damages sustained. Next, I begin manoeuvring the ship. It takes a while to figure out how to get it doing exactly what I want but once I figured it out, nothing could stop me.

I begin making my way towards China all the while continuing tests including Takeoff and Landing operations, AA defence, Aircraft Rearming and slight antisub/antiship tests. At the halfway point of my journey, however, something miraculous happens. While dozing off, my ship breaks into thousands of blue cubes and form a much smaller rig which attaches itself to my body. At first, I burst out laughing but quickly realize it's not a dream. When I do, I come to a complete halt and begin reevaluating.

As it turns out, in this form, I am much more manoeuvrable and can travel much faster. I'm also hard to hit and can launch planes at a much faster rate. What's more, I maintain all the functionality that comes with my ship whilst maintaining a much smaller footprint, i.e. that of a human female. That being said, I have no idea how I changed to this form or how to change back and am forced to spend another hour stationery as I try to figure it out. Eventually, I do and after much more practice, I manage to reliably swap forms efficiently. With that out of the way, I resume my course.

Travelling in this newly discovered form, I soon arrive within familiar waters and before long, I'm being hailed.

????: Uhm. Hello. You're entering Dragon Empery's waters. Please identify yourself, please.