Real world
Fritz's apartment
Fritz stared holes in his phone, still not knowing what to do.
He had found out how to communicate with Daniel, who was somehow inside of his game, but had not found out a way for Daniel to get out.
Having the ability to communicate with his waifus in-game would've been an absolute gift from Heaven, had the situation not gotten off the rails.
"Why did the first person on this planet to get isekai'd have to be Daniel? Couldn't it have just been me or literally anyone else who would've actually known what to do there??
Or perhaps be able to stay there, even if I was isekai'd got stuck and had no way out it would still be a win nevertheless in my book.
But why Daniel of all people?! He hasn't seen a single episode of any anime ever because he dry-heaves at the friggin art style this second he sees it!" Fritz shouted.
"Fritz! Wrap it up! You have school tomorrow!" His mom shouted.
"Yes mom! I know that I have..."
....SCHOOL
There was school tomorrow,
And Daniel was still trapped in his phone.
Everyone still thought he was alive, he wasn't run over by a truck or murdered like normal isekai protagonists,
If he did not escape within a few hours...
Well, anything could happen!
Just likely nothing good.
Fritz checked his clock,
11:02 PM
Daniel always woke up at five or six every morning to play videogames before school.
He had seven hours of real-life time at maximum to escape.
Likely, however, there was some kind of difference between real life time and in game time, so perhaps Daniel had a chance.
Either way, Fritz had to tell Daniel about seeing if he can't find a way to escape, perhaps there was something on his end he could use.
Fritz replugged his earbuds back in,
When Azur lane yanked up a battle menu all of a sudden,
"Wha... what the-" Fritz stumbled in his speech
LV 200 (x99) it said at the top.
Level 200?!?
Nothing in the game goes remotely that high?!
That was the first thing that Fritz noticed was wrong about this "battle" in game,
Azur lane was a Side-scrolling shoot-em-up style game, giving chibi model of the characters you were using in the center of the screen,
Only problem, there wasn't any chibi characters anywhere,
Fritz heard Battle noises, like guns shooting and explosions through his earbuds,
Since Fritz could hear through his in-game character, he assumed that his character was on a warship in the middle of a fight,
What warship it was, he didn't know,
He looked down towards the side of the screen,
There were options for the use of cannons, like a battleship character in game,
Fritz tried tapping on the buttons to use the guns, but they didn't budge at his tap,
There was nothing on the screen,
And then, the game LAGGED.
It lagged HARD.
Fritz sat still for five minutes as his brand new phone almost melted into molten slag as it tried to process what was on screen.
Fritz's backpack had his lunchbox in it, and he retrieved the ice pack from his lunchbox so his phone wouldn't melt.
And then the giant thing rendered,
It was very glitchy, but it resembled a large ship
Daniel did mention that there was the real life version of the Bismarck that somehow got isekai'd with him, perhaps that was doing the fighting.
However, the game didn't have a sprite or model or anything for the ship, so it looked more like distorted glitchy pixels instead.
"I wonder how much damage the main guns of that thing"
*KAKA-BOOOOOM!!
His earbuds practically exploded with noise as he heard what could only have been the main guns shooting.
The earbuds obliterated their speakers from the deafening noise, blowing them so fast to the point where they snapped into garbled electronic sounds.
Fritz slammed his hands over his ears.
"GAAH!" He shouted out of instinct
The damage number popped up, the shells weren't modeled either, so it just looked like the damage numbers popped up out of thin air
9037628225...
The numbers trailed off the screen,
"What the ****?-" Fritz said
"Friiiitz! Get off all electronics! power down for the night!" His mom said from downstairs.
————————
Azur lane world
*BOOOOOM
*BOOOOOM!
It was cripplingly loud.
The sirens were closing in on two sides, attempting to prevent the battleship from escaping.
Daniel was out on deck trying to manage his way through the chaos of the battle.
His petty officer uniform meant that he was seen as higher ranking than the average sailors manning the guns,
He did manage to get his hands on an all black foul coat, meaning he wasn't messing up his dress uniform in the middle of the rough Atlantic seas.
His peaked cap always threatened to fly off in the wind however.
*RHHHEWWW
*SPLOOOOOSH!
A siren laser hit the side of the ship, failing to penetrate the belt armor, but the shockwave could be felt nonetheless.
Lasers were flying in every comprehensible direction.
And just about every single gun on the ship was firing in some direction, making a loud chorus of ear-raking gunfire
The siren laser fire plinked against the hull, doing almost no damage.
Considering this game was about using human manifestations of ships, it was likely that the enemy weapons were geared to disintegrate flesh more so than metal.
Even though the ship couldn't take much of any damage, the people on the ship certainly could.
*PSHEW!
"ARGGGH!"
Someone let out a bloodcurdling scream, somehow overpowering the sounds of gunfire,
Daniel immediately went to the sound of the scream
A sailor clutched his hand,
There was an absolutely abhorrent burnmark, melting away the flesh,
Bits of bone were exposed,
So that's why these weapons have almost no effect on metal, they were meant to melt skin instead.
Daniel resisted the urge to upchuck his guts as he yanked out a bandage,
The sailor was whimpering in pain as the bandage was applied.
*BOOOM
An explosion ripped across the side of the ship, sending cascading waves of scalding seawater over the side of the deck.
Daniel dropped his bandage onto the soaked deck,
Daniel grabbed the sailor from his underarms and dragged him away from his gun, trying to get to some kind of cover,
Daniel hid underneath one of the many smaller boats that were on the ship's superstructure
He immediately went to work wrapping up the wound, and then immediately got the sailor to one of the entrances to the deck's underside.
He didn't even have time to feel sick from the gory injury, those feelings would likely haunt him after his adrenaline wore off.
————————
Bridge
(The guy in the center with the telephone is the First Artillery officer, Aldabert Schneider)
The captain was nervously moving back and forth between the different windows on each side of the ship.
He was entirely cornered by the enemy,
all of the enemy ships glowed and could be seen for miles, but their lights melded together in the distance, so it looked like he was staring at a wall.
"Forward artillery is loaded Herr Käpitan!"
"Why are you telling me this?! Fire! Fire at will!" The captain shouted,
The distress was obvious in his voice.
"FEUER!" The artillery officer shouted.
*THOOM
*THOOOM!
The thunder of the main guns shook the bridge,
.
.
.
The High explosive shells from the main guns exploded in the distance, devastating at least two ships.
And then two more took their place,
"Absolutely disgusting how many ship they are willing to throw away..." the captain said under his breath.
These strange naval combat tactics were absolutely horrible, and nothing like the captain, (and the admiral for that matter) had ever seen before in naval warfare.
————————
Inner decks
Underneath the Battle-torn exterior of the ship, Bismarck was still trying to weave her way through the crowded interior.
Everyone assumed that she was a civilian that was picked up from the escape from the port, so her identity as a Kansen was safe.
Speaking of civilians, there were hordes of them jammed everywhere inside of the vessel, making the interior feel even more crammed than it did before, despite the impressive size of her alternate universe version.
Hammocks hanging from the ceiling, some with people in them and others without.
A labyrinth of pipes and wires, as well as the ever-present smell of metal, a lot less open feeling than that of gliding on the surface of the ocean.
As well as shaking and the deep roar of large guns, only offset by the respite when the guns had to reload,
Bismarck did successfully find Daniel.
In the middle of a lot of wounded sailors,
They had terrible burns, presumably from siren lasers,
"Bismarck! what in Gods name are you doing! It's a hellscape up here!" Daniel shouted,
Bloodstained water trickled across the deck.
And the... very charred remains of what used to be human beings huddled up in one of the corners near a lifeboat.
The gory sight made Bismarck flinch a little,
Though she always was programmed to be a soldier-like figure, the Azur lane devs never coded her to be used to the human carnage of a bloody war, likely never anticipating the likes of a World War II battleship ever going here.
That was something she had to figure out for herself.
"What are you doing here!??" Daniel shouted,
Bismarck's pupils shrunk
"S-sirens... did that...." Bismarck said, before proceeding to puke,
"Sirens did what?" Daniel said,
Daniel saw the thing that Bismarck was looking at
"Unlucky..." Daniel hissed,
"Sirens... did that???" Bismarck said, her face turning pale white.
The remnants of what used to be her fellow countrymen were scattered across the deck,
Based on what Daniel did know about Azur lane, based on the aesthetic alone, it probably never showed huge amounts of blood and guts with Saving Private Ryan levels of gore. (Daniel did watch that movie once)
Bismarck started to space out, almost like she was starting to have a mental breakdown as she began to comprehend what lasers do to human beings, via the visual evidence around the deck.
So, Daniel did the only thing that he could do at that moment
*SMACK
Right across her face,
"Come to your senses?! Do you want to join them?!" Daniel shouted,
"U-Uh, n-no I...." She began
"Get down then!" Daniel said,
Daniel grabbed Bismarck by the shoulders before pushing her over,
*PSHEWWWW
A laser screamed just over Daniel's head,
"*****! You alright??" Daniel shouted,
Bismarck didn't speak, but was still breathing, so she was okay, albeit still white as a ghost.
"Frigging door melted into the ship from that laser, were trapped out here." Daniel said, in an unbelievably calm voice.
Hordes of Siren ships could be spotted in the distance, attempting to close the gap, way more than Bismarck ever had the chance of seeing before,
And they were trapped?.....
Daniel slapped Bismarck on the shoulder
"Come on Bismarck, we need to see if we can do something to help
I think one of the dual purpose guns went quiet, let's see what that is about." Daniel said,
Why was he so calm about this??