The Betrayed Commander and The Abandoned Tsundere (Azur Lane: Origins 1)

Chapter 24: Operation

After a lot more struggling, Monarch, Izumo and Tennessee managed to drag Sora back to the Azur Lane Main Base. The Admiral instructed them to take Sora to the base's small prison. The base has a prison because it has everything.

The commander was thrown into a cell. He was given a cup of water through the bars. The water was drugged so that he would be unconscious, providing no resistance when the medical personnel took him. Sora, not knowing that the water was drugged, was conveniently very thirsty so he drank it. Chugged it in one go. And passed out.

Admiral Hipper was standing in a white void. There was nothing she could use to give her a sense of perspective and direction. She heard a voice. 'You're dying.' She couldn't find the source of the voice. 'You won't make it. You'll never see your precious commander every again.' Now she could hear another voice. It sounded like she was listening to it from underwater.

'Nothing's working; she won't make it!'

Hipper's eyes widened. 'No... I can't... I won't...'

The first voice kept talking. 'You will die all alone, in a hospital bed-'

Admiral Hipper cut the voice off with a scream, 'I won't die! I can't give up yet! I can't die here! Not now! I have so much that I need to do!' There was the muffled sound of a heart monitor flat-lining. 'No! I! Will! Live!' She screamed so loudly it felt like her throat was tearing apart.

Beep!

Hipper gasped.

Beep!

'Yes...'

Beep!

'I'm alive...'

Beep!

Admiral Hipper fainted.

Sora woke up. He was wearing a hospital gown. Lying on a hospital bed. In a room with white walls and ceiling and a grey tiled floor. He barely had any time to process this before the door opened. The Admiral walked in and sat in one of the chairs next to the bed.

'Glad to see you're looking better.' Sora ignored him. The Admiral sighed. 'Ok, I'll get straight to the point. What happened? What went wrong? Why are you and Admiral Hipper injured but Graf Zeppelin is fine?' Sora continued ignoring him. 'There's nothing else you can do right now.' The commander considered this for several minutes.

'The stupid gateway. That's what happened. That's what went wrong. That's why Graf Zeppelin was fine but we weren't.'

The Admiral knew he probably shouldn't but he asked Sora to elaborate anyway.

'I guess you're not gonna let me go unless I give you all the details. Everything was going according to the plan until we had to get back through the gateway. We were dumb enough to forget to ask Graf Zeppelin to send a plane through with us. The only other way to get out was to shoot our way out.' The Admiral raised his eyebrows.

'Admiral Hipper summoned her ship and had it fire a shell at the gateway. We then jumped in front of the shell, using her Rigging as a shield. The shell hit harder than we expected and it disabled almost all of her Rigging. The one undamaged part Auto-Purged when we made it through.'

'Thank you for telling me the full story.' The Admiral got up and left the room. He would have mentioned Sora going crazy and asked for an explanation. He would've if he didn't watch the guilt and regret leave the commander's eyes as he recounted the full story.