History Fanfic / AmbienceAFleetSymphony

As of June 17th, 2016, this story surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), and was, at the time, the longest piece of fanfiction on Fanfiction.net, peaking at 4,556,264 words as of its most recent chapter (443, posted on April 16, 2019). However, it has since been surpassed by ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12715870/1/The-Loud-House-Revamped The Loud House: Revamped]]'', which is still ongoing as of July 2021.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), and was, at the time, the longest piece of fanfiction on Fanfiction.net, peaking at 4,556,264 words as of its most recent chapter (443, posted on April 16, 2019). However, it has since been surpassed by ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12715870/1/The-Loud-House-Revamped The Loud House: Revamped]]'', which is still ongoing as of January 2021.

''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10333897 Ambience: A Fleet Symphony]]'' is a ''VideoGame/KantaiCollection'' AlternateUniverseFic by [[https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3863164/Hieda-no-Akyuu Hieda no Akyuu]].

As of June 17th, 2016, this story surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), and was, at the time, the longest piece of fanfiction on Fanfiction.net, peaking at 4,556,264 words as of its most recent chapter (443, posted on April 16, 2019). However, it has since been surpassed by ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12715870/1/The-Loud-House-Revamped The Loud House:Revamped]]'', which is still ongoing as of August 2020.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), and was, at the time, the longest piece of fanfiction on Fanfiction.net. However, it has since been surpassed by ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12715870/1/The-Loud-House-Revamped The Loud House:Revamped]]'', which is still ongoing as of August 2020.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story has surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), and is, at the time, the longest piece of fanfiction on Fanfiction.net. However, it is surpassed by ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12715870/1/The-Loud-House-Revamped The Loud House:Revamped]]'', which is still ongoing as of August 2020.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story has surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), becoming the '''''longest fanfiction on Website/FanfictionDotNet'''''.

In an alternate universe, following the [[TheWarOnTerror September 11th attacks]], "The F.L.E.E.T. Project", or the [[RecursiveAcronym FLeet]] Expansion and Enhancement Test, was initiated by a team of American engineers, codenamed "Constitution", who were contracted by the U.S. Navy to research and develop enhancements for the United States Navy. Specifically, how to condense [=WWII=]-era ship technology into the size of a human being. Essentially, making ship girls.

Last updated in April 2019, with the author apparently having moved on to greener pastures, and now seemingly {{Dead| Fic}}.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story has surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words (roughly, slightly more than 5.5 times longer than the complete King James Bible), becoming the '''''longest single work of fiction ever written'''''.

In an alternate universe, following the [[TheWarOnTerror September 11th attacks]], "The F.L.E.E.T. Project", or the Fleet Expansion and Enhancement Test, was initiated by a team of American engineers, codenamed "Constitution", who were contracted by the U.S. Navy to research and develop enhancements for the United States Navy. Specifically, how to condense [=WWII=]-era ship technology into the size of a human being. Essentially, making ship girls.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story has surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,514,141 words, becoming the '''''longest single work of fiction ever written'''''.

As of June 17th, 2016, this story has surpassed Fanfic/TheSubspaceEmissarysWorldsConquest in overall length at 4,061,145 words, becoming the world's longest piece of fanfiction.

!This fanfic contains examples of the following:

* AccidentalPervert: in chapter 295, a National Guard soldier looks up out of an APC roof hatch to talk to Shiranui, forgetting that he'll be looking right up her skirt because of the way she's standing on the vehicle. Only when Shiranui reminds him of what he's doing does he realize, and he has to duck down when the destroyer points her cannon module at him.
** Done again in Chapter 314, when [[spoiler:Haida]] asks Kuroshio for a boost-assist to reach the upper floors. The way the request was phrased, however...
-->'''[[spoiler:Haida]]''': "Hey, Kuro! Can you do us a quickie?"
* AccidentalTruth:
** In chapter 62, Damon deflects Zuikaku's questions about what he's speaking to Shoukaku about by flatly saying that he was just discussing how much Zuikaku hugs Shoukaku while sleeping. Which turns out to be spot-on.
** In chapter 89, Yuudachi somehow gives Shigure the same nickname that Damon had secretly given her.
* AccompliceByInaction: In chapter 54, Damon executes a mook who, although not a direct perpetrator of a certain evil, did nothing to stop it from happening and can't offer a good reason why.
* AdaptationPersonalityChange: Many of the ship girls experience this, either due to author preference or the progression of in-story events. Here are some of the more significant examples:
** Furutaka has become a lot more bitter and cynical due to having been active and living the post-apocalyptic life for ten years already by the time Damon meets her. In Chapter 201, the author explained that fan works at the time he had introduced her into the fic had given him an incorrect interpretation of her, and it wasn't until he had actually listened to her in-game voiced lines did he realize that he had made a mistake. This led to the personality change being justified in-universe in chapter 113, which reveals that this personality change was the result of mistakes that had been made when Kiyoshi Araki, her creator and the descendant of her final historical captain[[note]]Tsutau Araki[[/note]], located and activated her. Later events try to defy this and get her back to how she's supposed to be, but no one can forget how she was, not even herself.
** Kaga can get very passionate about her previous life. She's also not as antagonistic towards Shoukaku and Zuikaku.
** Takao is also a lot more cynical due to first landing in the hands of the creep Arrechea.
** Akagi is deeply depressed over both her failure at Midway and her role in [[spoiler:Damon's death]].
** Suzukaze has picked up some serious {{Jerkass}} tendencies.
** Kikuzuki is also quite different from her canon self in that not only is she very willing to fight and participate in war, but she's also sharply confrontational when it comes to the well-being of her sisters, both physical and emotional.
** Naganami is not nearly as hot-blooded as she is compared to her canon self, in that she's not so keen on fighting like her sister Asashimo is.
* AfterTheEnd: The fic starts off almost 20 years after a nuclear exchange between the United States and Iran.
* AHouseDivided: The city of Philadelphia suffered a schism within its population a few months before the start of the fic after [[spoiler:the Feds came down and offered to buy the live, unexploded Iranian, or rather [=AAHW=] nuke that's sitting in one of the cities' cemeteries, and offered an exorbitant sum for it.]] The decision as to whether or not to go with this effectively split the population into two factions, the Quakers and the Shakers, with the Shakers controlling the neighboring city of Camden, New Jersey (just across the Delaware River), and the Quakers controlling Philadelphia. To hammer this division in, the leader of each faction are brothers, who have never argued with each other once in their life prior to that event. [[spoiler:By the end of the Suzukaze's Voyage side-story, both brothers are dead, and so are both their factions.]]
* AintTooProudToBeg:
** [[spoiler:Sendai]] tries this in chapter 102, but fails to avoid getting killed anyway.
** [[spoiler:Kisaragi prostates herself before Murasame]] in chapter 106 as penance for her role in the previous chapter's events.
* AirborneAircraftCarrier: It may be a stretch, but during the Battle of Mobile, Kaga rides in Sanford's Bell 412 helicopter, alternating engaging key targets with her [=DSR-50=], and providing air cover by launching aircraft with her crossbow.
* AKA47: mostly averted; the author is an enthusiast of firearms and guns, so expect most of the firearms featured in the story to be called exactly what they are in RealLife. However, there are a few exceptions here and there, the most notable of which is Damon's MK-14 Juggernaut Chassis, which in the story is referred to as the "MK-14 Rogue Chassis".
* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:following Damon's first death after Little Rock, he gains access to a dreamworld that he can only access when he goes to sleep. There, he can meet his deceased mother Losira, a copy of whom dwells in her son's subconscious through means unknown. He can train with her to master his control over his YRC power, and it will all stay within his subconscious. The one exception that this has not been the case are when Losira managed to materialize using Ushio's body as a third-party vessel, once in Baltimore, and twice through Ushio's YRC power.]]
* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: Damon's misanthropy can be partly blamed on the mocking and disdain he received for his odd appearance.
* AllMenArePerverts: Some ship girls believe this to be the case and don't believe that Damon has no sexual interest in them, despite the fact that his behaviour more than bears this out.
* AllThereInTheManual: If you want to learn more about the members of Seal Team 6, more specifically, what they were doing prior to the Great War, and things such as [[spoiler:Losira's "Hellflower" ability that her 17-year old self mentioned to her son Damon in his dreams]], a lot of the relevant information is found in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9744933/1/Naraku-no-Hana Naraku No Hana]]'', a VideoGame/TouhouProject fanfic that the author previously wrote.
* AllohistoricalAllusion:
** In chapter 135, the narrator starts talking about ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', then corrects it to ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', because in this reality the nukes fell before 4 could come out.
** In 266, Damon remarks that if the nukes hadn't been launched, Urobutcher might have come up with a [[Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica grimdark magical girl show.]]
** In 319, [[spoiler:Prince of Wales]] wonders why the UK didn't leave the EU before World War III.
* AlphaStrike: the fleet oftentimes does this when first engaging the Abyssals in a naval battle, either through massive airstrikes or massive battleship bombardments - or both.
* AlternateSelf: [[spoiler:naturally, this is the case due to the author turning the story into something of a mass crossover among franchises that involve ship girls, mashing the original Kantai Collection together with Warship Girls, Pacific, and now Victory Belles. While there started off not being too many at first, with the first two being Iowa and Warspite, with the introduction of the Victory Belles characters, this will now be much more prevalent, as there are now, in-story, repeats of Chiyoda, Pola, Kumano, Kitakami, and I-8.]]
* AlternateUniverse: [[spoiler:heavily implied that A:AFS and Fanfic/AmbiencePlatoonMoebiusFour are these to each other. While no explicit mention exists, several characters and entities are, by themselves, evidence of connections between the two fics.]]
* AlternateUniverseFic: this story basically puts ship girls from VideoGame/KantaiCollection into a nuclear apocalypse-stricken world [[spoiler:with a supernatural twist to both them and the world itself]], in which the Abyssals, while they still remain their most dangerous enemy, are by no means their ''only'' enemy. Later events also firmly establish this story as [[spoiler:IntercontinuityCrossover]] territory, involving characters from [[spoiler:VideoGame/{{Touhou}}]] and [[spoiler:VideoGame/MadnessCombat]], due to both [[spoiler:this story's [[StealthSequel Stealth Prequel]] and the author's roots of writing fanfiction starting with Touhou Project.]]
* AltumVidetur: [[spoiler:Silva Gelida, Jeannie's personal rendition of Damon's dreamworld when she hacks it.]]
* AluminumChristmasTrees: Chapter 142 features a C-130 making a landing on the [=USS=] ''George Washington''. It sounds pretty unbelievable and several readers commented as such. In truth, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84 C-130s have actually been successfully landed on and launched from a carrier]], though the idea was later rejected as too risky to be made a routine operation.
* AmazonBrigade: The Combined Fleet, or any other organized navy of ship girls [[spoiler:like the British, German, and Italian fleets.]]
* AnachronismStew: Combined with InSpiteOfANail, there's references to goods and such that, in reality, made their debut after 2010, despite the nukings during [=WWIII=]. This is most readily apparent with post-2010 North American-made products, despite the [=US=] being the hardest hit by nukes during the war.
** In Chapter 74, during the Fleet's visit to Pop Jones' auto shop in Granite Quarry, as preparation for Operation Charlotte, all but one of the cars featured in that chapter were produced after 2010, the most recent of which is the 2015 Porsche 911 Carrera [=GTS=]. Germany was one of the countries that got nuked.
** In Chapter 77, while preparing to infiltrate the Fantasy Express (formely the Charlotte Convention Center), Damon thinks the VideoGame/PAYDAY2 soundtrack would be appropriate. That game was not released until 2013. In a later chapter, Damon's even seen listening to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bamLz-zIAEg a track]] from that game's soundtrack.
** During Mogami's debut during the Germany arc sees her armed with the [[https://www.oowinc.com/product/h-c-a-r-package-2/ HCAR]], a modernized Browning Automatic Rifle produced by Ohio Ordinance Works. The [=HCAR=] first started production in 2013.
** During an inventory of arms in the middle of the Vacation arc, some of the girls are listed with the [=FNAC=], a variant of the FN [=SCAR-L=] assault rifle submitted for the Advanced Carbine trials. The trials did not start, and therefore the [=FNAC=] did not exist, until 2014.
** In general, the appearance of any real-world firearm in the fic that, in reality, did not exist prior to March 2010, falls under this trope.
* AndIMustScream: Chapter 296. [[spoiler:A shipgirl can starve for up to 5 years without supplies. Their shipping containers are designed to keep the shipgirl's ship modes deactivated, so that the more unruly ones couldn't get out. These shipping containers are usually stocked with 2 weeks worth of supplies in case of holdups in the shipping process. It is revealed how Yamakaze had been accidentally reactivated while still in her shipment box during the flight to mainland USA. With no means of breaking out, she was forced to spend ''19 years'' alone in her box, unable to make any contact with anyone on the outside. Yamakaze somehow managed to make her supplies last her 14 years, and spent the next 5 starving before she was finally released.]][[spoiler:[[NightmareFuel Into !Samidare's hands.]]]]
* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: Chapters 224 to 228 follow [[spoiler:Franklin Kevinson's]] perspective.
* AndShowItToYou: In chapter 87, Damon disembowels a mook who was about to [[spoiler:rape Akebono]], then shows him his intestines.
* AnIcePerson: Umikaze's Icewater Protocol allows her to perform cryokinesis with abilities like Stasis. Taken literally when, in Chapter 184, Umikaze jumps on Damon's back for a piggyback ride and uses Icewater to cool him down after a long afternoon of training.
* ApocalypseAnarchy: After the nukes finished falling, there was a second American Civil War that ended with several parts of the US seceding to form their own private sovereignties. Gangs and bandits rule much of the rest. The governments that survive, whether the Feds in America or elsewhere in the world, are little better than the rebels. Reawakening to this brave new world is what has soured many ship girls to the idea of being subordinate to humanity.
* AppealToAudacity: In chapter 29, the reason why Damon doesn't think the interrogees were lying about [[spoiler:Baxter Harrison actively searching for ship girls]] is because they could easily have given any number of other reasons to be in the area, and they also probably wouldn't be lying about their mother being in need.
* ArcWords: [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII "Listen only to the sound of my voice..."]]]]
* ArmchairMilitary: Almost all of the other factions that have ship girls tend to the Rear Echelon Mofo commanding style. Thus, Damon's FrontlineGeneral methods come as a surprise, a welcome one to most but sadly not all the girls.
* ArmorIsUseless: there are members in both the ship girl fleets and the Abyssal fleets who are armed with special melee weapons or abilities that allow them to totally ignore any armor that their enemies have. Subverted, however, because the tougher ship types' armors are in fact strong enough to resist these weapons/abilities that are meant to cut through their armor.
* ArmorPiercingAttack: applies to any weapon made of Smartsteel that the ship girls come with because they can easily pierce Smartsteel skin that normally protects them from anything else.
** Kane, during her stay in Australia, invented a new type of ammunition, [=SSP=] ('''S'''mart'''S'''teel '''P'''iercing) rounds, designed to defeat Smartsteel that can be loaded in conventional small-arms with no modifications. To that point, [=SSP=] was produced in pretty much every caliber of ammo in use by the Australian Armed Forces, all in the name of helping them fight off the Abyssals, as they had no ship girls for support.
* ArmorPiercingSlap: In chapter 72, Damon does this to Shoukaku as a GetAHoldOfYourselfMan. In chapter 78, it's Kaga's turn to take one.
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: In chapter 238, after three ship girls make serious complaints, the fourth one's is about there not being proper toilets.
* ArtificialLimbs: [[spoiler:Admiral Kevinson has a cybernetic arm and cybernetic legs - he even states that his cybernetic limbs are the predecessor to Damon's ATLAS exosuit.]]
* ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: In this story, people can gain mutations from radiation that, if it doesn't kill them, can give them quirky powers like radiation resistance, radiation vision, etc, though these cases do seem to be rather rare, and the more realistic situations of people dying of radiation exposure, poisoning, or sickness is more frequent. In addition, the story's background premise is that the global human population got to work cleaning up radiation around the world immediately after the end of the nuclear war and have managed to clean up a good portion of it, though rad zones of varying sizes still linger in areas where human habitation is limited or nonexistent, when in reality nuclear radiation takes a long time to clean up, if at all.
** Certain abnormalities of the radiation and the clean up efforts, such as how easy it was to clean it up, and how quickly supplies were provided with which to do so, lead certain characters, like US President Tawney Blackwood, and Lukenstor Corp. [=CEO=] Eagle Clinton, to believe that something was very fishy about the bombings. [[spoiler:Blackwood was very close to finding out who was really responsible for [=WW3=]. After Eagle succeeded him, he orders the remaining members of [=ST6=] to conduct an op in Iran to find the truth. In Chapter 360, there is clear proof that the A.A.H.W. was responsible for launching the first strike using concealed missile silos from within Iran, which explains how everyone thought that Iran was the instigator despite them not possessing any nuclear weapons.]]
* ATeamFiring: By carrier standards, Chiyoda's marksmanship is atrocious. Objectively, it's not stormtrooper bad, but she's more concerned with putting lead downrange than grasping the skills behind sharpshooting, making her far worse than she should be.
* AuthorAppeal: now, where do we even ''start''?
** from the beginning, obviously. The initial setting and atmosphere of the story starts out as a gritty, post-apocalyptic world, where radiation is rampant, the environment is generally hostile, and finding a friendly face in the abandoned wilderness is rarer than finding a bottle of fresh, clean water sitting on the side of the street. This is because at the time of the story's initial genesis, the author had been playing a lot of [[VideoGame/DayZ DayZ Origins]] throughout the past year; if you look closely at the narration, there will be mentions of items like morphine auto-injectors and GAZ vehicles and weapons like the MK-16 EGLM RCO.
** the author is also an avid watcher of fighting games and fighting game tournaments; his author's notes throughout the story indicate as such. A lot of fight scenes in the story, particularly in melee battles when ship girls engage hand-to-hand, are frequently narrated with spinkles of fighting game lingo, and the ship girls themselves frequently exhibit moves seen in fighting games; for example, Amatsukaze uses a lot of Ken's moves from VideoGame/StreetFighterIV, and [[spoiler:Shigure and Yuudachi both use a few moves from Sol and Bedman, respectively, from [[VideoGame/GuiltyGear Guilty Gear Xrd.]]]]
** and speaking of those two, the Shiratsuyu-Class. Initially, with the author's relative unfamiliarity with Kantai Collection characters at the beginning of writing the story, the Shiratsuyu-Class weren't as favored by the author anywhere near as they are now. But over time, the author began to favor them more and more until they became the CreatorsFavorite. The author even admits in a few author's notes that the Shiratsuyu-Class is bar none his favorite destroyer class in the game; [[spoiler:hence, their concentrated focus for many chapters and their boosts in story significance that have been occurring recently.]]
** [[ReferenceOverdosed since there are too many to list]], simply look at the [[ShoutOut/AmbienceAFleetSymphony Shoutouts]] page. It's safe to say that if the author is a fan of a certain franchise, game, manga, or anything, really, he'll include it in some way, shape, or form in the story, with varying degrees of influence on the story as a whole.
* AutomaticCrossbows: The archery-themed carrier girls wield, in place of the traditional bows seen in canon, the Izanagi pump-action repeating crossbow, fed by a 5-bolt under-barrel detachable tubular magazine. The bolts that can be fired range from conventional kinetic energy penetrators, to the usual ship girl aircraft bolts. [[spoiler:Kaga and Shoukaku lose their crossbows while fending off Abyssals during Operation Norfolk and are subsequently captured. After their rescue by the fleet from an Abyssal outpost in Concepcion Bay just off of Gander, Newfoundland, they are able to summon Abyssalized versions of their canon longbows.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: Addressed by Damon in regards to weapons he came across during his trek to Houston. In one particular case, he came across an [=M60=] machine gun in a prepper's cache, which he rejected as it was too heavy for him to carry for long distances. He once also found a Desert Eagle, but the small amount of ammo he found along-side it were soon expended in two bandit encounters, and made the heavy pistol useless afterwards. When he came across the Juggernaut Tactical Rouge [=M14=] and the Glock 37, both were found with plenty of ammo, which led to those being his weapons of choice from that point on. This gets a CallBack later on in chapter 170, where Damon has to carefully shepherd his new {{Hand Cannon}}s' ammo and reloading is a pain in the arse because speedloaders don't come in that size. He gladly picks up some weaker guns that have more readily available ammo.
** [[spoiler:the Yamato Cannon that several battleships possess as an innate talent is this as well. Despite being a very powerful artillery attack, it's so powerful that the battleships using it must always think twice about using it in the first place to avoid causing unintentional collateral damage. See RealityEnsues below.]]
* AwesomeMcCoolname: Sir Hunter Stormrider, [[spoiler:the member of the Royal Family the Royalists want to put back on the British throne. Except, as it turns out, there's no such person by this name. It is actually a CollectiveIdentity formed by the Britain sisters.]]
* AxCrazy: Some of the ship girls, like Tatsuta and Yuudachi, love violence a bit too much. [[spoiler:The Re-class]] is the same.
** Damon also falls under this category [[spoiler:during the Baltimore arc, at least until he starts regaining his proper consciousness with the help of his ship girls.]]
* {{BFG}}:
** Damon manages to get his hands on various .50BMG anti-materiel rifles, such as the [=DSR-50=], the Barrett [=M82=], and the [=McMillan=] [=TAC-50=].
** Damon's late comrade Ghaffey had a double-barrelled 8 gauge shotgun as his WeaponOfChoice.
* BackForTheDead:
** Before setting off for England, Damon and co. encountered [[spoiler:a Federal officer named Major Lester.]] Many chapters later, the man returns only to die shortly after.
** In chapter 164, [[spoiler:Suzukaze shows up again only to be consumed by the Darkwater Protocol.]]
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler:the ship girls...and even Damon. The ship girls because even if they are sunk, so long as their bodies are recovered and their main processing units aren't destroyed, they can repaired back to life. Damon because...well, thanks to his YRC, if he has external assistance, he can revive even when considered clinically dead.]]
* BackstabBackfire:
** In chapter 7 a young bandit Damon had interrogated and intended to spare tries shooting him once he started walking away. Damon is faster on the draw.
** In chapter 130 a mook Suzukaze was interrogating tries to stall so one of his allies can sneak up on her. She takes out the flanker, then, when the interrogee tries to attack her, quickly turns around and puts him down too.
* BackToBackBadasses: [[spoiler:Johnston and Haida.]]
* BadassInANiceSuit: The [[spoiler:Inner Circle mooks]] in Germany are dressed in business wear. In chapter 149, Shimakaze wonders about the incongruity of this, unlike the properly-uniformed NDP mooks. [[spoiler:They were already in use pre-war, back when the Inner Circle was still the Advanced Administration of the Holy War, explaining Sanford's strong reaction to seeing them enter the field.]]
* BadassPreacher: ties in with the above - it's the Pope, no less.
* BalkanizeMe: In chapter 51 it's briefly mentioned that Germany has split up into many smaller territories.
* BarrierWarrior: Murakumo's "Waterfall Shield" allows her to project a barrier that can withstand quite a lot of incoming fire.
* BattleInTheRain:
** the end of chapter 372, when [[spoiler:Shigure stays behind to delay the Abyssals so that the rest of her fleet can escape and lose them, and it is raining as she begins to fight the Abyssals alone.]]
** the first day of Operation Goldmine has the fleet fighting in the rain against both the Abyssals and the Inner Circle Agent troops.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In chapter 289, the US President says that if Whitewater wants to take its conquered territory and secede from the US, well, he'll just have them declared no longer American citizens then. [[spoiler:Eagle's doing so also clears the way for Iowa and Wisconsin, who've been trying to avoid harming other Americans, to deal with them with extreme prejudice.]]
* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame:
** Subverted; [[spoiler:Shoukaku's attempt to use Abyssal energy to destroy the Abyssals trying to capture her fails.]] One of the enemies even lampshades the absurdity of trying to do so.
** Played straight in chapter 195, where [[spoiler: Kaga's Abyssal-powered rapid fire archery is what puts down the Re-Class.]]
* BecauseImGoodAtIt: In chapter 105 Suzukaze admits that she's always had a mean streak and never been good at being nice and comforting like Murasame or Samidare. The only thing she can do well for her sisters is fight for them, so don't deny her that.
* BeingHumanSucks:
** In chapter 8 Damon rants about how squishy humans are compared to ship girls.
** In chapter 249 Blackwood laments that humans are just too fragile for Genesis Thesis. [[spoiler:Ship girls, on the other hand...]]
* BerserkButton:
** Shigure takes being called "Guncannon" quite badly.
** Talking about the Pacific War negatively gets Kaga's goat. This is her major flaw. She also blows up at Zuikaku when the latter calls Akagi a step-sister.
** Suzukaze was going to stay out of the quarrel in chapter 105 since it was about Damon, who she never liked. But one of the belligerents trying to hurt her ship sister, who- or whatever the aggressor was, was something she couldn't allow to happen.
** Shiranui hates being called Nui Nui by anyone who isn't Kagerou.
*** Anyone bad-mouthing Kagerou will [[HairTriggerTemper suffer this as well]].
** A number of Japanese ship girls have bad memories of the war and bear grudges against America for it, and this becomes a issue once [[spoiler:the American ship girls]] join the fleet.
* BetterToDieThanBeKilled:
** In chapter 298 [[spoiler: Imwalle]] tries to kill himself than be taken alive.
** In chapter 314 several Whitewater mercenaries choose to fight to the end or even turn their own guns on themselves than let themselves be taken alive for interrogation.
* BewareTheQuietOnes: Chapter 124 reveals that despite her withdrawn personality, Jintsuu was one of those who very much approved of what Damon did to the Harpers at Nashville.
* BigDamnHeroes:
** In chapter 16, Damon and co. intervene in a battle between the Savannah inhabitants and another group [[spoiler:who made off with the ship girls at Charleston.]]
** In chapter 65, the strike force reach the battle in time to disrupt the enemy advance on the wounded main force.
** In chapter 87, Damon foils some AttemptedRape by the Atlantans.
** In chapter 92, it's [[spoiler:Jeannie's]] turn to do so, saving Damon from Nashville's soldiers.
** In chapter 103, [[spoiler:Jeannie]] does it again, saving Murasame from a foe trying for a TakingYouWithMe.
** In chapter 230, Damon and co. [[spoiler:return to Savannah]] in time to thwart a mercenary attack on it.
** In chapters 249 and 250, [[spoiler:Damon confronts and battles Blackwood in a fight to the death for possession of the combined Japanese and British fleets.]]
** In chapter 296, [[spoiler:Saratoga]] saves a few heavily wounded Delta soldiers just in time from an enemy Little Bird by throwing its pilot and co-pilot out.
** In chapter 336, Damon does this again to save [[spoiler:Haida]] from a Ru-Class battleship.
** In chapter 378, [[spoiler:surprise surprise, it's Damon again, but this time Samidare joins him, and in fact, Samidare is the one who does most of the heavy lifting during their fight against the Agents.]]
* BigEater: The capital ship girls can put away inhuman amounts of food. Clearly demonstrated in chapter 237, where two battleships and two carriers (with one heavy cruiser tagging along) put away $562 worth of udon.
* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Shiratsuyu-class turns out to be full of neuroses. It says troubling things when the AxCrazy BadassAdorable BloodKnight is one of the most well-adjusted of the lot, poi.
** [[spoiler:And don't forget about the first-generation Samidare, the second-generation's sole surviving aunt/mother, who wants nothing less than to have all of them dead.]]
* BigShutUp: Damon has to do this a few times when some of the more unruly ship girls give him lip.
* BilingualBackfire: In chapter 136 Ise recalls how a lot of people spoke to her in baby-like English under the assumption that she wasn't fluent.
* BilingualBonus: In chapter 298, [[spoiler:Samidare]] utters the line [[spoiler:さみ...？誰...？]]. This translates into [[spoiler:Sami... who?]] while the romaji goes [[spoiler:Sami... dare?]]
** [[spoiler:Toshi, the fleet puppy who's an Australian heeler mix, is implied to be able to understand human speech. His name means "wise" in Japanese.]]
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Damon is caustic, rude and violent and will gladly admit he's not the most moral of people, but he'll go to great lengths to protect his subordinates and innocents, and his targets usually deserve what they get. Between the predations of the bandits and private sovereignties, the neglect-at-best the Feds and other surviving governments have for anyone who isn't a fat cat, and the sinister goals of the [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] and Abyssals, the villains can and do much, much worse.
* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands:
** In chapter 74, Damon does this to a Granite Quarry gangster.
** In chapter 158, [[spoiler:Jeannie does this to the guns of General Brownlow and the men in his office.]]
** In chapter 298, [[spoiler:Saratoga does this to Jared Imwalle, leader of Whitewater.]]
* BloodierAndGorier: Compared to vanilla Kantai Collection off of which this story is based (and even some of the darker light novels like Kagerou, Setting Sail! and Bonds of the Wings of Cranes, depending on who you ask), this story doesn't bother holding back with the blood and the gore. When in Kantai Collection you may have to worry about certain ship girls creepily calling out the names of other ship girls who may or may not exist in your base yet, in this story [[UpToEleven a little bit of creepiness is a godsend.]] To list a few examples...
** The fight scenes. In the game, you can see your ship girls' moderately damaged [=CGs=] usually involve ClothingDamage, with only a few visibly showing blood and injury. Here, [[spoiler:Shimakaze is shown putting her arm through Amatsukaze's chest in chapter 20, Shigure and Yuudachi going protocol-happy on a squad of enemy soldiers in chapter 30, Yuudachi herself getting stabbed through the back of the neck with a javelin in chapter 48, and the discovery of Kisaragi in chapter 53, among many, many others. And the list just keeps going on and on...]]
** It's not just the ship girls and how they fight, with their cyber augmentations [[spoiler:and, later, magical abilities]]: Damon, the main character of the story, oftentimes brutally executes people in what can only be described as cruel and unusual. Even the gunfight scenes that are heavily prevalent throughout the story are sometimes a bit ''too'' detailed in its descriptions of the exact kinds and degrees of wounds inflicted, and the descriptions can sometimes fill up the screen when reading.
** [[spoiler:and with the introduction of magic abilities, some ship girls like Shigure and Samidare take this trope extremely literally and use powers that employ or manipulate blood.]]
** [[spoiler:If you need an example, read the chapters of the Suzukaze's Voyage arc or the fight scenes between the Shiratsuyu-Class and !Samidare.]]
* BloodKnight: Iku, Satsuki, Sendai, Tatsuta and Yuudachi take to combat a lot more enthusiastically than most of the other ship girls. Though some are more AxCrazy about it than others.
* BodyArmorAsHitPoints: [[spoiler:Warspite (canon) and Iowa (canon) have the Armored Core ability [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial (no,]] [[VideoGame/ArmoredCore not the game)]] that causes their armor points to take all incoming damage first before their health.]]
* BodyHorror:
** In chapter 100 Tatsuta tears off a He-Class light cruiser's mask to reveal a single eye set in bulbous, veiny skin that's charred like a burn victim's.
** In chapter 115, Suzukaze meets a girl so grotesquely mutated she looks more like a {{Starfish Alien|s}}.
** [[spoiler:The Baltimore mutants.]] Missing body parts, {{Nightmare Face}}s, stakes where forearms should be...
** In chapter 298, [[spoiler:Suzuya rips Jared Imwalle's left foot off.]]
* BombDisposal: [[spoiler:the Search and Destroy simulation in chapter 287: Shigure manages to plant the bomb, and Hatsushimo is the last one on her defender team who must defuse it with a defusal code. She doesn't make it in time, however.]]
* BoomHeadshot: the ship girls' eyes are their weakest point on their bodies, as it is the only sensitive organ that is explicitly exposed to bullets.
* BorrowedBiometricBypass: In chapter 174, Damon takes the thumb of an [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] Engineer so he can access a device.
* BossBattle: [[spoiler:Damon's fight against Blackwood can be seen as one.]]
* BossBattle: [[spoiler:Damon vs. Blackwood, [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10333897/250/Ambience-A-Fleet-Symphony chapter 250.]]]]
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:Shoukaku, after her complete Abyssalization into Aircraft Carrier Water Demon.]]
* BreakingTheFourthWall: the narrator sometimes does this from time to time.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: Most of [[spoiler:the German ship girls]] wield recreations of wartime firearms.
* BreakTheCutie:
** Having to recover the bodies of the girls sunk during Operation Dualsight did Imuya's psyche no favours.
** Being the 'sacrifice' for Little Rock, including a period of GoMadFromTheIsolation, resulted in Suzuya becoming a BrokenBird even after an attempt to repair her personality. Somewhat disturbingly, her old persona resurfaces when she gets to fight.
** Shiratsuyu was on the verge of this after her experiences in Charlotte, but was rescued by Damon's fleet in time.
* BulletCatch:
** In chapter 8 Amatsukaze catches a shotgun slug.
** In chapter 101 [[spoiler:the Re-class's tail]] does this to ship shells.
** In chapter 149 [[spoiler:Bismarck]] catches a tank shell.
** In chapter 294 [[spoiler:!Pacific Iowa]] catches an anti-tank rocket.
** In chapter 301, [[spoiler:Erin]] catches an 8-inch shell.
*** In the same chapter, Amatsukaze doesn't ''catch'' a shell, she ''punches'' it, and it goes flying over its shooter's head.
* BulletproofVest: the fleet administrators like Sanford, Lauren, Chuck, and Damon all wear bulletproof vests into combat, namely the [[http://www.ar500armor.com/ar500-armor-body-armor.html AR-500 armor plates.]] Ship girls only need to wear load-bearing vests that will help carry their infantry ammo because [[ImmuneToBullets bullets aren't the most effective against them.]]
* BulletTime: the stat sheet on chapter 169 has a listing of bullet time abilities [[{{Shoutout}} inspired by the Tier 5 Zed Time perks seen in]] VideoGame/KillingFloor2, implying that the ship girls, who have much faster than normal reflexes compared to humans, perceive the world around them with their faster reflexes in a form of bullet time.
* BullyingADragon: In chapter 54, the captured mooks taunting Damon really should have known better. If killing all the other rebels around wasn't enough of a hint that he wasn't the wuss they thought he was, they should have figured that he'd known of a certain most heinous crime they perpetrated.
* BunnyEarsLawyer: heavily subverted from the game. The quirks, over-the-top personalities, and oddities that the ship girls had in the game are downplayed a lot in the story, yet the girls themselves still remain effective soldiers and warriors in-story.
* TheBusCameBack:
** After not being seen for a long time, Khal is mentioned again in chapter 140 and reappears in person in the next.
** Dee Jay makes his return in chapter 209.
* CainAndAbel: Inevitable, since Damon isn't the only person looking for and/or in possession of active ship girls.
** In chapter 20 [[spoiler:Shimakaze and Amatsukaze fight because the Atlantans got to the former first.]]
** Subverted in Operation London. [[spoiler: Although Kongou was sent out alongside the Orion-class dreadnought girls by the terrorist organization "The Inner Circle", she never directly exchanges shots or blows with Haruna.]]
** Operation Norfolk. [[spoiler: During the second half of the operation, the actual assault on Naval Air Station Norfolk, all factions of the Coalition round up as many of their ship girls as they could muster and send them off to defend the base and intercept Damon's girls. Needless to say, most of these girls are sister ships of girls that are under Damon's command.]]
* CallBack:
** In chapter 148, while searching through an airport, Kitakami brings up Damon's doing so before.
** Remember the [[spoiler:Mexican Army soldiers]] at Corpus Christi? In chapter 174, we find out what they discovered there.
** Chapter 296. [[spoiler:Before Sandman lets Damon view his memories, Damon hears him whisper:]]
-->[[spoiler:Sandman: [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII "Listen only to the sound of my voice..."]]]]
** Every time [[spoiler:a Shiratsuyu-Class succumbs to her demon angel form.]]
** In chapter 412, when Tenryuu [[spoiler:deals the fatal blow to the Armored Carrier Demon]], she remarks how Shigure was the one to kill her last time, and that [[spoiler:it's a shame Shigure isn't here to do it again.]]
* CallingYourAttacks: [[spoiler:once ship girls start acquiring magic powers and abilities, this trope begins creeping up much more frequently.]]
* CameBackWrong: Chapter 187 - [[spoiler:Suzukaze's]] back! Wait a minute, why is she burning everything around her, and why are her voice and eyes messed up?
* TheCartel: [[spoiler:The Inner Circle]] are collaborating with Mexican gangs and have facilities on their territory.
* CastHerd: [[spoiler:becomes more and more this when more international fleets enter the story, with each of them getting their own arc or mini-arc in one way or another.]]
* CatScare: In chapter 111, Suzukaze gets spooked by what turns out to be [[spoiler:a falling brick.]]
* CaughtWithYourPantsDown: [[spoiler:in chapter 255, Damon walks back up to his room to change shirts, only to unwittingly discover Shigure in his closet, holding the shirt he intended to wear that she's been "using".]]
* ChainsawGood: Damon employs this [[spoiler:during the Baltimore arc.]] And what's better than one chainsaw? [[DualWielding Two of them.]]
* CharacterClassSystem: several chapters throughout the story, most notably chapter 169, also referred to as the "stats sheet" throughout this tropes page, set up gameplay-like mechanics as if the author was envisioning the story as a game, rather than just a story. The characters in the class system naturally deal with the ship girls, specifically the ship types:
** [[FragileSpeedster Destroyers]]: the fleet's bread-and-butter soldiers, more or less. They fill [[JackOfAllTrades all roles of the fleet]], in both sea and land operations, and can be assigned to complete basically any task that needs to be done, as reinforced by their ability options listed in the stat sheet. Not quite {{Mooks}} because, other than the fact that they're the main focus of the story, many destroyers come with their own special "protocols" that give them extra power in combat; and because there are so many destroyers, some come already specialized in certain fields of combat expertise. They typically use CoolGuns/AssaultRifles and CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns, with a few using handheld CoolGuns/MachinePistols or CoolGuns/{{Handguns}} that they use dual-wielded - in fact, [[GunsAkimbo destroyers are the most proficient ship type at dual-wielding firearms (typically machine pistols or regular pistols), or learning how to do so]] - while one destroyer even uses a sniper rifle like a carrier. They are also almost always [[FragileSpeedster weak but fast,]] having the lowest health and armor pools in exchange for better base speed and boost gauges (barring the submarines). Typically, the destroyers are divided into two divisions during operations, and it's almost solely based on their personalities:
*** the more reserved, passive, or shyer destroyers perform [[EscortMission escort duty and other defensive roles]] during combat, protecting the more advanced ship types, as they (theoretically) can't fight off ambushes from enemies as well as the destroyers can simply because there are more destroyers than there are capital ship girls, not because the capital ships can't fight them off themselves. (The carriers, having only sniper rifles, might actually have some difficulty if they were swarmed.)
*** the more aggressive, bloodthirsty, and faster destroyers are typically put to work being part of what the story refers to as the [[CloseRangeCombatant "vanguard" unit(s) that attack enemy formations headfirst to give the fleet an opening into the enemy forces]]. These girls almost always have a protocol or some kind of special power or weapon to augment their damage output, as, being the first ones to get into the thick of the fight most of the time, they need these additional powers to make sure that they can stand a chance against the enemy forces without risking their lives - at least not as much.
** [[InvisibilityCloak Submarines]]: the stealth fighters of the fleet. Their designs being an explicit {{Shoutout}} to the Ghosts from the VideoGame/{{Starcraft}} series, their swimsuits are described to be made of a special fabric that can render its wearer invisible, though it's implied that these swimsuits are specifically manufactured for use by the submarine girls, and that your average Joe off the street can't just wear one and go poof. Naturally, their innate ability to Cloak defaults their services to stealth missions, and in large-scale battles, to [[SupportPartyMember support roles]] to stealthily take out enemies and take pressure off the rest of the fleet wherever the fighting gets intense, and their abilities listed in the stat sheet focus on accentuating their stealth capabilities and survivability while out in the field. They always use suppressed CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns and suppressed sidearms, as using unsuppressed weapons would mean that the muzzle flashes of such guns could give away their positions due to the disturbance that the muzzle flash creates in the submarines' Cloaks at least, and could even break their Cloaking effects at worst.
** [[UtilityPartyMember Light Cruisers]]: the specialists of the fleet. Their abilities as listed in the stat sheet allow the light cruisers to specialize their damage against specific enemy ship types in their fight against the Abyssals and power up certain story mechanics that only the light cruisers can tweak to their advantage (generally speaking), like increasing their parry strength and being able to give more EXP for actions they and surrounding allies take for completing various tasks. Their infantry weapons of choice are CoolGuns/AssaultRifles, with only Sendai actively using an SMG as her base infantry weapon to suit her CQC nature. Of note, all light cruiser classes featured in the story thus far have a class-specific role in the fleet:
*** the Sendai-Class (except for Naka) are night battle specialists, true to their canon reputations. Sendai is the only non-submarine ship girl who has an invisibility skill of some kind, though in her case, it's both [[InvisibilityCloak an optical camouflage]] and noise suppression system rolled into one that can only be used when it's nighttime.
*** the Tenryuu-Class are melee specialists; their canon weapons of the sword (which the story refers to as the [[MeaningfulName "Dragon Sword"]] and the glaive are made of Smartsteel, making them capable of ripping through both human and Abyssal flesh with equal impunity; naturally, this means that they are front-line fighters like the more aggressive destroyers, though thanks to their smaller than average health/armor pools for light cruisers, they're definitely the [[GlassCannon Glass Cannons]] of the CL's.
*** the Kuma-Class are, like their canon selves, torpedo support specialists: the ones featured in the story (Kitakami, Ooi, and [[spoiler:Nisei Kitakami]]) all have special torpedoes by default that they can configure at will to be free-fire torpedoes or homing torpedoes, whereas only the destroyers have the option of converting their own torpedoes into homing ones, but not only does this require them to equip an augmentation called the JDAM Converter, but it also makes ''all'' their torpedoes homing.
*** Yuubari, the experimental cruiser, sacrifices health and armor (she's basically a glorified destroyer as far as durability goes) in exchange for greatly expanded peripheral power; the story compares her peripherals with those possessed by capital ship girls like battleships and carriers, who have by default the strongest peripherals of any ship type. This makes her an excellent TargetSpotter for destroyers and other cruisers, as she'll be in the center-forward positions of the fleet, assisting other girls by alerting them to enemy presences since she's got the mental processing power to handle seeing and calling out so many enemies at once, in the confusion and chaos of a battle.
** [[LightningBruiser Heavy Cruisers]]: the [[LamePun heavy]] hitters of the fleet. Bridging the gap between the weaker destroyers and light cruisers and the capital ship types, they have big guns that hit hard and are fast and mobile enough to participate in front-line activities, as Ashigara best demonstrates. Their abilities in the stat sheet emphasize their power, both offensively and defensively (as in their weapon power and personal durability), and they also allow the cruisers to specialize [[ArmorPiercingAttack against enemy shields and armor to further emphasize their killing potentials]]. They currently use exclusively CoolGuns/BattleRifles, the only ship type to dedicate themselves to using battle rifles, which may serve to further emphasize their mobile but powerful offensive capabilities.
** [[MightyGlacier Battleships/Battlecruisers/Dreadnoughts]]: the big guns of the fleet. The single most durable ship type of the fleet, their healths are, as described by the stat sheet, generally in the ''thousands'', whereas for comparison's sake, many destroyers don't even break a thousand in health. Slow and strong, they typically are not seen fighting in the front lines, because if they have to, you know there's something that's [[GoneHorriblyWrong gone wrong with the operation.]] The only exceptions to this is the fact that fast battleships or battlecruisers or dreadnoughts can get away with fighting up close and personal because they have the health to tank damage that other ship girls who are faster would be able to dodge and outrun; typically these battleships also have melee weapons or powers of some kind to justify their close-range fighting nature. They use CoolGuns/MachineGuns, [[CoolGuns/SniperRifles DMR's,]] and powerful CoolGuns/AssaultRifles - some even use CoolGuns/{{Shotguns}}. The [[LongRangeFighter Long Range Fighters]] of the fleet, along with the carriers, they provide suppressing fire from afar with their [[MoreDakka large volumes of infantry fire from their machine guns]] and artillery bombardments from their big battleship guns to cover their more mobile friends fighting in the front lines for them so that the battleships themselves don't have to.
** [[LongRangeFighter Aircraft Carriers]]: the snipers of the fleet. Indeed, every single carrier in the fleet in the story so far wields [[CoolGuns/SniperRifles a Sniper Rifle]] as her infantry weapon, and the story even describes the carriers as the one ship type that's been innately made proficient with usage of sniper rifles. Since they are currently the only ship girls in the fleet who are capable at all of launching airplanes of any kind, the carriers stay with the battleships and support destroyers who can protect and cover them as they launch their ever-important squadrons of attack planes to establish favorable air superiority for the fleet and also cover their front-line allies with close air support. The story also makes explicit mention of the carriers' ability to individually control their planes, much like a MarionetteMaster, to do certain specific tasks in battle, like attack a specific high-value target or [[UpToEleven even take control of a plane to make sure that it survives a dogfight.]] And because the planes are automated and electronic, they even boast on-board observation cameras that ''anyone in the fleet'' can access, so long as the carrier makes sure to tether connection to her planes' cameras and make them available to her allies so that they can download the feeds and see what the planes see for themselves, thus making carriers also [[SupportPartyMember support ship girls as well.]]
* ChekhovsGun:
** The Project scientist who Damon interrogated and whose home he had recovered Murakumo from. Read the spoiler below to know the importance of this.
** The fact that other non-government factions know about the existence of the ship girls is a great concern to Damon and Sanford, due to the secrecy of the project that made them. The latter was even one of the leads on the project. It is of even more concern when they encounter foreign nationals looking for ship girls at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. [[spoiler: During Operation Charlotte and Atlanta, the leaders for both factions spill the beans on who gave them that info. It was Ken Simpson, the scientist that Damon had interrogated weeks earlier, and has been working with not only the Coalition, but also with the Mexicans. And then we find out that he not only divulged the project's data to the Abyssals' creator (known only as "Mr. Abyssal"), he's also in cahoots with the Abyssals' admiral, The Sheriff.]]
** In chapter 58, Sanford reveals that ship girls have no [=EMP=] resistance, as the materials that would've given them that resistance were simply too costly for the project. Chapter 88 adds on that the deadline got pushed up before they could be implemented anyway. [[spoiler: This has severe consequences during Damon and co.'s campaign against the Coalition. During Operation Atlanta, an [=EMP=] weapon is deployed against the girls immediately after they breach the hotel conference room that O'Reily is taking refuge in, rendering all of them combat-ineffective and helpless to his armored [[VideoGame/ModernWarfare2 Juggernaut]] until Damon comes to save the day. It's during Operation Little Rock where the girls' lack of [=EMP=] resistance leads to fatal consequences for one of the fleet's human members, as Alastor Scott of Little Rock saw fit to retrofit [=HIS=] ship girls with [=EMP=]-shielding, leaving them free to retaliate while Damon's girls are helpless, and Damon himself is cut off from comms due to the [=EMP=] frying his headset.]] By the time the fleet finally gets its hands on EMP shielding, the damage is already done.
*** however, when [[spoiler:Imwalle tries to set off an EMP charge near the Mogami-Class to disable them and all other ship girls in the area, their Reverse EMP Field augmentations that the entire fleet had been assigned renders Imwalle's secret EMP trap next to useless.]]
** During Operation Atlanta, there's a lot of concern that a damaged skyscraper might collapse. No prizes for guessing that it does, eventually, collapse.
** Also during Operation Atlanta, as Damon enters the west building of the Georgia World Congress Center in search of Room 335, Benjamin informs him that the fleet's airstrikes have taken out the sky-bridge that links the east and west buildings together, and in the event that his target isn't in the current building, Damon will have to go all the way back down to street level in order to access the other building.[[spoiler:He really did end up in the wrong building and wastes precious time switching buildings.]]
** Back in London, Damon confiscated [[spoiler:a nuke the Inner Circle tried to have Kongou use.]] It eventually gets used to [[spoiler:nuke Baltimore.]]
** [[spoiler:Damon's coffin at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. Not only is the body of the Ru-Class that was somehow slipped into the coffin to replace Damon's body itself a ChekhovsGun, being used to create the exosuit that Damon later uses, but when Damon and his new team returns to the grave and dig it up, the coffin is now filled with a small cache of high-grade military weapons, ammo, and gear that supplies them adequately for their upcoming missions.]]
** [[spoiler:Remember the MadnessMantra that Damon was blabbing to himself when Ushio found him in the middle of Baltimore? Samidare recites the entire same mantra to Yamakaze to calm her down.]]
** During his solo journey with the Slugs down to Mobile/Houston at the start of the Stolen Fleet arc, Damon fights a small group of rogues in a town called Satsuma, Alabama and stumbles upon a makeshift greenhouse growing orange trees and plucks a few oranges to take with him. This is all the way back in chapter 211 - [[spoiler:!Samidare]] visits this same greenhouse in chapter 331, with the implication that she may be the one who set this greenhouse up.
* ChekhovsGunman:
** In chapter 50, an unknown woman Damon encounters takes a look at him and wonders if she knows him. [[spoiler:In chapter 52, Sanford says that might have been an aunt. Confirmed in chapter 56.]]
** During the early chapters, Damon and his girls stay the night at the Savannah survivor community led by Khal. [[spoiler: In chapter 140, Khal, or Dr. Kolomon Faust, is revealed to be a close friend of a German chancellor who presides over the German state that leads the Social Democratic Party, and it is this party Blackwood wants to support and is also sending the fleet there to deal with the Inner Circle.]]
** When Suzukaze and Samidare both [[spoiler:activate their respective protocols]], the letters "[=XYZ=]" are seen being repeated over and over and over again. In chapter 176, Damon's browsing of documents drafted by [[spoiler:an Inner Circle engineer]] reveals mentions of "Substance [=XYZ=]".
** Sandman, who helped Damon out back in Mexico, and [[spoiler:Kevinson are revealed in chapter 207 to be the same person]].
** [[spoiler:Warspite/Winifred]] is briefly glimpsed in chapter 246, a few chapters before she is properly introduced.
** [[spoiler:While not mentioned explicitly in name, Jared Imwalle, the Whitewater PMC commander, turns out to be one of the many men who raped Suzuya at Little Rock during her time of imprisonment there under Coalition control when Suzuya confronts him in chapter 297.]]
** Earlier on, the Combined Fleet encountered [[spoiler:failed Aircraft Carrier Water Demon clones]] at an Abyssal base. They encounter a fully armed and operational one many chapters later in 303.
*** It appears that an operational clone escaped the Abyssals, along with her DNA baseplate. [[spoiler:Commandant Teste and her Abyssal clone. They both now reside in France.]]
* ClarksThirdLaw: [[spoiler:this story hinges its magic on advanced military technology, but before the characters explicitly discovered that their advanced military technology actually hinged on magical foundations, some of the ship girls' powers in the beginning seemed like actual magic to those who didn't know otherwise.]]
* CloningBlues: averted from the game. The story seems to establish firmly with its setting and plot that all ship girls in the Japanese fleet have already been constructed (which may raise a question of how newly implemented ship girls in the game would be treated in this regard) and have been shipped to the United States or elsewhere, meaning that it's impossible for there to be a clone of an already existing ship girl.
** [[spoiler:...or so it seemed at first. Things get complicated when, for example, ship girls like Warspite and Iowa show up, where the story features both the canon and external incarnations of the exact same character, meaning that these two girls are the exceptions. And things get even more complicated when Lukenstor demonstrates the ability to construct additional ship girls, meaning that, if they so wanted, they could very well begin pumping out clones of ship girls who already exist and are active, but they haven't done that. Yet.]]
* ClothingDamage: both maintained and averted from the game. Maintained because clothing is very obviously going to be damaged by high-explosive ordnance that the ship girls get hit by when fighting Abyssals, but averted in that this story, striving for as much tactical realism as possible, clearly describes blood and gore that results from injuries like these.
* ColdSniper [=/=] FriendlySniper: Though Kaga's more on the former side, the main role for the carrier girls under Damon's command is to provide precision support fire against key targets with their sniper rifles, and provide air cover with their aircraft. As a last resort, they'll even bring their rifles to bear on enemy aircraft and down them with ease.
** [[spoiler: Enteprise and Yorktown provide this comparison almost perfectly.]]
* TheComicallySerious: Kaga's BigEater antics cause a lot of unintentional hilarity.
* CombatMedic: [[spoiler:Samidare and Umikaze. While Harusame and Ushio could technically be considered such, these two aren't known for their fighting and would rather just focus on healing and taking care of their friends and allies, while Umikaze is just as willing and proficient at fighting as she is at healing. Samidare would have been classified with Harusame and Ushio as just plain medics, but in light of the recent chapter 378, Samidare now has the fighting skill to put her as a combat medic too. And while we're at it, maybe Damon too.]]
* CommonCrossover: subverted; [[spoiler:this story, from quite early on in the story, in fact, pulls in characters from the Chinese equivalent of Kantai Collection called VideoGame/WarshipGirls, which essentially a Kantai Collection with much more emphasis on foreign ship girls, so given these premises, one may believe that the two franchises would be more commonly depicted in crossovers, but it's not very common at all.]]
* ConcealmentEqualsCover: Repeatedly averted starting from chapter 2, where bullets go through the decayed wood and brick Damon was hiding behind. Bullet (over)penetration is something that the author clearly bothers to take into account.
** specifically averted in chapter 287: [[spoiler:during the Search and Destroy simulation, several of the attackers attempt to hit the defenders through walls by shooting directly through them. Shigure accidentally shoots the other side of a reinforced panel, so in her case, her bullets [[DefiedTrope really can't punch through.]]]]
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: In chapter 115 Tatsuya just doesn't react to the horrible things around him, like the BodyHorror of his sister or [[spoiler:subsisting on meat carved from human corpses. Suzukaze]], on the other hand, takes such things much more poorly.
* ConflictingLoyalty: A few of the girls, most notably Shiranui and Zuikaku, struggle to prioritise between their ship sisters and the needs of the fleet as a whole.
* ConservationOfNinjutsu: perhaps a squad of ship girls fighting against a human army with infantry guns is believable, but the story is guilty of pitting ship girls fighting against a numerically superior force of Abyssals - and winning. It gets to the point where even ''destroyers'' can go toe-to-toe with Abyssals who are supposed to be stronger than them simply due to the difference in ship type. [[spoiler:Subverted, because there are times when the ship girls do in fact lose.]]
* CoolGuns: since there are so many that could be listed, only the ones that are listed under the written entries of the CoolGuns page will be shown.
** [[CoolGuns/{{Handguns}} Handguns:]]
*** Amatsukaze uses for a while a standard US Army-issue Beretta M-9 that Damon finds and gives her during their excursion to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. The Mogami-Class, as per the fleet's equipment upgrade in chapters 285-286, now carry Beretta M9-A3's as their sidearms.
*** Fusou uses a Beretta PX-4 Storm as her sidearm.
*** [[spoiler:Haida, the Canadian destroyer,]] uses a Browning Hi-Power in a Mk. III variant, a {{Shoutout}} to the one featured in VideoGame/RainbowSixSiege, used by both Buck and Frost as their sidearms.
*** Quite a few examples of the M-1911: Hatsushimo and [[spoiler:Nisei Nenohi]] carry [[http://www.nighthawkcustom.com/pistols/grp-recon Nighthawk Custom GRP Recons]], which are custom-made M-1911's; [[spoiler:the American destroyer Johnston]] carries a [[http://para-usa.com/2013/firearms/tactical/blackOps1445.php Para P-14]], another custom-made M-1911 that features a double-stack magazine that allows it to carry double the magazine capacity of a normal M-1911 mag; [[spoiler:Iowa, Wisconsin, and Saratoga]] all use M-45 MEUSOC's, standard-issue M-1911's for Force Recon Marines, and the first gives one to Lauren [[spoiler:during the first assault on the White House]], which Lauren still keeps and uses; and Shoukaku and Zuikaku both use [[http://www.genitron.com/Handgun/Para-USA/Pistol/P16-40-Limited-Stainless/40-SW/Variant-1 Para P-16's]], customized M-1911's that are chambered for .40 S&W rather than .45 ACP.
*** several light cruisers early on in the story carry CZ-75's as sidearms, and Furutaka and Kako, as per the fleet equipment upgrade, now carry IWI Jericho-941's, which are closely based on the original CZ-75 design.
*** Retia Wedekind, President-Chancellor of Germany, carries a fifty-caliber Luger as her sidearm. One may wonder how on Earth she even managed to get her hands on a weapon like this.
*** Asashio, Arashio, and Kasumi all carry FN Five-seveN Mk. II's to complement their primary weapons that all use the same ammo type, the 5.7x28mm.
*** many ship girls use various models of Glocks: the Fubuki-Class (barring [[AceCustom Murakumo]]) carry Generation-6 Glock-19's (the Glock 19 exists as a gun, but currently in RealLife it only goes up to Generation 4); the Ayanami-Class carry Generation-6 Glock-17's, the Yuugumo-Class carry Glock-34's, and Shimakaze carries a selective-fire Glock-18, called the Glock-18 "Cobra", a {{Shoutout}} to the weapon featured in VideoGame/CombatArms.
*** the entire Shiratsuyu-Class use H&K USP.45's, specifically their Compact Tactical models, as per the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** [[spoiler:the Russian destroyer Engels]] carries a Makarov PMM as her sidearm.
*** the Kuma-Class cruisers use P-250's, the Myoukou-Class cruisers use P-226 Navy's, and the Kongou-Class use P-320's after the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Taihou and [[spoiler:Wakamiya]] both use [[http://www.springfield-armory.com/products/xdm-4-5-9-mm/ Springfield XDM's.]]
*** [[spoiler:The Russian cruiser Kirov]] carries a Tokarev TT-33 as her sidearm.
*** the Mutsuki-Class all use Walther P99c-AS pistols as their sidearms.
*** Hibiki uses a MP-443 Grach as her sidearm after the fleet equipment upgrade.
** [[CoolGuns/{{Revolvers}} Revolvers]]:
*** [[spoiler:Russian Coastal Defense ship Novgorod]] uses a Nagant M1985 - which is appropriate, as they're more or less the same age.
*** Damon picks up an [[https://www.smith-wesson.com/firearms/performance-center-model-629-stealth-hunter S&W Model 629 Stealth Hunter]], a stainless steel model of the original Model 29, from the Granite Quarry gang boss (after dealing with him and his gang) and gives it to Sanford. Curiously, Sanford keeps this revolver as his sidearm ever since.
*** [[spoiler:Enterprise and Yorktown both use S&W Model .500's - the former uses just one, while the latter [[GunsAkimbo dual-wields two of it.]] Justified, as Yorktown is a ship girl who can easily handle the strong recoil and tough handling of the guns that the story [[LampshadeHanging acknowledges would be impossible for any reasonable human shooter to imitate.]]]]
*** Chuck uses a [[http://www.taurususa.com/product-details.cfm?id=235&category=Revolver Taurus Raging Bull Model 454.]]
** [[CoolGuns/SubmachineGuns Submachine Guns]]:
*** Kasumi uses an FN P90-TR SBR, a short-barreled rifle variant with a Picatinny rail system to accept different optics rather than the original P90's default dot sight and various side-mounted attachments.
*** [=MP5=] variants have been frequently used by the fleet over the course of the story: the submarines for the first half of the story used [=MP5SD-6=] variants to fit their invisible stealth roles before swapping them out for Honey Badgers with the fleet equipment upgrade. The Mutsuki-Class, also before the fleet equipment upgrade, used [=MP5=] variants as their primary weapons. I-8 of the German fleet also uses a suppressed [=MP5=], this time the [=MP5SD-N2.=]
*** Z-3 Max Schultz uses [[GunsAkimbo two MP7-A2's]] as her primary weapons, and she even carries special reloading mechanisms with her utility belt that let her dual-wield them and [[UnorthodoxReload reload them in a practical and efficient manner in combat.]]
*** Asashio used the UMP-45 as her primary weapon before the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Wakaba, a GunsAkimbo enthusiast to the extent that her entry in the stat sheet explicitly gives her a passive trait that allows her to dual-wield guns by default, has always used a pair of Mini-Uzi's as her primary weapons and still keeps them, even after the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Satsuki is also a GunsAkimbo enthusiast like Wakaba, and she herself carries around a pair of MAC-11's, guns that she received even before the fleet equipment upgrade - and still uses.
*** Z-1 Leberecht Maass uses a modernized MP-40 called the HG-40, a {{Shoutout}} to the gun featured in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII''.
*** [[spoiler:Russian cruiser Murmansk]] uses not one, but [[MoreDakka two PPSh-041's]].
*** Saratoga uses a Lukenstor-built Thompson SMG, fictionally dubbed the M-2029 with classic fifty-round drum and thirty-round box mags.
** [[CoolGuns/AssaultRifles Assault Rifles]]:
*** plenty of AK's and its variants/derivatives show up in the story, perhaps too many. The more prominent examples are as follows - the Fubuki-Class all use AK-12's as of the fleet equipment upgrade; a few battleships used to use AK-M's prior to the fleet equipment upgrade. In Operation Goldmine in particular, the Inner Circle Agents use mainly AK-M's and other variants, and [[spoiler:several of the Russian ship girls also use AK's.]]
*** Hibiki uses an AKS-74U carbine after the fleet equipment upgrade; an AEK-971 has also been used by several of the destroyers before the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Beretta ARC-160's show up in the hands of the Italian Army soldiers - makes sense, as the ARX-160 is the Italian Army standard-issue rifle; several ship girls in the Combined Fleet have also used it as well. Jintsuu in particular once used the ARX-100 as a marksman rifle before the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** the ACR is used by several ship girls before the fleet equipment upgrade; now, [[spoiler:Iowa and Wisconsin]] use ACR's chambered for 6.8 SPC.
*** the English dreadnoughts (except for Erin) use L85-A2's; Kongou at one point used one too, in the early days of her admission into the Combined Fleet. Erin herself uses the L86 LSW variant.
*** the FS-2000 Standard, simply called the FS-2000 in the story as a {{Shoutout}} to the one featured in VideoGame/CombatArms, has been used by a few ship girls at one point.
*** quite a few SCAR's are used by the ship girls: the Kagerou-Class (except for Amatsukaze) have always used SCAR-L's, called by the story MK-16 SCAR-L EGLM RCO's, a reference to the variants seen in VideoGame/DayZ Origins. After the fleet equipment upgrade, they've traded in their SCAR-L's for FNAC's, but still with the same attachments. Benjamin used the MK-16 CCO SD, also a reference to VideoGame/DayZ Origins, and Shoukaku and Zuikaku used the MK-20 SSR SD and the MK-17 Long Barrel SD (though these are considered battle rifles/DMR's rather than true assault rifles), all of which were used specifically for Operation Night Tide. Ashigara and Haguro both use MK-17 SCAR-H's as their primary weapons after the fleet equipment upgrade. Mutsu also now uses the FN HAMR, the LMG variant of the SCAR design, after the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Yuudachi's very first primary weapon was the G36-C. Sanford also uses the G36-E, the export variant and also another reference to VideoGame/CombatArms.
*** Furutaka's first primary weapon was the IMI Galil.
*** Shigure's first primary weapon was the TAR-21. Hatsushimo also currently uses the CTAR-21 variant, and [[spoiler:Nisei Nenohi]] uses the X95-330, or the MTAR-21.
*** M16 variants frequently show up in the hands of rebels and rogues that Damon and co. encounter in the early parts of the story, and naturally they also show up in the hands of American army soldiers too. Samidare uses an AR-15 with a simple red dot sight as her primary weapon for the first half of the story, and [[spoiler:Johnston]] uses one with an undermounted grenade launcher only, which the story calls the M16-A4 M-203, as her primary weapon.
*** M-4's are used widely by the Combined Fleet in the story, even amongst the fleet's administrators: Chuck used a SOPMOD variant during his participation in the Coalition Wars, and currently, after the fleet equipment upgrade, many of the Shiratsuyu-Class now use Colt M-4's with various customized skins inspired by those seen in [[VideoGame/CounterStrike CSGO.]] Shigure herself used an M-4 Carbine for the Germany campaign after her TAR-21, and then upgraded to an AR-15 chambered for the .50 Beowulf round with the fleet equipment upgrade, as does Yuudachi. [[spoiler:Canadian destroyer Haida]] also uses a Canadian version, the C-8 SFW carbine.
*** Ashigara and Haguro both used SIG 550 variants before the fleet equipment upgrade, Ashigara in particular using the SG-556 variant.
*** Ayanami and Shikinami have traditionally used Steyr AUG's, at first AUG-A1's, then upgrading to AUG-A3 Carbines with the fleet equipment upgrade.
** [[CoolGuns/BattleRifles Battle Rifles]]:
*** both Samidare and Suzukaze eventually end up acquiring Arisaka rifles, the Type 38 and the Type 99, respectively. Both were once part of private gun collections, the Type 38 being part of one of Baxter Harrison's friends' collection who had recently passed away and was given to Damon to take with him heading out of Mobile to Cape Canaveral, who then passed it on to Samidare to keep, and the Type 99 also being part of Eagle Clinton's friends' collection and then passed onto Damon, who then gave it to Suzukaze. Both are captured relics from World War II itself, the original American GI's who'd captured them having brought them back home with them to America. They have both been, perhaps to the ire of gun collectors, modernized to accept the more modern 7.62x51mm cartridge and have better handling and ergonomics, as the Arisaka rifles had various problems in their original states.
*** Takao uses the FN FAL for her entire career with the Combined Fleet. Even with the fleet equipment upgrade, she simply upgrades her FAL to the OSW variant, a paratrooper version with a folding stock.
*** Kinugasa used the H&K G3-A3 as her first primary weapon. Chitose used the [=PSG1-A1=] as her primary weapon upon first joining the Combined Fleet, but this is a sniper rifle rather than an assault rifle.
*** Damon's WeaponOfChoice in the first half of the story is an M-14 placed in Juggarnaut Tactical's Rogue bullpup chassis. Currently, Hiyou and Jun'you use marksman variants of the M-14, the MK-14 EBR and the M-39 EMR, respectively.
** [[CoolGuns/SniperRifles Sniper Rifles]]:
*** Wakamiya used an AW-F, a variant with a default folding stock, as her sniper rifle before the fleet equipment upgrade. Now, after it, she uses an AX-50, a .50BMG anti-materiel cousin of the original AW sniper rifle. Murasame, also after the fleet equipment upgrade, now uses the AW-P sniper rifle - complete with the Redline skin from [[VideoGame/CounterStrike CSGO]], the only destroyer in the fleet to use a dedicated sniper rifle.
*** One of Mutsu's first primary weapons is the M82-A1, which she uses during the first half of the first assault on Atlanta; Musashi receives and has faithfully used the grenade-launcher variant of the M82, the [=XM109=], though she uses a fictional variant called the [=M109-A2=]. [[spoiler:Yorktown]] now also uses an M82 variant called the [=M107CQ=]-Airforce, yet another reference to VideoGame/CombatArms.
*** Taihou's first sniper rifle was the Cheytac M-200 Intervention, and after the fleet equipment upgrade, she upgrades her rifle to the M-200 Carbine variant, a more portable version.
*** Damon finds in a special weapons case that he and Murakumo capture in the second chapter of the story a DSR-50, the anti-materiel variant of the DSR-1. He uses this as his own personal sniper rifle, then passes it on to Zuikaku once she enters the fleet since a carrier like her can get a lot more mileage out of it than he can. Zuikaku still uses it, making the DSR-50 the longest-serving firearm still in use in the fleet.
*** Chitose once used a [=PSG1-A1=] as her sniper rifle before the fleet equipment upgrade, as mentioned above.
*** [[spoiler:Kane]] carries an M-110 SASS.
*** Saratoga uses an M40-A5, an upgraded version of the R-700.
*** Damon briefly uses a Steyr Scout, acquired from the supplies Baxter Harrison gives him for him, Samidare, and Suzukaze to use while on their way to Cape Canaveral from Mobile. It's presumably lost after they reach Cape Canaveral, however.
*** Chuck used a Dragunov SV-U as his marksman rifle of choice.
** [[CoolGuns/{{Shotguns}} Shotguns]]:
*** Remember the DSR-50 listed above that Damon found in a weapons case in the beginning of the story? There were actually two more weapons cases, and one of them contained not just one, but a ''pair'' of AA-12's. Amatsukaze was initially assigned one to suit her role as a close-quarters combat ship girl, but she then passes it along to Shimakaze, and the second one is given to Suzukaze when she joins the fleet. Currently, only Shimakaze uses the AA-12, which she's faithfully kept even through the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Barry gives Suzukaze a customized M-1014 when they go to kill the men who injured Baxster's girlfriend.
*** [[spoiler:Damon's late teammate, Ghaffey, once carried a custom-made 8-gauge double-barrel shotgun.]]
*** [[spoiler:Iowa]] carries an Ithaca Model 37 - as an [[ParasolOfPain umbrella shotgun.]]
*** [[spoiler:Russian destroyer Engels]] carries a Saiga 12K 030 variant.
*** [[spoiler:Haida]] uses the M-26 MASS as an underbarreled attachment for her C-8, also a reference to Buck's special ability in VideoGame/RainbowSixSiege.
*** Yuudachi once used a Remington 870 MCS as part of her loadout before the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** [[spoiler:Yorktown]] uses [[GunsAkimbo two Model 1887's]] to fit her cowgirl, gunslinging image, and as a reference to those seen in VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2.
** [[CoolGuns/MachineGuns Machine Guns]]:
*** Mogami and Mikuma both use the [[http://www.ohioordnanceworks.com/hcar Ohio Ordnance Works HCAR]], or [[FunWithAcronyms Heavy Counter Assault Rifle]], a modern reimagining of John Browning's original BAR weapon.
*** [[spoiler:Russian cruiser Kirov]] uses a Degtyaryov DP-M as part of her loadout.
*** [[spoiler:Amagi]] uses the Barrett M-240LW, a significantly lighter variant of the original M-240.
*** [[spoiler:New Jersey]] uses the M-249 SAW as her primary weapon, and Hyuuga and Ise use the FN MK-48 MOD 1 variants.
*** Miniguns are frequently featured mounted onto attack helicopters and Harriers, but several other examples stand out: [[spoiler:both the Metal Slug and the Slug Gunner have them, the former having Vulcan Miniguns that fire blue tracer rounds in full reference to the [[VideoGame/MetalSlug original game]] and the latter having a fictional MTS-S/A 60mm Autocannon. Iris and New Jersey]] also sport their own miniguns, a fictional variant called the M61-A3 Vulcan Rotary Autocannon that fire 20x102mm M-246 HEI-T-SD rounds.
*** [[spoiler:Russian battleship Sovetsky Soyuz]] carries a PKP Pecheneg LMG.
*** Mutsu used an RPK-74 as her LMG of choice before the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Nagato now uses the M2-A2 Browning LMG after the fleet equipment upgrade.
*** Bismarck carries a modernized MG-42 that will fire 7.62x51mm NATO rounds.
*** Several battleships have at one point used the Ultimax 100 LMG.
** [[CoolGuns/RocketsMissilesAndGrenadeLaunchers Rockets, Missiles, and Grenade Launchers]]:
*** The FGM-148 Javelin has been used ''against'' the ship girls during the second Atlanta assault, severely damaging a few destroyers - in particular taking off the legs of Mutsuki.
*** Air-launched versions of the Stinger missile (known as the [=ATAL=] or [=ATAS=]) mounted on helicopters and aircraft are featured in the story.
*** [[spoiler:Enterprise]] uses an XM-6 Bazooka, a futuristic prototype variant that fires both 60mm rocket explosives and her own planes. She is unique for being the only carrier in the story to be able to launch her planes right out of an explosive platform.
*** Kagerou, Shiranui, and Kuroshio's MK-16's and FNAC's use EGLM grenade launchers, and they are the only destroyers to use rifles with undermounted grenade launchers - [[spoiler:until Johnston shows up, and her rifle, too, uses an undermounted M-203. And after the fleet equipment upgrade, Iris now uses an undermounted M-203 as well, but it's attached to her KAC Chain SAW, a light machine gun that's designed to be fired from the hip.]] A possible case of AluminumChristmasTrees - [[http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2009shotshow-day3-2009shotshow-01172009-001.jpg it must be seen to be believed.]]
*** The Mark-19 mounted grenade launcher has been seen mounted on various vehicles throughout the story.
*** [[spoiler:The newly introduced Richard P. Leary uses an M32-A1 MGL as part of her loadout.]]
*** RPG-7's and their variants like the lesser known RPG-29 are now being more frequently used against the ship girls, particularly by [[spoiler:the Agents, since they've had experience fighting the ship girls before, though that doesn't make them any less easily killable]]. Seeing that explosives are a much more efficient and faster way to damage ship girls, rather than bullet weapons, this comes as no surprise. Nagato herself even uses a captured one during the Germany campaign - see MissingBackblast below.
** Fictional: Damon's [[spoiler:Daemonbane and Daemonedge Revolvers. They're chambered for an entirely fictional .80caliber "Lilith Express" cartridge that are specifically manufactured just for Damon to use against the Abyssals and is powerful enough to rip a normal human man in half; the revolvers are so powerful that Damon must use them while wearing his exosuit because it would break even his wrists if he attempts to shoot one without the suit. Daemonbane sports a neon red/black color scheme, while Daemonedge has a neon blue/white color scheme.]]
* CoolPlane: Some examples here.
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_AW101 Merlin HC-3]] transport helicopter.
** The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_412 Bell 412]] utility chopper. Foreign nationals who rode into Naval Air Station Corpus Christi had modified their [=412s=] with a chin-mounted [=M60=] machine gun.
** The Lukenstor-built XV-29 Banshee, a {{Shoutout}} to the Banshee from VideoGame/StarcraftII. It can Cloak, mask all the noise that it makes, stay hidden off enemy radar, perform amphibious combat duties, and even has a sophisticated auto-pilot computer capable of taking remotely spoken orders by both the ship girls and the fleet administrators. It is also a tilt-rotor helicopter, similar to the MV-22 Osprey, that allows it to transition from helicopter to airplane mode on the fly.
* CoolShip: There are some examples.
** The USS ''Alabama'' museum ship, moored at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama. It is clear that there is something up with the ship as it's able to somehow open communications and ''talk'' to Murakumo. It is also here that Damon picks up his first cube of Navitasium and also his communication headset.
** The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS ''John Paul Jones'' is part of the Atlanta faction's naval force during their attack on Mobile.
** A certain ship girl's voyage has her making a stop at the USS ''New Jersey'' museum ship. [[spoiler: She's got the same shtick as Alabama. Further questioning by Suzukaze reveals that both Alabama and New Jersey have been loaded with ship girl routines, created by none other than the FLEET project.]]
** A later takes place on the very last dreadnought still afloat, the USS ''Texas'' museum ship. [[spoiler: She's been loaded with ship girl routines, or rather loaded with the base components for them by parties wanting to cultivate the reward, as had been done with New Jersey and Alabama.]]
* TheCorruption: [[spoiler:ship girls can be corrupted either if they are loaded with corrupted navitasium energy cubes that slowly convert them into Abyssals over time, as Murasame demonstrates, or if the Abyssals physically capture one and subject her to conversion processes that turn them Abyssal as well.]]
** [[spoiler:as demonstrated by Shigure, Yuudachi, Samidare, and Suzukaze, the entire Shiratsuyu-Class can fall into [[Franchise/{{Nasuverse}} "alter"]] versions of themselves if they let their emotions run rampant intensely enough or for long enough and take over their powers and protocols, effectively becoming evil, bloodthirsty demons that take the place of normally sweet, well-meaning destroyers. Sanford implies that this corruption is actually a built-in failsafe process that he and his Moebius team installed in the Shiratsuyu-Class as a way to divert their enormous magical energy along a different route that is less powerful and ultimately less potentially destructive and world-ending as opposed to if the destroyers went straight to their ultimate demi-god forms instead.]]
* CosyCatastrophe: Zig-zagged. On one end there are places like Inner Chicago that were not hit by the nukes and are barely changed from pre-war. On the other end are bombed out, irradiated and abandoned places like Houston or Atlantic City. Then there're places that are anywhere in between. These rich people are even able to spend money on imported goods ''from '''France''''', simply because they have nothing better to spend their money on.
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: In chapter 74, Damon points out to the leader of the Granite Quarry gangsters that he was perfectly willing to pay and go his way in peace, but the other guy just had to be obstinate and pull a gun.
* CrapsaccharineWorld: Charlotte is a glitzy, glamorous casino city, as long as one doesn't look too closely at what Premier Kerrigan Badeau is up to.
* CrapsackWorld: the first half of the story - much of the setting of the story takes place in irradiated or abandoned towns and cities, and the first time the fleet enters Chicago, it's a dystopian city where the rich live in the center, and everyone else lives outside the walls that surround the rich.
* CreatorThumbprint: have problems with the author of the story writing it up in such a way that a perceptively overpowered male main character ends up with a fleet of cute girls who can shoot and fight and grows his own harem within said fleet? [[spoiler:The very first fanfic the author wrote, a Touhou Project fanfic called [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9865536/1/Lacrimaeque-Laetitia-Cantus-Exposition Lacrimaeque Laetitia Cantus: Exposition]], is more or less the same way.]]
* CreepyChild: Due to the things that have been done to her, Jeannie acts in a mechanical manner.
* CriticalHit: subverted from the game; according to the stat sheet on chapter 169, critical hits do exist in the story's made-up game parameters, but given its lack of mention besides being explicitly par of ability descriptions, it can be implied that critical hits don't have a great prevalence in the story.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath:
** Even by the usual standards of WarIsHell, [[spoiler:the Re-class]] is prone to killing people in an excessively brutal, gory and visceral manner.
** The fate of the Harpers in Nashville at Damon's hands, so horrible that even Tatsuta was scared and it made him an InUniverse BaseBreakingCharacter.
** What happened to [[spoiler:Major Lester at the hands of Suzukaze, who literally vaporizes him with a Darkwater-powered punch.]]
* CultureChopSuey: In chapter 131, Kongou expresses her annoyance that the developers made her so British and then seemingly arbitrarily gave her a "desu" VerbalTic.
* CurbStompBattle:
** In chapter 150, we learn that back in 2015, the Inner Circle tried to bomb the White House. In response, Delta Force was mobilised on a search and destroy mission so effective that they were suppressed into inactivity for years afterwards.
** Chapter 190. [[spoiler:!Samidare defeats all the present Shiratsuyu-class]] while only taking a few hits that aren't enough to stop her.
** Chapter 213, Damon vs [[spoiler:Suzukaze]]. The chapter starts with him having been mauled in the time between the end of the previous chapter and this one's start, and when the two fight again, what few hits he manages to land have little effect.
** Chapter 291, Damon vs [[spoiler:Admiral Kevinson. Despite tag-teaming with Jeannie against Kevinson, Kevinson is able to handle both of them while taking no damage himself.]]
** [[spoiler:the very first battle of Operation Hammer Down: once Damon gives the go-ahead to his fleet that they're allowed to use their magic abilities, they absolutely crush the Abyssal ambushers whom they run into. Yuudachi herself single-handedly deletes the Abyssal base complex in Cuba off the map and practically insta-kills a second Re-Class who's apparently been housed there.]]
** Chapter 434, [[spoiler:Abyssalized Shigure single-handedly kills at least 5 of her sisters before the chapter is finished.]]
* CurbStompCushion:
** Though [[spoiler:the Re-class]] beats all the ship girls attacking it, it doesn't do so unscathed; Yuudachi manages to break its ribs and Furutaka hurts it enough that it drops its SlasherSmile.
** In chapter 292, the Shiratsuyu-Class girls manage to get [[spoiler:!Samidare]] to bleed before she destroys them.
* CursedWithAwesome: Zuikaku has this opinion of her luck, since it seems that Shoukaku is absorbing all the misfortune in her stead.
** Yuudachi also feels this way [[spoiler:when she activates her Demon Angel mode]]: the problem she has isn't with her power itself, but rather the reasons why she's using it. It's heavily implied that she hates that she's using this power [[spoiler:specifically because she's both sad and angry over Shigure's death at the hands of the Abyssals]], and given that she's talked with Damon before about how she doesn't know how to control her emotions or how to work off them well, this comes as no surprise.
* CustomUniform: PlayedForDrama in chapter 110. Samidare feels that Suzukaze and her having different uniforms from the rest of the Shiratsuyu class was one of the things driving a wedge between them.
** can be put into HilariousInHindsight territory when, later on, when [[spoiler:Samidare Alter]] shows up, she changes her own uniform to black, red, and blue instead.
* CycleOfHurting: the stat sheet specifically mentions that ship girls perform worse the lower their health gets, which means that, in the middle of combat, becoming slower, having worse accuracy, and worse reflexes leaves injured ship girls more vulnerable to taking even more damage.
* CyberPunk: has shades of this in the first half of the story: a post-apocalyptic world almost twenty years after a global nuclear conflict, where law and order is rare to stumble upon and ship girls who are powerful androids designed to be as human as possible are beginning to emerge into activity, with the question of just how impactful the ship girls and the technology that makes them exist in the first place will be on a global scale growing more and more as the story progresses.
* DarkerAndEdgier: ties in with BloodierAndGorier above.
** The overall setting and atmosphere immediately establishes this story as DarkerAndEdgier territory. To give an idea of this, the main character [[spoiler:shoots a baby who's been exposed to radiation as a MercyKill.]]
** The Abyssals are indeed an antagonist force in the story, as with the original game, but they're not the only ones who cause trouble, and that's only putting it lightly. Very lightly.
** A lot of darker themes are explored and discussed in the story, some of which is unique to the story. These include ship girls succumbing to the stress of possessing overwhelming power, being exposed to the stresses and horrors of war without adequate treatment, and being captured and commanded by people who are just about the very last people who should get that responsibility. And beyond the ship girls, many other themes and events are explored, such as civil war, government conspiracies, genetic experimentation, rape, the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, etc.
** Some of the ship girls, as a result of AdaptationPersonalityChange or not, also count as this - the two most glaring examples that come immediately to mind are Furutaka (before her personality codex glitch was fixed) and Suzuya.
** All of the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers. As mentioned above, most of the destroyers of this class are given very extreme depictions and behaviors, alongside being given powers called "protocols" that take said extremes to...whatever is above extreme. Granted, not ''all'' of the Shiratsuyu-Class are deranged (or have shown the potential to yet, anyway), but certainly their trials and tribulations over the course of the story's events have changed them enough to consider them as this.
** And let's not talk about what happened to [[spoiler:the first-generation Shiratsuyu-Class...]]
** [[spoiler:the "alter" versions of the Shiratsuyu-Class are definitely these. Just take a look at Samidare Alter.]]
* DarkFic: see DarkerAndEdgier above; Ambience: A Fleet Symphony is easily one of the darkest, if not grittiest Kantai Collection fanfictions, a fact that many potential readers have been turned off from reading too far into it.
* DashAttack: [[spoiler:Kasumi performs one of these with her special YRC power in chapter 367.]]
* ADayInTheLimelight: The Fleet Logs are short vignettes that show various ship girls reflecting on their past and their interactions with Damon.
* DeadlyGas: [[spoiler:in chapter 378, Kongou's squadron gets subjected to a gas attack when the Agents who overwhelm and subdue them set off a canister full of an unknown blue gas that envelops the ship girls and visibly and swiftly harms them.]]
* DeadlyUpgrade:
** Shiranui's Vengeance Protocol lets her become a OneManArmy, but also damages her.
** In chapter 100, Amatsukaze sets her reactor to overdrive, which will cause her to burn from the inside out if used for too long.
** Yuudachi's Nightmare Protocol is normally just a SuperMode, but becomes this if kept on for too long.
* DeathDealer: In chapter 77, Damon uses studded playing cards as a weapon.
* DeathFromAbove: there are times when ship girls flying in airborne helicopters provide manual close air support with their guns - sometimes even their ship guns, though this has only happened once or twice. And as the story progresses and the fleet makes friends with various militaries, they themselves are supported by modern jet fighters and helicopters who provide close air support during combat operations.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: [[spoiler:Damon is revealed to have resurrective powers after his death at Little Rock in chapter 95, though he can't resurrect on his own and requires external assistance to revive him, but each time he comes back normal - full memories and all. Subverted, however - each time he dies, he gets transported into his dreamworld during his death period, where he meets his mother Losira in the exact same setting, and certain signs suggest that the more he keeps dying, the more this setting will change...]]
* DeathIsCheap: [[spoiler:As long as a ship girl's core is intact, she can be rebuilt.]]
** [[spoiler:This goes further: now that Lukenstor has been manufacturing additional ship girls, they could simply replace any ship girl who sinks and ends up unrecoverable for whatever reason.]]
* DeconstructionFic: this story deconstructs a lot of elements of VideoGame/KantaiCollection that are either only vaguely explained or not mentioned altogether, such as psychological stress from wartime and environment, the origins of ship girls and the Abyssals, the technology and the processes by which ship girls are produced, and the cruel realities of war. It also pitches ship girls in a far different world than the norm for most Kantai Collection fanfics and explores the various situations in which ship girls are pitched and their reactions and adaptations to them. However, the story still reconstructs these elements to stick to the basic Kantai Collection formula of a fleet of ship girls fighting the Abyssals as its core, with an Admiral who cares about his fleet members and leads them to the best of his ability against enemies both expected and unexpected.
* DefectorFromDecadence: In chaper 310, the [[spoiler:Seaplane Tender Princess is revealed to be living with the President of France]].
-->[[spoiler:'''Seaplane Tender Princess:''']] ''[firmly]'' They... are not ''my'' kind. I wish to have nothing to do with them. They are not ''my'' people. You know this, [[spoiler:Commandant]].
* DefiantToTheEnd: In chapter 190, [[spoiler:Shiratsuyu]] throws a ClusterFBomb at [[spoiler:!Samidare]] as the latter prepares to finish her off.
* DeflectorShields: The Kai upgrade provides a ship girl with passive regenerating shields that can stop attacks. They must be broken before attacks can begin affecting the ship girls who possess them.
** a slight caveat: these "Kai shields" only prock when a ship girl is attacked with ship weapons or any attack that the shields consider physically big enough to present a serious threat to the ship girl, meaning that Kai ship girls can still be shot by firearms because the bullets are too small to trigger the shields.
* DependingOnTheWriter: Kantai Collection is known for having not a lot of actual lore established, meaning that fans are free to establish their own headcanons however they wish. So in the case of this story and its writer, several points of lore are firmly established.
** The overall tone of the story is gory and grimdark, but mixed with a splash of slice of life, (crude) humor, and supernatural and sometimes even horror elements (see GenreBusting below).
** The origins of ship girls are based on something along the lines of Super-Science (as described on the main VideoGame/KantaiCollection page), combining advanced military technology with [[spoiler:magical elements]]. Fleet girls are explicitly constructed in Japan and then brought over to the US to serve out their terms of being American naval auxiliary units, but their services are interrupted by a nuclear war.
** Projectiles and planes stay true to the anime, in which projectiles seem not to change form after firing, but planes expand to their full sizes after deployment (the planes themselves are drastically altered, but their usage in combat remains roughly the same). This being said, it is implied that shells still have the same ranges as they historically had.
** Unlike most fan depictions and interpretations of the ship girl-Abyssal conflict, this story does not only focus on the Abyssals as the antagonists of the story, and by no means are the Abyssals the end-all, be-all for the rest of the human world. Conventional forces, while normally at a severe disadvantage against Abyssals on their own, are shown to be quite effective against the Abyssals if they coordinate with a fleet of ship girls who fight the Abyssals with them.
** The Abyssals themselves are explicitly established as a HenchmanRace for an international terrorist organization known as the Inner Circle, who constructs and maintains their numbers to send around the world to wreak havoc wherever the ship girls show up, apparently. In addition, the Abyssals have a leader-ish figure known as the Abyssal, but it's unclear and still very vague as to how the Abyssals actually operate beyond the aforementioned.
** And lastly, ship girls themselves are androids, computerized humans with augmented senses, strength, skill, and abilities that essentially make them [[SuperSoldier Super Soldiers]] if they weren't first called ship girls. And not only are they used for their intended naval duties, but given their SuperSoldier status, they're also used for infantry duty because, well, [[RealityEnsues if they don't even get hurt by bullets, why the heck not?]] [[spoiler:And later, it's revealed that the technology with which the ship girls have been built has its roots in magic research, meaning that the ship girls also have a magic streak in them as well.]]
* DespairEventHorizon:
** In chapter 12 [[spoiler:Chad finds his raped and murdered girlfriend and, after killing her killers, asks to be put out of his misery. Damon obliges.]]
** Chapter 143 ends with the implication that, after a long TraumaCongaLine, [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] has lost herself.
* DesperatelySeekingAPurposeInLife: Invoked; chapter 227 reveals that ship girls are deliberately programmed to experience psychological degradation if they spend too long away from an admiral or other commander out of lacking an authority figure to give direction, so as to discourage them going rogue.
* DestinationDefenestration: [[spoiler:At the end of Operation Atlanta, Malcolm O'Reilly gets kicked out of the window of his office by Damon and goes splat on the street many stories below after spilling the beans on everything he knows about the person who told him about the project. One of O'Reilly's mooks, who had beaten Suzukaze into unconsciousness, also gets his corpse tossed out of the window.]]
* DeterminedDefeatist: As revealed in the monologue that starts chapter 147, Retia doesn't think it's possible to make a better country, not after World War Three, merely prevent or slow its descent into being a worse one. But that doesn't mean she's going to lay down and let her nation rot away.
** Damon qualifies as one too.
* DeusSexMachina: [[spoiler:according to the natural magic laws in the story world, human male semen is one of the most powerful and rawest sources of magical energy known due to the fact that sperm helps create life, and it can supplement a human female's energy should she be magically talented. Damon does this with Shigure, Umikaze, and Kawakaze thus far as of chapter 332, and all three have received and demonstrated definitive boosts to their magic ability. However, it's also explicitly mentioned that energy provided this way is limited in the sense that the girls with Damon's power must treat it like an exhaustible resource, implying that if they want to get more when they run out, well, it's back to the bedroom for them.]]
* DidIJustSayThatOutLoud: In chapter 107, a distracted [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] accidentally broadcasts her monologue aloud.
* DidntSeeThatComing:
** Said by Sanford to Damon in chapter 65 when they realise that [[spoiler:the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge they were planning on taking has been destroyed.]]
** No one was expecting [[spoiler:the Abyssals]] to appear in Germany, so initially few of the girls are equipped with the necessary firepower to kill them at range.
* DiegeticInterface: [[spoiler:Saratoga's ELO sight on her M-2029 Tommy gun has the bullet counter etched in the lower left corner to let her know how many bullets are remaining in her magazine/drum mag. [[FridgeLogic But on second thought, given the fact that all ship girls already have Heads-Up Displays]] that automatically tracks their weapons' current ammunition counts for them, this might be a little [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment redundant.]]]]
* DisappointedInYou: In chapter 105, [[spoiler:Murasame]] saying this to [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] is the cherry on top of the preceding EtTuBrute, the straw that breaks the camel's back and causes the latter to abandon the fleet.
* DissonantSerenity:
** Ayanami's Nightmare Protocol manifests as calmness and elimination of her emotional factors, in contrast to Yuudachi's LaughingMad or Tatsuta's SlasherSmile bloodlust.
** In chapter 121, [[spoiler:Suzukaze]]'s tone is described as unexpectedly soft and droning, "with the calmly insane listlessness of a mass murderer".
** In chapter 361, Kawakaze [[spoiler:decides to channel some of Damon's energy in order to power up her protocol briefly]], and as a result, rather than getting ''more'' aggressive like Shigure and Yuudachi become when they pop their protocols, she instead gets calmer and more focused.
* DisproportionateRetribution:
** In chapter 117 we learn that [[spoiler:at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the Re-class tore off the head of an Inner Circle personnel who refused to give it fuel he wasn't authorised to give, then slaughtered the rest of the Inner Circle personnel present.]]
** In chapter 213, [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] goes on a MotiveRant where she admits to wanting to KillAllHumans as payback for what was done to her.
* DistractedByTheSexy: Invoked in chapter 77. When infiltrating the Fantasy Express, Damon has the battleships and carriers doll up and draw the eyes of the patrons while he takes the rest of the fleet in less eyecatching suits and slips in.
* DividedStatesOfAmerica: After the nuclear exchange, a second American Civil War (known as the Border Wars), occurred. In the aftermath of that, private sovereignties developed within the American South. Together, they form the "Coalition", led by Malcolm O'Reilly of Atlanta, Georgia. [[spoiler:However, with the conclusion of the Coalition campaigns arc and the Stolen Fleet arc, the new government headed by Lukenstor CEO Eagle Clinton is taking steps to reunify the country and begin proper reconstruction.]]
* DoNotAdjustYourSet: In chapter 81, Damon has Benjamin hack Orlando's loudspeaker system to deliver an ultimatum to its leader.
* DoNotRunWithAGun: Ship girls suffer a major mobility penalty if their ship armaments are deployed while on land. This is why the girls keep their armaments stowed and rely mostly on their firearms in ground combat, deploying their armaments only when they're firing from moving vehicles, from cover, or as seen when the second part of Operation Norfolk kicks off, from a stationary position. The Kai upgrade removes this restriction, which Yuudachi demonstrates during Operation Trenton as she runs up and down the streets surrounding their defense target with her ship armaments deployed, firing and laughing mad the entire time.
* DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: Several times, ship girls unintentionally injure Damon or aggravate existing injuries by being [[{{Glomp}} too enthusiastic or rough with him.]]
* DoingInTheScientist: The revelation that magic and the paranormal actually are a thing answers some questions about the ship girls... and raises a whole lot more.
* DontMakeMeDestroyYou:
** In chapter 99, [[spoiler:Shoukaku receives a communication from the Abyssal reinforcements]] warning the Combined Fleet to withdraw, or else.
** In chapter 106, after another incident that threatens the unity of the fleet, Sanford says that the ship girls had better stop pushing their luck, unless they want him to start giving out punishments.
** In chapter 162, [[spoiler:it's Shoukaku, now fully Abyssalised into Aircraft Carrier Water Demon]], who delivers such an ultimatum to some of the girls.
** In chapter 249, [[spoiler:Warspite/Wikolia issues one to Iowa/Iris to gain access to Blackwood's main laboratory.]]
* {{Doorstopper}}: As of chapter 383, published on 1st June 2017, the story is sitting at just over 4 million words and ''still'' doesn't look near completion.
* DopeSlap: In chapter 145, Chitose gives Chiyoda one of these when the latter gets a little too joyful about the possibility of getting a Japanese admiral.
* DoubleTap: In chapter 95, [[spoiler:Shoukaku]] is shot three times. A fourth shot, presumably with the intention of destroying her CranialProcessingUnit and inflicting a FinalDeath, [[spoiler:is blocked by Damon's knife]], but she was already dead anyway.
* DramaticDrop: In chapter 251, Samidare drops a tray of food after seeing [[spoiler:Damon is awake.]]
* DramaticGunCock: Damon gives one to [[spoiler:Sanford in chapter 292, when he finally confronts him on the truth about the Shiratsuyu-Class and ship girls in general.]] This also doubles as an {{Homage}} to VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare3, when Captain Price confronts Yuri about his ties to Makarov, and Damon even uses a Desert Eagle to do it.
* DramaticIrony:
** In chapter 220, [[spoiler:Alabama, Samidare and Suzukaze's musings on American ship girls become tinged with this considering 219 revealed that American ship girls have been op.]]
** In chapter 239, Damon warns Sanford of his potential displeasure if he discovers the latter has been hiding something important. Without going into spoilery detail, he actually has.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: In chapter 86, Damon disguises himself as an Atlantan mercenary to get close to their leader. This does lead to him taking fire and getting ''hit'' by his fleet when they mistake him for one. Thankfully, his body armor took all the hits.
* DungeonBypass: The various times a shipgirl charges a wall to clear enemies on the other side. See ThereWasADoor below.
** Taken {{up to eleven}} by Chapter 313, with various shipgirls actively employing the tactic to flush out enemies in cover.
* DyingDream: [[spoiler:bizarrely inverted - Damon has a very specific dreamworld sequence that he only sees after he dies and is in the process of being revived, a {{Shoutout}} to the dreamworld sequence seen in VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}. And with each time he visits it, the dreamworld sequence changes slightly, with implications that it's degrading each time Damon dies.]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: In the alternate universe entry ''Contingency Summer'', Gernot Wedekind's daugther Retia is an infant and thus a SatelliteCharacter, as the primary viewpoint character in that entry is her unnamed mother. When she makes her debut here in chapter 144, she does so as a teenager.
* EasyLogistics: This trope becomes more and more apparent as the fleet grows, and the variety of infantry small arms fielded by both the ship girls and the human members of the Combined Fleet increases. Compare and contrast the following two lists: [[https://pastebin.com/gHQXE9hy This one is the loadout list for the girls prior to Operation London.]] [[https://pastebin.com/TUh8sLhJ This one is the loadout list for not just the girls, but also the humans as well, prior to Operations 300 and No Exit, MANY chapters later.]] The primary issue that brings this trope to the forefront is that, as mentioned, there is a large variety of guns in use, as well as ammunition and even magazines for the weapons. Some of the weapons even use proprietary ammo that's either exclusive to the weapon (eg. Modern Sub-Machine Carbine) or shared with only one or two other guns (eg. AR-57, [=P90=], Five-SeveN).
** and it would appear that the Inner Circle Agents are all ''exclusively'' armed with Desert Eagles for their sidearms. Just how and where are they producing enough Desert Eagles and ammunition to equip an entire army's worth?
* EldritchAbomination: it's not the Abyssals who take the cake for this, but [[spoiler:the monsters that Damon and some of the ship girls fight in Baltimore.]]
* EldritchLocation: [[spoiler:two examples: Damon's dreamworld, which, with one exception, always presents a unique location every time Damon visits it in his sleep, and !Samidare's reality marble, which is a sea of pure blood littered with literal piles of dead mutant bodies, the same ones that are seen in places like Baltimore and Moscow.]]
** [[spoiler:Silva Gelida, when Damon visits it the second time. For some reason, it mirrors the same path that he took when he first gained access to his own dreamworld and met his mother for the first time, but instead of Losira, he meets the older Jeannie instead, after walking past a grove of bleeding and talking redwood trees littered with corpses and meeting a silent baby that explodes in his hands as a result of swords that burst out of it.]]
* ElementalPunch: in chapter 301, with the power of her Burning Love, Kongou [[MegatonPunch punches a Ne-Class about forty meters]] and lights her head on fire in the process.
** Kongou does it again in chapter 305 in a bid to break [[spoiler:Aircraft Carrier Demon's (a.k.a. Abyssalised Kaga) shield. [[TheWorfEffect It fails.]] ]]
** Also in chapter 301, Amatsukaze executes a burn kick onto an enemy Ri-Class.
* EliteMooks: [[spoiler:elite Abyssals with differently colored eye hazes show up in Australia, during Operation South Town.]]
* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: the story follows a group of ex-special forces in the former Seal Team Six. The fleet itself isn't exactly supposed to be an ordinary military company, either, and the story certainly doesn't portray them like one.
* EmbarrassingNickname: the case for Kikuzuki, whom Damon simply calls "Cookie" after butchering her actual Japanese name rather badly. This becomes her nickname ever since they meet, and Damon, even after learning how to say her name properly, will occasionally call her Cookie just to get under her skin.
* EmergencyTransformation: [[spoiler:Lauren had put Jeannie through the second phase of FLEET because she would have died of complications at birth otherwise.]]
* EmpathyDollShot: In chapter 21, Damon bumps into a ruined dinosaur doll in an abandoned mall.
* EmpathicWeapon: [[spoiler:Kaga and Shoukaku's partial Abyssalization eventually extend to their anti-materiel rifles. Their rifles no longer allow themselves to be held, much less fired, by someone that's not their owner. Damon shocks Sanford and these two girls when Shoukaku's [=TAC-50=] responds to him as if he was the owner, leading to speculation that the Genesis Thesis Project is related to whatever the hell Mr. Abyssal is up to.]]
* EmotionalPowers: [[spoiler:as Yukari's video that Shigure watches reveals, it's a well-established magic law in this world that emotions can be utilized as magic enhancers - the more turbulent one's emotions, the stronger one's powers become. Emotions are what are referred to as "internal supply providers", or "ISP"'s for short.]]
* EnemyMine:
** [[spoiler:When the Abyssals crash a battle between Damon's fleet and the Coalition ship girls during Operation Norfolk, both sides give the Abyssals their undivided attention and firepower.]]
** In chapter 235, it is recounted that during the Typhoon Wars, American Federal forces cooperated with Mexican cartels to repel the South American hegemony forces invading Mexico.
** [[spoiler:Franklin]] hates Sanford's guts for what he did and would love nothing more than to have him cut down, but tolerates his continued existence so long as Blackwood remains alive.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: the NDP troops in Germany whom the fleet fights against are noted to have both male and female soldiers. Averted with most other enemies they fight - including the Abyssals, since ''their'' members are either female or gender-neutral, with no male members [[spoiler:except for the Abyssal himself.]]
* EquipmentUpgrade: in the case of the story, the fleet receives its first major equipment overhaul in chapters 285-286, when Lukenstor supplies them with repeating cannon modules and torpedo launchers, the latter of which the fleet was severely lacking because only a few select ship girls came with them by default as their starting equipment, which includes the submarines, whose torpedoes are their biggest form of naval attack. The fleet had equipment overhauls before in the past, but those were almost entirely infantry equipment-based, not naval weapon-based.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** When [[spoiler:Xenolith]] first appears, he boredly slaps aside a RPG like it was nothing.
** Damon and co.'s first contact with Eagle Clinton has the latter admit he's planning a coup to depose Blackwood and sending data right through Benjamin's firewall and other defences like they didn't exist.
** The first time we see [[spoiler:the Sheriff]], he leers unashamedly at [[spoiler:the captured Shoukaku]] and declares his vulgar intentions. Cue chapter break...
* EtTuBrute: In chapter 106 [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] comes to the recognition that she wouldn't have taken the words in the previous chapter so badly had they not come from her ship sister.
* EvenEvilHasStandards:
** The mercenaries employed by Atlanta may be amoral and OnlyInItForTheMoney, but they're still professionals, and have only disdain for the thugs playing soldier that make up the rest of the Atlantan military.
** Alastor Scott may be a HolierThanThou {{Jerkass}} with TheFundamentalist delusions, but even he isn't so far gone as to approve of his men's sexual abuse. Or perhaps it's precisely because of his religious convictions that he disapproves. Whatever the reason, he has the culprits executed when he finds out.
** The Whitewater Mercs in Little Rock. When briefly interrogated by Kagerou, he refuses to give up the locations of the remaining mortar positions they were guarding, instead [[DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu calling her]] [[DefiantToTheEnd a slut]]. He is immediately shot by [[HairTriggerTemper Shiranui]].
* EveryoneHasStandards:
** Damon is very lax as far as discipline is concerned, but even he draws the line at the ship girls coming to physical blows with each other.
** In chapter 280, Akebono's antipathy for Damon reaches such a fever pitch that even Kasumi, who's hardly a fan of him either, is disgusted by it.
** In chapter 295, Suzuya's refusal to let herself be helped is so bad that even Mogami wants to give up on helping her.
* EveryoneIsArmed: Invoked in Mobile, where everyone above 18 is required to bear arms in order to deter troublemakers.
* EvilCounterpartRace: In one of their encounters, [[spoiler:the Re-class]] tells Shigure and Yuudachi that Abyssals are just shipgirls but uglier both in appearance and in heart.
* EvilOldFolks: Malcolm O'Reilly, leader of the Atlanta faction, is 70 and an unabashed white supremacist.
* EvilPowerVacuum: Discussed in chapter 144. [[spoiler:The reason why the Royalists need Holmwood's itinerary is so that they can coordinate to have Sir Stormrider in London to take power as soon as Holmwood gets assassinated. If Holmwood gets assassinated without Sir Stormrider in position to take over, the feuding of Holmwood's generals might plunge the UK into another civil war, which no one wants.]]
* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Suzukaze ditches her twin-tail hairstyle in favor of a ponytail while staying in Ablett Village.
* ExtremeMeleeRevenge: In chapter 53, Damon subjects a New Jersey rebel who did a bad, '''bad''' thing to a major beatdown.
* EyeBeams: Furutaka's ElectronicEyes double as this.
* EyepatchOfPower: besides the ship girls, there are a few story-specific characters who have this, [[spoiler:like Losira.]] Currently, Shikinami is wearing one too, [[spoiler:to hide her left eye that's been [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion glowing blue]] after her interaction with Damon's YRC power.]]
* EyeScream:
** In chapter 63, [[spoiler:Shoukaku]] gets shot in the left eye.
** In chapter 86, [[spoiler:Kisaragi]] takes a piece of shrapnel in her left eye.
** In chapter 92, Damon plucks out Harold Harper's right eye.
** In chapter 99, [[spoiler:Ushio]] also suffers a chunk of shrapnel in her left eye, to the point where it may have instantly killed a normal human being.
** In chapter 102, [[spoiler:the Re-Class plucks out Furutaka's searchlight eye after defeating her.]]
** Abyssal destroyers' eyes are a small arms vulnerable weak point.
** Damon does this to two gangsters in chapter 275.
** [[spoiler:Then, it's Damon's turn to get it in his right eye in chapter 359, Red Samidare having shot it out with Umikaze's sidearm.]]
** In chapter 370, [[spoiler:Kikuzuki]] gets shot in the left eye at very close range by an AK round. [[spoiler:Kikuzuki herself inflicts this on the Agent who shoots her in the eye by trading hits with him with her pocket knife, which she throws at him and hits him in return in his own right eye.]]
** in chapter 382, Shimakaze gets her eyes clawed by a Ne-Class after being distracted mid-fight.
* FantasticRacism: Mutants are despised by the unmutated and even have a slur, "chunkies".
* FemaleGaze: In chapter 61, Damon ends up on the receiving end of this from Kagerou after the summer heat gets to him and he takes his shirt off.
* FictionalDocument:
** Chapter 34 contains a document on the F.L.E.E.T Project.
** chapter 189 features a part of an after-action report [[spoiler:which is later revealed to be written by Sandman dealing with the Baltimore incident.]]
* FinalDeath: Unlike its [[Fanfic/AmbiencePlatoonMoebiusFour alternate universe]], this has not actually happened, but is of much greater concern here. While new cores could be made in the alternate universe, they can't in this one as all the original plans and blueprints were destroyed after the completion of all the girls. Any ship girl that dies and can't have their core recovered is gone forever.
** [[spoiler:as of chapter 394, Shigure, after Operation South Town, is the story's first true fatality. Or so it seems...]]
* FingerlessGloves: many of the characters in the story wear these as part of their clothing, to the point where it could be classified under AuthorAppeal.
* {{Fingore}}: In chapter 99, Shigure does this as part of her NoHoldsBarredBeatdown on [[spoiler:Armored Carrier Demon]].
* FireBreathingWeapon: [[spoiler:New Jersey carries a pump-action Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun with half her ammunition being orange Dragon's Breath rounds.]]
* FireIceLightning: [[spoiler:the Shiratsuyu-Class demonstrate this - Shiratsuyu has the lightning, Shigure, Yuudachi, (Red Samidare to an extent), and Kawakaze have the fire, and Umikaze has the ice.]]
** [[spoiler:by chapter 335, it's also revealed that New Jersey, Haida, and Johnston also form this trio as well, boasting black fire, black ice, and black electricity powers, respectively.]]
* FiveSecondForeshadowing: In chapter 106, Fusou remarks that Sanford has only recently been informed about certain recent events and might need time to decide the next course of action. The man shows up shortly afterwards.
** in chapter 331, Damon at one point wonders why [[spoiler:it tasted like grape when Umikaze kisses him]]. When Umikaze wakes up, she [[spoiler:discovers that she can now use violet flames.]]
* FlawlessVictory: what ends up happening whenever you put ship girls against humans in a gunfight. Though, it's noteworthy to mention that there have been times when ship girls have been shot and wounded, either because they were shot in the eye or something was wrong with their Smartsteel constructs that enabled them to become wounded like a normal human being would be.
* {{Foil}}: Chapter 110 suggests that Shigure and Shiranui are this to each other. Shigure is tormented by the extreme negative emotions like bitterness, anger and hatred that she experiences, while Shiranui is fueled by and revels in them.
** Shigure and Yuudachi are this to each other as well; Shigure is hesitant and thinks twice about using her protocol (most of the time), while Yuudachi never thinks twice and never hesitates.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** In chapter 27, Damon expresses concern that [[spoiler:another faction could have its own large collection of active ship girls.]]
** Holy shit, just how many [[spoiler:death flags]] were raised in chapter 94?
** When the [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] exosuits were first mentioned, it was noted that they would crush any normal human trying to use them. [[spoiler:Well, Damon isn't exactly a normal person, now is he?]]
** Chapter 247. Anyone who's been keeping up with the references would have felt a sense of foreboding on learning that one of the goals of the missions was to [[spoiler: retrieve a DSM.]]
** When Kikuzuki gains a new pocket knife and a set of crescent moon eyes [[spoiler:with Damon's YRC intervention]], compared to her sisters, who receive a [[spoiler:shape-shifting scythe, an invisible sword whose blade length can change at will, and a katana]], it really does seem like Kikuzuki got shafted in the power-lottery department. But Kikuzuki claims that she doesn't mind this as much as her sisters think she might. [[spoiler:Come the next chapter, she reveals that she possesses the ability to [[VideoGame/MeltyBlood slice people cleanly into nineteen pieces]].]]
** For those who actually pay attention to the stat sheet, some ship girls' new powers as given by [[spoiler:Damon's YRC]] are actually quite predictable. Case in point, Shigure and Yuudachi.
** In chapter 296, Damon is pondering [[spoiler:possible connections between him and his own ship girls, specifically the Shiratsuyu-Class, due to Suzukaze's XYZ code infection and his own sighting of the XYZ syndrome as an after-effect of witnessing Sandman's memories. Three chapters later, Samidare is seen reciting Damon's MadnessMantra from Baltimore...even though there's no possible way she could have heard it from anyone except for Ushio.]]
** In chapter 303, [[spoiler:the Ta-class battleship mentions fighting "Demon Angel" in her conversation with Wo-class. In chapter 314, Harusame suggests that Suzukaze's transformation in Chapter 312 is angelic, and yet not angelic. An angel that is not an angel... can be considered a "Demon Angel"]]
** in chapter 377, [[spoiler:the submarines operating in Conakry secure Bravo site and find a weapons stockpile with weird labels on them, but when Goya tries to grab the manifest that's sitting on one of the crates, it explodes into a heavy blue gas that sits and lingers around the weapons stockpile, and the submarines don't go near it, fearing that, since they don't know what that gas is, it could be a weapon that could harm them or otherwise have some kind of malicious effect on them. Come the next chapter, the gas indeed is shown to be harmful towards ship girls.]]
* TheFourGods: [[spoiler:referred to: the four leaders of the A.A.H.W. called themselves the Four Gods.]]
* FourTemperamentEnsemble:
** the four Seal Team Six members in Operation Sandblast can be considered as such: Irene is Melancholic, Chuck is Phlegmatic, Lauren is Sanguine, and Sanford is Choleric.
** [[spoiler:the original American ship girls also can count as such: Wisconsin is Melancholic, Enterprise is Phlegmatic, Iowa is Sanguine, and Yorktown is Choleric.]]
* FragileSpeedster: all destroyers, all submarines, and several light cruisers. There are outliers within the other ship types as well that count as this within their respective ship types. And on the Abyssal side, all their destroyers.
* FromBadToWorse:
** Operation London. [[spoiler:First, Kagerou gets wrecked by a salvo of 35.6cm shells from Kongou. Then Yuudachi is ''killed'' during the Battle of Hyde Park by HMS ''Swordfish'' and ''Javelin''. Oh, did we mention the introduction of '''THE ABYSSALS'''??]]
** Operation Norfolk. [[spoiler:Shoukaku gets her left eye shot out during the first part of the operation (capturing and holding Oceana Naval Air Station, across the bay from [=NAS=] Norfolk) while providing sniper cover for the infiltration teams. Then the Coalition ship girls show up during the second part of the op to attack the ship girls sailing into Chesapeake Bay to cover the land assault on [=NAS=] Norfolk. And then the friggin' ''Abyssals'' show up. When the dust clears, '''both Shoukaku and Kaga have been kidnapped by the Abyssals'''.]]
* FunWithAcronyms:
** Damon grew up in a CCPL Post, which stands for Controlled Center for Protected Living.
** the fleet's main base is called the Mid-Atlantic Provisional Seabase - or "MAPS" for short.
** the fleet's HAVOC low-orbit attack satellite - Heavy Assault Vulcan Orbital Cannon.
** [[spoiler:two different types of magic providers are the internal supply providers - "ISP"'s - and the external supply providers - "ESP's".]]
* GenderBlenderName: [[spoiler:the sole American destroyer so far, Johnston, is the straightest example. And just to reinforce it, her nickname is Johnny, and she's perfectly okay with either. The other American ship girls may qualify, as following American ship-naming conventions, they're all named after states (for the battleships) and famous historic American battles (Yorktown).]]
* GenericEthnicCrimeGang: A quartet from gangsters from the Chinese gang Righteous Fist appear in chapter 275.
* GeniusBruiser: The members of the old SEAL Team Six were not just elite special forces operators but also very technically proficient.
* GenkiGirl: generally speaking, given the darker nature of the story, all examples of this from the game are subverted and watered down. But during times when the girls can let loose and just be themselves, their GenkiGirl tendencies do resurface. They are, after all, young women - both in mind and body. At least, they've been designed as such.
* GenreBusting: It's post-apocalyptic action with superhumans, but there are also conspiracy, technothriller, horror, mystery and ScienceFantasy elements.
* GirlsWithGuns: par for the course in a story about anthropomorphized warships, but in a way that most Kantai Collection fans would be unfamiliar with: this story puts an awful lot of emphasis on infantry combat and falls off the deep end with the GunPorn.
* GlassCannon: many of the destroyers with protocols, the submarines (as torpedoes are very effective against both ship girls and Abyssals alike), and the melee light cruisers.
* AGlitchInTheMatrix: [[spoiler:Damon's dreamworld sequence plays the same scene during his recovery period each time after he dies. And with death he racks up, something about the scene changes, a fact that Losira is keen to make him aware of, but not directly...]]
** [[spoiler:The entire second sequence of Jeannie's Silva Gelida in chapter 417. It harkens back to Damon's first time gaining access to his dreamworld, only it turns it much, much bloodier.]]
* TheGlomp: Everytime the destroyers dogpile Damon. See DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength above.
* GodzillaThreshold:
** In chapter 228, [[spoiler: Franklin]] considers the situation desperate enough to reveal the existence of [[spoiler: American ship girls]].
** Averted in chapter 229. As dire as the situation is, Damon doesn't consider things bad enough for him to [[IGaveMyWord break his agreement]] with [[spoiler:Ooi]].
* GogglesDoSomethingUnusual: [[spoiler:in chapter 377, when the ATP soldats make their appearance, their one-eyed goggles are capable of seeing the submarine girls even when they are Cloaked.]]
* GoldenSnitch: averted from the game, there hasn't even been a mention of flagships for the Abyssal enemies (and the story makes it clear it doesn't care for the game's mechanics that don't exactly adhere to realism). Moreover, ship girls who are assigned as flagships in the story are not magically immune to sinking [[spoiler:even if magic does come into play in the later parts of the story]].
* TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil: Baltimore turned out to be this. The Feds, doing sinister experiments and things that would be war crimes if anyone actually gave a fuck about Geneva any longer. The southern rebels, raping, pillaging and burning their way north. And a small number of ordinary people who just want to get out alive.
* GoombaStomp:
** In chapter 45, Murakumo kills a mook by landing on him.
** In chapter 156, [[spoiler:the Slug Gunner]] pulls a BigDamnHeroes moment by squashing an enemy on landing.
* GottaCatchEmAll: perhaps the purest similarity between the story and the game; Damon's main goal is also to find all the ship girls constructed in the F.L.E.E.T. Project (or as many as possible) and consolidate them all under one fleet.
* {{Gorn}}: the narrative can be ''merciless'' with the exact descriptions and nature of wounds and other ailments.
* TheGovernment: Negative portrayal. After the war, the US Federal Government has gone to shit, prioritising the welfare of the rich and powerful. Relief aid to everyone else is scarce at best. At worst, the so-called aid... isn't, and comes from scum unworthy to be called soldiers, little better morally than the petty, violent bandits and secessionists in the DeepSouth. This also extends to the English government under the regime of Prime Minister Holmwood; really only Retia's government under the SDP political party in Germany is the only one that doesn't seem outright oppressive, but it's mentioned that Retia basically rules the country alone, like a dictator, by holding both titles of President and Chancellor. [[spoiler:There's also the chance that she's killed her own father to gain her power.]]
** improves, however, after chapter 250. [[spoiler:Eagle, the CEO of Lukenstor Defense Systems, replaces Blackwood as President after Damon assassinates Blackwood and is working both to get the country back on track and to help the fleet with improvements, upgrades, and information. In addition, during the Germany campaign, the Royalist movement to put the British Royal Family back in power succeeds, deposing of Prime Minister Holmwood and restoring Sarah Britain to the throne.]]
* GovernmentConspiracy:
** [[spoiler:The fact that it was The Abyssal who brought Lauren into the second F.L.E.E.T. Project, and that Lauren and Jeannie's escape from it led to an executive order for their capture by none less than the US President himself, implies two possibilities. Either the Inner Circle is directly in cahoots with the Feds, or they have deeply infiltrated the Feds. Neither possibility bears thinking about. It gets worse when Shoukaku's Abyssalised weapon reacts to Damon, suggesting a link between the Genesis Thesis Project and the Abyssals. Chapter 235 then reveals that the President is in cahoots with Mr. Abyssal himself, but the latter appears to be acting in his own interests, and not in the interests of the Inner Circle or any of the other Abyssals.]]
*** [[spoiler:As of chapter 432, the link between the Genesis Thesis Project and the Abyssals has been fully established, through one common connection: The original [=FLEET=] Project. To elaborate: "Serenity", a substance that powers up Abyssals had been clandestinely obtained by members of [=ST6=] that infiltrated the project, and it's also how the US and [=ST6=] found out about the Abyssals in the first place. Project Constitution was re-purposed into the [=FLEET=] Project and its objective changed. Now what about the connection from [=FLEET=] to [=GT=]? Ken Simpson, [=FLEET=] Project dev, defected to the [=GT=] Project after the war and presumably took with him a sizeable quantity of the "Rebirth" virus in the Moebius Four sub-project, which had resulted in the birth of the SuperPrototype [=Mk2=] Shiratsuyu-class. The "Rebirth" virus was then modified for the [=GT=] Project, in such a way that when injected into a test subject, would give them administrative powers over the ship girls.]]
** Baltimore. As revealed in chapter 189, [[spoiler:the Feds were working on something, and when it resulted in a mutation-inducing outbreak, quarantined the whole city far faster than they should have been able to, then hushed the whole thing up.]]
* GratuitousEnglish: averted wholesale, to the extent that all Japanese ship girls even come already being fluent in English. The foreign ship girls the fleet run into also know how to speak fluent English, though with their own cultural accents. [[spoiler:And again averted when the American ship girls show up, and they, too, speak perfect English.]]
* GratuitousFrench: averted; Commandant Teste in the story speaks fluent French, [[spoiler:given that she's the French president.]]
* GratuitousGerman: averted; all German ship girls speak German fluently.
* GratuitousRussian: averted; all Russian ship girls speak Russian fluently, including Hibiki, who even worked as a Russian-English translator for the Federal government for a short while before the events of the story.
* GraveMarkingScene: In chapter 31, Damon visits his mother's grave and offers LibationForTheDead.
* GreatOffscreenWar:
** The Border Wars, which was essentially a second American Civil War.
** The Typhoon Wars, where the Abyssals and [[spoiler: the American ship girls]] were first used.
* GreenEyedMonster: [[spoiler:Kisaragi and Murasame's]] quarrel in chapter 105 is provoked by the jealousy the former feels over the latter using Damon's old gun.
* GrievousBottleyHarm: In chapter 174, Damon kills a mook with a Coke bottle.
* GrowBeyondTheirProgramming: [[spoiler:Sanford explicitly mentions that the protocols that the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers have have been intentionally designed to grow on their own, implying that they all have a potential to fulfill this as time goes on.]]
* GunAccessories: ties in with GunPorn below. The author goes out of his way to list down real-life gun parts and attachments while describing and depicting the various guns featured throughout the story and even makes a few fictional ones up, usually named after video game franchises as [[{{Shoutout}} Shoutouts.]]
* GunPorn: The amount of attention paid to firearms can get a bit indulgent and excessive at times.
* GunsAkimbo: Destroyers are the only type of ship girl innately proficient in dual-wielding guns. Their knowledge of this is initially limited to pistols and machine pistols, but can learn to dual-wield other types of guns. They also predominantly use a dual-wielding ship cannon equipment setup that allows them to bring standard infantry firearms into naval combat.
* GunshipRescue:
** In chapter 103, a healthy dose of air support finally breaks the back of the enemies facing the fleet.
** In chapter 149, a group of [[spoiler:friendly helicopters]] destroys an enemy ZergRush.
* HairTriggerTemper: Shiranui shoots a mercenary in chapter 314 for bad-mouthing Kagerou.
** A captured mercenary was being a dick to another POW, reminding him that he had [[{{Cuckold}} gone after the man's girlfriend]]. Shiranui orders them to shut up, and the mercenary slaps away her gun. [[GoryDiscretionShot Shiranui shoots him.]]
* HandCannon:
** Baxter Harrison gives Damon a [[BlingBlingBANG decorated]] IMI Desert Eagle to use on the scientists behind the Genesis Thesis Project.
** Alastor Scott has a Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver chambered for .44 Magnum.
** Damon, [[spoiler:newly back from the dead]], has two .80 revolvers, powerful enough to inflict HalfTheManHeUsedToBe. Even using them on humans at all is ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill; they're meant to destroy Abyssals.
* HeadsUpDisplay: being computerized humans, essentially, ship girls have heads-up displays built into their augmented visions that provide real-time tactical information about their surroundings, usually in combat.
* HealingFactor: Damon, being a mutated human thanks to his involvement in the Genesis Thesis Project, has naturally hyper-accelerated healing and can heal back anything, even lost eyes and body parts, so long as he's given sufficient amounts of time to rest.
* HealingHands:
** As of chapter 137, Suzukaze has gained this ability courtesy of the Colossus Reactor. [[spoiler:Except, as chapter 143 reveals, it doesn't work right on humans. After apparently healing Celsie, it turns out some time later that it did so by emitting Darkwater radiation, which caused its own problems. As chapter 169 reveals, humans are hurt a lot more by Darkwater radiation than ship girls, so what might have been acceptable for ship girls is definitely not for humans.]]
** Harusame, Samidare, and Umikaze all invoke this with their new healing powers [[spoiler:via Damon's YRC. Suzukaze, too, is mentioned to now be able to properly heal, but her power still remains a double-edged sword - just not as much as before.]]
* HealItWithFire: In chapter 170, after Damon gets shot in the right side of his abdomen and extracts the bullet, Kawakaze cauterizes the wound with her Firewater Protocol.
** Kawakaze does it again in chapter 314, this time to treat Damon's arm after it had been blasted off.
** [[spoiler:New Jersey]] does this as well with her own Colossus Reactor, healing the civilian man whom [[spoiler:Asashio had accidentally fatally shot]] with black flame in chapter 313.
** It's Ushio's turn to do the same in chapter 325, [[spoiler:also healing a wounded Italian Army soldier hit by frag grenade shrapnel with black flame, presumably borrowed from Losira's Hellflower.]]
* HealthDamageAsymmetry: [[spoiler:according to the stat sheet, there are a few attacks and abilities that deal staggering amounts of damage. For example, Shigure's Raging Demon scales tremendously with three variables: her own current level, her own insanity level, and her enemy's insanity level. Just throwing a few hypothetical numbers in, according to the damage equation given by the stat sheet, if Shigure is level 50 and has a 50% insanity bar, while the enemy whom she's attacking with the Raging Demon also has 50% insanity, Shigure will deal a total of 7125 damage. To put it in perspective, Iowa (canon) has the single highest health of any ship girl featured thus far in the story at 4300 HP, meaning that, given these conditions, if Shigure hits Iowa with a Raging Demon, she will instantly die. And Shigure is just a destroyer.]]
* HeKnowsTooMuch:
** In chapter 121 [[spoiler:the Feds try to kill Tatsuya]] because what they're doing there is supposed to remain unknown.
** In chapter 133, Suzukaze ends up having to eliminate all the Quakers who are holding the Shakers' leader's grandson captive on the [=USS=] ''New Jersey'', as she absolutely could not allow any of them to escape after they saw her super-human abilities. [[spoiler:This act of leaving no witnesses to her actions comes to really bite her in the ass later, as the Quakers blame the Shakers for the losses, leading to them launching a raid on Ablett Village in retaliation. To see how screwed she was, scroll down to KillEmAll]]
* HeroicBSOD: In chapter 102 [[spoiler:Sendai]] has a nervous breakdown as her death approaches.
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:the end of chapter 372. While attempting to return to Hawaii, the Operation South Town fleet are caught out in the middle of the Pacific by a sizeable fleet of Abyssals. The last scene of the chapter opens with Shigure already having cut herself off from the rest of her fleet with a wall of Guilt flames, boxing her in with the Abyssal fleet so that the Abyssals cannot pass through, except for their air fleet, which Enterprise holds off by mass-launching her own planes, knowing that they, too, have no chance of returning to her. The chapter ends with Shigure, having activated her demon angel form, fighting the Abyssals so that the rest of her fleet can escape.]]
* HeroicWillpower: [[spoiler:during his fight against Blackwood, Damon suffers having his exosuit ripped right off him - since the exosuit must be directly linked with his central nervous system so that the suit can obey Damon's neural commands as responsively as possible, doing this means that it will undoubtedly cause huge pain and damage to Damon's nervous system, and according to the narrative, it's essentially no different from tearing Damon's nerves straight out of his body; yet, despite this, he manages to get up anyway for one last attempt to beat him.]]
** [[spoiler:the Shiratsuyu-Class standing up to Suzukaze while in her Demon Angel form in Houston also counts, as they manage to stand up tall in an area where gravity is much, much stronger than usual and keeps everyone else pinned flat against the ground.]]
* HiddenBuxom: [[spoiler:Kawakaze is the sole explicit example of this. Damon remarks after he spends a night with her and her sister Umikaze that without her uniform and the sarashi that she wears around her chest to suppress it in combat, Kawakaze actually has a pleasantly well-endowed chest.]]
* HiddenDepths: While Tatsuta has genuinely embraced her AxCrazy sadism, she also hides quite a bit of brokenness.
** Damon also qualifies, [[spoiler:once more details about his involvement in Baltimore are revealed.]]
** [[spoiler:The events of chapters 224 to 228 firmly establish Sanford as this, and, perhaps by corollary, !Samidare as well.]]
* HiddenVillain: averted from the game, a post-nuclear war international terrorism organization called the Inner Circle is mentioned to be the villains behind the Abyssals.
* HighSpeedBattle: several ship girls engage in this in a training simulation in chapter 350.
* HighTechHexagons: mainly seen in the story in the form of BeehiveBarrier shields, be it the Abyssal shields that some of their boss characters are seen to have or the Kai shields that remodeled ship girls receive as part of their remodels.
* HistoryRepeatsItself: [[spoiler:the Moebius Sub-Program and the F.L.E.E.T. 2 Project are both secret projects intended to create super prototypes of their corresponding generation of ship girls - and both succeeded.]]
** [[spoiler:For reasons unknown, when Jeannie drags Damon into her dreamworld, Damon goes through a journey that closely mirrors his first time discovering his personal dreamworld.]]
* HitAndRunTactics: employed by the vanguard destroyers who fight in the front lines, most notably by Shimakaze and Amatsukaze, ''the'' fastest destroyers in the fleet. Justified, since the destroyers are all [[FragileSpeedster Fragile Speedsters]] who need to rely on their speed, evasion, and reflexes to dodge incoming damage rather than tank it.
* HoldingBackThePhlebotinum: Sendai and Sanford independently suggest in chapters 280 and 286 respectively that the girls who have been upgraded with [[spoiler:powers from Damon's YRC]] hold off on using them outside of dire situations out of the fear that the Abyssals will either accelerate their plans or carry out their own upgrades in response.
* HolierThanThou: Alastor Scott, the Controller of Little Rock, considers himself to be on a MissionFromGod.
* HollywoodHealing: Subverted. Despite Damon's enhanced physiology, several of his wounds take a long time to heal and reopen when stressed.
** Damon mentioned getting his arm ripped off by machinery when he was 9 years old. The arm apparently ''grew back''.
* {{Homage}}:
** The fate of [[spoiler:Premier Kerrigan Badeau of Charlotte]] is one to the opening of ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyWorldAtWar''.
** [[spoiler:Jeannie's]] telekinetic BulletCatch [[CatchAndReturn And Return]] is reminiscent of ''Film/TheMatrix''.
** At the end of chapter 146, [[spoiler:the Sheriff]] recreates the "I like war" speech from ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''.
** In the beginning of chapter 172, [[spoiler:Damon's very first encounter with his dreamworld is heavily influenced by the mind-hacking procedure the Player inflicts onto Hall in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII''.]]
** Halfway through chapter 172, Eagle recites the G-Man's opening monologue from ''VideoGame/HalfLife2''.
** The formal introduction of [[spoiler:Moebius Four's Samidare]] and her outfit are one to [[spoiler:Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower]] form ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}''.
** The end of chapter 247 takes a leaf out of ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 2'''s book, with [[spoiler: one group of heroes, after having retrieved a DSM, undergoing CavalryBetrayal, and their allies radioing in to give a warning too late.]] Another homage is made in chapters 249 and 250, where Damon and Blackwood's confrontation plays out similarly to [[spoiler:Soap, Price and Shepherd's, all the way down to Blackwood's end being the same as Shepherd's.]]
** The formal introduction of [[spoiler:Moebius Four's Kevinson and his character design in this story]] are one to [[spoiler:Gehrman, the First Hunter]] from ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}''.
** in chapter 391, Damon recreates the most famous scene from Film/PulpFiction.
* HorrifyingTheHorror:
** Tatsuta is an unrepentant AxCrazy, but what Damon did to the Harpers at Nashville scared even her.
** During Operational Dualsight, some of the ship girls fight in such a brutal, vicious manner that the Abyssals are terrified by the sight.
* HumanResources: The [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] exosuits need to be made from the Smartsteel of an activated ship girl. [[spoiler:An Abyssal is fine too.]]
* HumanSubspecies: Shipgirls are biologically distinct from baseline humanity and some of them see themselves as separate from mankind.
* HumanWeapon: the ship girls are these, naturally. Quite a few ship girls buy into this mentality themselves, that they are nothing more than weapons built to serve their roles in their new lives as ship girls.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: While ship girls are flawed, it's baseline humans who commit or order most of the worst atrocities in the story. As Damon himself says on a few occasions, despite their artificial nature, ship girls generally are more humane than the actual humans.
* HunterOfHisOwnKind: [[spoiler:Jeannie eventually reveals to Damon that the objective of the F.L.E.E.T. 2 Project of which she was the "prototype" was changed by Blackwood to turn Jeannie into a secret "assassin of ship girls", or an "anti-ship-girl ship girl" so that Blackwood could have an emergency contingency plan against his own fleet of ship girls, should they turn rogue against him. She also mentions that she still possesses the skills and abilities necessary to perform her task as this assassin of ship girls, and that Damon need only give her the word for her to fulfill her intended purpose.]]
* HypocriticalHumour: In chapter 187, Damon has to restrain himself from pointing out how hypocritical it is for somebody [[spoiler:surnamed Britain]] to comment on the implausibility of the name [[spoiler:Hunter Stormrider]].
* IAmAMonster:
** Damon repeatedly makes no bones about the fact that he's not a very moral person.
** Shigure has this opinion of her Guilt Protocol and considers it a SuperpoweredEvilSide rather than a normal SuperMode. Ayanami has the same about her Nightmare Protocol.
* ICallItVera: [[spoiler:Daemonbane and Daemonedge for the two revolvers that come with Damon's ATLAS exosuit. While it's unknown if Damon himself gave those revolvers those names, given the fact that they both start with his own name, this may be the case.]]
* IconicOutfit: maintained, as the uniforms that the ship girls wear in the story are kept the same, but due to the grimdark nature of the story, these [[IconicOutfit Iconic Outfits]] aren't played for {{Moe}} points but for [[PlayedForDrama drama points]] instead.
* IfItsYouItsOkay: [[spoiler:how the Shiratsuyu-Class eventually view Damon, especially when the whole DeusSexMachina with magic sex part comes along.]]
* IfIWantedYouDead:
** In chapter 55, Sanford reassures Damon that he needn't worry about Shiranui trying to slit his throat in his sleep, because she would have already done so if she had had the thought.
** Chapter 183 has a nonlethal variant. Benjamin tells the Royal Navy ship girls that if he really wanted to spy on them, he wouldn't need to go to the trouble of implanting some chip in [[spoiler:Javelin.]]
** Another variant in chapter 254. Ayanami tells Akebono and Kasumi that if Damon really was a Shitty Admiral who was going to cut and run or do something nasty to the shipgirls, he's had many opportunities to do so already.
* IHaveYourWife: [[spoiler:The reason why the Coalition ship girls are forced to fight. Each member of the Coalition selected one particular ship girl out of each pool of girls they've acquired, and has physically crippled their selected girl and threatened to finish the job in order to force their sister ships and fellow ship girls to follow their orders. This is why in the aftermath of Operation Norfolk, the Coalition ship girls could not completely surrender to Damon, instead having each group surrendering whatever ship girls had been incapacitated during the fight, while the rest return, as failure to do so would result in each group's master killing off the girl that they've each held hostage. This is what spurs Damon, after Operation Gander (an op to rescue Kaga and Shoukaku from an Abyssal outpost in Gander, Canada), to attack each of the four Coalition cities to liberate the remaining girls from their tyrannical masters.]]
* IJustWantToBeBadass: Shikinami wishes she had some unique power to call her own. [[spoiler:Fulfilled in chapter 261.]]
* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: [[spoiler:the fight between Zuikaku and Water Demon, since Zuikaku tenuously believes that her older sister can still be recovered from her Abyssal conversion. As it turns out, not only does Zuikaku win, but Shoukaku does actually get restored - but not the way you might think.]]
* ILoveNuclearPower: [[spoiler:subverted with Saratoga, who comes with a unique Nuclear Fusion Core augmentation in chapter 297, but the problem is that at the time, due to the circumstances surrounding her acquisition into the fleet, Saratoga's body isn't calibrated to handle her own Fusion Core and puts her on a timer to finish the Little Rock operation within an hour, otherwise her body will begin shutting down due to radiation overload.]]
* ImmuneToBullets: subverted. Ship girls, due to their Smartsteel constructs, can resist bullet damage and will not suffer wounds like a normal human would when shot. However, the shots will still hurt them, depending on the ship type, with weaker ship types feeling more blunt pain from bullets hitting them. And since their eyes are the most sensitive, hitting a ship girl in the eyes with bullet weapons is quite effective - the most amount of damage you can do to a ship girl, in fact, with a gun. If you hit a ship girl in the eyes with a big enough bullet, it will actually do serious damage - [[spoiler:as an example, Shoukaku was shot in the eye by a sniper rifle round that was at least a .338 Lapua Magnum caliber, and this disabled her eye and smashed it pretty badly during the fleet's attack on Oceana Naval Air Station]]. This also works both ways, though, as the Abyssals, also being made of Smartsteel, also suffer these bullet effects, which is the main reason why the ship girls still bring their infantry guns with them into naval combat, as their computerized aims can help them shoot the Abyssals accurately even in the turbulence of battle.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: In chapter 101 [[spoiler:Shigure gets killed when the Re-class impales her through the chest with its tail.]]
* ImprobablyFemaleCast: all ship girls in the story are...[[CaptainObvious female,]] meaning that the only major male members in the story are either the fleet commanders, developers, or important background characters (which there aren't a lot of to begin with). Justified because it's explicitly mentioned that male naval personnel are not possible with the technology that's responsible for ship girls, so ship boys are an impossibility.
* ImTakingHerHomeWithMe: in chapter 295, one National Guard soldier asks his commanding sergeant if they can't just ask the girls to come fight with them for all their future missions because of how easy the ship girls are making things for them with their superior firepower. The sergeant says, [[IWishItWereReal "I wish."]]
* InASingleBound: All ship girls have superhuman jumping abilities, but this is taken UpToEleven during the prelude to Operation Orlando (Chapter 79), where Kaga, Shoukaku and Murasame, [[spoiler:the former 2 having been partially Abyssalized, while the latter had a Navitasium cube loaded with Abyssal energy fed to her, respectively]] boost jump out of the water and onto the deck of a freighter to assist Damon and his escorts in securing it. Suzukaze also displays this when she boost jumps from the surface of the Delaware river and onto the deck of the USS ''New Jersey''.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: averted, see AdaptationPersonalityChange above. Kaga is nowhere near as antagonistic towards Zuikaku or Shoukaku in the story, and they all get along relatively well together. Of course, Kaga and Zuikaku have had a few bouts, but nothing that breaks their otherwise stable relationship. Kaga doesn't even complain or raise a ruckus over the fact that Zuikaku is the first carrier in the fleet to receive a Kai remodel.
* InjuredVulnerability: maintained in the story but for the ship girls as well: the story's made-up game mechanics on chapter 169 heavily imply that ship girls perform worse as their health ratings drop. This may apply to a certain extent with the Fatigue mechanic as well; the higher their fatigue meters, the worse off they will be in combat.
* InsaneAdmiral: definitely the Coalition faction leaders who come to possess their own small fleets of ship girls; most of them have a few screws loose and mistreat their ship girls to varying degrees. Damon can be considered one too, not in terms of his own treatment of ship girls but in terms of the lengths to which he'll go to protect his fleet and the things he will do to those who hurt or mistreat his ship girls.
* InSeriesNickname:
** Damon calls Amatsukaze "Amy" because he finds her name a mouthful.
** He calls Mutsu "Mutslug" because her headgear looks like a slug's stalks.
** He butchers Kikuzuki into "Cookie" and ends up getting the other Mutsuki-class doing it.
** In chapter 72 Damon reveals that his weird appearance led to him being called "Yellow Fever Kid" when he was younger.
** Damon shortens Shiratsuyu into "Shirley".
** He also secretly calls Shigure "Sugar".
** In chapter 229, [[spoiler:Enterprise is "Ellie", Wisconsin is "Winny" and Yorktown is "Yorkie".]]
** when Damon and [[spoiler:the French battleship Dunkerque meet, Damon calls her "Dunkey" in chapter 385 because he's afraid that he'll butcher Dunkerque's real name's pronunciation, a sentiment he is absolutely correct about. Dunkerque herself is hesitant to accept the nick, but she doesn't protest it.]]
* InsistentTerminology: [[spoiler:!Samidare]] refers to the Shiratsuyu-class as [[spoiler: daughter of so-and-so.]]
* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: When [[spoiler:The Abyssal]] first appears, he emerges from some giant snake-dragon thing.
* [[spoiler:IntercontinuityCrossover]]: [[spoiler:Sanford eventually reveals that characters of the VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Project universe were directly involved in the F.L.E.E.T. Project and its subsidiaries. Subverted because crossovers between Touhou Project and Kantai Collection have been made, due to similarities between the games such as [[ImprobablyFemaleCast Improbably Female Casts]], largely unexplained and undetailed premises, and cult followings, but perhaps this story makes a bigger crossover between the two games than most, or at least to this extent.]]
* InstantRunes: [[spoiler:for a story that's beginning to be filled with magical powers, the only ship girls who possess runes of any kind are several of the Shiratsuyu-Class destroyers - fitting, as they are explicitly revealed to be designed as demi-gods with unparalleled magic power. But so far, only Shigure, Samidare, and Suzukaze, the ones who have gained access to their "Demon Angel" forms, have displayed them - and funnily enough, Yuudachi, who has accessed her own during Operation Hammer Down, has yet to demonstrate rune construction like her sisters.]]
* InterruptedSuicide:
** In chapter 96 [[spoiler:Murasame attempts suicide and is barely saved by Sanford. The men suspect the Abyssals are responsible.]]
** In chapter 298, [[spoiler:Jared Imwalle attempts to kill himself when he is cornered in a meat locker. Saratoga [[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands shoots his gun out of his hands]] before he could do so.]]
* InterserviceRivalry:
** In chapter 61, Sanford (a Navy SEAL) sees a pair of Delta Force soldiers and calls them amateurs under his breath. In chapter 63, he also makes at jab at the Marines.
** Several of the ship girls' attitudes show the influence of the historical rivalry between the IJA and IJN.
** In chapter 310, [[spoiler:Prince of Wales]] scoffs at the idea of shipgirls using guns, saying that it should be left to the infantry.
* InvadedStatesOfAmerica: averted; America is not run over by Abyssals and is so far safe from them. In the events before the story's beginning, however, there was a conflict called the Federation War in which Southern American forces wanting to expand their power post-nuclear war managed to fight their way north to claim all of Central America and Mexico and threatened to penetrate the southern US border with Mexico, but the Americans were barely able to stop them and begin pushing them back down to South America [[spoiler:with the help of the American ship girls Iowa, Wisconsin, Yorktown, and Enterprise]].
* InvisibilityCloak: A standard ability for all submarine girls. Sendai is the only surface ship girl that has it, but unlike the submarine girls, whose swimsuit provides them with this ability, Sendai's cloaking is within herself, not granted by her uniform. The Lukenstor Systems XV-29 Banshee has a Cloaking field of its own as well.
* InvisibilityFlicker: Sendai's cloaking breaks when she fires her ship guns.
* ItAmusedMe: Akebono's reason for charging into an Abyssal squadron, regardless of a lack of covering fire?
-->"I just really want to kill something."
* ItemCrafting: invoked within the story itself, as the fleet administrators can write up their own augmentation programs to equip the ship girls with, and now that Yuubari has her own weapons workshop, she can potentially create her own custom-made weapons for the fleet too.
* ItGetsEasier: In chapter 69, Damon admits that he's become desensitized to killing and violence.
* ItIsDehumanizing: In chapter 28, Damon takes it poorly when someone refers to the ship girls as "things". This wouldn't turn out to be the last time someone calls a ship girl not human.
* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: Shigure has to correct people who mispronounce her name as "shi-gure" rather than "shi-gu-re".
* ItsQuietTooQuiet:
** In chapter 21, as the group approach an abandoned mall, Damon finds the lack of any obvious hostiles disquieting. [[spoiler:His fears turn out to be unfounded. There's no ambush waiting inside, only one man standing guard and another four relaxing.]]
** Damon mentions it again in chapter 70 after [[spoiler:apparently clearing the Newfoundland Abyssal base of hostiles.]]
** In chapter 284, Eagle says that things have gotten calm and quiet between England and Germany suspiciously quickly.
* ItsRainingMen: Starting from chapter 29, you can air drop ship girls onto land, or onto water, but wherever you drop them, they won't be needing parachutes.
* ItWorksBetterWithBullets: In chapter 149, Wakaba tries to shoot a pair of mooks only to find that she has forgotten to reload. She resorts to PistolWhipping to take them down.
* IWasNeverHere:
** The briefing [[spoiler:Eagle gave to Lauren]] at the start of chapter 144 ends with this sort of reminder.
** [[spoiler:Eagle]] says this again in chapter 189 after sending a highly-classified document [[spoiler:about Baltimore]] he hacked out of the Feds to the Fleet.
** In chapter 295, Colonel Fodemski tells Murakumo, Yuubari and Ooi that they never just had a certain conversation.
* IWillOnlySlowYouDown: [[spoiler:Amatsukaze]] does this in chapter 20 after she's badly wounded.
* JackOfAllStats: according to the game mechanics in chapter 169, several of the ship girls have average stats across the board, such as Kagerou and Kitakami.
* UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics: The ship girls call Sanford and Araki "sensei", and Furutaka specifically calls Araki "taichou" due to their relationship.
* JackOfAllStats: maintained when compared directly to the game, but differently - on the Tropes page for VideoGame/KantaiCollection, the heavy cruiser ship type is listed to be this, being "average" in all stats. But it seems that in this story, according to the stats written up in chapter 169, the heavy cruisers are actually the best-rounded ship type, offering great damage and attack power through their personal strength as heavy cruisers and their weapons, both ship guns and infantry guns, and speed to keep up with the faster ship types.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Despite his brusque demeanour, Damon will go to great lengths to protect his girls, such as carrying an injured Amatsukaze on his back.
* JiveTurkey: Dee Jay speaks this way.
* JokeCharacter: ''inverted''. Maru-yu in the story, according to her stats, is supposed to be this, which is in line with how she is in the game, but what she does and how she conducts herself in the story make it very clear that she ''very'' far from being this. Let's just say that Damon won't be using her to modernize other ship girls (especially when there isn't even such a thing as modernizing in the story).
* {{Joshikousei}}: lampshaded frequently throughout the early parts of the story - Damon wonders why anyone in their right minds would build ship girls intended to fight in wars and armed conflicts just so that they can clothe them like they're schoolgirls. Eventually he gets used to the sight of them and thus stops asking, but it comes up every once in a while.
* JustFollowingOrders: In chapter 147 [[spoiler:Shigure wonders if her obeying Sanford's orders to abandon Suzukaze was right.]]
* KickTheDog:
** In chapter 45, [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] forces shell a hospital.
** In chapter 229, it is revealed that [[spoiler:the anti-Blackwood forces who shot Damon dead]] also shot his puppy.
* KillEmAll: By the end of chapter 143. [[spoiler:All of the Shakers are dead, after the Quakers raided Ablett Village in retaliation for their losses suffered on the [=USS=] New Jersey and at the aquarium near the museum ship's berth, not knowing it was Suzukaze's doing, due to her leaving no Quaker alive. In turn, most, if not all of the Quakers, have been reduced to puddles of radioactive blood after the Quaker raiding party returns with Barry's head on a pike, parading it on the street next to their stronghold, and triggering a massive Darkwater-powered radioactive burst from Suzukaze upon her seeing the head.]]
* KillItWithFire: Damon's initial plan against the [[spoiler:mutants of Baltimore, for whom he uses a napalm flamethrower.]]
* KillSat: [[spoiler:The Lukenstor-built HAVOC, which has a laser cannon built in.]]
* KilledOffscreen: The fact that [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] exosuits are made of Smartsteel from activated shipgirls implies that at least one of them was scrapped for the materials offscreen, though we haven't been shown who fell victim.
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: subverted slightly - ship girls with special protocols or powers may use their abilities to varying degrees in combat, but they will always use their issued infantry weapons and ship guns in combat. Even the Shiratsuyu-Class, who are the most guilty of [[spoiler:possessing magical powers with their protocols]], still depend very heavily on their ship munitions to fight the Abyssals, and oftentimes their protocols even work with their standard guns and power them up.
* KukrisAreKool: the Chief of Army Tyler Wittiker that the Operation South Town fleet meets in Australia in chapter 372 carries a kukri around behind his waist.
* LampshadeHanging:
** Damon wonders several times what kind of perverted mind thought personifying ships as young women was a good idea. He has a similar opinion on some of the more outlandish default outfits the girls were given.
** In chapter 97, Sanford hangs a lampshade on the MildlyMilitary tendencies of the girls, pointing out that there would have discipline issues aplenty had this been a real navy.
** In chapter 112, Mutsu wonders what was the point of recreating the IJN in the first place, never mind in human form.
** In chapter 117, Orion notes how inexplicable [[spoiler:The Abyssal's]] dragon-thing is. She and Monarch also think their developers were daft to bring back their Great War-era class.
** In chapter 118, Satsuki wonders what kind of technosorcery F.L.E.E.T did to extract the souls and memories of their past warship selves that shouldn't have been able to have such things.
** In chapter 138, Ryuujou wonders how on Earth the developers came up with the near-MagicFromTechnology the ship girls have.
** In chapter 141, Khal wonders what good a doctor like him, even one who knows the Chancellor, will be in resolving the German situation.
* LawOfConservationOfDetail: ties in with ChekhovsGun from above - when [[spoiler:the fleet first buries Damon at the Abraham Lincoln Cemetery outside of Chicago]], Sanford leaves a plain karambit knife in place of a tombstone, since [[spoiler:Damon]] used a karambit during active service. When Damon returns to [[spoiler:dig up the coffin to claim the weapons that are actually inside rather than his own body]], he also takes the karambit with him. [[spoiler:He uses this karambit knife to ultimately kill Blackwood in chapter 250.]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In chapter 318, [[spoiler:Losira]] wonders if the story isn't progressing too quickly.
* LegacyCharacter: In chapter 152, Sanford reveals that the "SEAL Team Six" he used to belong to wasn't the actual SEAL Team Six, which was officially disbanded on schedule, but really a unit that still bears the name as a cover for their true identity.
** [[spoiler:in a warped sense, the Shiratsuyu-Class. The Moebius Project's method of creating the second-gens could imply that they had meant for the identities of the first-gens to be transferred into different bodies that had the true magic potential that they were striving for.]]
* LemonyNarrator: subverted; for the most part, the narration can be considered normal, but there are times when the narration suddenly becomes jarringly casual, sarcastic, cynical, or perhaps a bit of all. He also [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall leans on the fourth wall]], [[BreakingTheFourthWall breaks it sometimes]], even, and at one point [[InteractiveNarrator even interacts with Damon, the main character.]]
* LethalChef: In Hiei's absence, Kongou seems to have taken up her inability to cook curry. When she does so in chapter 61, it knocks out almost everyone who tries it.
* LetsSplitUpGang: the fleet does this in chapter 290 in order to fight the Whitewater mercenary company in the southern Midwest US, Italy, and Kentucky.
* LewdLustChasteSex: [[spoiler:many displays of intimate physical contact are shown in the story, often with or without a fair amount of detail, but the sex scenes are never shown (the author says it's mainly because he's afraid that the Fanfiction terms of service may forbid lemons) and simply become cases of PreClimaxClimax.]]
* LightningBruiser: the heavy cruisers of the fleet. They're fast enough to join the destroyers in front-line duty if they need to, and they offer the most balance among high offensive power, durability, and speed. The fast battleships who are also capable of fighting in the front lines count as well.
* {{Lime}}: [[spoiler:naturally, with the story unafraid of exploring darker and more explicit themes, there are scenes where sexual activity is heavily implied to the point of blatant mention, but the narration always leaves the explicit details out.]]
* LimpAndLivid: In chapter 143, Suzukaze moves lifelessly after [[spoiler:having been chased out of Ablett Village when the Colossus Reactor turns out to be a curse.]] The livid part comes in when her reaction to people getting in her way is to turn them into bloody messes.
* LiteralistSnarking:
** In chapter 268, Zuikaku tells Damon to "bite me". Guess what happens next.
** More seriously, in chapter 293, [[spoiler:when Sanford dares him to pull the trigger of his Desert Eagle, Damon actually does - and shoots just right of Sanford's head.]]
* LiteralSplitPersonality: [[spoiler:Akebono gets this as a result of Damon's YRC. She uses it in battle to save a dazed and confused Furutaka from an Abyssal.]]
* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: even more so than the game, because the story goes into detail describing political leaders, people Damon and the ship girls meet during their travels and adventures, and ship girls [[spoiler:who may or may not actually be a part of Kantai Collection in the first place]], ''on top of'' the ship girls who are in the game but are yet to be found in the story (and all the ones that will come in future updates for the game).
* LoanShark: In chapter 176, Damon recalls that he had a friend when he was young who got killed when these came calling over her parents' loans.
* LodgedBladeRecycling: In chapter 95 [[spoiler:Damon pulls out a crossbow bolt shot into him and uses it to kill Alastor Scott.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: remember that one restriction that ship girls have about deploying ship guns on land, as described in DoNotRunWithAGun? Well, [[spoiler:there does exist a loophole in this restriction, best demonstrated by New Jersey and Kuroshio during Operation No Exit, when New Jersey carries Kuroshio with her ship guns deployed on her shoulders. Even before this, Kuroshio's sisters Kagerou and Shiranui were able to deploy their ship guns on the tops of moving armored personnel carriers to basically turn themselves into mobile artillery platforms; and even before this, there has been one instance when Mutsu even deployed her ship cannons while in a helicopter, pointing them out of an open side door and shooting her guns down at the ground. It appears that the movement restriction that ship girls suffer if they deploy their ship guns on land can easily be passed if they themselves are being carried by a third-person entity, since only the ship girl's body when deploying ship weaponry on land is affected and not necessarily rooted or locked down into the ground.]]
** [[spoiler:Jeannie must do this out of necessity to use her Keys. She explains to Damon that normally, she can only use her Keys inside her reality marble, Silva Gelida, which is also her dreamworld, and that the normal way of going about this is to simply deploy her reality marble, projecting what she sees inside her mind onto her surroundings. But due to then navitasium generator/core that she possesses, she cannot use her Keys this way because the physical world doesn't accept navitasium as a natural energy source that's native to the world, causing navitasium to be unable to fuel Jeannie's deployment of her reality marble and thus prevent her from deploying Silva Gelida to use her Keys. So to get around this, Jeannie uses her navitasium to forcefully convert her own body as a gateway for her internally produced Keys to enter the physical world, but this comes at the cost of suffering immense physical damage and pain, because her Keys end up tearing out of her body for her to use.]]
* LoveConfession:
** In chapter 61, [[spoiler:Murakumo]] gives a veiled one to Damon, but was too subtle. She finally makes it obvious in chapter 253.
** Chapter 131 reveals that Fusou received one from one of her developers back before she was shipped out. She's never seen him since.
** [[spoiler:Amatsukaze]] does this accidentally in Chapter 267, when Damon gets badly burnt by Kagerou's power activating.
* LuckBasedMission: obviously averted, unless you count the randomness of war to be as such.
* LudicrousGibs: The fate of [[spoiler:Major Lester at Suzukaze's hands]] in chapter 121.
* LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler:Graf Zeppelin]] considers Akagi to be her mother due to the nature of her development. Kaga was unamused. Very unamused.
* MadnessMantra: In chapter 197, [[spoiler:Damon is stuck in his dreamscape beset upon by Baltimore mutants, murmuring his mantra over and over, getting progressively louder and louder as the mutants close in on him and his mom.]]
-->[[spoiler:[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII "- listen only to the sound of my voice - let your mind relax - let your thoughts drift - let the bad memories fade - let peace be upon you - surrender yourself to your dreams - let them wash over you like the gentle waves of the bluest ocean - let them envelope you - comfort you - imagine somewhere calm - imagine somewhere safe - imagine yourself in a frozen forest - you are standing in a clearing - the trees around you so tall they touch the sky - pure white snowflakes fall all around - you can feel them melt on your skin - you are not cold - it cannot overcome the warmth of your beating heart - can you hear it - you only have to listen - do you hear it slowing - you are slowing it - you are in control - calm - at peace - listen only to the sound of my voice -"]]]]
* MadScientist: [[spoiler:Sanford and Big, and perhaps by association Okazaki Yumemi, the leaders of the Moebius sub-program that created the second-gen Shiratsuyu-Class. Subverted because they were tasked to create the second-gen Shiratsuyu-Class out of perceived necessity, rather than their own twisted scientific desires.]]
* MagicFromTechnology: [[spoiler:proves to be more and more of a case in the story as the plot unfolds. At first, it started with powers like Shigure's Guilt Protocol and Ryuujou's, Jun'you's, and Hiyou's special plane-launching techniques, but it steadily escalates to Damon's YRC contracts and, the most glaring example, the Shiratsuyu-Class's godly powers.]]
* MagicIsMental: [[spoiler:implied to be averted. In the story's universe, magic apparently can be genetic. And as the ship girls who have access to magic abilities use them, they are implied to be tied to their physical abilities and capabilities, rather than simply an issue of mental fortitude, though perhaps there is a concentration element to using these magic abilities.]]
* MagikarpPower: averted heavily. Due to what this story defines as a ship girl, every ship girl is always useful, no matter how weak they may have been in the game, and this is their minimal effectiveness in the context of the story: many ship girls then have added powers, abilities, protocols, and even [[spoiler:magical talent]] that further augment their strength. All this, and so far only four ship girls total have been remodeled so far.
** the most standout example of this aversion is Shigure. She comes with her Guilt Protocol, perhaps ''the'' strongest protocol featured in the story at the time of her introduction, and it only grows stronger even before she gets her remodel (note this isn't her ''second'' remodel, where she gets crazy in the game).
* MakingASplash: Samidare and Suzukaze have the ability to manipulate water for defensive and offensive purposes, respectively.
* ManBitesMan: In chapter 155 Yuudachi bites into a certain enemy.
* MarionetteMaster: averted from the game: Chitose and Chiyoda are considered in the story to be straight-up light carriers, meaning that they have the same gear and equipment as standard carriers (the long-range plane-launching crossbow and flight deck), so they do not have their traditional gear that they use in the game.
** but in a sense, maintained. Because the story makes explicit mention that the carriers can all directly take control of each and every individual plane that they launch, they can control however many planes they want at once, so long as they've got the processing power and mental concentration to pull it off, just so that they can get the most performance out of their planes or to ensure that they return back to them in one piece.
* MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: [[spoiler:Damon's YRC can give ship girls extra magical powers, such as abilities or summonable weapons and gear. Almost all of the girls who've made "contracts" with Damon have obtained powers or weapons that are directly taken from a myriad of other franchises, anywhere from Franchise/{{Halo}} to VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters.]]
** [[spoiler:more relevantly, this story is now becoming this in terms of the sheer number of ship girls that are potentially on the table for implementation, with ship girls from games like VideoGame/WarshipGirls, [[Fanfic/PacificWorldWarIIUSNavyShipgirls Pacific]], and Victory Belles, though Kantai Collection will still remain the main source of ship girls.]]
* MassOhCrap: Many of the girls freak when [[spoiler:the Abyssals make their reappearance]] in chapter 65.
** This is also the Ayanami-Class's and the Sendai-Class's reaction [[spoiler:when they first regroup with Damon at Baltimore.]]
** The Shiratsuyu-Class also do this when [[spoiler:the Anchorage Demon begins a self-destruct sequence in an attempt to take them down with her, but they escape in time.]]
* MeaningfulName: Every chapter title that ends with "Contact" will have at least one new ship girl appear.
** [[spoiler:Several of the ship girls gain powers or protocols through Damon's YRC that have a lot to do with their own names.]]
* TheMedic: [[spoiler:Damon, Harusame, Samidare, Umikaze, and Ushio are all this; Damon has medic training and has worked in hospitals and emergency rooms before, along with his field medic training while in the military, while the destroyers all have magical healing abilities thanks to their protocols (or, in Ushio's case, thanks to Losira's Hellflower).]]
* MegaCorp: Lukenstor is this in the story, being North America's biggest defense corporation, having amassed the former employees and personnel of pre-war defense and aerospace contractors and corporations like Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, etc. [[spoiler:And as the story progresses, they're even revealed to be able to construction additional ship girls, becoming the only known entity in the story's current setting with the capacity to do so.]]
* MercyKill:
** When a group of bandits roll up in trucks at the house where Damon had found Murakumo, he's forced to perform this on an infant that he found in one of the trucks after realizing that his opening of the door had exposed it to what was essentially lethal amounts of radiation for the poor child.
** In chapter 9, Damon puts a paralysed bandit out of his misery.
** In chapter 91, Damon puts down a mutated fox that lost its lower jaw attacking him.
** In chapter 145, Mutsuki puts down a badly wounded neo-Nazi after the victim's facial expression made her recall Damon's mercy-killing of a mutated fox just prior to Operation Nashville.
** In chapter 247, this is done to a soldier with a breached radiation suit.
* MidSeasonUpgrade: For a short time after [[spoiler:his resurrection]], Damon gains the use of an [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] exosuit that lets him emulate ship girl abilities. [[spoiler:He gets it back in chapter 242.]]
* MightyGlacier: the battleships, at least the ones who don't fight in the front lines.
* MildlyMilitary: somewhat subverted from the game. Being a DarkerAndEdgier fanfic, the story does put more emphasis on the realism of maintaining a fleet (or at least [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] over things that are absurd to see in a real navy), but for the most part, the fleet is more like an unorthodox private military company rather than a full-fledged, proper navy.
* MilitariesAreUseless: heavily subverted; there are multiple times when modern human technology clearly trumps even the Abyssals and their powerful bosses, and the most vivid example of this is the aftermath of the Battle of Greifswald Bay, when the Abyssals, [[spoiler:after defeating the Combined Fleet]], are decimated and forced to retreat when a fleet of German jet fighters comes in to save the ship girl survivors. And while it's made clear that human navies will not beat Abyssals in a straight-up fight, mainly due to the sheer mobility and small targets that the Abyssals have and present, if they serve as the ship girls' rear line support task forces, they will almost certainly make the ship girls' jobs much easier.
* MilitaryMashupMachine: HAVOC counts as one - the Combined Fleet uses it as both a stealth observations satellite and an attack satellite.
* MindRape: [[spoiler:Jeannie's [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Direct Neural Interface ability]] allows her to hack other ship girls' brains; this is her main assassination tool against ship girls, as interfacing with them allows Jeannie to exert total control over her victims' mental processes, putting their lives entirely at her mercy. She also demonstrates that she can perform what's called a Reverse Direct Neural Interface, which works on normal humans like Damon and allows Jeannie to show them what she sees in her own mind.]]
* MindScrew: [[spoiler:Damon's dreamworld - the scenes it creates makes sense once or twice in context, but most of the time it just displays scenes that [[SceneryPorn look pretty cool]] but otherwise make no sense in the story's context. Also, the Moebius Sub-Program to the F.L.E.E.T. Project is just one big, giant mess that somehow makes the Shiratsuyu-Class out to be [[SemiDivine demi-gods.]]]]
* MiniMecha: [[spoiler:both the Metal Slug and the Slug Gunner are described as miniature tanks that can only seat two people each.]]
* MisplacedRetribution: In chapter 213, Damon calls [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] out on not properly focusing her desire for payback on [[spoiler:Sanford]].
* MissingBackblast: Averted in chapter 153. When Nagato makes the mistake of using a RPG indoors, the backblast sends Wakaba and Hatsushimo flying.
* MistakenForGay: Nagato assumes that Damon is gay when he refuses her sexual advances, though the latter quickly informs that he doesn't swing that way.
* MixAndMatchWeapon: [[spoiler:Mutsuki's YRC weapon she gets from Damon is this - being an obvious {{Shoutout}} to the rifle-scythe of [[WebAnimation/{{RWBY}} a certain someone who happens to look just like her.]]]]
* MoeAnthropomorphism: heavily zig-zagged. While the base game of which the story is a fanfic may qualify as this, the story itself is not, as it functions as a DeconstructionFic and depicts far more bloodshed and violence than the game itself (granted, it probably isn't that hard to do). However, the story's long break arcs, particularly the thirty-ish chapters after the Stolen Fleet Arc during which the fleet takes a week-long vacation in New Chicago, are filled with nothing but slice-of-life narrative and storytelling, with the ship girls engaging in plenty of acts of {{Moe}}.
* MonumentalDamage: [[spoiler:in chapter 243, the Black Ops attack the White House to rescue Lauren, Mary Britain, and Benjamin.]]
* MoodWhiplash:
** Chapter 55. After a pair of sombre conversations with Murakumo and Kisaragi, Damon walks into the rest of the girls holding an impromptu fashion show.
** Chapter 259. After a lot of SliceOfLife and catching up, the last part of the chapter cuts away to the aftermath of violence being done.
** Chapter 265. After a heartfelt talk with Shoukaku and Zuikaku... pillow fight!
** Chapter 288: After an ominous conversation with Benjamin about the true nature and purpose of ship girls and Abyssals, Damon gets dragged into a basketball game with the Shiratsuyu-Class.
* {{Mooks}}: the Agents of the Inner Circle are the straightest example of this. And when Damon infiltrates an Inner Circle research facility in Mexico, he encounters other types of Agents, like the ATP Engineer, that perhaps serve as EliteMooks.
* MoraleMechanic: the story seems do away with the "sparkling" mechanic seen in the game but keeps the fatigue.
* MoralMyopia:
** Several times Damon and co. encounter bad guys who try to use IHaveAFamily [[VillainsWantMercy to beg for mercy]], yet somehow see no problem with slavery, murder, rape and doing all sorts of evil to others who have families too.
** The Abyssals claim they're morally "more worthy" of Earth and despise Mankind for its misdeeds, yet conveniently overlook the equally or even more heinous wrongdoings of their commanders.
** Shiranui sees nothing wrong with being insubordinate and putting her ship sisters ahead of the needs of the fleet. Yet when [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] does the same it's suddenly disgusting. Furthermore, despite her self-declared protective feelings for her ship sisters, she doesn't even stop to contemplate how she herself would react if, like the deserter, one of her own ship sisters were to turn on her for defending them.
* MoreDakka: The battleship girls prefer machine guns and automatic rifles, while some of the destroyer girls prefer machine pistols and sub-machine guns (Satsuki, for example, dual-wields a pair of Magpul [=FMG-9s=]) in lieu of carbines and assault rifles. [[spoiler:And the American ship girls, not surprisingly, pack quite a lot of heat themselves.]]
* MortonsFork:
** In chapter 99, [[spoiler:the Abyssal reinforcements tell the Combined Fleet to withdraw without raiding the freighters, or else. While some of the girls are in favour of doing so as they've already taken casualties, others point out that they can't afford to go back empty-handed either. Sanford has them press on, though the results aren't pretty.]]
** In chapter 105, [[spoiler:no matter what Shoukaku did when the Wo-class demanded her surrender, she would have been captured and then converted anyway. The only difference that willfully surrendering without a fight would have made was that she would be converted with her memories completely intact. She instead tried to blow herself up and hopefully wipe out the Wo-class and her escorts with her, which had absolutely no effect whatsoever.]]
** in chapter 364, [[spoiler:upon making contact with the damaged British squadron down in Australian waters, Enterprise offers them a sadistic choice: either the British ship girls can receive what limited medical aid the Combined Fleet girls have to offer in exchange for information on what they are doing operating in Australian waters, or they can be left hanging on their own and risk the treacherous voyage back home to England or elsewhere to safety without any medical aid whatsoever and risk being finished off by another Abyssal fleet, should they happen to run into another one.]]
* MotiveRant: In chapter 249, Blackwood gives one.
* MuggingTheMonster: In chapter 275, some gangsters that encounter Damon outside with some of the ship girls insult him for being a mutant white boy and make the mistake of thinking he's a pushover.
* MugglesDoItBetter:
** Downplayed. While ship girls are indeed superhuman and nearly immune to small arms, heavy weapons are still very much a threat. Excellently illustrated at the end of chapter 167; [[spoiler:the Abyssals have just steamrolled the Combined Fleet, but when friendly air support shows up, the hitherto invincible Aircraft Carrier Water Demon]] is told to retreat under the belief that, as powerful as she is, even she can't stand up to the newcomers. This is a unique break from most Kantai Collection fanworks and fanfictions that subscribe to the notion that modern human technology is simply no match against Abyssal technology, or at best have such an unfavourable exchange rate as to be unaffordable.
** This being said, the Abyssals would most likely beat modern human naval fleets in a straight-up battle, simply out of sheer mobility of their physical bodies and the large targets that modern warships present. It's just that, so far in the story, a battle like this is yet to be seen (outside of the small one when Mutsu and co. defeat a rogue American missile destroyer early on in the story) because the Abyssals have always been weakened to the point of retreat whenever human air support shows up.
** Also, as explained by Sanford, technology can underperform, but it can't exceed the parameters it was built to achieve, unlike magic that has potential to grow. [[spoiler:The Shiratsuyu-class, as a result, will eventually grow to exceed any actual shipgirl.]]
* MultinationalTeam: [[spoiler:the Combined Fleet eventually grows to become this. At first, it's all Japanese ship girls, sticking true to the original Kantai Collection roster. Then, the fleet gets a small number of English dreadnoughts who come join after Operation London. Later on, they get a chance to fight with the German ship girls, though none of them come join them like the English do. When the Stolen Fleet arc rolls around, in the middle of the arc, Damon is joined by four American ship girls who reveal that they've been working and fighting for the country throughout the years of the apocalypse, and after Whiskey Hotel, they formally join the Combined Fleet too. After their vacation, they're reinforced by two more American ship girls and even a Canadian destroyer, and the fleet goes on to fight with Italian ship girls in the Mediterranean. And finally, during Operation Goldmine, the Combined Fleet are lightly reinforced by assisting ship girls from France, England, and Italy to secure the bauxite mines.]]
* MyGreatestSecondChance: several of the ship girls feel this way, as revealed in the Fleet logs.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** Kagerou's reaction in chapter 267 to [[spoiler:accidentally burning Damon with her new powers.]]
** Asashio takes learning that she accidentally [[spoiler:shot a gun-toting civilian]] very badly in chapter 313.
* MyMasterRightOrWrong: Asashio's main trait is dutifulness and loyalty to her superiors, no matter how undeserving or immoral they are. It drove a wedge between her and the rest of the girls held by Nashville. Her CharacterDevelopment involved her learning that there are people whose behaviour disqualifies themselves from receiving loyalty.
* MysteriousPast: Amagi has no memories of her past and her existence and capabilities only create more questions than they answer. And Wakamiya, who is even older, older still than the ones built during the Great War like the Kongous or Orions, just raises even more questions.
* MythologyGag:
** In chapter 86, Kongou deflects a shot with her bare hands.
** In chapter 103, Benjamin bitterly makes a crack about repair buckets.
** In chapter 119, the Tenryuu Kindergarten gets brought up.
** Alexis and Gordon Kevinson, parents to the main character of the [[Fanfic/AmbiencePlatoonMoebiusFour alternate universe fic]], make their debut here in chapter 142 stationed aboard the [=USS=] ''George Washington'', the same carrier that their son Franklin commanded in the alternate universe and was aboard when [=ISIS=] initiated strike missions against it. Though Franklin himself isn't mentioned save for a nod courtesy of an old paperback labelled titled ''F.R.Kevinson''.
** In chapter 201, [[spoiler:Losira]] references a "[[VideoGame/TouhouProject boundary-shifting youkai hag]]." Whether or not it's a reference to ''Naraku no Hana'' or just a regular shout out to the Touhou Project series in general depends on whether or not she's referring to her as a fictional character.
** In chapter 218, [[spoiler:Losira]] mentions that [[VideoGame/TouhouProject Renko Usami and Maribel Hearn]] are part of [=ST6=]'s Japanese branch, effectively cementing the link between this story and ''Naraku no Hana''.
** Chapter 235 reinforces the link to ''Naraku no Hana'' with TheReveal that [[spoiler:navitasium is actually refined Abyssal energy or serenity, the AppliedPhlebotinum of that work.]]
** In chapter 269, Hatsuyuki and Shirayuki get called potatoes, a common moniker for the Shibafu-designed girls, while Imuya expresses her desire for a smartphone, which her canon self owns.
* NGOSuperpower:
** [[spoiler:The Inner Circle]] is another of those nominal terrorist groups with international reach and way more resources than they should have. During Operation London they deploy enough mooks to give the British Army trouble. In chapter 51 they're briefly mentioned among a list of major power holders, the rest of which are nations.
** Lukenstor is a MegaCorp formed by merging many of the old aerospace companies. It has vast numbers of mercenaries on retainer, an air force, [[spoiler:and builds Kill Sats. Its CEO Eagle Clinton plans to take the "N" out of "NGO" and is preparing for a coup against President Blackwood.]]
*** [[spoiler:With Eagle becoming president after chapter 250, Lukenstor finally sheds the N, as Eagle has control of both the American Federal government and his own company.]]
** The Combined Fleet is starting to edge into this territory. As of chapter 257, there are 89 girls present, definitely larger than some modern navies.
* NakedPeopleAreFunny: In chapter 62 [[spoiler:Sendai sneaks naked into Damon's room, having been given the impression by President Blackwood that he would be the kind of person susceptible to favours. Then has to go back to her bunk the same way after getting blown off.]]
* NeverFoundTheBody: In chapter 237 [[spoiler:Damon and Ooi note that they never found Dee Jay, TK and Big E's bodies in the Spring Hope massacre.]]
* NeverMyFault: Murasame's log reveals that she has no regrets about [[spoiler:driving Suzukaze away from the fleet]], she does regret this later when she is able to make amends with Kisaragi, and again when she ends up having to [[spoiler:explain to the revived Damon has to how and why Suzukaze was kicked out of the fleet.]]
* NextTierPowerUp:
** [[spoiler:several members of the Shiratsuyu-Class demonstrate this, like Umikaze and Kawakaze.]]
** [[spoiler:the members of the Burial Agency demonstrate this too - the crests of the Last Rites that they possess are designated with ranks from I to VII, and according to Pope Julius IV, ascending the ranks of the Last Rites means that one is learning enough about their own powers and skills to improve noticeably and remarkably to earn the subsequent ranks.]]
* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** In chapter 228, [[spoiler:Franklin scolds !Samidare]] for how her loping off [[spoiler:Damon's]] arm started a series of events that led to his dying prematurely and ruining their plans.
** In chapter 289, one of the missions given to the Combined Fleet is to go to Italy, where the Abyssals are going to attack in force, since [[spoiler:the Italian ship girls were ''too'' good at wiping out Abyssal patrols to the last creature]], apparently causing the Abyssals to think Italy has a much stronger fleet than it really does and deploy accordingly.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: In chapter 63, an enemy Hind attack chopper pops its flares, causing the Stinger missile flying at it to instead redirect themselves to the Hind's wingmen in a Pave Hawk.
* NightVisionGoggles: the former Seal Team Six operatives oftentimes use their tri-ocular goggles that are capable of night vision for several of their missions.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown:
** Takao delivers a lethal one [[spoiler:to her former controller, Monroe Arranchea of Orlando, Florida.]]
** In chapter 92, after witnessing some mooks kill a family of civilians, Shigure tears the arm off one of them and beats him to death with it.
** In chapter 99, Shigure and Yuudachi brutally destroy [[spoiler:Armored Carrier Demon and Southern War Demon]], even tearing bits off them.
** [[spoiler:The Re-class]] does this to almost everyone it kills.
** In chapter 133, after getting ambushed by a mook, Suzukaze retaliates by literally beating him into pulp.
** In a battle spanning chapters 291 to 292, [[spoiler:!Samidare pulls this at the end of chapter 291, where she unleashes her magic that creates her own closed space that she is greatly empowered by and proceeds to deliver one of these to the entire class.]]
** In chapter 301, Akebono does this to a Ri-Class heavy cruiser.
* NoHonorAmongThieves:
** In chapter 7, Damon witnesses a pair of clashing bandit groups.
** In chapter 290, Damon mentions that bandit "conventions" were once a thing, but when you get too many crooks in one place, well, RealityEnsues.
* NoNameGiven: Downplayed. Araki's full name (Kiyoshi Araki) is not given until Furutaka's fleet log, many chapters after she, Araki, and the rest of his ship girls were introduced. Chuck also qualifies, as it's never mentioned just what his surname is, or if Chuck is simply a squad callsign and has another real name that is simply unknown to those outside of the old Seal Team Six squad.
* NonEntityGeneral / EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: thoroughly averted; a lot of narration goes into fleshing out Damon's character. In fact, initially, more than a few ship girls didn't consider Damon to even be a legitimate Admiral at first due to the less-than-wholesome ways in which he'd acquired his first few to get started and the fact that Damon has no knowledge or experience of a proper Admiral.
* NonIndicativeName: Suzukaze takes the cake for this one. [[spoiler:Her Japanese name when translated into English means "Cool Wind", but not only is the protocol that she develops called the "Darkwater Protocol", but it manifests physically in the form of hot, black flames.]]
* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: In chapter 115, [[spoiler:Suzukaze discovers that Tatsuya has been subsisting on meat carved out from corpses.]]
* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Invoked by the project, as all the plans and blueprints for the [=FLEET=] project ship girls were destroyed as the first set of completed girls were being shipped. [[spoiler:The existence of the Royal Navy ship girls is explained as the pre-war work of Shadow Helix, another branch of the [=FLEET=] project (Sanford's branch, which produced the [=IJN=] ship girls, is known as Seal Helix), and they too most likely destroyed their blueprints and plans prior to delivering the girls to Great Britain (though as you can plainly see, they never got there, as the Inner Circle managed to get ahold of all of Shadow Helix's ship girls). The fact that the Abyssals exist means that someone is able to make them even though the plans are gone, which sets off alarm bells for Sanford. It's later revealed that Ken Simpson, one of the creators for the project, is in cahoots with the "Inner Circle", having divulged all the data on the project to "Mr. Abyssal". Invoked with the second phase of FLEET, as Jeannie deliberately destroyed all the data outside her own head while escaping.]]
** [[spoiler:Now that Lukenstor has demonstrated the capability to produce more ship girls like Warspite/Wikolia, Iowa/Iris, and two other unknown girls at this moment in time, this trope may now be averted, as Eagle could probably assign his company to produce even more ship girls and replace those who may be lost in future events.]]
* NoPlotNoProblem: mostly averted from the game, the story has a definite plot and direction, though more than a few readers have had problems with said plot and have seen glaring flaws with it.
* NoSell:
** This is usually what happens when you shoot a ship girl with a bullet, granted you don't shoot her in the eye or somewhere where it's a little more...private, let's say. Though, this gets subverted more the higher the bullet caliber a ship girl gets shot with, and it gets reinforced the stronger the ship girl type (a destroyer vs. a battleship, for example).
** In chapter 47, [[spoiler:The Abyssal]] nonchalantly slaps aside a RPG.
** [[spoiler:!Samidare]] in chapter 190. Whatever little that actually manages to hit barely seems to affect her.
** The shipgirls don't need to take a mortar strike seriously, because seriously, they don't need to.
--> "Murakumo rolls her eyes a little, scoffing at the laughable damage a mortar would deal compared to an actual ship caliber shell."
** in chapter 412, when [[spoiler:Anchorage Demon]] launches a volley of shells at her and her sisters, Yamakaze stands her ground and blasts them all away with a neutralizing force field that slaps the shells away, even those that wouldn't have hit her.
* NoSwastikas: surprisingly played straight - the NDP are heavily implied to either be Neo-Nazis or have Neo-Nazi tendencies and idealisms, but no swastikas are ever mentioned or depicted during the Germany campaign.
* NoSympathyForGrudgeholders: The ship girls who can't let go of their grudges and resentment over the Pacific War usually get portrayed more poorly than those who have managed to move on.
* NoodleIncident:
** The Battle of Baltimore during the Border Wars. Baxter Harrison of Mobile compared it to the original Civil War's Battle of Gettysburg and the second World War's Battle of Berlin, saying that Baltimore made those two look like catfights. Damon, a veteran of the battle himself and one of the very few survivors from it, really does not want to talk about it, but he does drop this much.
--> Damon: ''"I won't give you the details since I don't feel like talkin' 'bout it, but I will give you a summary. Five thousand 'n three hundred Feds, including me, against ten thousand four hundo bandits 'n southerners. I got sent down there as a pilot to ferry in ammo and supplies, but as soon as I got in, they didn't let me out - both the Feds with their bullshit regulations 'n protocols and the bandits with their fuckin' AA turrets that no one fuckin' knows how they got their hands on. What shoulda been a ten hour battle then got bashed into a two month long struggle to stay the fuck alive. Seriously, fuck that place. Fuck that battle, fuck that city, fuck everyone who was a part of it, fuck everything that has or had anything to do with that shithole."''
** Orion wonders if the Battle of Baltimore was anywhere near as bad as a certain incident in the French seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Thunderer and Conqueror provide further details on this to set the baseline. [[spoiler:They're referring to an incident from back when they were still under Inner Circle control, prior to the invasion of London, when these two girls and Kongou were sent into the town to find out what happened to a group of Abyssals that had been sent in days earlier to meet up with Inner Circle contacts in the city, as they did not return on schedule. They arrived to find out that Re-class '''PAINTED THE TOWN RED''' after one of the contacts refused to hand over some fuel.]]
** [[spoiler:In chapter 303, the Ta-class Battleship brings up a past incident, to which the Wo-class Carrier it was conversing with asks it to not mention it again.]]
--> [[spoiler:'''Ta-class''': "But we haven't gotten an equipment overhaul in years. Not ever since our last encounter against the Demon Angel. And we saw how well that ''went''."]]
--> [[spoiler:'''Wo-class''': "Remind me not of such times"]]
* NotTheIntendedUse: During Operation South Town, [[spoiler:Deimos' Reverse Psi Emitter and Kane's [=SSP=] rounds were originally meant to keep Abyssals away, and to defeat those that managed to brave the effects of the [=RPE=], respectively. They work just as well against actual ship girls due to the presence of Smartsteel.]]
* NotSoDifferent:
** For all Sanford's beef with Damon's attitude and behaviour, he too can get awfully disrespectful and snippy with others, even nominally allied generals.
** A number of the ship girls think themselves superior to baseline mankind. Physically? Definitely. But morally, they can be as irrational, petty and spiteful as any muggle.
** The [[spoiler:anti-Blackwood faction]] is as willing to use AnOfferYouCantRefuse, IHaveYourWife and YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness as the one they're opposing.
** Quite disturbingly so for the Abyssals, as fitting their being the EvilCounterpartRace to the shipgirls. Chapter 303 shows the Ta-class Battleship absorbing steel chunks to repair her injuries, resupplying herself with fuel and ammo that is implied to be similar to the resources shipgirls require. All while holding a civil conversation with the Wo-class Carrier as they discuss the battle that had just ended and their next step in the war. The Abyssals communicate among themselves much like shipgirls or military personnel, much like how ''normal beings would''.
* NotWhatISignedOnFor: In chapter 18, this is Murakumo's comedic reaction to having to take a helicopter.
* NotWithTheSafetyOnYouWont: Damon points this out to a hostile in chapter 38. He has to point this out to Tenryuu too in chapter 39.
* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: After [[spoiler:Damon's death]] in chapter 95, the dynamics of the fleet are completely upended, not least due to [[spoiler:Sanford, with his very different attitude and command style, needing to take over as the new admiral.]] Even after [[spoiler:Damon's resurrection]] comes to pass, too much has changed in the interim to return to the old days.
* NukeEm:
** In chapter 49 we learn that [[spoiler:the bomb Kongou tried to throw into the London sinkhole was a nuke, supposedly meant to cause London to cave in. Damon personally doubts the viability of the idea.]]
** In chapter 206, [[spoiler:The Feds nuke what's left of Baltimore after successfully evacuating Damon.]]
* OhCrap:
** In chapter 301, an injured Wo-Class looks up [[spoiler:to see a Teseo surface-to-surface cruise missile flying right down at her.]]
** In chapter 307, [[spoiler:!Samidare]] shows horror for the first time in what is probably very long both InUniverse and out after her opponent {{No Sell}}s her and says a certain phrase.
* OldMaster: Pope Julius IV. [[spoiler:The narration describes him to appear in his late fifties to early sixties, and before the Italian ship girls came along and joined, he was the last remaining member of the Catholic Church's Burial Agency.]]
* OlderThanTheyLook: invoked specifically in one incident: [[spoiler:when Asashio accidentally shoots an innocent but armed civilian during one operation, the civilian's wife starts to berate her, causing Kasumi to come to her sister's defense and eventually yell at the wife, telling her that she and her sisters have lost more friends and allies in war than the civilians have friends put together.]]
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** If Sanford loses his PsychoticSmirk, or worse, something has him seriously shaken up.
** Damon is notably lacking his usual aggressive tone when he visits his mother's grave.
** In chapter 74, Amatsukaze is dumbfounded by Shimakaze telling her not to get into a fight with some misogynistic scum.
** In chapter 189, normally cheerful Shiratsuyu hits RageBreakingPoint over her sisters' indecisiveness between Damon and Suzukaze.
** In chapter 204, Sazanami becomes unusually angry and doesn't drop a single meme when the topic of American museum ships comes up.
** In chapter 213, [[spoiler:!Samidare]] loses her cool at a certain "cataclysmic sight".
** In chapter 228, the magnitude of [[spoiler:!Samidare's]] screwup is reflected in [[spoiler: Franklin]] being annoyed with her.
** In chapter 251, everybody is stunned into silence by Murasame calling [[spoiler:!Samidare]] a whore.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: In chapter 276, Damon clears a houseful of gangsters by himself.
* OneBulletClips: In chapter 147 Suzuya wonders if she should bother reloading when her magazine still has some bullets left in it.
* OneHitPolykill: A frequent occurrence with the more powerful guns, along with the aforementioned aversion of ConcealmentEqualsCover.
* OneManArmy: Yuudachi becomes this during Operation Hammer Down [[spoiler:when she consciously triggers her Demon Angel form]].
** [[spoiler:in chapter 415, Jeannie also becomes this to defend against the Abyssals trying to force the fleet back to Louisiana, away from the Caribbean.]]
* OneSteveLimit: Averted on not one, but ''two'' occasions:
** There are two Benjamin's: Benjamin Yamamoto, Damon's best friend and the self-proclaimed descendant of the historic Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, and Benjamin Korotayev, the Controller of Chicago and one of Sanford's acquaintances and ex-special forces partner.
** A girl named Miyuki shows up who doesn't seem to have any link to the destroyer of the same name. [[spoiler:Subsequent events make this more unclear, but given the sheer mutation she's undergone by then, it's hard to tell anyway. Now a moot point after her apparent death in chapter 121.]]
* OnlyAFleshWound: Damon's reaction to getting shot in the shoulder in chapter 8.
* OurMonstersAreWeird: [[spoiler:the mutated monsters that Damon encounters in Baltimore.]]
* OutDamnedSpot: In chapter 134, Hiyou reflects that her military career means she'll never fully be able to get back to being a luxury liner. Made particularly explicit by a similar allusion to how no amount of water can wash out the traces.
* OutOfFocus:
** Discussed in chapter 112, where Iku notes that she got less attention as the fleet expanded.
** To a lesser extent, Fubuki. She's the only starter ship girl who hasn't even been mentioned or seen in the story thus far. [[spoiler:'''A''' Fubuki appears eventually, but not [=KanColle=]'s.]]
* OutOfGenreExperience: [[spoiler:Suzukaze's Voyage]] has a tone more like horror than the normal action-adventure.
* PaintingTheMedium:
** in chapter 228, the text starts turning into X, Y and Z as [[spoiler:Damon gets revived and is kicked out of Franklin's dreamworld.]]
*** as a matter of fact, [[spoiler:starting with Suzukaze, the narration gets filled with X's, Y'z, and Z's to indicate the progression of corruption in her systems. This later spreads to Samidare, and as mentioned above, Damon gets a glimpse of it too.]]
** starting in chapter 306, Samidare's dialogue appears visibly tampered with and markedly different from the default font that the rest of the narration is written in. [[spoiler:This font is called Zalgo text, and it is meant to portray the effect of Samidare's trauma on her speech.]]
*** and when [[spoiler:Suzukaze turns into her demon angel form a second time after finding Samidare dead at Houston, her own dialogue becomes infected with Zalgo text, albeit looking more disturbed and harder to read than Samidare's.]]
*** [[spoiler:with chapter 372, Shigure's last bits of dialogue are also written in Zalgo font to represent the fact that her own demon angel form is emerging.]]
* ParryingBullets: In chapter 41 [[spoiler:an enemy Royal Navy ship girl]] cuts Amatsukaze's shells in two with a sword. This is a common skill that ship girls demonstrate.
* PastLifeMemories: played straight in the story. The ship girls are all explicitly loaded with ''all known historical data and information'' of the Pacific War, so not only do they know the extents of their battles and their own fates, but they know everyone else's as well. This war knowledge also includes the American ships who have attacked and sunk them, to the point where somehow, the Japanese ship girls ''instantly recognize'' [[spoiler:Iowa, Wisconsin, Yorktown, and Enterprise]] when they meet in the story even though they'd never met as ship girls.
* PerspectiveFlip: chapter 303 opens from the perspective of the Abyssals as the Ta-class Battleship and the Wo-class Carrier discuss future plans after the failure of their opening attack on [[spoiler:Italy]].
** the above mentioned instance is just one of many such cases of perspective flips that the author employs in the story to depict the activities of other characters and factions that are not the Combined Fleet or Damon or their close associates. Really the only major organization/characters who have not yet had a dedicated segment of narration to themselves are the Inner Circle and their leaders.
* PhlebotinumRebel: [[spoiler:Darkwater-possessed Suzukaze]] is defeated by [[spoiler:Samidare, who the former had empowered in the hopes of creating an ally.]]
* PlayingWithFire:
** Amatsukaze's Ignition Glove lets her create flames or FlamingSword and use ElementalPunch.
** [[spoiler:Kongou's Burning Love]] is now a LiteralMetaphor.
** Hibiki's "Phoenix" lets her fire incendiary rounds that stick to their victims napalm-style and can grant this buff to friendlies.
** Kawakaze's Firewater Protocol can generate flames remotely via pyrokinesis and, like Amatsukaze's Ignition Glove, let her use ElementalPunch (with kicks as well).
** [[spoiler:Suzukaze, after she becomes lost. When she arrives in Houston, the city eventually becomes swallowed by silent black flames.]]
** [[spoiler:Losira's Hellflower capabilities. First demonstrated in Damon's initial dreamworld memories, and further demonstrated when Losira actually shows up in Baltimore.]]
** [[spoiler:Damon's Yellow Reality Cancel gives him access to yellow flames that were seen throughout mentions of his dreamworld.]]
** Kagerou can now release a heat wave from her body [[spoiler:as a result of her interaction with Damon's YRC]] that will burn human tissue.
* PleaseKillMeIfItSatisfiesYou:
** At the end of chapter 33, after an unsatisfactory discussion with Murakumo over whether he's no better than a slavedriver, Damon points out a nearby cleaver and tells her that he's going to sleep and she can do what she wants to him.
** In chapter 44, he similarly offers Shiranui a gun when she doesn't want him to bring a repairing Kagerou along.
** In chapter 82 it becomes Takao's turn to get the offer.
** In chapter 107 [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] tells [[spoiler:Shigure]] that if she wants to defend Damon so badly, she should just kill her like she wanted back in Charlotte.
* PoirotSpeak:
** Khal occasionally lapses into his native German.
** Araki slips into Japanese when his tenuous grasp on English fails him.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain:
** The Atlantan faction was founded by a bunch of slaving white supremacists.
** Damon and co. run into an awful lot of misogynistic scum who can't keep the lust out of their face and words.
* PopculturalOsmosisFailure: A number of references go right over Retia's head.
* PostCyberpunk: initially averted and more CyberPunk, as the story begins in a world devastated by a nuclear World War III, and governments around the world, at least in North America and Europe, are not friendly to their own people and are sometimes up to no good. But the more the story progresses, [[spoiler:particularly with the downfall of Tawney Blackwood in chapter 250]], the story becomes more this, with governments becoming reformed (usually through political upheavals) and acting more in the interests of their people or having generally better intentions than before. Add to this the concept of "ship girls", highly advanced battle androids that act virtually the same as human beings and have the power to fight at sea, and all the technological gadgets and vehicles that Lukenstor cooks up for the main character and the fleet.
* PostModernMagik: The whole shipgirl thing, of course, but without giving away identity-spoiling details, {{Power Armor}}ed {{Mage Marksm|an}}en and cyborg sorceresses among others also eventually show up.
* PosthumousCharacter:
** Despite having died in the backstory, Damon's father Deimos keeps having an impact on the present day.
** [[spoiler:and now with the chapters detailing Operation Sandblast, Damon's uncle and Losira's brother, Hank, is heavily implied to be involved with the launching of the nuclear missiles that kickstarted the nuclear World War III.]]
* PostVictoryCollapse:
** In chapter 195, [[spoiler:Kaga]] experiences this after killing [[spoiler:the Re-class.]]
** [[spoiler:Damon does this too after finally finishing Blackwood off.]]
* PoweredArmor: [[spoiler:The Inner Circle]] has been working on powered exosuits, and Sanford and co. discover to their horror, upon recovering a few pristine sets of these things, that they are made out of Smartsteel, the same material that ship girls are made from. Worse, it's not just any Smartsteel, it's Smartsteel of an ACTIVATED ship girl. Who knows just how many girls were recycled into these exosuits? When we finally get to see one in action, it turns out to be well worth the cost, with {{Hand Cannon}}s powerful enough to literally stop a charging [[spoiler:Re-class]] and punching hard enough to seriously hurt a battleship-class girl.
** and later on, [[spoiler:Damon obtains an upgrade for his exosuit, called [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Kinetic Armor]], which covers his whole body except for his head with kinetic energy that repels and destroys incoming bullets the instant they touch it.]]
* PowerGivesYouWings: [[spoiler:Samidare and Kawakaze have both grown wings of energy thanks to their protocols.]]
* PowerMakesYourHairGrow: [[spoiler:played with in Ushio's case, whose YRC abilities include being able to serve as a vessel in which Losira can materialize outside Damon's dreamworld and exist in the real world. The way others can tell Losira is occupying Ushio is through her hair, since Ushio's hair grows out to mimic Losira's.]]
* PraetorianGuard: The Secret Service are more or less acting as one for Blackwood.
* PreClimaxClimax: In chapter 289, the narration cuts out just as [[spoiler:Damon and Shigure have at it in the base bathhouse before going on the mission to find Sandman and !Samidare, which they may not live through. This applies also for all the other times Damon sleeps with several of his destroyers, who include Murakumo, Samidare, Umikaze, and Kawakaze as of chapter 375.]]
** [[spoiler:heavily subverted in chapter 391 - when he and a part of the fleet reach Moscow, Damon catches Kawakaze redhanded in the act with the Russian spy Ramsay.]]
* PreMortemOneLiner: Asashimo delivers one of these when she slays an enemy Tsu-Class in chapter 301.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors: Atlanta employs a lot of these, including members of [[BlandNameProduct Whitewater]]. They're amoral but professional, which is more than can be said for the other ruffians in Atlantan service.
** and later on, one of the fleet's operations requires them to put down an insurrection caused by mercenaries of a PMC called Whitewater who break away from the United States and attempt to forge their own territory in the Southwest.
* PsychoticSmirk:
** This is Sanford's default expression. It takes a lot to have him drop it.
** President Blackwood's smile is described as making him look like an evil mastermind.
* PuppetKing: Pope Julius IV, the current Pope in the year 2029, freely reveals that the Council of Cardinals, a council that is ordinarily meant to be elected by a newly instated pope as his primary group of advisors, instead put him on the papacy after Benedict XVI's resignation with the intention of controlling him like a puppet Pope.
* ThePurge: From Chapter 114, we learn that there was mass emigration from Russia to the US to escape postwar purges.
* PyrrhicVictory:
** Operation Little Rock. [[spoiler:The last of the Coalition ship girls are liberated and the city's Controller is assassinated, but the fleet's admiral is killed in action.]]
** Operation Dualsight. [[spoiler:Sanford's team of ground-pounders get the info they need out of Ken Simpson and make a safe getaway, but things aren't so peachy with the fleet's op to secure 3 freighters of resources. The freighters are eventually captured and some Demons are killed, but due to the fleet being ambushed by a whole fuck-ton of Abyssal destroyers, and the appearance of the '''Re-class''' of all things (who [=REKTS=] every single ship girl who tries to take her on), the casualty list is massive. With so many dead and injured, 83% of the resources gained in this op have to be used to rebuild and repair the fleet, leaving only a net gain of 17% of the total take, and leaving the team only that much with which to perform Kai upgrades. Furthermore, not only has Shoukaku been captured by the Abyssals ''again'', Re-class somehow SURVIVES the [[KillSat HAVOC]] strike.]]
* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: What happened to [[spoiler:Baltimore]].
* RageBreakingPoint:
** In chapter 188, after a long bout of Takao's bitter sniping at Akagi culminates in making a crack about [[spoiler:not everyone the latter kills coming back to life to forgive her]], Kaga snaps and does a NeckLift on the former, followed by a WhatTheHellHero TheReasonYouSuckSpeech.
** Chapter 313 has three in succession, first from [[spoiler:the wife of a civilian Asashio mistook as hostile and shot]], which prompted Kasumi to give a ShutUpKirk speech, and that in turn leads to Arashio punching her through multiple walls.
** Damon has one of his own [[spoiler:during Operation Goldmine, when he's dealing with the multiple effects of Samidare's rampant protocol - at one point he even yells at Samidare,]]
--> [[spoiler:Damon: GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!]]
* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: subverted, due to the fact that the ship girls in the story generally have subdued personality quirks across the board. Still, they keep enough of their more unique personality traits to be considered as such, especially considering that the fleet is literally an entire company of ship girls with no rigidly enforced substructures and squadrons.
* {{Ranger}}: Chapter 289 reveals that Whitewater is currently led by a former captain from them, which has given the rest of the 75th a personal stake in bringing the mercs to heel.
* RantInducingSlight:
** The aforementioned BeingHumanSucks rant from Damon in chapter 8.
** In chapter 29, Kaga gives Haruna and Shoukaku some stern words over how quick they are to get over the War.
** In chapter 41, Haruna flips her shit when Zuikaku starts acting out about the seeming worthlessness of the fight.
* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Several of the ship girls experienced this at the hands of their captors.
* RareGuns: naturally a few examples, in a story full of all kinds of guns.
** Ryuujou at one point wields the [[http://sniperrifle.wikia.com/wiki/AWC_G2 AWC G-2]], an American semi-automatic sniper rifle, of which only less than a hundred were ever manufactured.
** The German President-Chancellor, Retia Wedekind, carries a [[HandCannon fifty-caliber Luger pistol]] as her sidearm.
** Samidare and Suzukaze end up receiving actual Japanese Type-38 and Type-99 battle rifles, respectively, as they had apparently been brought to American after World War II as keepsakes from the war by returning American GI's who fought the Japanese in the Pacific theater and sat for some eighty years in private gun collections before being eventually given to the two destroyers.
** [[spoiler:Novgorod, a Russian ship girl dating back even before World War I, keeps an old Russian Nagant M-1895 that was standard-issue during her time as an active warship.]]
* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
** The ship girls who show up in the beginning chapters of the story after Murakumo until the end of the first Atlanta arc - Amatsukaze, Mutsu, Iku, Shimakaze, and Kaga - were chosen because of the author's attendance of a Kantai Collection panel at Anime Expo 2014 titled "Can I Kantai? You Too Can Teitoku", at which he asked the panel speakers who their favorite Kantai characters were in order to select which ship girls would show up in the early part of the story.
** The author went to go study abroad in Japan (Hirakata City, Osaka) during the spring semester of 2015 as part of his university requirement to obtain a Japanese minor degree, and he continued writing during his studies there. One day, he found a local Tsutaya video bookstore while biking back to his host family's house, and he found a small dispenser that sold little [[http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pE4AAOSw7hRWQaCp/s-l400.jpg Kantai Collection keychains]] and bought a few, receiving Inazuma, Yayoi, and Naka - hence why Inazuma (and the rest of the Akatsuki-Class) show up in chapter 38, Mutsuki, Satsuki, and Kikuzuki in chapter 66 (the author wasn't the biggest fan of Yayoi and thus decided to put in her sisters instead), and Naka and Jintsuu, also in chapter 66.
** The implementation of new ship girls in the game oftentimes means unexpected twists in the story's plot, as seen below in RippedFromTheHeadlines. Several of the below-mentioned entries have had dramatic impacts on the story's direction.
** The digression about discrimination against and relocation of Japanese Americans in World War II that started in chapter 321 was due to the author spending a semester working on the topic for his history major.
* RealityEnsues:
** The whole thing about using ship girls as infantry. Really, when you have ImmuneToBullets {{Super Soldier}}s with SuperStrength, [[NotTheIntendedUse Intended Use]] or not, who ''isn't'' going to be using them in land warfare?
** In chapter 31, Sanford explains at length to the ship girls about how trying to uplift the Chicago poor by just having the rich give money away won't work.
** In chapter 34, it's mentioned that staying underground without sunlight means Vitamin D supplements are needed.
** In chapter 42, once Shiranui loses the element of surprise, [[spoiler:Kongou]] clearly has the upper hand. In a fair fight, a destroyer can't beat a battleship, righteous anger or no.
** In chapter 47, though she makes a valiant attempt, [[spoiler:Yuudachi gets killed]] after being double-teamed by [[spoiler:HMS ''Swordfish'' and ''Javelin'']].
** In chapter 61, Damon tells Kongou that putting all of her heart into doing something won't help make it good if she doesn't actually know how to do it right.
** In chapter 119, Kitakami recalls that she had been warned against returning to the Boise CCPL post because the ship girls' slowed aging might have led to inconvenient questions.
** Just because you TookALevelInKindness doesn't mean people forget how you used to be. Not even Furutaka herself can forget.
** Grudges, resentment and trauma doesn't just go away. Without proper psychological help, some of the girls still struggle with their PastLifeMemories. For a few, like Musashi, the hatred of Americans has actually grown since their reincarnation.
** In chapter 222, Damon tells Suzukaze that for all his laxness regarding discipline, he's not going to go so far as to try and appease or mollycoddle her given how she's been consistently an arse to him for little to no reason.
** In chapter 264, Shiratsuyu explains this aspect of her [[spoiler:[[Analysis/ShockAndAwe electricity powers]]]].
** ParryingBullets is cool and all, but when there are innocent bystanders around, ricochets can be a problem.
** "Subcapital ship can't beat capital" is reiterated again in chapter 298. [[spoiler:Suzuya]] may be a heavy cruiser and [[spoiler:even have Yellow Reality Cancel powers]] but she can't overpower [[spoiler:Enterprise]], a carrier.
*** This is most likely because Suzuya's [[spoiler:YRC power is her scythe. She left her scythe behind in Simmons Tower chasing after Imwalle after he tried escaping her by jumping out with a parachute, so without it, Suzuya was probably no stronger than she normally is without YRC, meaning that Enterprise could overpower her easily just because of her superiority as a capital ship.]]
** Collateral damage concerns means the girls sometimes can't use their most powerful attacks, like in [[spoiler:Italy]] where the potential political issues of missing and hitting [[spoiler:foreign soil]] means the girls with Yamato Cannons can't use them as an opening salvo against the Abyssals.
* RealityIsOutToLunch: The state of [[spoiler:Houston]] as of chapter 212, most visibly in the massive pillar of black flame orbited by skyscrapers.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: In chapter 150, [[spoiler:Kisaragi tells Murasame]] that the latter is a disappointment for wallowing in her problems and pretending that she's moved on when all she's been doing is running away from them.
* RedEyesTakeWarning:
** The eyes of certain ship girls turn red when they activate their {{Super Mode}}s.
** This is one of the external signs of [[spoiler:Kaga and Shoukaku's partial Abyssalization.]]
* RedHerring: Part of chapter 247 sets up Damon's concern that [[spoiler:the American shipgirls]], if allowed to go on a mission unsupervised, will do something under [[spoiler:Sandman/Franklin's]] orders that will have negative consequences for him and his. Without going into even more spoilers, that's not the angle that the trouble ends up coming from.
* RedOniBlueOni: all of the usual pairings for this in the game carry over into the story, but special mention goes to the Shiratsuyu-Class, who can basically be divided into such: Shiratsuyu, Murasame, Yuudachi, Kawakaze, and Suzukaze are the Red Onis, and Shigure, Harusame, Samidare, Umikaze, and Yamakaze are the blue onis.
* ReferenceOverdosed: Just look at the [[ShoutOut/AmbienceAFleetSymphony shout out page]], for crying out loud!
* TheReliableOne: Taihou, refusing to let her lack of luck in her previous life get her down, turned herself into the unofficial caretaker of the girls held in Charlotte.
* ReluctantWarrior: Shigure doesn't like having to fight and kill. But don't push her or give her reason to think you're an AssholeVictim, lest she change her mind with gruesome results. Murasame feels the same way.
* TheRemnant: [[spoiler:"The Inner Circle" was formed by remnants from the group "Advanced Administration of the Holy War", which dissolved following the Great War.]]
* RemovableTurretGun: invoked in chapter 315, when [[spoiler:Iris and New Jersey]] find that there is no more ammunition in the mounted side-door machine guns, the battleships simply tear the turrets out and leave them behind to assume their positions for themselves.
* ReplacementGoldfish: In chapter 135, Hatsuyuki recalls that her head developer modelled her appearance after TheLostLenore.
* RequiredSecondaryPowers:
** Iku and Imuya's InvisibilityCloak extends to their weapons as well.
** In chapter 63, Damon notes that even though the radiation's gone, no one's going to be staying in the Virginia boondocks they're passing through as it would be prohibitively difficult to get food and supplies.
** Sendai has a noise suppression system along with her cloaking. Presumably, the latter doesn't muffle any sounds she might make. Though chapter 98 reveals that the cloak does hide any wake she creates.
** Unlike Sendai's, in chapter 97 the Banshee's cloaking system is explicitly said to muffle sound too.
** The [[spoiler:Inner Circle]] exosuits mentioned in chapter 107 have two major flaws. Firstly, they need an already super strong user lest the user be crushed using them, similar to ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'''s MJOLNIR. Secondly, they are extremely expensive to make.
** In chapter 284, Eagle mentions that while it is theoretically possible to mount cannons on destroyers' legs, recoil, target acquisition and body kinesthetic issues make doing so unwise.
* ResignationsNotAccepted: In chapter 231, when a certain character walks away from the {{Jerkass}}es the people she's been working with reveal themselves to have been all along, one of said people tries shooting her InTheBack.
* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: In chapter 53 we learn that the people rebelling against the Feds in New Jersey did a bad, '''bad''' thing. Though few of the other dissident groups fighting the Feds have much cleaner hands.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: The question of where the ship girl the machine ends and the ship girl the human begins is a recurring issue no one's entirely able to answer.
* RightHandVersusLeftHand: We eventually learn that [[spoiler:there were secret divisions within the F.L.E.E.T. Project, such that developers within each cell did not know about the others.]]
* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: In chapter 102 a Wo-class tells Shoukaku that it considers its kind a superior race and therefore more worthy of Earth.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines:
** [[spoiler:Graf Zeppelin]], who first appeared in the Fall 2015 Event, shows up in chapter 144.
** [[spoiler:Warspite (canon)]], who was introduced in chapter 249, is put into the story a week after her implementation.
** Implied in chapter 289, with the [[spoiler:President giving us this line: "...France, huh..."]]
*** This comes to pass in Chapter 310, with [[spoiler:the ''President of '''France''' '' revealed as the French shipgirl Commandant Teste. As a major shock to readers, it was simultaneously revealed that she lives together with the Abysallised-version of herself.[[note]] Seaplane Tender Princess[[/note]]]]
** [[spoiler:Yamakaze,]] introduced in chapter 290, ''the next day after her implementation''.
** [[spoiler:Saratoga,]] introduced in chapter 294, also a week after her implementation.
* TheRival: subverted to the point of aversion: rivalries among the ship girls, if they even exist, never evolve beyond past friendly ones. Part of the reason for this is because of the one rule in the fleet that Damon strictly enforces, and that is making sure that everyone gets along to prevent any opportunity for in-fleet conflict.
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge:
** In chapter 121, [[spoiler:Suzukaze goes on one of these after Tatsuya is wounded by Federal troops while trying to hide from them and later expires from his injuries, and when the Feds track Suzukaze back to the siblings' shack and torch it with Miyuki still inside. This activates her Darkwater Protocol.]]
** In chapter 296, [[spoiler:Suzuya goes after the Whitewater soldiers with a vengeance, having had certain '''bad''' things happen to her in that particular city.]]
* RobotWar: seeing that both ship girls and Abyssals are in fact androids - ''extremely'' humanized androids - technically the conflict between the ship girls and the Abyssals is this, in the eyes of the story.
* RocketTagGameplay: subverted heavily in the story, and part of this is explained with the made-up mechanics in chapter 169, where health pools are expanded greatly and stats much more adequately describe a ship girl's full combat abilities. For the most part, even destroyers are hardy and tough to kill; there ''are'' technically ways to one-shot ship girls, but that would have to involve weapons that are beyond even what ship girls are usually capable of wielding or gimmick attacks. However, this is only for when ship girls get attacked - it would seem that the Abyssals have a much easier time getting ripped to shreds at the hands of the ship girls, and the Abyssal destroyers get the worst shaft of the situation, as they are almost always taken out by destroyer cannons in one shot; even the splash damage from destroyer shells is enough to kill them.
* RunningGag: Destroyer dogpiles. Considering how the past few times it happened, Damon always ends up with a brand new injury (dislocated shoulder, broken wrist, broken ''ribs'' etc.), his reaction is understandable.
-->'''Shiratsuyu:''' "Dogpile him!"
-->'''Damon:''' "No, no, oh God, no- "
* SailorEarth: [[spoiler:the author has taken many liberties to include ship girls who do not exist in the browser game for the sake of having an international presence of ship girls. Given the ongoing mysteries surrounding the F.L.E.E.T. Project and all its sub-divisions, it's very easy for the author to suddenly put into place another fleet of ship girls wherever he sees fit in the story.]]
* SanitySlippage: [[spoiler:Shigure suffers this, starting from her class's revelation of their true identities. She finds out more details about her class in the old underground Seal Team Six base in San Pedro, and it gets worse and worse until she finally succumbs to her own demon angel form.]]
* SarcasmFailure: In chapter 192, an approaching figure is so terrifying even Sazanami can't crack a joke in the situation.
* SecondHourSuperpower: [[spoiler:Damon's Yellow Reality Cancel; the first time he explicitly uses it under his own control is two hundred and fifty chapters into the story.]]
* SceneryGorn: The world is in ruins and the narration doesn't hesitate to remind you of it.
* SceneryPorn: Each time Damon's dreamscape is shown. [[spoiler:Except when it ''[[NightmareFuel doesn't]]'' ]]
* SchoolSwimsuit: somewhat justified in the story, as the swimsuits are the main reason why the submarines are able to Cloak. It still doesn't prevent Damon from lampshading why it ''had'' to be school swimsuits that did this.
* ScopeSnipe: In chapter 147 [[spoiler:Graf Zeppelin]] does this to a NDP sniper.
** in chapter 381, this happens to Taihou, whose scope for her sniper rifle gets ruined by getting sniped by another sniper.
* ScratchDamage: perhaps the occasion of a ship girl getting shot by a gun can count as this. A ship girl shot by a gun will still feel pain from a gunshot (albeit only a little), but usually, so long as it doesn't strike them in somewhere sensitive like the eyes, getting hit by a bullet is little more than getting a pebble thrown at them. Though, the story takes the time to make the detail that some ship girls who've had historically very little armor, like Yuubari, feel markedly more pain from gunshots.
* ScreamDiscretionShot: In chapter 77, the last thing said onscreen about the fate of [[spoiler:the premier of Charlotte]] at the vengeful hands of the Shiratsuyu-class girls is that she screamed. Subverted in the next chapter, where we learn what happened.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: The Typewriters of Inner Chicago are a gang of {{Spoiled Brat}}s who have evaded justice because their rich parents pay off the police.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere:
** In chapter 105, [[spoiler:Suzukaze, driven to tears by Murasame's rebuff, decides that if the latter really is so ashamed of her, then she'll just leave.]]
** In chapter 155, a certain enemy, seeing that a third Protocol-equipped destroyer has joined the two already fighting it, decides discretion is the better part of valour.
* SecretCircleOfSecrets: [[spoiler:subverted; the Green Grass society is this, but apparently they are not villainous.]]
* SeeTheWhitesOfTheirEyes: In chapter 39, Sanford says that someone he spoke to said that the Atlantans manning the USS ''John Paul Jones'' were idiots because they failed to capitalize on the range advantage that the ship's armaments had over whatever Mobile could throw at it. The Tomahawk cruise missiles, in particular, could've been launched from well outside the engagement range of any of the defenses. They instead launched way too close.
* SelfDeprecation:
** In chapter 129, Kinugasa's comments on Damon in her fleet log reflect the issues and complaints that readers had about Damon in general.
** In chapter 167, the author acknowledges that this is the wrong place if you're looking for high literature.
* SheIsAllGrownUp: [[spoiler:at one point, Damon meets a teenage version of his cousin Jeannie while inside his dreamworld.]]
* ShellShockedVeteran: Damon himself is one, having fought in the Battle of Baltimore during the Border Wars.
** a few ship girls who have bad times dealing with their memories as warships (or what has happened to them as ship girls) may count as this, albeit subverted because they can handle their memories just fine during times when they need to and only lapse into their shell shock whenever they can afford to.
* ShootTheHostage: In chapter 148, a mook tries to shoot Wakaba through the guy she's using as a meatshield.
* ShoutOut: [[ShoutOut/AmbienceAFleetSymphony Now has its own page.]]
* ShutUpHannibal: In chapter 12 Chad tells a trio of mooks trying to use IHaveAFamily that they have no right to ask for mercy after [[spoiler:raping his girlfriend.]]
* SiblingYinYang: Chitose has saintly patience. Chiyoda... not so much.
* TheSiege: In chapter 54, Damon and co. have to defend the labs where certain ship girls are undergoing surgery.
** The Battle of Baltimore, with 5,300 Feds, Mercs and Damon against 10,400 bandits and southerners. The number of survivors can be counted in the ''single-digits''.
* SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids: In chapter 82, Arrechea tells Damon that he's gravely mistaken to think that there's any place for heroism in the world.
* SkywardScream: Damon has such a moment at the end of chapter 18 when [[spoiler:Baxter Harrison makes off with Kaga.]]
* SlasherSmile: Chapter 297. [[spoiler:As Suzuya meets Jared Imwalle, one of her rapists during her stay at Little Rock. With her scythe deployed. And Imwalle having expended his EMP only to find that it didn't work on any of the shipgirls.]]
-->[[spoiler:Suzuya: "Start squealin' like a bitch for me, you little shit."]]
* SlaveMooks: [[spoiler:The Inner Circle's Agents]] have had their brains modified to unquestioningly obey orders.
* SmugSuper: Akebono takes a lot of pride in her ship girl superiority over baseline humans. Hyuuga does too, but to a lesser extent.
* SoftWater: Averted in chapter 121, where the water [[spoiler:being controlled by Suzukaze]] hits hard enough to kill.
* SoreLoser: Discussed in chapter 270. When an American asks Kikuzuki why she can't let go of her hatred of Americans, she retorts that it's easy for Americans to be magnanimous in victory, but they probably wouldn't feel the same way if they had somehow lost the war. Considering works like ''Film/RedDawn1984'' that glorify LaResistance fighting on in the face of InvadedStatesOfAmerica, it's hardly an unfounded complaint.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: this story and author favors the name "Abyssals" for the standard antagonists of Kantai Collection.
* SpellMyNameWithAThe: [[spoiler:the Abyssal.]]
* SplitPersonalityTakeover: Hibiki's "Phoenix" persona, which takes over at critical moments.
* SpontaneousWeaponCreation: [[spoiler:many ship girls gain this ability as a result of their YRC contracts they form with Damon.]]
** [[spoiler:Jeannie is able to create "Keys", her red and black swords that she creates inside Silva Gelida, which she uses as her signature weapons when she is in her Vatista Install.]]
* TheSquad: the new Seal Team Six that deploys during Operation Sandblast.
** Sanford is TheLeader.
** Chuck is a FriendlySniper and TheBigGuy.
** Lauren is TheSquadette and ThePointMan.
** Irene is TheQuietOne and also the ColdSniper, though she's actually pretty friendly and is only considered cold because of her dominating trait of being extremely quiet [[spoiler:due to her perceived muteness.]]
** [[spoiler:Jeannie]] is the NewMeat - but with the way she fights, she'll have you fooled that she's actually TheVeteran.
* SquishyWizard: Yuubari has capital-tier sensors, reflexes and processing power, but is even more fragile than most other light cruisers.
* StabTheScorpion: Chapter 115 ends on a cliffhanger with [[spoiler:Tatsuya reaching for his knife over the unconscious, seemingly dead Suzukaze shortly after it's revealed that he's been carving up corpses for food.]] The next chapter reveals that he didn't do anything to her.
* StarterEquipment: subverted. For ship girls, Damon does indeed "start" with a starter ship in Murakumo, but he finds the rest of the starter ship girls steadily over time (except for poor Fubuki, who hasn't even been mentioned save for whenever the narration describes Murakumo, Shirayuki, and Hatsuyuki as a class). For equipment, the vast majority of ship girls are described only to have their destroyer cannons as their default equipment, with only a few ship girls having anything more than that (like torpedo launchers, for example).
* SteelEarDrums: like ConcealmentEqualsCover above, the story strives to avert this at all times. One good example is found in chapter 293, when [[spoiler:Damon fires a Desert Eagle, a particularly loud handgun thanks to its large cartridge, in front of Sanford's face off to his right, deafening him significantly.]]
* StepfordSmiler:
** Inazuma has a lot of bitterness brewing under her cute personality.
** Goya's cheerful personality hides her disappointment over the use of kaiten and how the sinking of USS ''Indianapolis'' came only after she had delivered the atom bomb parts.
* SticksToTheBack: Invoked in chapter 140. The ship girls' gearboxes have been coated with special gels that allow their guns to stick.
* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: in chapter 238, [[spoiler:President Blackwood declares to the Shiratsuyu-Class, "you may believe that you are about to fight a madman, but instead, you may find a god..." A dozen chapters later, during Damon's and Blackwood's fight to the death, Damon, when drawing out his YRC for the first time, utters:]]
--> Damon: [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/EiyuuSenkiTheWorldConquest "I am the God-slaying blade..."]]]]
* StuffBlowingUp: in a story about ship girls armed with cannons, it would be a little worrying if the story didn't have this.
* SuicideAttack: in chapter 383, Abyssals attack the ship girls [[spoiler:by charging straight into them with armed Nova Gas canisters, which ends up hitting Yuudachi, but this is because Yuudachi herself charged straight into the Ri-Class who was holding it with enough force to puncture the canister and cause the gas to leak so that Shimakaze, who was injured shortly before, won't suffer the effects right after losing her eyesight.]]
* SuperMode: many of the ship girls' protocols, like the Nightmare Protocol.
* SuperSenses:
** Damon has innate night vision.
** Iku can see much farther than a normal human.
** Damon once worked with a guy who could see radiation.
* SuperSoldier:
** The F.L.E.E.T. Project that created the ship girls. While they're not designed to fight as regular infantry (Damon only has them perform anti-infantry roles because the first couple such girls he finds don't have their rigging with them, and because most of the fighting is on land, where their mobility drops like a rock if they deployed their ship armaments), they can wield small arms with a good degree of proficiency. The ship armaments are more suited to the usual anti-ship combat, as well as anti-vehicle/demolition duty. [[spoiler:Chapter 56 reveals that a second phase was started, one that would have made the ship girls look weak. Or it would have if the sole subject thus far didn't escape and destroy the plans. Chapter 219 further reveals that F.L.E.E.T. was actually the second generation of ship girls, with !Samidare apparently being the SoleSurvivor of a preceding one. Chapter 225 reveals that the first-gen Shiratsuyu-class girls were all impregnated and would eventually give birth to their second-gen offspring, [[DeathByChildbirth in such a way that the birthing process would kill off the first-gen girls.]] !Samidare is, of course, the only first-gen to survive the birth of her daughter/clone.]]
** The Genesis Thesis Project, intended to create a radiation-resistant HumanSubspecies better able to survive in the irradiated postapocalyptic hellhole, [[spoiler:which Damon is the only surviving success of.]]
** In chapter 249, Blackwood reveals that [[spoiler:he intends to combine both the above; take the children of ship girls and put them through the Genesis Thesis Project, creating a personal army superior to either.]]
* SuperStrength: naturally, the ship girls, but also Damon with his mutated state.
* SuperToughness: Ship girls can take a lot more punishment than humans. Best demonstrated in chapter 26, where even a headshot with a rifle round against a destroyer is described as only as effective as hitting a human with a tennis ball. It takes [=RPGs=] or better anti-armour weapons to get anywhere fast. Even a soft target like the eye needs at the minimum SniperRifle rounds like .338 Lapua to damage.
* SurroundedByIdiots: All but one of the captured Whitewater mercenaries tries to hit on the shipgirls, prompting this reaction from the only one who doesn't.
--> '''Whitewater mercenary:''' Are ''you'' trying to get her number too? You're all fucking hopeless. Whitewater's fuckin' doomed to hell.
* SwipeYourBladeOff: ship girls who are armed with their own swords do this sometimes after a kill or after a battle is concluded.
* SwissArmyWeapon: [[spoiler:Mutsuki's YRC weapon can be considered as one. It has three forms: a bladed scythe that can cut through enemies, a blunt four-clover club that can electrocute enemies, and a sniper rifle that fires anti-materiel rounds.]]
* SwordDrag: [[spoiler:the mutants that show up in both Baltimore and Moscow that are described to have stakes for arms do this, being a {{Shoutout}} to the Gorefasts and Gorefiends from the VideoGame/KillingFloor games.]]
* TakeAMomentToCatchYourDeath: At the end of chapter 54, as the helicopters start flying away, Murakumo deactivates her Waterfall Shield... [[spoiler:and a bullet goes right through the chest of the boy sitting on her lap.]]
* TakeMeInstead: In chapter 307, [[spoiler: Samidare tries to offer this to her mother.]]
* TakeThat: At the end of chapter 146, where a {{Homage}} to [[Manga/{{Hellsing}} the "I like war" speech]] is made, [[spoiler:the Sheriff]] trails off and declares that "only [[spoiler:true Nazis]] who can't aim for shit", which was true of the original, "can talk like that anyway".
* TakeThatUs:
** In chapter 216, the superpowered fight sequences of the previous few chapters are scoffed at as "anime logic".
** In chapter 228, a character also finds the above events ridiculous.
* TakesOneToKillOne: Without heavy or naval weapons, only Smartsteel melee weapons can harm shipgirls or Abyssals, who are themselves made of Smartsteel.
* TakingTheBullet:
** [[spoiler:Damon does this twice: once to save Shoukaku from getting KilledOffForReal by Alastor Scott, and twice to save Kawakaze from suffering the loss of her arm at the hands of Demon Suzukaze by sacrificing his own.]]
** In chapter 305, Imuya stops two incoming torpedoes with one homing torpedo. She launches her one torp at an incoming torpedo and uses her body to take the hit from the second one.
** Chapter 315: [[spoiler: Iowa(Kancolle version)]] tanks a continuous burst of fire for Mogami from a Howitzer-mounted [[{{BFG}} M2-Browning machine gun]].
** in chapter 378, [[spoiler:Damon takes one to the nose for Naganami when an Agent tries to get a last-second shot with his Desert Eagle at the destroyer.]]
* TakingYouWithMe:
** In Chapter 103, an Abyssal tries this on Murasame, and fails due to outside intervention.
** Later, [[spoiler:Shoukaku]] tries it when a Wo-class and her cohorts demands her surrender. [[spoiler:It doesn't work, and leads to her capture anyway.]]
** [[spoiler:Aircraft Carrier Water Demon]] tries to do this to [[spoiler:Zuikaku]].
* TapOnTheHead: In chapter 7, Damon knocks out a bandit ringleader [[PistolWhipping with the butt of his pistol]] to the head.
* TearsOfBlood: [[spoiler:in chapter 378, when Kongou's squadron gets ambushed and overwhelmed by Agents, they're subjected to a gas attack that damages them quite severely, and part of the damage is portrayed through tears of blood.]]
* TechnicolorFire: [[spoiler:the fire users in the fleet have fire colors across the spectrum. Damon himself has yellow flames, coinciding with his Yellow Reality Cancel. Amatsukaze, Kagerou, and Kongou have realistic flame colors, Shigure has dark, bloody-red flames, Yuudachi has a slightly differently shaded yellow flame that more matches her own hair color, Samidare has blue flames, Umikaze has violet flames, Kawakaze has red flames, and Suzukaze, Ushio, Losira, and New Jersey all have black flames.]]
* TeethClenchedTeamwork: Damon and Sanford, though it's mainly one-sided from Damon, in that Damon hates Sanford's guts for multiple reasons, justified or not.
** [[spoiler:but as the story goes on and Sanford's roles within the F.L.E.E.T. Project are more and more explored, with unsavory details coming to light, Damon finds more and more reason to truly despise his godfather's guts. The breaking point comes when Damon first learns about the Moebius Program involving the Shiratsuyu-Class, and since then, it's quickly gotten to the point where Damon will willingly and unabashedly give Sanford a sucker punch here and there if the latter says or does something that Damon really doesn't like.]]
* TemptingFate: In chapter 7. "There's a possibility that we could get through here without any trouble, but-" Cue explosion, which gets a LampshadeHanging right after.
* ThatManIsDead: Chapter 162. [[spoiler:Aircraft Carrier Water Demon denies being Shoukaku.]]
* ThenLetMeBeEvil: Invoked by Damon in chapter 92, where he says that, if Akebono wants him to stop trying to be a hero... well, he'll give her just that.
* ThereAreTwoKindsOfPeopleInTheWorld: In chapter 38, Damon says that the two are those "who do their jobs bein' themselves" and those "who do their jobs bein' people they ain't".
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: In chapter 147, a grenade fired by Shiranui does a contact explosion on a NDP mook already dying a MultipleGunshotDeath.
* ThereWasADoor: When a ship girl charges a wall, the wall loses.
* ThirdPersonPerson: some ship girls who normally speak like this in the game now speak in regular first person in the story. The one persistent exception to this rule is Haruna, who faithfully retains her third-person manner of speech.
* ThisIsReality:
** In chapter 37, Damon and Benjamin bemoan the fact that they don't live in the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' world with the accompanying RegeneratingHealth perks.
** In chapter 108, Amatsukaze chides herself for having several thoughts seemingly out of a shoujo manga.
** In chapter 148, Benjamin is chided for thinking that, like a video game, there would be an incentive for completing secondary objectives.
** In chapter 241, [[spoiler:Ooi]] tells Damon he's not a harem protagonist.
** In chapter 278, Jeannie tells Damon that his life is not a DatingSim.
** In chapter 322, Damon tells Umikaze that [[spoiler:feelings alone probably won't allow him to wake Samidare back up, and that their world isn't a Shonen Jump publication.]]
* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: averted from the story; as mentioned above, due to the nature of ship girls in the story, there is at no point when a ship girl is deemed useless; the only way a ship girl cannot be a force to be reckoned with is if she herself does not want to be, and even if they don't want to, duty is usually a good enough reason to convince them to fight.
* ThoseWackyNazis: The reason why the fleet is going to Germany is to help with the resurgent Neo-Nazi problem. No longer content with the political process, they seek to reestablish the Reich by force. [[spoiler:And the Inner Circle is supporting them. To what end no one knows yet, but probably nothing good.]]
* TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain: In chapter 130, a mook Suzukaze had shot in the forehead is still somehow alive. She quickly rectifies that error.
* TookALevelInJerkass: In chapter 232, Damon notes that although the Savannah survivors weren't the friendliest the first time around, they got even more full of it the second time.
* TragicKeepsake: In chapter 295, [[spoiler:a National Guard is shot in the head by an enemy Super Cobra attack helicopter. Another soldier quickly rips off his dogtags before rushing to find cover from the helicopter.]]
* TraumaButton: the story concentrates on the ones that are produced within the events of the story itself as opposed to the ones caused by historical reasons. For a perfect example, see below:
* TraumaCongaLine: [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] goes through this starting from after Operation Dualsight. [[spoiler:She goes to rescue Murasame when Kisaragi turns violent only to be rebuffed, the last straw on an already tense relationship that causes her to flee the fleet. Neither Sanford nor Shigure are sympathetic and Sanford almost eagerly Unpersons her for not falling in line. When she reaches Atlantic City, she discovers a pair of young survivors, only for the two of them to die at Fed hands. When she links up with the Shakers from Ablett Village, it almost looks as though she's finally found a new home... Nope! The Colossus Reactor augmentation she picks up is revealed to be a bane rather than a boon when the healing it seemingly grants turns out to be nothing of the sort. This results in her being driven away from Ablett Village. This second rejection just compounds on the lingering effects from the first, which causes her to fall into a lifeless, violent funk. Her subsequent discovery that the purported ship girl in Quaker hands is not actually one, the slaughter of the Shakers by the Quakers, and having to bury the corpses of Barry, Baxster and Celsie all tear at her fraying psyche. Chapter 143 ends with the ominous message "END TRANSMISSION: SUZUKAZE'S VOYAGE", and in her next appearance in chapter 164, she's outright immolated by her own Darkwater Protocol.]]
* {{Troll}}:
** Tatsuta doesn't troll her sister Tenryuu as mercilessly as she does in other fanworks, but she likes to poke fun at her from time to time.
** Damon himself likes to tease his girls, having a little bit of fun at their expense and chagrin.
** Of all people, Nagato is this - to ''Damon'', of all people too. There's a bit of a RunningGag between the two that Nagato thinks Damon is gay (jokingly) because of their first encounter at Charlotte, and she's casually been spreading a small false rumor about it. That, and she's also been telling the destroyers that he ''prefers'' them...[[spoiler:which, given Damon's relationships with the destroyers, would actually be quite true.]]
* {{Tsundere}}: the Kantai characters who are infamous for their tsundere personalities are somewhat more complicated in the story, with Murakumo being the straightest example, at first hating Damon and then warming up to him as the story unfolds. Kasumi seems to simply hate Damon with none of her dere side, and Akebono's case is...complicated.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: the story starts in the year 2029.
* UnconventionalVehicleChase: in chapter 294, [[spoiler:the American ship girls]] chase a cargo train on horseback.
* UnderestimatingBadassery: Damon and co. thought [[spoiler:Little Rock, being the least obviously militarised of the Coalition's cities,]] would be a pushover, with horrible consequences.
* UndergroundCity: "New Chicago", built underneath the remains of Chicago.
* UngratefulBastard:
** While Suzukaze might have gotten a bit carried away during her rescue of [[spoiler:Murasame from Kisaragi]], the rescuee not only did not thank her for it, but in fact very harshly reprimanded her.
** In chapter 231, [[spoiler: the new Savannah camp survivors]] not only fail to thank Damon for saving them, they get mouthy and chase him away without any supplies for daring to defend himself when one of them tried to get physical.
* {{Unobtainium}}: Navitasium, a special mix of bauxite and Smartsteel involving an unknown catalyst that lets ship girls use special abilities.
* UnorthodoxReload: In chapter 164, Amagi reloads by catching a thrown magazine out of the air right into the slot.
* {{Unperson}}:
** The Battle of Baltimore was left out of official records by the Feds, leaving almost all the dead undocumented.
** In chapter 108, following [[spoiler:Suzukaze's dishonourable discharge from the fleet]], Sanford deletes all records of her and officially forbids any discussion of her existence.
* UnusualEuphemism:
** the term [[MythologyGag "night battle"]] gets used a few times at first during the first half of the story, and then when things start escalating between Damon and some of the ship girls, it naturally gets used more and more often.
** the author varies between terms like "fuel tanks", "chest armor", and "upper hull armor" to describe ship girls' breast sizes in narration.
* UnwantedHarem: One of the things from the game that gets deconstructed. Having to juggle the affections of so many girls turns out to be relationally and even physically hazardous for Damon, and all that's even before counting the superhuman factor. It demonstrates quite clearly why conventional militaries take anti-fraternisation regulations so seriously.
* UnwittingPawn: In the aftermath of Operation Orlando, [[spoiler:Damon and co. suspect that the ship girl-possessing Coalition factions are this to the Inner Circle, first having been told where to get them in the first place, and then sent Navitasium cubes loaded with Abyssal energy to use on their girls. They suspect that this will result in the hijacked ship girls tearing out each faction from within.]]
* VerbalTic: the story's dialogue heavily implies that ship girls actually enunciate their Japanese verbal tics in Japanese ''even when they're speaking English.'' So for Yuudachi, she says "poi" in English, Inazuma says "nanodesu" in English, and Iku says "nano" in English.
* VeteranUnit: [[spoiler:the American ship girls, in particular. Pretty much any group of ship girls who have been active and in service prior to the beginning of the story's events.]]
* ViceCity: Under Arrechea, Orlando has become little more than a drug manufacturing plant filled with junkies.
* VideoWills: [[spoiler:a twist on this trope: Shigure, who is lost in action during Operation South Town, doesn't actually leave behind a pre-recorded video for her sisters to see, but Jeannie creates an audio file by using both Shigure's personality codex and Haida's memories of Shigure's final moments to make it as if Shigure is addressing her sisters in regards to her own final moments.]]
* VillainExitStageLeft: [[spoiler:The Re-class]] has a habit of bugging out whenever a fight starts to turn against it.
* VillainousRescue: In chapters 213 and 312 (huh), [[spoiler:!Samidare]] intervenes against an out-of-control [[spoiler:Suzukaze]].
* VillainousValour:
** In chapter 164, we see NDP soldiers trying to drag their wounded out of the line of fire.
** Happens twice in chapter 325. One mook tries to pick up a grenade and throw it away from his comrades. Another tries to save a comrade who's been wounded by Taihou, even as the rest of their unit flees.
* ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption: [[spoiler:This turns out to be the case in Little Rock. Damon and co. thought that, since it was the least obviously militarised of the Coalition's cities, they could go in with minimal weapons, buy the ship girls held there, and get out peacefully. They even wanted to spare the leader, Alastor Scott, due to concerns that his death and damage to the city would ruin the agricultural supply Little Rock was giving the surrounding region. Of course, it turns out to be a trap, and once Scott fired the first shot there was no way he was going to walk out alive.]]
* WalkOnWater: the story depicts the ability of ship girls to traverse on water in three different ways: the standard cruising, used for long-distance travel, the "ice-skating" method discussed in the 4koma, used when ship girls must quickly reach a destination on water, and simply sprinting on water, used in combat for when ship girls must make evasive or attacking maneuvers at close to melee range against the enemy.
* WantsAPrizeForBasicDecency: Discussed in chapter 145. Kikuzuki thinks that the lengths Damon went to for the fleet, far from being anything unusual, are merely what's expected of a normal Admiral. Her sisters disagree and think that he did go beyond the call of duty.
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Damon's brusque ways and unorthodox methods frequently get him into disagreements with his allies. It reaches a peak in chapter 68, where [[spoiler:he and Sanford get into a fistfight over his decision to allow Shiratsuyu to return to the Coalition for Murasame's sake and have the rest of her class follow, instead of forcing her to stay with his fleet.]] Divisions also develop between the ship girls.
** and to a lesser extent, the Transatlantic Alliance. Even though it's a multinational organization with countries like the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and now most recently Russia, the leaders of these countries quickly seek out other partner countries within the bigger alliance either due to already established political connections (US and Britain) or fears that a certain country is already too powerful and will too easily dominate the alliance if the others don't band together (Italy, France, and Russia). As the alliance is only recently established, the countries aren't at the point where they're bickering, but that is only for now.
* WeaponOfChoice:
** Damon is never seen without his rifle and pistol of choice. The [[http://www.jtactical.com/rogue Juggernaut Tactical M14 Rogue Chassis]][[note]]One of many bullpup conversions available for the M14 battle rifle[[/note]] rifle, and the Glock 37 pistol.
** In the document about the [=FLEET=] Project in Chapter 34, it notes that ship girls are proficient with a large variety of infantry small arms. Each type of ship girl has, among the types they are proficient with, types of guns that they prefer. For example, the destroyer girls prefer pistols all the way up to assault rifles, light cruisers girls prefer all those including battle rifles, and carriers are specialized in and prefer long rifles ([=DMRs=], sniper rifles, and anti-materiel rifles).
** Several ship girls have this, either through their default equipment [[spoiler:or what they get through Damon's YRC]]. The entire Kagerou-Class, minus Amatsukaze, all use MK-16 SCAR-L variants as their signature assault rifles.
* WeaponTwirling: Damon and some of the [[spoiler:American]] ship girls are prone to doing this to relieve their boredom, either when they're just standing around talking or while on long flights to get to their areas of operation.
* WearingAFlagOnYourHead: [[spoiler:Bulldog, a British destroyer, wears a sweater with the British Union Jack on it.]]
* WhamEpisode:
** Chapter 7. Damon and Murakumo find Amatsukaze.
** Chapter 18. Damon discovers he's not the only person who is looking for and/or in possession of active ship girls. [[spoiler: He spots Baxter Harrison of Mobile meeting with members of the Atlanta faction, who have their hands on Shimakaze and Kaga.]]
** Chapter 20. The first CainAndAbel incident listed above.
** Chapter 26. [[spoiler: The secrecy of the Project itself is brought up, after Damon encounters Mexican nationals at [=NAS=] Corpus Christi in the previous chapter. How the hell do they even know about the Project in the first place? Or have not one but ''seven'' partly-used navitasium cubes?]]
** Chapter 28. [[spoiler:Baxter Harrison isn't just coincidentally happening to pick up ship girls but is actively looking for them. Furthermore, the existence of Amagi (the battlecruiser, not the carrier) means that F.L.E.E.T created ship girls other than those the IJN actually used in the Pacific War, girls that even Sanford didn't know were to be created. There could be a lot more out there than originally anticipated.]]
** Chapter 30. After successfully defending Mobile from the Atlantans and flying to Chicago, [[spoiler:Damon gets arrested by Chicago police.]]
** Chapter 36. [[spoiler:The Feds have operational ship girls of their own and Sanford warns Damon to prepare to fight if he wants to hold on to his own.]]
** Chapter 38. After a very tense confrontation with the US President, [[spoiler:Damon and co. are going to Britain to help fight the Inner Circle.]]
** Chapter 40 [[spoiler:Shortly after landing at Menwith Hill, and before deploying to the English Channel, Damon and Sanford receive intelligence that the Inner Circle have deployed their ship girls. The fact that they have ship girls is bad enough, the fact that Kongou is among them is worse, but the fact that Sanford doesn't recognize any other ship girl in the photos he's been given sets off alarm bells for him and Damon.]]
** Chapter 41 [[spoiler:Kongou opens up this chapter with a bang by countering Amagi's Yamato Cannon with her own, and then quickly wrecks Kagerou with a salvo of 35.6cm rounds. The abyssals make their debut, and Damon's fleet manages to capture one of the unknown ship girls.]]
** Chapter 42 [[spoiler:The unknown ship girl identifies herself as the HMS ''Conqueror'', third ship of the ''Orion''-class Dreadnoughts. She also reveals the existence of the Abyssals, and the fact that someone by the name of "Mr. Abyssal" is making them for the Inner Circle. They also happen to have in their possession (save Conqueror) ALL of the Royal Navy ship girls produced by Shadow Helix, and Sanford briefs Damon on Shadow Helix.]]
** Chapter 53. Damon finds Kisaragi. To say any more would give away a major spoiler.
** Chapter 64. Damon's fleet joins battle with the Coalition's [[spoiler:and the Abyssals make their return.]]
** Chapter 87. [[spoiler:Zuikaku is killed, Shoukaku nearly goes Abyssal in response before Kaga knocks her out, and the ship girls' weakness to EMP is shown in action.]]
** Chapter 95. [[spoiler:Damon is fatally wounded, his hacking nanoknife destroyed, and Shoukaku's Abyssalization reaches a new height trying to revive him only to be killed by Alastor Scott.]]
** Chapter 96. [[spoiler:Damon's funeral is held, more dire effects of Abyssalization are revealed when Murasame attempts suicide, and Sanford has a mysterious conversation about a body and the Genesis Thesis Project.]]
** Chapter 105. The unity of the fleet is once again called into question when [[spoiler:Kisaragi and Murasame get into an argument over the latter being gifted Damon's old rifle. Suzukaze comes to Murasame's rescue when Kisaragi escalates to violence only to be blown off by Murasame, which leads to her running away. Shoukaku is confirmed back in Abyssal hands, and the Sheriff makes his first onscreen appearance.]]
** Chapter 107. [[spoiler:After Shigure fails to talk her out of running away, Suzukaze has the dubious honour of being the first ship girl to be dishonourably discharged from the Combined Fleet. Sanford and co. learn from Eagle that the Inner Circle is recycling activated ship girls into exoskeletons and that Simpson was ''not'' officially on the Genesis Thesis Project, meaning that anything the Inner Circle knows about it comes from them having directly worked on it.]]
** Chapter 122. Suzukaze manages to hitch a ride with some bikers heading back to their home base in Philadelphia, and they tell her what happened to the Trenton [=CCPL=] post after Damon and his fleet completed their mission there and left. [[spoiler:To start off, the Philadelphians, or whoever they received this news from, mistakenly thought that Damon's fleet was a Fed regiment that rolled in on Trenton that day and killed off scores of rebels. But more to the point, what happened after the fleet left was that the Feds rolled in to suppress the rebellion by exterminating the entire population of the post, trucking their bodies to Atlantic City, and dumping them at the same location where Tatsuya was scavenging. This introduces a FridgeHorror moment. If Tatsuya and Miyuki's parents didn't manage to flee the post prior to the extermination, they may well be among the bodies piled up in Atlantic City. Not only that, there is implication that either they would have eventually been discovered by Tatsuya had he not met an untimely death, or even worse, that he and Miyuki had consumed their corpses without either knowing it.]] Philadelphia itself also contains a little surprise for us. Smack dab in the middle of one of its cemeteries [[spoiler:is an unexploded Iranian nuke.]]
** Chapter 125. [[spoiler: A traveling merchant by the name of Pulupet is implied to be in possession of some of the un-accounted for ship girls. The leader of the Shakers and his grand-son know that Suzukaze is a ship girl and are planning on selling her off to the merchant in exchange for much-needed medicine. Chapter]]
** Chapter 133. [[spoiler: When Suzukaze boards the USS ''New Jersey'' museum ship, it's revealed that both this ship and ''Alabama'' have ship girl cognitive programs loaded aboard them. And said programs were created by Sanford's team in [=FLEET=] Project.]]
** Chapter 137. [[spoiler: We now know why Baxter and Barry recognize that Suzukaze as a ship-girl. Prior to the incident that led to Philadelphia becoming AHouseDivided, another ship girl (they never found out her name) had been living with the family, but decided to go with Barry's brother and the Quakers when the split happened.]]
** Chapter 142. [[spoiler: A German ship girl, U-511, makes her debut, pulling a BigDamnHeroes moment to save Hatsuyuki and Sanford from a Eurocopter Tiger attack chopper.]]
** Chapter 143. [[spoiler:The Colossus Reactor turns out to have side effects when used on humans, which lead to Suzukaze being chased out of Ablett Village. The ship girl with the Quakers turns out to have been nothing of the sort, "merely" a superpowered mutant, meaning that traveling merchant Pulupet's girls may not be ship girls either. The Quakers wiped out the Shakers while Suzukaze was away, and she returns the favour. After burying the bodies of Barry, Baxster and Celsie, she "disappears into the starry night", the chapter ending with an ominous "END TRANSMISSION: SUZUKAZE'S VOYAGE".]]
** Chapter 146. [[spoiler:The German ship girls were initially in the possession of the [=NDP=] before the truck transporting them was stopped by the [=SDP=], had its cargo confiscated and sent over to the Chancellor.]]
** Chapter 147. We know more, a lot more, about Deimos' team's mission to rescue Chancellor Gernot Wedekind and his family during the Great War. [[spoiler:Deimos was personally involved in the development of the German ship girls, which fell under the umbrella of an off-shoot of Shadow Helix, Wunderwaffle Helix. In fact, the reason why he and his team were even in the country in the first place was to deliver the six completed ship girls to the Chancellor, though outbreak of war plus the impending impact of a nuke meant that those girls never made it to the Chancellor, until 19 years later when his party managed to liberate them from [=NDP=] possession.]]
** Chapter 154. [[spoiler:The Re-class makes its second appearance, while Murasame's Protocol activates.]]
** Chapter 162. [[spoiler:Shoukaku re-appears, this time as Aircraft Carrier Water Demon, and fatally wounds Zuikaku before forcing the rest of the fleet to retreat. Zuikaku bleeds out before they make it back to base. And the British ship girls who chose to stay with Holmwood are assaulting German territory for currently unknown reasons.]]
** Chapter 163. [[spoiler:We learn exactly what Holmwood was dealing with the Inner Circle for, shortly before he gets assassinated.]]
** Chapter 164. [[spoiler:Suzukaze reappears briefly before being consumed by the Darkwater Protocol, but this reveals that there's a second Samidare running around in the US. The British ship girls - now under Sir Stormrider's command - intervene against the Abyssals.]]
** Chapter 206. Damon spills the beans on Baltimore [[spoiler:and finally gets out of there, shortly before Blackwood apparently has him killed.]]
** Chapter 219. [[spoiler:The current ship girls are confirmed to be the second generation, with !Samidare being the apparent SoleSurvivor of the previous one. American ship girls are also shown to be secretly operational, with their admiral collaborating with Franklin and Eagle on something involving Damon.]]
** Chapter 225. We learn what happened to [[spoiler:the first generation Shiratsuyu-class.]]
** Chapter 230. [[spoiler:Damon's dreamworld is acting weird after his latest revival.]] The Feds, working through mercenaries, try to purge [[spoiler:Khal's old survivor camp at Savannah, who have picked up Aoba.]]
** Chapter 233: Damon and co. reach [[spoiler: Spring Hope]] too late to thwart a massacre.
** Chapter 247: The missions to [[spoiler: retrieve access codes to the White House are both traps. U-511, and presumably Retia and the German government, is working with Blackwood, and so is canon!Iowa.]]
** Chapter 293: [[spoiler:Sanford finally reveals the details of the secret Moebius Four sub-project and, accordingly, the true nature of the Shiratsuyu-Classes, both the first and the second.]]
** Chapter 316: [[spoiler:Umikaze and Kawakaze manage to enter Damon's dreamworld on accident, demonstrating that ship girls, too, can somehow join Damon in his dreamworld.]]
* WhamLine:
** Chapter 14.
--> Second Nagato-Class Battleship, Mutsu.
** Chapter 25.
--> "[[spoiler:Mexicans?]] What the hell're [[spoiler:the Mexicans doing on American territory]]?"
** Chapter 31.
--> "Gospodin Sanford, I must inform you that you are to expect an important visitor."
** Chapter 46.
--> [[spoiler:"Shiranui! Kagerou!"]] Damon calls loudly, confused at why they are suddenly missing from the second floor, where he last remembers seeing them.
** Chapter 56.
--> [[spoiler:"My daughter. Blacklist: Vatista. Unfinished prototype of the Second Fleet Expansion and Enhancement Test. Status: fugitive from the United States Federal Government."]]
** Chapter 65.
--> [[spoiler:"Kaga and Shoukaku... have been captured by these Abyssals."]]
** Chapter 70.
--> As soon as she opens them, [[spoiler:a sizzle of red haze radiates from Shoukaku's brand new eye.]]
** Chapter 77.
--> Her right eye, which is [[spoiler:a full shade of sickly orange]], begins to [[spoiler:pulse with a familiar haze of the same color.]]
** Chapter 79.
--> [[spoiler:"'''C-4! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OU-!'''"]]
** Chapter 88.
--> "Tell me why...''this happens''."
** Chapter 90.
--> It's a [[spoiler:land mine]].
** Chapter 97.
--> Inside, it is not [[spoiler:Damon's body that lies inside that coffin]], but the preserved body of the Ru-Class that was captured during the fleet's invasion of Newfoundland.
** Chapter 99.
--> "You don't think..." Lauren whispers, "[[spoiler:they've been ordered over to Cayo Romano... for those cargo tankers?]]"
** Chapter 125.
--> "She's a good candidate for Mr. Pulupet."
** Chapter 141.
--> "Once you land in Germany, watch everyone, and trust no one. That chancellor over there? I don't think that's actually him. It might be someone else."
** Chapter 148 has two.
--> [[spoiler:There's nothing inside.]]
--> Among the [[spoiler:row of tanks]] that is parked all around the hexagonal hub, one of them is slowing to a stop.
** Chapter 152 has two too.
--> "Yup. We found him," Sanford chuckles. "This's where [[spoiler:good ol' Deimos]] died, by the looks 'a it."
--> "[[spoiler:The Abyssals]]? What the hell're ''they'' doin' in Cologne?"
** Chapter 158.
--> "The 'offer' is a deal Holmwood and his secretaries are negotiating with a continental organization who only refers to themselves as [[spoiler:the 'Inner Circle'.]]"
** Chapter 168.
-->[[spoiler:"My name ain't TJ Combo," Damon Polchow laughs, "but I am so fucking back!"]]
** Chapter 179.
--> Indeed, when he does reach for it and pull on it a little, [[spoiler:the padlock immediately falls apart into two pieces and drops to the ground before Damon can catch them.]]
** Chapter 198.
-->[[spoiler:"He said his ETA to Cape Canaveral was thirty mikes. That was an hour ago. I can't get into contact with him."]]
** Chapter 209.
-->[[spoiler:"...Kitakami-san..." she mutters quietly.]]
** Chapter 259 ends with an email requesting for weapons to be shipped out, and the sender is [[spoiler:Marco (Santini)]].
** Chapter 298.
-->[[spoiler:Samidare opens her lips to speak in a tiny, raspy, and strained voice:"「さみ...？誰...？」"]]
** Chapter 315 ends with the arrival of the [[spoiler:Agents]] as reinforcements for Whitewater.
** Chapter 376.
-->[[spoiler:"''...why did the Agents sound like...Hank was the one who...launched these missiles...?''"]]
* WhamShot: InUniverse in chapter 247. [[spoiler:Iowa]] is shocked when she sees [[spoiler:BB-61]] on the clothing of a certain subordinate of Blackwood's.
* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Occasionally, Damon and co. encounter the family of mooks they killed.
* WhatMeasureIsANonCute: The hacking of shipgirls by stabbing them in the head is one of the things that always gets brought up by objectors to this story. But no one complains about Skulljacking in ''VideoGame/{{XCOM 2}}'', which is essentially the same thing, presumably because Advent troops, unlike shipgirls, aren't young, attractive women.
* WhatMeasureIsANonhuman: Discussed in chapter 127, where Haguro feels disturbed by how the inhuman appearance of the Abyssals makes it easier for her to fight them than if they were humans.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** Murakumo rips into Damon for the MercyKill involving the baby. It won't be the last time.
** In chapter 156, Kagerou reprimands Shiranui for the latter's overreaction to the Nui-chan nickname.
** In chapter 214, Samidare scolds Suzukaze over her actions.
** In chapter 280, Mogami calls out Suzuya on how she's gone right past BrokenBird into bitch.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Damon can't place Kuroshio's accent. It's not Southern, nor is it stereotypically North American.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: A lot of the ship girls that Damon finds in the early chapters are found without their rigging (referred to by the author as a "gearbox"), meaning they have to fight with only their innate abilities, and whatever firearms Damon manages to scrounge up. This doesn't stop them from being any less useful in anti-infantry work.
* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity:
** Some of the girls with {{Super Mode}}s, like Ayanami's Nightmare Protocol, discover that the things have unwanted effects on their psyches.
** In chapter 213, [[spoiler:Suzukaze]] has gone as far off the deep end as she has become powerful.
* WomenAreWiser: Averted. Women, both human and ship girl, are very much able to be as irrational and immoral as the men.
* WorfBarrage: In chapter 162, nothing gets through the shields of [[spoiler:Aircraft Carrier Water Demon.]]
* TheWorfEffect:
** Want to show how much of a tech wizard someone is? Have them outdo Benjamin.
** In chapter 101, after Shigure and Yuudachi onesidedly slaughter [[spoiler:Armored Carrier and Southern War Demon, the Re-Class shows it's on a completely different level by killing both of them in a horrible manner.]]
** The Shiratsuyu-Class are the strongest destroyers in the Combined Fleet and possibly the strongest shipgirls overall. So in chapter 190 [[spoiler:!Samidare]] dominates all eight of the extant Shiratsuyu-class even with them using their Protocols. [[spoiler:Blackwood]] shows he's a force to be reckoned with by handing them their arses, and offscreen at that.
** [[spoiler:Franklin]] shows Damon and Jeannie that as powerful as they currently are, they still have a long way to go by toying with them throughout most of the fight and very quickly ending things once he gets serious.
* TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled: Damon's mother told him that his father was part of a team meant to stop nukings... who was killed in a nuking.
* WorldOfActionGirls: naturally, with all the ship girls featured in the story and ship girls being many times stronger than human men (under normal circumstances). And although Kantai Collection is undoubtedly this too, the grittiness and action-oriented nature of the story perhaps puts forth this notion better than the game itself.
* WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide: In chapter 243, Damon finds an executive order that includes a veiled call for the extermination of mutants and other dissidents and undesirables.
* WouldNotHitAGirl: Discussed in chapter 148. Shioi finds it wrong to shoot another girl. Ashigara retorts that the stereotype of women being less able fighters than men is silly.
* WouldNotShootACivilian: Discussed in chapter 317. Murakumo tells [[spoiler:Asashio]] that it's hypocritical to get hung up over nearly fatally shooting a civilian and fearing for the man's wife and child when [[WhatMeasureIsAMook she hasn't given any such consideration to the mooks they've been slaughtering]] or to the crews of their previous bodies.
* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Chicago is divided into the rich downtown and the squalid, dilapidated rest of the city.
* YesMan: Discussed in chapter 92, where Damon says that having people who disagree with him keeps him on his toes, because he'd start to feel like he wasn't keeping it real if he only surrounded himself with girls that love him.
* YouAreAlreadyDead: [[spoiler:Kaga says this to the Aircraft Carrier Demon in chapter 305 after executing her Shitenketsu attack that promptly causes the Carrier Demon's arms to explode off, followed by her head and then the rest of her body.]]
* YouAreInCommandNow: [[spoiler:With the assassination of Gernot Wedekind, his daughter Retia has taken over as interim Chancellor/President.]]
* YouBastard: In addition to the SelfDeprecation, in chapter 167 the author notes that if you're reading this specifically for the gore and violence... what the Hell is wrong with you?
* YouCanBarelyStand: Exploited in chapter 92, where Damon fakes his wounds being more severe than they actually are in order to lure a foe into overconfidence.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness:
** In chapter 144, we learn that after the war, the British government was initially headed by a triumvirate until Holmwood had the other two assassinated for not going along with his plans and took the reins.
** In chapter 206, [[spoiler:Blackwood tries to kill off Damon after he comes back from Baltimore.]]
** In chapter 223, [[spoiler:this appears to happen to Damon again after he refuses to go along with Stukov's plan.]]
* YouKilledMyFather: Technically "You Left My Father To Die", but that's the beef Damon has with "Godfather" Sanford.
* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: averted wholesale, with the exception of story arcs that do not involve the fleet being situated out of a base, the fleet never has to worry about running out of supplies, due to a combination of a reworked resource concept and the fact that Lukenstor, the story's resident MegaCorp, provides the fleet all of the supplies that they would need, including their usual consumables, weapons, and equipment.
* YourHeadAsplode: in chapter 378, [[spoiler:after taking a Desert Eagle bullet to the side of his nose for Naganami]], Damon retaliates by shooting the Agent who's shot him with his own [[spoiler:.80cal revolver]], and the bullet strikes the enemy in the head. Given what that kind of bullet will do to a normal human being, it's safe to say that that enemy no longer has a head.
* YouWatchTooMuchX:
** After getting a summary of the situation in chapter 66, Yuubari tells Damon that it "sounds like a corny plotline straight out of an anime."
** In chapter 157, when Benjamin wonders if a certain ship girl gained a new weapon from VictoriasSecretCompartment, Sanford says he's watched too much harem anime.
* YoureInsane: In chapter 100 a Chi-Class uses this line on a battle-crazed Tatsuta.

* ArcWords: [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3 "Listen only to the sound of my voice..."]]]]

-->[[spoiler:Sandman: [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3 "Listen only to the sound of my voice..."]]]]

*** Z-1 Leberecht Maass uses a modernized MP-40 called the HG-40, a {{Shoutout}} to the gun featured in VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3.

** In the beginning of chapter 172, [[spoiler:Damon's very first encounter with his dreamworld is heavily influenced by the mind-hacking procedure the Player inflicts onto Hall in VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3.]]

-->[[spoiler:[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3 "- listen only to the sound of my voice - let your mind relax - let your thoughts drift - let the bad memories fade - let peace be upon you - surrender yourself to your dreams - let them wash over you like the gentle waves of the bluest ocean - let them envelope you - comfort you - imagine somewhere calm - imagine somewhere safe - imagine yourself in a frozen forest - you are standing in a clearing - the trees around you so tall they touch the sky - pure white snowflakes fall all around - you can feel them melt on your skin - you are not cold - it cannot overcome the warmth of your beating heart - can you hear it - you only have to listen - do you hear it slowing - you are slowing it - you are in control - calm - at peace - listen only to the sound of my voice -"]]]]

* MindRape: [[spoiler:Jeannie's [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3 Direct Neural Interface ability]] allows her to hack other ship girls' brains; this is her main assassination tool against ship girls, as interfacing with them allows Jeannie to exert total control over her victims' mental processes, putting their lives entirely at her mercy. She also demonstrates that she can perform what's called a Reverse Direct Neural Interface, which works on normal humans like Damon and allows Jeannie to show them what she sees in her own mind.]]

** and later on, [[spoiler:Damon obtains an upgrade for his exosuit, called [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps3 Kinetic Armor]], which covers his whole body except for his head with kinetic energy that repels and destroys incoming bullets the instant they touch it.]]

->''...their solution was not to make improvements to current generation ships, but instead to use the cheap, older-generations of ship technology - namely that of the Second World War - and condense it to the size of a human. In other words, their goal was to create [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots a fleet of humanoid robots]] - or something like that - that had the firepower of World War II-era ship technology that would be incredibly cheap but still be able to to wield significant battle power and augment the larger, more modern ships of the American fleet nicely as escort boats or naval support squadrons...the team eventually decided to name their new human ship after the World War II navy of Imperial Japan...the scientist told Damon that they had shipped one of their first products to Houston, Texas, to be transported to the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, but as fate would have it, the nukes fell a few days after its arrival in the city. Apparently, it had been moved to the underground basement of the home of one of the American scientists as an extra safety precaution that it did not fall into the wrong hands, and it has sat there to this day, inactive.''

The year is now 2029, and the world is...[[Franchise/{{Fallout}} not actually an okay place to live.]] Enter our hero, Damon Polchow. Born shortly after the war, he has basically seen all of what life had to offer AfterTheEnd. He's hot on the trail of a possible ship girl, following a lead provided by a scientist who had worked on the F.L.E.E.T project, and eventually ending up in the scientist's former home in the suburbs of what used to be Houston, Texas. It is here that he encounters his first ship girl, Fubuki-class destroyer ''Murakumo''. But what begins as a lofty yet simple goal of making a better world, by force if need be, quickly takes some unwanted turns when new complications and enemies, some less foreseeable than others, start to come out of the woodwork.

** In chapter 135, the narrator starts talking about ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'', then corrects it to ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', because in this reality the nukes fell before 4 could come out.