Characters / Ambience A Fleet Symphony Two

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As per Handling Spoilers, no trope names will be spoiler-marked. In addition, the very presence of certain names on this list may constitute spoilers by itself. You Have Been Warned!

Due to the tons of characters, many of whom can be found on the character pages for KanColle and Warship Girls, only tropes relevant to how they are different here should be listed.

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Mutsuki-Class

• Can't Catch Up: An issue of concern among the Mutsuki-Class destroyers is their historic inferiority to more modern destroyers like the Fubuki-Class and the Shiratsuyu-Class; this is a pet peeve of Mutsuki's and Kikuzuki's, and Kisaragi is very concerned about this as well (really only Satsuki doesn't seem to care). This is reflected in the stat sheet, where all Mutsuki-Class destroyers generally have noticeably lower-than-average stats, armor points, hit points, and maximum level caps.
• Exotic Eye Designs: As of chapter 262, with the help of Damon's YRC, the Mutsuki-Class all sport white crescent moon outlines in their eyes.
  • And with the revelation in chapter 263 that Kikuzuki's eyes may be more than just a cosmetic change, since the story doesn't make any clear distinctions between each of the Mutsuki-Class's eyes, there may be a chance that the rest of the Mutsuki-Class also possess the abilities granted by Kikuzuki's eyes.
    • Confirmed in chapter 274, when Satsuki herself uses her crescent moon eyes to slow time to be able to cut down all of Murasame's energy bullets with impossible speed.
  • And as of chapter 403, when Mutsuki absorbs the power of the Mystic Eyes from Umikaze, it's now clear that the Mutsuki-Class' eyes may actually be a variant of the Mystic Eyes themselves.
• Support Party Member: The Mutsuki-Class members have access to defensive support abilities that focus on keeping other allies alive and prolong their fighting in battle.
  • Several of the Mutsuki-Class' class abilities are taken straight from Sengoku Rance.

Mutsuki

• An Arm and a Leg: During Operation Atlanta, Mutsuki gets heavily damaged when an enemy Javelin missile detonates practically on top of her and rips both of her legs off.
• Big Little Sister: Reinforced from her anime rendition, but Mutsuki herself explicitly recognizes this in her Fleet Log in chapter 118, when she acknowledges that her sister Kisaragi can fill that big sister archetype much better than she can.
• Calling Your Attacks: In chapter 407, Mutsuki uses an attack called "Slash Zapper", a move also used in Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest.
• Cool Big Sis: Being the lead destroyer of her class, Mutsuki has a passive ability because of it that allows her to grant passive stat bonuses to her sisters if she deploys with them in combat.
• Defense Mechanism Superpower: Mutsuki's Mystic Eyes trigger when Ayanami uses an attack that she thinks will put her life in danger.
• Despair Event Horizon: As discussed in her Fleet Log, she goes through a small and brief one during Operation Atlanta, when she's compelled to shoot and kill an enemy who's about to shoot Satsuki and laments her decision to do this to herself, wondering if killing the man was absolutely necessary.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Started out this way at first, according to her Fleet Log, in that she didn't like the idea of ship girls like herself being used as augmented infantry, and, like Ushio, didn't like the idea of using a gun to shoot and kill people. However, the first major operation that had her see heavy combat action, Operation Atlanta, quickly changed her mind on this matter, and now she believes that if she does not fight, no matter what the method of fighting she must partake, something may happen to her or her sisters as a direct result.
• Hidden Depths: Part of the reason why Mutsuki fights as a ship girl is because of her historical awareness about herself and her ship class, about how she and the rest of the Mutsuki-Class were outdated warships by the time of the second World War, and in light of this, she wants to fight to prove to herself and to everyone else who cares to see that she and her sisters are just as effective at fighting and being dutiful, effective ship girls as any other. It's to the point where her Fleet Log even mentions that Mutsuki's pet peeve is more technologically advanced destroyers, namely the Fubuki-Class or the Shiratsuyu-Class, but she seems to be able to control this pet peeve quite well if that's truly the case.
• Genki Girl: She's portrayed in this story closer to her ingame rendition than her anime rendition. However, while she's certainly energetic, cheerful, and playful for the most part, she's not exactly a Motor Mouth like she is ingame.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Her Fleet Log states that Mutsuki pouts a little every time she sees Yuudachi get a pat or a head rub from Damon, but since apparently they're best buddies, she doesn't mind that much.
• Mercy Kill: In chapter 145, she ends the suffering of a fatally wounded NDP soldier. When Kikuzuki asks her why she did this, Mutsuki replies that the man's expression reminded her of the time when Damon did the same for one of the irradiated foxes that attacked them during Operation Nashville.
• Morph Weapon: Mutsuki's scythe, which has three forms: its default scythe mode, a staff mode, and a sniper mode.
• Move Along, Nothing to See Here: Underneath Mutsuki's Type 69 Yuri-dar ability in her entry in the stat sheet, the narration goes as follows:
  -this passive ability does absolutely nothing useful, so stop reading this and move on.
• My Greatest Second Chance: bLBasically what Mutsuki considers her new life as a ship girl, in order to continue her warship's original desire to prove that the Mutsuki-Class is not obsolete and can still fight just as well as any other destroyer class.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: For the most part, Mutsuki is more or less portrayed just like she is in the game. However, at two points in the story first when Damon puts down a wounded, irradiated fox on their way to Nashville and second when Mutsuki herself puts a fatally wounded NDP soldier out of his misery in Germany, Mutsuki suddenly grows extremely pensive and can't bring herself to act like the Genki Girl that she usually is.
• Repressed Memories: She remembers her desire as a warship to prove to her country that the Mutsuki-Class could fight just as well as any other more recent and modernized destroyer class, so the fact that she and Kisaragi were both sunk early on in the war doesn't sit too well with her.
• Shout-Out: A two-fer:
  • Mutsuki's scythe in its scythe form is one to Ruby Rose's HCSS, almost definitely because Mutsuki and Ruby appear to be Expies to one another. According to Mutsuki herself, the scythe in its standard form is also called 'Rose mode', to further reinforce this shout-out. In addition, like Ruby's HCSS, Mutsuki's scythe also has a sniper rifle mode, but the scythe physically morphs into a sniper rifle that uses enormous 14.5x114mm anti-tank rounds.
  • The scythe also has a third mode that changes it into a staff topped with a three-pronged clover, one to the Leangle Rouzer wielded by Mutsuki Kamijo in Kamen Rider Blade.
  • She's also got a more subtle one to ichimi's Secretary Fleet Girl Nagatsuki-chan webcomic with her passive ability that allows her to sense whenever someone awakes to yuri.
  • In chapter 407, she uses an attack called Slash Zapper, and when she counters Ayanami's final attack, a burst of rose petals flies out around them, and Ayanami finds herself stunned and unable to move momentarily.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Except not with a gun. She now has a scythe that's nearly twice her height. That can also change into a sniper rifle that's just as tall.
• Those Two Girls: Heavily subverted from the game/anime. Kisaragi is found first on her own without her sisters, as Mutsuki, Satsuki, and Kikuzuki are acquired afterwards, so she and Kisaragi aren't necessarily depicted as inseparable (though it appears that, once these four are in the fleet, they all hang out together for the most part).
  • Also seemingly subverted with Yuudachi from the anime trio, but her Fleet Log does mention that she and Yuudachi are best friends, so it can be assumed that the story simply doesn't depict their interactions. Though, this being said, her Fleet Log does detail their relationship in regards to the falling-out between Murasame and Kisaragi, in which Yuudachi declares that she won't let this incident harm her friendship with Mutsuki.
• Took a Level in Badass: Her Fleet Log mentions that she didn't want to use firearms or fight like a regular ground soldier at first, but within one major combat operation, Mutsuki sheds all doubt and hesitation to be able to fight to protect her friends and sisters, even if it means fighting in a way that she didn't initially like.
  • With Damon's help via YRC, Mutsuki gains a triple-mode scythe that can change into a staff and a sniper rifle meant to take out tanks.
• Variant Power Copying: Mutsuki develops a variant of the Mystic Eyes when she touches Umikaze while the latter's Mystic Eyes are still active. This allows her to incapacitate Ayanami during their spar not long after.
• Verbal Tic: Seemingly averted, since she doesn't add "nanodesu" or "nyaa", and she hasn't been throwing around her ingame Kai-2 "nyashii". But the story makes a point to include the "nyashii" as part of Mutsuki's new shapeshifting scythe, when, in its sniper mode, literally has "nyashii" written in hiragana along the end of the barrel.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Also averted, as Mutsuki in-story hasn't been vying for Damon's approval. However, in light of recent events, this may only be because the story hasn't portrayed her personal relationship with Damon adequately enough for the readers to know.

Kisaragi

• Adaptation Personality Change: Initially was The Woobie when she finds out what happened to her in Trenton while she was still deactivated, but with Damon's care, she quickly returns to normal. However, her ordeal still has a lingering effect on her usual psyche, as she's nowhere near as flirty and promiscuous as her ingame rendition.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • In chapter 106, she bows in apology to Murasame for her role in Suzukaze's abandonment of the fleet.
  • In chapter 186, Kisaragi offers Damon her body in exchange for Kai remodels for her sisters of the Mutsuki-Class, though Damon declines her offer while promising her he'll keep her concerns in mind.
• Berserk Button: Averted. Like many of the ship girls whose warship counterparts sank early on in the war, she thankfully never had a chance to develop feelings of deep-seeded animosity towards America and thus could handle working the US Navy before the nuclear war happened.
• Break the Cutie: Gets broken in one fell swoop when Damon informs her that she's been raped once she's brought to the underground facility in Trenton for repairs. The repairs are implied to repair her emotional and psychological states, though, as stated above, her personality is perhaps permanently damaged, if only a little, by the irreparable trauma she's inflicted herself with upon the revelation.
• Can't Catch Up: Has a very real fear of this after the Germany arc concludes, noting that due to the historical accuracy with which the ship girls have been built, she and her sisters, being outdated destroyers by the time of the second World War, will inevitably fall behind with little they can do about it.
• Culture Clash: Feared a form of this, as her Fleet Log reveals, before being shipped over to America, because she didn't feel comfortable being herself in a foreign country where she may not understand the culture as much as she should.
• Cute Bruiser: While all ship girls are this to a considerable extent, Kisaragi, because of her very good looks and body, is a prominent example of this.
• Defiled Forever: One of the fears Kisaragi had following her rape was that people would think of her as "used goods" following the incident. Her deep appreciation for Damon as her Admiral revolves greatly around his disregard for (or simply ignorance of) this possible stigma and continue to care for her as part of his fleet.
• Despair Event Horizon: Like the other ship girls who had feelings for Damon, she goes through a one following his death at Little Rock. But unlike other ship girls', Kisaragi's is much worse and causes her to be filled with despair and longing, to the point where she even raids Damon's old room at the office building at the MAPS base just so that she can sleep with his blanket. Eventually, she even targets his old rifle that is given to Murasame, and that doesn't end well at all.
• Doublethink: While not discussed in her Fleet Log, Kisaragi does seem to demonstrate this. On one hand, she fears the stigma of being seen as "used goods" because she'd been raped. But on the other hand, it's implied she didn't want her body to be restored back to being a virgin even though she had the option to because a surgery might be able to fix her body, but it can't heal the pain.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Is seized by jealousy when she finds out that Murasame has been given Damon's rifle, the MK-14, the result of her personal affection for him and her grief over his death at Little Rock.
  • Also in chapter 186, she admits to having small feelings of jealousy watching other destroyers outpace her and her sisters of the Mutsuki-Class in terms of combat performance, particularly the Shiratsuyu-Class, but this time it's subverted, as it's nothing malicious.
• Eye Scream: Loses an eye to a piece of shrapnel in chapter 86.
• Love at First Sight: Not necessarily the first sight...more like the second. Her Fleet Log explains that following her repairs after her rape, she replayed back the memory files she'd received from other ship girls and viewed clips of Damon's interactions with the fleet over time, and upon realizing Damon's devotion to his fleet, especially in context with Operation Trenton, Kisaragi got smitten.
• Not What It Looks Like: Damon has always noted the extraordinary levels of beauty that the ship girls as a whole generally offers over baseline humans, but in Kisaragi's Fleet Log in chapter 118, she particularly stands out as having body proportions and looks that could fool anyone into thinking that she definitely wasn't built as a weapon of war.
• Plucky Girl: Was this before the nukes fell, as her Fleet Log describes her optimism for her future as a US Navy auxiliary personnel and for the chance to work to become the best destroyer produced out of the F.L.E.E.T. Project. Then Trenton happened.
• The Power of Love: Her Rouse passive ability benefits both herself and Damon so long as they deploy together into combat: she gains a much needed +1 to all stats, +50% experience gain, and nullification of her Scarred passive debuff effects, and Damon, in turn, receives +50 all weapon damage and a +1 all stats of his own.
• Puppy Love: Wanted to pursue this kind of romantic relationship with prospective guys, mainly by innocent flirting and the like. The people of Trenton had something else to say about that.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: She suffers this while her body was still deactivated at Trenton, though the fact that she isn't able to remember it doesn't exactly comfort her when she finds out about it. Her Fleet Log goes into disturbing detail about how her rapists, due to the condition of Kisaragi's body while deactivated, were basically having their way with a dead body.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: At the time of the Trenton mini-arc, the Kantai Collection anime was airing, so as a possible reference to the fanbase's trend "Saving Destroyer Kisaragi-chan", the author slipped in Kisaragi as a new addition to the fleet in the story.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to Murasame a week after their falling out, telling her that she's become a disappointment to her sisters for showing such angst over Damon's death instead of being a stronger person and managing it. She drops her own Wham Line by telling Murasame that Samidare, who has suffered the most from Suzukaze's banishment, deserves much better than her for a big sister.
• Repressed Memories: Subverted; in her Fleet Log, she makes it clear that she doesn't feel ashamed of her warship self for having been the second major warship to sink in the Pacific War, but she did fear that during her would-have-been service in the US Navy, other ship girls might have made fun of her about this particular historical incident, so she was resolved to overcome the difficulty of her feelings about her warship memories as quickly as possible.
• Shout-Out: The invisible sword she gets by way of Damon's YRC is named Yukianesa, the same name of Jin Kisaragi's sword.
• The Tease: Surprisingly subverted - simply for the reason that she doesn't tease as much as her ingame rendition does and instead is much more direct with Damon.
• Was Once a Man: A twist on this trope: Kisaragi considered her humanity stolen away by the people who raped her immediately following her revelation of the incident. She eventually does get over it, though.
• Vanity Is Feminine: Subverted, since Kisaragi in this story doesn't boast about her beauty anywhere near as much as she does in the game, though when it comes to Damon, she isn't afraid to tell him what her good points are.

Satsuki

• Anime Hair: In her Fleet Log in chapter 118, Satsuki opens it up by wondering right away why anyone thought it was a good idea to give a ship girl like her blonde hair. She also wonders what a Japanese girl like herself is doing with blonde hair, but she also indirectly questions the more exotic hair colors of her fellow ship girls too.
• Artificial Human: Discussed in her Fleet Log, where Satsuki notes the genetically modified bodies that their "souls" and memories are now housed in. Also ties in with Super-Soldier, as she describes the powers that her genetically modified body gives her due to its cybernetic enhancements thanks to its Smartsteel construct.
• Ax-Crazy: Discussed in her Fleet Log: Satsuki questions her enjoyment of battle, asking herself if it's alright for her to enjoy fighting as much as she does. She wonders if maybe she's enjoying fighting too much, beyond what is mentally healthy for her, but at least she can be sure that she's nowhere near as bad as the other Blood Knights in the fleet.
• Blood Knight: She's the most battle-happy and combat-enthusiastic member of the Mutsuki-Class out of those currently part of the fleet - her Fleet Log goes into detail about how Satsuki only felt truly reestablished as a ship girl once she participated in her first major combat mission as part of the Combined Fleet during the Newfoundland operation, as the thrill of fighting helped get her back into the groove of things. But since there are so many other Blood Knights in the fleet, she just happens to be overshadowed by them as the prominent Blood Knights of the fleet; she's also nowhere near as Ax-Crazy as the others are. Or, at least, she doesn't think she is.
• Determinator: In chapter 103, the post-Operation Dualsight report details that Satsuki suffered heavy damage covering some of the fleet's light cruisers from the Abyssals' advance. Her entry in the stat sheet justifies her combat action, listing her endurance at 8, which none of her sisters currently in the fleet cannot match anywhere as near.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: She mentions in her Fleet Log that she had a hard time getting used to the fact that she was now a ship girl, sixty-five years into the future, and now able to see her fellow destroyers and ship girls in the flesh, as fellow ship girls, following initial activation. It got worse following her reactivation, when she got told that now, she's been transported again another two decades into the future, waking up to the world that's devastated by nuclear war.
• Guns Akimbo: This is actually listed in her entry in the stat sheet as a default passive ability, which grants Satsuki more experience for dual-wielding guns, a faster learning rate to using unfamiliar dual-wielded weapons, and an AOE effect that helps other allies around her also learn how to dual-wield faster.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Implied to have a bit of this opinion in her Fleet Log, when she wonders why humans would ever think nuking the world in the name of war was ever a good idea.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Gains one through her interaction with Damon's YRC.
• Lampshade Hanging: In her Fleet Log in chapter 118, Satsuki can't help but wonder if their developers were technomancers or something, to be able to draw out memories and "souls" of warships when warships don't exactly have such things - at least, not according to common perception about objects.
• More Dakka: She's one of the destroyers who opts for a dual-wielded infantry style, rocking double Magpul FMG-9's for a good portion of the story.
• Ornamental Weapon: Perhaps averted, because she gains a katana through her interaction with Damon's YRC, and other ship girls who have gained weapons through their own YRC-induced powers know how to use their respective weapons, so Satsuki should know how to use her katana.
• Repressed Memories: A minor case, but in her Fleet Log, regarding Damon's death, Satsuki wishes that this won't mean that her Admiral will be changed every year, as what had happened with her warship self in the war.
• Shout-Out: gives one to The Familiar of Zero when she likens her situation as a ship girl to a certain Japanese boy becoming a familiar.
  • The katana she gains from Damon's YRC is more or less identical to the one wielded by Johnny from Guilty Gear.
  • And the finishing move she uses on Murasame to end their spar is Hibiki's Heavenly Spirit of Victory super from Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium.

Kikuzuki

• An Arm and a Leg: Like Mutsuki before her, during Operation Dualsight, Kikuzuki loses both of her legs to a 12.5in shell that she bodyblocks for Kasumi.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Averted from her ingame rendition, as she speaks modern-day, conversational English and Japanese, according to her in-story dialogue lines. However, she does sometimes try to talk this way (although she gets weird looks from other ship girls for doing so) and highly admires Amagi's mannerisms of speech.
• Back from the Dead: Sank at Greifswald Bay during the final engagement between the fleet and the Abyssals.
• Berserk Button:
  • Like Mutsuki, she doesn't like it when people point out to her that she and her sisters were technologically inferior to other destroyer classes from the war, but Kikuzuki takes it even further and is willing to fight people to prove that they aren't, at least not in this life as a ship girl.
  • Still has a grudge against Americans even as a ship girl, since she can't forget what the Americans did to her when they found her sunken warship body at Gatuvu Island.
• The Cynic: Subverted from her ingame rendition but otherwise played straight: in this story, Kikuzuki doesn't seem opposed to war and fighting, although she's explicitly not as Ax-Crazy or as much of a Blood Knight as others, instead seeing her duties as a ship girl as an opportunity to prove to the rest of the fleet that she and her sisters of the Mutsuki-Class are not weak or technologically inferior. However, when it comes to men, specifically Damon's relationships with her sisters, she heavily distrusts him and doesn't think that he'll stay faithful to any one of her sisters because the rest of the fleet will distract him and render him to be just like any other degenerate human male who can't control his lustful desires.
• Does Not Like Men: As part of her Repressed Memories, according to her sisters, it can be implied that Kikuzuki really doesn't like men because of how her warship self was treated back in the second World War, when she was abandoned at Gatuvu Island by her crew and left to sink when the high tide rolled in, only to be discovered, raised out of the water, and salvaged heavily by the Americans who shortly captured the island afterwards. While this could be seen as a case of Misanthrope Supreme at first, Kikuzuki specifically mentions in chapter 264 that she has strong feelings about Damon possibly abandoning her sisters after he's through with them and has had his fun with them, using such phrases as "because you men are all the same" and other misandrous comments.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Damon gives her the nickname of Cookie, since he doesn't want to put in the effort to learn how to say her name properly (or just to take the time to say it slowly), and Kikuzuki, not surprisingly, hates it, given her personality. But it seems like, just like Amatsukaze before her, past the stolen fleet arc, she doesn't mind the nickname anywhere near as much as she did, though she'd probably rather be called by her proper name and only tolerates it.
• Epiphanic Prison: In chapter 277 Damons tells her that she herself is the one who is seeing herself as a Human Weapon rather than a person and she alone is the only one who can break herself out of her negative perspective.
• Eye Scream: Takes an AK round to the left eye, which damages it and forces her to treat it with a steel patch and bandage it, but at least she deals it to the Agent who shoots her like this, by throwing her pocket knife at him at the same time as he shot her, effectively trading blows.
• Foreshadowing: While all of her sisters have crescent moon eyes now thanks to Damon's YRC, they all have big, fancy weapons that are all at least katana-grade, while Kikuzuki endsd up with only a humble pocket knife. Kikuzuki claims not to mind all that much, but she doesn't explain why. The next chapter, she demonstrates that she has a terrifying power to rip people into nineteen pieces instantly with that very same knife.
• Glass Cannon: Has an 8 in attack but a 1 in defense.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She takes a hit for Kasumi that blows both of her legs off during Operation Dualsight, according to the post-operation damage report in chapter 103.
• Hidden Depths: According to her Fleet Log, she wants nothing more to go on to become as powerful a ship girl as physically possible, and look cool and badass while at it - almost to chuunibyou levels, even.
• I'll Kill You!: Delivers one to Damon in chapter 264, threatening him if he ever dares to commit to a relationship with any one of her sisters and later abandons them or proves to be unfaithful. She even goes beyond just threatening to kill him and tells him that she'll erase him from existence.
• In-Series Nickname: When she first joins the fleet, Damon, thanks to his unfamiliarity with Japanese names, tries to pronounce her name but gives up quickly and just calls her Cookie, which gets the rest of the Mutsuki-Class to call her that too in jest.
• I Work Alone: Because of her cold and aloof personality, she fights better if she's alone, as indicated by her Solo Operator passive ability that's listed in her entry in the stat sheet.
• Magical Eye: Seems to have this in light of her Jyuku Bunkatsu attack that she pulls off in chapter 263: when she activates her eyes, the world slows to a near-standstill except for herself, her movement becomes staticky and frame-like, and an incessant echoing is all that she can hear - but she dices five different people into nineteen pieces at the same time. While Kikuzuki's sisters all have crescent moon eye designs as well, Kikuzuki's stands out because the story narration seems to imply that it's Kikuzuki's eyes that allow her to enter this state and use her Jyuku Bunkatsu.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: A metaphorical case: heavily implied by Kisaragi in chapter 264 when she's explaining to Damon the possible reasons for Kikuzuki's confrontational behavior - the anecdote about Kikuzuki's warship self being raised out of the water where she sank at Gatuvu Island and salvaged suggests that the Americans salvaging her was more or less a rape in itself.
• Repressed Memories: Chapter 264 has Kikuzuki's sisters explain to Damon why she's so aloof and cold towards people as she is. According to them, Kikuzuki harbors a sharp hatred of humans because of what her warship self went through during its process of sinking and following its sinking, so she has trouble accepting the fact that her sisters are showing affection towards their Admiral because she's afraid that Damon will abandon them just as how her crew had abandoned her and left her to be salvaged by the Americans. This sentiment is implied to be reinforced by her thoughts in her Fleet Log in chapter 118.
• Shout-Out: Has multiple to Tsukihime, specifically Tohno Shiki.
  • With the help of Damon's YRC, Kikuzuki gains a pocket knife that not only looks like Shiki's knife, but it also has the kanji 九夜 etched into the base of the blade, with her own name etched on the other side.
  • In chapter 263, in order to get past some guards and escape the building that she and Hibiki are in, Kikuzuki uses a custom variation of Shiki's Seventeen Piece Dissection attack as seen in Melty Blood to eliminate the opposition. The narration even goes to length to describe Kikuzuki's attack in a similar way: slowed time, eerie echoing, Kikuzuki's frame-by-frame movement, and a distant shattering of glass when her attack lands.
  • In chapter 264, Kikuzuki makes yet another reference to Tohno Shiki's power, off of which her own is based:
    Kikuzuki: ...I'm going to kill you, and make it so that you never existed...
• Tsundere: For as much animosity that she may harbor towards Damon and as much annoyance with which she regards him, she still secretly admires his willingness to protect his ship girls, such as refusing to abandon Amatsukaze despite her request to do so and ensuring her safety at the risk of his own. However, this is still heavily subverted because it's very clear that she still does not trust him, especially in light of her sisters' developing relationships with him, to the point where she threatens to kill him if he decides to get into a relationship with any of her sisters and proves to be unfaithful to them - Kikuzuki even goes so far as to say that she felt secretly relieved when Damon died the first time around at Little Rock.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: She discusses this with her sisters on their flight to Berlin at the start of the Germany campaign. Kikuzuki believes that Damon, as an Admiral, didn't do anything spectacular or noteworthy during his brief tenure, while her sisters disagree. This being said, this was after Damon's death at Little Rock, so Kikuzuki's opinion of Damon may have changed after his duel with Blackwood. And considering that she's at least tolerating him calling her Cookie still, this seems to be the case.

Fubuki-Class

• Video Game Objectives: In the stat sheet, the Fubuki-Class have access to abilities that allow them to complete objectives faster or more efficiently and also grant them combat bonuses for using such abilities to complete objectives.

Fubuki

Japanese destroyer as depicted in Victory Belles.

• Culture Equals Costume: She wears a winter kimono complete with navy blue fur sleeves and collar.
• Emergency Weapon: Fubuki considers her katana this, because even though she comes trained in swordsmanship skills to use it in combat, she prefers to stay in the rear lines of the fleet and simply provide supporting fire, and she will only use her sword if enemies get too close for comfort.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Given that she has a winter theme going on with her design, blue eyes are par for the course.
• In-Series Nickname: Nisei Fubuki.
• Katanas Are Just Better: All Nisei Japanese ship girls possess katanas, with the exception of Chiyoda. Fubuki has one with a white handle and a black sheath.
• Minidress of Power: With a kimono, but since it barely reaches her thighs, it counts.
• Shrinking Violet: Subverted, she both looks and is shy and reserved, wears a thick kimono, and has snowflake hair decs, but she likes hanging out with the others in her class who are already part of the Combined Fleet.

Shirayuki

• An Ice Person: With her contract with Damon, Shirayuki now has access to ice and snow-based powers.
• Back from the Dead: Not once, but twice - she sinks during Operation Dualsight at Cayo Romano and during the final engagement between the fleet and the Abyssals at Greifswald Bay in Germany.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's described as one of the very few destroyers produced by the F.L.E.E.T. Project to have a positive and optimistic attitude coupled with a soft and gentle persona, but she will willingly fight and give her all in combat if it's asked of her. She also claims that if she had ended up being found by Damon during his initial travels in the South rounding up lost ship girls instead of being captured by the Coalition forces in Orlando, she would have gladly fought at his side to search for her missing sisters and fellow ship girls.
• Commonality Connection: It's mentioned in Arashio's Fleet Log that Shirayuki has become good friends with Arashio during the brief interim period between the end of Operation Dualsight and before the beginning of the Germany campaign, as they both sank in the same battle during the second World War, the Battle of Bismarck Sea.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her stay in Orlando counts as this. Shirayuki recalls her memories spent in the drug-infested city, such as watching people high on LSD jump off buildings to their deaths. This is perhaps Harsher in Hindsight because Japanese culture tends to label illegal drug usage as highly taboo, so Shirayuki must have been horrified having to stay in a city like Orlando.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The "Generic Five" moniker that Shirayuki and her ship sisters (except for Murakumo) have received from their devs. Shirayuki explicitly states that she would very much so to not have such a nickname.
• Hidden Depths: If you look at Shirayuki's entry in the stat sheet, you'll see that her insanity rating is only 10%, and this is taking into account her ordeal as a ship girl living in Orlando...meaning that for as much of a Shrinking Violet she might be, she has some strong mental fortitude to emerge from her imprisonment, especially one spent in a decrepit drug-infested city that Orlando has become due to the drug-trafficking trade in the area.
  • Reinforced in her Fleet Log in chapter 135, in which she's explicitly mentioned to be the strongest in terms of mental fortitude compared to Hatsuyuki and Goya. Shirayuki is willing to bear hardship, no matter how tough it gets, as her ordeal in Orlando demonstrates.
• I Should Have Been Better: Her main regret regarding her past warship life, because she sank relatively early in the war and now, as a ship girl looking back, feels that she wasn't able to serve her country as much as she otherwise could have. While she's not crying over it every day, per se, it's still something she keeps in mind to remind herself that she must do her absolute best in this life as a ship girl.
• Meaningful Name: Now that she's made her contract with Damon and has ice and snow-based powers.
• The Power of Love: During her stay in Orlando, taking care of her scared sister Hatsuyuki allowed her to be able to keep her mind off resorting to hatred and resentment towards the city and prevent her attitude and personality from degenerating and help maintain Hatsuyuki's mental sanity at the same time.
• The Reliable One: Her Fleet Log states that like Taihou in Charlotte, she stepped up to be the comforting big sister to Hatsuyuki and, to a certain extent, to Goya as well.
• Required Secondary Powers: Lampshades this in her Fleet Log, where she recognizes that her developers must have worked very hard to code the programs for her and the ship girls that make it possible for them to use their ship girl strength and powers without having to worry about the possible repercussions of using them - such as feeling the same amount of pain as a normal human would trying to lift an object that's far too heavy while doing exactly that.
• Shout-Out: One in her Fleet Log - Ayumu Aikawa from Is This A Zombie? gets referenced, but not in name.
• Those Two Girls: Is usually seen with her sister Hatsuyuki during the few times the story does mention her. There's a possibility that the reason for this is due to her ordeal as a ship girl of one of the Coalition factions spent in Orlando was spent with Hatsuyuki, her only ship sister at the time, and thus does not want to part with her sister, even if she did have the mental fortitude to come out of the city in good mental health, as discussed above.
• You All Look Familiar: Shirayuki's Fleet Log reveals that the developers of the project had an inside joke among them to call Shirayuki and her sisters Fubuki, Hatsuyuki, Miyuki, and Isonami the "Generic Five" due to how similarly they all turned out physically to one another. Shirayuki lampshades this by wondering why Murakumo, the other immediate Fubuki-Class destroyer, was given white-ish hair and not, for example, herself or Fubuki, whose names actually refer to snow-related natural phenomena.

Hatsuyuki

• Adaptation Personality Change: Ever since she receives her YRC power from Damon, Hatsuyuki has always been diligently fighting and not causing trouble as a lazy shut-in like her ingame self is.
• Back from the Dead: Like her sister Shirayuki, has sunk twice so far in the story: once at Cayo Romano during Operation Dualsight and once at Greifswald Bay in northern Germany.
• Break the Cutie: Surprisingly, she's the one who suffers this the most among the ship girls of Orlando, not Chitose, who is Orlando's victim ship girl. See Nothing Is Scarier below.
• Candid Camera Prank: In chapter 313, the way in which Yorktown gushes about appreciating a nice, big explosion (no, not ''that'' kind) just after a mortar strike finishes bombarding the water treatment facility that they've just evacuated themselves from causes Hatsuyuki to think that she's being trolled by one of these.
  Hatsuyuki: "I'm so getting trolled, aren't I? Where's that damn camera?"
• Commonality Connection: Since Yayoi, another lazy ship girl with whom Hatsuyuki is good friends in the 4koma, is not yet present in the story, she hangs out a lot with Yuubari, who came with a datacache full of anime shows already burned onto her storage files, and is stated to have been watching plenty of anime with her during the evenings back at base.
• Draw Aggro: Is the one drawing aggro (unwittingly) in chapter 142: when the helicopter transporting her and her squad of ship girls and Sanford gets shot down by an RPG and scatters its occupants, Hatsuyuki wakes up to find herself alone at the crash site of her helicopter and is approached by a squad of German NDP soldiers, and Sanford, who's nearby, uses her as bait to catch the NDP soldiers off guard and kill them all with a quick fanning of his revolver's hammer.
• Hidden Depths: According to her entry in the stat sheet, while almost all of her stats are extremely poor and make her possibly the worst destroyer in the fleet thus far as far as combat stats are concerned, she does have a whopping 9 in intelligence and has a cost of 0, which the stat sheets implies shouldn't normally be possible...until you realize that Hatsuyuki is a Hikikomori who may simply not eat much in the first place. Combined with the one good attribute that her passive ability "Hikikomori" provides, a double experience gain rate for any non-combat stat or skill, the story seems to pitch her as an extremely low-maintenance utility destroyer whose skills can be used for a variety of support roles, assuming that she gets past her unfailing laziness, of course.
  Hatsuyuki: "I'm a fast learner...I'm good at learning."
  • In-Universe, Hatsuyuki mentions in her Fleet Log that she wants to try to shed her Hikikomori ways and personality and be just as badass as any of the other destroyers. Naturally, given her personality, she's still working on this.
• Hikikomori: The story even cements this major part of her persona as a passive debuff that cuts her combat performance in half if she's awoken before 11 in the morning and causes her to gain Fatigue 50% faster than the average destroyer does.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: In her fleet log, she admits that watching her sister Murakumo fight valiantly on the ground and perform just like a professional infantryman is pretty cool and wants to mimic her skill and performance.
• Not a Morning Person: She performs at half of her combat stats if she sorties before 11 in the morning.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Hatsuyuki gets hit with the double-whammy of this: not only was she horribly spooked by the dark and drug-infested city of Orlando, but during her time there, she lived every day in fear of what might end up happening to her or what she may end up being ordered to do by their controller. She couldn't handle the fear and anxiety building up day after day she spent there, and her sister Shirayuki is the only reason why she was able to get rescued from the city without emerging a total emotional wreck.
• Parting-Words Regret: After learning of the reasons behind her design as a ship girl, she tells her head developer quite bluntly that those reasons are pathetic, and how he himself was pathetic for constructing her out of those reasons, likening it to making his own blow-up doll. This is the last time she ever sees him, and after her ordeal in Orlando, Hatsuyuki really wishes she could have left on more friendly terms at least.
• Plain Jane: Definitely thinks of herself as this, and she hates it. She basically hates every part of her own design, wondering to herself why she couldn't have been designed better and given a personality that isn't quite as crappy as that of a Hikikomori.
• The Quiet One: Just like her ingame rendition, Hatsuyuki is very quiet and doesn't ever talk to anybody unless she's talked to, to the extent that Damon initially thinks she's a mute the first time he meets her after rescuing the Orlando ship girls.
• Replacement Goldfish: She finds out she is this before she got shipped out to the US by meeting with her head developer in her Fleet Log, who designed her after his deceased girlfriend who died of leukemia and its complications.
• Shout-Out: Her Fleet Log in chapter 135 has quite a few, given the character:
  • Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 get mentioned, due to a case of Allohistorical Allusion.
  • Twitch and Twitch chat, including the Kappa emote.
  • Yes...innuendo.
  • Her head developer went by the name of Otacon.
  • Her contract power is a reference to the Jeweled Branch of Hourai, and it shoots out orbs of rainbow-colored lights from portals like Gilgamesh.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: At the end of chapter 295, when the girls need to shoot down a couple of enemy helicopters, Murakumo, Shirayuki, and Hatsuyuki all find AT-4 rocket launchers dropped by the enemies they've killed and try to shoot down one of the choppers. Both Murakumo and Shirayuki miss, but Hatsuyuki, who's apparently learned how to handle rocket launchers like the AT-4 from somewhere, nails the chopper and downs it instantly.
• Those Two Girls: Is usually seen with her sister Shirayuki during the few times she's mentioned in the story.

Murakumo

• An Offer You Can't Refuse: A downplayed version: in the beginning of chapter 295, when the fleet first meets with the commander of the Rangers, Colonel Fodemski, he offers Murakumo a secret deal that involves the ship girls agreeing to capture the Whitewater commander Jared Imwalle and bring him back alive to the Rangers because the Colonel has some personal business with him. In exchange, because his desire for personal vindication is so great, he offers to give her a satellite radio that she can use to contact him or his lieutenants so that she can call in one favor of any kind from them, so long as it's something the Rangers can do with reasonable deniability and within reasonable boundaries. Murakumo eventually does take this deal, figuring that this favor could come in very useful to perhaps get Damon out of a tight pinch if such a scenario were to happen.
• Anti-Gravity Clothing: Like her ingame rendition, refers to her floating mechanical ears, but the story refers to them as "head arrays" and specifies them as radar equipment for Murakumo. The story also distinguishes them by painting them as actual independent entities, as Murakumo actually yanks one off her head and throws it at someone as a makeshift projectile without apparent discomfort.
• Back from the Dead: Sinks at Greifswald Bay during the Germany campaign but is repaired back to life.
• Barrier Warrior: More so than other ship girls who have received remodels and have thus acquired Kai shields because her Waterfall Shield is an innate ability that she comes with, and it's also a Beehive Barrier just like remodeled ship girls' Kai shields.
• Berserk Button: She doesn't like it when her fellow ship girls discuss whether or not Damon really has a place in the fleet, as indicated by her Fleet Log in chapter 108. Subverted because this is more like a pet peeve than a real Berserk Button, and she's not going to attack her own friends and comrades over something like this.
• Big Little Sister: Despite being technically younger than both Shirayuki and Hatsuyuki, she escorts and fights with them in battle due to her more prolific experience in the fleet. She's also like their big sister out of combat as well.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Her decorated and etched Desert Eagle given to her by Damon, who in turn received it from Mr. Harrison of Mobile.
• Close-Range Combatant: Surprisingly, in the story, is this along with Amatsukaze and Shimakaze, the resident front-liners of the fleet. Due to her valuable work as the single most experienced ship girl in the fleet (mainly because of the fact that she's been with Damon the longest), along with her powerful Waterfall Shield and main mast spear, and her own pride of being Damon's first ship girl, she can almost always be found in the front lines of any fight, even sortieing alongside both Amatsukaze and Shimakaze.
• Despair Event Horizon: During Operation Trenton, Murakumo is put in charge of protecting a boy the fleet has found caught in the crossfire of their fighting with the local Trenton rebels. Not only does she fear that she's the one who might have shot and killed the boy's parents, but as the fleet is flying away from Trenton after the operation is finished, Murakumo deactivates her Waterfall Shield that she's been using to protect the boy, thus inadvertently allowing him to get shot and killed by a stray bullet on the way out while he was sitting on her lap. She takes it very badly, to say the least.
• Dual Wielding: In chapter 264, she demonstrates that she can dual-wield both her main mast spear and her new Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi at the same time.
• Elemental Weapon: While Murakumo has been able to use a water-based ability in her Waterfall Shield, with Damon's YRC, she now possesses a summon-able sword capable of generating flames and water, though she's yet to demonstrate the sword's full elemental capabilities.
• Friendship Trinket: Receives a turquoise diamond penchant made from the ashes of the young boy she tried to save from Operation Trenton. When Damon dies, this becomes a Tragic Keepsake that she unfortunately loses when she gets sunk in Germany.
• Goomba Stomp: Delivers one to an enemy in chapter 45.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Lampshades this about herself in her Fleet Log when she thinks about why she feels angry about the rest of the fleet talking about Damon in the ways that they are after his death.
• Hidden Depths: Apparently she has a super soft spot for sharks, as she has Iowa and Wisconsin make her little shark sock puppets that she can fit over her floating head arrays, and Damon catches her red-handed.
• Love Confession: Gives one to Damon via moonlight confession, but Damon isn't familiar with it and thus fails to grasp its true meaning. She's okay with it for now, however.
• Not What I Signed Up For: Due to her and other ship girls' general unfamiliarity with flying in helicopters and planes, Murakumo says a line to this effect this when she is taken on her first such flight in chapter 18.
• Onrushing Army: Orders her sub-fleet in chapter 295 to assault the Little Rock Air Base in this fashion - because they're ship girls who don't get affected by bullets for the most part, along with precision artillery strikes from the Kagerou-Class, this simple tactic works out brilliantly.
• Playing with Fire: With Damon's contract, half of her powers are fire-based.
• Pistol-Whipping: In chapter 315, she does this to a mercenary whom she is interrogating after he reveals his information regarding the enemy mortar site locations, which ended up matching the one that the girls had already cleared out.
• Pre-Climax Climax: In chapter 346, Murakumo gets a sexy time of her own with Damon and is very embarrassed when Losira teases her about it in Damon's dreamworld in chapter 347.
• Shout-Out: Gives one to the Unlimited Blade Works chant while adding slightly onto it in the midst of summoning her new elemental sword that she gets from Damon's YRC.
  • Has one to the game Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit, where she uses what seems to be a Super Mode named after the titular mech of the game that turns her eyes heterochromic with red and blue, just like her head arrays, and causes her silhouette to glow with a thick red aura.
  • Her secret love of sharks is one to a Japanese meme regarding Murakumo and sharks, popularized by inishie.
• Sole Survivor: Of her class at Cayo Romano.
• Starter Equipment: Just like her ingame rendition, in which Murakumo is one of the five starter ships, she is THE starter ship for Damon in this story, being the first one he finds and acquires.
• Super Mode: Seems to now possess one thanks to the newfound powers she's gained from Damon's YRC, called Cloud Breaker, where she emits a red aura and her eyes turn red and blue like her head arrays.
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: When the fleet is extracting out of Trenton, Murakumo, with the young boy she's saved from Trenton on her lap, shuts off her Waterfall Shield that was protecting him just in time to allow a stray bullet to hit in him the chest and kill him instantly.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Right off the rip, Damon puts down a baby that's been exposed to radiation in the Houston area, right in front of her, and Murakumo, on top of giving him the What the Hell, Hero? rant, spends some time not being able to forgive Damon for this act.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Towards Damon, of course. She starts out not liking him at all, but with due time, she comes to appreciate his work as her and the fleet's Admiral and even has deep feelings for him.
• Tsundere: Definitely was not this for much of the early parts of the story, but she eventually warms up to him as the fleet grows and they're pitched into more operations. Has become one (albeit a violent one) by the time of Operation Trenton's end, after she suffers some psychological trauma from having a young boy she's rescued from the operation get shot and killed right in front of her as they're extracting from the scene, and Damon is compelled to address her trauma. By the time Damon returns to the fleet after the fleet's operations in Germany, she goes full Dere.
• Uniformity Exception: Seemingly by luck of the draw, Murakumo is implied to be this after you read Shirayuki's Fleet Log, as Murakumo alone stands out from her five other sisters who make up the "Generic Five" with her white hair and deviant uniform.

Ayanami-Class

• Close-Range Combatant: According to the stat sheet, the Ayanami-Class have access to abilities that assist with the offensive capabilities of their comrades, as well as their own, or help cover their allies with fire support. So they're not exactly dedicated front-liners like Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Amatsukaze are, but they typically should be found in the front lines or even the vanguard of the fleet. Though, it's a little odd for Ushio to have abilities of this nature...
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Their and the Sendai-Class's reaction upon regrouping with Damon at Baltimore for the first time.

Ayanami

• Adaptation Personality Change: Whether it's mainly due to the author's personal portrayal of her or a trauma-induced personality change due to her quadruple amputation at the hands of the Atlantan faction, either way, Ayanami is much more reserved and serious than her ingame rendition.
• Berserk Button: Possibly her hair. She gets annoyed, even while in protocol, if her hair gets shot at. The fact that her hair tends to make her a deceptively bigger target in battle than she actually is doesn't help.
• Break the Cutie: Being the victim ship girl of Atlanta, Ayanami, with all four of her limbs smashed in to prevent her from moving and forced through a period of Go Mad from the Isolation, remembers that she eventually broke during her imprisonment and become a Broken Bird.
• Broken Bird: Subverted; even though Ayanami has every reason to become one, given her quadruple amputation and her treatment as a victim ship girl in Atlanta, once she's repaired at MAPS, she doesn't go down the extreme cynicism path and instead does her best to be the Cool Big Sis for her sisters in her class.
• Cool Big Sis: Being the lead destroyer of her class, Ayanami even has a passive ability because of it that allows her to grant passive stat bonuses to her sisters if she deploys with them in combat. Later, during the Ayanami-Class's deployment with the Sendai-Class to Baltimore to find and assist Damon, Ayanami counsels Akebono about the situation regarding Damon.
• Doing It Wrong: Tells Ashigara this in chapter 99 when the heavy cruiser starts clubbing an enemy Abyssal over the head with its own turret, citing its improper usage.
• Dumb Muscle: Implied and subverted for the same reasons listed in Yuudachi's entry below: both of them have a limit-breaker power, the Nightmare Protocol, that gives them insane combat bonuses, and both are perhaps the most level-headed in their respective classes.
• Emotion Suppression: Exactly what her Nightmare Protocol does to turn Ayanami into a cold, efficient killer.
• Exceptionally Tolerant: Zig-zagged: when she speaks with Akebono at Baltimore, Akebono, on top of her already caustic and frankly bitchy attitude, goes so far as to accidentally spray spit at Ayanami's face while the former is complaining about how much she hates Damon and thinks that Damon is faking everything they've seen from him in the city. Ayanami just wipes her face off and just keeps patiently listening to her. However, Ayanami will put her foot down if she feels Akebono is taking things too far with the other ship girls, especially when it threatens the unit cohesion among their team, very similar to how Damon doesn't like his ship girls fighting each other.
• Hidden Depths: No one is apparently aware that Ayanami is having difficulty coping with the possession of her Nightmare Protocol. She hasn't told anyone about this problem yet, either, because she's scared of talking about it.
• Hidden Evil: Not Ayanami herself, but her Nightmare Protocol. In her fleet log, she sees it as a sentient parasite that's actually growing on its own, following its own will. It hasn't done anything drastic on its own, but while she still feels nervous about it, she's never spoken about this to anyone so far in the story. In addition, her Fleet Log also reveals that according to Ayanami herself, what her Nightmare Protocol is now doing is replacing her usual persona with the one of the Ayanami who broke at Atlanta, and understandably, she's quietly freaked out by this.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Her fleet log in chapter 135 reveals that not only did she almost choke out one of her developers at her initial activation, forcing her developers to shut her down and run emergency repairs on her to correct this glitch in her behavioral codex, but the second time she gets activated after these problems are fixed, she feels like she's in another nightmare and that everything about her new life is totally foreign, and thus spends her first day as a ship girl cowering in the corner of her activation room. The developers even declare her clinically insane.
• Necessarily Evil: Implied. She uses her Nightmare Protocol willingly, whenever she sees that the situation calls for it, but only in her Fleet Log does she mention at all that she is quite frightened by her power. She believes that her protocol is screwing with her, and that it was the reason why she nearly forgot that she even had ship sisters in the first place, but this could be because of her trauma as a victim ship girl.
• Power Glows: A subverted case - according to chapter 99, when Ayanami triggers her Nightmare Protocol, her hair gains a subtle red outline indicating that she's in-protocol.
• Shout-Out: gains the Spear of Longinus and an AT Field to match Shikinami's equipment via Damon's YRC.
• Super Mode: Shares the same protocol with Yuudachi, which is based off her Real Life performance at her final mission during the second World War. However, hers behaves differently from Yuudachi's: instead of increasing her aggression, Ayanami's emotions get suppressed, allowing her to focus on her combat performance as efficiently and machinelike as possible. However, just like Yuudachi, this protocol has the potential to become a Deadly Upgrade if she stays in-protocol for too long by tiring out and gaining insanity at accelerated rates.
  • But if you pay attention to Ayanami's Fleet Log in chapter 135, you'll learn that Ayanami's Nightmare Protocol is actually not the same as Yuudachi's because they were developed independently from one another, and the dev teams responsible for them were different; the names are simply a coincidence.
• Those Two Girls: With Shikinami. While they're portrayed as such frequently in fanworks, the story takes this one step further, as they were held prisoner by the Coalition faction of Atlanta together. Even after they join the Combined Fleet, whenever they're mentioned, they're usually portrayed hanging out together, though they do spend almost as much time together with the rest of their sisters in the Ayanami-Class.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: As a result of her Nightmare Protocol. It's even explicitly written in the last line of her Fleet Log.

Shikinami

• I Just Want to Be Badass: Really wants a strong power to call her own, almost to chuunibyou levels. It gets a hell of a lot worse directly because of her stay in Atlanta, where she felt completely powerless to do anything to save her sister Ayanami who was being held as Atlanta's victim ship girl, and it gets even worse during Operation Norfolk, when she personally witnesses other ship girls with protocols go to work. Her one saving grace now is the discovery of augmentations, and if Suzukaze's acquisition of her Colossus Reactor augmentation is any indication, there may be hope that Shikinami might just get what she wants.
  • Fulfilled more than she expected when she joins the fleet: Shikinami states in her Fleet Log that by being given a rifle by Damon and told to fight, she feels incredibly empowered just by serving as an infantrywoman because her enemies are not other warships like they were in the second World War, but other humans whom she can defeat swiftly and easily thanks to her innate strengths as a ship girl. It's still a far cry from having an outright power like her sister Ayanami or her other destroyer friends, but it's a good start.
    • Finally fulfilled in chapter 261, when Damon uses his power to help Shikinami develop her own. See Shout-Out below.
• Lampshade Hanging: Does some of this at the end of her Fleet Log, when she thinks about what kind of power she might want if and when she does get one, like having a Super Mode or a power that exudes battle aura, etc.
• Life Isn't Fair: Bemoans this, for good reason - she's surrounded by fellow destroyers, many of whom have secret powers or battle-changing protocols, while she herself wishes she could even have half their powers.
• Not So Invincible After All: More like "Not So Special After All". In her Fleet Log in chapter 135, she has this opinion about herself, because for being called a "Special-Type Destroyer" during the war, she feels that she did nothing really spectacular or outstanding like her sister Ayanami did.
• Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction in chapter 192, when the Baltimore ship girl team meet Damon there for the first time, except at the time they don't know that it's him because he's got a gas mask on and is splattered from head to toe with both red and black blood. She barely keeps her cool...barely.
• Shoot Everything That Moves: Does this in chapter 192 again - when the Baltimore ship girl team face off against the Baltimore mutants for the first time, Shikinami starts freaking out for good and screams, "Kill them! Kill them all!"
• Shout-Out: The end of her Fleet Log ends with, "Power...it really does change everything, doesn't it."
  • In addition, one of her developers once called her "Asuka", but she herself doesn't know why this is.
  • In chapter 261, Shikinami gains an AT field and a double-bladed breakable spear. In chapter 262, her left eye starts glowing blue as well. Now we know why the developers called her Asuka.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In her Fleet Log, Shikinami swears she's not actually a chuunibyou.
• Those Two Girls: With Ayanami. While they're portrayed as such frequently in fanworks, the story takes this one step further, as they were held prisoner by the Coalition faction of Atlanta together. Even after they join the Combined Fleet, whenever they're mentioned, they're usually portrayed hanging out together, though they do spend almost as much time together with the rest of their sisters in the Ayanami-Class.

Oboro

• Adaptation Personality Change: While she keeps her original personality intact, she has become quite jaded and hardened once she comes out of Nashville. She lampshades this in her Fleet Log, noting that she's even a bit scared of just how quickly and readily her personality's changed in just two months. If Ushio and Sazanami have pointed this out to her before, she recognizes, it's a pretty concerning issue.
• Berserk Button: Averted in her Fleet Log, when Oboro specifically states that her very short war service prevented her from ever developing hard feelings towards Americans or America.
• Catapult Nightmare: Oboro reveals in her Fleet Log in chapter 123 that there are nights when she wakes up with a wild heartbeat and a sharp pain in her stomach and chest, the physical manifestation of what she remembers from her sinking as a warship (she was sunk by an airstrike when a bomb scored a direct hit on her munitions room and detonated her shells, causing her to explode).
• Determinator: The passive ability that her crab friend gives her temporarily boosts her critical damage resist and her will ratings both by 50% when she drops below 20% HP, but she loses her EXP bonuses that she otherwise would receive.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Receives this accidentally from Akebono in the form of a small Despair Event Horizon; her Fleet Log states that towing her dead sister Akebono during Operation Dualsight has snapped her out of potentially becoming an Emotionless Girl and has motivated her to not let apathy and insensitivity become coping mechanisms for the hardships she's had to deal with during her time spent in America as a ship girl thus far.
• Iconic Item: Her crab companion who hangs out in her equipment is even cemented as a passive ability that gives her more EXP in naval battles and more EXP to her and her sisters if they all deploy into combat together.
• Meaningful Name: Oboro (朧) can mean "Moonlight", and in her Fleet Log, Oboro really likes moongazing.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Subverted; like Damon, she doesn't outright hate humans, but her opinion of them has certainly soured a lot as a result of her ordeal in Nashville.
• Misery Builds Character: Basically what she went through due to her time spent in Nashville.
• Point of No Return: Believes that she's passed a psychological one with her personality hardening; as much as she wants to and tries to return to how she was before her time spent in Nashville, she can't just forget what she's experienced in Nashville.
• The Quiet One: Has become this as a result of her Adaptation Personality Change - her Fleet Log states that she tends not to socialize very much and oftentimes be found spending time alone. She also apparently spends a few minutes every night at the fleet's base at MAPS moongazing by herself.
• Repressed Memories: She chooses not to dwell on her past memories as a warship due to her relatively short service history during the war. Once she and the Nashville ship girls get rescued and implemented into the Combined Fleet, her memories of Nashville and her time spent there also join these.
• Shout-Out: Can now summon the Moonlight Greatsword from Dark Souls via Damon's YRC.

Akebono

• Adaptation Personality Change: Like Oboro, Akebono goes through this during her time spent in Nashville. However, unlike Oboro's personality change that turns her into a silent jaded type, Akebono becomes a bitchy, cynical, and brooding jaded type. She's still got her shitty attitude towards Damon, however.
  • The stat sheet takes the shit attitude of hers and turns it into a passive status buff that lets her fight with slightly improved stats if she's with Damon but at the cost of doubled fatigue gain rate and slowly accumulating insanity.
• Alpha Bitch: The story probably takes the ingame Akebono and takes this up a notch - there are quite a number of readers who are very soured by the story's portrayal of Akebono, both towards the character and the author himself, sheerly due to how much of a consistently crappy attitude she has towards Damon. At the very least, she acts nothing like how she acts towards Damon towards her own sisters, though she will still get snappy with them, especially if Damon is brought up for whatever reason.
• Back from the Dead: Sank once at Cayo Romano during Operation Dualsight.
• Berserk Button: Akebono also has a degree of wartime hatred of the Americans and of the concept of American ship girls, though, like Sazanami, she only shows it during the Baltimore arc, when they actually do come into contact with the ship entities there.
• Best Friend: Considers Ushio this because only Ushio can legitimately make her otherwise troubled and disturbed persona feel at peace and thus will listen to her, even if Damon is involved.
• Big Damn Heroes: Manages to reach Furutaka in chapter 305 before a band of Ri-Class heavy cruisers can inflict possibly lethal damage to her, and by activating her Daybreak Protocol to ensure this.
• Blood Is the New Black: Becomes like this in chapter 301, after delivering her No-Holds-Barred Beatdown onto a Ri-Class.
• Blood Knight: Her brutal fighting in chapter 301 now firmly establishes her as this.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Ties in with her Smug Super. Her only gripe, as revealed in her Fleet Log in chapter 123, is that she doesn't have a special protocol like some of the other destroyers so that she can go ham in battle too.
• Born Unlucky: If she claims in her Fleet Log that she can literally count the number of good things she can say about her lives (both as a warship and a ship girl) with one hand's worth of fingers...
• Close-Range Combatant: According to the stat sheet, the Ayanami-Class have access to abilities that assist with the offensive capabilities of their comrades, as well as their own, or help cover their allies with fire support. So they're not exactly dedicated front-liners like Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Amatsukaze are, but they typically should be found in the front lines or even the vanguard of the fleet.
• Crapsack World: Has this opinion of the world, not surprisingly.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Akebono is killed in action during Operation Dualsight by taking two sixteen-inch shells in a row by an Abyssal battleship, and it blows her body apart in half from the abdomen down.
• The Cynic: Always sees everything glass-half-empty, to the point where she practically thrives in misfortune. Her Fleet Log says it all:
  "Reuniting with her ship sisters? That's not a poignant reunion moment, that's just another responsibility she'll need to take unto herself to protect her ship sisters, especially Ushio-chan..."
• Dissonant Serenity: She seems awfully composed for someone who's just blown a Ri-Class's face off with three point-blank cannon shells at the end of chapter 301.
• Epiphanic Prison: In chapter 260, Damon bluntly tells her that the reason she is such a bitch despite no longer having a good reason for it is because the mental bomb shelter she originally built against the past cruelties she experienced has become her own jail cell.
• Everyone Has Standards: In her Fleet Log, Akebono is so horrified of the concept of being raped that for as much as she hates Damon, she secretly is thankful that he was able to prevent it from happening.
• Freudian Excuse: Carries over harshly from the game. Akebono's reasons for hating Damon, her new Admiral after her time spent in Nashville, are almost purely arbitrary, not even counting her historical reasons. For the context of this story, Akebono can and will certainly use the excuse that her American "admirals" in Nashville treated her and her fellow ship girls in the faction like crap and therefore can justify her behavior towards Damon off this.
• Glass Cannon: The strongest destroyer in the Ayanami-Class with an attack rating of 8, but has the second-lowest defense rating of 2. Maybe this is why Akebono sank the way she did at Cayo Romano...
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Oh boy, you don't say...towards Damon, of course.
• Hidden Depths: Her Fleet Log implies that she's getting tired of constantly acting like a cynical bitch because the pessimistic front she always has is extremely draining on her, and that all she wanted after joining Damon's fleet was some mental peace and quiet without having a compulsive desire to complain about everything.
  • And even if she has a trash attitude, she insists that she really does love her sisters too much to bring herself to hate them for any reason.
  • When Akebono splits herself into her two personality halves, the friendly Akebono tells Damon that Akebono not only is a genuinely good person, and that she's just confused about what she ought to think of him, but also that she actually has deep feelings for him.
• I Am a Monster: Repeatedly does this in her Fleet Log. She's only missing a monstrous protocol to go with it.
  • ...which she actually does gain with the help of Damon's YRC, but it's only half-monstrous, as she can produce a clone of herself who's caring and tender while she herself becomes more or less an embodiment of distrust and hatred.
• Laser-Guided Karma: When she complains to Damon that he shouldn't try to act like a hero, he obliges her - Akebono finds him in the Nashville State Capitol building, sitting amidst the bodies of the Harper Family which he's horribly mutilated.
• Literal Split Personality: In chapter 265, Akebono reveals that she's actually technically the first ship girl to receive an energy transfusion from Damon's YRC that empowers her with new abilities, mainly a new protocol called Daybreak Protocol that allows her to send out a clone of herself who is kind and amicable towards Damon, while her original body becomes a sullen and perhaps malicious Akebono who avoids Damon and refuses to talk to him at all.
• Mama Bear: Shows signs of this in her Fleet Log - she wants to protect her sister Ushio from all the horrors of the world, for as much as she likes pointing them out, because she feels that Ushio doesn't deserve to suffer as much as she herself should.
  "A delicate angel need not dwell among the sins and pollution of mere mortals...only demons who revel in such wrath and depredation."
• Meaningful Name: Akebono's protocol is the Daybreak Protocol, so essentially her own protocol is named after herself.
• Misanthrope Supreme: By far the purest example in the story, since she utterly detests humanity.
• Mythology Gag: In the story's Alternate Universe, Akebono eventually receives a unique augmentation called Slayer that gives her exponentially scaling power depending on the ship type of the enemy she fights. In chapter 301, it's subtly implied that Akebono temporarily gains heavy cruiser-tier strength or stronger while giving a Ri-Class the below, but you wouldn't know this unless you happen to make the connection between this story and Ambience: Platoon (Moebius Four).
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: She tears off the torpedo launcher from a Ri-Class's right arm and then proceeds to blast her face in with three shots from her cannon module at point-blank range.
• "Not So Different" Remark: She's compelled to begrudgingly recognize that Damon may be on the same wavelength as she is in her Fleet Log.
• Point of No Return: Her Fleet Log states that her perpetual pessimism was getting out of hand to the point where she was being cynical for the sake of being cynical, and that this was averted in her sinking during Operation Dualsight because only by dying was her mind forced to calm down and take a break from all the pessimistic thoughts she was making.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Almost suffers this at Atlanta when she and her team get EMP'd and captured by O'Reilly's personal security team. Damon barely averts this in time.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Ushio's blue.
• Repressed Memories: After she gets repaired back to life after Operation Dualsight, Akebono recalls feeling the experiences she had towards the end of her life as a warship in the form of turbulent human feelings and briefly has flashbacks to all of the major incidents her warship counterpart had.
• Shout-Out: Her Fleet Log references the Pensieve from Harry Potter.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Ushio. Akebono is the black side of the yin-yang - caustic, rude, cynical, and fatalistic.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Now that all ship girls in the story can speak fluent English, it's definitely harder to find lines of Akebono's dialogue that don't drop F-bombs or S-bombs or the like, because swearing at her Admiral in Japanese clearly isn't enough.
• Smug Super: She heavily looks down on normal humans because she's a ship girl and is by default stronger than they are.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Akebono is one of two (three, if you count Furutaka's glitched persona) whose affection for Damon is officially listed in the stat sheet as "Hatred".
  • But this now becomes a gray area when the friendly Akebono clone informs Damon that the real Akebono actually loves him - it's just that her conflicting emotions and thoughts are preventing her from ever getting that point across to him.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Akebono does not mind becoming one with her dark personality and attitude if it means she can be at peace with herself and perhaps get stronger to protect her sisters in the process.
• This Is Reality: In her Fleet Log, she realizes that she's just not the type of person who'll go through some radical personality and mindset changes and wants to strive to find as much of a neutral ground with her attitude and mindset as possible.
• Those Two Girls: With Ushio. They're each other's foils. Akebono specifically has a passive ability in her entry in the stat sheet that gives her slightly better combat stats when deployed and fighting with her and rewards her with bonus EXP if Ushio completes a mission with minimal damage taken.
• Tsundere: Subverted, as revealed in her Fleet Log. She definitely does not have any feelings for him...but she at least quietly gives Damon his due after his death at Little Rock that he's done a hell of a lot more for her and the ship girls compared to every other human she's had to deal with so far.
  • Double Subverted when, in chapter 266, Akebono's kind personality half reveals to Damon that the real Akebono does in fact love him; she just can't ever bring herself to admit it or act as such.

Sazanami

• Adaptation Personality Change: She's nowhere near as silly as she is ingame and is instead much more sarcastic and drops dank memes like she's a walking version of Twitch chat.
• Animal Motifs: The rabbit. Explored in her Fleet Log in chapter 112, when she notes that if she's left all alone without her sisters for whatever reason, she feels she might go off the deep end.
• Back from the Dead: Sank at Cayo Romano during Operation Dualsight, killed in action by an enemy Ri-Class cruiser.
• Berserk Button: Implied to be Ushio, as in if anyone bothers Ushio or tries to do anything funny to/with her, Sazanami will rek ya, m8.
• Crapsack World: Develops a view of this herself during her stay with the Feds, before Damon comes to pick them up.
• Foil: Considers herself to be this to Oboro as a result of their wartime experiences, in which Sazanami not only survived longer into the war but was also able to develop historical friendships with other Japanese ship girls, while Oboro both sank earlier than she did and didn't have nearly as many chances to do the same, which may explain why Oboro's Fleet Log discloses the fact that Oboro was slowly becoming an apathetic, unsociable and emotionless girl at the time of joining the Combined Fleet.
• Hidden Depths: She values her family (mainly her wartime squadron, Destroyer Division 7, which was comprised of herself, Ushio, and Akebono) more than anything else.
• Iconic Item: Her bunny button is retained (since it's part of her character design and not just part of her equipment, like Ushio's personalized 12.7cm turret is), and the rabbit is implied to be an actual sentient entity and actually helps her in combat with additional perception stats and bonus EXP if Sazanami completes a mission without ever dropping below 80% HP.
• Irony: Suzukaze's banishment from the fleet, while it may have temporarily shattered the family cohesion of the Shiratsuyu-Class, actually strengthened the Ayanami-Class's bonds, as Sazanami observes in her Fleet Log, since they learned the lesson of having strong family bonds the easy way.
• Lampshade Hanging: Mercilessly mocks the whole concept of personifying warships like herself in her Fleet Log.
• Mama Bear: Acts as Ushio's guardian during their time as Federal ship girls, since Akebono isn't there to fulfill this role.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sazanami's antagonism towards American warships of the second World War is strong enough to make her not drop any memes during Operation Baltimore.
• Otaku: Just like her ingame rendition, she's a Fourth Wall Breaker and makes references to all kinds of random internet trivia, except instead of making Japanese net references like in the game, in the story, she references lots of American internet memes (she does occasionally make quips involving Japanese 2ch memes and netspeak, mainly in her Fleet Log). She does also call Damon "Master" as she does to Admirals ingame, which doesn't go well with Damon, given his tendency for Insistent Terminology.
  • Strangely, this Otaku nature of hers is cemented as a passive ability that lets her grant a +1 bonus to a random stat rating for every ship sister she deploys with, even if she deploys by herself.
• Power Incontinence: The power she gains from Damon in chapter 257 isn't exactly cooperating with her.
• Sarcasm Failure: In chapter 192, she can't be her usual meming self when she and the squad come across a particularly disturbing sight.
• Separated at Birth: Due to their wartime circumstances, Sazanami considers her sisters to be this, since she only ever served with Akebono and Ushio as part of Destroyer Division 7. Because of her unfamiliarity with Ayanami and Shikinami (and to a certain extent Oboro as well), she initially does not want those three to disrupt the close-knit family nucleus she has with Akebono and Ushio, but she quickly warms up to them thanks to the efforts of Ushio to bring them all together before they were shipped out to the US.
• Shipper on Deck: She spends much of chapter 200 trying to get Ushio to hook up with Damon.
• Shout-Out: she's got a lot, obviously, given her Fourth Wall Breaking nature, but in her Fleet Log, she makes one to the infamous "devilishly attractive" Ushio doujins produced by Himura Kiseki.
  • gains the signature spiked ball and chain and knife of Rem and Ram, can summon as many of those knives as she wants, and sometimes opts to drop them right out from underneath her skirt.
• The Smart Guy: Implied to be this among her sisters in the Ayanami-Class, as her entry in the stat sheet lists her intelligence rating at 8, which blows any of her sisters' such ratings out of the water. Only Ushio comes close, but only at 6.
• Smash Sisters: Considers her destroyer class to be this, as she is very close with every one of her sisters. Indeed, once the entire Ayanami-Class is assembled in the fleet after the conclusion of the Coalition campaign, it's quite rare to see any of them fighting without at least one other ship sister with them.
• Starter Equipment: Averted from the game; Damon does not acquire Sazanami as a ship girl until chapter 38.
• Take That!: In her Fleet Log, Sazanami is probably making a sharp jab at the premises of Kantai Collection, gijinka/personifications in general, and perhaps at otakus as a whole.
  "No one thinks of a warship as a living entity, unless you're one of those crazy people who become infatuated with inanimate objects - then you're just a creep."
• That Came Out Wrong: In Ushio's Fleet Log, Sazanami apparently made a joke and told Ushio that at least she wasn't sold as a reparation ship and used as a test target...not realizing in time what had ended up happening to Nagato and Sakawa.
• Third-Person Person: Averted; she's yet to speak like this in the story.
• Zerg Rush: Discussed in her Fleet Log - Sazanami believes that destroyers like herself are very weak by themselves and are only strong when working and fighting together in groups and squadrons to get anything done.

Ushio

• Adaptation Personality Change: Goes through one at Baltimore, though as it turns out, it's more because Losira inadvertently hacks her main processing unit to share her body than Ushio herself acting different.
• Berserk Button:
  • Will actually be willing to fight if her sisters or Damon come under fire, though usually she resorts only to nonlethal measures, such as pushing an Abyssal cruiser with enough strength to send her flying down a street.
  • Averted for the most part - despite fighting the American Navy during the war the longest and surviving the war, even, Ushio refuses to give into the sin of resenting the Americans for something that happened eighty years ago, though she admits that she was starting to fall into that trap until Damon came in and took control of her and the Federal ship girls.
• Best Friend: To Akebono. She's the only one Akebono will freely admit who can keep her in check and calm her down.
• Break the Cutie: Suffers this after Operation London, when her Fleet Log states that she cried into Sazanami's arms because she couldn't handle all of the combat stress that she took while fighting.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Losira takes some time to point them out, noting that she's probably bigger than the rest of her sisters combined.
• The Cutie: As much as this trope can exist in a story like this. In her Fleet Log in chapter 113, everyone treats Ushio like this without exception, after she took the time after her initial activation in Japan to pay visits to all of her comrades she'd fought with during the war.
• Despair Event Horizon: May have gone through one of this following Damon's death, because she feels heartbroken for the first time in her conscious memory. Not even all the horrors and memories of her wartime service broke her heart, but this incident did.
• Emergency Transformation: Goes through one at Baltimore when, upon seeing Damon getting gravely wounded, allows her own main processing unit to become "hacked" by Losira to temporarily gain her power and save him.
  • In chapter 272, with Damon's YRC, Ushio is able to recall this emergency transformation state that she underwent in Baltimore with the exact same appearance and seemingly with the same ability to channel Damon's mother through herself.
• Eye Scream: Takes a piece of artillery shrapnel to her eye in chapter 99 - had she been a normal human, it would have probably killed her instantly.
• Fighting from the Inside: An unusual case for this trope - in chapter 205, Ushio battles Losira for control of her own body when the latter starts attacking Akebono for pointing a gun at Damon - not only does she win, but she briefly gains control over her powers.
• Heal It With Fire: She heals a wounded Italian Army soldier with Losira's Hellflower flames.
• I Am a Monster: Subverted: while she doesn't think of herself as an outright monster, Ushio doesn't really like being called an angel, because then she'll just think of herself as some kind of angel of death due to her circumstance as one of the few surviving destroyers at the end of the war.
• Iconic Item: Unfortunately averted from the game, as there is no mention of Ushio keeping her pink smiley-face 12.7cm gun due to the changes in general destroyer equipment that the story establishes.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Her sisters regard her as a complete angel in a grimdark world where ship girls like them have too many enemies and have been subjected to a plethora of horrors and abuses.
• Interface Screw: Like Samidare and Suzukaze, suffers one of her own, and she, too, has a small smattering of X's, Y's, and Z's start littering her heads-up display, indicating that Losira is in the process of hacking herself into her main processing unit at Baltimore.
• Joke Character: Implied to be this if you go off Ushio's stats as written in the stat sheet - and they're downright atrocious. Indeed, she is the only ship girl in the entire fleet as listed in the stat sheet who has a 0 attack rating.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Discussed in her Fleet Log: when Ushio recalls fighting in her very first operation as a ship girl during the London campaign, she finds war a hell of a lot different than she remembers it.
• Pacifist: Perhaps the purest example in the fleet. Like Harusame and Samidare, she possesses the "Battlefield Angel" and "Pacifist" passive skills in her entry in the stat sheet, but unlike the other two, Ushio has an attack rating of 0. While she recognizes that there may come times when she will have to attack people, she'll only do so strictly in self-defense or to protect other people who need protecting, and even then, as her attempt to save a downed helicopter pilot shows, she'd much rather try to get them out of harm's way rather than shoot back at her attackers. This is also reinforced in her stats in the stat sheet, as all of her combat-related stats are very, very low, with her Intelligence rating being anything decent. There is an exception, and that's her Berserk Button.
• Playing with Fire: She's seen presumably borrowing Losira's Hellflower ability to heal a wounded Italian Army soldier who got hit by a frag grenade. She's used Losira's Hellflower before offensively, but this instance is especially significant because she consciously uses it.
• The Pollyanna: Is determined to stay optimistic and hopeful despite the fact that none of her sisters share this mentality and even though the world she lives in now as a ship girl very clearly does not give many perks to ship girls like them.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Akebono's red.
• Shout-Out: Gains the Beast Spear that happens to change her hairstyle to match that of Losira's.
• Shrinking Violet: Her shy personality carries over from the game, and in the story, she can't bring herself to be more assertive towards Damon while there are so many other girls who vie for his affection.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Akebono. Ushio is the white part of the yin-yang: kind, endearing, hopeful, and optimistic.
• Split Personality: What happens in Baltimore after Losira hacks Ushio's main processing unit. It's a bit of a case of Fighting from the Inside, except both Ushio and Losira can yank away control of Ushio's body at any time whenever they want - which means, naturally, given Ushio's regular personality and her learning of who Losira is, Losira ends up in control more often than not. She does, however, seize control of her own body when Losira starts attacking Akebono for almost shooting Damon to prevent her own body from hurting her own sister.
• Team Mom: As revealed in Sazanami's Fleet Log, Ushio was the one who brought the Ayanami-Class together when, prior to their new lives as ship girls, they had very little historical connection to do so.
• Thoroughly Mistaken Identity: This happens when Damon mistakes her for his mother, Losira, in Baltimore.
• Those Two Girls: with Akebono. According to Akebono's entry in the stat sheet, Ushio is the only one who can keep her truly under control.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Has one of these at the end of Operation Dualsight, when she and Oboro have to tow the dead bodies of Sazanami and Akebono. She's only got one of her eyes intact, though.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: She's considered the "paragon of Japanese diligence and maturity" by practically all of the ship girls in the fleet, according to her Fleet Log.

Akatsuki-Class

• Status Buff: all Akatsuki-Class members have access to abilities that enable themselves and allies close to them varying buffs to different aspects of weapon handling.
• Anchors Away: they also have access to anchors to use as melee weapons, but because they're considered purchasable class abilities according to the stat sheet, they don't come with them by default. And as far as the story itself is concerned, none of the Akatsuki-Class so far have possessed one or used one in combat.

Akatsuki

• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: A step further than her canon self, she doesn't even try to be aloof.
• Affectionate Nickname: Not for herself, but for her mobile satellite that she gets from Damon's YRC, which she calls "Kitsuaka-chan", basically her own name backwards, which further adds to her whole childishness thing.
• Back from the Dead: Sinks with Hibiki at Greifswald Bay during the final fight between the Abyssals and the fleet during the Germany campaign.
• Butt-Monkey: Sometimes can be seen as this, as she indirectly gets teased about her whole Character Tic of wanting to be a real lady.
• Cool Big Sis: She also possesses the Eldest of Kin passive ability that grants a small amount of additional combat bonuses to her sisters if she deploys with them into combat, though the "Cool" and "Big" parts are more debatable.
• Gratuitous English: Averted, as all Japanese ship girls are fluent in English.
• Insistent Terminology: Surprisingly subverted, because throughout the story, while she tries to be a proper lady, she doesn't exactly demand that other people treat her like one. At least, not yet...
• Joke Character: Much like Ushio, while her stats aren't as bad, Akatsuki has some pretty terrible stats compared to her sisters, considering the fact that she's the lead destroyer of her class. Subverted somewhat, however, since she does have two passive abilities that do buff her own performance and those of her sisters. And now that she gains a mobile satellite capable of sentry duty by blasting enemies with bolts of plasma, she becomes less so.
• Meaningful Name: "Akatsuki" means "Dawn". Hence...Hammer of "Dawn".
• Proper Lady: Her Character Tic of always trying to act like a high-class lady is present in this story as well, but it's actually cemented in her entry in the stat sheet as a passive ability that grants her +1 all stats every so often over time in combat and additional stat buffs if her sisters get injured in combat so that she can fight better to protect them. She also receives additional armor points and a +20% faster experience gain rate if she deploys and fights with other ship girls who also carry themselves like high-class ladies (i.e. ship girls who have formally polite or archaic speech mannerisms like Kumano or Amagi).
• Shout-Out: A three-fer in chapter 277: through Damon's YRC, Akatsuki gains possession of a small satellite. On one side, the word "JAXA" is written, a reference to the Akatsuki Venus space probe launched in 2010, and on the other side, the words "HAMMER OF DAWN" are written. Finally, the narration at one point calls the probe a "mobile satellite", a possible reference to the Mobile Satellite power-up ally seen in Metal Slug 3., which is properly referenced in chapter 353, when the satellite is seen in action.
  • In chapter 353, Akatsuki calls her mobile satellite "Kitsuaka-chan".
• Sneeze Cut: Sometimes has one whenever anything related to being a lady is mentioned.
• Third-Person Person: Averted, she doesn't refer to herself this way.
• Took a Level in Badass: Now that she's got a mobile satellite.

Hibiki

• Abnormal Ammo: Like Kawakaze, Hibiki can also ignite her own ammo with phoenix fire for additional burn damage onto enemies while her protocol is active with her Phoenix Breath ability, but unlike Kawakaze, she can extend this buff to nearby allies as well.
• The Ace: Is this within her class, with undoubtedly the best stats among her sisters - only Inazuma edges her out in total hit points and negotiation rating.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Not so much her personality as her character itself: while in the game her Russian identity as Verniy is saved until her second remodel, in the story Hibiki has full memory of her time as a Russian destroyer and can speak fluent Russian, to boot. This ability to speak Russian right off the bat comes in very handy in Operation All Russian.
• Back from the Dead: Sinks with Akatsuki at Greifswald Bay during the final fight between the Abyssals and the fleet during the Germany campaign.
• Bucket Helmet: Averted, she's yet to pull out the bucket.
• Emotionless Girl: Heavily implied to be this due to her entry in the stat sheet, as one of the conditions she possesses with her Russian Cold ability is the inability to gain Insanity. The only way for her to gain Insanity at all is for her to see any of her ship sisters fall in combat.
• Gender-Blender Name: Invoked in chapter 354, when a Russian teenager asks Hibiki why she goes by a masculine name of Verniy.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: If Hibiki's health reaches 0 or if she takes a critical hit that drops her below 25% health, she instantly activates her Firebird Protocol that just as instantly regenerates her health all the way back up to full.
• Gratuitous Russian: Averted; she speaks it fluently.
• Heal It With Fire: When Inazuma suffers the loss of one of her arms due to Xenolith's dragon in England, Hibiki activates her protocol to cauterize Inazuma's wound to prevent her from losing too much blood.
• Ice Queen: The story takes this trope literally by giving Hibiki +1 all stats and double effective health if she fights in extremely cold environments or temperatures.
• The Leader: Hibiki becomes one when she gets assigned flagship for Operation All Russian.
• Magikarp Power: Averted, Hibiki starts off as a very strong destroyer, one of the best in the game in terms of raw stats. She even has a
• Meaningful Name: "Hinotori" literally means "Firebird" and refers to the mythological phoenix.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Averted, Hibiki runs into another Verniy in Russia in chapter 354.
• Not So Stoic: Averted, she's always kept a straight head and attitude.
• Odd Friendship: With Venyamin Korotayev, Controller of Chicago. Korotayev first met Hibiki at the unnamed Federal base where the original Federal ship girls were being held and introduced himself to her as the grandson of one of her sailors who served aboard her in the Red Fleet, wishing that had the world not gone through the nuclear war, assuming that they still somehow met, he would have liked to take her to his grandfather's grave. Because of this friendship, she goes drinking with him and Sanford in chapter 263...presumably vodka, of course.
• Only Sane Man: Subverted; it's true that Hibiki is the most level-headed of her sisters, but the rest of her sisters are pretty serious too.
• Playing with Fire: As expected, due to her whole connection with the phoenix, Hibiki has control over phoenix flames while her protocol is active.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Hinotori, her alter ego, does this to Hibiki and takes over her body when her protocol is activated.
• Super Mode: Her Firebird Protocol gives her varying stat bonuses depending on how it's activated and gives her access to flame-based powers. If she activates it a certain way, she even regenerates all of her lost hit points.
• Super-Powered Alter Ego: Hinotori, her protocol identity who comes out and replaces Hibiki anytime her Firebird Protocol is triggered. She speaks in a much more archaic fashion, not unlike Amagi, to differentiate herself speech-wise from Hibiki.
• Survivor Guilt: Surprisingly averted, as many fanworks of Hibiki explore this aspect of her - considering that this story has gone quite in-depth with Shigure's own case of this. Though, this may just be that the story has yet to dive into Hibiki's case.
• Translator Buddy: Hibiki became this during her short time as a Federal ship girl translating for Russian political and military refugees working in the American government who still can't quite speak English very well.
• Vodka Drunkenski: Averted, she's yet to be mentioned drinking gratuitous amounts of vodka.

Ikazuchi

• Back from the Dead: Sinks at Cayo Romano during Operation Dualsight.
• Combination Attack: Her and Inazuma's NA-45 Lightning Strike. Inazuma fires the primer round first, and then Ikazuchi must fire the detonator round second. If Ikazuchi's round hits near enough to Inazuma's, they'll detonate together to match the power of a battleship-caliber shell.
• Jack of All Stats: As far as her combat stats go - she has 5's in attack, defense, intelligence, and speed. Only her endurance rating stands out at 8.
• The Leader: Averted; for Operation All Russian, she's not the leader, Hibiki is.
• Nice Girl: While the game establishes her personality as a reference to the incident in which she and Inazuma rescued 900 Allied sailors from ships they'd helped sink a day before, the story takes this incident up a notch by listing in her Fleet Log that before she was scheduled to be shipped over to the US, Ikazuchi actually met Sir Samuel Falle, one of the survivors whom she'd saved nearly seventy years before in her warship form, and learned that if it weren't for Falle's work to publicize the humanitarian work of her captain, Shunsaku Kudo, in his decision to save those 900 sailors, the world would have never known about Kudo's and Ikazuchi's heroic deed.
• The Reliable One: Cemented as a passive ability in her entry in the stat sheet.
  Because you have Ikazuchi, don't you!
• Shout-Out: Her NA-45 Lightning Strike is a two-fer to the Lightning Strike scorestreak in Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the NA-45 grenade sniper in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
• Sole Survivor: Of her class at Greifswald Bay.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Averted, she's not actively seeking out Damon's approval. That's the Shiratsuyu-Class's job.

Inazuma

• Adaptation Personality Change: While she hasn't explicitly acted this way yet, Inazuma is hiding a lot of bitterness, according to her Fleet Log entry.
• All-Loving Hero: Subverted, while almost all other Kantai Collection media protrays Inazuma like this, this story, as stated above, reveals that she's not so angelic this time around. She keeps that not-so-angelic side of her under control pretty well so far, however.
• Back from the Dead: Sinks twice, at Cayo Romano and at Greifswald Bay.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Contributes to her Stepford Smiler tendencies. Her Fleet Log discusses the day when Ikazuchi met Sir Falle before they were shipped to the US, and Inazuma felt extremely bitter that only Ikazuchi's captain gets any credit while her own seemed to have already faded into obscurity.
  • The fandom's Plasma personality for Inazuma is also present in this story, cemented as a passive ability in her entry in the stat sheet.
• Children Are Innocent: Averted. Not in this story she isn't, if her Fleet Log has anything to say about her.
• Combination Attack: Her and Ikazuchi's NA-45 Lightning Strike. Inazuma fires the primer round first, and then Ikazuchi must fire the detonator round second. If Ikazuchi's round hits near enough to Inazuma's, they'll detonate together to match the power of a battleship-caliber shell.
• Deadly Upgrade: Her Plasma passive ability causes her to lose 100 hit points per minute spent as Plasma, causes her to deal +50% extra friendly fire damage, and adds a permanent 20% Insanity to her Insanity meter every time she becomes Plasma.
• Jack of All Stats: A bit better off than her twin sister Ikazuchi, with 6's in all combat stats, including endurance, so Ikazuchi does beat her out in this regard.
• Reluctant Warrior: Seemingly averted in the story, perhap due to her Stepford Smiler tendencies.
• Shout-Out: her NA-45 Lightning Strike is a two-fer to the Lightning Strike scorestreak in Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the NA-45 grenade sniper in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
  • She frequently uses Benimaru's attacks from the The King of Fighters series.
• Sneeze Cut: Has one in chapter 281 when Samidare uses her "Hawawawa!" cry.
• Starter Equipment: Averted, she is the third starter ship girl Damon acquires along with Sazanami.
• Stepford Smiler: She's got an uncharacteristic amount of bitterness that she hides beneath a fair expression.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Her Plasma passive ability. She gains +2 all stats and becomes immune to all enemy status effects, but she also deals +50% extra friendly fire damage.
• Third-Person Person: Averted.
• Verbal Tic: Her "Hawawawa" tic is only mentioned sparingly, but her "nanodesu" gets used almost every time she talks.

Hatsuharu-Class

• Support Party Member: The Hatsuharu-Class members have access to specialized abilities that dramatically increase their own or other allies' combat proficiency for a short period of time.

Nenohi

Japanese destroyer as depicted in Victory Belles.

• Culture Equals Costume: Wears a pink and red kimono with pink and red floral prints.
• Expressive Accessory: Subverted, the toes of her boots have little smiley faces with their tongues sticking out somewhat, the faces don't actually change expression themselves.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Averted, she may wear a pair of headphones, but she's very sociable and goes around talking to both the Kagerou-Class and the Fubuki-Class on her first night with the Combined Fleet. Moreover, she wears them around her neck as opposed to wearing them over her ears, too, at least whenever she's talking to people.
• In-Series Nickname: Because the new Japanese ship girls that Lukenstor has built are mostly all repeats within the Combined Fleet, these ship girls are being called "Nisei [insert ship girl name here]". So for Nenohi, currently, it's "Nisei Nenohi", Nisei being the word for second-generation.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Nenohi's has an elongated handle that makes it look more like a nodachi handle than one belonging to a katana, and it's got four big bobbles stuck through it at different lengths along the handle.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Short pink hair tied up in double hair ribbons. It's not just her hair that's pink, though, the top half of her kimono is pink, some of the flower prints on her kimono dress is pink, and even her boots are pink.

Wakaba

• Determinator: Has an Endurance rating of 9 and a Will rating of 75%. Her Masochist passive ability also contributes, as she takes reduced damage from all attacks by default and fights better the longer a fight drags on.
• Friendly Target: Is a victim of this when Nagato fires an RPG-7 warhead a little too close to her and Hatsushimo, so the two destroyers get taken for a short flight.
• Guns Akimbo: Like Satsuki, she prefers dual-wielded guns and even has a passive ability that reinforces this trait. The fact that Damon buys her a pair of AMT Hardballer Longslides only serves to reinforce this trope.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Tries shooting a few enemies with her pair of Mini-Uzi's that have run dry, so she's forced to Pistol Whip them instead.
• Shout-Out: The AMT Hardballer Longslides that she gets from Damon at the Full Metal Jacket gunshop, which are an obvious one to Hitman.
• The Stoic: In the form of her Emotionless passive ability, which allows her to reach 100% insanity and withstand the penalties that would normally affect any other ship girl who does the same.

Hatsushimo

• Determinator: While she doesn't have the endurance rating to match her sister's, she still has a Will rating of 75%.
• Escort Mission: Her passive ability Capital Escort Specialist, a reference to her Real Life roles during the Second World War, gives her several combat bonuses for fighting near the vicinity of any capital ship girl.
• Friendly Target: Is a victim of this when Nagato fires an RPG-7 warhead a little too close to her and Wakaba, so the two destroyers get taken for a short flight.
• Shout-Out: Her unique active ability, Fallen Comrades' Revenge, is taken from Sengoku Rance, which allows Hatsushimo to track the exact amount of damage that's been dealt to her allies in her immediate vicinity and concentrate it all into one attack that, if it successfully hits an enemy, will deal that same amount of damage onto one target.