Kongō is sad you forgot about her. She's standing outside your bedroom window, holding a boombox above her head, playing "Don't You (Forget About Me)" by Simple Minds at a volume level that will probably annoy your neighbors slightly at this time of night, while bitter tears of regret and loneliness cascade down her perfect, British-built cheeks. I hope you're proud of yourself. You monster.

(On the other hand, this is Hiei's big chance, so you'll probably get a nice card from her later. :)

>I doubt Yuudachi would
>be able to maintain cover for very long

Heh, yeah, it's hard for me to picture Poi even attempting such a strategy. For one thing, it would be way too much work. Particularly before her second remodel, I don't think Yūdachi is diligent enough to really work as a normal sailor, quite apart from the difficulties she'd have had fooling the recruiting officer, the doctors (although how did that work, anyway?), everybody in Basic...

>and losing a capital asset
>like Mutsu and then having something weird and magic-y crop up in the
>aftermath probably would have caused more of a stir at HQ, by which I
>mean "you could hear the screaming clear in Saint-Ulrich".

In fairness, Mogami was a heavy cruiser, which, while not a capital ship per se, is hardly a trivial loss. On the other hand, the IFN wouldn't have sent a battleship on such a mission anyway. Mogami was probably the flagship of the escort flotilla.

Nathan added:
>Also, pre-sinking Human-Mutsu would find maintaining cover as a man to
>present certain considerable physical challenges...

Yes, much like Yūdachi, she wouldn't have fit (erm, as it were) into this plot construct at all; a different introduction vector would've been required. And that would certainly have been possible, but in the end, the shorts simply won. :)

This is as good a place as any to note: In determining the disposition of the Fusō fleet, I'm assuming that, though losses to enemy action are obviously very different in this war, the Japanese ships that were lost for non-combat reasons during WWII have still been lost in this setting. Unfortunately, that means the battleship Mutsu sank in June 1943 as a result of sabotage by a disgruntled crewman; so she wouldn't have worked for this particular intro scenario in a couple of different ways. Interestingly, though, Mogami was one of the ships that rescued her survivors.

--G.
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