[Depth 001]

//Naturally, as this is a fanfiction including an OC, some characters might feel OOC purely because of the OC's presence. Sorry about that but that's just how life goes.

If you see me refer to USS Kirk as both a frigate and a destroyer, then that's because it kind of was both.

Anyway, this story follows more so the anime and the Cadenza movie than the manga, however, elements of both will be very prominent.

BUT, beware, this is kind of an AU since I do diverge from the original plot to help expand my characters a bit, hope you don't mind.//

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The life of a Fleet of Fog frigate is as robotic as one might expect. Proceed with orders, don't do anything extraordinary, return to patrol, repeat. The American frigate, USS Kirk, had been ordered to undergo a prototype refit plan for the whole Fog fleet. As one would guess, it was one of the chosen participants due to its redundancy and easily replaceable nature. However, it was not bothered by this. Why? Because the ship barely had a conscience. It was, for the lack of a better word, not smart enough to understand this injustice.

It was a bit strange for one of the few warships of the Fog built outside the WW2 era to undergo a refit as their designs were quite rare. Nobody knew why this was the case but nobody really cared all that much.

The modernization was mostly supposed to be internal, such as increased power capacity, mitigated power cavitation and so on. Some updates were also supposed to be to its armament, mostly to its CIWS system to be an uninterrupted laser rather than an actual minigun-styled energy cannon.

So, the ship sailed at a comfortable/maximal speed of its gravity engines... 90 knots or 167 km/h or 104 miles. The speed was by all means not something a vessel should be able to reasonably achieve, at least by human standards.

The ship, along with tens of missile and torpedo tubes, features a dedicated missile launcher to fully recreate its human counterpart. However, its appearance was as far as the similarities ran. The hull of the vessel was dark grey in colour, lined with crimson lines that emitted an ominous red hue the humans have come to associate with dread. The Mk-16 8 cell missile launcher for ASROC and Harpoon missiles wasn't even used for those types of missiles but for Fog's own series of missiles. The Mk-42 5-inch/127mm calibre gun didn't fire shells but photon blasts. Tens of missile and torpedo tubes lined the body of the ship, bearing many powerful warheads. Only the ship's Phalanx CIWS functioned anywhere close to its human counterpart, even if it fired short bursts of energy instead of high-calibre bullets. USS Kirk's overall weight was 4,202 tonnes, nothing short of a miracle considering the durable materials it was made out of. For defence, the ship could even equip the one of a kind technology that allowed Fog to control the seas in the first place, the Wave Force Armour, otherwise referred to as Klein-field. The ship's length came to about 438 ft (134 m), its beam around 46 ft 9 in (14.25 m) and draught in around 24 ft 9 in (7.54 m).

Overall, the vessel was small, nimble, and deadly. Its photon weaponry was lesser than that of WW2 era destroyers, however, it compensated for this with newer model technologies and wider missile armament.

It rolled to Fog Mobile Shipyards-04 at about 4:20 PM, or 16:20 in normal human time. The shipyard was a strange construct, it was not based on any vessel known to have been built by humans, rather, it was like a massive transport vessel that made love to an oil rig and an actual dock. Strange indeed, the base even had to be run by multiple mental models due to its massive processing power needs. USS Kirk received confirmation and an order to enter dry dock 9, and so it did without hesitation.

Then, the refit process began...

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