It is the shoreline of the River Tyne in Newcastle Upon Tyne, the year is 2401 CE, just after the Frontier Day incident. Two shipgirls, twin sisters in their hearts despite their different looks, are spending some welcome shore leave away from their ships, both of which are now in the competent hands of Port Weller Spacedocks' Queenston Station works to fix up whatever damage was done to them by the Borg and the Changelings which were stopped by the intervention of the veterans of USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D as seen in the last season of Star Trek: Picard. And while the visitor from the Chaudière-Appalaches region of Québec appears to want to strangle her sister for her braggadocio, she still loves her as a twin sister would always love someone who is as emotionally close to herself as a person can be. The host is the shipgirl AI of USS Hero, the inheritor of a name line from the Royal Navy which stretched over two centuries and six separate ships from the time of the Seven Years War to the Second World War. Created in this incarnation as a Matsumoto-class frigate near the end of the XXIII Century by Yoyodyne Propulsion of Mars, she was created in the same way other Royal Navy namesakes of this group was born; a split-off element of a core programming tree which gained so much information that it created TWO separate synthetic beings which could be installed in two separate starships. Given the rather interestion connontations of her name, Hero the shipgirl decided it was best to live up to it in ways that would have Starfleet's logisticans and engineers constantly weep; EVERY iteration of USS Hero was lost in battle. The first went down in a fight with Tholians in 2320. The second, a Miranda-class destroyer, wound up a constructive write-off against the Tzenkethi in a border skirmish in 2355. The third, a Challenger-class, was wrecked by rogue Maquis of all things in 2370! The fourth, another Challenger-class, fell in the second battle of Chin'toka five years later. The fifth, an Akira-class cruiser, would be a victim of Frontier Day in 2401. After these pictures were taken, Hero would be given a Reliant-class hull. The bets are already running across the quadrant. And the bet mistress is none other than Hero's more level-headed sister adopted of Québec, the shipgirl AI of USS Chaudière, named after a tributary of the Saint Lawrence River flowing down from the northern Appalachian mountains to join the mother river across from Québec City proper. Also starting her career as a Matsumoto-class frigate in 2294, she would last in that hull until 2341, an impressive forty-seven years of commission without major uincident. Next would come a Lancelot-class destroyer, which was commissioned in 2343 and would also last until Second Chin'toka when the Breen had much to say about it; the one thing both Hero and Chaudière could loudly claim was that when their hulls were lost in battle, the casualties were quite minor. Following that would be a Defiant-class escort frigate, which commissioned in 2377 and would last until the turn of the XXV Century, when the option for a Valiant-class ship came up. Built at PWSD's Luna Orionis yards, it was ready when the Borg and the Changelings came along to ruin a lot of people's days, forcing Chaudière to take control of her ship and race to Earth to help rescue Hero and her crew when her sister was forced to scuttle her hull. "Ah, Miss Chaudière! There you are!" "Ah, M'sieur Quark! How goes business?!" "Profitable as always! How's your sister!" (*groan*) "Boasting that she'll make her next 'Sidekick Commander' even better than the last one!" "Oh! Put me in for ten bars of latinum and ten standard years before she wrecks her next hull." "I will do so, M'sieur...!" "CHAUDY!"
