Glad to see so many responses to my small story! By popular demand, have an Epilogue.

First, review responses:

BrokenLifeCycle, War historian: Glad to see such fervent responses!

Guest: There's a bit of a fanon amongst some Kantai Collection stories that in times of high stress a Kanmusu can summon her original, steel hull. Having it appear felt to me like an appropriate end to the last chapter.

ThePizziaMan, edboy4926, redcollecter, TazalTerminals, OBSERVER01: Thanks!

Danny79: "Achievement Unlocked: Viking Funeral." "Achievement Unlocked: Wee Bit Toasty."

bri1967: Sorry but nope. Harvest (the shipgirl) is the ship's spirit; its soul. Harvest (the ship) is just steel; it doesn't come with crew.

Mkoll, The One and Only MUDKIP: One frigate shipgirl, one frigate ship, one dumb AI, and one spirit prowler. That's quite the collection!

perfectshade: Thanks! Your detailed reviews are always a joy to read. Glad you liked the fic, and hope you enjoy one last chapter!

2 lazytosignin: So forceful! Well, now that you mention it, there is something my mind is cooking up... But that would be telling. ;)

Glad to see so many people responding to my story, and hope you enjoy one last chapter!

As always, I own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.

UNSC Harvest whistled to herself as she strolled through the center of Pyongyang. Exchanging waves with the couple ship girls manning the UN food bank, her eyes swept over the signs of past fighting that still marred the city.

It was rather ironic how, before the Abyssal War, some in Europe and America had worried over how China spread its wealth and influence across the seas, as the Abyssals proved the dangers cut both ways. Caught by the collapse in international shipping, the Chinese economy plummeted. They were lucky that, despite all the difficulties and even some rumblings early in the war, their country survived the crisis rather intact.

The same could not be said, however, for China's quasi-vassal to the north-east. North Korea depended entirely on trade with China for just about everything, yet the country had no spare income for the consumer goods that made up China's trade economy. With China's attention turned inward, North Korea was suddenly cut off from supplies, and neither South Korea nor Japan was particularly inclined to devote precious resources to fill the gap. Mass starvation followed by civil war ensued. Despite the disaster in progress, however, China valued the buffer between its border and the west too much to allow South Korea to step in. Anarchy reigned until shortly after V-A Day, when China acquiesced to the United Nations stepping in to govern the province.

The nations of the world had been caught off guard when every last ship-girl defected en masse to the UN, but the week of shocked inaction gave the ship girls time to make themselves useful. Alongside the usual patrols of the sea lanes to protect against Abyssal remnants, ship girls found a number of applications for human-scaled warships. What was left of the Middle East became surprisingly calm with female warships patrolling the borders, and where once the only dependable job was as a martyr, now there was an endless amount of profit to be made in the culinary arts. There had been that one attempt at a rocket attack in the West Bank, though only a couple rockets were fired before a destroyer-sized shell landed directly on the launch tube. The swift response, coupled with the threat of warship-level antiaircraft fire should the helicopters even think of entering the West Bank, succeeded in persuading the Israelis to call off the retaliatory strike.

High commands grumbled, but couldn't really do much else considering the experiences conventional navies had early in the Abyssal War trying to fight a supernatural enemy, not to mention the fact that the poster-girl of the UN ship girl contingent was a spaceship from five centuries in the future.

Despite a tense first couple of months, in the end the nations of the world took the decision remarkably well, though joy at the end of the Abyssal War probably tempered many complaints. Economies were booming thanks to the restoration of international trade and shift back to consumer goods over wartime material. Another factor that definitely helped was the fact that, as the ship girls directly assigned to the United Nations headquarters made clear, they were subject to the UN, not controlling it. Saratoga's speech for the first post-Abyssal War reconvening of the UN made headlines around the world. Drawing a comparison to George Washington's refusal to become king of the new United States after the American Revolution, Saratoga said, "We ship girls are the defenders of humanity, but we are not nor will we ever be its rulers. We did not overthrow the greatest threat humanity has yet seen only to become that threat ourselves." Harvest smiled; it was as close an oath to defend Earth and her colonies as was yet applicable to this past planet. The United Nations was far from perfect, but of all the complaints arrayed against it, no one could ever accuse it anymore of being toothless.

Exchanging greetings with passers-by, Harvest checked in on some of the other ship-girl efforts. The de-mining program seemed to be going smoothly. Even before the Abyssal War, many nations of the world had struggled to deal with millions of land mines laid throughout the twentieth century; the combination of massive numbers of mines laid coupled with the effort-intensive process of removing them made de-mining dangerous and time-consuming. And despite the efforts of many thousands of committed volunteers, mines continued to claim thousands of victims.

Ship-girls, however, made de-mining much easier. A mine meant to blow up a tank would barely scratch a battleship's armor plate.

In fact, de-mining efforts remained the most popular assignment for battleship ship-girls. Though a few were retained for Abyssal patrols, battleships were resource-intensive to sail, even more so with the change from wartime to peacetime production. Similarly, though battleships were fearsome deterrents, their very stature made them ill-suited to most peacekeeping roles. Cruisers and destroyers were better able to win hearts and minds playing with the children, and if they ever did need to respond to anything they had the speed to do so, while their firepower would not level an entire city block if it needed to be used.

Their massive size and armor weight may have left battleships ill-suited to peacekeeping, but it made them perfect for de-mining. The sheer amount of armor plate shrugged off even the most powerful land mines—New Jersey described anti-tank minefields as "foot massages I can get for free," while the tickle of anti-personnel mines resulted in many Youtube videos of giggling ship-girls—and the walking patterns to ensure no mines were left fit well with the precise, methodical mindset of battleships. The de-mining efforts were even having some beneficial diplomatic results, despite the status of ship-girls as untethered to individual nations. Japan's status amongst Southeast Asia, for example, rose considerably after Yamato herself came there as part of the de-mining program. All in all, Harvest thought to herself as she ignited her thrusters and took off towards Yokosuka, things were going pretty well.

And then, of course, there were all the ventures in science and technology opened after the war. Scientists from the world over made coming to Switzerland almost a pilgrimage; now not only for CERN but for Harvest's hull hovering above. Most of what they were discussing went way over Harvest's head, but just about every scientist in the world was excited by at least one thing on the ship. From cryogenic suspension to slipspace to her fusion reactor to her A.I. to her Titaniam-A plating, UNSC Harvest was driving the global scientific and engineering communities bonkers. Copeland had transferred back into the ship, bringing it down above Switzerland once a day for traffic to travel on and off the ship, before ascending back into geo-synchronous orbit to save wear-and-tear on the engines. Harvest herself was grateful her hull wasn't just being left as a ghost ship, but she still preferred being away from the steel frigate. Too many unpleasant memories.

Harvest was also thankful many of the technological advances from the Abyssal War weren't being abandoned with the war's end. The collapse in international trade coupled with the destruction of many off-shore oil platforms by the Abyssals forced great advances in cleaner energy sources. Wind, solar, biofuels, even nuclear had seen a boost, especially once government nationalization forced them to stop competing against each other. Coupled with the advances on the horizon thanks to Harvest's fusion power plant, fossil fuels looked more and more like a thing of the past, something Harvest's historian skipper would have been grateful to see. Who knew how different humanity might look if the Resource Wars never occurred.

Speaking of differences, Harvest thought as she landed back in Yokosuka and walked towards her room, the fame the little frigate had (unknowingly) built up during the war coupled with appreciation for the fact that alien civilizations are somewhere out there led to renewed interest in space travel. NASA and other space agencies enjoyed budgets they had hardly dreamed of, and plans for future ventures off world were well underway. Already plans were being drawn up for new space stations around Earth, and Repensum's talk about Earth's orbital tethers moved what had been wishful and speculative thinking towards actual projects. Apparently Repensum had visited Sol more than a few times during her time as an ONI Prowler; her knowledge of orbital stations had been a pleasant surprise to many space agencies. People were talking about settlements on Luna in as short as forty years, maybe even stations on Mars by the 2080s.

All those thoughts brought Harvest's attention back to her own job. Despite her unquestioned status as the most powerful ship girl, Harvest shied away from the suggestion that the UNSC frigate should lead the world's ship-girls. Harvest readily acknowledged there were many ship girls far better suited to diplomacy and leadership than she was. Let the capital ships handle all that; Harvest was a frigate at heart, and she preferred busy work far more than the delicate acts of politics. Luckily for her, there was a big opportunity for busy work that only she could do. Humanity's early ventures into space had left millions of pieces of debris in orbit around Earth, posing incredible danger to further space travel, even before the Covenant battlecruiser had annihilated any intact satellite in orbit around the planet. Though most of the pieces were practically microscopic, there remained many thousands of more sizable pieces of litter cluttering Earth's orbit.

Perfect busy work for a spaceship-girl. Harvest grabbed her equipment rig out of her room, put it on, and lit her thrusters again, soaring into orbit above the green and blue gem she called home. A jaunty grin on her face, the frigate pinged her sensors, singing to herself as she flew towards the nearest concentration of debris.

"Fly me to the moon, Let me plaaay among the stars!" Harvest didn't particularly care how cheesy her choice in music seemed to some of the others. She was just happy to have a job that needed doing that (for once) was unlikely to result in her death. So what if she knew that springtime on Jupiter was nothing to get worked up over? Maybe Mars would be nicer. Not even the distinctive marks of plasma burns on the pieces she stuffed into her rig brought her mood down. That SHIVA had definitely done its job; pretty much the entire teardrop-shaped aft section of the CCS had been vaporized by the blast, while the neck of the battlecruiser had made a new crater on Luna. Harvest had checked out the wreck before returning to Earth after her mission with Nagato, and had found the nose strangely empty. Perhaps any crew that had been in the forward section had moved aft to deal with her and Nagato, and had thus been caught when the SHIVA went off. Harvest had motored out of the battlecruiser as best she could after her MAC spaced Nagato, but though she was able to make it out of the blast radius in time the explosion still sent the frigate for quite the tumble. Harvest never failed to remember that, yet again, the little frigate had cheated certain death against the Covenant. Even more than her rescue from the Abyssals, her second escape from the Covenant left the small frigate grateful to wake up and live every day of her life.

"Fill my heart with song, And let me siiing forever more!" Harvest was excited for the future—an emotion she had never felt before. She hoped the peace would last a long time yet; perhaps with the specter of aliens out there somewhere, humanity would be less inclined to fight amongst itself. A silly hope, perhaps, but having known nothing but war her whole life, Harvest knew she'd enjoy some peace.

Of course, the spaceship also knew that with the sheer vastness of space, it was a near-certainty that they'd encounter an alien civilization sooner or later. She only hoped that when that time came, it would go a lot better than the first contact with the Covenant at Harvest.

"In other words, please be truuue!" Of course, all those worries were for times still yet to come. And for the present, at least, humanity was at peace and the future looked bright. Harvest couldn't ask for anything more. Snatching a couple floating pieces of solar panel and jamming them into her rig, she finished her song. "In other worrrds! In other worrrds! Ayyyee! Looove!—Dah! Dah! Dah!" she made finger-gun motions with her hands, before turning towards the planet she had sworn to protect. "You!"