六月七日（土）
Today, Takahashi-san called me to his office from breakfast to discuss some important things, which I was very glad he did. Earlier this morning, I woke up and wandered over to the dorm room that Kawakaze and Suzukaze had been sharing. Without really thinking, I climbed onto Suzukaze's bed and hugged her blanket. It still had her cool scent on it. I couldn't help it - I cried some more into her blanket. If Suzukaze was going to die like this, I wanted to at least make up to her, get rid of our conflict earlier this week. But I didn't even get to do that. Worse, Asashimo-chan, who lost an arm in the ambush attack at the naval yards, walked by, and since I accidentally left the door open, she walked in, wondering who was inside, and saw me doing such an embarrassing thing, and from there, rumors spread to the other ship girls that I was suffering from depression. That's why I wanted to get away from the rest of the fleet, because everyone was staying away from me out of pity, because they thought that I just wanted to be alone and did so out of respect when in fact it's the exact opposite that I want.
What's even worse is that now, with Shigure-onee-san's consistent behavior, I have heard some of the destroyers call us the most unfortunate class of destroyers in the navy. I don't want that to be our reputation. While I don't despise it, I resent it - the fact that Kawakaze and Suzukaze had to die just to end up with a reputation like that slapped onto them is...unforgivable. But what can I do? This is the hand that has been dealt to us, and we must live with it until future events prove it otherwise.
That aside, Takahashi-san called me to his office. The first order of business he talked to me about regarded the issue of maintenance of the Platoon - specifically, the repairing and reconstruction/revival of sunken ship girls. Takahashi-san informed me that the bodies of our fallen were being kept in Tokyo, at Tokyo Medical University, so that the country's top doctors and surgeons, called by the government to participate in a private venture to contribute to national defense, are now studying and analyzing the bodies. Takahashi-san said that the committee from yesterday had informed him earlier this morning that just today, the Diet had authorized a fully funded program whose goal would be to replicate the technology behind us ship girls. However, Takahashi-san, Akiyama-san, and Maki-san were of the opinion that this would take too long, that swift action would be necessary to get the ship girls who had been killed in action back on their feet.
The Rear Admiral, therefore, suggested to me that this was a secret plan that he and Akiyama-san were formulating in private, and because I was his most trusted ship girl and the most decorated (well, I should say, the only decorated ship girl), he would divulge this information to me too. He said that they were thinking about perhaps entrusting me to a highly classified mission to sail across the Pacific to make contact with our original producers, the American Seal Team Six. The reason why this mission is so classified is because over the course of the last month, the Diet had passed military laws that forbade unauthorized contact with any foreign military or political entity, that all such military and political contact coming into or going out of Japan would be through the Diet itself, therefore filtering what information goes in and out. By doing this, the Diet had intentionally severed the Jietai from maintaining any sort of contact with other militaries around the world, an effect that had had drastic consequences on all branches of our military. I will spare the details for now, since there have been too many to list, but one of the more obvious effects is that we currently have no way of reconstructing us ship girls if we fall in combat.
Takahashi-san laid out the details for me: while the mission timeline was not yet set in stone, I was to be flown out to the ocean, over Chiba, about fifty kilometers out, and deployed onto the water and trek to the American West Coast and make contact with any military entity I could and attempt to establish friendly communications with authorization from the highest ranking admiral of the Kaijou Jietai. I interrupted and stated that I knew of a critical base of Seal Team Six and could travel to its coordinates in an attempt to make contact with the developers immediately, and Takahashi-san liked the idea and told me to do that instead. Once there, the Rear Admiral instructed me to communicate to our developers and inform them of our situation and attempt to negotiate some kind of deal with them to have them repair our ship girls. It didn't matter how; if we can come out of this situation with the insurance that our ship girls can get repaired, then we gain a net positive. The fact that we also have a lot of wounded here at base too, Asashimo-chan's lost arm, for example, further puts pressure on this mission's significance.
Now, Takahashi-san made it very clear that I did not have to take this mission if I didn't want to. I was the most experienced ship girl at base here; having fought all those battles during my time based at Okinawa in the Pacific against the Abyssals, I alone could judge the feasibility of such a dangerous but critical mission. In addition, for the sake of my own safety, Takahashi-san pondered the option of having me take another ship girl from this base to escort me to America, but if I took too many, the base authorities would know that something was going on from the look of all these missing ship girls. One, perhaps at most two. And definitely not a battleship or carrier - their absences would be sniffed out immediately.
But I immediately accepted the mission anyway. I am very well aware of just how risky and dangerous this mission can be and will be. We have absolutely no information on enemy Abyssal fleet movement or logistics; the military satellites that we depended on during my time in Okinawa are no longer accessible because they are property of the American military (perhaps specifically that of Seal Team Six, even), and the satellites that we have are either being prepped for launch or are already in orbit and cannot be reconfigured for military use, leaving us in the dark; and who knows just how many Abyssals are lurking in the depths of the Pacific. With my destroyer speed specifications (optimal cruising speed ~150 km/hr, maximum cruising speed ~200 km/hr, maximum speed 300 km/hr), it should take me a little over two days to reach America, but this is only assuming I do not encounter any enemy task force along the way, which I most likely will. In addition, I will have to carry my own supplies with me. Luckily, the voyage itself will not be so long that the weight of supplies needs to be factored in, but should I be found by the enemy and they happen to destroy my supplies somehow and I do not have enough fuel to complete the voyage, I will be stranded. I don't want to know what happens to a ship girl when they become completely depleted of fuel, let alone starve to death due to lack of supplies out in the middle of the ocean...
The point is that I not only feel obligated to undertake this mission, but I also want to. As a ship girl, I want to do everything in my power to help my comrades come back to life, for myself and for the ship sisters who are suffering from their deaths. As an officer and a leader of the fleet, like Teitoku has taught me and showed me, I want to not only look after my fellow ship girls but also prove to everyone that a ship girl being an officer can be just as good as a human officer; I want to demonstrate to everyone that I can be a great officer and...perhaps one day, become a great Admiral. An Admiral who is also a ship girl...this feeling excites me somewhat...not to mention clearing my class name of this ill-fortuned nickname that has been designated to us.
But most importantly, as a ship sister, I want my sisters back. I want Kawakaze back. I want Suzukaze back. I want Shigure-onee-san to come back, in a different sense. Normal humans do not have the luxury of having their friends reconstructed and brought back to life. However, as a ship girl, I do. And I am keenly aware of this. I have an opportunity to bring my own friends, my own sisters back to life, something that no human being possesses, and I will capitalize on this opportunity if it is the last thing I do.
Therefore, undertaking this mission is not a choice, nor is it an obligation. I do not do this for the sake of seeking more military decorations or making a name for myself or doing this for the sake of righteous justice. No, it's nothing complicated.
It is my own personal duty. I choose to do this because I want to, and I know what I want. I remember reading in Teitoku's journal about how he talked about honor in Japanese culture and in other contexts. In my case, there is no honor involved, because there doesn't need to be.
The second order of business was also something of extremely high classification. Takahashi-san informed me that the committee received word that the Diet had been constantly receiving phone calls from a political member of the nation of Germany over the past week or so, and when they finally decided to speak with him, they discovered that this person was the Chancellor of Germany, and that the reason why he had been trying to get a hold of them was because he wanted to speak with someone in the navy about negotiations for a possible joint exchange training program/regimen. Akiyama-san suspects that the Diet simply left the call hanging after that and refused to talk to him anymore, meaning that they probably are not in favor of establishing firm military relations with Germany, which comes off as very strange to me, as they were our allies once upon a time.
But then this situation begs the question: just why were the Germans trying to negotiate for something like this, like a joint exercise program? Why now, and in what fashion?
Takahashi-san then suggested something that I would have never been able to guess myself: he suspects that the Germans are also in possession of ship girls like us. This notion is unbelievable - assuming the Germans do have ship girls of their own, since when did they have them? They couldn't have developed the technology for us on their own, so most likely Seal Team Six shared the technology with them, sold the technology to them, or gave them the technology in some way, shape or form. Currently we have no way of proving that the Germans do have ship girls of their own, so Takahashi-san's claim may be unfounded, but if this is true, just how many other countries also have ship girls? And more pressing, do our developers know about their existence? Do they know about the fact that the German Chancellor has been trying to make contact with us for a joint exercise program most likely involving us ship girls? But that also begs the question of how we even know this joint-exercise program is related to us ship girls in the first place.
Therefore, my secondary objective for this mission is to find out more about the German situation through Seal Team Six. Takahashi-san asked me to think carefully about my mission, and perhaps about who I would want to bring with me, if I wanted to. He advised me that going it alone was highly dangerous, and that I should at least take someone.
I think I already know who I have in mind...