23.6.2014
Today was the emergency congregation of the representatives of the European Union. As mentioned before, we met today to discuss the topics of the recent terrorist attacks in the forms of the Abyssals and the Hanover Massacre, and most importantly, the topic of fleet personnel.
After cooking breakfast for our Japanese guests and leaving Retia with them in their care (which is some great timing, might I add, for I did not wish to bring our daughter with us to work on this crucial day and our friend Khal unfortunately had prior appointments today and thus could not offer his time to look after her), my husband and I drove straight for the Reichstag nice and early in preparation for the congregation, as the heads of government of all the representative countries of Europe would be in attendance. Thankfully the meeting began flawlessly and on time - both Gernot and I were half-expecting something else to go wrong or another catastrophe to happen, as the times nowadays may threaten. It is as though it is the season for catastrophes...what is this world coming to.
I had the pleasure of being greeted by Sir Sinclair, who surprised me with his sudden arrival at my office, brought to me by the resident Reichstag security who helped him find me. I asked what I owed to him for this surprise visit, and he simply said that Mr. Holmwood, the British Prime Minister and representative of England in this meeting, had requested his company to this meeting.
We did sit down and talk for a little while before it was time to convene. Sir Sinclair brooded that very likely, our respective countries would stand out as the ugly ducklings, so to speak, in the congregation. Germany and England, the only two European countries with known fleet personnel, would be gazed upon with wolfing eyes, and if Marco, whom we expected to be here as well, continues to try to play the long con of keeping his own small fleet of ship girls secret, we are more or less forced to be mutual allies in this situation. I informed Sir Sinclair that I was preparing to give the committee a short presentation on our fleet personnel: their capabilities, their intended design, and the like. We needed to face the likely truth that this congregation would not be a true meeting in terms of planning for the safety of the continent as a whole, but instead a meeting that the other countries would use to force us to cough up information on the fleet personnel we possess so that they may attempt to manufacture their own. As much as Sir Sinclair did not wish this to be true, he also unwillingly agreed that this was perhaps the correct course of action for us to take. Because we both knew that the other countries want to produce their own ship girls, or at the very least, if they could not acquire some for themselves, they would know as much as they could about them as classified military intelligence. But at the same time, we feared that the risk we would be running by doing this is the potential leak of this same sensitive military information into the public, or even worse, to the wrong hands - at worst, the Abyssals themselves. I arranged for security to be bolstered and make very thorough sweeps of the congregation room, but of course there can be only so much security can do; there may always be ways that information can be leaked without us ever knowing how.
The one saving grace that we had is the fact that we do not have rightful ownership of our respective fleets, for the ship girls are patented products and intellectual property of the American Seal Team Six. We in fact did have the option to refuse to disclose any sort of information to our fellow European peers, but that would amount to political suicide for both of our countries because then, we would be suspected of colluding to share an imbalanced portion of continental power through our fleet personnel forces, and the last thing we need is for the unity of the European Union to fragment over a silly issue like this, an issue of fleet personnel ownership. But this still did mean that we could simply feed the rest of the committee information they wanted to hear, and nothing else. If they did not ask for it, we would not be inclined to give it. The real question was, would Seal Team Six allow us to mention them directly in this kind of a situation? Would they not mind? Would they mind? They being a covert American operations team, I imagined they wouldn't want us to mention their name directly. Plus, it would have made our own countries look bad, too - receiving help from an American special operations branch? Especially without notifying any of the other countries? (This cannot be blamed on us, however, Seal Team Six specifically asked us to keep the fleet personnel we built a secret.) In light of American-European relations souring steadily over the past few years, both England and Germany can expect to receive quite a backlash if this was revealed. Then our fellow European countries would begin to wonder what else we were hiding in terms of collaborative efforts with the United States, and even if the American president were to deny such allegations himself, all of Europe would remain suspicious anyway.
The meeting went just as we had discussed, unfortunately. Immediately after precedings were finished, Sir Sinclair and I were bombarded with questions regarding the fleet personnel. In fact, for the duration of the meeting, not one question was asked about the Abyssals. No one talked about what we needed to do against the Abyssals, no one pushed any military or even political strategies against the Abyssals or suggested any countermeasures to strengthen our defenses in the continent as a whole against the Abyssals - no one even so much as brought the topic of the Abyssals up. Instead, it was only about the fleet personnel we possessed. For nearly an hour, Sir Sinclair, Gernot, and I had to sit through twenty-six other individuals demanding explanations for and information about these rumored "ship girls" (although they are hardly a rumor by now, given how much physical evidence there is of our ship girls circulating throughout continental media). Surprisingly, Marco came very well prepared - and by that I mean he perhaps gave one of the most scathing denunciations of our ownership of ship girls among the committee. He even went so far as to gain some of the other countries' support in rallying the committee against England and Germany with the convincing display of spokesmanship, but Gernot and I, knowing Marco, knew that this was merely a front that he was deliberately building in order to keep his secret of his own Italian fleet of ship girls a secret, of course. We spent more time during his short speech wondering how he would ever get himself out of that huge hole he was digging himself, once the other countries found that Italy, in fact, also has a fleet.
To our great surprise, however, the committee was abruptly interrupted by a movie-esque timing, committed by none other than several members of Seal Team Six themselves. It was just like a James Bond movie: Herr Sanford, Herr Deimos, Herr Big, Frau Losira, and Frau Lauren all entered the committee room without warning, and to our amazement, security even let them in. Well, perhaps it was not exactly like a James Bond movie, but the same sentiment was there. The American operatives simply strolled right into the middle of the floor and quite literally hijacked it for themselves. Just how did they even get into contact with Reichstag security without either Gernot or I knowing? How did they even know we were conducting an EU meeting here and now to begin with? They are fearsome operatives indeed.
Seal Team Six simply did my planned presentation for me. By seizing the floor all to themselves, the Americans had full rein to present the information they wished to share regarding their ship girls, and once I realized what they were trying to do, I sighed a breath of relief, since that meant I could simply sit back and let them do my talking for me. They shared much more than even I had intended to reveal to my European colleagues, so much so that at several intervals, I was afraid they might have been telling too much, but because they are the developers, they can choose to reveal however much they want. Most importantly, Seal Team Six claimed ownership of all the fleet personnel constructed in the world, excluding those under Abyssal control, and that their intention for them had been strictly to help different regions around the world combat the creeping influence of the terrorist organization that they were targeting, the A.A.H.W.
When his team was asked why only England and Germany were the only countries to own ship girls so far, Herr Deimos immediately blew Marco's cover by including Italy among the list of nations in known possession of ship girls. So much for his firebranding speech earlier in the meeting. In addition, because the theme of the fleet personnel was clearly inspired by the navies of the old World War II days, Herr Deimos revealed that their plan was initially to have all the major countries of that era with large navies to eventually have all their own fleets of fleet personnel, but due to the unforeseen contingency in the form of the recent remilitarization of the Japanese sovereignty, these plans unfortunately had to be cut short. This explained why the three European countries with fleets like this only had a smattering of ship girls, all things considered, compared to the enormous fleet that Japan possessed because they had been the recipients of the initial Moebius Four Armament program. And for the record, Herr Big added, their own country, the United States, did not possess such a fleet themselves, which vastly surprised many of us, myself included. Why would the developers not even develop a fleet of their own, for their own country? Herr Big stated that the cost of replicating a fleet as large as the American World War II navy was too astronomically costly, even for the huge American military budget that their country has become infamous for in the last decade. And if those who chose not to believe them wanted to confirm, they only needed to wait two days to question the American president, Mr. Tawney Blackwood, himself at the emergency congregation of the United Nations in London. How they knew about that, too is a bit of a mystery.
For now, the American operatives stated that they did not intend to construct more fleet personnel on a regular basis; due to their own busy agendas and their recent efforts to track down the activities of the elusive A.A.H.W., their time to work on the extensions of the Moebius Four Armament program for the rest of Europe would be temporarily put on hold. They requested that all countries respect the hegemony of those who happened to possess fleets of naval personnel, for they would be the countries who would be able to stop Abyssal attacks and bail out the countries that did not. As much as the other countries may desire and covet our fleets, they asked that the other countries respect those who do, because it would not be the EU to regulate our activities with our naval personnel fleets, but they themselves who would revoke our ownership of such fleets if they decreed so.
While the American operatives did end up crashing the committee meeting and cutting it short, I do not mind their interruption at all. Not only was I saved the trouble of facing the wrath of the rest of the European Union committee, but also the rest of the representatives have now been checked in their aggressive quest to find out more about our fleet personnel.
There are many other details regarding the events of today regarding the meeting, but this is a basic summary that I feel is most important; should I fill in all the details, I fear this entry will be too long. Not to mention, today has been especially tiring. I do want to say that when Gernot and I returned home late at night tonight, we found, to our great pleasure, that our German fleet girls and our Japanese guests were getting along extremely well. The girl with the blue hair, I believe her name is Samidare, was talking quite animatedly with Bismarck, the girl with the red hair named Kawakaze was rolling around on the floor with our daughter with U, and Graf was enjoying a cup of tea with the girl with the short black hair, Shigure. When we arrived, they warmly welcomed us home saying that they had quite a day getting to know our German girls, and vice versa. Somehow, I feel quite alright with having a family this big.