Thursday, February 27th, 2014.

Dockyards, you da real MVP. Without you, my fleet'd still be in the medbay healing up, and there wouldn't be a sortie today.

Since the girls were too busy docking and healing up, I had already gone to sleep by the time most of the destroyers could get out of the baths, so I made them their third lemon drizzle cake after breakfast, even though Houshou scolded me for it, saying that treats like cakes shouldn't be eaten in the morning. I said just this once, since I did say that I was gonna make them a third cake thanks to Akagi. I made sure Akagi wasn't getting any piece of that lemon drizzle cake.

After breakfast and before she went off for morning practice, I called Akagi to my office. I told her about how Kitakami mentioned her in the post-action mission report for yesterday's sortie, how Akagi wanted to speak with me in regards to her Mjölnir Cell Reinforcement augmentation.

Akagi asked me if I could procure multiple copies of the augmentation for Souryuu and others. She said that in yesterday's battle, the enemy submarines were trying to snipe her and Souryuu and Shouhou with torpedoes, and that without the help of the augmentation, there was quite a big chance that Akagi herself would've just sunk right then and there.

She thanked me with a big ol' bow for selecting her to equip the augmentation. She said that at first, she didn't think too much of it, since she thought that it would've been better off being used by somebody else, like a destroyer or a battleship, who would be in the line of danger far more often than she herself as a carrier would be. But as it turned out, Akagi said that she felt she owed me her life, in a sense.

I didn't deny Akagi's thanks, but I told her that it wasn't like I was some sort of prophet who could see the future. I just had her equip it because aircraft carriers are invaluable to any fleet, and that because of this, the enemy would always be gunning for them if given the chance. And in this case, it just happened to work out. She didn't need to feel as though she owed me her life or anything. But I did tell her that I'd let Seal Team Six know about sending us more copies of the Mjölnir Cell Reinforcement augmentation.

And then, she asked me this:

"Are you still angry at me for eating that cake?"

I simply sighed and told her that if she wanted to eat cake, I'd prefer that she just come to me and ask me to make one for her instead of eating one that was meant for the destroyers. Like, wasn't that a bit mean to do that? She knew it was for the destroyers and all. And so her eyes just lit up like the Fourth 'a July, and she asked,

"REALLY!?"

At that moment, I then was plunged into an infinite loop of profound sadness.

Profound...sadness...

Goddamn it. Fuck me.

I've never seen such eyes of pure, straight desire. Not blank, empty eyes, but maddeningly bright eyes that look forward to an impossible goal of gluttony.

Rest in pieces, kitchen, and rip in pepperonis, me.

So after Akagi left my office for morning training, I started up my usual morning regimen. I tossed Seal Team Six an email with Akagi's request, but then I got an email from them just before lunch. It was a short one, but it said,

"Just keep in mind that the augmentations can break by themselves if they're used too much at any one given point. We'll be sending over some more copies soon, including some of the new ones we've managed to build and need to test for battle-readiness. Make sure that the girls who're using them don't over-rely on them. Could be dangerous. After all, they're just augmentations. Those alone aren't gonna save their lives."

Words to live by.

After lunch, I gave the fleet their sortie orders. Since we'd missed our opportunity to see what was at Able Four and we'd basically mapped out the entirety of Able District, we'd check out the rest of Baker. I ordered the fleet to pass through Baker One to make sure there weren't any more of those floating platform thingies floating around, and if they found any, they were to destroy them immediately. Then, after that, they were to investigate Baker Two. We don't know what's at Baker Two specifically, to be honest. The satellite photos show nothing but an empty stretch of water. Like, was Baker Two supposed to even have anything valuable there?

Since this was going to be a somewhat "easier" mission (I say easier in quote marks since Baker isn't exactly familiar territory for the girls just yet), I issued the protocol of Observe and Pursue. It's been a while since we last captured those first three Abyssal destroyers, so I'm gonna see if the girls can capture another Abyssal specimen so that we can further Seal Team Six's research.

This time, breaking tradition, I designated Murakumo as flagship, which surprised everyone. She asked me why her, and I said that it was to complement the issued protocol. Murakumo as flagship would encourage the fleet to employ a more aggressive approach and increase the chances of capturing another Abyssal specimen. Murakumo complained that she didn't want to have to deal with the responsibilities of being flagship, and instead she just wanted to concentrate on solely fighting.

So because of that, I gave flagship to Suzuya, since I knew she'd be up to the task. From what I've read and heard, she's a pretty aggressive fighter, and she's a heavy cruiser, to boot.

This left Murakumo even more shocked, since she didn't expect me to change my mind so quick. I'm not dumb, Murakumo. You were saying all that not because you truly didn't want it but because you never expected me to make you flagship of the fleet, now that our fleet's gotten to this size. The look you gave me when I transferred flagship status to Suzuya told me immediately that you wanted to be flagship, but you weren't confident enough to tell yourself that you were going to be up to the task. For that, I have no pity. Having confidence is important - and if you can't even show it when accepting something like this, then what am I supposed to think of you when you're out there fighting? At the very least, if you're going to deny being flagship, you better mean it, because at least then, you're recognizing that you have flaws with your fighting and your ability to lead a fleet and know what to work on.

After deploying the fleet, I spent the afternoon in the kitchens with Mamiya and Irako, who wanted to know more about American-style cooking and wanted to try cooking some more Western dishes more frequently for the sake of variety. I told them all I knew about the different kinds of American-style cooking, especially Southern cooking, which is one of my favorite styles of cooking, even if it's not the healthiest. I even suggested that we have a Southern-style wood-fired barbeque on a Saturday night or something out on the pier, because wood-fired meat tastes a lot different than meat cooked in a gas-powered stove or oven.

It was a lot of fun, though, talking about cooking with those two. It was fun to teach them a few things about American cooking, but at the same time learning more about Japanese-style cooking, too. In addition, talking about that stuff made me realize that I actually knew a lot more about cooking than I gave myself credit for. Now, I actually wanna try cooking up a good ol' hearty Southern meal for the girls.

I guess it's true, what they say about cooking. If you cook for yourself, it's kinda boring. But when you start cooking for other people, suddenly, it's pretty fun. The nostalgia waves are hitting me, the barbeques of high school and the backdoor nighttime barbeques my family had when friends from the military came over to have some drinks and relax. I didn't think of those as much back then, but I definitely remember the food. As boring as those backyard barbeques were, the food was goddamn godlike. Then again, my standards for what good food is is pretty miserably low. Whatever's delicious is good food in my book.

So that surprisingly took up the entire time. All three of us were surprised when Error came in and announced that the fleet had returned at 1809 hours, so I headed out there to greet the fleet so that Mamiya and Irako could get started on tonight's dinner.

And surprise surprise, what do you know: the fleet had captured an Abyssal light cruiser, a He-Class, and two of the Floating Fortresses. Suzuya looked pretty damn happy and begged me to praise her, since she was the one who took down the He-Class. I asked the other girls if this was true, and rather reluctantly, they confirmed that Suzuya indeed was the one who captured the He-Class. Kiso muttered that she, Kitakami, and Ooi would've handled the matter just fine if they weren't distracted by a posse of Floating Fortresses that they accidentally ran into while surfing Baker One's waters.

He-Class didn't have any particular glow to it, so I guess it's a normal one. (He? She? I don't know.) Geez, though, meeting it face to face was kind of like an out-of-body experience. It's like meeting something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The Abyssal destroyers that were captured earlier weren't too intimidating, but meeting He-Class was kinda unnerving, not gonna lie. I mean, you'd be freaked out a bit too if you met something that had a humanoid torso and upper body, some kind of mask-like skull for a head, a giant mouth for a lower body, and arms with cannons on each side, right? Or maybe I'm just being a little pussy. Suzuya said that He-Class could talk, so I tried talking to it, asking if it had any other name than "He-Class", since that's the name we've given them just as a generic sort of thing, but it didn't say anything. Didn't feel like it was in a talking mood.

The Floating Fortresses, on the other hand, were cute lil' buggers, even if their eyeholes emitted a small red smoke. (The smoke's harmless. For now.) Like the destroyers, they understood what we were saying, but I'm not sure if they can speak in human language back to us. Initially, when the fleet returned to base, the girls who carried the Floating Fortresses got some rope and tied their mouths shut, in case they tried spewing that acid fire or whatever they do to attack. But when it was dinnertime, when we brought He-Class and the Floating Fortresses over for dinner, the Floating Fortresses started making whining noises, or what we presumed were whining noises, when we brought out the food, so I ordered them to be untied, since I wanted to see if they could eat human food. The ship girls watched me as I held out a long piece of thin, hickory-smoked ham in front of them, and they opened their mouths longingly at it, like dogs would, except the Floating Fortresses don't have any tongues. So I tossed it over to them, and the two Fortresses snapped at it exactly at the same time and ripped it almost cleanly in half and chomped on it so many times that the ham got minced into small, miniscule chunks. From what it looks like, these things eat by chewing their food into small bits, and then their mouths directly absorb the tiny food particles through the skin, since they don't have any bodies and thus no real digestive system. But it was hilarious seeing them swoop around the mess hall, dive-bombing to snatch up pieces of food here and there, much to the girls' chagrin.

I sent Seal Team Six notification of newly captured Abyssal specimens. They should have a reply back for me tomorrow.