25.6.2014

The General Assembly meeting of the United Nations today in London had unexpectedly dragged on for so long that we need to have another day to reconvene tomorrow. While we initially plan for meetings with the United Nations to go on longer than expected, considering the urgent nature of the situation in Europe and the global implications of the attacks on European soil, I expected that the congregation get down to business quickly and efficiently. I was wrong - I was still having my hopes up since two days ago when the Americans crashed our EU meeting and hijacked it for themselves. This meeting had no such hijacking by any team of special operatives, so you can perhaps imagine what the meeting was like.

To be brief, the UN meeting was more or less an amplified version of our EU meeting two days prior. Now, instead of only having European representatives voice their complaints and concerns over the fact that only a few select countries possess fleet personnel, it truly did feel like the world whole was complaining to us, letting us know that it was not fair that only Germany, Japan, Britain, and Italy were the four countries in the world that possessed fleet personnel. In addition, the European representatives who were also present at our EU meeting revealed to the UN that a secret group of counter-terrorism operatives known collectively as Seal Team Six, an American organization, was responsible for the construction and distribution of such fleet personnel, so these opening remarks paved the way for the rest of the meeting to unfold.

What surprised me was that the meeting first shifted the attention onto the topic of the United States not possessing their own fleet of such naval personnel - or, at the very least, not a known one. When confronted with this inquiry, the American president, who was in attendance at the meeting instead of the usual American representative, Herr Tawney Blackwood, denied all allegations. He did confirm that Seal Team Six was indeed an American special forces group, but their agenda was not involved with the agenda of American foreign policy. In fact, Herr Blackwood being the shrewd politician that he is infamous for, turned the argument back against the rest of the council by pointing out that Seal Team Six has operated in and assisted many of the countries represented in the UN council in operations of counter-terrorism large and small; by this point, the services of Seal Team Six were so well known they could be classified as a government mercenary group that America chose to lend out to all the other countries in the world; therefore, it was as though most other countries in the council had some degree of debt to pay back to him. Had Herr Blackwood made this statement six years ago before he assumed his first term as the American president, there would have been many a joke made about the American national debt situation - now, no such jokes can be made, and the American dominance in the United Nations council was felt more so than ever. Thus, no one could further challenge Herr Blackwood on the matter of a possible American naval personnel fleet. Besides, there was virtually no evidence to suggest that America had such a fleet, though the future may prove this otherwise, but we will have to see. The American president added that he himself did not directly influence or control the operations of Seal Team Six, and that a highly classified branch of the United States military command instead was in charge, but saying any further would compromise American national security.

Sir Sinclair, the British representative present at the UN council, asked Herr Blackwood why the United States seemed uninterested in acquiring such a fleet for themselves. He said that he found it quite strange to see that the country of the development team responsible for the manufacture of these "ship girls" would not have their own fleet. While understandable that Japan possesses the world's largest fleet of naval personnel by far, Sir Sinclair still expressed doubt that America truly did not have some semblance of this kind of fleet. Considering America's military might and capabilities and tendencies, many of the other representatives agreed; even if the American president himself denied the allegation, it just did not seem very likely. Why wouldn't the strongest country in the world as far as pure military capability is concerned have their own massive fleet of ship girls? Plus, not to mention the fact that the American hemisphere has been unmolested by Abyssal attacks. There have been Abyssal threats in Japan (Asia) and here in Europe, but suspiciously none in the American theatre. Why was this? Was there something the United States was doing to protect its hemisphere ala Monroe Doctrine? And if so, with what? A fleet of naval personnel makes the most sense by far, and for America to deny possessing such a fleet is at least a little bit bogus to many of us present in the meeting. But because no one had any evidence to support this theory, the argument died out and gave way to the next issue of contention.

The focus shifted to Japan next, and this was by far the biggest topic of the day for today's meeting. With the news of Japan's recent aggressive remilitarization, combined with the confident right-wing political atmosphere of the country, many of the UN representatives were eager to ask the Japanese representatives many pressing questions about their resurging military and their political agenda. Because Japan was also noted to be somewhat restricting foreign travel into the country, one of the representatives even likened the development of Japan's recent events to the historic closing of the country by the Tokugawa regime. A bit of an extreme comparison, if you ask me, the reports of Japan "closing their borders" are wildly exaggerated at this point. But no doubt the main focus of the questions regarding the rise in Japanese military hegemony in the Eastern Hemisphere rests on the question of what exactly the Japanese were planning to do with it. Bolstering national defense against the Abyssal threat is fine and all, and the Japanese are, to a certain extent, justified in doing so because they by themselves have suffered half of the known Abyssal attacks in the world, but it seemed just a little bit imbalanced to have a single country own over half of the world's entire known number of fleet personnel, and the Japanese representatives, the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Sakura Ugaki and the Japanese Chief of Maritime Staff Yuuma Akiyama were asked about this.

Herr Ugaki replied that while it was certainly lamentable that the distribution of fleet personnel was not more properly allotted to the rest of the countries of the world, neither he nor his country could be held responsible. Such questions must be asked of the American team that was responsible for the creation of the ship girls, Seal Team Six, not the Japanese government; the mere ownership of a large fleet of naval personnel did not automatically assign them to be a sort of "fleet sage" with all the knowledge in the world to answer everything about their fleet personnel. In addition, he added that as much as they were empathetic towards the Netherlands for their terrible catastrophe at the hands of the Abyssals, the Japanese government did not feel that they could afford to send any sort of reinforcements in the form of their own fleet personnel to assist in anti-Abyssal operations. If they did so, they feared that somehow the Abyssals would pick up on it and decide to attack another location in Japan, and the last thing they wanted was an Abyssal attack on a domestic target. They wished to eliminate the Abyssal presence in the Eastern Hemisphere first before branching out their forces and assisting the rest of the world in their own anti-Abyssal operations, and it would require the presence of all of their available fleet personnel to do so, because they would need to put upon themselves the burden of protecting all of the Asian Hemisphere, as no other Asian country possessed ship girls.

Though, these explanations were shallow excuses to keep Japan's own forces consolidated within their own borders, everyone knew that. Several of the representatives near us even suggested among themselves that the Japanese government instructed their representatives to give such vague and conservative reasons simply for the sake of convincing the United Nations council that they needed their own forces there. But we now knew for certain that Japan had no intention or desire to assist Europe with our Abyssal problem, which also means that the presence of the Japanese ship girls in my house may be very contrary to the intention of the Japanese government...

Naturally, South Korea, North Korea, and China all objected heavily to Japan's consolidation of their naval power. To them, I am sure Japan's intention of bearing the responsibility of protecting the Asian hemisphere is a giant insult to their respective hegemonies in the Asian hemisphere, they being Japan's direct competitors. North Korea can be neglected, but South Korea and China being angry with Japan is certainly setting the stage for an Oriental showdown of sorts on the political scene. Plus, my husband pointed this out to me, that the Japanese fleet personnel, as with our own German ship girls, are meant to personify the Imperial Japanese Navy warships used during the second World War, and China and Korea both have some memories with Japan from that time era. Now, suddenly I feel very glad that we did not end up managing to send our ship girls to Japan. Heaven forbid the other countries in this meeting connect our country with Japan and thus drag us into the picture as well. That is the last thing I would want...

The meeting concluded with the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean representatives beginning to bicker among themselves before the rest of the representatives motioned to call this meeting off in favor of reconvening tomorrow.

When we arrived back in our hotel room, Gernot discussed with me the matter of our housing of the Japanese ship girls. The Japanese representatives made it sound as though we were not supposed to be sheltering Japanese ship girls away from their home. Did this mean that Seal Team Six had sent them to Germany against the authority of the Japanese? Granted, if the Americans are to be believed, Japan had seized control of their intellectual property away from them initially, so this could be just a little revenge on their part. But that still makes it no less politically dangerous: if Japan finds out that we are housing five of their destroyer ship girls without their knowledge, what are we to do? Gernot became noticeably more and more distraught the further we discussed this, because we had never heard anything about this particular development from our American friends or at least to be aware of it before we received our guests; now, it feels as though we are offering asylum to escaped ship girls from a nation halfway around the world. We needed to get into contact with Seal Team Six immediately once we flew home to clarify these things.

Then if that is the case, why are the Japanese ship girls really here? What are the American operatives' plans for them here in Germany, or in Europe in general? And why are their presences intended to be top secret? This is all making me very uneasy, but for now I can do nothing but to try to keep it off my mind until we return and focus on the meeting for tomorrow. I hope our ship girls are doing fine back home...being unable to make them dinner is quite troublesome and discomforting all of a sudden.