Sunday, January 19th, 2014.
So I'm trying out new secretaries, just to see if having different ship girls as my secretary would really change much. I'm sure it will, but I'm kinda curious as to how. So for today, I assigned Ooyodo, who's normally in charge of secretarial duties, to drill instructor and task manager and appointed Takao to be my new secretary. I thought it'd be a nice change 'a pace, but the girls didn't exactly agree...or, at least, they didn't at first. When I first told Ooyodo about my intention to switch secretaries, she gave me one 'a those thousand yard stares, as if she were saying how dare you remove me of my most important role or something like that. So I had to explain to her that it wasn't because I wasn't satisfied by her quality of work or because I thought she just wasn't a great secretary, but just that I wanted to know how other ship girls would handle the secretary position. She still didn't seem too happy about it but she complied in the end, but only before making me promise her that I would restore her to the position of secretary again, because that was the one job she felt she could do well all the time. I told her that while I couldn't make any promises, I would definitely make her my secretary again.
So then I go up to Takao and I ask her to be my secretary for a few days or a week or so, and she, too, stares at me like I'm off my goddamn rocker. She asked me why I was making her secretary so suddenly, so I had to explain to her too that I felt like having different secretaries, so then she asked me if I was dissatisfied with Ooyodo, whom she felt was a great secretary already, so she didn't really see the point of me appointing her secretary to replace her, so I had to give her my explanation all over again. Lots'a explaining and clearing up misunderstandings, as you can see and can probably imagine. I asked Takao why she was so surprised about me offering her the position of secretary, because here's the thing: to me, it doesn't really seem like something to freak out over. Back in America, I used to change my subordinate positions all the time and no one really made a fuss over it. But Takao said that the position of secretary was a coveted position among ship girls because it was a sign of recognition and prestige bestowed unto them if they performed well in training or combat or something like that. So apparently, for me to offer Takao the position of secretary when it's literally only been a day since Takao arrived here at Okinawa came off as really strange and unexpected to her. Granted, Takao did say that she was honored to be offered secretary, not to get her wrong or anything, but she said that it's just that I ought to stick with Ooyodo for longer, since she's more experienced and all. But I insisted, so eventually Takao gave in and accepted.
Goddamn, so much effort just to change secretaries...but still better than what I would've had to deal with in America. Even though I did mention that I made staff changes all the time, the fact that staff changes can take up to a month or longer depending on Uncle Sam's mood kinda balances that whole shit out, so...yeah.
Because of all this, I spent this morning showing Takao the ropes, which apparently Takao didn't expect me to do either. She asked me before I taught her the secretarial stuff why I didn't just have Ooyodo teach her the stuff, and I told her that something like this's supposed to be the officer's job and that I didn't feel it was right to just throw the responsibility onto someone else and expect them to do it. I know what that feels like and I ain't really keen on doing my own subordinates dirty like that. Thankfully, just like I'd thought and hoped, Takao makes an excellent secretary. She learned everything super fast and basically did as good of a job as Ooyodo would today, so I'm quite pleased. It's awesome having subordinates like these girls, lemme tell ya. Coming from a workplace that basically tells you in the fine print that you shouldn't really rely on anyone else but yourself to make sure shit gets done, having people like Takao and Ooyodo do their jobs more or less flawlessly and just the way I want them to be done is a damn luxury. The rest of the secretarial world could learn a thing or two from girls like them.
After morning paperwork, I got a call from HQ saying that they were sending a heli with building supplies that would be scheduled to arrive at around 1700 hours or so. At first I was like, wait, what, we ain't got a need for any bloody building supplies - and then I remembered that Houshou was planning out her little izakaya thing and was waiting on some construction supplies to refurbish one of the big empty rooms at base near the dorms, so that the ship girls could go to the izakaya after normal mess hall hours for a drink or a snack during the night. She had placed the order sometime after she planned it out with Mamiya and Irako and had to put the construction on hold until the supplies arrived. Then again, I suppose that begs the question of why it took them so damn long, but obviously I didn't ask the lady over at HQ that. What's more surprising is how HQ even bothered calling me instead of sending me an email or something like that, which's normally what they would've done. Guess I'm just not used to getting direct comms from the higher-ups in general.
After I got that call and confirmed the incoming shipment, Ooyodo and I sent Sazanami, Ushio, Kitakami, Ooi, Kirishima, Souryuu, and Imuya off on today's mission, which was just a recon mission, this time around the northern perimeters of Sector B. Don't want anyone to end up like Samidare and told the girls not to get themselves into any real firefights if they didn't need to. They were too willing to comply...it's a safe bet that what happened to Samidare's still really fresh on their minds. Then again, it's fresh on everyone's minds, to be perfectly honest.
Speaking of Samidare, I went and visited her after sending today's task force off, and surprisingly, I found Murakumo also there, talking with Samidare. Not surprisingly, given her disposition, Murakumo positively screamed at me to leave as soon as she saw me walk into Samidare's infirmary space. Maybe I came at the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on your perspective.
Apparently Murakumo had come to visit Samidare to see if she was okay, which she was. She was able to sit up today, unlike yesterday, when she wasn't even able to do that. Murakumo made me swear not to tell anyone about this, which I agreed to since I don't really care to frame her or anything.
Samidare was all smiles when I visited her. I actually don't know if I've seen her happier. And she wasn't lying either when she told me the other day that she and Murakumo had made up; they were talking like they were bestest pals forever, so I told them that I had some work to do and left them so that they could keep talking without me hanging around. Turns out Murakumo stuck around with Samidare until late at night. I guess there's a lot more going on between them than I thought.
I went out with Mamiya, Houshou, and Irako and received the building supplies that're for Houshou's izakaya, so I spent a lot of the afternoon and early evening helping them out with building the new izakaya. Admittedly, recently I've been kinda craving some late night snacks or something, not like chips or candy but just a light little meal, and since the mess hall isn't accessible after regular hours (well, technically, because I'm the commanding officer at base here, I don't need to care, but I don't like doing things that my own subordinates can't do just for the sake of convenience), I'm actually really looking forward to the new izakaya. We managed to get through about a third of it, because I keep forgetting that the women I'm working with are all ship girls and are at least a couple times stronger than even the strongest human, so they were able to pull off some shit that normal people probably couldn't without power tools or something like that. This'll mean that the izakaya should be up and running before the week is out. Sure feels nice knowing that I can have an expectation and know that there's a good chance it'll be met.
Today's task force came back while we were finishing up today's work on Houshou's izakaya. Unfortunately, all of them came back pretty banged up, so as soon as Ooyodo came back to report their conditions, I left to see them and ordered them to go to the infirmary so that Akashi could patch them up. Luckily, no one got seriously hurt, so thank God, I don't have to deal with more Samidare's, at least not for today. But some of them had some pretty nasty burns and cuts. Kitakami, whom I made flagship for this mission, reported that they had run into a particularly nasty group of enemies while out on their patrol, including two light cruisers and a heavy cruiser, which later I identified to be the To-Class, the Tsu-Class, and the Ri-Class, respectively from reading Kitakami's report and matching the descriptions with reports from HQ. Apparently, my task force and the enemy fleet had more or less run into each other without really expecting to see each other, and a rough firefight ensued, leaving both sides pretty banged up, so it wasn't like it was a one-sided fight or anything. It's just surprising to know that even heavy cruisers can be found at just the perimeters of Sector B...seems like I'll have to basically send everyone out, more or less, if I wanna ensure that everyone's got the highest chance of making it back in one piece.
I spent some extra time in the office sending HQ some emails basically asking them what the earliest date is that I can expect to receive more reinforcements, obviously in terms of more ship girls. Takao was there in my office when I came in, organizing some of the files that I had accidentally left on my desk to look at later, so I had to rearrange them like they were before and ended up making Takao apologize profusely for messing up my work. I had to spend about an hour in the office in email correspondence with the guy over at HQ, passing emails back and forth. The thing is, I don't like working at night - it's like my brain's got something against it and I don't have any motivation to work during the evening, which is ironic because I've been on plenty of night ops and I operate just fine, but whatever, at least my anemia thing didn't work up today, probably because I've still got a bit of a cough that's lingering around. So I just popped some music with the stereos I installed in my office to keep me motivated.
The funny thing is, when I started playing my music, Takao asked me what kind of music was being played. I thought for sure these girls would know what modern music would sound like. Actually, no, not even thought, I just assumed. But apparently the ship girls don't know about any kinds of modern music. At least, Takao didn't. Maybe some of them do, the ones who're more familiar with pop culture and stuff, but Takao took a liking to the chillstep that I was playing. Well, like they say, one of us, one of us.
I did find Error napping on my bed with Batsubyou the cat, though. That was kinda awkward. I didn't wanna wake her up in case she decided to wake-up DP me, so I just played a little bit more Skyrim on my computer until she woke up. And when she did, and when she realized I was also in the room with her, she snatched up Batsubyou and nearly knocked down my door off its hinges as she ran away. I mean, seriously, Error, if you've got something going for me, you might as well be upfront with it.