Monday, January 20th, 2014.

Amazingly, Samidare was out of the infirmary today. Akashi ended up having to assure me no less than three times throughout the day that Samidare was back in fighting condition, so I feel kinda bad for not believing her. I just thought with a terrible wound like that, she'd be in there for at least a month. Then again, ship girls aren't exactly normal human beings now, are they. But hey, can't blame me, 'cause I see them as normal human beings just like anyone else. I would feel downright dirty if I saw them as anything else.

So here's the big ol' plot twist: today's email from HQ basically told me that if we could make a breakthrough in Sector B through an assault mission, we would receive more ship girls to be stationed at base. In fact, whoever wrote the email put something like a PS at the end and told me that that's the best chance I would have at receiving more ship girls, to show HQ that we can make tangible progress in figuring out and one day conquering Sector B so that it won't pose a problem to international overseas shipping security. Other than these big news, today was pretty ordinary, run-of-the-mill kinda day. Paperwork, reports, emails, mission planning and deployment, what have you.

I gathered everyone in my office today for mission debriefing. Keep in mind, the room that I chose to be my office is actually pretty big, I think its maximum capacity's supposed to be like forty or so people, so it's not some dinky bedroom or whatever, so literally I can have everyone at base right now come into my office and we'd still have ample space for more. Anyways, I called everyone except for the cooking ladies (Mamiya and Irako) and explained the situation to them, about our objective. The email didn't exactly say if I had a time restraint on this or anything, but because of my own work ethic and habit, I believe in getting shit done as quickly and efficiently as possible, so obviously my intention was, now that Samidare was fully healed, to send everyone with the exception of Ooyodo and Akashi, since they don't have their own armaments or are outfitted properly enough to fight, to gain more ship girls as possible. I mean, this base has plenty of more space to hold more occupants; and seeing that any one of my ship girls can get screwed like Samidare was even if I send out my full force now, having more ship girls at hand would mean I would be able to send out bigger task forces and thus increase the chances that everyone comes back home safely. So I asked if there was anyone who was particularly against my plan of sending everyone out today.

No one was. Surprising, usually I'd always have a few dissenters who didn't agree with me whenever I did open polls like this among my own men.

Therefore, I sent out everyone. Even Houshou, because technically she, too, is a light carrier and can fight. Before I sent them off, I pulled Sazanami, Fubuki, Murakmo, and Inazuma aside and ordered them to specifically protect Houshou. The thought of someone like Houshou getting heavily damaged like Samidare was is literally cancer to my brain.

So yeah, today was just a really boring day for me since I'm stuck here at base. I didn't really know what to do, because there wasn't really as much paperwork and reports that I needed to do for today, so I ended up finishing those a good hour and a half faster than I expected, so I just lounged around for a bit in my office with EDM blasting through my stereos and surfing Youtube. I didn't have the heart to go back to my room and act like a damn shut-in (hikkikomori, I think they say in Japanese?) by finishing Saints Row 3 (still need to get to Saints Row 4), so I ended up going over to the mess hall to go talk to Mamiya and Irako since I was bored, but I didn't find them there. After wandering around a bit, wondering where they could've went, I heard hammers clunking from Houshou's izakaya site and found the two of them working on the izakaya, so I joined them in the construction. As thanks, they treated me to some excellent gyoza, or dumplings, I think they're called in English, some of the best I've ever had. Homemade cooking is so much fucking better than the shit you buy at restaurants, oh my God.

After that, I retreated back to my own room to continue on with my progress on watching through Oreimo and Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio. I would leave my opinions on anime here but since this journal's intended for my military experiences here, I'll refrain from indulging in the dissemination of my personal opinions on things that have no relevancy in this journal. Though, I might add, it's tempting to break that rule. Batsubyou found his way into my room again - I usually leave my door closed against the hinges but not entirely closed, so I guess the cat doesn't have too much trouble pushing it open and making itself at home on my bed. Why, Batsubyou, do you think my bed is your home? Error's gonna get pissed at me, you know. Silly cat.

But thank God everyone came back safe. No one even got scratched. Apparently all the enemies they ran into were just low-tier destroyers today, and they wiped out a whole ton of 'em, so I'm just gonna say that they all did a good job today. As the report turns out, they actually managed to penetrate about five miles into Sector B, which is pretty damn impressive for pulling that off and still coming back with the biggest injury on the team being Souryuu with a light bump on the ankle from an explosion that sent a small piece of shrapnel her way, fortunately not piercing the skin but just slapping against her ankle on the flat side. Kirishima assured me that their lack of injuries today was due to the fact that they had all learned their mistakes in their last expedition together, the mission in which Samidare got heavily damaged, and today was their fruits of their learned lessons from combat.

But the most important loot from today's mission was the information they got. They had mapped the waters where they had crossed into Sector B territory, analyzed frequency of enemy presence and enemy movements, among various other military intel and logistics info. Basically, it's info that HQ over in Tokyo can convert into sample data and get a more accurate picture of what's going on throughout the rest of Sector B. The post-action mission report today was more or less a damn gold mine of information, and as soon as I realized it, I hopped right back onto my laptop in my office and spent a whole hour organizing the info and sending it over to HQ. I swear to God, if they don't promise to get me some more ship girls after this, you know there's gonna be a muh'fuckin' riot up in this -

Anyways, by the time I was done sending the organized report to HQ and went over to the mess halls for dinner, the ship girls were all gathered there celebrating their more or less flawless run into Sector B. The girls invited me to go eat and drink with them, so I did, and it was a lot of fun. Strange, really, since I can barely speak Japanese fluently enough to carry a conversation and I haven't known any of them for more than a week and a half or so. But I mean, when girls like these are your subordinates, it's kinda hard to not have fun, since half of 'em have a tendency to just plain goof off.

After dinner, Kirishima pulled me aside and asked me if she could speak with me privately, so we went to my office for a chat. When I asked her what was up, she asked me some stuff in regards to the email from earlier this morning. She asked me if it said in the email whether it was mentioned I could consciously choose the ship girls I wanted HQ to send over - in other words, basically a direct request. I showed her the email, and sure enough, there wasn't any mention of me being able to tell HQ exactly which ship girls I wanted. I asked Kirishima why she wanted to know this, and she answered that if the email had said specifically that I could request certain ship girls to be deployed to our base, she was planning on asking me if I could request her ship sisters.

That's when I realized that basically all of my ship girls all have sister ships (ship sisters? how do I say that?) who still haven't been deployed here. I don't even know if they've met each other before outside of this base.

I confessed to Kirishima that I was a bit on the ignorant side of things when it came to knowing the ships of the old Imperial Japanese Navy, which the ship girls are based off. She said that she just wanted to have all her older sisters come to base - Kongou, Hiei, and Haruna - and literally, that would be all she would ever want. If I could procure them to be deployed to Okinawa, she wouldn't regret even being sent out on a suicide mission. I told Kirishima to try not to raise any death flags around me, because that would make me feel like a sick fuck.

But after Kirishima left my office after we had that conversation, I just kept sittin' in my office, wondering about that. Like, damn, if you think about it, ships that're in the same class together technically are like siblings, right? 'Cause they're part of the same class? So if that's the case, while I don't really know a whole lot in regards to the specifics of the Imperial Japanese Navy, I at least know that there were a lot of ships that were classified under the same class-type, and there were hardly really any ships that were alone in their own categories or class-types.

I don't know how many ship girls there were in the IJN, but I'm just gonna say that there's a lot. Which means that if I get new ship girls, there could be a chance that a couple of 'em would end up being the only ones of their respective class-types, meaning they still wouldn't have a fellow ship girl to call a sister, and if that's the case, they might(?) get lonely, and then morale will decrease, and they won't do their job properly, and then they'll slip up and make mistakes in battle, and then they'll get sunk or die, either or, whichever comes first -

Okay, I'll just...take a moment and stop before I become the next fucking Edgar Allen Poe and morbid myself to death.

But the point still remains that now that these "ships" now have human form, it's really hard to treat them as anything else. At least, I can't. Maybe, like I've mentioned before, I've got a mushy spot for 'em that I just don't know why it exists - I certainly wasn't particularly interested in girls back at home or always trying to get hook-ups and dates like a thirsty lil' fuckin' high school brat. Or, more believably, maybe now it's 'cause I know that every single one of my ship girls has at least one ship sister who isn't at base right now, and that in itself is not right and is something only I can fix because I'm their Admiral.

Well, we'll see in tomorrow's emails...see what HQ says.