Tuesday, January 21th, 2014.
Good news, the check cleared. It's fucking go time.
HQ processed the report that I sent them from yesterday's mission results and emailed me back saying that they've decided that we've made sufficient enough progress to warrant more reinforcements. We're due to receive them next Monday...an additional four destroyers, two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, and a battleship.
Remembering the conversation that I had with Kirishima last night, I emailed them back asking them if I had the choice to specifically request certain ship girls from HQ. Unfortunately, they didn't respond back for the rest of the day, so I suppose I'll wait until tomorrow for a reply back.
Surprisingly, the rest of the ship girls took the news really well; they all seemed really happy that they'd get more reinforcements coming soon. I thought I was the only one who was going to get excited because I'd be able to field more task forces and do my job more efficiently with more ship girls, but when I nonchalantly told Takao about it, who's still my secretary, by the way, she seemed really excited about it too and ended up telling everyone else. Not surprisingly, Kirishima ran straight to my office as soon as she heard from Takao, slammed her hands on my office and stuck her face in mine and asked me if I could ask for her ship sisters. I tried to tell her as calmly as I could that I hadn't gotten a response back, and that by slamming her hands down on my desk, she basically pushed my desk about an inch into the floor.
She apologized a lot after that. Well, it's not like it bothers me, the fact that the desk is a bit lower than it should be and that it can't be moved anymore, at least not easily, but not gonna lie, I think I felt my balls retreat up my ass when I think about just how strong these girls are. I always forget that they aren't exactly...human, at least not in terms of physical strength.
So that got everyone super motivated to go out on more missions, so much so that every single one of them marched straight into my office at 1400 hours, which is usually the time when I give out mission duties, and asked me what today's mission was going to be. If you can imagine me staring like a dumbfuck at all the girls, except the ones who can't fight, obviously, with the daily mission profile in my hands that is now completely useless since I only designed it to be carried out by a task force of three destroyers, two light cruisers, and a standard carrier. I tried to tell them that I could only send out the ones that were specified in the mission profile that I had made, and besides, this was only going to be another reconnaissance mission, but they almost threatened not to go if I didn't send them all on today's mission.
Talk about a mutiny that doesn't make any fucking sense.
So I took another hour to revise today's mission plans so that I could send everyone. I warned everyone that it wouldn't be my fault at all if someone ended up getting hurt, though even as I said that, I knew that if someone did end up either getting heavily damaged like Samidare or even get sunk and killed, I'd still feel awful. So instead of a reconnaissance mission, this time, I issued them a search and destroy mission with the primary objective of defeating a Ru-Class or a Ta-Class battleship, an objective issued straight from HQ itself. I ran through their profiles and the info we currently have about them and told them that they're supposed to be really fucking dangerous, so I gave the whole proceed with extreme caution talk that I'm sure everyone who's spent at least a year in any military's heard more times than they've run miles in their lives. In order to ensure that everyone comes back home in one piece, I ordered them to assume defensive formations and focus on protecting each other more than damaging the enemy, and to not be afraid of retreating if someone needed to be saved by doing so. The secondary objective was to capture a live Ru-Class or Ta-Class specimen and bring it into base for interrogation, and from here it would be flown over to HQ for further analysis and research.
I sent them off at around 1600 hours. Mamiya, Houshou (who didn't go with them since she wasn't caught up in the whole battle fever thing), and Irako mentioned during breakfast that they were going to finish the rest of Houshou's izakaya, so after sending off the task force for today I went over to help them finish the rest. They had finished most of the handiwork for the izakaya yesterday, so we just put in the finishing touches, decorative stuff and organizing plates and silverware and setting up the tables and the chairs for the bar. Honestly, the ladies made the place cozy as fuck. It practically feels like a chill nightclub but in an Oriental setting, if that makes any sense at all. It's super easy for me to imagine the girls all gathered in the izakaya, chilling out, drinking some sake or something, eating some soba, and having a good time. Houshou decided to name her izakaya "Shinsengumi", which I think translates to "The New Battalion" or something like that. Mind you, my translation skills are meager, to say the least, so I could be totally wrong about that. But I guess it kinda makes sense, seeing that our little platoon here hasn't been in existence for too long - barely a few weeks old. In any case, I like the name. Don't know why, I just do.
In celebration of the finishing of Shinsengumi, Houshou decided to treat us all to some ramen that she had been practicing making specifically for the izakaya once it got finished and opened. She called it "Hakata" ramen, and what that means I have no clue, but I do know that it's the best fucking ramen I've ever had. Never again shall I poison my body with that shit known as instant ramen or cup ramen, the food that I wore on my shirt with the words "Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner". With ramen like this at my disposal, I don't need any other kinds of ramen. In fact, I can live on it. I can live on that shit. I can fucking live on Hakata ramen, that's how good it is.
I kinda ate so much that I ruined dinner for myself, but if I were in America, this's the part where I go on Twitter and tweet #worth. Well, then again, you don't have to be in America only to use Twitter. I don't even have a Twitter. So much for social networking.
As soon as I finished binging on ramen, the task force returned to base at around 2130 hours. Unfortunately, while no one got heavily damaged, some of the girls came back with some pretty bad wounds - Souryuu's arms got ripped up pretty badly, so much so that I instinctively cringed when I first saw her bloody arms. Some of the destroyers had blood splattered all over them, and worst of all, Kitakami lost her left hand from around half her upper arm down. Ooi was bawling by the time they came back to base, even though Kitakami kept telling her to calm down, that Akashi would be able to build her a new hand to replace the one she lost. For the most part, everyone got injured in some way or other, but at least no one ended up like Samidare. Ironically, Samidare was the least wounded one and got away with only a bit of shrapnel in her shoulder.
Even still, after getting patched up a bit over at Akashi's, everyone gathered at Shinsengumi like I'd imagined and celebrated the izakaya's grand opening together. Since I already ate a whole lotta ramen, I just joined in on the drinking, even ordering a bit of sake as well. As someone who's not used to drinking with other people and just drinking in general, it was pretty fun. I always knew alcohol was more of a social thing than just something you do by yourself, but I guess now I really know that it is. Though, it was kinda sketchy having to carry Kirishima back to her dorm because she went a little too hard on the sake. Turns out she's a lightweight, which is kinda surprising seeing that I'd imagine battleships would be heavyweights when it came to alcohol.
I left a bit early from the party though to prevent myself from being force-fed alcohol, since I saw some of the girls getting quite tipsy and feeding each other alcohol (Ooi and Kitakami, specifically), and while as a man I would've liked to keep watching, for the sake of my job I got the hell outta Dodge. And while I've never drank enough alcohol to know if I'm a lightweight or not myself, I get headaches easily from drinking, so either way, I would've gotten outta there. I spent the rest of the evening after compiling the post-mission report and sending it over to HQ sitting in my room and watching Expelled from Paradise. About half an hour into the movie, i heard a knock on my door, so I paused the movie and went to answer it, and it was Fubuki. She said that she wanted to talk to me about the same thing that Kirishima did, the whole requesting her fellow ship sisters part. Fubuki said that she hadn't seen Shirayuki, one of her ship sisters that apparently she'd been close with before she got transferred to Okinawa with me, in a long time, so she wanted me to request her so that she could see Shirayuki again.
Lemme guess, this's gonna turn out so that I just end up taking everyone's requests, huh. Well, since I don't really know the ships of the old Imperial Navy, it's not like I know which ship girl is supposed to be good or anything like that, like, this isn't some sorta motherfuckin' game. So if my request to HQ does end up being accepted, now that I think about it, I may as well go around base and ask everyone who they'd like me to request and just send that over.
Fubuki saw that I was watching a movie on my computer and asked me what I was watching. When I told her that I was watching Expelled from Paradise, her eyes lit up like some lights on a blinking Christmas tree and asked me if she could watch it with me, but immediately she realized that that wasn't proper behavior with which to address her superior and quickly tried to renege on her words, but I said that if she wanted, we could watch it together. I asked Fubuki when she'd be able to watch a movie, because besides my laptop in the office and my PC in my dorm, there weren't any other computers at base, and my subordinates can't touch my possessions as protocol, meaning that there'd be no way that Fubuki would be able to watch any anime or movie unless I allowed the girls to go on break or vacation to the mainland. Fubuki timidly asked me if I would allow her, and I got the hunch that she was feeling all embarrassed entering her own commander's room, a guy's room, at that, and I told her that she could come in and watch the movie from the start with me if she wanted. I wasn't about to force her to watch a damn movie with me, that's fucked up. Sounds like a date rape, more than anything. I told her that I would try my best not to tell anyone else, and finally Fubuki gave in and watched the movie with me.
Man, now that I realize it, I'm keeping secrets already. Who woulda knew.
After we finished Expelled from Paradise, Fubuki and I spent a whole hour talking anime and stuff. Apparently Fubuki's pretty knowledgeable in her animes and stuff, too, that was surprising. I asked her how she was able to watch anime, and Fubuki said that back at HQ, before she got assigned to Okinawa, she had overheard some HQ employees talking about Hayate no Gotoku and searched it up on the internet on her computer when she was working as secretary there, and the rest was history. She's been trying to expand her experience with anime genres, because mostly she's been watching slice of life animes and more comedy or daily life animes, stuff like that. She got into Sword Art Online just before she got assigned here, and she's been missing her ability to clandestinely watch anime on her secretary computer at HQ while working, since there's unfortunately no computers here. So I told her that I could buy her a cheap laptop so that she could watch anime on it and share it with her dormmates so that they could all watch together at night or something, but Fubuki instantly refused. She reacted in the whole predictable manner that's shown in anime all the damn time, when someone gets shown some generosity and they instantly turn it down, saying that "they don't deserve it" or "I'm giving them too much", and that was basically Fubuki's reaction.
Gotta make a note to order a cheap Dell laptop or something off Amazon and leave it in their dorm as a really, really late Christmas present. Or it could even be a New Year's present, since it's customary to give younger people New Year's money (it's foreign to Americans, generally speaking, so I'll have to try real hard 'n remember that every time New Year's comes around. I'm just gonna do it just so that I see what kinda face Fubuki'll make when she realizes there's a brand new laptop sitting on her bed so that she can watch anime like she used to. Call it generosity, call it being nice to girls, call it whatever, but either way, I'm looking forward to getting a laugh outta Fubuki's reaction. Hopefully.
Before she left for her own dorms for the night, Fubuki asked me if I've ever wanted to be the protagonist of an anime or a story or something like that. Since she mentioned it, when I was younger, I had that whole chuuni thing that Japanese people call it, what, the pubescent tendency to think that you're a superhuman being or something and you do it 'cause you think it's cool? I dunno what it's really called in English. I sometimes think back to those years, when I was just a twelve year old, when Naruto was big and I thought I was a ninja. Embarrassing but makes for some pretty good hilarious stories, lemme tell ya. After that, I "evolved" from that to thinking I was a super badass gangbanger who wore shades everywhere (yes, even indoors) and wearing a bandana, pretending I could summon fire or some shit in my hands. Cracks me up every single time.
Fubuki said that with me being in the position that I am now, she said that she was kind of jealous of me, that I was occupying the main focus of attention here at base, because I'm the most important person here. So because of that, she sees me as a protagonist character, someone who calls the shots and leads the plot in accordance with his choices. I mean, for all I know, unless I'm breaking the fourth wall here, I tend to think that we're all in control of our own lives, that we're all main characters of our own lives, and that's what I told her. Doesn't matter what position we have in life or anything, nothing will change the fact that we're all more or less our own main characters. Besides, I told Fubuki that if either one of us was the main character, it would be her because she's got superhuman powers and strength, whereas I'm just an ordinary human who happens to be her commander and tells her what to do, nothing more. I mentioned that if anything, someone might end up making an anime of this whole Moebius Four Armament, like how Hollywood sometimes makes movies of formerly classified military sections and stuff like that, and that maybe Fubuki could be the main character of that. She just smiled and told me that she'd like that, even though she knew that probably wouldn't be the case. No one outside of the government and the Moebius Four Armament project would believe that there were such things as girls who were the embodiment of military seaborne vessels capable of mass destruction and wore sailor uniforms and looked like characters straight out of an anime.
I told Fubuki that I didn't believe girls like her could exist, but now I know that they do. If I can believe, so can the rest of the world. Then again, if the rest of the world knows about the ship girls, maybe that wouldn't be the best idea.
Oh God, Ooyodo just came in and told me that Takao drank a bit too much and threw up everywhere. Cleanup on Aisle Four...