Tuesday, February 4th, 2014.

...things have gotten interesting.

First, the good news. The medbay docks have worked brilliantly: the critically injured girls are already out of the docks and back to full health, except for the fact that some of the still have debilitating handicaps. The nano-bots in the bathwater may heal up wounds, but they can't reconstruct entire body parts or organs, they'll just seal up them and stop the wounded parts from damaging the rest of the body, so that's where Akashi comes in. She performed Inazuma's surgery in the morning, since Inazuma's blindness is by far the most devastating injury. One eye being shot out is ultimately not that big of a deal, since you have two eyes, and you can still see with one eye, but both eyes?

That surgery, though, took a really, really long time, and Ooyodo had to call off her secretary work to help Akashi with it, since she needed the help, but it's the kind of help that once you're there, you have to stay the entire time, so I couldn't qualify. I just made Takao my backup secretary for a day, which she was thrilled about. In fact, towards the end of today, she requested that I stick with her as my secretary ship, but I said that would be something along the lines of me dating a girl, and then breaking up with her suddenly to go date another girl. Ooyodo would probably stick several pens into every orifice of my body, including places where I don't want sharp pointy objects to be stuck. So I had to reject Takao. Doesn't change the fact that Takao, too, is an excellent secretary ship, I admit.

Anyway, before I got sidetracked by Takao, Inazuma's surgery, needless to say, since Akashi's the one performing it, was a success, but the process took about thirteen hours, and Ooyodo told me earlier this evening that Akashi went straight to her room in the light cruisers' dorm and just fell on her bed and went straight to sleep, it was that exhausting. Ooyodo herself was really worn out, understandably. After all, you're standing there for thirteen hours paying attention to the surgery and helping the surgeon every step along the way. I told her to go sleep for the evening, and that I would look the other way if she chose to sleep in tomorrow morning, for which Ooyodo was grateful. Inazuma's going to spend one last night in the infirmary/medbay so that her body can calibrate itself to its new eyes (ship girls, thankfully, don't have to worry about bullshit organ rejection or other annoying and otherwise common human ailments).

One thing that I do want to mention about Ooyodo: when I offered her a chance to sleep in tomorrow, she at first refused. The thing is, sleeping in is a luxury, especially on weekdays, for the ship girls (I guess it's not such a luxury anymore, since I've put my own base on temporary forced vacation, so anyone can sleep in for any amount of time except for me). On Ooyodo's face, I could tell that she was really thankful for my consideration. You can tell when you're talking to someone if they really appreciate you giving them something, it's not that hard unless they're really good at hiding their feelings. But yet Ooyodo was all like "Oh, no, I can't accept such a thing" and constantly denying it. The normal American me would've been like, oh, well, since she said no, I guess she's really fine with that, and I would've moved on. But the look that Ooyodo had and her refusal of my offer seemed too...incongruous to really match with each other, so I tried pressing my luck and asked her again. She refused, again. And then I asked for a third time - and bingo, she accepted.

What the absolute fuck.

As it turns out, since I searched this up on the Internet just a little while ago out of curiosity, that it's pretty customary in Japanese culture for someone to refuse an offer at first in order to show politeness. It's not that they don't want it, they're just following some sort of cultural procedure in which three times seems to be the magic number before they finally give in and accept.

As an American, this blows my mind. Who the fuck thought this was a good way of interacting with people? Doesn't that, like, waste a lot of time? I don't get it. Apparently it's not just in Japan, it's pretty damn common throughout Eastern cultures in general. I suppose that part makes sense, because Western cultures are pretty direct, and Eastern cultures are not as direct or think directness is a form of rudeness...I don't know, maybe I'm generalizing too much. But God, I'm actually surprised this's the first time I've come across this kind of thing. I think it's called a "critical incident" or something, I don't remember. Thankfully I didn't botch that encounter with Ooyodo and my intuition ended up saving me from a potentially awkward outcome, but the other girls didn't behave that way. I offered Sazanami some cake from all the way back when I baked Murakumo a cake, and she took it right away. Maybe it's adult behavior? Or maybe it's just a matter of personal preference, whether they want to engage in this cultural ritual of constantly refusing an offer until the third time asking? Ugh. Confusing cultural stuff. Not trying to complain, but I'd prefer my American way of asking just once and getting a clear answer, but that's neither here nor there.

Now let's get to the interesting stuff. I got an email from an unknown email address - I don't know how they did this, but the browser wouldn't actually show me the email address that sent me the email. Like some BCC shit, but on themselves. It was sent to me in English, not Japanese, so right away I knew that it wasn't an email from the government or HQ. I'll put down what they wrote here:

"Commander Kevinson,

We're sorry to hear that the capture mission didn't go as planned. Those assholes at HQ really should've been smarter with their choice of ship girls to send you, but by now it's already too late, since the damage to your fleet's been done. Hopefully your fleet can recover quickly.

If this is any consolation to you, we are currently working on 'persuading' the Ministry of Defense to deploy some more ship girls to your base in Okinawa. When they will arrive, and if they will arrive at all, isn't really something we can discuss here. Let's just say that we don't know at the moment.

We were quite interested in the capture mission your fleet participated in just the other day as well. That's not to say that we were the ones who gave the order, because we can't really issue you direct orders ourselves, but when we heard about it, we definitely hoped that you would be able to capture a live specimen, for analyzing Abyssal technology and physiology and hopefully reverse-engineering their properties and characteristics can really help bolster our own ship girl technology. Right now, let's just say that we have lots of things planned to expand the Moebius Four Armament, but in order to do so, a live Abyssal specimen is required to make that leap.

So you might already know what I'm about to ask you now. When your fleet is ready to reengage in naval warfare against the Abyssals, try to have them capture any kind of live Abyssal specimen if possible. We're not asking you to make it a primary objective; if they can capture a live Abyssal and not put themselves in further danger, that would be perfect. We don't want a repeat of what happened last week either.

Furthermore, I'd like to ask that you keep this email a secret between the two of us. Technically, we're not allowed to contact you in private like this, but fuck the governments, and I'm sure you're inclined to agree at this point. This email is untrackable, hence why you can't see the original email address, so you don't have to worry about anyone from either the Japanese or American government hunting you down asking you about this, we'll cover you.

Once your fleet manages to capture a live Abyssal specimen, reply to this email again, and we'll pick it up. After all, it was because of us that those guys at HQ issued you that capture mission, so you can think of this whole situation as partly our fault too. But if you can overlook that and procure for us what we want, we'll do the impossible for you.

-Someone you should know"

I think I might have an idea of who sent me that email, but I'll keep it to myself.

So basically, they want my fleet to keep trying to get a live Abyssal, but not to the point where they're getting slaughtered for it. Fine, I can live with that. The fact that they admitted that the mission was partly their doing still stings, though. But hey, at least they admitted it. That's not something a government would ever do.

And what do they mean by "do the impossible"? I'm not a very imaginative guy, so I have absolutely no fucking clue what they're talking about. I'm assuming they'll use a live Abyssal specimen to study it and maybe apply what they've learned to develop better weapons or new technology for the ship girls? That's about the most I can really imagine them doing. It's probably something a lot more mind-blowing than that, though, if these guys are who I think they are. Not gonna lie, I'm kind of curious what they'll do if we ever do manage to get a live Abyssal specimen.

Whatever. I won't dwell on it, it's just the most interesting thing this whole week so far. But I'll think about that once my fleet actually gets back to fighting shape.

I'm more surprised that I'm not more angry at them than I thought I'd be. Maybe I've just gotten over it.

After dinner, I headed back out to the pier, this time with my navy saber. It's been a long time since I've practiced with my sword, so I decided tonight was a good night to practice so that I don't lose my touch. That, and I've always been into swords. I think I've explained this before.

Just holding a sword feels right.

And please don't take these words of mine out of fucking context.

I was about fifteen minutes into it when I noticed that a couple of the girls were watching me, so I called out to them. Akebono, Wakaba, and Yahagi apparently were watching me for about ten minutes, according to Yahagi, since neither Wakaba nor Akebono seemed willing to answer my questions. Yahagi complemented my sword skill, which either means that was just an empty-handed complement because she didn't know what else to say to me or she has no knowledge of true sword fighting, because what I was practicing was just demonstration and show-biz kind of stuff, the flashy sword manipulation skills that you see at carnivals and at military parades and shit like that. Shit that real sword masters would take one glance at and laugh you out of the battlefield, because the only thing you need to do with a sword is stick it in the other guy's body, preferably the heart or the head, instead of doing all these unnecessarily fancy maneuvers and bullshit like that.

Akebono still calls me shitty Admiral. What the fuck is wrong with her?