Wednesday, February 5th, 2014.

I woke up early today and baked a cake for Inazuma before she woke up as a celebration for her recovery. It wasn't a fancy cake by any means, just a humble double-chocolate layer cake with some strawberries and apple slices on top and whipped cream that I put on it that spelled out "Omedetou, Inazuma!" in hiragana, which means "Congratulations, Inazuma!" in English. I think. Again, my Japanese speaking is better than my writing, even though I should be fairly confident in my hiragana by now.

I ran into Hatsuharu in the kitchen when I went in there to make Inazuma's cake. Like Shouhou, it was my first time actually talking with her one-on-one ever since she came here. I still can't get used to her super archaic way of speaking. Imagine if you got time-teleported to maybe somewhere like twelfth century England or a place where they're speaking Middle English, and that's what I'm hearing, more or less. Like, people always talk about the difference in Japanese dialects, such as the Tokyo dialect and the Osaka dialect, but wait 'til you meet someone who chooses to speak like they're some samurai during the friggin' Sengoku or the Tokugawa era, and on top of all that, me not being exactly perfectly fluent in Japanese quite yet. It's gotten better, but it's still nowhere near native-level. Now that's a mindfuck, lemme tell ya.

But we managed to have a decent enough conversation while I was making my cake, since she understood that I, being American and not speaking Japanese as a first language, was struggling to understand her, and enunciated her words as best she could for me to at least grasp the gist of what she was saying. At least she can understand me perfectly. She explained that she wanted to learn how to use modern appliances over the forced vacation period that I had imposed and planned to use this morning as her first day of her self-imposed training, so I offered to teach her a bit while I made my cake. Sure seems like her speech isn't the only thing that's rather old-fashioned, though I don't mean to say that in a condescending way. So she watched me keenly as I worked around in the kitchen, asking me what certain appliances and machines did and how I was able to manipulate them in such a way that I was able to make them do what I wanted them to do. If you think that sounded really wordy just now, that's because that's exactly what Hatsuharu said. Everything she says is quite wordy, but it's not annoying for some reason. Like Atago's constant smiling, just a characteristic, not an annoyance or a pet peeve.

Mamiya and Irako were surprised to see me and Hatsuharu in the kitchen already before them when they came in to make breakfast. I asked them where Houshou was, since normally Houshou would help them make breakfast too, and they told me that Houshou was taking care of Shinsengumi, since she felt that she hadn't done a good enough job sweeping the floor the night before. Wakaba and Kiyoshimo came in soon after - seems like they've become good friends, judging by their relationship - and asked what I was doing, so I told them, and they stuck around with Hatsuharu to watch me finish baking the cake. I had them taste-test it for me to make sure the cake's flavor integrity was acceptable and that I didn't screw up somewhere along the way, but they said it was really delicious, so I put on the whipped cream and fruit slices to finish. I asked the three of them if they wanted to join me in waking up Inazuma, and they tagged along.

We found Akashi already in the medbay, preparing Souryuu's eye that she had built along with Inazuma's replacement eyes so that she can perform Souryuu's surgery first thing in the morning. I asked her if we could give Inazuma a little congratulatory party, and Akashi let us, though she said to keep it short, since she was still pretty exhausted from Inazuma's surgery yesterday. In response to that, I suggested that she hold off on another grueling surgery like that so that she herself could recover. After all, an exhausted surgeon would be hazardous to the health of the patient. But Akashi refused - she said that she couldn't afford to wait a single minute, since she couldn't bear to not help people that she knows she has the power to help and heal and who are waiting desperately for her help. It's not like the other girls who got critically injured are going to die anytime soon, though, but I know where she's coming from.

So while we brought in a small folding table that the medbay patients are given to use to eat their meals on so that we could put the cake on it, Samidare, pushing Fubuki in a wheelchair because Fubuki's missing her right foot (and with only one arm, mind you), came into the medbay, coming to inquire about when their own surgeries would be. They saw us setting up something for Inazuma, so they asked what we were doing, and I explained to them, and they joined in too.

I shook Inazuma gently awake, and she opened her eyes. The eyes that she used to have before they got shot out were brown - but now, they were yellow. Maybe because it's such a weird eye color to have, or maybe because it just honestly suits her, but I found Inazuma with bright yellow eyes to be super adorable. Is adorable the right word? Cute, maybe? Or just beautiful? I don't know, but let's just leave it at this: those lemon-yellow eyes are quite a sight to see.

Inazuma was so moved by what we did for her that she just fell apart as soon as she registered what was happening. She couldn't even blow the candles at first because she was bawling so hard, and it was just a hugfest all around.

Oh boy, if my normal troops could see their hard-ass twenty-somethin' year old officer baking cakes for little girls and throwing celebratory parties. Wonder what I'd say for myself.

I guess I could say "I do what I want, motherfucker".

After all, grown men, especially soldiers, don't need parties.

Finally, after like ten minutes of straight crying and the other destroyers hugging Inazuma to calm her down and cheer her up (it's not like her spirits were down in the first place), Inazuma finally blew the candles, and we all had slices of cake, including Akashi. In fact, I gave Akashi a much bigger slice, but no one complained, since it's pretty obvious why I did that.

Hatsuharu asked me why I put candles on the cake. It wasn't like it was Inazuma's launch day yet (I had to ask what she meant by 'launch day', and apparently, as the girls explained it, it's like human birthdays, since the ship girls consider their initial launch dates back when they were first constructed during the war to be analogous to birthdays), so why would there be candles on the cake? I told her that it was because I had the ability to put candles on it, and because there were spare candles lying around in the kitchen, I did.

After we ate the cake and Akashi officially discharged Inazuma from the medbay after confirming that her new eyes were functioning as they were supposed to, I saw Wakaba reach up to Hatsuharu's mouth and wipe off a spot of chocolate. They acted really close, even though I've never seen them act that way around each other before. I had Kiyoshimo explain to me that it's because they're actually from the same class of destroyer, the Hatsuharu-class.

If you ever asked me before today whether Hatsuharu and Wakaba were actually "sisters", ten out of ten I would've said no, and another twenty out of ten I would've said that again. How the fuck are they so friggin' different?!

Well, then again, I shouldn't get myself worked up over that. Considering Fubuki, Inazuma, and Murakumo are all "ship sisters", that shouldn't have come as a surprise. Well, I mean, if we want to get technical, I suppose Fubuki and Murakumo are the sisters, and Inazuma's their cousin. So I guess it's makes more sense to compare Fubuki and Murakumo to Hatsuharu and Wakaba. But it's just - Wakaba's so chill and laid-back and walks around with the air of I-don't-give-a-flying-fuck, and Hatsuharu's this archaic daimyo noblewoman, it's just - DELETE SYSTEM.32 BEFORE PERMANENT DATA DAMAGE CAN BE INCURRED, 404 AN ERROR HAZ OKUUED

Nothing much else interesting happened until later today, after we'd finished dinner. I was chilling with Atago, Takao, and Suzuya, all of whom I found to get along very well with one another. Seems like the heavy cruisers are just one big happy family, but then again, all three of them have pleasant personalities that honestly, you'd have to actually put some effort into not liking. Suzuya can get a bit frustrating to work with, and Takao might seem a bit too serious sometimes, but those can be overlooked. I learned that Takao was the older sister between her and Atago, much to Takao's chagrin. I just assumed that Atago was the older one - I guess I can blame the first time I saw them together, when Atago and the other girls in her reinforcement group first arrived here at Okinawa. Takao kind of acted like the younger sister, so I guess I flip-flopped their ages around. Takao was considering not offering herself as secretary ship later, so I told her that I would let Ooyodo hog it all she wanted, and that shut Takao up pretty good. It's still weird to think that Atago's the younger one, and Takao's the older one.

Oh, you know what? I just realized - maybe it's Atago's longer hair. I always subconsciously think that long hair's a sign of maturity in a woman, so if you give me two girls who're sisters, and one's got long hair and the other's got short hair and you asked me to pick which one was the older just based on appearance, I'd go with the one with the longer hair probably nine out of ten times. But enough of age talk.

Kiso pulled me aside after asking to speak with me in private. Again, Kiso's another one of the newly arrived ship girls I haven't yet had a chance to speak with, get to know them and whatnot. She told me that Kitakami's been stuck in the light cruiser dorm, in the room that she and Ooi shared before Ooi died, refusing to leave. Apparently, all she's ever done the past few days after the day of the capture mission (or, more specifically, after Ooi's body got helied out) was hide underneath the blankets of her bed. She's even gotten to the point where she's apparently stopped eating. She asked Kitakami why she wouldn't at least try to let herself be cheered up after Ooi's death, and Kitakami told Kiso that not only was she suffering from Ooi's death and sacrifice, but she'd placed some of the blame on me, because of that verbal fight we had the other day. As Kitakami's youngest sister, Kiso said that she felt that she needed to do something to rectify her older ship sister's situation, even if she didn't necessarily agree with Kitakami's relationship with Ooi (not in the sense that Kiso didn't like them being quasi-lesbian, just that she preferred not to get involved in their romantic antics).

Therefore, Kiso demanded that I go to Kitakami sometime soon and apologize to her for whatever I'd said to her back then. At first, that angered me when Kiso first told me that, but I didn't let myself stay angry, since it's been several days since then, and it's hard for me to stay salty over something that's happened that long ago. I did tell Kiso, though, what Kitakami had told me when we had that verbal fight, and that she'd laid her hands on a superior officer and was thus subject to the fullest extent of military law if I so chose to prosecute her. Despite my half-assed threat (I'm not actually going to prosecute Kitakami for just grabbing me by the collar, that's just fucking stupid on my part if I actually did), Kiso called it and demanded that I go talk to her anyway. She'd been doing all she could for Kitakami, and she wasn't sure if she alone could do anything to help Kitakami feel better. Then again, given my recent interactions with Kitakami, I don't know why Kiso would think I would have any better of a chance than she does. Maybe because I'm the Admiral? Heh, well, fat chance that my fancy Admiral status would do anything for me, so long as I'm American. Fucking Americans, amirite?

But I did tell Kiso that I'd take some time to go speak with Kitakami, and when Kiso asked me when, I said right now. So Kiso and I headed over to the light cruiser's dorm and headed into Kitakami's room, and sure enough, we found Kitakami holed up underneath the covers. The dinner that Houshou left near her bed was already really cold, since the dorms, like most Japanese structures, aren't built with very much insulation, if at all, and since it's still really cold, being the start of February, the air is fairly cold.

I immediately walked over to Kitakami's bed, and without hesitating, I pulled the covers up so that I could take a look at Kitakami's face before she could react to what I was doing. As I pulled the covers up, Kitakami tried to pull them back down, but before she could, I caught a glimpse of her face and the pillow she was lying on.

I don't know how long she'd been crying for, but it wouldn't surprise me if she'd just cried into her pillow for the past two or three days straight.

She yelled at me and Kiso to go away, and Kiso hissed at me why the fuck I just did that. Ignoring Kiso, I explained to Kitakami that since Kiso wanted me to do something about Kitakami, I was going to give her an ultimatum: if I didn't see her at the mess hall to eat breakfast with everyone else tomorrow morning, I would send an email to HQ to request them to decommission her and remove her from base.

Decommissioning means that a ship girl gets removed from the active duty roster that HQ holds back in the mainland, and depending on the health and status of the ship girl in question, that ship girl either goes to work for the Bureau of Counter-Terrorism or another related government department involved in the Abyssal counter-operations, or she ends up getting scrapped. I'm sure that Kitakami knows what'll end up happening to her, should I actually go ahead and decommission her.

I'm not kidding with this one.

Now, this time, Kiso grabbed me by the collar and punched me in the face, and I got slammed against the wall. She rushed over to me and pinned me up against the wall, and she screamed at me, how could I make such a threat like that. I answered her that what I gave Kitakami wasn't a threat, but an ultimatum. I wasn't doing it because I was still angry at her (well, that's not the main reason, anyway). I wasn't doing it because I thought she was going to be useless to me. I told Kiso that because she'd asked me to do something about Kitakami, I simply did so in the best way that I knew possible: by giving two equally hard choices. Either Kitakami can consciously choose to continue her life that her younger ship sister Ooi sacrificed her own life to protect and thus live on, or she can go join Ooi in death and contradict her own purpose of life. She and the rest of the ship girls were constructed specifically to combat the Abyssal threat - dying needlessly and pointlessly without fulfilling that is simply unacceptable. After all, I pointed out, at least Ooi died serving her purpose. No matter how much she missed Ooi, Kitakami should not keep bitching about, groveling in her own room. She's a soldier, for fuck's sake, living in a military base and under the command of a military officer, so I said she should start acting like one.

Kiso tried to throw another punch, this time aimed at my nose, but I caught it and quickly and put my boot into Kiso's chest, kicking her off me. I told Kiso that if she ever tried to assault her superior officer again, I would put her under court martial. That, and I told her that she ought to be careful who she should be throwing punches at. Even if the ship girls are much stronger than I am, it's not like my military training was completely useless.

Before leaving, I did leave Kitakami with a few last words. I told her that if she so wanted to, she could put all the blame she wanted for Ooi's death on me, since obviously I was the one who ordered them on that fateful mission. If that's what she could do to make herself feel better, then that's fine, I wouldn't care either way - the fact that Ooi's still dead would still remain, and no amount of blame-throwing would miraculously resurrect her. I did genuinely feel sorry for Kitakami and how much she's been suffering because of Ooi's death and whatever else she might feel from it, and that I was sorry for the rough talk we had the day right after the mission, that I should've been a bit more conscious of my own words. The ultimatum would still stand, though. I didn't want Houshou or Mamiya or Irako or anyone else to be bothered by Kitakami's suffering, that by constantly shutting herself away in her own room, Kitakami was making everyone else worry - me, as her Admiral, Kiso, as her younger sister, the supply ships and Houshou as the people making her food and bringing it to her three times a day, and anyone else who might be concerned with her well-being. If she didn't want to improve herself by herself, then I would force her, or do away with her entirely. For situations like this, there just isn't any in-between, and there's just no point in pretending like there is.

My left cheekbone still hurts from where Kiso hit me. At least Kiso wasn't using her ship power when she punched me, thank God.

I stopped by the medbay before I headed off to bed to write this to check up on Souryuu, whose surgery Akashi performed to install her new right eye, and it'd turned out to be a success, as expected. I suppose I should make another cake for Souryuu too tomorrow morning before she wakes up - it wouldn't be fair if I only did that for Inazuma and no one else.

That probably means I'll be baking cakes for days. Meh, small price to pay.