Thursday, February 13th, 2014.

So Seal Team 6 ended up sending an MV-22B Osprey over here from the West Coast. I guess that's what they meant by "helicopter".

When I went out to see the helicopter in, I met one of the members of Seal Team 6, who had accompanied the chopper on its way here to oversee the loading of the enemy Abyssal vessels. She introduced herself simply as Callsign "Lauren", and that she was the one who had sent me that late email last night. Apparently someone else in her team had been communicating with me for the other emails.

I said that I had been aware of the fact that Seal Team 6 existed within the American military, but that almost no one knew who the members of it were, and even if people did know, no one else knew that they did because they kept their own knowledge about Seal Team 6 confidential. Lauren said that they would prefer to keep to the shadows, since operating in low profile was what they've been trained to do, apparently.

We loaded the Abyssal destroyers that my fleet had captured yesterday up onto the Osprey. I asked Lauren if she at least wanted to spend some time to rest, since she'd presumably be tired from eight hours of travel. She refused politely, saying that the conflict against the Abyssals was not going to simply pause itself for the sake of having some rest. She said that she was fine, she'd had nights much tougher than this.

I was curious what she really meant by that, and it turns out,

Lauren flew that MV-22B Osprey here from San Pedro, California, all the way here to Okinawa by herself, and she probably flew all the way back on top of it.

She did stay awhile to refuel the Osprey with some of our reserve supplies of multi-purpose fuel (it behaves like any conventional engine fuel so that civilian cars, military ground vehicles, and even jet engines and tanks with jet engines in them can use them) before leaving.

I guess either this Seal Team 6 has a few screws loose or they're all just a bunch of underground badasses saving the world one helicopter trip around the world at a time. I dunno, to be honest. Lauren did tell me to keep an eye on my email for a possible email from them soon, since they would start studying these Abyssal samples as soon as possible. She also said that if we could capture more live Abyssal specimens, I ought to contact them again, and someone from Seal Team 6 would fly over immediately to pick up the specimens. Looks like they're taking this seriously, whatever it is that they're doing.

During morning paperwork - er, I mean, afternoon paperwork, I got an email from HQ saying that they confirmed the subjugation of Able One through their satellites positioned over Sector B. And because of this victory, they would authorize increased supply drops at our base to cover the exponentially increased supply consumption rate of the fleet, considering the addition of Yamato and Akagi.

On a side note...holy fuck. I didn't think having to work at the mess halls every single fucking morning would get this tiring. I had another sleep attack right as I sat down in my office to take care of paperwork, and luckily no one came into my office to see that. My pride as a soldier and being trained as one for the past seven years of my life is telling me that something like that isn't something I should be feeling tired from. After all, I've been much, much worse. I'm tempted to use the "old man" card and say I'm getting old, like some of my friends and Dad says sometimes whenever he needed to go off to work back when I was in high school.

But I'm fucking twenty-one. If you need to pull the "old man" card at twenty-one years old, either you have that accelerated aging disease or you're just a little bitch.

Am I a little bitch? No, sir, I'm not. At least, that's what I like to tell myself.

But this sure as hell annoys the fuck out of me.

But it's not like there's really anyone else who can help. The girls have their own shit to worry about. I suppose I could ask Error, now that I think about it. What the hell does Error do around here, anyway.

I had asked the fleet at lunchtime if they were in the mood to go on another sortie, and that I was giving them the choice for today since they'd not only returned to base late at night last night but also they'd completed their secondary objective of capturing live Abyssal specimens, and three of them, at that. The more adventurous and thrill-seeking ones volunteered (I think a lot of them went because they didn't want to seem lazy or undutiful), so I sent Murakumo, Fubuki, Kiyoshimo, Imuya, Shioi, Kitakami, Ooi, Yahagi, Kiso, Suzuya, Takao, Atago, Yamato, Kirishima, Shouhou, and Souryuu on a recon mission back down to the AO of Able One to confirm the locations of Able Two and Able Three and to scout out defensive formations of those islands.

Able One is the first of a large archipelago of islands that HQ discovered through their satellites. By attacking and destroying Able One, we're basically kicking the tip of the iceberg here, so who the hell knows what the rest of the iceberg'll look like, or if it'll end up sinking us faster than the Titanic sank.

Whoops, spoiler alert.

Hopefully this'll be the first step towards finding out where the hell these Abyssals came from.

But the hell? Now that I think about it, why did it take so long for HQ to find these islands? They have satellites for God's sake - how weren't these islands found until recently?

After I sent the expeditionary force on their scout mission, Akashi met with me in my office and reported that she'd been working on building custom ship armaments for herself and Ooyodo. They had been talking ever since the catastrophic disaster that was the capture mission the other week and decided that they, too, would join the fleet as proper ship girls, not just auxiliary ship girls. I asked if this was okay, if their participation would likely cause trouble for me and the base over with HQ, and she said that there shouldn't be, since both Akashi and Ooyodo were listed as ship girls with full combat capabilities to begin with, so I issued my permission for her to finish her work on their armaments, which Akashi said should be done by the day after today since she needs to put some finishing custom touches on them. They're both to be light cruisers, so they'll augment our light cruiser fleet greatly. Plus, according to Akashi, Akashi's gear includes a mobile repair kit, so she can repair damage that other ship girls take while on sortie, which is very useful. This'll decrease the chances of any ship girl sinking or dying on the way back to base after a terrific battle or something. That, and Akashi told me that Ooyodo possesses large capacities for different kinds of equipment, so she has lots of utility and can function as a multi-role ship for the fleet. Pair that with her superior logistics and organization and communication skills, and Ooyodo and Akashi are looking like they can carry the fleet with their special gimmicks.

After that and after finishing paperwork, I didn't have much else to do, but because I was frickin' tired (and still am) from the past few days' worth of constantly waking up early to cook breakfast and lunch for Yamato and Akagi, I just put a song that I like on repeat and chilled in my office with it playing through the speakers. Music is a great way for my mind to completely wander off if I let it - so I was just sitting in my office chair, my eyes closed and leaning back on the chair, jamming out to some Adventure Time by Panda Eyes & Terminite.

Honestly, I don't have a defined music taste. I'll listen to anything that sounds good. Doesn't matter the genre, doesn't matter the artist - if it helps me relax and get my mind off things, it's done its job. Extra bonus points if it's something that I really like. From classical music to modern day electronic dance music and dubstep, I've heard it all, and I like 'em all just the same. You just gotta find the right times to play them.

I was relaxing so much that I didn't even notice Wakaba enter my office and stand in front of my desk. If she hadn't done anything, I would've never known she was there. She could've just walked in, stared at me for an hour, and walked right back out, and I would've never known the wiser. I only realized she was there because she tried sitting on my lap. Wakaba explained that she came into my office because she was passing by and heard the music through my door, and it was music she'd never heard before and thought it sounded really cool, so she entered to hear it more clearly. She saw me with my eyes closed, leaning back on my chair, listening to my music, and she thought that she could chill like me too if she could climb onto my chair and sit on my lap.

What kind of logic is that?

So she ended up sitting on my desk. Wakaba asked me what kind of music this was, because she really liked it. I explained to her that it's a modern music genre, style, whatever it's called, known as "electronic dance music", or "EDM" for short. This particular song was classified as "electro", a subgenre of EDM, and it was a song that I really liked myself. Wakaba asked me if she could stay awhile in my office listening to my music, and I said sure. So the two of us just chilled in my office, listening to the same song repeat over and over.

I'm that guy who likes his music on repeat; I apologize ahead of time. But this song is too damn bumpin'. I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome this music is -

Damn memes. I blame the Internet. And to think Socrates was the one executed for "corrupting the youth"...

The expeditionary force force returned at 1900 hours. I was surprised to see them return towing lots of supplies: barrels of fuel, waterproof crates and boxes of perfectly good bauxite chunks and steel bars. Apparently, according to the post-action mission report, they'd found crates of enemy ammunition, but since they're calibrated differently and won't fit the ship girls' weapon systems, they just left them alone. The fleet had found lots of stray resources just floating in the waters around Able One when they returned to inspect the damage they'd done yesterday and to confirm that the Abyssals haven't yet tried to reclaim it, which is odd for two reasons: first, because we're assuming that these stray resources are the result of yesterday's battle and had drifted off into sea when the manufacturing plants on that island were destroyed, why haven't they been carried elsewhere? Normally, the ocean currents would transport them around and take them away from their initial places when they first started casting away. Second, those are perfectly good resources - weren't they important to the Abyssals as well? I can imagine that either the Abyssals didn't want to risk possibly running into our fleet again because of the fearsome damage they'd done to Able One, or the Abyssals straight up don't even need those resources. But the latter reason would be counter-intuitive, since why the hell would the Abyssals have resources in their bases in the first place when they're not even gonna use them.

Whichever the case, I had Akashi and the supply ladies check the quality and edibility of the supplies, and they confirmed that it was safe for the ship girls to consume and not spiked with any shady stuff by the Abyssals. Another reason why they could be floating around's because the Abyssals intentionally put 'em there as a lure, a bait. So now that we know it isn't a bait, I can't help but wonder if we can expect this as some sort of regular occasion. Destroy or subjugate an island of operations in possession of the Abyssals, and gain resources as a direct result. The amount of resources that the fleet managed to recover and bring back isn't a small amount by any means, either - in fact, the supplies alone they brought in can last the base about half a week. If that's the case, it'll really help out with our little problem of always being in danger of running out of bauxite and steel to give to Yamato and Akagi.

Batsubyou's gonna spend the night with me tonight, it seems. He's curled up behind my pillow and is fast asleep, from what I can tell, and I don't feel like moving him. Hopefully Error doesn't kick down my door and accuse me of catnapping her cat.