Saturday, February 22nd, 2014.

Thanks to the food and sleeping the entire rest of the afternoon and night yesterday, I'm feeling a lot better. I'm pretty lucky to have a body that not only rarely gets sick but also can bounce back from getting sick quickly. One of the must-have traits of a good soldier, I suppose.

Because I'd slept for nearly fifteen or sixteen hours straight, I woke up really early in the morning and headed to my office real slow so that my wounds don't reopen to see if Takao had placed a post-action mission report on my desk, which she did.

What the fleet found at Baker District is something straight out of a horror film or horror game. Although Baker One, the most easily accessible portion of the district, was only lightly defended by a couple squadrons of Abyssal destroyers, they weren't the biggest threat: the floating platform things that're floating around there are the main threat.

It turns out that these mysterious floating platforms are actually a bunch of incubation containers just floating about at sea, but they're somehow anchored so that they don't get carried around by the ocean currents. This is completely beyond the realm of environmental physics. The fleet only then found out what they were when Wakaba decided to shoot one of them, and upon shooting one of the floating platforms, it burst open and released these xenomorphic, spherical things spitting red gas from their jaws or something. From the description that Takao left in the report, they seem like they're something taken straight out of Metroid or something. One of them managed to land a retaliation hit on Wakaba, and whatever they shot at her literally burned right through her skin. Luckily, it didn't seem like they were fully fledged - whatever those things are, so that's why we think those weird black floating platforms are incubation containers. The fleet decided to take matters into their own hands and completely destroyed Baker One and Baker Two before Abyssal reinforcements arrived to chase them out, and they got away without having to engage them.

Thankfully, Wakaba was the only one who got hurt at all, but Takao reported that her wound is really strange, and Akashi wasn't able to determine what's wrong with it. For now, it's like Wakaba just got a jar of acid splashed on her left arm, in between her wrist and her elbow, and it stings all the time, even if she's not touching it. It hasn't gone past her skin layers, it seems so far, but Akashi kept Wakaba in the medbay for now in case it's something that can spread through the dockyards' bathwater until she can analyze Wakaba's wound enough to know what exactly's going on.

I scanned the documents and quickly sent the mission report to HQ. We'll have to have them give these new enemies some sort of name so that we know what to call 'em. These guys are dangerous, whatever they are.

After sending HQ the email with the necessary attachments, I turned to look at the other emails. One of them had no return email address. Here we go.

"One of our contacts at the Tokyo HQ notified us of the assassination attempt on your life on Monday. If intel serves us correct, you should still be alive.

Since then, we've been working with our contacts to get to the bottom of this. Right now, for obvious reasons, the Tokyo HQ is trying to hide this info from the American government and keep the fact that there was ever an assassination attempt made on you a secret, and as of right now, the American Feds have no idea and still think everything's going fine and dandy.

Whether you're pleased with this info or not, we did manage to find out what happened. Those five guys were involved with extreme right-wing political groups who basically hate foreigners and want them out of the country, including you. As it turns out, several members of the Ministry of Defense and the Tokyo HQ collaborated together to orchestrate a way to get rid of you. We know this because we have telephone records, text messages, and eyewitness accounts from other people connected to those people from the Ministry and the HQ that all suggest that they've been meeting in secret to have you assassinated so that they can send in a Japanese naval officer to replace you without having the American government realize what's going on.

The reason why they're doing this should be obvious. They're trying to completely control the Moebius Four Platoon so that it is entirely their own military force and not one governed by the American government through one of their own officers. They're afraid that the United States will try to claim possession of the Moebius Four Platoon after the conflict against the Abyssals is resolved, and to their credit, they're probably right. So by killing you, the next in the chain of command would technically be up to the American government to decide, but the Pact states that if the American government cannot make a decision within three days of your death, the Japanese government is entitled to replace you. They're trying to use the loophole of not letting the American government know about your assassination in order to force this to play into their own hands.

Plus, the fact that they're all right-wing nationalists means that they also pretty much hate you because you're a foreigner - an American, to boot. So to them, this whole thing's like killing two birds with one bullet.

But because you survived, this whole plan's basically fucked all those guys from the government and HQ. This was a huge risk on their part - a big gamble. It's like they bet all-in at a poker table when they had a straight flush down, but you pulled a fast one on them and drew a royal flush. Now they're scrambling to cover up their tracks and make it seem that they're innocent and that they have alibis, destroying evidence of their activities and whatnot, but we already know what they did and we've got the proof. For now, we'll sit on it and keep it as our trump card against them, should the need arise.

And even if you did die, we'd still find out about it either way. Those guys were screwed from the very start.

For now, we advise you to lay low. Keep doing your job as usual. Our team's working on letting some of our superiors know low-key in the US government about what's happened this week, and they'll figure out how to handle this.

As a bit of good news, we can perform the Kai upgrade operation again. You mentioned earlier that you had a candidate for the upgrade, right? Confirm this with a reply and we'll send over a chopper to pick her up asap."

So now I know that some right-wing motherfuckers in the Japanese government want me dead. Sheesh, it's like I always have to be on my fucking toes all the goddamn time from now on. I already lived a couple years of my life like that and I find it tiresome to always be constantly on the lookout for something.

Seriously, I feel as though I'd prefer straight up death to living in a state of paranoia. That shit sucks.

Well, today's the weekend, so no sortieing for the fleet today. I did some of the morning paperwork before breakfast, but I paused in the middle of it to go to the mess hall for breakfast. The girls there were downright shocked that I was out and about, given how sick I looked just the day before. The heavy cruisers and the destroyers insisted that I sit down with them, and Kiyoshimo brought over my breakfast for me. Apparently word had gotten out that I'd let Fubuki hand-feed me, so Samidare, Inazuma, Kiyoshimo, Hatsuharu, Imuya, Atago, Suzuya, Yamato, and Souryuu all wanted to do the same. I declined all their requests and said that I was fine eating by myself, which I did, though slowly. Everything I do nowadays is slow and methodical. Moving too suddenly or doing anything too sudden, for that matter, not only hurts but could mess up my wounds further.

Suzuya accused me of favoritism as a result, though, because she thought that I wasn't going to let anyone else but Fubuki feed me. In retaliation, I said that girls who were excessively fawning for my attention for no reason weren't naturally entitled to such a ridiculous "privilege" to feed me, which shut her up real good. That might come across as harsh, but it's the truth, and everyone knows Suzuya's behavior towards me. And honestly, I'm getting sick of it. Before I took these shots, I could spare the patience for Suzuya's rather flippant and overfly affectionate, sometimes possessive, behavior. But not now.

After breakfast, I called Kitakami to my office. When we got to my office, Kitakami immediately burst out with,

"I wasn't involved in what happened on Monday! I swear!"

So Kitakami basically thought that I was calling her to my office because I suspected that she was part of the group of conspirators who wanted to have me assassinated. I assured her that this was not the case, because Kitakami can easily kill me with her bare hands whenever she wanted. That, and I wasn't about to associate her with a couple of extreme right-wing assholes just because they both share a common hate for Americans.

Instead, I informed her about the email I'd received from Seal Team Six, that they were able to perform the Kai upgrade surgery again. Because I'd stated that Kitakami would be the next candidate for the process, I asked Kitakami to reconfirm her willingness to participate in this program.

I thought that Kitakami was going to give me an instant "yes", but surprisingly, that wasn't the case. She was quiet for a good five or so minutes as I waited for her answer, and finally, she accepted. I asked her again so that she wouldn't change her mind, but she didn't, so I sent Seal Team Six a reply, saying that Kitakami was to be our second Kai upgrade.

I dismissed her after that, but she didn't leave right away, either. Instead, she asked me when I was planning to leave.

Needless to say, I was caught off guard by her question. Leave? Why would I leave?

Kitakami said that surely, I was thinking about leaving. No one in their right mind would choose to stay in a place where they'd nearly died from an assassination attempt.

She wasn't saying this because she wanted me to be gone. She was asking this because she couldn't believe that I would be that stupid to remain at base after what happened on Monday.

I told her that I was only going to leave either once my contract here ends, or a bullet blows my brains out. Whichever comes first. I said that a true commander wouldn't waver so soon just because they'd gotten subjected to an assassination attempt. The world has enough pussy-footed leaders as it is.

Kitakami, like Hiei from yesterday, then accused me of trying to look cool. She told me to stop trying to act all high and mighty, that I wasn't some American badass who could tank bullets all day just because I thought I could. Who the hell did I think I was, Rambo? She told me to stop acting stupid and just look after my own life.

Japan wasn't the place for me, she said.

I guess it's not, after all that's happened. I've yet to adjust to the culture here: I can't eat a lot of Japanese foods just yet simply because I'm not too familiar with the cuisine, and lots of the nuances in the language and communicating with the girls still fly straight over my head. Forget the people who want to kill me, it's tough enough just living here.

But I didn't say anything back to Kitakami. I just said,

"Sorry, Kitakami. I guess I'll have to annoy you for a bit longer. And it'd be nice if I thought I was being cool - if that were the case, I'd get my work done faster."

She just stormed out of my office after I said that without a further word. I know that Kitakami was pitying me then and was just expecting me to do what anyone else would do. She's right, a reasonable person would just get the hell out of here by this point.

After she left, I glanced at my email browser again, and there it was, the second reply chain.

After lunch (which was basically another repeat of breakfast), Ooyodo came in towards the middle of the afternoon with some more warm lemon tea and some onigiri. By that point, I'd already finished the light amount of weekend paperwork and was relaxing in my office with some chillout flowing through the room from my speakers. I asked Ooyodo to go find Kitakami and inform her that a helicopter was going to come and pick her up later in the evening. I also thanked her for taking care of the paperwork that had piled up over the days that I was in my slight coma so that I didn't have to have all my work backed up by a couple days.

As soon as I thanked her, Ooyodo just burst into tears. Talk about a real surprise coming out of the blue like that...I was just at a loss for words, to be honest. I didn't think Ooyodo was an emotional type, especially since...y'know, when people cry like this, they'd typically do this the day I woke back up.

I guess, now that I'm thinking back, the combination of all the stress that she had from doing the paperwork for me, worrying out of her mind about my condition (since I was pretty close to death at one point), and now finally being told that her wounded Admiral was grateful for the work that she'd done for him, it was all too much for her to hold back, and she couldn't control herself any longer.

Being the socially awkward me that I am, I didn't know what else to do but give Ooyodo a hug. She spent about ten minutes silently crying into my shirt as I patted her back. It made one of the gunshot wounds, the one on my lower right lung, open up a bit, but it wasn't enough to be dangerous.

My laptop was playing "The Moments We Shared...I Miss Them" by Jacoo. Talk about an appropriate BGM. Only the title doesn't fit.

Ooyodo, after calming down, admitted that over the past two months, she'd gradually come to respect me more and more. Unlike her superiors back at HQ, where she was working since her construction until her deployment here to Okinawa, Ooyodo had to deal with incompetent slackers who just shoved all their own work onto her while they went out drinking at city bars in Tokyo and not really giving a fuck about their duties. That wasn't to say that all of her superiors acted this way, but there were enough of them to convince Ooyodo that a competent superior was a rare occurrence indeed. She thought that I would turn out to be the same, a scumbag Admiral who'd just tell her to do all the paperwork while he just went off and goofed off or slacked off or something. And the fact that for the past few days since I came to, I'd just been doing my best to keep at my job like nothing's ever happened, working with three bullet holes through my chest and the remains of a cold/fever, had bought her trust in me that I was the best commanding officer anyone could hope to have.

I just told her that she was giving me too much credit. Soldiers don't work to receive praise; they work to get the job done.

I asked Ooyodo before she left if she wanted to take some time off as secretary. After all, now that she's battle-worthy along with Akashi, from here on out she'd be expected to fight alongside the rest of the fleet, and she must be really emotionally exhausted from having to worry about my health all this time. She refused. She said she wanted to stay my secretary ship girl for as long as possible.

After she left, nothing else really happened. Since I'm still recovering, I just napped the rest of the time until dinner, ate dinner, and hung out with some of the girls who invited me to Shinsengumi to play some mahjong, which I have no idea to play, so we spent some time until the heli for Kitakami came long teaching me how to play. Then, we saw Kitakami off, and I came back to my room. When I came back, I found a card and a stick of green apple Hi-Chew sitting outside my room.

It was a get-well card. Everyone at base signed it, both in kanji on one side and katakana on the other side.

Even Kitakami and Akebono signed it.

Thanks, everyone.