Sunday, March 2nd, 2014.

I woke up to find Kuubo-Hime staring straight into my goddamned soul. Overnight, she'd found a way to untie the huge towing cables that kept her in bondage, and I found them lying in a neat coil on the blanket I set out for her on the floor of my room. Kuubo-Hime was really disappointed in my lack of reaction when I woke up.

"I thought you humans were afraid of us," she said.

I told her as I got out of my bedclothes into my navy officer's uniform and peaked cap that she'd picked the wrong human to try and scare. I never get scared really easily, and you might think I say that because I'm bragging, but I'm actually not. That's why I'm not a fan of scary movies, because if I want to deliberately make myself scared, I'm just go to war. After all, war's a scarier thing than movies ever will be.

I asked her how she managed to get out of her cables, and she said that the girls who tied her up only intended the cables to hold her only temporarily; they basically untied themselves because the cables themselves are so thick and heavy, so Kuubo-Hime was able to just wriggle her way out of them. So I asked her if she managed to get any sleep, and she said it was more fun watching me sleep than it was going to sleep herself.

I mean, if that's an answer, then that's okay...I guess...?

After I got dressed, I realized that I was speaking to Kuubo-Hime in Japanese without thinking, since I've been speaking Japanese and not English for the past two months except to people like Big and Commodore Sawatari from before. So I tried speaking to her in English: I asked her if she could understand me.

She spoke back to me in perfect English that she could.

I asked her when she learned both English and Japanese, and she said that she's always known them, ever since she was born. I asked her when she was born, or how old she was, and she said probably not longer than two or three weeks.

I guess we have an idea of what Able Four was housing during that time.

I asked if Kuubo-Hime wanted to join me for breakfast, and she nodded her head somethin' fierce. So we left the room, but right after we did, I warned Kuubo-Hime that the ship girls might still be on their toes around her, so she'd best refrain from making any sudden movements. As we were heading to the mess hall, Kuubo-Hime said that while I was sleeping, I was always having some sort of pained expression on my face, as if it hurt to sleep.

"Why do you sleep, if it hurts that much?" I remember her asking. She pointed at my chest as she said that.

I said that I didn't feel any pain while sleeping. Besides, I said that I didn't know how it was like for the Abyssal girls like Kuubo-Hime, but humans need to sleep; it's just a biological fact of life, that humans need sleep to function properly. More so if they're injured like I am and trying to recover.

Kuubo-Hime said that none of the Abyssals had to do something as useless as "sleep". She said they could, but that would mean that seven or eight perfectly good hours would be wasted lounging around and doing nothing.

I then remarked that at some point, everyone's gotta do something that hurts them, even if they don't want to or can't feel the pain that they get from doing it.

When I reached the mess hall, all the girls were back up, except for some of the critically wounded ones who still needed surgery that was done earlier today for them. All of them were still really groggy. But as soon as I walked in with Kuubo-Hime behind me, the entire base seemed like it had an obnoxiously loud alarm clock shoved in its face. The mess hall just exploded, and the girls were screaming so loudly at me that at first, I didn't know what was going on. That's when I realized that Kuubo-Hime still isn't wearing anything below her waist.

So basically, the ship girls thought that I'd taken Kuubo-Hime to my own room at night while they weren't looking and (insert censorship here) her.

Nah, who am I kiddin', I'm American, I'm not supposed to support censorship of any kind, because that's against my constitutional rights. The ship girls thought I slept with Kuubo-Hime during the night.

Well, I mean...if you think of it literally, that's not technically wrong.

Some of the destroyers dashed on over to tackle Kuubo-Hime down, thinking that she'd be prone to attack me at any moment, but Kuubo-Hime just snatched them one after the other up with her hands, laughing as she held Fubuki and Wakaba with one arm and Akebono and Samidare with the other. I ordered the girls to stand down, that Kuubo-Hime didn't show any hostile intent towards me ever since she was brought to base, and that the cables she'd been tied up with fell off by themselves because they weren't secured properly. I asked Houshou if we had any spare uniforms for Kuubo-Hime to wear for the time being in the girls' laundry or the storage, and she said that there should be a couple extra copies of Atago's uniform that I could give her.

She asked me why I was calling the girl "Kuubo-Hime", and I explained to her what HQ was calling her, and how it was a shortening of it. Besides, it's not as though anyone else had a better name for her at the moment.

So I brought Kuubo-Hime with me to the girls' storage near their dorms and fished out an extra uniform for Kuubo-Hime, since they seem to be about the same size, and luckily, it fit, but not necessarily comfortably. After all, she's battleship size - taller than Kirishima and Hiei but smaller than Yamato.

She said the uniform wasn't her style, but since it looked cute, she'd be okay with it. So we returned back to the mess hall, and the girls all eyed me with great suspicion. I assured them that there were no sleazy intentions going on between me and Kuubo-Hime, but Kuubo-Hime decided to fuck me over and make my day worse by saying,

"But you brought me to your room! You naughty boy!"

At this, Suzuya, whose wound only needed to be healed in the docks, got up from her seat and ran all the way over to the empty seat next to me that wasn't occupied by Kuubo-Hime and grabbed my arm, saying that I still needed to give her lots of praise for capturing Kuubo-Hime, and that there was no way she'd accept me being stolen away by the very enemy she'd nearly died to take prisoner. Kuubo-Hime thought this was all fun and games, so she took my other arm and tugged at the same time as Suzuya tugged on mine, and they ended up cleanly dislocating both of my fucking arms.

Well, I did just get my arms pulled apart like a doll by a heavy cruiser and someone who's supposed to be an armored carrier. I stood no chance.

That was when the girls really did try to kill Kuubo-Hime right then and there. Souryuu, who was sitting nearby, got up so fast that for second I wasn't sure if she was a carrier like she's always been, bolted over to Kuubo-Hime, grabbed her by the hair and the neck, and hurled her straight out of the mess hall through one of the larger windows out to the middle of the harbor. The other girls would've surely headed out there and just murdered Kuubo-Hime straight away, so I had to order them all to stand down, that this wasn't something Kuubo-Hime was intending to do. That's the hardest order the girls've had to follow so far, and I could tell. When Kuubo-Hime was brought back in, the looks on the girls' faces - like a fucking pack of wolves glaring at a prey they know they can't just pounce on and finish off.

And so, because of that, I wound up in the medbay with the other critically injured ship girls. They managed to pop my shoulders back in place, so it's not like there's lasting damage from this, but they're both really, really fucking sore, and this's probably gonna take another two or three weeks before the pain from the dislocation goes away completely. Suzuya was nearly about to burst into tears as they moved me to the medbay, because at first when she heard my shoulder pop, she thought she'd ripped my arm off completely (which I wouldn't've been surprised if it actually did happen). Even Kuubo-Hime looked a bit guilty.

I stayed in the medbay until early evening, and during that time, I watched Akashi, Ooyodo, Inazuma, Fubuki, Samidare, Imuya, Shioi, and Yahagi operate on the critically wounded ship girls who needed limbs replaced or something of the nature. Kitakami's and Ooi's conditions have been stabilized for a long time, and technically both of them could've left the medbay a long time ago, since they still need to wait for Akashi to manufacture new eyes entirely for them and that operation will be tomorrow, but they liked it in the medbay for some reason, so they stuck around and watched too.

I headed back to my office to check my email for anything that might've come in today. It was really tough, since, y'know, both of my goddamn arms are dislocated, thanks to those two. I've decided to go around with my left arm unslung so that I can at least do some things by myself, but Jesus Christ, it hurts moving it. Funny thing is, getting my shoulders popped right out wasn't the painful part - it was when they popped them back in. I was having fucking flashbacks to two years ago when our carrier got hit by an enemy airstrike, and one of the Super Hornets exploded and sent a sharp and hot piece of metal plating from its wing over to me and it sliced right into my chest, like someone was stabbing a flamethrower into my chest and pulling the trigger.

But since today's a Sunday, nothing of interest. I'm just worried about how I'm supposed to work with two dislocated and sore arms that makes me cringe whenever I so much as lift them.

No, I can't lift, bro. 'Cause I used to be a Commander like you, but then I...yeah, I really don't have time for dank Internet memes after all.

When I headed back to my office around 2100 hours to head to sleep early, I found Kuubo-Hime sitting on the floor, where she'd been during the previous night. She asked me if I was alright, to which I retorted that I wasn't quite in the mushy mood to be friendly with someone who's supposed to be my enemy - at least, the enemy of the girls I command. I reminded her that while I didn't intend on treating her badly during her time here, I certainly wasn't going to be happy about having one of my arms pulled out of its socket by her. At this, she got a bit angry, saying that she'd apologized to me earlier (which is true, she did apologize a lot) and she'd come to my room to see if she could help me with anything.

She said she'd even be willing to "make me feel better". Hoo boy, I wonder what that means...

I made my intent to simply prepare for bed and go to sleep clear. I said that while I knew she'd apologized, I couldn't help but feel a bit miffed by her behavior. I told her:

"No wonder you thought we humans're afraid of you. If you can dislocate my shoulder like that so easily, I wonder what else you could to do us that's worse than a simple dislocation."

I felt the same way tonight as I felt about Kitakami before: salty. Of course, in this case, I think it's safe to say that my saltiness is justified, even if Suzuya and Kuubo-Hime didn't necessarily intend to pop my shoulders out at the same time. But bad habits never die quietly.

Kuubo-Hime's sitting next to my bed right now, watching some Hollywood movies with Japanese subtitles. Something tells me she's planning on doing something about me (or to me) once I go to bed. I really want to tell her to go to my office and spend the night there, but after seeing the look on her face when I gave her my last remark, I don't have quite the ice-cold heart to do that. But I swear, if she sneaks into my bed or something...