Monday, March 3rd, 2014.
Having no painkillers at a military base should be a sin against humanity. But since obviously ship girls don't need painkillers, why the hell would there be an emergency supply for just one human. Needless to say, my arms fucking hurt, and they're going to keep hurting like this. I can't imagine the town nearby sells painkillers - I didn't see a clinic or a drugstore on my last excursion there, but then again, I didn't walk around to sightsee that time.
So as I blatantly predicted, I indeed woke up with Kuubo-Hime's tits on my right arm. She's gotta be at least a C, probably a D-size. How do I know breast sizes even though I'm a male? Well, that sure is a mystery, isn't it.
Funny thing is, Kuubo-Hime's skin is naturally cold. It's like she's cold-blooded, like a reptile, which isn't surprising, now that I remember what Big mentioned in one of his emails, that the Abyssal destroyers have certain reptilian characteristics, so it's possible that Kuubo-Hime has some reptilian traits of her own. What's odder is that having Kuubo-Hime's boobs on my shoulder actually acted as a very...risque icepack. Maybe she knew that my shoulders needed a source of coolness to help the dislocation heal faster. But I'm inclined to doubt that, since I still wasn't happy about her sneaking into my bed like that either way.
Today, my arms - more specifically, my shoulders - hurt a fuckton more today than yesterday, and I could barely concentrate on my own work. Not sure why the pain would be greater the day after I dislocated them (or rather, had them dislocated), but my body's always been weird like that. Even eating was so painful that I actually accepted Suzuya's offer to feed me breakfast, since lifting a hand felt like taking an electric screwdriver and drilling my shoulder a new socket. It wasn't fun, especially not without painkillers. After breakfast, I went back to the medbay, and Suzuya helped me wrap my shoulders with icepacks like yesterday, and the icepacks definitely helped cut down on the pain. At least, the coldness took my mind off the pain somewhat, but it still sucked.
Because of the state of the fleet after the battle in which they captured Kuubo-Hime, I didn't assign any missions today. Murakumo and Hatsuharu still needed their reconstructive surgeries, which took place earlier today, so they should be fine by tomorrow, since they've already taken dips in the medbay docks after their surgeries. I'll see if the fleet's condition gets better tomorrow and manage my missions then.
That being said, I barely managed to get morning paperwork done just before lunch. It was a real effort, and honestly one of the hardest things I've ever done. I thought running the 20K back in boot camp was tough - I can assure you, now with first-hand experience, that no grown man would rather do office work with both arms dislocated and popped back in if given any other choice. In fact, by the end of it, I was sweating bullets, and when Ooyodo entered my office to let me know that lunch was ready, she realized what was going on just by taking a look at my face and said that from now on until my arms healed back, she'd be the one handling most of the paperwork, with the exception of the ones that required my signatures and whatnot.
New satellite photos from HQ today indicate that the Abyssal fleet is in utter disarray. If the fleet didn't get wrecked as hard as it did during the battle, I'd've definitely sent them to capitalize on this chance to eliminate Abyssal presence from as many of the Able District territories as possible, but I'll have to let this opportunity go. But just by looking at Abyssal fleet formations, it's clear that with the capture of Kuubo-Hime, they really don't have a leader, and dare I say, their morale's completely in the gutter, by the looks of things. However, Able Four seems to be patrolled by some of the stronger Abyssals, like Re-Class, Ta-Class, and Wo-Class. Something tells me that they're up to their old shenanigans again, but for now, I'll have to just keep this in mind.
In addition, a new email from Big...
"Congrats on capturing the Armored Carrier Demon, since we haven't said that properly yet. Your fleet did a kickass job capturing her. You should send us whoever captured her for a Kai upgrade as a reward or something, I dunno.
We've finished the Kai operation for Kiso. Like Kitakami, we've taken the liberty of installing a new internal augmentation in her. I assume you know the difference between the internal and external augmentation types by now.
But this one's a bit different. Since you should be aware that Kiso's got an eyepatch over her right eye (I mean, you're her damn Commander), we've installed an augmentation in the form of a right eye. For whatever reason, Kiso was constructed deliberately without a right eye and just an eyepatch over it. This might be some sort of historical reference, but I'm not a history major, so hell if I know. All I know's that doing something like that's probably really stupid in retrospect, so we gave her a new eye instead. So in case you see Kiso walking around with a golden eye, you'll know what's up. She should get there by tomorrow morning as usual, where you're at.
We've also done some preliminary studies on the new Abyssal specimens you've captured. Not too much, but we've definitely found some interesting stuff...and some really strange shit.
We've confirmed that the Abyssals do indeed have a telepathic communication style. He-Class, the Floating Fortresses, and the destroyers have been getting along just fine. Lauren's been playing with them a bit to see how they talk, and it really does seem like there's some sort of telecommunication going on. We just don't understand it, obviously, since we're human. Now, once we get our hands on the Armored Carrier Demon, we'll see if this Abyssal telecommunication is a fleet-wide trait, not just a trait for the xenomorphic Abyssals.
He-Class, from what we've derived from the initial genetic code mapping scans, seems to actually be a failed Abyssal creation: its genetic code's been scrambled all over the place and not really that well optimized to work cohesively together. That's why it seems to be part humanoid, part alien. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that He-Class was one of the first Abyssals created, because all the other Abyssals' genetic code's much more neatly manipulated and sorted out. He-Class's is just a complete genetic nightmare. It's like to the point where it's pretty unbelievable that He-Class even manages to function as a living being, but it does.
Now onto the more disturbing shit. The Floating Fortresses' acid's been identified as a modified kind of red fuming nitric acid with 99% concentration. We don't know how it's produced, but what we do know's that red fuming nitric acid, in case you're not a fan of chemistry, is a highly corrosive mineral acid that basically eats away at human kind and is used to get rid of impurities off steel. And the way that the Floating Fortresses make the acid, they make it all bright red with lots of smoke pluming off the acid. Normal red fuming nitric acid's a deeper red color and doesn't fume anywhere near as much as the Floating Fortresses' acid. But normally, even this high of nitric acid concentration won't do anything bad to steel, but after studying the acid's chemical composition, the acid looks like it's been chemically engineered to be used specifically against the ship girls.
So in case you can't tell already, whoever's behind the manufacturing of the Abyssal naval personnel has a general knowledge about the ship girls enough to devise a kind of attack that's geared specifically against them and to deal as much pain as possible.
Meaning, there's a small but real chance that someone who was involved in the Moebius Projects may be cooperating with the Abyssals.
But that also begs the question, why focus on making an attack that'll only hurt, but not kill?
We'll keep you updated.
By the way, since you have the Armored Carrier Demon there, try interrogating her. See if you can learn a thing or two from her about the Abyssals."
Perhaps we've got ourselves a traitor in our midst. How cliche. All militaries have to deal with traitors and treasoners one time or another.
I decided to take Big's advice and ask Kuubo-Hime a few things. She spent the entire day by the time afternoon rolled around in my office anyway, since it's not like there's any other place she can really be.
So after lunch, I returned to my office with Kuubo-Hime and sat her down on the couch. She brought along a platter of chocolate chip cookies, spicy cuttlefish snacks, and Ramune that I asked from Mamiya. Some of the ship girls followed us to the office, but I pretended not to notice so that I could deliberately let them hear what we were talking about.
I asked her the basic questions: who the Abyssals like her were, what they wanted, why they were fighting, how they were being constructed, and by whom. I told her that she had the freedom to answer whichever questions she felt like she could answer. And just to make sure all grounds were covered, I told her to refrain from lying to my face, because lying to me would be a lot worse than what she'd done to my left arm.
Kuubo-Hime said that the she and her people were fighting to create a sea in which they would be able to live without being attacked by the ship girls or by the navies of other nations. She said that they were a kind but warlike seafaring people, but whenever they met the ship girls out at sea, they felt inclined to defeat the ship girls with the faint hope that they would never return.
So I asked her what she felt now that she's in a base full of ship girls. She said that surprisingly, she didn't mind, for some reason. She ultimately decided that I was the reason why she didn't really feel threatened by the ship girls, since I made it clear that I didn't want anything to happen to her, despite having reasons to treat her worse than I am, dislocated arm and all.
She said that some of the Abyssal troops were manufactured at land-based factories and plants located on island formations and whatnot in Sector B (she referred to Sector B as 'The Home Waters'), but some, like the Floating Fortresses, had to be incubated, like on the floating incubation platforms. When I asked her why, she said that she didn't know. She did say, though, that she knew that she'd come from one of these such manufacturing plants. She's probably referring to Able Four.
She said that she had to swear never to talk about who constructed her. When I pressed the issue, asking her why, and if she even knew the answer to that at all, she didn't answer at all. She refused to say another word about the matter.
Suspicious.
I asked her how she's able to understand both English and Japanese, and she's barely been around for a week or something. She said that all the information in her head was directly loaded in at the time of her construction, and she didn't know why or what for.
Finally, I asked her if it was possible for Abyssals to simply integrate into human society - or at the very least, co-exist with the ship girls. I asked if there was any hope to bring the conflict to an end, and if there was, how a ceasefire could be negotiated and brought about.
Kuubo-Hime said that unfortunately, the Abyssals would never be allowed to surrender, even if they wanted to. After all, what good is peace if they couldn't even serve the purpose that they were constructed for?
She really didn't like talking about serious crap like this, so I ended the "interrogation" early. It seems she's just not the kind to be comfortable around serious situations - unless she's fighting, of course.
So basically, what I've learned from talking with Kuubo-Hime...
The Abyssals were probably constructed as sentient weapons by someone who's possibly worked on the ship girls before, in the previous renditions of the Moebius Project. Moreover, they're being controlled, it seems like, just like how I command the ship girls and tell them what to do. And judging from what Kuubo-Hime's like and the reports from Seal Team Six, the Abyssal fleet may not be innately "evil" or anything. And most definitely, there's no easy way to end this conflict anytime soon.
We still don't know why they're fighting or who exactly makes them and controls them. They could be two completely different people or groups, for all we know.
After sending what I learned to Seal Team Six, I ate dinner (Suzuya fed me again) and because my shoulders were straight killing me by that point, I just decided to go to sleep really early tonight. I hope Kuubo-Hime doesn't crawl into my bed a second time.