Wednesday, March 5th, 2014.

Arms still hurt like hell, but what's new. Akebono's painkillers are a godsend, though. Just the painkillers alone is enough to convince me to send Akebono in for a Kai upgrade first over Suzuya, but that'll be doing Suzuya real dirty, so I can't do that. I'll ask Seal Team Six if I can just send the two in together.

I did wake up today again expecting Kuubo-Hime to be right up in my face. But not so, since Seal Team Six already took her away yesterday. I'm not sure whether to feel happy or sad. I guess it's just back to the regular shit now, and that's that.

I tried to feed myself breakfast, but the pain still proved a bit too much, so Samidare helped me eat today. Today's breakfast had buttered bread soft-toasted on low-flame ovens in frying pans, which gives it a clean, crisp texture and rich flavor that standard toasters don't give, and it's an easy favorite among the girls. Samidare was the only one who was willing to sacrifice her own enjoyment of today's breakfast bread in order to help me eat mine, and she even offered me her own bread slices, which I rejected, since she needed to eat, too.

As Ooyodo handled morning paperwork, I checked the emails. The satellite photos for today indicate that indeed, the effect of yesterday's decisive strike against Charlie District was massive. Without air superiority, really only Re-Class was found wandering around at sea while the rest of the Abyssal forces were either docked or hugging whichever territory they're closest to. Looking at the photos, I could immediately come up with over six different viable attack locations to send the fleet out to.

But again, the Abyssals are holding onto Able Four ever so tightly. Whatever the hell Able Four is (we still don't know what it is, and satellite photos can only help so much), it's obviously important, and that's not the first time I've mentioned this.

And from Seal Team Six:

"Don't worry, we've convinced the Armored Carrier Princess that we aren't going to rip her apart from the guts to the spine. Just wanted to make sure of that first.

I was going to go over what we've learned so far from the Abyssals, but now that we've received the Armored Carrier Princess, we've decided to postpone that. We're going to study her as much as we can and see if any of the info we've extracted so far is wrong or not. Expect that before the weekend.

About the augmentations, as it turns out, they're not that hard to make. Of course, depending on which augmentation it is, it'll be harder and thus more expensive to produce, but some, like the Automated Reloader, are really easy to make. All it is is just an optimization program loaded onto a PDA tablet, and let's be honest, PDA tablets in this day and age aren't that expensive compared to most other high-tech gadgets we have in the military. On the other hand, don't even bother asking us to make another Weapon Pre-Igniter for you, since that shit wasn't easy to make at all, not to mention it's only an internal augmentation that requires surgery to install.

I mean, we can, but you'll probably have to pay us for that. Do keep in mind that everything that we're doing here is completely free of charge to you. We could've asked for royalty fees or some other monetary bullshit like that, but we decided that we'll leave the sleazy cash-cowing tactics to big-name jerk-off companies.

And lastly, about your request about the Akatsuki-Class destroyers, we've been looking into it for you. The problem is that we've found something a bit more pressing than that right now, and you won't like the sound of this, since it'll sound like deja vu.

Remember that last assassination attempt on your life a couple Mondays ago? Yeah, so if our sources are right, one of the members of the Ministry of Defense - won't say his name just yet - has apparently gotten so paranoid that he's actually reaching out to a well known Yakuza syndicate based in Tokyo for assistance in eliminating you for good. There won't be any danger to your life now or soon, but expect that you'll have visitors just like last time. We'll let you know when they're coming and what to do, since we're basically monitoring all communications coming in and out of both the Moebius HQ and the Ministry of Defense. We can't afford to have Japan and America going to war just because one single retarded politician thought that killing an American military officer's worth keeping his office."

This base's starting to feel more and more like Mogadishu and less and less like Okinawa. But ask me if I care.

I informed Ooyodo of the mention of a possible second assassination attempt on me, and I showed her this email. She urged that I should leave the base for my own safety, but I turned it down. Having me leave this base is exactly what they wanted, I explained. As soon as I leave and they get wind of the fact that I'm gone, even for a day, they'll pounce on that opportunity and do something real underhanded like sticking another naval officer in my post claiming that I had "deserted" my office and thus was subject to expulsion from the country. I've seen it happen in my own navy, and I'm not about to have that done to me.

I asked Ooyodo to keep this information on the down-low for now, since as my primary secretary ship girl, I could afford to entrust this info with her without her blabbing accidentally. I said that I would let the rest of the base know when Seal Team Six gets more information about this matter.

Ooyodo said that it's best if I at least do something to defend myself.

For today's sortie, now that Charlie District's basically wiped out, I asked the fleet to investigate Charlie District again and see firsthand what's going on with the airstrips. I wanted them to find out why on Earth the Abyssals would ever find the need to use land-based airstrips for their carriers when we already know both the Abyssal light carriers (whatever their name is, I forget right now) and the Wo-Class carriers don't need them.

After deploying them, I read up the augmentation feedback reports, since I've been procrastinating on reading them and sending them on over to Seal Team Six. I skipped over the feedback reports of the augmentations that've already been tested out.

Yamato found nothing wrong with her new Automated Reloader Mk. II. She said that being able to fire more frequently was a godsend, because before, she always felt like her guns were taking too long to reload. Understandable, but then again, she's using 46cms. The only problem was that she needed to be much more careful with cleaning and maintaining her weapons so that they don't break or malfunction under the duress of sustained increased rate of fire, but as long as she made sure to maintain the guns, it wouldn't be a problem. This seems to be a common downside with the others using the regular Automated Reloaders, too. Maybe upgraded weapons need to be in order.

Suzuya absolutely loved the Silencer, which makes sense, since apparently she just does whatever the hell she wants in battle. Obviously, whenever you go crazy out on the battlefield, the enemy's bound to notice you go off being an idiot, so having the Silencer basically lets her get away with being stupid and doing stupid shit one time. She said that the only downside to the Silencer was that it completely mutes her, meaning she can't even talk. Well, to be exact, she can, but her voice, too, is cut down by 50% in volume, so in combat or outside short ranges, no one can hear her until she deactivates Silencer. She just finds it somewhat eerie having all sounds around her decreased in volume, but it's nothing significant. Yahagi reported the same stuff, though with less enthusiasm and more professionalism.

All of Ooi's reports was about how she was able to protect Super Kitakami-sama from incoming enemy torpedoes. Not much of a constructive criticism report, but I guess if it works well enough and Ooi isn't complaining about anything in particular, then there's nothing to worry about for now.

Murakumo's assessment was more helpful. She said that while the augmentation worked flawlessly, she needed more combat experience with her new augmentation, since the battle she fought to make this report was yesterday's slaughter against the defenseless Abyssal carriers. But she did have a few complaints: first, the Jammer's range needed to be increased. Enemy torpedoes typically travel slow enough for the augmentation to pick up their signatures, but that only works ideally in situations where the enemy fleet launches an opening torpedo salvo. In the midst of a full-scale battle, where shells and airplanes are coming in hot at the girls alongside enemy torpedoes, 300 meters is not a very generous range at all. She suggested that either the Targeting Jammer needs to work passively during its active phase (as in, she won't need to have to individually paint incoming enemy torpedoes to jam and the PDA can handle it by itself) or extend the range out to at least 800 meters to give her ample amounts of time to get enemies off her first and then manually jam the enemy torpedoes. She said that the former would be preferable, seeing that Abyssals can and will launch torpedoes right up in her face, and having an 800 meter detection range means shit against that kind of scenario.

Akebono said that the Psionic Scrambler worked well against Abyssal destroyers, submarines, and light cruisers, but it didn't really bother any of the heavier ship types all that much. Short and simple. Not sure if just lazy and unwilling or just not much to say.

After reading and scanning the reports to send back to Seal Team Six, I headed over to the storages to see if we had any scrap leather, since I know Houshou likes to do some home economics sometimes in her spare time. Finding none, I met Houshou at Shinsengumi to ask her if she had any spare leather, and when she asked why I was looking for some, I explained that I wanted to make a pistol holster for my M-9 handgun. She gave me a bit of a puzzled look, like, one of those "Uh, I'm not quite too sure of what's going on, but okay" looks. I'm sure you know what it feels like getting one of those looks. So I explained to her the situation about the intel about a possible second assassination attempt, and that Ooyodo suggested that I do something to defend myself. That got Houshou's attention real quick, and she handed me some of the leather she'd been holding onto in her room. Thanking her, I returned to my own room after gathering some quick sewing and cutting supplies and worked on making myself a leather holster, just like the old holsters that American cowboys used to wear. I know it's easier for me to just order a modern pistol holster off the Internet and they'll ship it over, but I like making my own stuff and being self-reliant. One of the perks of being a loner in high school, it teaches you to make do by yourself. Yeah, my arms hurt, but I just popped some more painkillers and man-moded through the rest.

The fleet came back early today as well, since essentially all today was was a recon mission. They ran into almost no enemies the entire way except for a few recon destroyers who had the bad luck to run into them. Clearly, the Abyssals are scared, now that they've got no air support to cover them.

I stopped making my pistol holster to go to my office and take a look at the post-action mission report that Akagi, the flagship for today, had left.

As it turns out, the two airstrips at Charlie District aren't training grounds...not in the conventional sense. Akagi reported that judging from old explosion patterns and telltale signs of practice volleys fired at the airstrips, the Abyssal carriers weren't training with the airstrips, they were training on the airstrips.

In other words, they were most likely simulating a combat exercise on a military base, case in point, an airfield.

And in more specific words, in case you didn't get it already, they were training for a land assault.

But why would they be training to assault a land position? Did they find the location of our naval base here in Okinawa? It could be possible. It's highly improbable that my fleet accidentally let an Abyssal plane or destroyer or submarine slip in behind them in a blind spot or something, but still possible. Or did they have somewhere that they wanted to attack? It's too worrying.

So I immediately notified both HQ and Seal Team Six of this potential danger and called everyone to attention just before dinnertime started when everyone got into the mess hall. I explained to them my reasoning after looking at Akagi's report. The fleet had an idea that an attack on the base was within the realm of possibility, so they understood right away.

After dinner, I went back to my room to continue working on my pistol holster for a few hours. I headed over to Shinsengumi for a night snack at around 2100 hours and found Murakumo and Fubuki playing ratslap at one of the tables while Yamato and Yahagi were enjoying some Ramune together. Murakumo, surprisingly, was losing to Fubuki a lot. You'd think that with Murakumo's hot-bloodedness, she'd be better at ratslap, but as I waited for Houshou to get me some Ramune and dango, Murakumo lost again and again, until finally she couldn't take it anymore and nearly threw her chair. I asked Murakumo to calm down and to save her anger for actual combat, where she could go as berserk as she wanted and break whatever she wanted. Murakumo just yelled at me to come beat Fubuki then, if I was going to act like such a smartass.

Challenge accepted.

I sat in Murakumo's seat and asked Fubuki if I could play her in a game of ratslap in Murakumo's place. She didn't want to at first, citing that I should rest my shoulders, but I said that for ratslap, I wouldn't need to use my shoulders, so she played reluctantly.

To Murakumo's chagrin, I beat Fubuki. But barely. And having Fubuki slap my hands over and over eventually got to the point where my fingers are sore writing this journal. Fubuki apologized profusely for slapping my hands so much, which I excused, since it's just a game.

Murakumo did mention to me that the girls were kind of getting bored of the usual games they had to play. They only knew so many card games, Monopoly was the bane of their existence and more often than not ended prematurely whenever someone flipped the board, Takao was the supreme champion of chess and was untouchable at it, and they couldn't really do karaoke on weekdays because Houshou wouldn't let them do so.

Guess I should pitch in again.