Wednesday, March 19th, 2014.
This morning, I found Yuudachi staring into my motherfucking soul when I woke up. I asked her how I could help her, and Yuudachi said in the most serious tone I've ever heard her speak in to get her something like Kiyoshimo got yesterday. I told her that unfortunately, all we had left was Kiyoshimo's old augmentation, the Overclock PDA, so I'd give that to her to equip. It wasn't something Yuudachi was really satisfied with, so I promised her that I'd see what I could do for her.
Kiyoshimo sat next to me at breakfast, offering to feed me my breakfast. I declined, half because I can feed myself, half because half the fleet was throwing daggers at me with their eyes. I don't have any particularly big death wish any time soon, so I convinced Kiyoshimo to settle for morning head pats, which she really likes. Yuudachi, seeing this, got instantly jealous and ran over to me for head pats of her own, so I spent breakfast after eating patting the heads of two cute destroyers at the same time with the most serious look on my face. It's the most comical life-or-death situation I've ever been in in my entire life. I never knew my life could become a comedy anime.
Bad, bad news with the satellite photos sent in by HQ this morning. With the utter annihilation of Dog Two, Abyssal fleet movement is erratic. The entire sector looks like it's freaking out. It's dangerous to send the fleet on their regular sorties today - so instead, I'll have to send in the fleet on another Operation Blackout mission earlier than I'd planned. It's not that there's anything particularly bad about doing this, but I just don't like it when I have to FUBAR up my own plans.
After lunch, I called the fleet to another meeting and said that I'd canceled their regular sortie today, and instead, I'd be sending them on a night battle, which, predictably, Sendai aka Yasen Baka got all pumped up for. For about the first five minutes of our meeting in the mess hall, I had to talk over Sendai dancing around the entire mess hall singing "夜戦！夜戦！夜戦！夜戦！夜戦だよ！夜戦! 夜戦! 夜戦! 夜戦! 夜戦はいつ！？" (Yasen! Yasen! Yasen! Yasen! Yasen dayo! Yasen! Yasen! Yasen! Yasen! When's the Yasen!?" And then finally, I got fed up with her shit and screamed at her to shut the fuck up, and she sat down and became quiet with an apologetic nyoron~ face on.
I told them about the situation over at Sector B to explain the reasoning for the night battle tonight. I asked if the fleet was up to the task tonight, or if they wanted to sleep first and then go in the early hours of the morning. After a fleet vote, it turned out that more of the girls preferred to go after dinner and fight in the dead of the night. Normally, I'd tell them when the hours of their mission profile were, but in this case, since I'm anticipating the Abyssals to be constantly on high alert because of what Kiyoshimo pulled off, it won't matter. They're going to have tons of patrols sailing around either way.
Their objective will be to hit Charlie District for the third time and erase the Abyssal air fleet yet again. The longer we can delay them having a sufficient air force, the better. I told them that taking care of Charlie District as quickly as possible was the most important mission imperative - the faster they can do that, the more time they'd have to achieve their next objectives, which are to assault Dog Three and Four and destroy the naval bases and plants there. Their secondary objectives are to find out what exactly the Abyssals have been doing at those territories, and on their way back, destroy Baker One, the Floating Fortress Incubation Fields, yet again.
This time, however, I designated Kiyoshimo as the VIP. Basically, this means that Kiyoshimo is of extremely high strategic importance to the fleet because of her onboard Yamato Cannon. The fleet needs to protect her at all costs and make sure that nothing happens to her, especially when she's acquiring her weapons lock-on and proper firing calculations, because she's vulnerable when she's using the Cannon. Again, I was accused of favoritism, but I countered that I would have given the same treatment to anyone else if Kiyoshimo wasn't the one who received the Yamato Cannon.
After lunch, I headed out the back of the pier, doing some boring maintenance checks on the various structures at base, especially the buildings and rooms that aren't in use at the moment. When I was checking the last storage hangar on the far west wing of the base, I ran into Batsubyou the cat, whom I hadn't seen in while. He meowed at me, something he's never done before. He seemed like he wanted me to follow him, so I followed after him, and he led me around the hangars towards the waste and recycling dumpsters, where Mamiya and Irako and Houshou take out the trash.I then heard a voice that sounded like Akebono's, and sneaking up behind the voice, I found Akebono kneeling in front of one of the dumpsters, babytalking to another cat that looked pretty thin and worn out but still okay. Batsubyou slunk out and sat next to Akebono, who noticed first the cat, then me standing behind her.
She freaked the fuck out and backed up right into the dumpster in total surprise. She didn't expect me to be there at all, even though she should've, because ship girls can sense human signatures with their sensors at close proximity. She immediately started hurling all the insults and profane words as she could muster while blushing the hardest I've ever seen a girl blush, and I hadn't even done anything. I just waited until her shocked fury fizzled out and all she could do was breathe with a red face at me. Needless to say, I wasn't very amused. I'm sure it would've been hilarious to someone else watching us, though.
I asked her if she was done swearing me out yet, and she told me to fuck off. Well, so much for that.
I asked her what she was doing, saying that Batsubyou the cat led me here. Akebono wouldn't say at first, so I repeated the question. She then asked me back if I was too stupid to be able to tell just by looking, so I replied that maybe I was, and that maybe I'd misinterpret the situation, so I needed her to clarify it for me so I wouldn't make misleading assumptions of my own. I told her that we could stand here all day until it was time for the night ops to come around until she gave me an answer. I told her that I wasn't mad or anything, I just wanted an answer, and if that was too hard for Akebono to do, then I'd go ahead and make assumptions of my own. She still didn't want to talk to me, so I just sighed and told her that I would have to confiscate this new cat, a calico cat, by the looks of it, and send it to the pound or have a local resident in the nearby town adopt it or find its original home or something. It didn't look like a stray, but I can't be too sure.
At this, Akebono finally reacted and threatened to throw me into the pier if I touched Chiko, which I'm guessing is the name that Akebono gave the calico cat. Batsubyou walked over to Chiko and sat down next to him/her/it, and Chiko gave him an acknowledging sniff. Seemed like they'd known each other for some time now. So I asked her why she would threaten to do something like that to me, and Akebono yelled back at me that she wouldn't let me take Chiko away from her. By this point, anyone with a bit of deductive reasoning would be able to figure out that obviously Akebono's been keeping Chiko the calico cat around without my knowledge for some time. I told Akebono to bring Chiko in and called Batsubyou to come along so that we could go back to the mess hall. Akebono, still being really suspicious of me, demanded to know what I was planning to do with Chiko. I told her that we would feed her and take care of her until we could find out whether or not Chiko was a pet of some local family who'd run away on accident or something. I didn't think Akebono expected me to say that, so she didn't say anything and carried Chiko back with us to the mess hall. On our way over there, Akebono asked me what would happen if we found out that Chiko was just a stray. I already know what we're going to do with Chiko, but just to make Akebono suffer the worry about Chiko's "uncertain" fate, I told her that I'd have to decide that for later.
Predictably, we ran into Takao on the way back, who had been searching around the base for Akebono because she hadn't put away her equipment in storage correctly and was looking for her to scold her, and when Takao saw Akebono carrying Chiko, she was about to explode at Akebono, but I stopped her, saying that this wasn't something that needed yelling to resolve. Takao then became extremely irate with me, saying that she couldn't understand why I was being so lax on Akebono all the time, that she deserved punishment of some kind and that I was spoiling her. Spoiling, maybe, I agreed, but I reminded Takao that my job was strictly to command the fleet and guide them in naval strategy and combat. I wasn't paid to be here to be an authoritative parent on top of all that, and because I wasn't being paid to be some kind of overseer, I had the freedom to chose what kind of person I wanted to be around the fleet, and I'd chosen to be a chill guy who could try to be friends with everyone. Therefore, I didn't see a need to chew Akebono out on taking care of a cat without my knowledge. Yeah, it might've been better to let me know about it instead of keeping it a secret, but like seriously, who the hell cares, it's not like Akebono was hurting anyone by taking care of a stray cat.
Takao just left us without a word after I'd talked to her. I'm not too sure how I'm going to make amends with her later. I did tell Akebono that for my sake, she should really try to do what Takao tells her to do, but predictably, Akebono just called Takao a good-for-nothing bitch whose only real assets were her large fuel tanks hanging so obscenely for all to see. I reminded Akebono that Chiko's fate was in my hands, and that if she wanted the best for the cat, she shouldn't be going around calling people cows, so she shut up.
Nothing else really eventful happened today besides that. After taking care of Chiko, whom I noticed now started hanging out a lot with Batsubyou, much to Error's delight, I taught Sazanami and Wakaba the basics of Street Fighter IV at their request until it was time for sortie. I designated Kirishima as flagship and sent them off.
Man, grape youkan's amazing.