Sunday, March 23rd, 2014.

I swear someone's out there trying to make my life worse and worse. Like kicking a guy where he's already injured and when he's down.

Lazy Sunday. Sunny day out, but it sure doesn't feel that way at base. The initial depressing mood is gone from the base, but the aftermath of the depression is only just beginning. The only way I can make this atmosphere go away is by having the fleet score a decisive and punitive victory against the Abyssals. But judging at how the situation's developing at Sector B, it's not looking like pulling off such a feat is likely. No contingency plan, no easy way out.

I've officially shut down Operation Blackout. It sucks to have to remove an op entirely on such a disastrous and depressing battle, but the Abyssals know what we're up to with these night battles, and I'm sure it won't work anywhere as well as how the first few Op. Blackout missions went. Perhaps there'll be more night ops in the future, but they won't be under the same name. That, and I'll have to drastically revise the way I'm thinking when I send the girls off in a night battle.

One piece of good news, though: HQ's satellites have been searching Sector B ever since I notified them of our disastrous defeat at Charlie District for those five new capital Abyssals that the fleet encountered there, and one by one, they've found them, and HQ's identified and classified them.

泊地棲 (Hakuchi Sei-Ki). Anchorage Demon. Armed with special Abyssal armor-piercing rounds and planes of her own. More or less a battleship-carrier hybrid.

南方棲 (Nanpou Sei-Ki). Southern Demon. 16-inch triple gun primaries, 8-inch triple gun secondaries and fighters of her own. Again, another battleship-carrier hybrid but with more emphasis on the battleship aspects.

飛行場姫 (Hikoujou-Ki Hime). Airfield Princess. Stacked with Abyssal fighters and bombers. Straight up carrier, just like her name implies. At least she's pretty straightforward.

戦艦棲姫 (Senkansei-Ki Hime). Battleship Symbiotic Princess. Two 16-inch triple primaries, twin 12.5-inch cannon secondaries, with advanced Abyssal radar. We already knew about her. Now that I know what she's armed with, I can see just how dangerous she is. She's like Yamato plus a few destroyers put together.

離島棲鬼 (Ritousei-Ki Oni). Isolated Island Demon. Stacked with planes like a carrier, meaning that obviously she's a carrier. Sure doesn't look like one, though. And I don't really dig girls who like gothic lolita. Who the hell made her wear that shit, anyway.

Yeaaaaaaaaaah...the cat's out of the bag now. Now I can see exactly why the fleet got crushed at Charlie District a few days ago.

I think I know what the Abyssals' strategy is - I've seen this tactic before, both in my own military experience and just simple history reading. The Abyssals are trying to pull off a hybrid Russian-American strategy. The Russians are pretty infamous for solving their problems by throwing enough bodies at it that eventually they'll solve the problem. Hence why Russia had the most amount of casualties in the second World War out of any nation. Or the Soviet Union, if I want to be politically correct, but fuck political correctness, I'm no Bill Clinton. Ain't nobody got the time for that shit. And on the opposite end 'a the spectrum, America focuses on advancing technologically so that they use fewer but better trained soldiers and much better equipment. Two completely different military mindsets, merged into one. And what do you get?

You get the Abyssals. I think they're taking the advantages of both sides of this military logistic spectrum. Mass the weak Abyssals - destroyers, mainly - and field them with average and decent Abyssal ship types from light cruisers to heavy cruisers who are only slightly weaker than the ship girls. Then, toss in a few crazy bitches like Re-Class and Wo-Class, and spend the rest of your efforts building highly specialized and incredibly powerful assets, Abyssals who are individually stronger than anyone else on the playing field.

That's what those Abyssal bases and manufacturing plants are for that I've been having the fleet target down and destroy. I mean, we kinda already knew that. Seeing the amount of damage we've done to Sector B so far, the only really viable place they could've came from is Dog District. No chance of getting there, though. Even with that heavy air support from the boys over at Pearl Harbor, I doubt we can punch our way through, let alone during the night. God knows what'll happen to the fleet if we try assaulting the place during the day.

And then I caught a glimpse of an email from an email address that I recognized but didn't expect to be getting an email from. It was from Commander Terryfield, ol' man Terry. He was my superior in the Navy when I transferred from the Army to the Navy at my parents' jurisdiction to become a naval officer, part of Carrier Strike Group 10, and he taught me a lot of the things I know about being a Navy officer commanding a carrier. At first, I was pretty happy to hear from him again - it's been about half a year since I last talked to him, since he was eventually transferred out of Carrier Strike Group Ten.

But the contents quickly sunk my first feeling of good spirits in a few days.

"Dear Cmdr. Kevinson,

How has it been, lad? I heard about your reassignment from the Navy Board. So first things first, congratulations on your promotion. I can't call you 'Leftenant' anymore like I used to. But I suppose all boys grow up into men. After all, the military doesn't have any room for boys - only men.

But enough with the courtesies. I'm writing to inform you that you should expect a visit soon from your parents, Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Kevinson, your parents. They have requested that they be allowed to visit their son in Okinawa and review his fleet there.

Now, I know you don't like your parents, lad. I don't particularly like them myself, either. But I can tell you that I was the one who had to review their request and submit it to the Navy Board for finalization. I'm not sure if they'll be granted permission - there are a lot of factors going into this that will determine whether or not they actually do get permission.

But I will have you know, lad, that if they do get permission and the date of their visit is locked in, remember that even though you match your mother's rank, you technically have military superiority over them, because you are part of a top-secret task force. I will leave the rest to you.

You ought to stop by my place in Kentucky sometime, lad. I know it may be a few years before you are discharged, but just know that I've got a cup of Southern-style coffee waiting for you on my table."

Greaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. My parents are coming to visit me. Here's to hoping that the Navy Board shuts their request down hard. But knowing my luck...

After morning stuff, I went and ate lunch with the gang. The girls cheered up enough to actually talk about stuff in the mess hall, but still things were pretty quiet. Irako's been really reeling from the loss of Kiyoshimo. I'm aware that she had a pretty close relationship with Kiyoshimo because Kiyoshimo always used to help Irako with stuff, but I don't know enough about them to be qualified to comment on it. I asked Irako if she was going to be okay, and she assured me that she would cope with the loss.

After lunch, I found Akebono playing with Chiko the cat on the pier. It seems like Chiko likes the sight of the water, which is really strange for a cat. Maybe she likes the smell of the salty air. Either way, I sat out there with Akebono for a little bit, and surprisingly, she didn't hiss at me or call me Kuso Teitoku right away.

I asked her how Chiko was doing, and Akebono mumbled back that she was doing fine. She was surprised that I didn't just toss Chiko out, so she didn't know how to approach me other than feeling awkward for doubting that I would let her keep Chiko. Soon after, Batsubyou found us out on the pier and joined us. He and Chiko sat together in between us on the edge of the pier. A sunny day and a nice breeze rolling in - I suppose that's one way to liven up a shitty mood.

I brought up the topic with her and Takao, about what happened in the last battle when she saved Takao. I told her that Takao wanted to give Akebono her thanks, but Akebono told me to shut up. She didn't need to be thanked by someone like Takao. She didn't need to waste her time dealing with someone who does nothing but gripe and yell at Akebono all day about trivial things.

But even still, I told Akebono that that could be easily fixed if Akebono actually took the time taking care of things and not giving Takao any excuses to yell at her. Instead of complaining about how someone's always bitching at her, wouldn't it just be easier if she was just a bit more responsible? Or was it just because Akebono was the kind of girl who likes to have an excuse to be aggressive towards other people? Because I told her that I didn't think she was a legitimately mean-hearted girl. She wouldn't bother going out of her way to save Takao like what she did last Thursday morning if she really was that kind of person.

Akebono told me to go explode. That's a Japanese internet meme, commonly used by NEETs and other denizens of Internet Land in Japan. Probably originated from 2ch, to be honest. I just frowned at Akebono and told her that she shouldn't be wasting her time surfing through 2ch for the latest dank Internet memes. To my pleasant surprise, Akebono reacted quite strongly to that, because she didn't expect me to get her reference. Now she felt even more awkward around me. Great.

I told Akebono that if she could clean up her behavior, I wouldn't bother trying to have Chiko shipped off eventually like I'd said. And I urged her to at the very least go talk to Takao and accept her thanks.

After dinner, Samidare entered my office to see me while I was working on drafting possible new naval strategies for the fleet. She told me that Shigure was sitting by herself out at the pier, a different pier than the one I sat on with Akebono. She told me that she'd tried to comfort Shigure, but with only limited success. She asked me to go see Shigure and talk to her like we'd done last night. So I immediately stopped what I was doing and stood up to head out there, which Samidare was shocked by, since she expected me to finish what I was doing first before heading out there. I asked Samidare why she was telling me to go comfort Shigure. Wasn't I the one she liked? Wouldn't me going to console Shigure, her own sister, potentially raise more rivalries for her?

Samidare said she didn't mind. She said that she'd thought about what I'd told her last night, and she came to the realization that it wouldn't be fair for just a simple destroyer like her to monopolize me, the Admiral, who's supposed to take care of the entire fleet. Plus, she added, if some day Samidare is unfortunate enough to share Kiyoshimo's fate, then at least there would be someone else in the same kin who would take care of me. I put my hand on Samidare's head and told her that despite her concern and despite my own words, that shouldn't mean that she should stop her own efforts to grow our relationship. Maybe, just maybe, there was a slim chance out there that our relationship could very well grow into something bigger and more fulfilling in the future.

I told Samidare to join me to go see Shigure - we would sit with her together. Since Batsubyou was hanging out with me, sleeping on my desk while I was working, I picked him up and took him with me out to the pier with some cat treats from the mess hall and met Shigure out on the pier. And we did exactly that - I sat on Shigure's right, Samidare on Shigure's left, and I put the meowing Batsubyou in Shigure's hands and fed him some treats. We sat out there with Shigure for about an hour until Shigure finally bothered to say something.

"Why are you doing this?"

I just gave Shigure a smile and told her that I wanted to sit out in the pier with her and Samidare, that I was going to sit in the rain and enjoy its downpour.

I normally don't like rain. But for those three, I'll make an exception.