Wednesday, March 26th, 2014.

Today was a real hectic day, lemme tell ya.

The Abyssals managed to track the AC-130 gunships from yesterday's fire mission back to the supercarrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and attacked it at night. Luckily, HQ's satellites counter-tracked the Abyssals' fleet movements, so at 0340 hours this morning, the alarm system that we've never had to use before sounded off and woke us all up. I'm not sure how the alarm system works exactly, but I know that HQ has the ability to remotely sound the alarms from their end in Tokyo if there's an emergency going on.

I rushed to my office and dialed HQ's number while the ship girls, who knew what the alarms meant but weren't used to them going off, scrambled into their combat gear, and they assembled in my office if they could, while the rest who couldn't fit waited outside, trying to listen in, and that's when they told me about the imminent attack on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. Surprising, that they would even bother getting us to go cover them, considering that it's an American carrier cruising to a Japanese naval district, something that I'm sure the right-wingers in the Japanese government would disagree heavily with or at least frown upon. But since I already knew that the Ronald Reagan was en route to the naval district there so that Japanese officers could board and study the supercarrier, not for an outright military duty (military international exchange, you could even call it), I knew that they had to do their part in covering the supercarrier, because if they didn't, the American government would be on their asses.

I debriefed the fleet outside at the pier so that everyone could listen properly. The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, which is the carrier that's carrying those AC-130 heavy support gunships that have been assisting them these past few days, was about to be under attack. If the fleet deploys now and sails at top cruising speed to the supercarrier's coordinates, they will be able to intercept the Abyssal task force about a klick and a half north of the supercarrier's position, an easy distance for the carrier to send out its planes again and have its escort destroyers provide long-range shelling and missile support.

I quickly designated Akagi as flagship. Her top priority was to contact the commander of the carrier platoon and inform them of the situation, and that the main fleet would engage the enemy task force. Akagi was also to request long-range air support and artillery from the destroyers to assist the fleet. If the commander refused, then the fleet will simply have to make do without support. If the commander agreed, Akagi was to inform him that sending close air support in the form of helicopters was risky and ill-advised.

With that said, I deployed the fleet.

The fleet returned nine hours later just in time for lunch. Lots of them sustained heavy damage - Shigure was the only one critically damaged.

But not in the way you'd think.

I studied Akagi's post-action mission report closely as the fleet docked and had lunch. The Abyssal task force - if you can even call it a "task force" - was an entire fleet composed of some forty destroyers, twenty light cruisers, ten heavy cruisers, seven carriers, and fifteen battleships. None of the other capital Abyssal girls. It was an entire fucking navy they were up against. As planned, they managed to intercept the fleet. Yamato opened up the confrontation with a Yamato Cannon, and Suzuya and the others who had the Silencer augmentations slipped in and wreaked havoc.

Luckily, the commander of the Ronald Reagan agreed to provide long-range support. Instead of sending out the AC-130s, the supercarrier sent out three squadrons of F-35C Lightning II's for support, and the four destroyers escorting the carrier, the U.S.S. Curtis Wilbur, the U.S.S. Fitzgerald, the U.S.S. Stethem, and the U.S.S. Lassen shelled and sent in Tomahawk cruise missiles from afar.

This means that this morning's night battle is the very first time in history that weaponized androids and conventional fleet forces have fought together in a fully-fledged naval battle. But no one will ever care - not even the ship girls themselves, because for them, it's not about making the history books, it's about doing their job and not dying in the process.

But despite all this fleet support, the Abyssals put the hurt on the fleet. Re-Class was there, along with multiple Ta-Classes and Ru-Classes. And it's not like Carrier Strike Group 5 put in a lot of long-range support; in fact, they only sent out one volley of weapons and one wave of fixed wing support; the rest was up to the main fleet to finish the job.

As I read the report, I saw a lot of things that could be changed so that the fleet's attack strategies could be executed more effectively. I was tempted to sit the fleet down during dinnertime and talk to everyone about it, but then I realized that cultural differences meant that Houshou would beat the shit outta me for interrupting the holy hours that are mealtimes at base. So I held off on that until after dinner.

Now let's talk about Shigure...

When she returned to base, she was covered head to toe with blood. It's like she took a bucket of red paint that looks like blood and dumped it all over herself. Not only that, but when I asked her what happened that caused her to get hurt so badly, she just gave me a really, really creepy smile. Her eyes weren't focused, and she seemed listless. She just saluted me and called out to Yuudachi for them to go to the baths together. I noticed that Yuudachi was trotting along a bit behind her, and when I grabbed her to ask what happened to Shigure, Yuudachi gave me a really, really frightened look.

When Yuudachi, a night battle nightmare, gives you a scared look when she hears her sister's name, something is very, very wrong.

Yuudachi refused to talk to me about it, so I had to rely on Akagi's mission report instead to try to glean what happened.

Yuudachi received heavy damage from Re-Class when Re managed to get a good hit in on Yuudachi, and Shigure saw this. Shigure then proceeded to assist Yuudachi, and after about five minutes of fighting, Shigure apparently ripped Re-Class's tail off. This caused Re-Class to retreat, and a Ru-Class and a Ta-Class came to cover Re's retreat, so Shigure attacked them, with Yuudachi assisting. Shigure executed them both by stabbing them with her main guns and shooting their bodies off - hence why she came back doused with blood.

Why do I get the feeling that the "glitch" that I've read in Shigure's report is responsible for turning her into a monster so demonic that even Yuudachi, the Nightmare of Solomon, and even Re-Class fear her?

As if to confirm my thoughts, after they'd docked, Yuudachi came running to my office and begged me to let her hide in my office. When I asked why, Yuudachi cried that Shigure was acting really weird, and Yuudachi felt extremely uncomfortable being around with her.

"She doesn't feel like my sister anymore!" Yuudachi whined, "She's not the Shigure I know!"

It's not like I can disagree with that. Intuition alone told me that the moment she returned to Okinawa, Shigure wasn't herself anymore. And unfortunately, I can't give her a Snickers to make her return to normal. Well...it's not like they sell Snickers here in Japan, anyway.

So I told Yuudachi that she could stay in my office for the time being. When she asked me what I was going to do, I said,

"I'm going to see your sister."

But Yuudachi grabbed my legs, begging me not to go. She told me that it's just probably best to leave her alone, let her weirdness fade away for the time being. Eventually, she'll go back to being normal.

But that's not you're supposed to do. You don't solve a problem by circling around it; you solve it by confronting it and dealing with it. If you gotta get your hands dirty, then you better hope you don't mind going around with the stench for a while.

I asked Yuudachi where she was, but she didn't want to tell me at first. I had to order her to tell me where Shigure was, and she said Shigure was in their dorm, alone because everyone knew what Shigure was like by this point. Samidare then entered my office with some afternoon snacks and tea, and she asked what was going on, and I had to tell her what was happening.

Samidare volunteered to come with me. Yuudachi gave her the kind of look that you give your own family when you can't believe you're related. Samidare explained herself by stating that she wanted to get to know the two of them because they were supposed to be sisters, but she never yet felt that they were really sisters. So Samidare and I left Yuudachi in my office and went to go see Shigure.

We found her in the destroyers' dorm, sitting on her bed with her knees tucked up against her chest. As soon as we entered her room, she yelled at us to go away. She'd already returned to normal, and she remembered everything that she'd done very clearly, and everything was coming back to haunt her. When I didn't listen to her and kept walking towards her, Shigure screamed at me louder to leave her alone. She screamed that she'd become a monster - that something was terribly wrong with her that caused her to do horrible things and chase away her own sister. And she asked Samidare why she, too, was here. Shigure cried that she wouldn't be a responsible enough sister to her - better for Samidare to avoid her and Yuudachi, for the two of them were monsters in their own right, that Samidare should just wait until their other sisters arrived at base. Shigure herself would be of no use being a good ship sister to her.

So Shigure knew about Samidare's wish to get to know them both, somehow.

But Samidare, instead of running away, ran to Shigure and hugged her. Samidare begged Shigure not to isolate herself like this. She didn't want Shigure to torture herself in a dark room all by herself. Shigure tried to tell Samidare that she shouldn't associate herself with a monster that she'd become.

That's when I told Shigure in a clear voice that if Shigure thought that she was the only monster around, she was wrong. I told her that everyone was a monster. It didn't matter who - ship girl or human. All of us were in fact monsters in our own right. Just because Shigure let her own inner demon out didn't mean she had to be ashamed of it.

Everyone has a dark side. Everyone has dirty little secrets. Everyone has something about them that they don't want anyone else to know.

Everyone is a demon.

And if there are people out there who aren't, then they, too, have the capacity to become demons.

It doesn't matter who - everyone is capable of doing unspeakably horrible things.

I sat down next to Shigure again, whom Samidare was still hugging. I explained to her the "glitch" that she and Yuudachi suffered and what it was doing to them. I explained how Yuudachi's Kai upgrade fixed this glitch and turned it into a controllable protocol.

I told her that I would put Shigure in the queue for the Kai upgrades so that she, too, would have her personality glitch fixed.

Shigure started to cry, but silently at first. Without looking at me, she asked me if this was just all a cruel joke - a ploy to comfort her, and then leave her all alone yet again with no one to share her pain and plunge her back into her depression again. She said she wouldn't believe me unless I spent the whole night with her.

So I was like, "Challenge Accepted!" and Samidare and I sat with Shigure until two in the morning. We skipped dinner and only left to use the bathroom.

I came back to my office after Shigure and Samidare fell asleep on the bed, and I tucked them in and went back to finish whatever work I had left. Yuudachi had ended up sleeping on my couch, so I put my military coat over her as a makeshift blanket and worked until about three and headed back to my room to write this.

I did send Seal Team Six two orders for Kai upgrades - one for Akebono, and one for Shigure. I told them to contact me as soon as possible.