Sunday, March 30th, 2014.
Seal Team Six came at their usual time to pick up our girls. Akebono was utterly dumbfounded when I knocked on her dorm room that she shares with Sazanami and told her that the guys who handled the Kai upgrade operations were here to pick her up, like she didn't really believe that I would keep my word. Sazanami, who was there in the room at the time, also didn't expect that to happen, seeing Akebono's shitty attitude towards everyone, and was visibly envious seeing Akebono try to hide her great excitement. I told Sazanami that all she needed to do was ask for a Kai upgrade, and I would do what I could to provide it for her, so Sazanami demanded that she be put on the list as soon as possible.
I helped Big carry Shigure on her stretcher over to their usual Osprey at the Six-Pack, with a crying Yuudachi and a depressed Samidare trailing at our feet. Yuudachi begged Big to tell her what was going to happen to her sister, and Big just gave her a big fat smile and said that she'd come back to join Yuudachi's nightmare out at sea.
Why does that sound so cryptic, I wonder.
Ritou-chan refused to leave - she'd been up in my office watching through Canaan. I assured Ritou-chan that there was going to be anime waiting for her at the other side, which she very reluctantly believed. On the topic of the Abyssals, I asked Big how the other Abyssals we'd captured for them were doing, and he replied that they were at a point where the Abyssal destroyers were following Lauren around like goslings. She likes to spoil them with all sorts of cooking, which the Abyssals at Seal Team Six's base, wherever it is on the West Coast, have grown addicted to. I asked Big if Lauren wasn't spiking their food with anything, and Big said if she had, he'd be screwed, too, since too often were there times when Lauren was the only competent cook at their base working night shifts with him.
So, Akebono and Shigure and Ritou-chan set off with Big and Deimos of Seal Team Six this morning. Akebono should be back within a few days, hopefully. Shigure...Big said he wasn't so sure when they'd be done with her repairs and upgrade. He clarified that the "plans" he'd mentioned in his email yesterday were big plans, that with Shigure, given the dire nature of her situation, they were going to attempt some very risky upgrades that had been in the works but never executed, like Kiyoshimo's Yamato Cannon Type 0. I told him that if Shigure didn't come back, he'd have to deal with a lot more than just two crying ship sisters. Big just gave me a reassuring pat on the back and told me not to worry. They were the guys who built these girls, after all.
I guess if there was any one good thing that came out of Shigure's regression is that it's basically forced Yuudachi to turn to Samidare for her fix of sisterliness, if that's even a word. They've gotten much closer now that they both have a pitched interest in Shigure's well-being. Now that she's gone for repairs, I saw Samidare wiping Yuudachi's face with a handkerchief at lunch today. Yuudachi's been crying nonstop ever since Shigure left. I sat down with them for the latter half of lunch hour to see what was up, and Yuudachi admitted that she'd taken Shigure's companionship for granted. Ever since their construction, there wasn't more than half an hour that they weren't together (with the exception of Yuudachi's absence for revival and Kai), as though they were Siamese twins or something, inseparable and never away from one another. It never crossed her mind that Shigure would be the one who had to be removed from her, and Yuudachi felt like some part of her was physically missing now that Shigure was gone.
Not only that, but Yuudachi went on to explain that as the younger sister, she'd always looked up to Shigure. She saw Shigure as the role model, that even if Yuudachi herself went off the rails, she'd know that Shigure would be behind her to rein in her power. Yuudachi never expected for something like this to happen, for Shigure to have harbored such a nightmare within herself. She thought that Shigure was always going to be a gentle, caring older sister to her. But after the first time that Shigure snapped and started to break herself down, Yuudachi's image of Shigure was also hammered down, piece by piece, to the point where now, Yuudachi isn't sure if she really knew who Shigure was all this time. She considers herself a failure of a sister for not knowing that this would have happened, that she shouldn't have been so scared of her own ship sister. By this point, the fleet knows what I'd tried doing for Shigure, thanks to the girls finding out from eavesdropping on Houshou speaking about the incident with Mamiya and Irako, so Yuudachi's extremely disappointed and angry at herself, because she should've been the one to do the things I did. She should've been trying her best to comfort Shigure and try to make her feel better, so the fact that she ran away from the problem that was her sister like a dog with its tail in between its legs really messed with Yuudachi's self-esteem.
So to cheer Yuudachi up, I gave her some good ol' head pats. Yuudachi didn't understand why I was pampering her so much. At first, she threw my hands off, saying that she'd been acting childish up 'til now and that she didn't deserve anything that I was giving her. She even said that she'd revert her Kai to make Shigure go back to normal again, that I shouldn't've even given her her Kai remodel had we known how these last few days' course of events was going to turn out. In any case, she said that if I had time to give her head pats, I had time to punish her for being a bad and selfish ship sister.
But I explained to Yuudachi that punishing the girls on top of them doing something wrong wasn't the correct way to lead them as their Commander. I asked Samidare to vouch for me on this one, since she was one of the five starters who'd been here this whole time with me. I recalled the time when I had tried to treat the fleet just like a regular navy, or rather, sailors of a regular navy. Samidare laughed at the memory of those drills, recalling how tough they were and how Murakumo yelled at her that one day, and that I yelled at Murakumo back. I told Yuudachi that I had to change my outlook on this particular fleet and treat them not as a regular fleet but as a fleet of ship girls. I couldn't treat them like I treat my men and women in the Navy, even if I wanted to on the account of principle and equal treatment. Therefore, because Yuudachi was already suffering enough from Shigure's attempted auto-termination, I wasn't going to put her down even further and exacerbate the situation. So without further ado, I proceeded to rub her head like usual, and Samidare joined in too.
Yuudachi burst into tears again. This time, she didn't stop crying until this evening, so Samidare took Yuudachi to their room in the destroyers' dorm and stayed with her there until dinnertime. Murakumo asked me what the hell I was doing, making Yuudachi cry like that, so I had to explain to the rest of them what was going on. Murakumo accused me of plotting to kill Yuudachi softly - "kill her with kindness", to paraphrase her. I retorted that the fleet as a whole was going to kill me faster than I could kill them.
Today was the day of the fleet's little Street Fighter tournament. Because the girls who've been practicing look to me as some sort of otaku god (Sazanami not only calls me "Master" but also "Sensei" or, if she's feeling sassy, "Gouken-sama"), they had me ref the tournament. Sazanami's even been watching Street Fighter tournaments online, the vods, I should specify, so she even went so far as to have me commentate the tournament. Naturally, Kirishima joined me on the commentary table, and Houshou served us all yakitori and tea and Ramune all day at Shinsengumi. Are we esports now?
Murakumo, whom I was training yesterday, lost to Sazanami in the semi-finals, much to Murakumo's chagrin, but to my utter surprise, Takao met Sazanami with her Ryu in the finals and won. My mind is still having trouble that Takao, of all people at base, is actually any good at video games, much less win a tournament in a fighting game. Atago revealed to me behind Takao's back once the finals were over that Takao had been coming to Shinsengumi late at night after everyone else went to sleep to practice in secret. Very surprising that a disciplinarian like Takao would be so diligent in something like this...
But the tournament was fun, so I decided to offer vouchers for tournament winners, that if they won, I'd make a cupcake or a batch of muffins for them or something. That got the rest of them motivated, and some of the girls like Fubuki and Akatsuki, who were interested in learning the game made up their minds to now practice the game seriously.
No surprise, then, that Takao approached me after I said that and asked me to make some banana nut loaves to share with Atago. When I jokingly told her that I hadn't intended this tournament reward to apply to today's tourney, Takao looked deeply resentful, as though I'd double-crossed her. So I retracted my statement, saying it was a joke, and that I'd make something for her soon.
Have to get ready for tomorrow, so I'll end it here. Time for another week of death and destruction, but for me and the fleet, it's just a Tuesday.