Tuesday, April 1st, 2014.
At breakfast, Samidare approached me and informed me,
"Um...sir, I...I think you should take a look at this..."
When I turned to her with a mouthful of rice, she was holding out one of those pregnancy test thermometer-looking things.
And it read positive.
I immediately spat out my rice back into my bowl and started choking, and Suzuya immediately took advantage of the situation to perform CPR on me, even though that's not what she was supposed to do. Yamato thumped my back for me, but now I feel like my spine's broken in fourteen different places.
Well, today was the most dangerous April Fool's I've ever had. I regret telling Irako that this was a "fun" experience so far.
And when I told the fleet that I wanted them to practice a few destroyer maneuvers for training this morning in preparation for their sortie today, they asked me if I was making an April Fool's joke on them and that they didn't actually have to do any training today. I didn't buy it, and I still sent the fleet out to train.
I sent HQ an email and information that the fleet's gathered on that mysterious Abyssal little girl they fought yesterday, and they got back to me. They call her "北方棲姫", or "Hoppousei-Ki Hime", if I'm reading this kanji right. Hoppo for short, I'll call her. Their satellites had tracked Hoppo down and maintained aerial surveillance over her, and it appears that Hoppo doesn't ever leave Baker One. She's always there - something tells me that she's always been there. Then why didn't my fleet run into her from before, when the fleet was smaller, when the fleet assaulted Baker One for the first time, in those incubation fields? You'd think they'd've run into Hoppo back then, too. Maybe she wasn't created back then? After all, it's only recently that the fleet's found out about Hoppo's existence.
But besides that, I pored over Sazanami's post-action mission report from yesterday while the fleet was doing morning training. Hoppo is a carrier, amazingly enough, but her planes are vastly superior to the fleet's, so much so that there's practically no competition. Hoppo's planes simply gunned down all of the fleet's planes before they could really get anything done. And even when some planes did get through, several dive bombers that managed to drop a few bombs on her, Hoppo didn't get injured at all. In fact, torpedoes and bombs in general didn't do jack shit yesterday. So I guess that explains why I kept hearing Kitakami and Ooi complaining yesterday when they returned about how their torpedoes didn't seem like they were getting anything done. According to Sazanami's report, Hoppo's shielding seemed to be designed to nullify any amount of bombing or torpedoes, which is strange, because this's literally the first time we've had to deal with an enemy like this.
No, wait, April Fool's, I'm lying, actually - Airfield Princess. Just remembered - I remember how Airfield Princess was mentioned to have a sort of shielding that blocks all torpedoes and bombing, but I guess I didn't pay so much attention to that particular report.
Okay, but even still, this is really strange. And the fact that Hoppo went solo-dolo against the entire fleet is jaw-dropping. It seems that battleship shelling is the most effective tactic against Hoppo, according to the report, but even then, Hoppo seems to have high mobility and evasion rate just because she ran around a lot. I mean, I guess it's understandable that it's harder to hit a little girl who's scurrying around all over the place as opposed to a lumbering, big ship girl with big guns. Plus, even if she does get hit, she just brushes it off, no problem. I mean, she did tank one of Yamato's Yamato Cannons, though it did do a lot of damage to her, by the looks of it. And by the end of the fight, when the fleet had to disengage, it wasn't like Hoppo was still standing unscathed; she'd been banged up pretty badly, too.
I want to keep sending the fleet to Baker One to see why and how Hoppo is so goddamn strong. Capturing her sounds like the very first capture mission we were assigned: a suicide mission, so a capture protocol is out of the question for now. But I'm worried mainly about this Abyssal immunity to torpedoes and bombings, because that's two options of attack completely negated right there. I want to know how the fleet can circumvent their immunity so that ship girls like Kitakami and Ooi still have battle relevancy in a fight like the one against Hoppo yesterday. But even when I say this, the satellite image photos for today indicate that there are fucking tons of Abyssal forces at Baker One.
As if Hoppo needed escorts. What use are escort forces when they're just going to get killed in the crossfire?
But then again, Hoppo's existence begs a really uncomfortable question: if she's that powerful, how much more powerful are the other capital Abyssals? If we could capture ones like Kuubo-Hime (Jenna) and Ritou-chan, are they less powerful than Hoppo, and are the ones who were constructed after Hoppo just as strong as her? Or, an even more uncomfortable perspective, what if they all possess a similar power level, and that they're just letting us capture them? That's a pretty scary thought - now we're delving into overly complicated military and political spy theory and conspiracy here.
So instead, I ordered the fleet to carry out a search and destroy mission, this time on one of the larger task forces guarding Baker District, by drawing them out of their defensive patrols around Baker by way of a fake assault on Charlie District. In other words, the fleet was gonna act like they're about to hit Charlie District, which was already pretty well defended, but since the Abyssals take the fleet's threat seriously, they were sure to respond. Then, the fleet would pull away and sail directly for that Abyssal task force dispatched to deal with them. Given the proximity and the distances of the battle I wanted to force, I calculated that there would be a much greater chance of things going the way I want them to rather than not.
In addition, I also ordered the fleet to employ a divide-and-conquer tactic against the Abyssals in this battle. Because this was a large enemy task force they were facing, it would be best to tackle this battle by splitting the enemy fleet in half, in thirds, quarters, or in little chunks at a time and taking them out piece by piece. If you've ever played an RTS game, you'd know this is true. I mean, as though common sense wasn't enough to tell you that already - it's easier taking on three or four enemies than thirty or forty. And in terms of numerical advantages, the ship girls are used to fighting outnumbered one to three, one to four, sometimes even one to five or more. So you do the math - if our ship girls outnumber these small groups of Abyssals at all, it's an instant gg, motherfucker.
After the fleet departed, I sat in my office after finishing paperwork thinking about everything that I've learned so far. I haven't spent enough time learning on my naval mistakes here as the commander of this kind of fleet. Lots of things are similar to my previous experience as a carrier commander, sure, but there're a lot more things that I still need to learn, and even more that I need to adjust and change in my mind and my naval strategies. I need to look at my mistakes - all the battles that've ended up as failures, the battles in which ship girls have died, look at what went wrong, and change things accordingly. I think I've done a good job thus far changing up the ship girls' fighting styles and assigning them roles, and for now they're working, but I'm not playing Starcraft against a mindless AI. The Abyssals will adapt, and they'll find a way to break the formations I've given my fleet. And when that time comes, I'll need to counter-adapt and change things up yet again, keep things fresh and unexpected so that the Abyssals have no idea how the fleet'll fight them the next time around. The better I can get as a commander at doing this, the better my fleet will fight and survive.
Houshou came into my office with Error, and they brought me some snacks and some Coke, which is surprising, since we don't really drink soda here, other than Ramune, if that even counts as "soda". Houshou saw the papers that I doodled naval strategies on and looked over them. She said she was surprised at the level of thought put into these kinds of strategies.
"Perhaps I have been underrating your talent as a naval commander, Admiral," she even said.
I just waved that complement aside. It's not that I'm smart or anything. I never did nor ever will claim that I'm an inherently "smart" person. I mean, yeah, sure, there are people who just born smart, but I'm not one of them. If I can call myself anything, it's diligent. I learned the hard way in the early days of my career as a carrier commander that I couldn't just yolo plans on the spot and not think them through. That's how people die, unfortunately. And you'd think this is obvious, but common sense is probably one of the greatest tools for strategy-making, because sometimes, naval officers look over some of the most obvious things when planning out a battle. I explained to Houshou that all these plans that I'd made as prototype strategies were failures because either there were too many unknown and uncontrollable variables that I needed to know, or too many risks or risks that were too great that would most likely result in a ship girl's death, or a combination of the two. My objective was to come up with strategies and tactics that prioritized the safety of the fleet above all else.
"But there may come a day in the future that you must devise a strategy in which death is inevitable," Houshou reminded me. "When that time comes, what will you do then?"
I told Houshou not to worry. If I knew that someone was going to die, and if the fleet knew that someone was probably not going to make it out of a battle, I'd make sure that their death would be as costly of a death for the enemy as possible. I, more than any other commander on this side of the Pacific Theater, know how to do that better than anyone.
Error also came in with a dog, surprisingly. A pure white-fur dog, an Akita breed, probably about a year or two old, judging by its size. Houshou explained to me that this Akita had been coming to base very frequently for some reason, and since it didn't have a collar, there was no way to tell if it had a family it belonged to. Houshou had tried to shoo it away, but it didn't really give a damn, apparently. When I asked where it was hanging out, since I didn't know about this dog until today, she said it had been frequenting the kitchens. Like, it just walked right in like it owns this fuckin' base, and it always came and left during hours like this when I'd be in my office and the fleet was away for sortie, so only Houshou, Irako, Mamiya, and Error really knew. The dog had followed them into my office because of the rice crackers that they were going to give me. I asked Error if this dog knew about the cats and was chill with the cats, and since Error didn't know, I searched for Chika and Batsubyou with Error and found them cuddling on Akebono's bed in the destroyers' dorm. We carried those sleepyheads back to my office and put them on my military coat on the couch to see how the Akita would react, but it gave no reaction, just was like, cool, cats, whatever, I've got rice crackers. And because Chika and Batsubyou didn't really seem to care for the dog, I decided to keep it here until someone came to claim it. Houshou didn't look too happy about my decision, but there's no rule here that forbids the ownership of pets. She was fine with cats, but now that we have a dog, especially after I let Akebono keep Chika, Houshou told me that she wouldn't be cleaning after the dog, which I'm okay with. I'll look after it for the time being.
The fleet came back at 1915 hours. Amazingly, no one took any damage. That's fucking unheard of. I can't even remember the last time the fleet had a flawless sortie like today. Suzuya proclaimed herself the MVP of the mission today, since she'd scored the most confirmed kills today. Ooi immediately griped at her, informing me that Kitakami had scored the most crucial kills, sinking heavy cruisers and even three Ta-Class battleships. When I asked Kitakami to confirm or deny Ooi's statement, Kitakami just passed it off as nothing, saying she didn't need any praise from me. I told her that she did a great job out there anyway, and she said thanks back to me anyway. But Suzuya kept demanding to be rewarded for being the battle's MVP, despite Ooi's continued protests, so I announced that I would make Suzuya a small little treat or something because she was MVP, and that this wasn't an April Fool's joke. This not only motivated the other girls but also pissed off Ooi, who also demanded that I make something for Kitakami too, despite Kitakami's own protests. Now I have a feeling that I may have started a trend that I probably didn't need to.
Samidare, after the fleet went to the bathhouse to dock, informed me that my strategy worked brilliantly. The fleet organized themselves into hunter-seeker squadrons and pulled the Abyssal fleet apart into small squads no more than six ships big, and using the heavy hitters like Hatsuharu, Wakaba, Yuudachi, Kitakami, Ooi, and Suzuya, they one-shot everything that wasn't a heavy cruiser or bigger. Samidare, too, from the looks of her post-action mission report, did a fantastic job acting as flagship of the fleet for today's sortie, so I gave her an extra long head pat for her great work. In exchange, she gave me a hug. My Samidare can't be this cute. Did I mention that ever since her Kai upgrade, her hair seems even more vividly blue than before? It even feels cool no matter what the temperature is outside.
Ooyodo found out about the Akita dog when she came into my office to check up on her duties as secretary ship and saw the dog sitting on the couch. Chika and Batsubyou had since headed out to wander around on the docks, I think, and Ooyodo screamed with delight when she saw the Akita dog. She asked me when we'd gotten a dog, and I explained what happened today.
"Can I keep it!?" she asked. I didn't expect Ooyodo to be quite the dog lover. I let her, telling her that she was responsible for taking care of it, and Ooyodo named it Toyoda. It didn't take long for Yuudachi to join in with her Poi hype.