Thursday, April 10th, 2014.
Hayashimo showed up for training this morning, which was surprising. Even more surprising was that Naganami didn't give her any shit today, but that was probably only 'cause I was there with them at the training waters, giving the new ship girls, the destroyers specifically, acute combat training to get them as quickly accustomed to the fleet's combat tactics and maneuvers as possible. My hardline commander tendencies started to show again, admittedly, because the practice routines and courses I gave them in my training regimen caused several of them, notably Naganami and Akitsushima, to come up to me and complain about how tough they were. I told them that I would much rather have them complain here then die out there in the middle of nowhere on the high seas, so they could complain all they wanted, they were still going to get this training done. Which they did, just barely, before lunchtime.
During lunchtime, too, Urakaze came up to me and asked me why I was stacking the augmentations all onto the veteran ship girls. She asked why she and the other newer ship girls didn't get any, and why only Taigei, Amagi, Hiryuu, and Taihou got augmentations, so I had to explain. First, these girls weren't anywhere near as familiar with the augmentations and how to work with them, whereas the veterans have for over a month now, I think. Second, some of our newer augmentations, like the Kellorian Reactor and the other Reactor augmentations, are synergistic with multiple augmentations, so it only makes sense to stack them onto ship girls who have augmentations already in order to maximize the augmentations' benefits. And thirdly, the most brutally honest reason of them all, the newer ship girls, due to their natural lack of combat experience compared to the veterans, would run a much higher risk of sinking or dying or having the augmentations destroyed in combat, something that's happened a few times before and is not ideal, seeing that the augmentations weren't easy to make and have delivered, no less. It wasn't that I didn't want to equip the new ship girls with augmentations of their own - I told Urakaze that if we had more, I'd definitely try to give everyone an augmentation of their own, but as it stood now, there wasn't much I could do. I could try asking more to be delivered from Seal Team Six, but it wasn't going to be a guarantee. That, and Taigei, Amagi, Hiryuu, and Taihou got augmentations because of their roles. It wasn't mine or anyone's fault in particular that Urakaze, the new destroyers, light cruisers, and heavy cruisers didn't get any.
Urakaze didn't really seem pleased by my answer, but at least it seemed like she knew it wasn't me being biased against her and the new ship girls.
Because of the intensity of the training this morning, I told the fleet that I'd delay their sortie by an hour to allow them some extra time to relax and rest before their mission.
When I finished my lunch, I was taking my tray back to the kitchens for Mamiya and Irako to take for washing, and then Akitsushima's flying boat, Nishikitaitei-chan (Akitsushima sometimes calls her Taitei-chan for short), a flying boat that's based off the WW-II Kawanishi H8K Type 2 that the Americans codenamed "Emily", rammed me in my back as she was zooming around above our heads during lunchtime. Her nose stabbed me right in the middle of my spine, and we both crashed down to the ground, with me serving as her makeshift landing strip as she ran me over on the floor and took off again into the air. I was about to issue a no-fly zone in the mess hall, despite Akitsushima's repeated and frantic apologies for her Taitei-chan (I still call her Emily sometimes out of American military habit, having studied some military WW-II history myself). But I didn't, due to Akagi's, Shouhou's, and Souryuu's great protests that their little mealtime game of dogfighting (sending their planes out to have mock dogfights to see who won) would be ruined, and that they wanted to include the other carriers in their game of dogfighting. So I relented.
After lunch, I asked all the new ship girls to stay in the mess hall while the rest of the fleet headed out to get ready for their mission in two hours. Sitting on top of one of the tables up in the front of the mess hall, I went into further detail about Operation Rising Sun than I had on the day that they'd arrived.
I also went further and talked about personal stuff that's been brewing up in my mind ever since Operation Rising Sun became a thing: I told the new ship girls that most likely, within two weeks, once Operation Rising Sun was done and dusted, I would most likely be relieved of my command here of the Moebius Four Platoon and return to my original post as the commander of the American Carrier Strike Group 10, possibly return to America to serve on the Western seaboard. Operation Rising Sun's aim was to destroy the Abyssal threat once and for all, and if it succeeded, most likely this war, too, would be concluded as well, and the Moebius Four Armament Pact would be nullified, and there would no longer be a reason for me to be here. But more than likely, given how things were being arranged, I myself may not survive the operation, with the right-wingers doing what they could to get me killed as quickly as possible so that their holy Japanese Navy could be pure-blood and removed of all foreign taint. Either way, I wasn't going to be around for much longer, it seemed to me, and I was able to tell the new girls this because they weren't as attached to me as the veteran ship girls were. I also asked them to keep this conversation I had with them a secret from the other veteran ship girls, because this would cause an uproar amongst some of them. Perhaps they themselves had an idea that this would happen, but in any case, I didn't want to have that linger on their minds, because it would affect them far more than it would affect the new girls.
Tama told me that she was interested in knowing how I'd ended up here in the first place. She said that she remembered everyone in the fleet (including the girls who aren't yet deployed here to Okinawa) that they were surprised to hear that their naval commander would be a Japanese-speaking American like me when they were expecting an ordinary Japanese naval officer from the JMSDF. So I took about a half an hour to explain my background, the events that snowballed into me being assigned here as the Commander of the Moebius Four Platoon, and whatever else I needed to mention to make my post here make sense.
Houshou made things complicated by coming over and revealing to them that I was extremely good at baking sweets, as Taihou's birthday cake proved. She insisted that I try to bake everyone some as a welcome gift. I tried to protest that notion, seeing that I wouldn't even be able to bake that many sweets for everyone there before it was mission time anyway, but then Urakaze, Yayoi, Goya, Iku, Kuma, and Tama all ganged up on me, demanding sweets of their own. I felt like I was at a Halloween party where the kids keep begging for more and more candy. The only way I could escape the situation was by promising them that I'd make some for the entire fleet by the time they came back from today's sortie, and that I'd give double to the MVP among the new girls.
Today's mission was a particularly tough one: HQ's discovered supply lines running from Easy District, the small archipelago of islands that we didn't really care about until now, to Dog District. Judging from the satellite image photos, Easy is a major resource tap for the Abyssals, but for some reason they didn't start using it until just recently. HQ believed that it's because the Abyssals want to accelerate their underwater tower building process and are now starting to tap into the resources at Easy District, which I'm inclined to believe as well. After all, Abyssal troop replenishment has appeared to remain consistent by the looks of things, so the resources have got to be going somewhere. I ordered the fleet to sortie to Easy District, the district furthest away from base, intercept and interrupt Abyssal supply lines, capture whatever resources they could bring back, and destroy anything else that got in their way.
I recommended that the new ship girls, especially the new destroyers and light cruisers, to handle the towing of the resources back to base while the rest of the fleet covered them. At first, as usual, Naganami and Urakaze protested this, saying that they didn't want to end up doing "menial labor" like they'd had before (they're probably referring to the Tokyo Express during the war), but again, the more experienced ship girls and I pointed out the necessity of this, since the firepower that would be taken out of the fight if we had another ship girl who was better equipped than they were handle the resources might be fatal to the fleet.
About two hours after I'd deployed the fleet, I was sitting in my office, playing a bit of fetch with a tennis ball with Toyoda, when Houshou entered my office. She didn't come with any snacks, though, so I was a bit surprised. I asked her how I could help her, and Houshou asked me,
"So you really will not be here for very much longer?"
That came as an even bigger surprise, so I restated my thoughts on the near future. Nothing was certain yet, but if I did happen to survive Operation Rising Sun, that would most likely mean the end of this war against the Abyssals, and most likely I would be reassigned elsewhere, since the end of the war would mean the end of the validity of the Moebius Four Armament Pact that's keeping me here in Okinawa.
Houshou seemed very downhearted about this. She said that she didn't see why I had to leave so soon, after barely four or five months. After all, one of the biggest reasons why Houshou was able to run Shinsengumi and do everything she's been able to do at base was because she didn't have to worry about looking after the ship girls as a kind of mother figure to them when I was there in her place, fulfilling that role as a bit of a father/counselor/emotional support person, whatever you call it, figure myself. It wasn't that Houshou didn't want to deal with the girls, it's just that she felt very comfortable being able to do the things she wanted to do at base while still being able to interact with the rest of the fleet without worrying about the more troubling aspects of the ship girls' lives, and she was very grateful to me for essentially removing all the negative aspects about her role in the fleet.
She also added that as the kind of mother figure of the fleet, she wanted the very best for all the ship girls, including the best Admiral to lead them and command them. She said that she didn't really know how it would be possible to top what I'd done for the fleet. Sure, I had some rough starts and some bad calls. But it felt too abrupt and sudden if I were seriously to leave Okinawa in just a matter of two weeks. She wanted me to get to know the rest of the Moebius Four Platoon, the ones who hadn't yet been deployed to Okinawa. She wanted the rest of the ship girls who've been constructed to get to know me, to know what having a compassionate Admiral felt like. Where would she find an Admiral who's crazy enough, selfless enough, stupid enough to take a bullet for the sake of one of his warships' demise? Where would she find another person like me who would find it in himself to forgive someone like Shigure, who's even tried to kill me before? Most other Admirals would've just sent Shigure and Hayashimo and other disobedient ship girls straight to the scrapyard.
And finally, if I were to leave, what would Shigure, Yuudachi, Samidare, Ooyodo, and the others feel? Surely they would be devastated. We wouldn't even know if we'd ever meet again. I mean, I could probably request a military leave to Okinawa or at least the mainland to see them, but that probably wasn't going to be likely to happen anytime soon after I left anyway.
I just shrugged. Life's full of hard decisions, some of which we can't do anything about. It's not like I wanted to go back. I was perfectly fine staying here for a few years, as my assignment initially posted me here for. I told Houshou that I just wanted to make the most out of my life and the lives of the fleet before I was gone, in both senses of the word. Houshou made me promise to tell the fleet when they came back, during late dinnertime, what I'd told the new ship girls, so that the fleet would prepare for the aftermath of Operation Rising Sun, in case I did have to leave for good.
So when the fleet came back, having successfully completed their mission with a few critically injured (Harusame had an arm blown off, and Noshiro had some massive internal bleeding from tanking a shell for Yahagi), I let them dock to heal up while sorting out the resources they'd managed to come back with from the supply line raids with Mamiya, Irako, Houshou, and Error at the storage hangars. Then, Houshou, Mamiya, and Irako distributed some late dinner to the fleet, I went to my office, tapped the PA system on, and told the base what I'd told the new ship girls earlier today during lunch.
"I just want to let you all know in case I don't have another opportunity to say this to you all," I said to conclude, "I'll miss you."
As I got up from my seat to go to the medbay to go see if I could assist Akashi with Harusame's reconstructive surgery, I opened my office doors to find Fubuki standing in front of my office. She gave me a hug, crying into my chest, saying that she didn't want me to leave so soon. Then, the veterans came pouring through to my office - Shigure, Yuudachi, Samidare, Ooyodo, Inazuma, Hibiki, Ikazuchi, Akatsuki, Hatsuharu, even Wakaba, Imuya, Shioi, even Kitakami and Ooi.
Houshou was right - this fleet wasn't prepared to hear me say that in two weeks, I was going to leave them forever.