Friday, April 25th, 2014.

With the fleet's expressed purpose of construction achieved, I'm expecting an email from HQ or the US Government via official documentation from the USMC giving me an official decommission from my post here as the resident Admiral of the Moebius Four Platoon. It hasn't arrived yet, probably because it's about to be the weekend, and whoever's supposed to send me my documentation is feeling lazy as fuck, but I don't mind it. This's one of those rare times when I'm okay with things not being done on time. Because, well, obviously once I'm decommissioned, it's likely I won't ever see these girls again. I'll consider myself a very lucky guy if we ever do meet again, to say the least.

And therefore, I abolished the base's normal rules that once dictated the schedule for the ship girls, and they took advantage of it. None of them woke up until ten or eleven in the morning, which is about four or five hours past when they're supposed to get up. I myself still woke up at around the same time, and so did Ooyodo and Samidare, the former for decency's sake, and the latter, well...she just wanted to spend as much time with me alone together, which I didn't mind. And of course, Houshou, Mamiya, and Irako all got up like nothing had ever changed.

I spent the morning looking over the post-action mission report for Operation Rising Sun. This time, none of my ship girls were "flagship" necessarily, since I was giving them orders in real-time during combat, and instead it was Seal Team Six who made it for me. And after reading it, I had a meeting in my office with the guys and girls from Seal Team Six, and I brought Ooyodo in because she's my secretary ship girl and I felt that she needed to be there.

We've determined a few things in the wake of Operation Rising Sun, some good, others bad. We know that Sector B will no longer be an area of forward operations for the Abyssals - the JMSDF has ensured this, and they've got 24/7 satellite surveillance over the area to make sure nothing suspicious gets in or out without them knowing. So that's good - but we also believe that this most likely is not the end of the Abyssal threat. The Abyssal forces were too weak, too frail during Operation Rising Sun for them to have been the full force that the enemy possessed. They just weren't strong enough - very uncharacteristic coming from the Abyssals. This being said, we don't really know how the Abyssals escaped, assuming they did, and how many of them got away - all of our air assets were busy assisting the battles during the operation, so it is very possible that a rogue task force of Abyssals could have defected and gone elsewhere. Seal Team Six is keeping a close eye on international news and informed me that they have informants in all of the major countries' governments to let them know if there are any sightings of Abyssals around the world, so we'll know soon enough if there are still Abyssals out there. But perhaps the strongest piece of evidence to support our theory that Abyssals are still at large is the fact that Hoppo was never sighted during Operation Rising Sun. She hasn't been seen for a long time now, in fact, I forget exactly when we last saw her. For an Abyssal so powerful, you'd think that she would be there at the final battle, but she wasn't.

Which probably means Operation Rising Sun wasn't the final battle.

Always gotta be a plot twist somewhere...there can never be any perfect and happy endings, goddamn it.

But will the Abyssals resurface? And where? Sector B was their exclusive territorial grounds - er, waters, I should say - and we don't really know or have any leads as to where in the world they would go to as a Plan B. I'm sure they do have a Plan B, we just don't know it yet. (Duh.) On top of which, Seal Team Six wasn't able to figure out the origins of the Abyssals, specifically, why they were created. They know how they're created, because they salvaged a few crucial blueprints left behind in several of the manufacturing plants before they were bombed, and they've been looking over those carefully to learn as much as they can about Abyssal technology. But there weren't any precious documents they could find, and in one office, they found signs that papers had been burned a long while before. It would've been nice to know more about the lore behind the Abyssals, but I suppose for now, either we'll have to keep searching or assume their existence lost to history forever.

After our meeting, Big told me that he'd made arrangements to reserve the Emerald Beach here in Okinawa next Monday. And by reserving, apparently he booked the whole fucking beach just for us. Well, there go my plans for a fleet vacation, 'cause they were just done for me without me even knowing.

I spent some time with Samidare alone in my office once Seal Team Six went to go hang out at Shinsengumi and Ooyodo went off to complete base logistics, or our little fancy term for inventory checking and any other chore that falls under the category of base maintenance. I put on some house and prog house, and we just sat together on the couch, chilling with the tea and the orange mizu youkan that Samidare had prepared during our meeting and brought with her. I gave her a basic rundown of what we were talking about in the meeting, since I just felt like she needed to know. Samidare was concerned with the chance that the Abyssals might resurface again, but at the same time, she was excited, because if the Abyssals came back, that would also most likely mean that I would be there again to be their Admiral/Commander again. I tried to dissuade her from that attitude. Who the hell wants more war? Surely there were better ways to meet again in life than through war. I told Samidare that I would've much preferred to have met her normally, anywhere but in the military. I didn't want to be in a relationship with her and then see it torn apart because of our circumstances. I asked her if she was going to be fine if worst came to worst, that in the event that we never saw each other again, she would be still fine with that and not lose her mind over it. She just gave me a sad smile and said,

"That's why I'm here with you right now...so that we can spend as much time together before...well...you leave."

Samidare pls, y u heff 2 be so cute.

Seeing that sad, melancholic smile on Samidare's face was painful to see. I honestly think that seeing that kind of face on her is more agitating than seeing her cry or frown, because it looks like she's trying to hide whatever pain she's feeling inside instead of letting me know about it so as to not make me worry about her. I think she's accepted the fact that perhaps there really is no chance for the two of us to really stay together for long, as her words indicated, so she's just trying to make the best of what she's got. So I put her head against my shoulder and held her hand. I could tell Samidare was really taken back by this - I felt her cheeks go hot. It's like she still can't believe that I've responded to her feelings like this, but she slowly got comfortable and even hugged my arm.

I suppose I should explain what happened on that night aboard my flagship. Samidare came into my room at around midnight, about the time when everyone else was supposed to go to sleep. Samidare said that she'd waited for everyone else in the platoon to fall asleep before coming to my room, and when she came in, she asked if I could lock the door behind her. I did, thinking that she needed to tell me something important. I pretty tired at the time, since I just wrapped up writing my journal entry for the night, so I wasn't thinking straight and told Samidare to come sit with me on my bed so we could talk. And as soon as we did, Samidare grabbed me and pushed me down, and she apologized for her scandalous actions, but she justified them by saying that in case something happened in the second day of the operation to either of us (I think Kiyoshimo's death was on her mind while she was saying this), she wanted to at least, and I quote, "become a woman". A line straight out of an adult visual novel, for sure, maybe something like Majikoi or Shuffle, but hey, that's what she said, I'm not trying to make things up. I almost thought she was gonna go full yandere, because I remember not being able to move my shoulders that she was pinning down, and the rest...well, it's just like in an ero doujin. I'm sure you've all read hentai doujins before. I know I have...the confessions of a twenty-three-year-old naval officer sure are strange.

Towards the end, Samidare asked for a hug, and when I asked what the occasion was, she just blushed and said she just wanted one. So I pulled her up to my lap and hugged her, patting her head all nice 'n cuddly. There's something up with her hair, I swear. It's like it's always cool, and it was really nice to let the folds of her hair drape against my arms. I then subconsciously started fondling her hair. It's like when I'm around pets, like dogs or cats mainly, and if they're interested in hanging around with me, I typically pick 'em up and start petting them, maybe give 'em a scratch or two behind the ears just the way they like it, and they seem to be cool with it. So I started sort of doing the same with Samidare. It started out fine - Samidare gave me a little giggle when I first started doing it. But as soon as I gave the bottom of her hairline at the top of the back of her neck a gentle scratch, she, well...let's just say I found her weak spot. So naturally, she gave a different reaction to it, and we both realized it at the same time, so it felt pretty awkward for a few seconds before we both laughed at our reactions.

Then, Samidare said that it was okay if I wanted to do it with her again, right then and there, in my office. I denied it right away, since I'm not about to pull a Bill Clinton and get caught with my pants down (literally) and get the two of us in deep, deep shit. And then she gave me that whole look, the typical "oooohhh, but why nooooot?" look that I've seen plenty a girlfriend give her respective boyfriend. Some things don't change even across cultures.

"What kind of a guy refuses to sleep with a girl who loves him?" she accused me while pouting. Uh, dense motherfuckers, like Ichika, I suppose.

Because she insisted, I told her that it would be better for her to come to my room tonight. My room is a bit ways away from the dorm, while the girls pass by my office all the time. So she settled for that instead.

Once the rest of the fleet got up, we spent the rest of the time playing the vidya gaems in Shinsengumi and planning out Urakaze's and Akagi's belated launch day parties, since, because of the training and preparations for Operation Rising Sun, we didn't get a chance to celebrate them. We're thinking of maybe celebrating them when we go to Emerald Beach next Monday and having a beachside barbeque or something, and tomorrow we're going to go to town to buy the fleet some casual clothes, since they only have extra sets of their usual uniforms for clothes. Big, Deimos, Sanford, and Hank found out that I'd been training my fleet in the art of Ultra Street Fighter IV, so I was subject to much of their salty complaining when Murakumo, Takao, Yayoi, Sazanami, and Kitakami all OCV'd Seal Team Six at it. I just gave them a villainous victory grin in response to troll them.

I hear knocking at the door...probably Samidare. I've already set the alarm for early in the morning so that Samidare can sneak back into her dorm without having anyone else know what we were doing tonight. It feels weird, having a dirty little secret like this...just for now.