Commander's Rounds

Entry 86: The Course of Time

The commander finished looking over the reports. "Thank you, Albert. Now, before you go, is there anything else I might need to know about? Even minor things."

Albert stood at attention, as he knew no other way to do so in front of the commander. "Sir, it has come to my attention that there are some days in the week on which Shinano does a livestream. I believe Long Island or Archerfish talked her into it."

The commander blinked. "What does she livestream? She's not known for being the most active person."

"Correct sir." He began. "It would appear to be a livestream of her sleeping when she takes one of her more solitary naps."

The commander paused. "...What kind of following does that have?"

Albert quickly responded. "She started a couple of months ago, and has one and a half million subscribers and rising, sir. She has taken care to scrub any locational data from her stream."

"Huh." He went, wondering exactly what kind of large audience a sleeping Shinano might attract. "Anything else?"

"Yes sir." He said. "I have been tracing the course of Taihou's income. While the ships are paid out of our operating budget, ships are also given an allowance to keep them in finery. However, as Taihou is considered something of an embarrassment, I checked to see where her extra income comes from, considering the expensive materials she uses to make her clothes."

"And?"

Albert hesitated, and the commander feared what unsavory activities Taihou might have gotten up to. "...This may seem unbelievable, but at some point in the past Taihou had written, illustrated, and published a children's book."

The commander slowly put the paper he was holding back on his desk. "Albert, I know you're trustworthy, but I'm not sure how much I'm willing or ready to believe that."

"Understandable." Albert said, and then took out a rather colorful book titled 'The Phoenix Princess.', and placed it on the commander's desk. "That is why I took it on myself to acquire a copy."

The commander picked it up. It was excellently illustrated, and he took a quick read-through. It was a fairy tale about a somewhat familiar-looking beautiful princess who had been trapped and kept prisoner in the castle of a pair of evil fox-women who told her how stupid and useless she was every day, and her only friend was a white crane who visited her window. Eventually, the white crane brought news of her troubles to a clever and handsome prince of a kingdom by the sea, who dropped everything to rescue her from the schemes of her vulpine tormentors and make sure she was showered with all the love she could have ever wanted.

As far as the commander was concerned, it was pretty on the nose, but from the outside, it wasn't anything especially strange. Taihou did have a way with words, but... "I'm just wondering how she learned to paint so well so quickly."

"While it's theoretically possible she learned on her own, the date of publication is after Tosa joined us here." Albert said. "I believe that would sufficiently explain things."

"Fair enough." He handed the book back to Albert. "But I don't think it will do to have this kind of thing on the island.

"Understood, sir." Albert looked at a stack of papers that was on the commander's desk. "May I ask what those are?"

"A "gift" from our acquaintance, Admiral Hunt. It's a list of candidates for the job that I have right now." The commander looked at the stack. "A list of names, ranks, and the official reasons for rejection, as well as some more... Internal papers. He thinks of it as an apology for not informing me of something that was happening on this base back when I started."