Azur Lane: Under Development

Chapter 6: Entrapped

"I have news."

"The obvious question is whether or not they're good news or bad news. I'm betting on bad."

"Well, you'd be wrong. It's good news. It turns out that your candidate has been bringing in results."

"Oh?"

"Oh, indeed. Not a single loss under his belt so far. Quite a consistent one, he is."

"Yeah, he was easily top of his class. The other issues, though..."

"They haven't reared their head at all."

"That's your gamble. I give you the odds, you do the bets."

"I think I'm confident in my choice."

"Very well. Whatever happened to you rejecting it initially?"

"Upon testing, he's been more than adequate. Abilities cannot be accurately measured in a vacuum. People lie, and most often to themselves. So you mix them in with other stimulated factors. Stress. Pressure. Rewards. It so happens we were at our limit and happened to guess. And guess what? We were lucky."

"I must fundamentally disagree with gambling everything on chance."

"Chance is always a factor. Yes, every single variable in the world can be measured to a certain degree, and a call can be made which is more likely to happen. But you can measure the distance and mass, take psychological evaluations and blood work, agonize over the direction of the wind and cloud cover, and you'd still be wrong."

"Better than chance, I'd say."

"If you can freeze time, let me know. We can then spend eternity over every minor decision and weigh every single consequence together without time constraints."

"You're misconstruing me. I just don't want you flipping a coin with world-endangering decisions."

"Haha. I either guess right or guess wrong. Fifty-fifty chance."

"And all the seriousness of the argument has been thrown out the window. You're infuriating."

"Right back at you, fella. You're too serious."

—

The commander blinked awake at the crack of 4 AM. The room and the bit of skylight were still dark as midnight. Despite this, he groaned and stared at the ceiling. Not because he was an early riser, but because he knew that it was pointless trying to go back to sleep. His mind was always running on jet speed whenever he woke. The tiredness from getting only four hours of sleep would take its toll around the afternoon. Like it always does.

That was the norm for his sleep schedule. Get inadequate sleep at night, then have a throbbing headache and heavy eyebags throughout the day until he passed out mid-afternoon. And then after a three hour nap, he'd be completely incapable of going to bed at a reasonable time.

Some might joke that he was making value of getting two days in one, but to be quite frank, the two-half days barely added up to a complete one.

This morning, his mind was full of scenarios from yesterday. Akagi, Kaga, and Tirpitz. In that order.

Why couldn't life be simple? Misunderstandings upon misunderstandings, pride and self-interest. He considered letting the entire matter with Akagi and Kaga die out over time. All things heal over time, right? Was that how the saying went?

Besides, the flames of yesterday had puffed out overnight. Easily, the entire matter with Tirpitz could be dropped. It wasn't his job to interfere. Just as he didn't want nosy people in his business, he could apply the same philosophy to Bismarck and Tirpitz. It'd just cause a messy headache for everyone involved. Doubly so, because Bismarck was the de facto leader of Iron Blood. No, he didn't want an entire country's fleet to fall into disarray by his hands. His job was to command. To move little icons around in a holographic field like pieces on a chessboard.