“Having just returned from visiting the Lexington museum in Corpus Christi, which also has small sections about both CA-30 and CL-81 Houstons and miniature of CV-8 Hornet, I had a question regarding ships in WWII that share names. Are you planning on doing anything to differentiate them in name, or will they just have the same name in the same way that John or Mary are common names?”

You guys have seen this one, but it’s worthwhile to post it again to illustrate my point. This is really a matter of identity.

Here, Pennsy is obviously trolling Sanny. Those are (probably) cosplay pictures, but the general point is pretty clear. Even if all those are different “Pennsy’s” (which they aren’t), Pennsy is a Pennsy is Pennsy. Putting on a funny hat doesn’t make Pennsy not a Pennsy, and putting on a swimsuit doesn’t make a Pennsy more Pennsy.

“Where’s Pacific’s next major event?”

Taiwan went well. Probably the Chinese ones next. Zero’ll be coming to the US for AnimeBoston. I’ll probably put up an announcement soon regarding that.

Oh, do you mean in-universe? No comment. 🙂

“What happens when a shipgirl goes on a mission?”

This is sort of an unusual question, but I’m going to guess at what you’re actually asking.

On the mission itself, the shipgirl does whatever the mission objective may be. Generally, on your standard counter-Abyssal run, you’re looking at a very simple thing of eliminating the Abyssal in question.

The shipgirl is generally kept in touch with Avalon through a number of ways. Satellite image, two-way communications, and the like. I mean, the shipgirls themselves aren’t dumb. This isn’t like Pokemon where Mike has to tell them to fire on the enemy or run away or whatnots. He might have to remind a few girls to back off or to fight at optimal range, but that’s a comparatively rarer event.

Though, of course, STEC does watch the shipgirl’s performances. There’s plenty to be learned from each shipgirl’s way of fighting, and plenty of ways to improve after. In addition, a chance to observe the Abyssal fleet in action is always a good one, since the more you know and understand what the enemy’s capable of, the better you are at beating them.

Commander. Since two months ago, MERLIN has steadily detected low-level activity occurring during regular intervals. These bursts of Abyssal signals occur at highly irregular intervals, but always seem to accompany the deployment of abyssal beacons. Over time, we have learned to correlate these activities with our beacon-hunting activities.

Recently, however, we have noticed that certain segments of “data” (if it can be called that) have been highly repetitive. That is to say, we’ve noticed that the signals are exact matches to signals that we have captured during prior sessions. Naturally this arose our collective curiosity, as it wasn’t long before we figured that the repetition must have something to with the destruction of the beacons in question.

We’ve always known that the beacons seem to be integral in the deployment of Abyssal forces. We knew from prior experience, including recollection from our shipgirls, that the beacons allow for the Abyssals to bring in stronger and more capable units into the war. We also knew that the Abyssals are capable of subverting the resources of the planet towards the creation of its units – the initial stages of any major incursion necessitates the creation of one or more Abyssal “fortresses,” where the Abyssal Fleet uses as a combination of headquarter and eventually, a local manufacturing base.

We now believe that the beacons also serve as some sort of logistical repository. It is my opinion that the Abyssals deploy roughly half its beacons as decoys or decoy-equivalents. These serve the ordinary function of calling in the Abyssal fleet and nothing else. The remainder with the aforementioned similarities in composition are structures of a logistical nature, where we believe the Abyssals are intentionally trying to deploy and to ensure that they remain deployed on the planet for purposes unknown.

In a recent incident, however, a beacon was deployed anomalously. Rather than its ordinary form of deployment of being hidden somewhere in the deep sea, it literally crash-landed in the Mississippi delta. The malfunctioning Abyssal object was quickly terminated, but we were able to record and observe the data that it carried, and it matched signatures that we had observed previously.

We are currently working to decipher, to the extent which we are capable of, the implications and the contents of the data carried. I’ve got a feeling that this could be something big, commander. Here’s hoping that we succeed.

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