SACN [Personal] Kage Yaichiro/Ketsurui Hanako COMM

[Toshiro]

TO Ketsurui Hanako-Taisa
Commanding Officer, YSS Eucharis

I hope this communication reaches you in good health and spirits...I must ask your advice, if you have it to give.

As you know, the UOC has declared independence, and I find myself being presented a choice--remain in the YSE or join the UOC. On one hand, I have my loyalty to you and the Empress, both of whom have been large personal influences on my life and career. I'd also given my life to this Army...on the other, I find that I am drawn to the political opinions in the UOC, and I have taken a daughter who may remain within it. I've seen them grow from a wrecked and battered fleet to a proud nation. I've seen history, to put it bluntly, even being present for Former Emperor Uesu's confrontation and the transfer of power.

I had hoped that I would be more decisive as a Shosa, but it seems that I still need occasional guidance. The former Taisho is pressuring me for an answer, as my skills are considered essential to the building of their new technological identity...what is your opinion?

Kage Yaichiro-Shosa
Flag Commanding Officer, UCS Yugumo II
Director, Starship Improvement Project

 

[Wes]

The best way to improve Yamatai is from within. Please stay.

-Hanako.

 

[Toshiro]

TO Ketsurui Hanako-Taisa
Commanding Officer, YSS Eucharis

While I would have agreed a short few months ago, trying to improve it from within has failed spectacularly...the quibbling of the senate against the military and the lack of change when Motoyoshi-sama became Empress were especially disillusioning to me. I feel what was discussed that day simply never materialized. Those are some of the reasons why these masses have withdrawn from Yamataian society.

I will weigh your opinion with all the other opinions I am receiving. Honestly, I wish it was legal to make an ST clone of myself, and assist both...but that is an irresponsible, illegal, and disturbing solution.

Kage Yaichiro-Shosa
Flag Commanding Officer, UCS Yugumo II
Director, Starship Improvement Project

 

[Toshiro]

TO Ketsurui Hanako-Taisa
Commanding Officer, YSS Eucharis

After a great deal of reflection and consideration, I've decided to remain in the Empire...recent events with Himiko-sama's Progressive stance have proven that you were right...the Empire CAN be changed from within. I want to help with such things, but I'm not sure where to start...perhaps politics?

I'd like to spend some time serving under you at the Eucharis, if you don't mind having a Shosa being an Engineer of all things. If my rank is too high, I'd understand...I'd like to bring Midori-san with me as a passenger, if you and she wishes...if not, I'll let her stay at a house in Kyoto with a hired hand while I am gone...but seeing you would be very good for her, I think.

Kage Yaichiro-Shosa
Unassigned

 

[Wes]

TO: Shosa Kage Yaichiro
FROM: Taisa Hanako

Yaichiro, I am greatly relieved and am pleased to have you aboard again. You are good man with good skills. Some of the memories we share are making me smile right now.

Eucharis will be staying at Yamatai overnight for a brief shore leave and departing after lunch tomorrow. Please be aboard by then.

 

[Toshiro]

TO Ketsurui Hanako-Taisa
Commanding Officer, YSS Eucharis

I'm delighted to acknowledge...I will bring Midori-san as well, thought she might be a passenger for a time more than a Samurai...still, I feel it'll be good for her to see you again.

I'll look for a home in Kyoto to purchase in the meantime, assuming they aren't all taken. I have left my residence in Jiyuu to the possession of my daughter.

Kage Yaichiro-Shosa
YSS Eucharis

 

[Toshiro]

TO Ketsurui Hanako-Shosho
Commanding Admiral, 1XF Squadrons

I hope this communication finds you and the Eucharis' crew in good health. It's been a while since I have left you all to serve with the Seventh Fleet. While the Mobile Fleet is a fine idea and I am appreciated there, there has been little to do since its initial setup and refit. There are other places I am needed far more. Much of my recent work has related more to the construction and design of Tsubomi than actual military duties. I've returned to the First Expeditionary Fleet once more, this time as the Commanding Officer of one of your ships -- the YSS Sakura II.

I've arrived at Gemini Star Fortress to inspect and claim command of her, and find her to be a fine ship -- though she is not quite ready for duty at this time. Those I hope to select as crew are also currently involved in combat operations, so I have time to think and stock her in the interim.

I contacted you in part to stay in touch, and also in part for your advice. Inheriting the Sakura name, even if it is the Eucharis who is the Sakura's true successor, is not something I take lightly. I look to the record you have set and find myself wondering if my command will live up to the expectations which come with her patch and name. While I don't expect any form of magic tip to make it all work or anything, I was wondering if you had any advice to pass on which would help make my command more likely to continue the successes expected of our old ship.

Kage Yaichiro-Taisa
Commanding Officer, YSS Sakura II, NG-X1-395

 

[Toshiro]

I do apologize for contacting you if you do not wish me to do so, and would like to state that if you are overly busy that you can disregard this. I won't be offended, and you aren't obligated to by the psychologist for your subordinates. You're one of the people I trust the most and have personal experience with which I speak, and may be the only one who can understand as a member of the Sakura crew.


While I think I've done well enough in a command role, and I like my crew, I find myself fundamentally unhappy. In honesty, I haven't been very happy for years. I thought that perhaps helping a new crew would help...but I find this not to be the case. I think I have realized why.


When I was created, I was burdened with an identity I knew was no longer mine, and parents which had nothing but malice for me. I had no place, so I went into the Star Army to find one. I found that place on the YSS Sakura...but then, I was taken away from it to work on something else for the Empire, and swept into the tempest that was the 5th XF situation. The YSS Sakura was lost in the meantime, and I was never able to return home. I forged a new city, commanded a ship, and saw the birth of a new nation. I began to recover, but that too was lost. I stayed with the Empire because of your encouragement to change Yamatai from within, which looking back, probably saved my position if not my life.


I returned to you, and joined the Eucharis, hoping it would be home...but it was not the Sakura. The more time went by, the more I realized it was a new generation, a new crew, and a new ship. I felt awkward and my beliefs were shaken by the abdication of the Emperor. I returned to Yamatai at a new low, and our disagreement at that time nearly destroyed me. I spent two years simply going through the motions on Yamatai, not even venturing out into space except when ordered, until you called for me.


While I started to feel better after you extended your hand to me again, the feeling of being out of place remained. As an advisor in name, I was a glorified engineer in practice. I had little function, my career was at a dead end, and I still felt more detached from you perhaps as a result of our fight or my own issues...but oddly, it was the closest to home I have felt in this decade. I felt less useful, though, and for the sake of my career, you guided me forward, knowing that I couldn't go backward or stay still forever.


The Seventh Fleet did not provide what I needed and I command a ship again, but even now I am not at home on my own ship. I realize now that it has always boiled down to that. I've always served on or commanded ships with at least some tenuous connection to the Sakura when given a choice. I've built ships and cities for others to work and live. A school for students to grow properly in. I provided a place for the first Jo Midori to live when no one else would have her and now do so for her children. I realize now that it hasn't ever been about my career. It's been about finding my place in the universe all along, and my home was destroyed when the Sakura was lost. Never in my life have I been as content as when on that ship, even aboard her successors.


Now that the second Jo Midori has been murdered in such a cruel way and I have worked to welcome her children into Yuuko-san's old home, the home of their grandfather, I have come to that realization. The more I look around, the more I see that the Army and Empire have changed, in some ways for better and in some for worse. On a level I am proud of the progress made, the wars won. My accomplishments, command, and wealth ring hollow though...my home is forever in the past, and if there is anything I have learned by my returns to the Eucharis, I cannot move backward. I'm starting to believe that I've lost my place in the Army altogether, and find myself tempted to throw it all away...but I don't know where I could ever go. I've made places where others can belong, but I'm still searching.


How do you deal with such things? You loved that home as I do. You've seen faces come and go, you've been able to make new attachments. When you met the first Jo Midori after she returned to Yamatai from her POW days and regarded her without as much outward emotion as I expected, I was puzzled...but I now realize it was because you'd mourned and moved on. Out of sheer necessity. Perhaps moving forward is one essential thing for a soldier and officer that I was never able to learn. I feel as though I belong on the Sakura, in YE 29, and I've long outlived my place.


Kage Yaichiro

 

[Wes]

TO: Taisa Kage Yaichiro
FROM: Shosho Hanako

For seven years my home has been the Eucharis. It's like a better version of the Sakura, although it's not all the same. I have gone through over 50 crew members during my captaincy here and recently I have lost almost all of them to crew transfers and have a new, very strange replacement crew that I am trying to break in. I think I tend to live in the present and focus on what I am doing in the now instead of the past, which holds a lot of pain for me. I am concerned and saddened to hear that you feel lost even though you are so such a highly successful officer. I wish you shared my outlook, which is that I wish I could do more. There are endless systems to chart and visit, a never-ending supply of problems to be solved, and I get frustrated that at my limitations in taking them on. I am been thinking of retiring and settling down, but find that I cannot sit on the side. There is an incredible power to change the universe that only a starship captain has. And I feel like the ship is home so intensely that when I visit Kyoto I find myself drawn back to the captain's chair when I should be enjoying my leave.

What do you plan to do?

 

[Toshiro]

TO: Shosa Ketsurui Hanako
FROM: Taisa Kage Yaichiro

Well, I think that I will be stepping aside and letting someone else take command. Someone with more ambition for their career and better suited to the role. My ambition was for Yamatai's safety in times of war, rather than the Ketsurui name or success like for some of your other former crew. I always felt such ambitions to be arrogant and cast them from my mind when the daydream ever surfaced, as they are gifts for doing one's duty well rather than things to be pursued and taken...but again, perhaps that is another part of why I am finding myself lacking and unhappy -- I lack the ambitious drive of a leader which has served you so well, and no amount of experience or skill could resolve that issue. I guess I am, at my core, a follower that leads when he has no other option for the sake of something larger and immediate.

I may ask for some time off to think, and if I can't find an answer that I feel makes sense or has a future in the Army, I may resign as an officer outright. I would certainly not keep the rank of Taisa as only 100 can exist in a fleet at a given time. I have no prospects outside of the Army as well either, though I've enough wealth to seek whatever future awaits me.