"Belfast, Edinburgh intercept those two. Belfast go after the one on the left while Edinburgh, you take the other one." Emir ordered and the two maid immediately went into action, charging at the other ships.
Clashing with them the two maids kept their opponents in place, as a power struggle now occured in the middle of the blue waters, with one trying to push the other back.
"Hello Ms. Cleveland, long time no see." Belfast politely greeted, to which the blonde responded with a wide smile.
"Yeah, it's been a while Belfast. See you haven't gotten rusty!" Cleveland then broke the deadlock, by swinging her arms upwards before letting her cannons fire a couple of blasts.
Not having enough time to dodge, Belfast hastily crossed her arms in an attempt to shield herself from the strike. A small explosion occurred, from the impact of the bullets. Out of the explosion came a skidding Belfast, who managed to withstand the attack.
"A maid must never be rusty in her duties, this is one of them." Belfast snarkily replied before firing several rounds at Cleveland using her arm mounted guns.
Cleveland skated across the waters outmaneuvering the oncoming hailstorm of highly explosive rounds. During this, Cleveland was unaware that Emir was also giving Belfast different commands on how best to deal with her through the earpieces they had. When she saw the maid had stopped firing one of her guns, she became worried as to what she was scheming.
Pulling out a couple of torpedoes, Belfast then threw them directly at the direction of where Cleveland was going, whilst still following her tail with her arm gun. Seeing the attack, Cleveland quickly changed her direction, moving in between the attack, but it seemed that this was anticipated by her opponents when she saw another set of torpedoes charging at her quickly. Unfortunately for the Union cruiser, she couldn't dodge this one, resulting in a massive explosion that caused several waves to ripple across the waters.
Watching from the docks, many were impressed by how Belfast managed the attack. Though most of them probably didn't know that the attack was orchestrated by Emir behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, over at Edinburgh's fight, she wasn't fairing as well as her younger sister. The ship she was versing was Montpelier, Cleveland's own younger sister.
"Wahh~!" cried the maid as she tried to dodge several flying projectiles that were being hurled at her.
Seeing the distress the ship was in, Emir commanded Edinburgh via the earpiece: telling her to first calm down, then to anticipate where the attacks were gonna land. Following her orders, the cruiser scanned the incoming attacks, but rather than predict where they were going to hit, she ended up panicking once again before zipping past the several small geysers that were forming around her.
Over at the command ship, Emir was watching as the light cruiser continued to glide around the water wailing at how relentless Montpelier was. Watching the entire thing unfold made Emir wonder how exactly Edinburgh managed to perform under actual combat.
Emir tried to look for ways to make the scared cruiser's job easier. So he placed his attention on Montpelier, looking at how she was attacking. Emir noticed that she had torpedoes mounted but not yet used. Quickly getting Edinburgh's attention, the young Regis told Edinburgh to shoot at the other ship's torpedoes.
"Eh? Shoot them?!" the cruiser asked in shock, not knowing if her order was insane or genius.
"If you can't do multiple attacks and chip away at her, then all we need is one good shot that will do lots of damage." Emir explained, kinda hoping that what he said just made sense.
Though unsure of the command, Edinburgh still went through with it with conviction: turning her body 180 and aiming low at Montpelier's before sending a stream of bullets at the mounted torpedoes. Due to how focused she was on firing at Edinburgh, Montpelier didn't realise what her opponent's plan was and didn't care whether the bullets were actually going to hit her or not. This made it easier for one of Edinburgh's bullets to then hit the torpedoes causing them to explode.
Montpelier was then consumed by a cloud of flames that roared high into the sky. Seeing the results of the attack, it shocked many people who were watching even those who were in the middle of fighting, as well as the two commanders.
Edinburgh, worried about Montpelier, rushed close to the dying flames trying to look for the cruiser. After much of the fire had disappeared, Montpelier jumped out and fell to her knees, panting heavily. Kneeling next to her, Edinburgh checked if the cruiser was ok as well as apologising for damaging her. Though the other ship wasn't even mad at her, rather she was actually impressed with the attack, even saying that it was brilliant.
"You thought that attack was brilliant?" the maid asked with tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.
"Yeah, that was quite the surprise. You did good, Edinburgh." Montpelier complimented with a tiny smile.
Over at the Emir's commanding ship, the boy was breathing a sigh of relief since his plan didn't cause Montpelier to sink. He then heard a giggle coming out of the ship, making him look back out into the water. Akagi, who had not moved from her place since the start of the exercise, was watching the others in amusement.
"You seem to be quite skilled in commanding those two. For someone who hasn't had training." the carrier teased.
"Well I always talked to grandpa, plus me and sis always played chess, so strategy is something we've always trained at." Emir replied bashfully with a shrug.
"Oh, that must be why the commander was able to beautifully give orders on how to push the sirens back yesterday." The fox-eared woman slyly mentioned.
Nervously chuckling, Emir stayed silent upon hearing the events of the day before. He didn't want to shame his sister, so he just let the idea of her giving the commands play on, not like he wanted the attention anyways.
Meanwhile over at Felix and Enterprise, the former commander was smirking at the sight in front of him, which the carrier caught.
"Is this going the way you wanted it to, sir?"
"Ever the sharp insight Enterprise. What do you think about Emir's methods?" Felix asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the exercise.
"Has he given orders?" Enterprise questioned confused.
"Yes, Emir's orders were made to compliment both the ship and the situation they were in. Take Edinburgh as a prime example just now: I could tell that Emir tried to calm her down due to her panic, when that didn't work he appealed to her sense of duty. He knew that Edinburgh would be too nervous to fight head on against the stringent Montpelier, so he gave her an order that suits her; to shoot once only but deal a grave amount of damage." Felix explained.
Hearing her old commander speak in such a manner, brought a small smile to the carrier's face. It has been some time since she has had the pleasure of being under his command. She returned her attention to the exercise and saw Cleveland slowly making her way to them. Even when she had taken a tremendous amount of damage, she still managed to get herself back to Felix and Enterprise, where she then just sat on the water laughing at the fact she just got destroyed by Belfast.
"You did well Cleveland, stay here and rest now," Felix gently ordered to which the shipgirl just saluted at him in response.
Felix then turned to Enterprise, telling her its up to her to do the rest. With a silent nod, Enterprise moved forward with her bow in hand.
When Belfast saw that Enterprise was making her way to them, she immediately returned to Emir to inform him. Hearing that Enterprise was advancing somewhat brought a small drop of sweat to fall from Emir's forehead. He's heard many stories about Enterprise's strength from his grandfather, he knows she's not to be taken lightly. Quickly trying to think about ways to survive an onslaught from the eagle union carrier, Emir began to rack his mind for any strategies but found himself struggling from the fact that he didn't know how carriers fought in the first place.
"Panicking won't get you anywhere, young man." said a certain fox eared carrier, who also made her way to the front of her acting commander.
"I will hold her off, so you better think of something. I refuse to lose to Enterprise." confidence oozed out of Akagi as she turned her head to give Emir a small snide smile.
As Enterprise drew closer to her target, she noticed that Akagi was on her path: arms crossed, with her fingers pinching several red shikigamis. Stopping her advancement, Enterprise gave the sakura ship a smile, before readying her bow.
With a small giggle, Akagi readied herself as well. Though even when they were ready to fight, none of the carriers moved. Suddenly the shadow Enterprise's eagle flew over Akagi's head, making her turn her attention to it rather than Enterprise. Taking this opportunity, Enterprise released the string of her bow back and fired a couple arrows at Akagi, which then turned into fighter planes. Hearing the roaring engines, Akagi quickly looked back at Enterprise and saw the advancing planes, so she threw several of her shikigamis towards the charging aircrafts. In a burst of flames, the paper shikigamis turned into fighter planes as well, shooting down several of Enterprise's planes.
Though Enterprise was not done with her attack, she glided to the side avoiding some of Akagi's fighters. She then aimed her bow high into the sky then consecutively shot five arrows into the clouds. After reaching its peak the arrows began to drop transforming into dive bombers this time, which then carpet bombed the area around Akagi causing several towers of water to burst all around her.
Keeping her footing as stable as she could, the Sakura ship did her best to avoid the pillars. Afterwards she threw three more Shikigamis towards Enterprise's direction but this time the planes came out as torpedo bombers. Sticking close to the ground, the torpedo bombers kept shooting at the incoming fighters that were trying to prevent them from reaching Enterprise, though this did not go well with the torpedoes managing to wipe out the small group that was challenging them. When they had reached their target the torpedo bombers released their load, sending large clumps of high speed torpedoes at Enterprise.
In order for her to escape the attack, Enterprise jumped up and summoned a squadron below her; which she then rode high into the sky. Akagi watched in annoyance as the eagle union carrier began to maneuver around her. She tried to follow the plane's movements but unfortunately, it was moving too quickly to determine where to send her planes for a good strike.
Meanwhile, Emir watched the fight intently, making sure to read as much of Enterprise's moves as possible. He noticed that both carriers could only control one type of plane each time, so he predicted that Enterprise would not be able to summon any other plane apart from the type she was currently riding. That said, even if they could knock one plane out, she could easily transfer to another one. He then remembered something that his grandfather told him about Enterprise's strategies when it came to aerial combat.
"Enterprise was a natural fighter, both her skills in aerial and ground combat proved that. However, even she had her weaknesses…"
Remembering this, Emir called out to Akagi through a headset. He then gave her some orders, only to be questioned by the carrier.
"Do you honestly think I will do such a thing?" she complained.
"I know that its a crazy idea, and you can shout at me later. But if you don't want to lose to Enterprise then you'll have to trust me on this one." Emir pleaded. There was a brief silence before Akagi answered that she will follow the order.
Taking out a large number of shikigamis and tossed them into the sky; summoning several planes that were flying upwards. At first, Enterprise thought that this was an attack so she readied herself, but she became confused when the planes dodged her completely before suddenly turning tail, heading straight down to Akagi. Watching the planes, Enterprise saw that several large bombs had been dropped to hit Akagi!
This came as a huge shock to everyone watching, it didn't take a genius to know that if those bombs were to hit their marks then Akagi could be heavily injured.
"What a crazy boy." Akagi closed her eyes as the bombs made contact with the water, creating a massive towering collection of water that covered the aircraft carrier.
Speechless at the events that had just occurred, Enterprise stood on her plane not moving a muscle, eyes glued at the large wall of water in front of her.
This spectacle distracted her enough that she didn't have time to react when a lone fighter plane rushed out of the water and started to shoot her planes down, including the one she was on.
Falling to the ground, Enterprise was luckily caught by another plane, which she recognised wasn't one of hers. Hovering just above the water, Enterprise hopped off the plane before it burst into flames disappearing from existence.
Facing the direction of where Akagi was, Enterprise was shocked to see that within the collection of water stood the Sakura aircraft carrier. Her arms crossed with a small smirk. She then pointed above her white haired opponent, causing the opposing carrier to look up. Enterprise's eyes widened in shock when she realised that she was now surrounded by a squadron of Sakura Empire aircrafts, each one had their turrets ready to shoot upon command.
Figuring that she had lost, Enterprise tilted her hat forwards to cover her eyes slightly. She dematerialised her bow then raised her hands as a sign of her surrendering the fight.
Every ship who was watching was in awe, they didn't expect the strongest aircraft carrier of Eagle Union to lose. As for the Regis family, wide smiles were plastered on both Azure and Felix's faces, while Zander was a mixture of shock and happiness.
Felix and his granddaughter then gave each other a quick glance, with Azure even shooting her grandfather a thumbs up while he nodded back at her.
Back at Emir's side, the boy gave a huge sigh of relief when he found out that his plan worked. He was honestly worried about it as well, one wrong aim of the bombs could result in Akagi being hurt, he and the carrier had to put a lot of faith in the aim or else their win would've been a loss.
"Young master." called a certain maid from the side of the ship. Peeking out to the water, Emir was met with a smiling Belfast, who congratulated him on a good job, to which he gave her a thumbs up along with a smile in response.
Returning to land, Emir and his fleet met up with everyone else, at which he was then showered with praises from all of the shipgirls for his win. Walking through the crowd, Felix followed by Azure were next to congratulate the young man. Felix then turned to the crowd and announced Azure's replacement.
"As you can see, your new commander, who is here to replace Azure while she goes to retrain herself, is more than capable in leading all of you. Some of you may know him, most of you will not, so I will introduce him to you: This is my grandson, Emir Regis and very soon he will be your new commander. Treat him well."
Emir's jaw dropped to the floor when he was introduced, he hadn't heard of this!
Azure could already tell just from looking at her brother that they were in for an earful.
There we go, a full action packed chapter, hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks by that way to everyone who gave me an insight on what they think happened to Yorktown, I think I'm going to be taking liberties in this story just in case I misinterpreted her sinking. So already in advance I apologise if it is wrong because I actually interpreted Yorktown's death as a permanent death and the summoned ships aren't obviously canon to the actual story-line. But I know that ever since the anime came out, Yorktown was seen to be alive, so I already believe I am not a hundred percent accurate.
That said, I can only hope you guys aren't too bothered by that and will still tune in for future chapters. But I'll still accept the fact that it won't be to everyone's taste and that there will be comments pointing that out.
I think that's all for me this chapter, as usual feel free to tell me all your thoughts about the chapter, positive and/or negative.
Thank you all so much for reading and I hope to see you all next chapter :D