Hey Nintendo, I'm still here, playing through Advance Wars for the 7th time. I imagine I'll be here for several years still. Or forever. But hey, who's counting?

If there was one big weakness Yellow Comet possessed above all else, it was that their sizable navy did not have a relatively equal number of experienced COs to command it in battle, nor did they have a specialized naval force. Despite having the largest navy out of the four allied powers, it was still not as effective as that of Green Earth. Kanbei's personal force had the most effective ships in Yellow Comet, but only because his vessels were armed with the most expensive equipment and weaponry. Furthermore, Kanbei was probably the most experienced Yellow Comet CO when it came to commanding naval combat, but only because his schooling and training as Emperor had included it.

Sensei had no more acumen than average in naval combat, and Sonja's knowledge was also based on books, theories, and the like. Minus the use of a few battleships during the assault on the Black Hole fortress, she had no actual experience, especially not in the open seas.

Thankfully, as the Emperor's daughter stepped onto the bridge of her command carrier to take command of the situation, she noted that none of Black Hole's commanders seemed especially navy-oriented either, at least as far as could be discerned from Adder and the reports on Lash and Flak from the other countries. Then again, whichever Black Hole force has bested Green Earth had obviously defeated their navy as well, so perhaps that was about to change.

The first thing Sonja did was take stock of the enemy, which ended up being a force of jet black vessels and aircraft much smaller than she had been expecting. The enemy force may have been half of the Yellow Comet navy. Even with the first strike they had landed with a few of their submarines, the young commander couldn't see how they planned to win this engagement.

Then again, perhaps winning wasn't the point. This Yellow Comet force was the only immediate relief coming to Green Earth. As long as they were cut down to size, their effect on the current theater of war would be minimized and likely not shift the balance, at least until Orange Star and Blue Moon arrived. But considering Green Earth's dire straits, they might have been wasted by then.

Besides, Black Hole had made it pretty clear thus far that the lives of their own soldiers were forfeit if it meant achieving more victories. Whoever was in charge of the enemy fleet probably didn't care if it was all destroyed so long as Yellow Comet forces sustained enough casualties here.

Sonja's own carrier had obviously taken a blow to the starboard side, but she had no way of knowing how severe the damage was herself.

"Captain, damage report!"

"We took a torpedo to deck four ma'am! Damage control has it handled and we're still at maximum combat efficiency! Other ships in the fleet are reporting damage also; one of our carriers is dead in the water and two of our battleships are sinking! Three cruisers are down as well!"

While dismayed by the initial losses, Sonja was far more troubled by a more serious concern. "How did we get ambushed like this? There's no way this enemy fleet didn't show up on sonar! Even then, none of their battleships were spotted prior to coming within firing range?!"

To be fair, the captain looked just as confused as Sonja by the turn of events. "I'm sorry ma'am, the sonar didn't pick up anything at all! As for visual scanning, the fog was just too thick, we didn't see them until they were right on top of us!"

Sonja resisted the urge to curse, trying to maintain an image of confidence to her subordinates, even though the situation was not off to a great start. They had let their guard down, having not deployed any scout planes to keep an eye on surrounding waters. The reasoning had been that their currently limited fuel supply would need to be conserved for the initial counterattack on Green Earth soil, but they should have at least launched a few recon sorties. It was her fault for not doing so, leading to this situation now.

Perhaps it was another testament to Sonja's lack of naval aptitude, but whether it was at land or sea, she still knew the nuances of battle. She didn't have to know the specifics of ocean warfare to properly orient her fleet for the coming battle.

"Scramble all available aircraft. Issue my commands as follows; all bombers are to target enemy battleships, with fighters as escorts. Allied battleships and battle copters are to prioritize cruisers, and our cruisers and subs must prioritize enemy submarines. Have our carriers retreat behind the main line of battle after deploying aircraft. That is all."

The ship's communications officer nodded his understanding of the orders before turning to his station to actually relay them. As for the captain, he quickly gave the signal to scramble all aircraft as he began the long turn necessary to take his mostly defenseless ship from the front lines. From Sonja's view on the bridge, she was able to see the first salvo of shells from Yellow Comet battleships descend on the enemy's cruisers. Many of the explosive shells landed harmlessly in the water around their targets, but the handful that did make contact were more than enough to rip apart four cruisers with relative ease.

It occurred to Sonja that the cost of naval warfare like this was absurdly high; all the money, resources, and time it took to build a war vessel, and it could all be lost in a single shell or torpedo. That was to say nothing of the many lives onboard a vessel that could be snuffed out by something that was so seemingly small. But then, maybe the entire nature of war was how much could be lost in a mere moment.

It hadn't taken more than a moment for Sonja to lose her naivete, after all.

It wasn't long before the small patch of the ocean these ships commanded was transformed into a warzone. While entirely different from ground warfare, it was hectic in its own way. From Sonja's view on the bridge, the sky seemed to be more lead and steel than blue. The number of shells, missiles, and bombs being launched at both sides was simply staggering. Ships from both sides pulled maneuvers to avoid incoming threats, but each of them was limited by the presence of their fellow vessels.

One Black Hole ship helplessly plowed into a larger comrade when its rudder was damaged. A Yellow Comet cruiser went up in flames when a damaged fighter barreled into its decks. And an eruption of water momentarily blocked much of the view when a sub was obliterated beneath the waves.

Truthfully, Sonja found this scenario more stressful than nearly any other she had been in, at least from a self-preservation standpoint. From a tactical point of view it was unlikely their forces would lose, but she was rarely this close to the actual danger. Rather than being in an HQ dozens of miles behind the main line of conflict, she got a front row seat to the carnage; and it wasn't lost on her that carriers would be the primary target for her enemies, made clear by how many aircraft were swooping in to attack.

When a bomb splashed a little too close for comfort, Sonja decided it would be best to rearrange the battle formation a bit.

"Recall two fighter squadrons per carrier for close air defense!"

The officer she gave this order to didn't follow through immediately. "Ma'am, that won't leave our bombers with much of an escort!"

"The enemy is clearly focused on dealing damage more than preventing it. They'll probably fight to the last ship just to inflict as much damage as possible. Recall those squadrons now!"

"Yes ma'am!"

While the carriers themselves were not without anti-aircraft guns, Sonja realized they weren't the absolute best option. Even her lack of combat experience didn't stop her from understanding why shooting down a plane that was heading in your direction didn't always solve the problem. In fact, it became painfully obvious when the AA guns on her carrier tore the wing off an incoming fighter: having lost control of its descent, the pitch black aircraft failed to pull up from its attack run and simply plowed into the front on Sonja's ship.

Thankfully, the relatively tight airspace of the battlefield meant Yellow Comet fighters were soon intercepting enemy attack craft. Even though Sonja's bombers were now left with less defense, the enemy forces didn't bother shifting their focus skyward.

In fact, it was very clear that Sonja was right about the enemy's strategy. They were focused entirely on destroying as many Yellow Comet ships as possible, even at the cost of their own defense and evasion. Enemy battleships were placing themselves right in the paths of torpedoes if it meant they could land a volley on a Yellow Comet vessel. Some smaller vessels were going so far as to outright ram larger ones in hopes of sinking them. At some point, enemy aircraft stopped making attack runs and were actually attempt to barrel into Yellow Comet ships.

Sonja had definitely not been mistaken; this was a suicide task force. They were intended to die, so long as they made a lot of Yellow Comet forces die with them.

While this was certainly a tactical advantage, it was once again something Sonja was not happy about for self-preservation reasons. The enemy's reckless abandon meant they would be easy to defeat from an objective point of view. But it also meant that they were much more eager to kill their targets even at the cost of their own lives. And of course, their primary targets were the Yellow Comet carries. Sonja happened to be on one of those.

Faced with this situation, Sonja re-evaluated her understanding of Ryu's battle lust. She had convinced herself that she understood his drive to be in battle, but now she wasn't so sure. Being in the midst of this melee, knowing that any well aimed or unfortunately guided projectile could blast her frail body into messy chunks at any moment, was utterly terrifying. The only reason Sonja was able to keep a cool head was because she had been trained to. Taking command was what she was good at. It allowed her to ignore the threat to her life while she was giving orders and analyzing the battlefield. But that didn't mean the terror wasn't there.

Regardless of what had happened to him, how could Ryu want more of this? How could he possibly desire to be thrust into this kind of situation, time and time again? Sonja couldn't fathom any sane person actively wanting to be on the field of battle, where the slightest stroke of misfortune could end their life.

However, what she could fathom was the fact that Ryu had not always been this way. He'd been a normal, sane man at one point, not long in the past. Staring into this battlefield from a front row seat, this terrifying battlefield that Ryu now craved, Sonja once again realized that her actions had pushed him this far. She couldn't even comprehend the twisted desire to want this risk of death like Ryu did, but she knew that his madness was her fault.

Only now it struck her as even more horrifying than it had before. It wasn't every day that you realized that you had ruined someone's psyche beyond your own comprehension.

"Commander? Commander!"

Lost in her own thoughts, it took Sonja a moment to realize that someone was addressing her. "What? What is it?"

The officer that had addressed her motioned out towards the sea. "The enemy fleet is retreating! What are your orders?"

Truly surprised by this news, Sonja followed the gaze of her crew towards the Black Hole ships that were all quickly turning tail. Many of them were smoking and obviously damaged.

"Retreating? I thought for sure they'd fight to the last to deal as much damage as possible..."

"Should we pursue them commander?"

Definitely uneasy about the whole situation, Sonja was quick to counter that notion. "Absolutely not. I find it hard to believe that Black Hole suddenly started caring about the lives of their troops today. If we chased them we could finish that fleet off; but that's probably what they're counting on. Let them leave, but have every ship stay on high alert. Someone get me a status report on the fleet!"

"Yes ma'am!"

As bridge officers scurried to follow her orders, Sonja furrowed her brow at the rapidly fading black vessels that was the enemy fleet. Indeed, prior to today Black Hole had never retreated until they had nothing left to fight with, or until the objective they were fighting to defend was lost. That meant the commander in charge of this fleet may have been more tactically adept than his predecessors, but if this hadn't been a suicide attack fleet, why bother assaulting the Yellow Comet force at all?

It was far more likely that this was a trap, something Sonja had transmitted to her father and his ships as quickly as possible. She knew how he was about chasing down the enemy, what with samurai spirit and all.

With the fleet stuck in position doing repairs and salvaging what they could, Sonja once again found herself with several hours to spare. She did feel somewhat guilty when it came to letting her subordinates do all the work, but everything that needed to be done right now was simply outside of her jurisdiction. She was tactical military commander, it wasn't like her officers needed to be ordered to do every little thing outside of combat.

So once she had received the reports she wanted and issued standing orders to the crew, Sonja had little choice but to return to her quarters, though she had not reached it quite yet. She was walking pretty slowly, intentionally dragging out the trip so she could have more time to think.

Today's battle had been brief; so brief that she would probably file it as a mere skirmish if it were up to her. It was actually more of a hit and run on their opponents part, showing up to deal moderate damage and retreating almost immediately. By the time it was all over barely fifteen minutes had passed.

Of course, there was the serious issue of why the enemy fleet wasn't detected by sonar; engineers were looking into their equipment now, but Sonja was fairly certain that mechanical problems on their end had not been the source of the ambush. If she were willing to bet, the Emperor's daughter would have blamed Lash. She wouldn't put it past that girl to develop something that could counter sonar.

There was nothing to be done about that other than tell everyone to keep a sharper eye out from now on, and to avoid large, billowing clouds of fog. What Sonja was still focused on the battle itself.

Despite being such a brief struggle, it was the first time Sonja had ever directly been in the line of fire. She had been captured by Sturm before, of course, but no one had been shooting at her that time. There had merely been the possibility of danger. Never had she felt the abject terror of being in the middle of a war zone. Massive explosions from stray shells, passing torpedoes, aircraft careening into things with no control: the absolute chaos was what Sonja had feared the most.

How could you avoid an untimely demise if you didn't even know where it was going to come from? Being a logical person, Sonja wasn't afraid of things she could do something about. If she was killed by something she had the power to stop, then it was her own damn fault. But if your life was left up to nothing more than chance, up to whether or not a pilot died with his body leaning on the stick, what could she possibly do? Dying because of something beyond her control was one of Sonja' most rampant fears.

And yet, that was exactly what Ryu wanted more of. He actually craved that madness, that unmistakable chaos of war and possibly death. Sonja couldn't fathom that as anything other than well and truly insane. She had known before that Ryu mind was in question, but now that she had experienced what he was so addicted to firsthand, Sonja had a new understanding of just how warped the man's mind had become. How much she had wounded him.

Some small part of Sonja told her to stop blaming herself; that Ryu's lust for the risk of death was a fault of his own shortcomings. But following the battle at that fortress, following that blow he had landed on her defenseless face, Sonja had made doubly sure to look into the soldier's record.

There hadn't been a single incident of that nature prior to that day. No reports from superior officers or concerns from his comrades. No examples of recklessness or rebellion. Never had he exemplified any sort of psychotic tendency, never had he presented something that would cause those around him to question his sanity. Not before that day, at least.

The only explanation was that the events of that battle had led to this fracture. And the events of that battle played out the way they did because Sonja had made a mistake. Because she had still been playing chess, rather than commanding a war. The way Ryu was now was directly caused by what Sonja had forced upon him. She couldn't pass the blame onto anyone else.

Coming to the door to her quarters, the young woman paused only to ponder her next course of action. Maybe the wise thing to do would have been to mark him as a lost cause and ship him off to a psychiatrist or a mental ward. It was certainly a smarter decision than trying to appease his desires and substitute one addiction for another.

But then again, if she had been tackling this scenario logically this whole time, none of this would have happened in the first place. Ryu simply would have been court-martialed or worse the day he hit her. The fact of the matter was, Sonja couldn't let anyone but herself handle this situation. Some of that was guilt. Another part was stubbornness. And yet a great deal of it was an illogical attachment to a man that could hurt her both physically and emotionally. For some ridiculous reason, she couldn't leave him. Not even for the risk she was placing herself in.

With her mind made up, Sonja entered her quarters, closing the door behind her and ensuring that it was locked. As expected, Ryu was in her face almost immediately, demanding information about the battle while simultaneously stating his displeasure with being locked in here like a child. However, his demands and complaints all died in the man's throat as Sonja wordlessly began the process of shedding the entirety of her clothing.

She couldn't bear the thought of him being addicted to the chaotic, horrific possibility of death on a battlefield. That left her with only one alternative; she would ensure that he became addicted to her instead.

Sorry this is so short, but then again, that is the M.O. for this particular fic. Kinda sucks with the long update times I know, but I've barely been able to update anything in the past 3 months, never mind this.

Granted, the battle could have been longer; but let's be honest, a conflict that doesn't directly involve any named character is really just filler. There's no investment if a main character isn't actually involved, so I felt that there was no need to draw out a long conflict in which a bunch of nameless troops are dying.