Well, here we are, the 10th chapter of Demons Reigns. We're used up many more chapters than I thought, but we're still making good time; perhaps I'll keep updating this through December, breaking my norms to finish this before 2025. Things were a bit tight with this one; there were some things that I had to remove for the sake of narrative flow, but the finished product was something I could be happy with. However, I wish I had made some improvements; I just didn't quite know where.

Also, I watched the sixth episode of Arcana, and yeah, I can see why people said that it felt rushed. I was really expecting to see more of what the characters did after the explosive end, which was episode 3. Still, instead, they just talk about it, with little shown. I don't know; maybe they're calling this the final season that knee-capped what they could do, as each episode is twice the length of most other animated stuff.

Chapter 10: Cyclone FLEIJA

In the skies over the vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean and its icy, turbulent waters, the battle waged on without any sign of ceasing or any pause. On the seas, ships of Britannia, manned by sons and daughters of the empire, fought tooth and nail against vessels of the UFN and those traitors who sided with the man who destroyed their capital and spilled the blood of millions. On both sides, they dutifully listened to commanders, relayed changes to the battlefield, and carried out their orders.

Beneath the waves, Portmans carried out their duty, even if that meant braving enemy depth charges and anti-submarine ordnance. In return for these brave souls charging through waters that could end up being their watery graves, they unleashed torpedoes onto enemy ships, breaking their formation while scoring some hits now and then; already, 4 enemy ships had been knocked out of action, one perilously close to sinking as its stern sunk deeper below the water.

But each time Portmans broke through, at least 10% of them didn't return, and despite the vast number the Britannians had come with, these weren't losses they could sustain for long.

For Leila, this just made the fight all the harder as her command ship shook under the force of a torpedo exploding close by, having barely been intercepted before it could blow the 3rd hole in their hull. She couldn't afford to worry about going down; she had to trust those who built the vessel to take a beating, and the crew that manned it could keep her steel body afloat; they had no choice but to.

'We've already lost their fellow carrier, the Elizabeth, and 2 destroyers, the Montgomery and Bernand.' Leila glanced out the window as a UFN fighter was tagged by their CIWs and burst into flames before crashing into the water around half a kilometer; no ejection happened.

Once the saying Britannia ruled, the waves meant something, and when Napolean crossed the English Channel and took the British Isles, the remnants of the old Britan, having fled to the Americas, vowed to never let that happen again; that was why the longest time, there was a stalemate and uneasy peace between the E.U and Britannia, the former had the superior army, but they had the superior navy.

But ever since Charles came to power on the back of knightmares, a primarily land-based unit, Britannia had slacked off when it came to its navy, new projects canceled for future projects like the Glasgow and Sunderland, upkeep on their existing fleet suffered because of the introduction of the Portman and special projects like those that spawned the Lancelot, Modred, and Tristan. The irony wasn't lost on her that 2 of those machines were now enemies.

'When I was in the E.U., Britannia neglecting its once proud navy was good, if only those in power capitalized on that instead of trying to match Britannia's knightmare corp.' Leila thought to herself as she gave the order to turn to port and prep their 4th air squad for take-off as soon as they finished rearmament. Even if the force that faced them wasn't top-tier vessels, they had experienced crew and, more worryingly, numbers as they outnumbered them nearly 3 to one.

"You better get ready soon, Lelouch." She said to herself before turning to the captain. "Engage that squadron of enemy bombers, use Sam turrets 1 through 6, and tell Timothy and Gunther to do the same with turrets 1 through 4 and 1 through 8, respectively."

"Yes, my Lord!" Following her orders was the scream of missiles, 18 launching into the air, leaving trails of white smoke in their wake. Leila watched, refusing to look away as the squadron of enemy fighters scattered, all discharging flares but didn't fool all the missiles. She watched unflinchingly as 5 of them found their make, and 5 more souls were lost that day. Her fist tightened, but she said nothing; she would say nothing to disrespect the efforts of the men she commanded who celebrated the confirmed kills or the men who had to die.

Higher above things, things were just as chaotic as bullets, grenades, missiles, and energy weapons flying against both sides. Flying ships, marvels of the modern didn't engage one another from beyond visual range but acted like the ships of the line of the old. They might not have lined up to exchange broadside volleys, but they behaved like them. Schneizel and Lelouch quickly adapted their ancestors' naval tactics, adjusting them for modern weapons and communications.

Lelouch supposed that such an analogy would turn knightmares into sailors that would swing and jump onto each other's ships, as in this battle, their knightmare forces were proving to be the deciding factor. The Britannian units, namely the Gareths, gave the 99th emperor the edge regarding ranged assaults and suppression. Still, he knew full well that Black Knights were trained extensively for small squad tactics and close-ranged battle, which was where his Vincent mass production models were falling short against the enemy Akatsuki units.

"We've lost the Sussex," Cecile reported as another Caerleon went down, having been swarmed by enemy units that attacked it like a swarm of angry bees.

"Reinforce its position with the remains of the 8th squad and the 5th knightmare platoon. News on our flanks?" Lelouch kept a level head, his eyes on the bigger picture being shown to him and the rest of the bridge crew.

"They've been slowed, but they're making progress. It's our vanguard that's having issues." Cecile replied, to which Lelouch nodded. The scientist and Emperor believed Kallen and Suzaku would achieve that, even if they faced challenges against Modred and Tristan.

'Those two.' Lelouch allowed him the mercy to think about Anya and Gino and acknowledge that they were good people. One of them was that he couldn't be sure about Anya for the longest time; she was merely a pawn to some parasite. It was just a reminder of a lesson he learned back at Narita, the value of the lives of those he killed. He didn't want either dead but wouldn't let himself or those under him pull their punches.

The moment passed, and he was back in commander mode. "It won't be long; all they must do is hold out," Lelouch replied, switching the screens to show how the two battlefields looked when overlaid. Despite the difficulty of her position, Leila was performing wonderfully; it would just be a little longer before their ships were in position.

Away from the bridges of these two command ships, the hundreds of knightmares still remained in combat readiness. One such unit was the Zangetsu, which slashed through a desperate missile volley from an armless Gareth. Driving his blade into a Gareth, Tohdoh felt no satisfaction at the death of a Britannian, as this wasn't like it once had been; things had changed far too much. "These poor foolish soldiers fooled just we were." He said as he forced his blade to slice the machine in two, destroying it before he jetted over to the next one.

With Xingke, he had cleared a path for himself. He pulled back the trigger, and his unit's charged particle cannon came online as he targeted a large enemy ship. Pulling the trigger, his blast of energy tore through the skies, taking out several knightmares unfortunate enough to get in the way before hitting its mark; just like the others, its shields proved no match as its starboard side blew up.

"A Logres class has been destroyed, along with half its knightmares." A bridge crew member on the Ikaruga reported this loss in the enemy forces, leaving the enemy without its Logres-class ships as the first had already been destroyed, leaving just the Avalon in the center ranks. At the same time, the other 4 remaining Caerleon-class were stretched thin, supporting the Britannian advance on their flanks.

"This is the moment; smash both wings," Schneizel ordered, quick to see the advantage.

"Pulling forces out of the line of fire." One of the Black Knight bridge crew called out as orders were sent to units in question, who either dived to the side, ascended, or descended, leaving Xianglin to handle things from there.

"Bow-mounted hadron scatter cannon charging. Power cap limiters deactivated." To the bow of the Ikaruga, its fearsome weapon caps were released, ominous red energy was building up, and the build-up was detected by the Britannian forces as Lelouch ordered their ships into evasive action.

"Ready to fire." Xianglin nodded at that, seeing the charge reach a critical mass.

"Target both enemy wings; now fire!" With her order, twin blasts of massive hadron cannon energy were unleashed, leading to dozens of Britannian units being caught in the explosion and simply erased as the intense heat and plasma cooked metal and flesh to boiling point. For Lelouch, he closed his eyes as he heard the continuous ear-piercing beep of units being changed to 'lost' in seconds.

"Status." He asked, even as his bridge crew were panicking over it.

"We've lost 40% of our remaining forces in that single attack. Our wings are now isolated!" Cecile reported that Lelouch remained silent and calm despite the fire strikes. His enemies felt like they had scored a critical victory, with the enemy split into 3 smaller groups; even if the Knights of the Round and the Guren remained in play, they would sooner rather than later burn through their energy fillers with the way things were going, they won't have enough vessels left in the air to return to for resupply.

Ohgi resolved to make Lelouch pay for all he had done, from deceiving his people to geass Kallen into betraying them. Meanwhile, Diethard aboard the Damocles' bridge enjoyed the show as Lelouch was a master strategist. Still, like many famous generals before him, it seemed this had found his breaking point against Schneizel.

"It seems that Zero has badly underestimated the fighting strength of the Black Knights." He noted Schneizel and Kanon feeling the same but keeping it themselves in case Lelouch had a trick up his sleeve.

Schneizel would be correct in that assumption, as Lelouch finally saw their naval forces get into position directly below the Black Knights' aerial forces. "Impressive, but predictable," Lelouch noted as he contacted his second in command. "Leila." Her face appeared on the screens. She looked stressed but in control.

"Understood. Be advised; payloads are inbound, danger close. All forces be advised that the payloads are inbound, danger close." Leila confirmed as aboard the remaining vessels, their silo doors opened up for the first time, as in the confusion of the battle, and the mass use of Portmans had concealed a critical detail from their enemies. Not a single anti-ship missile had been launched thus far into the battle.

With Leila's order, dozens of missiles screamed as they took the air—20 of them—but they were far larger than the typical ones, and for a good reason.

"What the?" Ohgi said that as the Black Knights' surface ships reported this, and the aerial vessels confirmed it, the Ikaruga saw 20 missiles coming for them.

"They're targeting us? From below?" Xianglin asked. As such, the move was unexpected but quickly countered. Even then, why would they use such a small number? To their shock, the missiles' exteriors blew off less than km from their marks, revealing them as carriers for smaller, short-range but high-yield missiles. Once they were shown, the dozens of smaller missiles fired, turning what had been 20 to over 100 missiles that slammed into the Black Knight's relatively unprotected underbellies.

Knightmares and CIWs tried to counter them, but when one explosion occurred, the bright flash of their sakuradite-tipped warheads blinded cameras and most sensors, allowing a dozen or two to be lost and allowing the bulk of the assault to pass through.

"Evade them!" Minami called out as warnings sirens sounded.

"We can't, they're too many!" Someone yelled as the missiles slammed into their forces, lighting up the sky in bright pink explosions that shook people to their bodies. Machines directly hit were wiped out; those caught in the blast range might have survived, but their machines were so badly wrecked that they simply fell out of the sky.

"All forces, Deploy radiant shields!" Tohdoh tried calling out, having done the same for the Zangetsu, which was put to rest when one slammed into his side, knocking his head into the side of his cockpit as his machine screamed at him as its shields were pushed to their limits. Meanwhile, to his rear, the Ikaraga was hit by several of them, the blast overwhelming its shields, their generators catching fire before de-activating.

Lelouch silently watched as dozens of enemy units and several of their ships were taken out. But he wouldn't give them a moment to breathe, as the next volley had already been sent up. The first was meant to strike at their central, but this one leaned a little closer to their side.

Most of their ships had overworked their shields in the first volley, so while dozens more knightmares were destroyed or otherwise knocked out, the Emperor watched as several enemy ships, including the one he once called his flagship, started to face towards as they began to fall from the skies, covered in flames and smoke.

"Anya!" Gino turned his attention away from his duel with Kallen in horror. Most of their center had just been wiped out, while their right had severe damage. Kallen frowned as she watched it all. Despite everything, she still cared for her friends—friends who could never accept the choices she made, but friends all the same. But she wouldn't cry for them, so she turned back to her fight with Gino and took advantage of his distraction.

"Shit!" Gino turned and dived out of the shot of her dreaded right arm, but he was too slow as his machine lost both legs below the knees, leaving him backtracking as she pressed her advantage. Aboard the Damocles, Diethard and Kanon couldn't believe what they had just witnessed.

"It can't be…" Diethard spoke up, as he had seen Lelouch perform miracles in the past, but this was on par with collapsing a city. How could he have planned for this? He had been in charge of intelligence for the Black Knights. He knew Britannia didn't have many such weapons. Most were land-based for use against enemy mass missile strikes on crucial industrial sites and population centers in the homeland.

"He used masses of Portmans to cover for the fact his ships weren't fighting to their best because they were equipped with sakuradite-tipped swarm missiles." Kanon realized the ploy, a part of him realizing its genius though the massive risk as that would have meant his ships had been fighting at a diminished capacity. How could he tell sailors to fight with a hand tied behind their backs, even when outnumbered?

"Yes, endangering his own navy forces at the same time," Schneizel stated as debris of knightmares and ships rained into the ocean below, leading to a pause in the fighting as commanders on both sides yelled out evasion and counterfire orders; Leila most of all as their position directly beneath the enemy aerial forces meant they got the worst of it, already ships had reported being struck by debris while Portmans in the water had dived to deeper water to avoid the same fate.

"Leila, be careful." Akito looked over the scene, worried for his commander and close friend, but he would have to do what he always did. He put faith in her as he returned to the fight before him.

With more of the smoke of the strike clearing away, Xingke's unit became visible once more, untouched by the hell that had been wrought around him thanks to his quirk reaction time in deploying his unit's slash harkens and spinning them to deflect debris. Even so, Xingke was furious at what he saw."Dammit, I was careless. I should have realized that he would have a trump card like this! But how could he sacrifice his own forces?"

"If all went to plan, which it looks like it did, the enemy's vanguard would be isolated, their main unit smashed, and one of their flanks fighting at a pretty big handicap." Kallen surmised as she continued to push Gino, allowing units that followed her a more leisurely time engaging with the shaken enemy left wing. Gino sweating as he blocked a strike from her radiant wave surger but still felt his machine jolt under the impact.

"Such a move would throw the enemy forces into complete disarray as small unit tactics or not, seeing so many of your number destroyed would rattle even the most hardened of soldiers," C.C. noted as she walked down the halls of the Avalon towards a pink variant of the Lancelot that had been prepped for her use.

"And with a decreased number of enemy forces to worry about, that allows us to close up our ranks, eliminating the weaknesses we would have gained from overstretching our limited units," Suzaku stated as he could now focus more on the Mordred, using his speed to strike when its shields were done, Anya being thrown back into her seat as her units weapon, it's prize and glory was cut in two, leaving her displaying a more prominent frown as she was forced to rely exclusively on proximity missiles as units pushed right on past her and slammed into the remaining forces of their right wing.

"Which means those lucky bastards on the flanks will have it easy smashing through their lines to close up on that flying overcompensation." Ashley laughed as he, his personal unit, and Dorothea fired everything they had into the now isolated and weakened enemy vanguard, which kept Xingke and Tohdoh on the defensive as they couldn't advance under such concentrated firepower.

"We have no issues gaining ground when most of our majesty's enemies that stand before us have been defeated." Jeremiah finished the thought that seemed to be going through the heads of all of Lelouch's generals as he targeted a group of confused and damaged Akatsuki and traitorous Vincent mass production models. "Forward, men! Fight and secure victory for your Emperor and empire!"

"Yes, my lord!" His call was answered as he unleashed a volley of missiles and fired his hyper-velocity cannon, destroying most of his targets while the rest faced his allies.

Schneizel, much like his brother, remained calm despite the drastic shift in the momentum of the battle. He could admit that it was a masterful move from his little brother, as while he had started the battle with fewer forces, he held out long enough to lure them into a trap, and now he was fighting at a 2 to 1-disadvantage. News of their flanks would have no doubt concerned him as with both the Lancelot and Guren against them, it wouldn't be long before the Modred and Tristan were defeated. At that point, if he was in most other situations, it would have been wise to retreat or surrender.

"Quite the predicament. Lelouch has proven that he hasn't lost a single step, but like many times before, I used that brilliance against him and put him in check." Schneizel stated that this situation wasn't like most situations; it was wholly unique, and he would exploit that as he contacted his sister.

Having returned to the gardens to wait things out, Nunnally hardly shifted when her brother's voice came through the speakers. "Nunnally, targeting has been complete. Now that the Black Knights have been smashed, we must use the FLEIJA's power."

"Yes," Nunnally agreed. She had wished to not need to use it, having known that the Black Knights had been against it as well. Still, if things were this bad, they would have no choice as she squeezed the shake, which released the firing switch while its spherical body flashed red. "I shall wipe away my brother's sins with this act." She pressed the button, and the Damocles aimed its launcher before firing a FLEIJA.

"Incoming! It's a FLEIJA!" Cecile reported to them, which got Lelouch to sit straight for the first time in the battle.

"So he's finally taken off the gloves? Have the 1st Brudenell unit advance! Pull back the rest of our forces at once!" He ordered, with 4 machines flying towards the FLEIJA as fast as possible.

"Yes, your Majesty!" The Vincents acknowledged their orders as they reached the missile. She stabbed it with her lances before it could race past them, but it started to crack and glow instead of deactivating as they had hoped.

"It's useless. The FLEIJA went critical from the moment it launched." Schneizel smiled as the FLEIJA prematurely detonated. Several of Lelouch's units were caught in the blast and the vacuum it created.

Even as far from the epicenter as he was, the Avalon still shook under the extreme forces of the FLEIJA explosions and extreme winds generated by the vacuum. Lelouch held onto his throne, keeping his eyes on the field as he directed his forces. "Continue to have our forces fall back. Have the 2nd through 5th Brudenell units prepped for additional FLEIJA attacks."

Hearing that order saddened the Ghost of Hannibal, but it also angered him as Akito knew that some of those units assigned to the Brudenell units had been geassed purists and other enemies to his Emperor's rule, assigned to be disposable pawns. But it was only some of them as they didn't have enough people. He and the other Knights of Round and Leila had been present when the Emperor called forth those men and women before he left for the UFN summit.

Lelouch had been straight with them, explaining the plan to them, from how the summit was doomed to fail to his concerns about Schneizel and FLEIJA, ending with how they had been chosen to serve in a newly forced suicide unit whose job would be to charge the FLEIJA and do all they could to trigger them before they could reach their main forces.

'Well, unlike in Europe, Lelouch was honest about them being sent off to die, and he seemed to genuinely care about that.' Akito thought back to how for a moment, the Emperor seemed weakened by grief, noting that if he had another means, another way to counter those damned weapons, he would have done so. So he didn't order them but asked that they sign in. That honesty and care was perhaps why no one refused the call.

Seeing the explosion and knowing why it was triggered so far from their positions, Ashley saluted the fallen. "You bastards went out with a bang, I hope they have cute girls and booze up above." He said, his eager smirk gone as he paid respects to his fallen brethren.

"Force them to keep launching FLEIJA warheads till the arsenal is empty," Lelouch ordered, as those prepped Brudenell units replied with a "Your, your Majesty." Before they charged, the battlefield had changed drastically around them as the winds churned up the seas, battering the ships that fought against the waves. The sudden pressure difference led to mass cloud formation, darkening the skies.

Such things escaped the notice of Ohgi as the reports and orders shot over the bridge of the Ikaruga, which, despite their best efforts, continued to lose altitude. Ohgi grimaced as he understood what that meant when they had no land for as long as the eye could see the beach of their vessel.

"I'm calling a general evacuation! I repeat a general evacuation. Everyone get to the transports and life pods while you can. The essential crew will remain with me, and we'll buy you as much time as possible." Ohig called out, which stunned the others even as warning after warning came through that their remaining float systems were being overworked and shutting down or just failing.

"But Ohgi, that-!" Sugiyama started, but Ohgi raised his hand.

"I know…and I'm sorry, but I have to do this." Most of the bridge crew left at his insistence, leaving the man with a skeleton crew, one issuing orders across the ship's intercom so the rest could make their way to safety. Ohgi glanced at the violent, turbulent waters of the Pacific and then at the console before him that read they were less than 10000 ft from it. Seeing that and doing the math in his head, he didn't have a good chance of getting out of this.

He spared a thought for Viletta, whom he had asked to return to Horai island after she had given him the news. He wished he could return to her, but with how things were, he would take her not seeing him in his final moments, having been led by the nose like a fool.

With the skies around them only growing darker as ash and soot from the burning wrecks that fell into the ocean, Lelouch was displeased with how things were going for them. 'Having been forced to use the firefly plan and considering the suspected number of remaining FLEIJA warheads, I'm at a one-move disadvantage.'

'How cosmically amusing, having to rely on Nina now to deliver her solution to the problem, relying on someone that despises me for killing her princess, for changing the Britannia she once knew to my image.' Lelouch thought about Nina, who he prayed was still diligently at work on her solution and not just buying time for them all to die, a notion that he could admit crossed his mind as Rivalz, arguably the sole person aboard she still cared for, had disembarked before the fighting started, so her waiting to die and take him along with her was…feasible.

Closing his eyes, he breathed before opening them, casting doubts about his classmate and ex-friend to the pits. 'All I can do is buy her time, but at this rate, I might need to start using other units to supplement the Brudenells.'

Schneizel had picked up on that fact as well, as he found it impressive that his brother had prepared suicide units, but how many did he have? Even then, with how fast the FLEIJA moved when fired, that fist shot had wiped out a small portion of his forces despite Lelouch's counter.

"Do you really think you can defeat me, Lelouch? A fool's errand, I'm afraid, for a man who has not mastered the mask can never prevail."

"Ohgi, we've almost done getting the last people off the ship. You need to leave." Minami called out to Ohgi over the radio as he supervised the last of the crew boarding transports. With the ship's extreme list, that was proving difficult, made all the harder by the storm that had formed outside, battering the falling ship with extreme winds and rain.

"Not till every last soul has before me," Ohgi called back; with the man, he had already sent off most of the skeleton he had retained, the ship's capacity to remain in the air all but lost, but at a point where just a few people could handle it. Looking at the console again, he saw they were now less than 3000 ft away from the water. "I won't let anyone else die today, not when I was the fool that brought us into a battlefield ruled by FLEIJAs."

"The remains of our forces are pulling out, but…" Minami pointed out that after that first FLEIJA strike, their forces followed their directive, turned their tails, and ran. Sadly, this didn't save some, as the Britannians, eager to press the advantage, continued to assault them, turning what was supposed to be an organized retreat into a rout.

"I know, this…this was our defeat. We can only hope it doesn't destroy everything we've built." Ohgi felt the weight of his position and choices on his shoulders, which was crushing. He could see now when all he had was hindsight, that it didn't matter what Lelouch did; he had won this war before it was even started, and now, he found himself hoping that the bastard won else that would give Schneizel a path to the throne, a man who has displayed a callous disregard for agreements or threats. He would undoubtedly turn the FLEIJA on the UFN and the weakened Black Knights.

The withdrawal of the bulk of their forces and the massive losses already suffered left Schneizel's people in a terrible position. However, Gino could not assist them as the Guren didn't give up. It wasn't just the machine's more incredible specs, but the woman who controlled it as she had just as much passion and battle instincts as Gino had seen before when they attacked Princess Nunnally's transport to Area 11 and again in China.

"Damn, she's even better than before; I can't keep up!" Gino dodged a kick and swung one of his blades for the Guren, knowing he couldn't destroy it, but if he could just take out one of its energy wings. Unfortunately for him, Kallen reacted faster than expected and punched his unit in the face. It didn't damage his unit, but he threw him off long enough for her to capitalize.

"Sorry, Gino, but this duel is over." Kallen fired both slash harkens at him, one pieced through his right shoulder, striking at his float unit, the other at his machine's mid-section, bisecting it and forcing an ejection of the unit as it exploded. Kallen watched his cockpit fly off, only for the thing to be thrown about like paper in a breeze when another bright pink ball of death formed.

"Another FLEIJA strike," Kallen uttered, as that was the 4th one in as many minutes. She didn't want to look at her screens to see how many more had been killed by it and the massive vacuum it created, which only added to the intensity of the storm raging around them. She might not have cared for them at one point, but these were now her people-they were people, and they were being killed without any means to protect themselves.

'Hurry up, Nina. Please, we need that solution,' Kallen begged as she turned her grief into rage and dived headlong into the remaining loyalists around Damocles. These people were people she could say she would enjoy killing.

Cecile was starting to sweat as she saw the IDs of the losses they had just suffered, including two of their remaining float ships, which had been too slow. "We've lost the St. Albert and Vancover. Your Majesty, at this rate, the operation-"

"Will proceed, increase our retreat speed 2 levels, and send 20% of our forces to our flanks." Lelouch's brow was creased, as he wasn't blind to how dire things had gotten now that Schneizel was trying to wipe out even their ashes from this world. With the first strike, their advantage went from 2 to 1 to 5 to one, but even with an organized retreat and good soldiers throwing themselves at that twice damned weapons, they had already suffered a further 43% of their forces.

He also had to consider that soon, the Lancelot, Guren, and other ace machines would need to return to resupply, depriving his assault of its key pieces. "Leila, status?" He contacted his second in command as the storm outside battered the Avalon so hard that its shields came on to deflect stray lightning bolts.

When her face came on screen, it was much more stressed than before and shaky as her carrier was thrown about the waters like a children's toy in the bath. Waves came so high that their peaks came into contact with the windows of her bridge, and they were no doubt washing over their flight deck, taking anything or anyone that wasn't tied down into the grey angry waters.

"It's worse than we thought. The seas are proving too unstable to recover any of our units, including cockpits," Leila replied. The woman he had come to love looked deeply frustrated with that, as they couldn't recover anything nearly as fast. They had watched the storm and just rolled the dice to allow fighters to land, their crews needing to then rush in to secure the plane and move it out of the way.

But even with ropes tied around their waists to prevent them from being washed overboard, the rising and hard falls of the ship in the waters, along with those same waves washing over the desk, slowed them down. That left their deck crewmates, those who hadn't gone over the edge, too busy to spare a thought for their Portmans, who were ordered to dive and stay at least 15m beneath the surface.

"They're designed to handle the worst nature can throw at a time," Lelouch replied, but she gave him a look that said enough of how little she felt about that explanation.

"Yes, but only for a time-dammit!" Leila slammed her head into the console, tears of anger in her eyes as she saw something off-screen. "We just lost another ship. A massive wave struck its portside and caused it to roll over." Lelouch looked to the side where the battle map was still displayed and that HMS Galway was listed as lost. If the ship had just flipped, as Leila said, then they could expect most of its crew to be lost if not trapped in the vessel as it slipped beneath the waves.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to hope that they had sealed off bulkheads to keep him alive, as it might have been better to die now than be trapped in a steel box that might not even survive the pressures of the deep Pacific.

"Do all you can to protect the lives of those in reach, Leila. Reinforcements are on the way that can aid in search and rescue." It went unsaid that those search and rescue units would be looking for those who had survived the hell that was forming around them as each FLEIJA only increased the storm's power.

Leila scoffed, regaining some composure. "I have a misfortunate ability to always find myself fighting uphill battles with little to work in in the most difficult circumstances."

Morbid as it was, Lelouch smiled at that complaint. "And the fact that you're still here to grumble tells me that despite such odds, you always find a way to victory. I trust that today will be no different."

"Yes, your Majesty," Leila replied. On her end of the call, she paused before saying one last thing: "Don't go dying on me; you hear me." With that, she cut the call to focus more on her task.

"Captain, status." She turned to the grizzled seadog at her side.

The 40-something with a greying beard nodded, handling the ship being thrown about much better than she was. "My Lord, we've secured another fighter, but it would be best if the rest head southwest and ditch near our reinforcements."

That didn't sound like a bad idea. While it would surely result in some bad landings in the water, it would be better than trying to land on the carrier in these conditions. "Do they have the fuel for that?"

"Yes, My Lord, it's standard practice that all jets get a full tank before they're sent out into battle in case their mission parameters change." Leila scoffed, though not at him or his response but rather at a reminder of how poorly things used to be run in Europe as the E.U. regularly 'managed costs' by limiting how much fuel and supplies troops got, which proved to be a detriment many times when Britannian forces just shadow them, waiting for when they would be estimated to be low on supplies and strike.

It only ended when, two years prior, that policy saw the German High Seas fleet lose 11 capital ships in just two days off the coast of Greenland.

But she could complain about how terrible the council of 40 was later, preferable over a drink, sweets, and her Emperor's naked body to comfort her. "Then do it. We'll focus on trying to recover those cockpits. Focus on our men, and then, if there's time, we'll recover those of enemy units. Use the Portmans to locate and secure them."

"That would be risky." The captain advised.

"Believe me," Lightning struck the waters to the side of the ship, bathing the bridge in bright white light before the roar of thunder followed. "I know, but if I can decide between returning comrades to their families instead of sending letters to grieving families, I'll choose the former."

"As would I, my Lord, it shall be done." The captain bowed his head.

There was much more to this, but I reached my word limit without realizing it. Funny enough, in the first draft, I had the Black Knights remain on the field despite earlier stating that they'd bounce if Schneizel broke the terms of the agreement. So, of course, I changed it to match Xingke's threat, which could be a threat to Schneizel's position, but seeing how he has nukes and planned to kill them anyway, it's not that big a loss. Besides, he has nature on his side, as Damocles can handle a storm, but everyone else? Well, not so much.

The next chapter will be out on December 19th.

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