Semper Ad Meliora (Code Geass/Britannian Royalty Quest)

You are Lelouch vi Britannia, Second Consort and Minister of Culture to the Empress of the People of China and Sovereign Monarch of the Empire of Australia, Protector of the Islands of Indonesia, Bane of Pirates, and Prince of the Empire of Britannia. For today, though, those titles are unimportant. Today, you stand astride a much greater achievement that will doubtless be recorded in the annals of history.

You stand aboard the bridge of the first great vimana to take to the skies in tens of thousands of years as it makes its maiden voyage across a desolate portion of the pacific ocean.

The massive construction floats freely in the air, its propulsion a mixture of psychic waves manufactured by the complex matrix of gold and sakuradite woven into its construction and the next-generation levitation engines produced by the CAMELOT program under Lloyd Asplund. Reverse-engineered and completed by your own subordinates, the FLOAT and Druid Systems augment the impressive capabilities of the ancient psionic technologies you'd unearthed last year.

Bleeding edge holographic screens light up at the speed of thought, your already-incredible psychic talents allowing you to coordinate the many parts of the vimana effortlessly.

"Greetings, my consort," Lihua smiles at you from where she is perched atop a raised platform, attendants and guards surrounding her as she is brought various different pieces of paperwork. "How goes the test flight?"

"My Empress," you smile, taking a slight bow. "We are making headway back to port in Australia. The test is almost complete and we have experienced no problems. We even-"

"We're flying! Tou-san, Tou-san! We're flying!" The five year old child behind you yelled as they ran from one window to another.

You and Lihua stared deeply into each other's eyes for a long moment, her lips quivering just the slightest bit. Truly, a testament to her near-absolute control of her visage.

Sayoko, suddenly to your right, bowed. "My deepest apologies, Lelouch. Lady Lihua. Sumire managed to slip my watch briefly."

"Lookit the ships! They're so tiny!" Your daughter cries out energetically.

You close your eyes briefly and inhale through your nose as Lihua releases a strangled noise that's very clearly a cough and not stifled laughter.

"It's... it's fine, Sayoko. See if she wants pudding down in the cafeteria, I suppose. I'll be down to sit with her a little later." You wave her off.

"It is times like these I suppose we should both be grateful for staff to help us take the pleasant, if undeniably weighty burden that young children can be," Lihua states, smiling impishly.

"I take it Prince Hàoyú is doing well under Xingke's care?" You ask, trying desperately to recover some hint of your previous regal bearing.

Lihua smiled softly and nodded. "He is. I will be entertaining my General and my heir tonight at dinner. We will have to arrange an evening next month when you return to the capital."

"Perhaps Euphemia can attend. She is due to return from St. Petersburg visiting her sister within the next week," you muse.

Lihua shook her head. "I had actually actually wished for it to be a private affair. Euphie is always welcome at our table and you should not doubt that, but there are times when I would like to see my second consort for personal business."

You blinked, Lihua's words accomplishing what Sumire's interruption hadn't been able to and bringing a subtle blush to your face. "Ah... I see. I'll be sure to clear my schedule, thank you for the invitation, My Empress."

"In other news, Europa United has pushed for further concessions in trade treaties to prove that our alliance with Britannia is purely defensive in nature." Her expression soured a bit. "I do not enjoy their defense of the previous Japanese administration's actions, nor their devotion to offending me by supporting the riots in India."

"It's an unfortunate state of affairs," you agree readily enough, being careful not to advise on that matter. You were already extremely busy with matters that were distinctly outside the mandate of your ministerial office and the riot-protests in India weren't something you had any real attachment to 'solving.' Yes, losing them would weaken the Chinese Federation's standing on the world stage, but it was looking more and more like an eventuality.

Which would, obviously, give the EU another member for their own defensive pact; if not immediately, then within a decade or so of the Indians achieving independence. Joining the motley crew of the African Unions and what was left of the MEF, there wasn't much the 'Bastion of Democracy' would be able to truly do to stop Britannian expansion outside of their own continental borders. Japan was at least nominally in this political bloc, although the belated fall of Kururugi Genbu and the rise of Kaguya's father to prominence meant that, for all practical intentions, Japan had returned to a fully neutral stance. Even if the island nation was to commit to the thinly-veiled 'Antri-Sino-Birtannian Pact' it wouldn't mean all that much given Japan could be overrun in a month or two by a dedicated Britannian invasion force.

No, the main culprit stopping your father from simply conquering the Europeans outright were the growing pains of the empire itself. Digesting the former North Africa League, half of the MEF, and dealing with the Russian Empire's rebirth under Cornelia's rule as Catherine III was taking much of his attention. It didn't help that suspiciously well-equipped terrorist units had been popping up in both regions as well as India.

There was also the looming shadow of Charles' advancing age.

Even with Britannian medicine being what it was and your father being a particularly healthy individual, the man was still in his seventies now. If no significant health concerns arose, he likely had one more decade of good rule within him, but he was not the man he'd been a decade ago. If only just slightly, he'd slowed and weakened. Not visibly so, not outside those who knew him well, but it was enough to be concerned.

After finishing things up with Lihua, you flexed your awareness of the hulking vimana to ensure you were making good time before putting in another call...

"Ah, it's Marianne's boy again. I'm sure this won't lead to more work for me," the golden-eyed woman on the other end of the screen sighed and swept back a curtain of long green hair to look at you with a put-upon expression so masterfully-crafted from equal parts disdain and exasperation that you wondered if she'd broken lesser men with a simple glance at some point in the past.

"Lady CC," you greeted neutrally, looking over the background of her image and taking in the excavation work being done deep within the caverns you had discovered. "I'll keep things brief, since you appear to be otherwise occupied-"

You pointedly ignored the slice of pizza she lifted to her mouth, not daring to challenge the authority of someone who knew even more underhanded tricks than Milly to get back at you.

"-I simply wanted to check on the progress being made towards the inner vault."

CC swallowed her bite of pizza and sighed with all the regal stature of an ancient queen. "We're still making our way through. Given that geass does not affect the animate statues, moving deeper into the ship is extremely hazardous. Since I have you here, though..."

"Yes?" You asked, already knowing where this conversation was going.

"Have you given any thought as to what you'll be doing with what we find?" CC asked, a bland curiosity coating her voice that utterly disguised whatever she truly felt.

"I've given a great deal of thought to it, but made no decision yet," you stated bluntly.

CC hummed, picking up her pizza again. "You should get on that."

Then the screen cut off.

You sighed.

It was a complicated matter, what you believed lay in the innermost vault of the crashed vimana which you had discovered underneath the ancient megaliths humbly known as 'Potbelly Hill' by the natives of the Anatolian region.. Normally, you'd have been loath to invite your father's close confidants into the investigation of the ruins, but this had very much grown beyond your own ambitions. There was also the matter of your half-sister Laila needing a 'win' politically to stabilize the region. Unveiling the forgotten past of the giant stone pillars and the origins of mankind, even without being fully transparent over the true discoveries had made international headlines and helped reignite a political narrative that the region was much older than the MEF or the petty squabbles of the religious and cultural differences involved.

It wasn't as though you were going to get access to a site so firmly under Britannian military control without a few concessions, anyway. And, truthfully, you didn't actually have the kind of trained personnel to do the site justice, either. Once the project was over, though, you would. Any further discoveries you made would be fully within your own ability to exploit however you wished.

Psionic technology would pave the way to the stars very soon and even now it was assisting in the first unmanned probes being sent up by the empire.

The issue was, though...

At the center of the vault was 'Heart of the Immortal' you remembered being, once long ago. The small orb you'd found had made you a ready vessel for its power, but you did not have to accept it. There were other candidates. Specifically, your father. You were new to the revelation that was the 'Power of Kings,' but knew enough to understand that the job of holding a geass was to allow that power to make you ready to receive true immortality.

You recalled nothing of the sort from your ancient memories, but there had been many thousands of years between then and now. There was nothing stopping one of the survivors of the apocalypse from reinventing the wheel, so to speak.

It had even turned out that Kaguya and Sayoko had a number of very peculiar gene-markers which indicated a much stronger lineage from those ancient days than you thought could reasonably survive. It was possible, with a great deal more research and experimentation, that the true root of psionic potential could be developed with those clues. Even now, Kenshin had constructed an elaborate screening process as part of the new immunization protocols wiping out infectious diseases among the remote Chinese populus.

Combined with what the Geass Institute and OSI had secreted away, life-extension technology would likely be possible within the next few decades.

But that would not be the same as the 'true immortality' you had glimpsed in CC and VV, the later of which had been revealed as your uncle. Death, for them, was an impossibility as they stood frozen in time even after decades or, in the greenette's case, centuries.

It was a heady thought. Not just an extended life, but one that was completely free of any danger of death by accident or disease.

But, there was the possibility of not taking it for yourself. Of, instead, granting it to your father. Regardless of your rather complex personal feelings on Charles himself, it would undeniably be for the Empire's betterment. Even if Charles went into 'seclusion' and slowly faded from public consciousness, Guinevere and Odysseus would hardly have the kind of will to oppose an immortal emperor ruling from behind the scenes.

The question was... did you want to take up the mantle?

[ ] Yes. Lelouch Becomes Immortal.
[ ] No. Charles Becomes Immortal Instead.

A flare of attention drew you from your musings as your focus shifted towards where you knew Australia to be. Specifically, you looked towards the northern coast, where the European settler colonies lay.

Something was happening.

Then, a bright pulse of pink light created a second sun against the bright blue sky.

"Psionic Energy Wave detected!" One of your operators called out.

"Massive spike in energy implies a weapon of some kind!" Another concurred.

"We're getting a read on something huge!" A final soldier on the bridge yelled.

"Why didn't we detect this before!?" You demanded, looking around as you felt the vimana you were piloting shift into a state of combat readiness.

"A combination of distance and a lack of active scanning, My Lord." You looked to the soldier who'd spoken. "We'd already tested the active arrays on the way out and shut them down for diagnostics. We were limiting ourselves to passive scans given the isolated nature of the region."

You grimaced, realizing there was nothing to be done. Instead, you focused your will into the scanning arrays and brought them online to direct where you'd felt the pulse of energy.
Immediately, an image of...

It was a golden craft straight out of your ancient memories, laced with sakuradite to give it lift and propulsion. Around you, you heard gasps of shock and horror as you caught sight of the smoking ruins of the capital of the settler colony.

As impossible as it seemed, there was only one way to explain what you were seeing.
Another vimana, this one looking as though it was ripped from ages long past.

New Heaven had, incredibly, managed to resurrect a slumbering beast.

Your mind raced, evaluating the forces you currently had at your disposal. Jaeger had, thankfully, contented himself with being present for the numerous test runs of the various systems before pronouncing the project complete and turning his manic energy towards other pursuits. The man had become a machine in recent years, turning out revolutionary technology after revolutionary technology as he barely stopped to enjoy the triumphs he'd earned for himself. You trusted Madison to keep him healthy, at least. But what was important for the moment was that you didn't need to evacuate one of your most important subordinates from the vimana before flying into combat.

That said, you did need to get Sumire and Sayoko off the vessel. That was relatively easy, though. Jeanne and Gino were combat personnel and would be invaluable. Kallen and her squad would be as well, but they were not here at the moment. You could summon them for a rendezvous, but that would take a bit of time to scramble and coordinate before meeting the New Heaven vimana in battle. As it was, you only had Gino and a flight of next-generation FLOAT-enabled KMF units and the flotilla of ships patrolling the waters beneath you. Granted, that included a dreadnought and an aircraft carrier as well as a host of support and guard craft, but it was overall a patrol group. Not a full assault fleet.

In addition to Kallen, you could also call Nunnally back from her own excursion with her guard group hunting pirates. That would give you another group of elites to deploy against whatever other surprises New Heaven had. Or to distract their main force while you moved in for the kill. It would also give you time to scramble the Chinese fleet under your command in Indonesia, the Crowns who were guarding Britannian shipping, and your own primary fleet stationed in New Caledonia.

You would have called in the Sons of Teach, but they were half a world away in the Black Sea under Euphemia's nominal command.

Which was one less thing you had to worry about, honestly.

The downside was that while you could respond in a matter of hours, calling up the various forces under your authority would take days. That meant letting New Heaven do whatever it wished in the meantime, such as continuing the destruction of Port Talleyrand. Which… would remove a thorn in your side as well as a valuable and technologically-advanced pseudo-ally frenemy.

Regardless, you'd put the call out for everything you could reasonably count on to assemble, but you couldn't be sure they would arrive in time if you chose to engage directly.

The final option you had was to call up a true coalition force. Which would take at least a week, perhaps more. Even if the Europeans could hold out days, they could not hold out that long under the kind of assault you were seeing now. Calling in a proper multinational combat force from the EU peacekeeping fleet in East Africa and a Britannian main battle fleet from one or more of the Areas, as well as possibly the Imperial Japanese Fleet in Taiwan…

Well, it would doubtless be a force to reckon with, but it would mean the largest number of casualties. And you were unsure if New Heaven would be willing to keep their destruction to Australia or if they would begin striking out elsewhere.

The choice is yours.

[ ] Meet the New Heaven forces head on. (+25)
[ ] Regroup and strike them from a position of strength. (+50)
[ ] Call up a coalition force. (+75)

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