From the Depths of Dark Waters

Chapter 1: Between the Stars

The long and arduous era of searching had long since ended. Humanity drifted aimlessly between the darkness of the stars for thousands of years, using them as sources of power both unmatched and endless. Far across the depths of space, far from the planet where humanity had started, the might of mankind survived on a super-fortress of unmatched size—a mighty utopia—appropriately given the name 'The Garden.' To the billions of people that resided on the mighty fortress that drifted between the stars endlessly, only a few knew why it had been named so, and even fewer knew the history of where mankind originated.

In the new home for humanity, only the physically perfect had been given their right to survival. The Garden was a place where humanity bred only perfection, cutting imperfections out like they were nothing more than cancer. Only the strong and mentally sound were allowed a place on the vessel of humanity, and the rest were considered useless to the progression of humankind. The story of humanity—according to legends—began on a planet named Earth, a planet that most believed to only be a place of fiction. A world where dirt and water stretched with unknown depths and verdurous vegetation. A time when imperfections were normal and expected.

A place that The Garden could only hope to ever be. But the super fortress that humanity had built was the ultimate achievement of mankind, a place that was to be both praised and respected. It was a place created to offer humanity an eternal future and home. A beacon in the vast darkness of infinity—against the Sirens—that showed mankind's perseverance to strive for a brighter future.

A beacon of hope. A beacon that showed the willingness of humankind and the hope that ignored the enormity of the tasks and roadblocks that stood in their path to reach up and grab at the stars. A beacon that showed humanity's willingness and courage to keep reaching, working, striving, and fighting. A beacon that proved humanity was greater than the sum of their individual ambitions and proved that they would—and forever would be—the species who had earned their rights for survival through countless trials. From the moment they had discovered fire, to the moment they first landed on the moon.

However, ladies and gentlemen, you mustn't forget that such paradise was bought at a great price. From the moment humanity touched the depths of dark waters, they came to meet them. And with them, came a force so formidable, that it was inappropriate to call the attack anything other than what it truly was: a slaughter. Things that had appropriately been called Sirens began their slaughter, rising from cracks in the earth that acted only as one-way portals that were titled 'Breaches.'

During the first Vryheidsoorlog—the first Freedom War—mankind had been reduced to only a few billion. A blunder that only further crippled humanity after the still-recent event that was the Third World War. After fifty long and hard-fought years, the first wave of Sirens had finally been destroyed. But, the first wave was only the beginning, it was a wave meant to test the strength of humanity.

A test to gauge their abilities.

In fifty years, massive fortresses were built on every coastal area to combat the Sirens with massive cannons and fleets of warships. Eventually, resources began to run thin, and the cost of constructing larger ships became harder and harder and took longer and longer. Ten years later, the first of the coastal super fortresses fell. That was the beginning mark of the Second Vryheidsoorlog. A single Siren tore down the one-hundred-meter-tall metal wall in only a single day, proving the vanity of humanity's efforts once more.

If the first wave of Sirens were the drones that were sent to test their abilities, the second wave were the executioners. No amount of weaponry that mankind had produced could damage them, and the war they were fighting was a losing battle. It wasn't even a battle. It was a slaughter, with mankind as the pigs trapped in the metal cages that they had constructed themselves. Mankind then looked to Siren weaponry for answers.

And answers they received.

Faster than imaginable, the understanding of alien technology developed, and with it came the knowledge of Sirens. The ability to create energy weapons stronger than railguns, lasers capable of producing so much heat it instantly vaporized all forms of life, even having the ability to vaporize Sirens themselves. Laser weapons that were capable of 'glassing' the surfaces of planets, a term used in the literal sense—to literally turn the surface of the area hit by the lasers to glass.

With that knowledge, humanity took to the stars for the answer to their lack of resources, before eventually constructing 'The Garden.' The rest—as they say—is history. And our story begins at the end of the human range, and at the beginning of the Age of Stars.

…

Name: Captain Aphelion

Designation: Alpha 1-5-0

Interrupted the overlay of Aphelion's artificial intelligence assistant, appropriately named after himself. He was the proud pilot and commander of the Aphelion warship—a human-shaped mech armed to the teeth with enough armament to completely glass an entire planet and still have enough power for more. With a stunning kill count of two-thousand and twenty-one at the ripe age of twenty-one, he was an ace pilot and the best in his fleet of two hundred wingmen.

'Incoming broadcast from Colonel Mercer.'

"Play." Came Aphelion's curt reply. There was no need for emotions in his line of work, he had been taught that at the ripe age of six, since the first day he was admitted to the White Room and trained with them for battle over the span of ten years.

"Captain Aphelion, do you read me?" came a voice that boomed with power in his helmet.

"Sir! Captain Aphelion reports as ordered!" Aphelion snapped back with a quick response. The longer his response took, the more danger the fleet would be in.

"It's regrettable for me to inform you that we'll have to be retreating from this Siren conflict. As such, I need you to buy us time."

"Understood."

Aphelion's orders were quite simple: standby. He was to stay in his mech until he was ordered to attack, and when the order finally came for him to jump into action, he couldn't help but feel invigorated by the rushing feelings of war. He had been taught to hate from an early age and taught to direct that hate towards Sirens as such, but never towards another human or ally. To direct his hatred and anger towards another human was a direct violation of the Uniform Code of Humanitarian Justice, previously named the UCMJ.

His mech sprung to live in a flash of lights, zipping past his allies without leaving even as much as a trace in his path, rushing towards the Sirens that stood against them in a desperate attempt to prevent another warp. The 'warp' was the term used when humans shot through space to find a brief moment of peace away from Sirens. Destroying Sirens completely was out of the question, destroying one of them only led to the creation of three more, and the more they slain, the more they learned. Their Pawns were hive-minded, and they all learned from one another.

Regardless of that knowledge, he considered them to be all the same. The centerpiece of his warship was essentially a nuclear bomb, but much stronger than one anyone could possibly imagine. It was the product of Nuclear Fusion with a core of Tritium that burned as hot as a star. Well, over five-thousand degrees Kelvin. All that energy was then directed into the weapons and armament that adorned the exterior surfaces of Aphelion One.

To his side, the sword he had donned flashed to life in the form of a massive and flickering blue blade. It was a simple blade when it came to design, but it was as hot as any star and was able to instantly rip and tear through Sirens without any problems. It was an efficient tool that didn't require hardly any energy to use, unlike the massive pool of laser weapons and cannons he had at his disposal.

"Captain Aphelion, engaging the enemy," Aphelion spoke aloud, ending the transmission suddenly as the screens around him in the cockpit blinked to life, initiating his mind dive into the machine. Being a pilot meant one had to link themselves to the machine that they wielded. In the literal sense, you become the mech to pilot it. All the movements that the mech made, were the movements the pilot themselves made in the cockpit. The very first iterations of these machines required two pilots to operate but delving into each other's minds became a task too complex and often ended in disaster for both machine and pair, so they were simplified down to a single operator, with the advancement of technology and additional years of training.

Around him, Sirens exploded as the cannons mounted on his back zapped them into dust, piercing through the shields they had like a hot knife through butter and destroying the things in an instant. Around him, were things that sought to destroy mankind. And he was their hunter. And he would do exactly as he was trained to do.

Hunt.

Beams of blue energy zapped out, each one colliding with a Siren as hundreds more surrounded him, each one meeting their fate in an instant from the might of his power. Until eventually, there was more around him than he had ever seen before, warping around him in a similar fashion to mankind did to escape. Countless amounts of Sirens warped into place, facing him and charging their own beams of energy.

He had made a foolish mistake.

In his five years of service and ten years of vigorous training, he had made his first mistake, and it was one that would cost him his life. He had fallen into a Siren ambush and was completely unaware of it until the last moment.

"Captain Aphelion! We are warping in 30 seconds, don't do anything foolish and get back here!" Came the commands of Colonel Mercer. But his command was far too late.

"Sir, I will hold them off here! I won't be able to make it back in time!" Aphelion gave his sharp reply. There was no immediate response as his lasers darted at more of the Sirens that appeared. The warp that would soon be used to send The Garden into the further reaches of space would leave a horrible wormhole in its place, and if the Sirens didn't get him first, he would surely be sucked into the depths of the unknown and possibly crushed. Humanity had never attempted to go through a wormhole, they only knew of them, but never researched them past surface observation.

Aphelion couldn't remember the last time he felt fear. He couldn't remember the last time he had ever genuinely been worried about his own downfall and how his death would play out. He thought he would get a response from the Colonel, but nothing ever came. Instead, in the distance, his Colonel's own humanized metal machine offered a salute to him. No words. No emotions.

So why did it feel like something in him had been crushed as he rendered his salute in return?

He watched as the only thing he had ever known stretched endlessly before him, disappearing without a sound as it warped to an unknown part of space. And suddenly, there was nothing but silence and static over his communications. The flashes of light that hit his metal body reflected off, bouncing into the vastness of a black infinity as he watched the wormhole form where his home once had been.

He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so lost. He had forgotten all the unnecessary emotion his body came with in favor of being the perfect soldier. All he had ever wanted was to please those who presided over him and to be acknowledged for his work. But the truth was… to the greater will of humanity, he was disposable. His life had no value, and his sacrifice to their cause was meaningless. His sacrifice came as a result of him making a mistake. And there was no room in The Garden for mistakes.

Suddenly, the Sirens stopped firing their weapons at him. As did he to them. Briefly, there was a moment of peace as they watched each other in the cold darkness of space. Creatures with faces that looked human, but were clearly not, stared at him with calculating eyes of blue and sometimes gold. Their feminine features and cold, cunning eyes watched him as he drifted closer to the wormhole that would soon deliver him to his fate. The Tritium that burned at the core of his unit had finally died out, cutting the power of his suit and leaving him drifting aimlessly, unable to escape the wormhole. He assumed it was only a matter of time before his vessel went into emergency mode and froze him for an unknowable amount of time.

But before his vessel fell into emergency power mode and put him into a deep sleep, only moments before he reached the wormhole, he saw something that flooded him with an unimaginable amount of shock. Piercing purple eyes with long white hair looked at him and rendered a gesture he couldn't quite understand, hands held out as if a mother to her child would as he was pulled closer and closer to the wormhole. The source of the gesture was from a Siren he hadn't recognized before, a new class of Siren. He had remembered each Siren he had ever encountered, from the littlest details to their names and when they were first sited. But he had never seen one like the one that had made a gesture towards him in his final moments.

Suddenly, there was a feeling of crushing cold that washed over him. A kind of cold that he hadn't ever felt before as he watched the arms of his vessel stretch endlessly on the event horizon. And just as suddenly as the screens went black in the cockpit, and before he knew what had happened—before his mind could put the puzzle pieces together—his vessel's emergency protocols took over, flash freezing him in his spot and placing him under stasis for an undefined amount of time.

…

Cleveland sat on a towel reading a book and leaned against one of the many trees in the park that was just under the dorm buildings where she and her sisters shared a five-room condominium. Today was a recovery day for her, and just like most of the vacation days she had been given after completing a sortie, she decided to spend her time occasionally looking out to the distant horizon while reading peacefully to herself, completely undisturbed by her sisters or the world and other Kansens around her. The book she found herself reading today was something she saw many humans around the base—when they were still on base—reading: The Bible.

"… and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the Abyss." Cleveland read aloud, reading the spot she had finally reached in Revelations.

The book spoke of concepts she couldn't possibly imagine, despite being given extreme intelligence by the Wisdom Cube that had created her. It spoke of the creator of humanity, the one who created Earth, and while it sounded interesting to her, it was an experience she couldn't understand or relate to in any way. She was a product of mankind's perseverance, created from their thoughts and ambitions from Wisdom Cubes. And while they stood leagues above humanity alone in the terms of power and versatility, there was always a sense of something that was missing.

That one certain thing about every human that they all just didn't have. A never-ending, creeping feeling that they could never escape from. A feeling of something being buried deep inside their weeping hearts that had been shrouded by the veils of war and conflict. While they had been given purpose at their birth in the form of war, and they had meaning in the sense of direction, it felt incomplete. Without their weapons, and without their riggings, what exactly were they? Combined thoughts and hopes breathed into human form?

Ships made from steel given flesh were still steel at heart. They were weapons and nothing more. At first, that was fine, but now she wanted something more. Perhaps that was why all of them—deep down—felt disconnected from humanity… their creators. They weren't allowed to even converse with them, and their jobs were soon taken by Bulins and repair ships like Vestal. Humans, like the God in the book she read, seemed untouchable.

She shook her head, shaking the thoughts away from her as she looked into the cerulean skies above, placing the book face-down in her lap as the cape she wore blew in the gentle breeze. She was by no means feeling depressed; depression was an emotion she considered to be useless to her cause as a valiant knight of the sea. Her focus and attention were both better spent on her younger sisters and further past that, her attention was better spent combatting Sirens in the fight for humanity. She was simply curious and sought the book that she had seen so many humans read around her for answers.

Unfortunately, the answers never came. She was instead only met with more questions that were even further beyond her ability to answer. She stood from her spot in the grass, deciding that she had read enough for today and should find some other way to occupy her time. She still had her Bonsai trees to tend to for the day, after all.

However, just as she collected her towel and wrapped it up neatly with the book in the center, the sounds of her fellow Kansen rang in her ears, pointing to the sky as they spoke about a shooting star. She followed their fingers as they pointed to the blue sky, and to her amazement, a brilliant streak of gold and red shot across the sky as clear as the sun itself. She watched in amazement as the object soared through the sky beyond her reach at impossible speeds.

Only moments later, another object followed, trailing after the first as if it were engaged in a chase. The second object was much smaller in size than the first, and the first was moving much faster than the second as if it were being propelled. After what felt like a few minutes had passed—but was actually only a few seconds—it began to look like the two objects were going to soar out of their sight and out of Earth's orbit. However, the first object freakishly shifted as if it had been afflicted by some unknown and powerful force. Immediately, conversations began to stir among the onlookers as they watched the things redirect their course and began their burning downfall…

And then the panic began to set in.

The first object began its descent by heading straight for the base. Or, at least, it looked like it was about to crash into the base. Cleveland watched, unmoving from her spot as the thing moved rapidly closer, the only thought she could manage was her untimely demise being brought to her by a falling object from space. She had fought in countless battles and emerged victorious every time, and she was about to meet her end by kissing the broadside of a falling star. She wasn't sure if it was appropriate to close her eyes or to just watch until it kissed the earth and took with it the base. And in the woes of her stray and worrisome thoughts, the object shifted freakishly once again, and it soared over her head, missing the base completely and moving faster than her eyes could keep up with as it fell towards the ocean countless miles from port.

Until eventually the object slammed into the depths of the ocean blue, many great nautical miles away from the port. The object collided with enough force to launch water into the sky as high as a skyscraper, but the strangest thing that came from the object was the lack of sound the thing produced as it soared over and crashed. There was no whistle, no flames dancing in aggression, there wasn't even an explosion that came from the collision, and oddly enough, there was no tidal wave that came after the impact, instead, it was as if the water had been pulled in as the object sunk.

Hundreds of sets of weary eyes stared at the site of impact in complete and total confusion, all belonging to the Kansen of Azur Lane. There were no more humans left at this base, after all. The confusion then gave way to curiosity as mutters began to arise between the masses about what exactly the thing was that they had all just witnessed. Was it a meteor, or some attack the Sirens had developed and it was an unintentional miss? Whatever it was, it didn't matter for long, as a sharp wind rushed around them towards the crash site, bringing with it a deafening thunderclap of sound.

BOOM!

The explosion of noise shattered the silence of Azur Lane that had previously only been filled with murmurs. The sound was so loud and powerful that it forced her and many others to their knees as air exploded around them with the force of an enraged tempest, uplifting the tree she had previously leaned against and slinging it away with ease. Every glass window in the headquarters of Azur Lane suddenly shattered from the sound in only a moment, and through the ringing in her ears, the sound of glass falling torrentially to the ground went completely unnoticed. The air around her suddenly shifted in direction, and there was an uncanny pull followed by a violent push as the wind rushed to the site of the collision and forced itself away. Never in her life had she felt so crushed, the impact that had been nowhere near her was so powerful it sucked the air from her lungs and hit her with the force of a sledgehammer to the gut.

She struggled onto wobbly feet a few minutes later.

There goes her vacation day.

…

4 Months Later

To say that Cleveland was unbelievably perplexed would have been the understatement of the century. Why was she so perplexed? Well, for starters, the asteroid that crashed down on Earth wasn't an asteroid by any means. It wasn't a small chunk of space rock that they could analyze or use for any purpose. It was something else entirely, and it was terrifying to know something existed like it among the stars. It wasn't as large as a battleship or cruiser, but it was roughly the same length and height as a destroyer.

The problem that arose with the discovery of the object, was that absolutely nothing they did made any progress towards the Eagle Union cracking the thing open. Whatever it was, it was shaped like a human—a very large human—made entirely of a strange black metal they couldn't understand or even put a scratch on. No matter how long Cleveland or Akashi—another repair ship that came to Azur Lane from the non-allied Sakura Empire shortly after news of the arrival of the object—analyzed the thing, they couldn't find even the tiniest of damage on the bare and plain external surface. They had tried torching it, shooting it, hell they hit it with a full-on barrage of 533mm torpedoes and 18-inch cannons. The damn metal thing didn't receive even a tiny scratch on its glossy ebony-colored external metal surface, even after all of those attacks.

Whatever they welded onto it simply broke clean off, as if nothing had been welded onto it in the first place, and there wasn't even a slight discoloration from the heat of the torches they used either. They tried to weld tow hooks onto the metal shoulders of the thing for easier transportation, but they broke off with only a slight tug. A tug that was delivered by hand. Now you may be asking why she was put in charge of this project, considering she was simply a light cruiser and knew absolutely nothing about the maintenance world in any form.

To answer that question bluntly, she oversaw briefing the installation commander about the weekly progress on the thing since the day she first reported the occurrence, and while she was by no means the first person to notice the object fall to the earth in a burning ball of fire, she had been the first to report it, which, unfortunately—in military terms—made her the perfect culprit to lead the investigation team tasked with cracking it open. However, this week—just like every other week since she had started—was about to be the same exact same report she had always given. That being that absolutely no form of progress had been made to figure out what it was, or why it was now in their loving arms, and the number of options they had at potentially cracking the metal thing open like an Easter Egg was becoming fewer and fewer with each passing day. Cleveland didn't need to write down the brief because she fell into a rhythm like it had been clockwork, and in a way, it was. Since the moment she had been assigned to the project not a single change was made on it, and she had briefed that more than fifty times now to the commander of Azur Lane.

Enterprise.

So, why was a Kansen in the command position? To put it simply, the human race had spread few and far between, suffering from extreme losses when Sirens first appeared and the Kansen weren't yet around. Enterprise has the highest capability to lead them all, and she knew more about the outside world than possibly every Kansen that resided on base.

Akashi approached her from the side and joined her on the bench she sat at.

"Nya~ I'm beaten." The green-haired repair ship spoke, giving a large stretch as she spoke.

"I wonder what in the world it is?" Cleveland asked rhetorically, not expecting to get a proper answer to her question.

"It's kind of impressive, nya? No matter what we throw at it or do to it, nothing leaves even a single scratch on it." Akashi began. "It even fell from the sky, and not even that seemed to cause any damage to it. I honestly can't even guess at how such a machine was made."

"Akashi…" Cleveland began but was stopped as the green-haired cat continued.

"And nyot only that, the strange writing on the vessel. I've never seen characters like that before, they just look like lines. Not even the Sakura Empire has such strange marks, nya. At least our writing system makes sense." Akashi began, half-heartily making a joke about the line-like marks they had found over the left breast of the metal man, carved into the unit perfectly.

"Well, I wouldn't be too sure about that. I don't think I could recognize a single word written in Kanji, same as those lines." Cleveland laughed out in response. The cat laughed at the joke before she continued.

"That aside, I can't help but feel strange while examining it." Akashi expressed her worry for the machine that had been the primary focus of Azur Lane for almost half a year now.

"Why is that?" Cleveland asked the girl, wondering what it was she was thinking about the machine. It wasn't like they had any concrete evidence on what it actually was, so speculations were the only things that could be made about it.

"Well, nya. Don't you think it's a bit strange?" Akashi asked Cleveland, her eyes drifting back to the machine.

"Of course. It isn't every day you see something like this fall from the sky." Cleveland admitted, nodding her head briskly at the green-haired girl who only shook her head repeatedly.

"Nyot exactly what I meant, nya." Akashi began. "Isn't it strange that our weapons can't damage it? Our weapons are capable of destroying Sirens, but we can't make a scratch on this with even our best weaponry. You Eagle Union ships even dropped that experiment on it—what was it again, nya? The atom bomb? Nyot a scratch."

Cleveland only nodded as Akashi spoke the truth, letting her imagination wander as Akashi began to describe herself in more detail. Akashi was right. The most powerful weapon of destruction mankind ever created and abandoned had been dropped on it. It leveled an island the size of Azur Lane, and the machine received no damage.

"Nyot only does it not look like a siren, but it's also more advanced than any Siren we have ever encountered. And there isn't a single Wisdom Cube anywhere on it. Everything, from its design to the metal it is made of, is simply otherworldly. That certain energy that Wisdom Cubes have; this machine doesn't have it. We can't feel anything from it." Akashi explained.

"Almost like it never existed before. Not in the thoughts of humanity or their feelings and beliefs." Cleveland finished for the girl. She had never thought of it like that. If what they said was true, then that meant the thing was more similar to a Siren than they thought. But if that were the case, that meant only the worst for Azur Lane.

"Right, nya. But I doubt it is a Siren. It seems to… human. And if it were a siren, then why hasn't it attacked yet? It has had more than ample opportunity to wipe all of Azur Lane out."

"Maybe there is something inside it?" Cleveland suddenly added to their conversation.

"Nya~, have you been reading that book again?" Akashi countered, shifting the direction of the conversation.

"Nah, I finished it weeks ago," Cleveland admitted with a smile. "Wasn't for me, but it had some good lessons in it. Follow your heart."

"Nya~, well. I'm gonna take lunch. Swinging a wrench and everything else under the sun at a hunk of metal is surprisingly draining, nya?" Akashi made one last joke before standing up and walking away with a wave.

Cleveland stood from the bench and approached the metal unit. She placed her hands on the headpiece and looked in at what should have been where a visor would be, and gave it a few quick pats. There was no resounding knock that greeted her, instead, her knuckles collided with an unimaginably hard and cold surface that offered nothing in return to her attempts.

"A star was given the key to the abyss, huh? I don't think I ever made a wish." She shook her head. She was done for now; she would come back later and take another crack at the thing when she had time to clear her head a little. She placed her forehead against the cold surface and finally made her wish.

But she wouldn't voice it aloud.

She took a deep breath and shook her head once more. She was supposed to go and eat with her sisters today anyways.

…

BEEP BEEP BEEP

'Captain Aphelion slowly opened his eyes at the sound that slowly entered his ears from the inside of his unit.'

'No abnormalities were detected.'

'Bodily functions were restored in accordance with Intergalactic Emergency Protocol 273-8255.'

'Captain Aphelion of Aphelion One, awakening confirmed. Resuscitation successful.'

"Ugh… how long have I been asleep?" Aphelion grunted out, his head hurting as his muscles recovered from a stiffness he wasn't used to.

'Two hundred and twelve days, fourteen hours, and thirty-six minutes have passed since you were cryogenically frozen.'

"I was unconscious for seven months?" Aphelion asked, the lack of belief evident in his voice as he spoke.

'According to protocol, pilot input is required given the current situation. Captain Aphelion's awakening started one hundred and twenty-five days ago.'

Aphelion knew the protocol. He wasn't to be awakened until one of two things happened: the first being that he was found by his allies, and the second was if the vessel had found itself captured and/or under attack by an unknown variable.

The darkness in front of him suddenly came to life in the form of digital panels. He could see around him completely and observe what he was seeing with care. The sight was something strange to him. Strange-looking people, dressed in strange clothing and odd appearances sawed and torched at his unit's hull, each one doing nothing to the external most metal that acts as a simple shield for the much stronger metal underneath.

"Who are these people?" Aphelion suddenly asked, looking around at each member of the team of ten that had gathered around and began to hammer on his hull. All of them oddly seemed to be female and smaller in size. All of them muttered roughly the same phrase as they used large drills and wrenches, one even had a massive chromatic hammer that she slammed onto his visor, earning herself a backlash of vibrations that looked painful, even in his eyes.

'That information is currently unknown.'

"They don't look like the people on The Garden." Aphelion made a rough observation, but it was entirely accurate in his own eyes and experiences.

'Conjecture: they are not affiliated with The Garden of Humanity. Observation: they are attempting to destroy this vessel but have no means to do so. Their culture is very primitive and similar to that of ancient humanity.'

"Ancient humanity? What language are they speaking?" Aphelion asked, watching as they continued desperately to make some form of damage to his unit. Their attempts proved to be futile each time.

'Analysis: Ancient English.'

"Can you translate it for me in real time?"

'Yes.'

Immediately, the voices that filled his visor began to shift.

"Buli! This thing is much stronger than us Bulins!" one of the smaller females of the group said. Whatever the small girl was, it donned an absolutely massive wrench and swung it like the thing weighed absolutely nothing. But one of the more memorable things about her that he hadn't noticed at first, was that the small girl dressed in a small white dress with white, shoulder-length white hair had a tail with electricity zapping between its prongs.

The first thought that came to him immediately was that the girl looked similar to a Siren. But she acted nothing like one, so he had no urge or reason to fight them. In fact, all of them seemed to be completely harmless in his own eyes.

"What does Buli mean?" Aphelion asked, earning him a stagnant pause that was finally answered with a less-than meaningful answer.

'The ancient Czech word for 'Fat Man.''

"… they are calling me a fat man?" Aphelion asked, his expression turning deadpan.

'Conjecture: that is not the term they are using. The data is insufficient to produce a full translation.'

"Interesting." Aphelion discontinued, deciding to change the direction of the conversation to something more meaningful to him. "We should leave them alone for now. What is our current situation?"

'Current coordinates are as follows: Milky Way Galaxy, in the solar system of Sol, otherwise known as Earth's Solar System. Currently twenty-five thousand light-years from the center of the galaxy, on the outermost layer. However, star formations are completely different from the ones charted in The Garden's data.'

"Different in what way?" Aphelion asked quickly, the concern growing in him as he began to move around in the cockpit, searching for the emergency rations tucked neatly away in a compartment above his head.

'Answer: star patterns are millions of years behind our charted star system of this galaxy.'

"That's impossible!" Aphelion suddenly exclaimed, his shock getting the better of him as the exosuit he wore began to glow to life. The metal, nanotubular plates began to shift as if preparing to deflect a blunt force attack by hardening their exterior surface like metal scales.

'Conjecture: time travel through a wormhole is possible. However, it is impossible to travel forward in time.'

"You're implying I'm stuck here?" Aphelion said with a start.

'Correct.'

He sat on the cold metal surface of the cockpit and opened the first of his rations, sucking down the flavorless thing in an instant, but savoring the sustenance that had finally sated his starving stomach. He took a moment to think to himself, without the help of his artificial intelligence. Listening to the things that continued to wrench, pound, and drill away at his hull. He noticed how oddly similar they all seemed to one another.

Almost like they were clones.

But not even in his future were clones real. So, something didn't sit right in his stomach. Something was… off.

"Their language doesn't sound difficult." Aphelion thought aloud.

'Ancient English is the foundation for the Universal Language.'

"How difficult would it be for me to learn their language?"

'Easy.'

"How long would it take?"

'A few days or less.'

"Would you be able to translate what I say to them until then?"

'While it is not advised for this unit to speak on your behalf, if that is your order, then yes.'

Suddenly, a sound pierced through the sound of hammering and drilling. Something that sounded horrible and dual-toned. It was an alarm that started as a soft and low tone that whipped itself towards new demonic heights that flattened out at its high-end before dipping back down into a steady low tone.

"Siren attack imminent! All Kansen to port!"

The broadcast repeated the sound of a female voice, the only word he heard and fully understood was the only word that ever had meaning in his life.

Sirens. He thought, his teeth gritting together as he pushed himself up with a start. He stood in the center of the cockpit, allowing the machine to latch onto his arms, legs, and spine before it finally finished by latching onto the back of his head. His visor flipped over and covered his eyes, and before he knew it, the link to his machine had been complete. The world around him faded shortly before it blinked back to life, and the body he saw through was now the metal mech itself. He had become the vessel once more, an act that wasn't advised after awakening from stasis for the damage it could cause to the body.

The eyes of the helmet buzzed to life, a piercing green that caught the attention of all the little things around him and forced them to scatter in fear of what would happen next.

"Bulin! It woke up!" The one with the hammer exclaimed with confused and amazed eyes.

Aphelion One stood with the deft movements of something more man than machine. No sound was made as he picked himself up and stood on two feet, causing a few of the odd creatures around him to run around in panic, throwing their wrenches at him that had all but bounced off him in a comical fashion.

They yelled mixed phrases of 'Bulin' this and 'Bulin' that, 'Bulinated' existence so on and so forth. The word was going to be his most well-pronounced word in Ancient English, and he had no clue what it even meant.

He squatted down slightly, and gave a hearty jump, launching into the massive two doors that created the roof of the building he was in. The two thick slabs of metal had bent at his forceful leap, but he blew through them with ease, and shortly after, he was floating in the air above what looked to be some form of a compound. Primitive but very large metal boats floated on top of the water, and in the distance, he could see his targets.

But they didn't look like anything he had ever studied about. And yet, he was certain they were Sirens.

The other thing that caught his attention left him floating aimlessly in the sky for some time in deep thought. That thing was the sight of the world he saw stretching endlessly before him. He wasn't in a dome that stared out into the open darkness of space. No, he was floating effortlessly above verdurous lands, with water and lands of green as far as he could see. More water than he had ever seen before.

And it was beautiful.

He focused his eyes back on the targets. There were easily thirty Sirens skimming across the water with strange and cumbersome riggings that looked similar to the metal boats that were closest to him, though clearly more advanced in design and material. He began to move slowly at first, testing how fluid he could move through the air as hundreds of pairs of eyes watched from the ground below, staring up at him in amazement and terror as he moved in almost complete silence.

He floated with little sound, a result of Siren technology and gravity manipulation that humanity had seized control of thousands of years before his birth. For the first time in his long life… he had heard something that he hadn't ever heard in his mech before. Not the sound of his assistant or the sound of his voice, but the sound of wind and crashing waves.

Sounds that were entirely new to him, given how accustomed he was to the crushing silence of space and its emptiness.

He tilted his body forward slightly, and with a single crack of sound that boomed below him, he was speeding rapidly towards the Sirens in the distance, leaving a trail of water that shot into the air in his wake. Air whistled around him, and a loud piercing sound of an object moving at high speed sounded around him well before he reached the Sirens.

They opened fire on him immediately, canons and lasers shot out at him, but they too did nothing to his armored shell. The shielding technology on his armor deflected them all with ease like it was nothing but small debris hitting him. His arms extended forward as he passed the fleet of Sirens, and his hands split open with blue energy. In the blink of an eye, the blue energy shot out towards the fleet with an angry hunger.

And missed them all. But the attack didn't need to hit any of them. What happened next, gave him a sound that he had never imagined before.

…

Cleveland watched from the port as the metal object that had been the object of her attention and affection—for a lack of better words—for the past few months whirred to life above her and shot towards the sirens faster than anything she had ever seen. Faster than any plane from any carrier, the metal human-shaped thing seemed to reach such blistering speeds in only seconds, acting as if gravity did not affect it at all.

Inside her head, thoughts fairly yawned with a possibility that unsettled her. If the thing was with the Sirens, they would all be severely in trouble. No, they would all be slaughtered by a force they simply couldn't damage. Enterprise stood unmoving as she watched the thing move, the expression on her face unmoving as well. Aside from the brass up top who gave Enterprise the orders for her to carry out and dispense, she was the second person who knew the most about the metal object that Cleveland had been assigned to.

But inside Cleveland, the emotions she had been feeling at the moment were completely different from Enterprise's. The stark fear of the unknown along with its possibilities penetrated her brain and reproduced at nightmarish speeds in her amygdala. The norepinephrine produced in her bloodstream seeking out nociceptors the same way an invading army would disable radio towers and forms of communications. There was a red alert blaring in Cleveland's mind, flags were waving, alarm bells ringing, and lights flashing, but the ends of her sensory neurons had been blocked and taken over from her adrenaline, and instead of fight-or-flight, she was instead left standing like a deer in the headlights.

It felt like she was screaming into a void with no control of her own body.

Lights filled the sky as flashes from the Sirens rung out across the vastness of the ocean, their main cannons launching barrage after unending barrage at their opponent, each firing cannon singing the song of war and destruction. But each shell bounced off its target with ease, the lasers ricocheted, and shells bounced off a surface they couldn't fully see before shell after shell fell into the ocean surface and sunk to the depths of dark waters

Realization dawned on her at that moment. Whatever the thing was, it didn't belong to Sirens. And the Sirens weren't here for Azur Lane either. The Sirens had come more armed than anyone had ever seen, and they came in numbers that showed they were expecting something more than just the forces of the Azur Lane. They knew something about the black metal suit that they didn't, and she couldn't help but wonder what exactly that something was.

The second wave of flashes followed the first, this one not coming from the Sirens, but from the object that now hunted them. And before she could comprehend what had happened, there was a blinding flash of blue, followed by a blast of air that hit all the ships both in the dock and out of it like a sledgehammer, lifting their bows out of the water with a force so violent, it even slammed battleships into their docks. Enterprise and Cleveland were thrown back like they were nothing more than leaves in the wind, only barely managing to stay on their feet as they both struggled to watch the sight before them with the hundreds of others around them.

The centermost point of the blue light that had been the cause of their current struggles began to expand its radius rapidly, easily growing larger than a nautical mile. The horrible, flowing blue energy of the attack picked water up around it and formed a spiraling orb that sent horrible shivers of fear down Cleveland's spine as she watched the water tornado form. What looked like one nautical mile quickly became two, and then three only seconds later. Eventually, a massive swirling tornado of water formed, shooting far into the sky before falling back down in a torrent of heavy rain that veiled their vision for a brief moment

And a moment later, the blue energy sucked back into itself, crushing back down into the centermost point before completely disappearing, leaving with it a completely absent sea. Not a single siren ship was to be seen, no debris, no fire, not even water was left. There was an absence of water, that began to rapidly balance out with a horrible suction that pulled water in from miles away, successfully creating a whirlpool that—too—eventually faded away.

Whatever attack it was they had all just bore witness to, it was terrifying. The thing they were bombing and shooting for the last few months was a weapon of unimaginable magnitude, capable of destroying sirens without leaving as much as a single flake of ash behind. It was a power beyond the reach and understanding of humans and the Kansen range. And whatever it was, it had shown its capabilities to destroy indefinitely.

And they had been trying to destroy it.

It had demonstrated its power to completely disintegrate Sirens and leave absolutely nothing left of them. And they were trying to harm it.

"Cleveland…" Enterprise began. "Friend or foe?"

She was at a loss for words. No matter what she said, she couldn't bring herself to speak.

"What if it is an enemy?" Cleveland asked hesitantly as if speaking the words would make them true.

Enterprise hesitated before she delivered her answer. "Then… we fight until the end."

The glossy black metal with a now burning fiery center stood before them both only a moment later, flashing before them without a sound or a gust of wind, hovering with an aura that demanded respect and radiated authority and power. Cleveland looked to Enterprise. The amethyst eyes of the normally stoic and confident carrier held no confidence now, no strength, and showed an emotion that she had never seen before.

With Enterprise's bow in her hand, not held in any aggressive way, she opened her mouth to speak, but words never came.

The fear that she had always kept at bay, always hid away from her fellow ships, had finally bled through. The fierce flagship of the Eagle Union, for the first time, cracked under pressure.

A sharp sound of pressurized air being released filled their ears, and the headpiece of the metal object that had been the root cause of all the fear she had, suddenly cracked open. And jumping from the metal thing, landing only a few feet away from Enterprise, stood a man dressed in a black suit. On each shoulder stood a rank that looked oddly familiar. But the face of the man betrayed the rank they saw.

Five black stars situated in a circle on each shoulder.

The rank of fleet commander stood before them. And the face was that of a young man, not even in his mid-twenties. The black suit he wore was skin-tight and showed the perfectly defined muscles he had, broad shoulders, defined abs, and sharp features. Blond hair and piercing blue eyes that lacked any form of emotion stared at Enterprise, arms held up in an unaggressive gesture that caught the carrier off guard. A mechanical voice echoed from the machine that floated behind him, now empty but still acting on its own.

The man spoke, his lips moved, but the words came out as something they couldn't understand. And only a second later, the machine behind him translated.

'We mean you no harm.'

End of Chapter 1: Between the Stars