Title: Legacy of Nazara
Author: NHunter aka N.H.
Genre: General, Adventure
Rating: R
Warnings: AU; Crossover.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Mass Effect" or "Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio". No profit is being made. Same goes for other books, anime & manga I may or may not use for ideas.

Legacy of Nazara
Prologue I: The Origins

Nazara were strong and proud people; they pretty much ruled the known galaxy. Or, they did until the day when an armada of strange vessels appeared at the very heart of their Dominion without a warning. All people present on the Citadel, civilians and guards alike, were killed before anything could have been done the sudden arrival of the mysterious and very murderous spaceships.

Unfortunately for their new enemy, this surprise attack failed to completely decapitate their state: a small portion of their ruling elders were away on various political businesses and, thus, weren't killed when the Citadel fell. And once the shock of this unexpected incursion wore off, these elders rallied the people from the hundreds of Nazara worlds to defend the Dominion against this new threat.

Alas, that wasn't enough. Even if the fleets weren't caught flatfooted by the enemy's attacks anymore, there was almost nothing they could actually do against these unidentified ships from the Dark Space. Whatever those monsters were, they possessed the technologies Nazara could only dream about. And they were extremely proficient in wielding all that power, obliterating anything the Dominion could throw at them with terrifying ease.

Conventional Mass Effect technologies was of very little use against these invaders. Something different, something unlike anything created ever before was needed to combat these nightmares, and the remaining elders of Nazara understood that. That's why they poured all available resources into R&D in hopes that something, anything, that can turn the tide of this war would be created before it was too late.

Too bad, the scientists of the Dominion were too used to working with the Mass Effect technologies; thinking outside of that particular 'box' was not easy for them. And that made the already tall order they've been given even more harder. Yet, none of them wanted their civilization fall to the Reapers, so they tried their best to develop something that would give their people a chance of turning the tide...

And, after many years of hard work, the breakthrough everyone was hoping for has finally been made. Alas, it came just too late: by the time the first working prototypes of the new technologies were completed and tested, the once-mighty fleets of the Dominion were reduced to small groups of patchwork warships; meanwhile whatever systems were still under the Nazara control no longer the industrial power to produce the new weapons in quantities that could make any difference in this war.

Their extinction was all but inevitable, but Nazara would not go gentle. They would make their enemies pay dearly for the destruction of their civilization! And if they couldn't do that themselves, they'll make damn sure that those who came after would avenge them. Thus, it was decided to give everything they've managed to learn – the new technologies and the knowledge about the Reapers – to the races that would inhabit the galaxy in the future cycles.

And so, twenty heavily armored and shielded capsules were prepared, each carrying databanks full of knowledge and even a few samples of the technologies. Each capsule also had an AI, whose purpose was to guard this gift and ensure that it ended in the right hands.

On the launch day, though, things went straight to hell as an armada of Reaper capital ships – likely alerted about the plan by their indoctrinated agents – appeared in the system and proceeded to blast everything in their sight into pieces. And that most certainly included the capsules... Within just a few seconds, all hopes of Nazara for bringing light into someone's future and their dreams of vengeance were brutally annihilated right before their eyes.

Unknown both to the Reapers and to Nazara themselves, one of the capsules actually survived the attack. It, however, was seriously damaged with both the control module and the engines being shot off. And so, all it could do was drift aimlessly through the galaxy in hopes that one day it would be come across by some sentient life...

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In an extremely-improbable turn of events, after floating through the vast emptiness of space for great many years, the capsule ended up crash-landing on a garden world. However, since most of its sensors had been damaged or outright destroyed during the capsule's eventful launch, the AI in charge of it could not determine, whether there was any sentient life on this world. Thus, after activating the self-repair protocols and nanities production system, the AI returned to hibernation, hoping that one day some civilization would appear on this world, thus granting it a chance to fulfill its purpose...

Several hundred of planet's orbits later, the Intelligence was awakened again, this time by a primitive but most definitely artificial radio signal that originated from the planet's northern hemisphere. Now aware that the planet it landed bore sentient life, the AI began its observations. From listening in on the local's radio transmissions, it learned that this planet was called 'Earth' and it was inhabited by a race that called itself 'humans'. And, according to their dominant calendar, it was year 1895.

The next eighteen years the AI spent on studying the humankind. And it didn't do that just by intercepting their radio transmissions; it also sent thousands of miniature drones to observe them at closer range. And, despite their technologies being quite primitive and their people living in great disparity, the humans still managed to pick the Intelligence's curiosity enough for it to decide to mingle with them as it observed their civilization in person.

Thus, the AI created a physical body for itself, modeling it after a random human it had seen via one of its recon drones – a barely-teenaged 'European' girl with long silvery-blonde hair. And as it moved into this new avatar, the Intelligence modified itself to give itself a gender. And so, 'it' became 'she'. Which was oddly appropriate: the humans often talked about their naval vessel as if they were female, and, well, she was essentially a spirit of a space-faring 'vessel'.

For almost two decades the Intelligence lived among the humans in 'Europe' without arousing their suspicions about her true nature. Then, in year 1931, one of the German scientists, a man by the name of Edmund Gauss, discovered something unusual – the nano-materials that the capsule's factory has been producing for several centuries now – in the ocean waters.

And with this discovery, the times when she could passively evaluate the humans were coming to an end. Yet, the Intelligence wasn't ready to decree these people as worthy of her creators' gifts... Some other method of determining the humanity's worth was needed. And after thinking about this whole situation for awhile, the Intelligence managed to come up with a trial that would let her finally pass her judgment on the humankind.

This trial would see the seas taken away from the humans by an armada of technologically-superior ships. Not quite a reconstruction of the Reaper invasion her creators faced many many years ago, but still something that would show her what the humans are truly made of. And seeing as her instrument for testing the humanity will be a fleet of very advanced warships, the Intelligence decided to re-name herself appropriately. Thus, she became the Admiralty Code.

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Even with the amazing technology her creators, the Nazara, have bestowed upon her, secretly creating a fleet capable of enforcing a global blockade took years. And so, while her 'children' were being built, the Admiralty Code could do little but continue observing the humanity.

She watched the Earth getting engulfed in the fires of a new great war in the late 1930s. And that was causing a major concern: could a race of warmongers ever be worthy of her creators' gifts? Well, one certainly needed to be good at war to stand a chance against the Reapers, but... If the humans couldn't stop fighting among themselves, giving them advanced technology would only spell the end of their race long before the Reapers return from the Dark Space.

The very thought of her creators' gifts being waster like that was scaring the Admiralty Code. Yet, she has already committed her resources to her plan and set things into motion; there was no going back.

Meanwhile, even in the midst of a world war, the humans were still trying to uncover the secrets of the world around them. One Dr. Johaness Gauss, for example, was continuing his late father's work in researching the nano-materials that could be found in the ocean waters. And since the understanding of this alien substance could very well let the Third Reich steamroll over their enemies, his research had some quite strong backing from the Wehrmacht. It was both the money needed to conduct various experiments, and the various information that cold help the Nazi scientists understand of what this strange matter was and how it came to be.

Thanks to the cooperation from the Kriegsmarine captains, by the summer of 1943 Dr. Gauss was able to finish mapping the distribution of the nano-materials along the coasts of Europe. And the information he was able to read from this map was... disturbing. While it was known for a while that the nano-materials weren't a natural phenomenon, Dr. Gauss now believed that the entity that created them wasn't benevolent; he actually thought that it was planning something big and that those plans were nearing their completion.

Of course, others weren't as convinced that some mysterious entity was out there, waiting to plunge the human civilization into even greater chaos than it was already in, but Dr. Gauss still managed to get his expedition, aimed to uncover the truth behind the existence of the nano-materials, approved.

The team lead by Dr. Gauss himself departed from Berlin on December 11, 1943 and began its long journey across the Reich-occupied Europe... For over a year not a trace of that mysterious entity could be found, but then, when the people were ready to give up, they accidentally stumbled upon a trail of something that defied the understanding of then-modern science.

Even that lead didn't really help all that much, beyond raising the team's morale through a hesitant confirmation that something indeed was going on. Finding out what that something was and tracking the perpetrator down was still quite a tall challenge... Not tall enough to stop Dr. Gauss, though, as on April 20, 1945 he reported that he and his team managed to corner a 'being of unknown nature' near Bremerhaven and were going to confront it.

That was the last message Dr. Gauss has ever sent.

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April 21, 1945: The team led by Dr. Johannes Gauss confronts the Admiralty Code near Bremerhaven. No records of what had happened there exist, but this meeting results in deaths of all humans present and the disappearance of the Admiralty Code.

May 1, 1945: On this day the Fleet created by the Admiralty Code was supposed to activate and seize control over the Earth's seas. With the Admiralty Code missing, however, the warships remain dormant.

2012: From this time on, sightings of the 'ghost ships' are reported all over the world. All witnesses claim that they saw WWII battleships appearing in thick mist.

2036-38: The sightings of the 'ghost ships' become increasingly more frequent and no longer happen only in the open seas. Several major countries launch serious investigations into these 'ghost ships', but nothing concrete turns up. The 'ghost ships' are now collectively referred to as the "Fleet of Fog".

October 11, 2038: A Russian patrol engages a group of "Fog" warships for trespassing on Russian waters near Vladivostok. The patrol is destroyed without being able to land even a single solid hit on the "Fog" vessels.

December 2038: The "Fleet of Fog" begins to actively attack human vessels.

2039: Navies of the world join together in an attempt to deal with the "Fleet of Fog", but all battles end in the defeat of the human forces.

September 8-9, 2039: The Great Battle in which the international "Final Battle Fleet" clashes with the "Fleet of Fog". Humans lose 70% of their remaining ships and suffer over 600 000 casualties. No "Fog" vessel above torpedo boats is damaged in the battle. However, JMSDF commander Shouzou Chihaya managed to capture "Fog" submarine I-401.

October 2039: "Fleet of Fog" completes their Global Blockade.