A/N: Arpeggio fandom! Greetings! I have been watching this anime for all of 3 days and can fully say that I love it! Except for the second movie (which brought me to tears for the second time in the series) I loved all of it.

Now, I bring to you a cannon story, but following a personal OC that has treated me very well in the past.

Anyways, I'll stop talking now. If you like the story, leave me a follow or a favorite and if you're feeling especially generous, maybe a review?

Have a great day!

I-401

"Gunzou, how's it going my friend?" Andrew asked as he sat down with his lunch tray in the cafeteria of the Maritime Institute of Technology.

"Good Andrew. Yourself?" he asked.

"Me? Eh, you know, the usual" Andrew shrugged, before digging into his food.

Another young man in the school uniform, but wearing a strange mask came up to the two and sat down.

"Hey guys" he said simply, to which both responded with "Hey Sou."

All were classmates at the Institute, and their circle of friends had two more members who were making up tests over the lunch break.

However, while Gunzou and Sou were Japanese, Andrew was not.

Standing at 6ft tall, he was by no means, a small person. Short brown hair, and piercing blue eyes, with no significant facial hair, and a permanent neutral expression marring his face were his features.

He had been a transfer student from the young age of 5, managing to get across the Pacific Ocean before they mystic Fleet of Fog had completed their blockade of all merchant trade across the oceans, and shooting down all satellites and aircraft.

The Fleet of Fog. A naval force that had appeared out of nowhere in order to blockade all ports around the world, destroy any commercial shipping and seemingly to bleed humanity to a slow death.

Nobody knew anything about the United States, even something as small as if it even existed, so complete was the destruction of all means of communication.

The naval forces of humanity had come together for a final stand against the Fog, but they had been utterly decimated, with over 600,000 sailors and airmen killed as a result.

All three of them could remember the small cadre of ships that returned to Yokosuka, all badly damaged and struggling to stay afloat.

Andrew's father had been killed during the Great Naval Battle, and his mother had died during a Fog shore bombardment which had hit the shipyard where she was working as a safety inspector.

"So, you got picked to go on that trip to the hanger eh? What was inside there?" Sou asked after a few minutes of quiet eating.

"Sorry" Gunzou replied with a small smile "It was top secret."

"Well we can always guess" Andrew stated "It was probably a new weapon to fight the Fog."

"Oh if only you guys actually knew" Gunzou thought, smiling to himself this time.

What was in the warehouse was a captured Fog submarine, I-401.

It had surrendered peacefully, but all weapons and commands had been locked out so the navy spent seven years trying to reactivate the ship.

And he had done it by merely touching the hull.

All that wasted time, and all it took was a simple touch.

Gunzou regarded his friends, quickly realizing that he would never be able to tell them what happened and it would be best to just forget the whole incident.

Andrew looked back on his time in Japan with a small smile.

Sure, it wasn't Canada, but he didn't remember a whole lot about his home country because of how young he was.

Here, he had made friends, and he wouldn't trade them for the world.

"Hey Andrew! Wake up" a voice said, causing the mentioned young man to break out of his thoughts.

"Iori, I apologize" Andrew replied, snapping out of it and returning his full attention to the engineering console in front of him.

"You must've been thinking awful hard about something" she chided, handing him a cup of coffee.

"Just thinking about old times, back at the school. Before all this" he murmured.

"You want me to take the console for awhile? Go get some sleep and a meal?" Iori asked.

"That would be excellent" Andrew replied with a smile "Everything's still running like a top. As usual. Core readings are all in the green."

He stood up and stretched, grabbing his jacket off the back of the chair as Iori sat down.

Much like their Captain, Andrew wore a suit as well.

A slate grey, 3-piece suit, with a white shirt and a blue tie, and black dress shoes completed his outfit.

Most of the crew wore casual clothes, with Sou being the next most formal to him in a turtleneck sweater and jeans, his ever-present mask still in place.

There were two other crew members, Shizuka and Kyouhei were in charge of sensors and weapons respectively.

Iori was the engineering officer, and Andrew was the Chief Engineer, but they both basically did the same job, ensuring that the engine kept going and that all systems were functioning normally.

Sou was the first mate, or in reality the Executive Officer on board, and Gunzou was the Captain.

They had quite a diverse group, but they worked very well together, especially since they had been able to sink the battleship Hyuuga, though it was exhausting for everyone.

There was also the Mental Model for I-401, a girl named Iona on board.

She requested that everyone call her by name instead of hull number, which was easy to adapt to.

Everyone was slightly nervous to come aboard after they had abandoned the academy to set foot on a Fog ship, but Gunzou had assured them that everything would be fine.

And everything was fine, there was nothing wrong with being aboard Iona at all, she was perfectly safe in all respects.

Stopping off at the small mess hall onboard, Andrew made himself a sandwich and put it on the only table along with his half empty coffee mug.

Their current orders were to proceed off the Saga Prefecture and ensure that the launch of an SSTO spacecraft went off without a hitch.

Apparently, someone thought that the Fog would try to interrupt it so they made the decision to contract in the I-401 for additional protection.

However, they had a few hours until they reached the patrol area, so Iona had a majority of the systems well in hand while people were resting.

"I'd best get some rack time before this all kicks off" Andrew muttered before clearing his mug and plate away, and heading off to his small cabin.

Andrew awoke to the blaring alarm signaling a call to general quarters, indicating that they were indeed going into battle.

As Iori had everything in engineering under control, he quickly made his way to the control room, and grabbed the tablet reserved for coordinating damage control on the vessel.

Sure, nanomaterials may have comprised the hull and systems, but if Iona was busy in combat, he could at least handle damage control to give her a little bit of leeway.

"Contact with one Nagara light cruiser. They've destroyed both Japanese ships protecting the SSTO" Shizuka reported as the lights onboard dimmed way down to combat levels.

Iona went through the specifications of the ship, and Gunzou had Kyouhei load the torpedoes that they had decided on before into the specified tubes.

"Tube 7, launch corrosive torpedo!" came the order from the captain, quickly followed by "Snapshot tubes 1 and 2. All stop. Dive deep."

I-401 had been detected and the Fog ship had fired two torpedoes in response to the one that was already fired.

There was a distant explosion as one torpedo was intercepted, but the other hit the Klein field that Iona deployed, shaking the crew around.

"5 seconds to torpedo impact" Kyouhei reported, keeping a close eye on the weapons track and counting down the seconds.

The Fog ship attempted to deploy its Klein field, but it was far too late.

The torpedo hit, corroding a large hole into the midships of the cruiser, before causing the ship to violently explode.

"Surface the boat" Gunzou ordered, and on the way up, he said "Andrew, you know what to do now."

"With pleasure captain" the other man replied with a smile.

Andrew was already up top when Iona came up from the control room, standing aft of the bridge and watching as the SSTO took off from its launch platform.

"Do you feel bad? Sinking another member of the Fog?" Andrew asked, spreading a tarpaulin on the upper deck before he grabbed a paintbrush and a photograph.

"I'm following the order of my captain" Iona replied simply.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the response. It was so calculated.

Gunzou came up and began talking with her, so Andrew returned to the task at hand, which was painting a kill marking of the cruiser alongside the one they had from Hyuuga.

The captain had wanted to keep a recorded tally, but he thought it was too boring to just have it recorded digitally in Iona's databanks, so he had brought back the art of painting kill markings on the ship.

With Iona unable to make that minute of an alteration to her colour, the task had fallen to Andrew, who was the best artist in their small group.

Finishing the task in about half an hour, he looked up to see Gunzou and Iona still chatting away.

"Captain, kill marking complete. It'll take about fifteen minutes for it to finish drying so you might not want to dive unless we're gonna die" he said, chuckling lightly "But I'll still be pissed at you for wrecking this one."

"You'll be mad if I ruin any of your markings" Gunzou replied, rolling his eyes as Andrew finished cleaning up.

"You're darn right! I work hard on those" Andrew grumbled, before turning away and going to an access hatch "I'm gonna go see if Iori wants a break."

Back down in engineering, Andrew and Iori were chatting about the battle.

"We should be putting into Nagasaki pretty soon. Another hour or so" Iori stated after Andrew had already sat down.

"Anything else that I need to know about?" he asked, looking over the display in front of him.

"Not that I can think of" she replied, tapping her chin in thought "If you need something, you know where to find me."

With a jaunty wave, Iori walked out of engineering, leaving Andrew alone in the peace of the engine room.

True to Iona's word, they pulled into Nagasaki a little under an hour after Nagara had been sunk offshore.

"I need to go and talk to our client. I should be back soon. Be ready to go, 10 minutes notice for power" Gunzou said as he got out of his chair and walked towards the ladder going into the sail.

"Roger. 10 minutes notice" Andrew replied in the engine room, punching a few commands in to drop the system into a standby mode as he stood up and stretched.

Heading to the control room, he found everyone still there, except for Iona, who had disappeared somewhere.

"So what do you think the captain went to talk about?" Kyouhei asked, to which the group shrugged their shoulders.

"Who knows. It could be our next job too" Sou replied, getting out of his chair and walking around to stand by the sensor station.

Gunzou came back within fifteen minutes of leaving, and everybody was still shooting the breeze in the control room when he came back with Iona in tow.

"To your stations! We have a new job. Set course for Yokosuka" he ordered, easily sliding into his chair as everyone returned to their stations.

Andrew hurried to the engine room and typed in the restart commands and within a minute they had full power ready to go.

"Captain, engines are ready. We can go when you're satisfied" Andrew reported through the active communication link that was always open to engineer.

"Excellent. Thank you" Gunzou replied simply.

"Course laid in for Yokosuka. Estimated time of arrival 26 hours from now" Iona said over the ship intercom.

"Are we expecting trouble?" Andrew asked aloud to the panel.

"We're not sure, but I do know that we'll be ready for anything. No matter what it is" Gunzou replied through the comm link.

20 hours later, they were all nearly ready to eat their words.

The alarm for general quarters reverberated through the hull, rousing any sleeping members, and pushing everyone (excluding Andrew who was on shift in engineering) to the control room to figure out what was going on.

And it was just about the worst thing that they could have prepared for.

"So…. captain…. are we actually prepared to take on a heavy cruiser?" Kyouhei questioned as everyone stood silently in the control room looking at the object that had halted their progress and caused the launch of seven active decoys.

"Takao is merely a stepping stone to get to Yokosuka" Gunzou informed him "All hands, man battle stations."