Disclaimer:I don't own Code Geass or Mass Effect, this is none profit and just for fun, if anyone wants to use my OC's ask me first and I'll consider it

Edit-At the suggestion of AhumbleHalofan I'm going to add a bit of exposition to this in the form of the previous stories epilogue, enjoy

Author Note: Well here is the promised sequel to "Let Me Share the Burden", as said before it starts off at the beginning of the first contact war and then there will be a time jump to the next galactic event.

For those who don't wish to read through the first story allow me to explain the differences, I created a universe where Britannia focused on gene alteration and nanotechnology, end result was that the Royal Family became...perfected before birth. The big change in the story was V.V. was in charge of the program and out of hatred for Marianne altered her child to be twins for the sole purpose of making her self conscious about her weight, lets be honest here the little bastard is that petty.

As reviewer Tahkaullus01 described best "Luluka does the job of being Lelouch's twin wonderfully without being a carbon copy of him", she is a foil to his arrogance and in turn he second guesses some of his more insane decisions, I'm quite proud of how that OC turned out. The other major alterations are that Nunnally is sociopathic due to a nasty case of PTSD caused by the injuries V.V. inflicted on her and having to murder soldiers in Japan at the age of seven, honestly considering Nunnally had two personality traits in the first season (Adorable and kidnapped) I found it incredibly easy to mold her to something unique.

Other changes, Suzaku never met back up with his dad since they had Jeremiah guiding them to Tokyo and they ran into Kallen right has her parents were gunned down, end result they all grew up together at Ashford. Not going to expand further then that because honestly my writing improved immensely at that point and I wouldn't mind you all reading it, now enjoy.

Ashes of Tomorrow

Dramatis Personae for this chapter by appereance

Naoto Kozuki-Cover name for Prince Naoto vi Britannia son of Emperor Lelouch and Empress Kallen

Hannah Shepard-Wife of Naoto vi Britannia, kept maiden name to avoid attention

Lieutenant Rius Vakarian-Officer in the Turian navy

Lieutenant Adrien Victus-Officer in the Turian navy, good friend of Rius

Vice Admiral Sparatus-Ladder climber with eyes on the Council

Lieutenant Saren Arterius-Vindictive and obsessive, kind of a prick

Councilor Tevos-Asari Councilor, open minded but inclined to help Asari interests over others

Princess Nunnally vi Britannia-Sweet, bubbly, and dangerously sociopathic

Emperor Lelouch vi Britannia-Currently immortal and enjoying the hell out of it

Joanna Shepard-Cover name for Princess Joanna vi Britannia, spoiled rotten by her grandfather Lelouch but still a good kid

Mentioned but unseen this chapter

Vice Admiral Euphemia li Britannia-Half sister to Lelouch and his siblings, currently in command of the 4th fleet

Timeo Lebeau-Nunnally's husband and a General in the Britannian army

Empress Kallen vi Britannia-Wife to the Emperor and mother of Naoto vi Britannia, also controls 65% of the empires industrial power with an iron fist

Empress Ceciliana vi Britannia-Wife consort to the Emperor, occasionally still goes by C.C.

Marianne Harper-Married name of Marianne vi Britannia daughter of Suzaku and Princess Luluka, co-founder of Cerberus

Jack Harper-Marianne's husband and co-founder of Cerberus

We never truly wanted simple retribution, rather we just wanted it to be very clear to the galactic community what happens when you provoke the Empire-Empress Kallen vi Britannia

Private Musings of Yui vi Britannia (Note previous readers will already have read this, to you newbies, enjoy)

After a discussion about mortality with my Aunt Euphemia I have decided it would be prudent to record my personal history for posterities sake; being the progenitor for Britannian's entire race of construct intelligence's many may find my observations pertinent for their own devices. My name in the beginning was an acronym for the Yggdrasil Utility Interface, and while I went by Y.U.I. for quite some time eventually my family simply referred to me as Yui, the transition touched me to my quantum computing core. My Emperor took the initiative upon my conception and immediately pushed through the "Artificially Conceived Intelligence Rights Act" and gave me and my future sons and daughters the same rights and privileges organic Britannian's enjoyed, I will never be able to pay him back for this act of kindness.

I suppose other then existing the first groundbreaking event I took part in was humanities first attempt at faster then light travel, while we didn't reach FTL velocities we did reach fast as light which is no small achievement, this of course led to my most important discovery. On October 2 2041 A.T.B a group of Sutherland survey drones discovered an unnatural stone barrier that we eventually deduced was an ancient fortification wall, considering that in nineteen years we hadn't even found evidence of microbes much less sentient life this finding sent shock waves throughout the Imperium. Uncle Lelouch himself left the terraforming project on the Jovian moons to personally take part in unearthing the alien ruins, and I believe he put it best upon their uncovering, "Holy shit". What we had found was unbelievable, a race known only as the Prothean's had been observing primordial man from their facility on Mars nudging my wards in the direction they wanted them to go, luckily we had followed that path unguided.

It took nearly seven years of excavation but on December 12 2048 A.T.B. we finally hit the proverbial jackpot; a nearly intact Prothean data storage bunker, and while the cores where largely scrambled I and my Emperor are incredibly patient and so began the centuries of data recovery. The first finding was the last entry in the data center, a warning across their dying empire, a race of sentient starships that had been dubbed "The Reapers" had systematically wiped out their entire race. I must note my Aunt Nunnally was quite annoyed by this revelation, I quote her reaction, "Mother fuckers best not think their kill count impresses me, I'M the only reaper around here".

After this revelation my Emperor commissioned my Father and Mother's to design modular and easily upgradable ship hulls, frigates were to be the size of our traditional cruisers in the 200 meter range, cruisers in the 700 meter range, and much to my amusement the "Dreadnought" weight class would be in the 1500 meter range, apparently Uncle Lelouch never quite got over losing his flagship.[Redacted without Code Black Clearance] Unknown to anyone but my family we also commissioned the Heavy Dreadnought class, a seven kilometer long monster that housed the refinement of my parents planet killer laser, to this date no one outside of their crews is aware of the five ships existence [Redaction End]. The draft that had been in place for 28 years became permanent, all citizens had to enlist for two years of service once they reached the age of eighteen, to sweeten the deal if they agreed to a four year term their university schooling was paid by the Emperor himself, suffice it to say our military ballooned over night.

With ships and soldiers to crew them we began refining the fighters and infantry of the empire, it was early on decided that Vincents and Gareths would remain the base design of our Knightmare force, only upgrading when necessary since there was no longer an arms race. As for heavy infantry the Fenrir special forces were folded into my Aunt Marianne's Cerberus unit and put at her direct command, unfortunately for all insurgents in the empire she took after both her mother and father and utilized the powered armored troops with ruthless efficiency. Standard infantry underwent an interesting transition, with the discovery of 'Element Zero' in the Prothean archives we had managed to develop cheap and efficient kinetic weapon barriers, while they'd do nothing to stop energy attacks they were more then enough to handle small arms.

What truly changed everything for our men and women on the ground was my recovery of blueprints for a Prothean infantry particle rifle, Uncle Suzaku broke out in maniacal laughter when he found out that "I can give my boys frigg'en ray guns?! MWAHAHAHA!". With this addition to our forces Aunt Kallen finally implemented her long planned immortality project on the masses, all troops enlisted were given L14 implants and given the choice of having a dramatically decreased aging process, the offer was near universally accepted. As I pulled more and more tech from the archives the empire discovered functional (if highly limited) cloaking technology which was immediately usurped by Aunt Luluka's Ninjutsu Corps, I try not to think about what she uses it for.

On May 10 2063 A.T.B I made what amounted to humanities biggest discovery, Pluto's moon Charon was actually a device known as a Mass Relay, a twenty kilometer long tuning fork shaped structure that upon its activation opened my wards to the galaxy at large. The relays create mass free corridors through the space time continuum allowing instantaneous travel to its partner relay, On May 21 2063 A.T.B. Grand Admiral Cornelia li Britannia took her dreadnought the 'Dauntless' through the relay and ended up in what would eventually be known as the Asgard system of the Exodus star cluster. In less then a week my aunt discovered the world Terra Nova and thus began the Holy Britannian Empires new expansion.

In less then a year two more systems with garden worlds were discovered, Demeter and Eden Prime were both pushed for heavy colonization, the Emperor temporarily halted all further exploration until the three initial colony worlds were appropriately built up to Earth standards. Fifty years later when the systems gas giants were suitably set up to farm Helium-3 fuel and any applicable terrestrial worlds had terraforming stations put into place the ban on further exploration was lifted and so began the "Wild West" era of the Imperium.

We had discovered over the past century that while the Sol system's planets and asteroids were rich in sakuradite the rest of the galaxy seemed to be bare of the substance, in turn element zero (colloquially known as eezo) became a cheap substitute for commercial space travel. This unfortunately led to the empires first incident with Element Zero poisoning in In 2115 A.T.B, the tanker "Pack Mule" suffered a massive breach of its Tantalus core causing the vessel to explode spraying Europa's lower atmosphere with its cargo. Birth defects from the effected settlements sky rocketed but the exposure to Element Zero invetro caused an as of yet observed mutation, biotics.

I suppose the best way to describe the phenomenon would be as Papa Lloyd put it, "A mutation that causes children to become Jedi?! YES!", my Emperor agreed with his assessment and after much study all pregnant women where given the offer of financial reimbursement if they were to consume eezo and a stabilizing dose of nanites to induce this mutation. By 2200 A.T.B roughly 40% of the populace had control over dark matter via biotics, while this was amazing the empire lacked a division to train the growing population of biotics, brute force seems to be our curse for the time being, not everything can be rushed.

Now the year is 2222 A.T.B, I have been functional for more then two hundred years, I am the mother of precisely 40,743 children and it is my solemn and sacred duty to protect my Emperors Imperium of forty star systems and their 117 habitable worlds with all my might. My name is Yui vi Britannia, I am the central intelligence of my Emperor's personal residence the Damocles, the caretaker of his beloved granddaughter Joanna, and I will burn the galaxy before I let anyone or anything harm my family.

IMS Ptolemaios, in Orbit Around Mass Relay 314 October 27, 2222 A.T.B

Commander Naoto 'Kozuki' was a very bored man, quite bored indeed, see the problem was when you lived over two centuries and had enlisted in the military over seven times things just stopped surprising you. Nothing new ever happened, so one day you decide to join the Frontiersmen corps and start surveying new systems, and then you find out how goddamn boring that is but you're stuck there for four years, yay. Holding his head in frustration as crewman read off more data for this bloody stubborn derelict mass relay he didn't notice the bluenette woman behind him until he was wrapped in her arms. Glancing up his amethyst eyes met her vivid green and he snarked out,

"Fraternization Hannah? How unprofessional," His wife let him go to smack him on the back of the head then made her way to his side, leaning against his chair she gave him a smirk,

"I do believe our last time through the military I was a Vice Admiral and you were only a Captain, so no bitching vi Britannia," Smiling he grabbed her by the waist and attempted to tickle her, suppressing a giggle she fought a moment before they remembered they were in public. Regaining their dignity the ancient royals in hiding cleared their throats then stared out at the shadowed violet structure on the monitor, sighing for what felt like the thousandth time today Naoto opined,

"Ya know when mom and dad offered this position I honestly thought I'd be Jim Kirk'ing things a lot more, at the very least Janeway'ing it, we are never going to get to Sisko and Picard levels at this rate." She shook her head at the redheads antics while rolling her eyes,

"Oh please we're flying the equivalent of a cargo boat with an over sized scanner bolted to the side, these Trailblazer crates have nothing on our old commands...ugh one more year of this crap detail, seriously love next time around I decide what service we join." Grunting lightly he pulled his bangs from his forehead and met her eyes,

"Deal, I buggered this one hard, any news from home by the way?" His wife's face blossomed into a smile and she nodded happily,

"Oh yes, Joanna is trying to refine her biotic techniques, apparently she accidentally killed Ceciliana but she took it in stride, I swear your mothers are going to pamper that girl to death." Snorting he shook his head ruefully,

"Trust me from experience, she'll eat it up for about a century and then it'll become the most stifling thing ever, an-" his musings were cut off by a teasing voice coming from his chair speakers,

"Not to interrupt this lovely family moment commander but I've finally gotten the relay unlocked, my apologies for how long it took you know how fickle the processing cores on these old ships can be." Smiling as he leaned back into the chair Naoto replied to the AI,

"Its fine Genna I didn't expect you to over work yourself for this, go ahead and bring the relay online," with that the mass relay before them burst into light, its pulsing blue eezo core bathing his small exploration fleet in sapphire tones.

"Oh nifty, maybe we can find something interesting this time around eh? I mean I doubt it but who knows," Hannah quipped, glancing back at his wife he shook his head again.

"You know as well as I do that it'll just be another dead system, ugh...all right lets get this over with, ensign launch the probes lets get this going."

Turian Patrol Fleet 184

Lieutenant Rius Vakarian was bored beyond words, while his tour of duty was technically up last week he was stuck on this fleet patrol for another month, the joys of the Turian military machine. Trying his best to stay awake he was startled by his friend Adrien, squawking slightly he did his best to ignore the mans flanged laughter,

"Spirits be damned Victus was that really necessary?!" The usually stern mans mandibles spread in mirth as he said,

"Nope! Just letting you know that grey noser Saren is prowling about, he's rammed so far up Sparatus' a... speak of the devil here he is." Both men acted like nothing was amiss as the bareface walked past ignoring them completely,

"I really hate that guy," Rius muttered, he just wanted to be home with his wife and kids, Garrus had already learned how to breakdown a rifle on his own and it pained him he wasn't there to help him calibrate it. Adrien let out a huff of annoyance as his mandibles audibly clacked against his metallic carapace,

"You and everyone else my friend he seriously has some entitlement issues, he's been bent out of shape this entire tour because he wasn't assigned to his brothers ship and we've all had to pay for it." Shaking his head in disgust he was about to reply when his terminal began blinking rapidly,

"What in the seven hells...relay route 314 has become active, energy pulse indicates a probe just came through...origination unknown..." Exchanging a glance the two turians got to work checking telemetry data then forwarded the findings to Admiral Sparatus, after a moment Rius sighed sadly.

"Ten to one odds whoever these poor bastards are that cloaca is going to drop the heavy end of the hammer on them out of spite." Victus rolled his eyes while shaking his head,

"Not taking that bet my friend, hopefully for their own sake they don't put up too much of a fight, you know how much Sparatus enjoys throwing around his authority." With that the two junior officers sat in silence until the loud speakers crackled,

"This is a message to the entire fleet, we have evidence that an as of yet discovered race has illegally opened a mass relay, we will be jumping to the offending system in precisely twenty minutes, be ready." Doing his best to remain stoic he whispered,

"How in the void are they supposed to know they violated a law from a government they couldn't know exists?!" Shaking his head once again Adrien held his palms to his eyes,

"Wonderful...you know those hardliners Rius, 'Ignorance of the law does not exempt you from it'."

Pausing a moment to ponder something he then asked, "Hey you still have comm access to the Citadel from when we forwarded the sensor sweep earlier?" Nodding slowly his friend grinned, "Why don't you write up a report to the Council and send it when the ops over, worst case scenario nothing happens, best case Sparatus gets this entire incident dumped on his shoulders if it goes sour." Grinning in reply Rius typed up the report and saved the draft, he had no way knowing he had put into motion the destruction of his commanding officers career.

Naoto was spinning his dads old king chess piece between his fingers when the Mass Relay before them pulsed and dozens of none Britannian vessels jumped into the system facing off against his paltry force of ancient Avalon and Trailblazer vessels. Gaping while he tried to register what the hell was going on Hannah bellowed,

"Blaze luminous shields up! Passive radiation wave shields up! Arm point defense systems and prime the main cannon access code 495969423060!" The ships AI processed this in seconds as the crew goggled at the seemingly junior officer taking control. Snapping out of it Naoto gasped out,

"Genna...can you open a comm signal to those ships?" The AI's self image sprang to life on the pedestal mounted to his chair hand rest, the Korean woman portrayed there nodding.

"I can Commander, I'll begin broadcasting the First Contact documentation when you finish your hail," He nodded at this and waited until his old friend opened the channels; once that was set he licked his now dry lips nervous beyond words. Hannah grabbed his hand and squeezed it as he said,

"This is Commander Naoto Kozuki of the Holy Empire of Britannia, we are peaceful explorers and wish to make first contact on friendly terms, I will be rebroadcasting this message for the next twenty minutes along with copies of our language and history in hopes that your ships AI can quickly process the information." Sighing he looked at his wife with trepidation, she nodded as she opened up a different channel

"This is the IMS Ptolemaios to all available forces, the Winter Contingency is in effect first contact has been made, I repeat first contact with an alien species has been made." With that being sent back home all the small Britannian fleet could do was wait anxiously.

Rius stared nonplussed at the massive amount of data pouring out from the alien vessels, as the ships VI's tried in vain to translate the alien signal he glanced over to his friends console and gaped openly. While they had put up their shields like any rational being would the energy levels made no sense, Adrien was busily manipulating his controls trying to clean up the readings when he looked at the camera display that had his friend enraptured; the alien vessels were cloaked in massive interlocking green hexagons.

"En..energy shields? For real?" Adrien gasped out, before he could further analyze this the Admiral announced his intentions.

"The aliens have made obvious overtures to violence and we'll respond in kind, battle stations people prepare for imminent conflict." Exchanging a look the two Turians expressions mirrored each other,

"Attacking?! What the hell they've done nothing but put their shields up!" Rius said, fumbling around underneath his station Adrien pulled out two helmets and handed one to his stunned friend while he sealed his own.

"He's bucking for that council seat so he probably thinks putting down an "alien threat" will look great on his resume, I have a bad feeling about this my friend, be ready." Nodding in understanding Rius took the proffered helmet and locked it to his armors seals,

"Nothing good is going to come from this is it?"

The Ptolemaios shook violently as the alien vessels opened fire peppering the shields with mass accelerator rounds, both Hannah and Naoto began barking orders as their ancient vessels took evasive maneuvers, grimacing Hannah said,

"Well it appears they're hostile, lovely, hadrons are out of range and we have no Knightmares or fighters, crap." Agreeing with her assessment Naoto was about to reply when one of his Avalon's detonated taking its entire crew with it, eyes narrowing in rage he bellowed,

"Lock onto one of their Dreadnought analogues, hit the bastards with an Asplund special!" The massive vessel shook as its main cannons capacitors discharged a full powered burst, the green beam lancing through the void immolating a half dozen cruisers before detonating one of the kilometers long alien vessels. As this was happening Hannah was giving orders to what remained of their fleet,

"All vessels fall back to Shanxi, I repeat fall back to Shanxi, we have no methods outside the spine cannon to fight these bastards let General Williams know whats going on!" As the Ptolmey took another heavy hit Naoto couldn't help but grin,

"Good news love...I'm not bored anymore, all right fire snap shots with the main gun we don't have the time to wait for the capacitors to fully recharge just keep them on their toes."

Sparatus was swearing so heavily the spirits were probably blanching, through that wall of vitriol Rius was trying his best to keep track of the alien vessels but the damn things were faster then anything he'd encountered before and that cursed Dreadnaught kept spitting those hellish green beams out specifically targeting their dreadnaughts.

"Well now we know what my bad feeling was about!" Adrien yelled as a beam clipped their vessel damaging several ships caught in its continuing path. "Not only did we provoke an unknown race we provoked an unknown race with ENERGY WEAPONS!" The ship shook from another near hit when they got lucky, a group of frigates had managed to charge through the dreadnaughts strange shields while it was firing, they successfully took out its main gun but as they were attempting to flee several black tinged red beams spat out and killed the entire flotilla. It was a short lived victory for the alien vessel though as its hull was perforated with debris, secondary explosions spread along its massive width and its shields began fluctuating.

"We've pulled their teeth. all cruisers and frigates move forward!" Sparatus bellowed, their's was the only dreadnaught left in the fleet so it looked as if they were simple spectators giving fire support from here on out. Rius glanced to Adrien while shaking his head,

"No way its this simple."

The ship was lost, those damn alien frigates had destroyed most of the point defense systems and the main cannon not to mention frying several of its Higgs Field Neutralizers preventing a jump to light speed.

"We need to evacuate, all remaining crew get onto the escape ship immediately, Genna transfer your processes and set the self destruct...Genna?" Getting no response from his long time companion he stumbled over to a diagnostic station and pulled the dead crewman from the seat, assessing the damage he dropped his head in sorrow. "Genna's gone, AI center got cored..." Neither royal knew quite how to handle their friends death but another massive jolt to their stricken vessel knocked them out of their reverie, Hannah ran to the weapons console and began typing in several commands.

"Main guns off line but that doesn't mean the primary loading chamber and capacitors are, removing safeties and setting them to continuous charge, with any luck the overload will blow the ship apart." Nodding at this Naoto motioned for his wife to follow him as he cast his Geass of Absolute Guidance leading the surviving bridge crew through the burning and shattered corridors.

"Ya know, outside of the loss of one of my best friends, hundreds of men and women who entrusted me with their lives and the majority of my bangjacked fleet, today was fairly memorable, first contact and all," Glancing at Naoto Hannah decided to join in the gallows humor.

"Indeed, at the very least we won't have to worry being followed back to Shanxi and having to weather an impending planetary invasion seeing as how these blokes seem to be the very definition of rational restraint," snorting at that she received a few dry chuckles from their crew. Finally making it into the escape hanger they rushed to the ancient Ikaruga frigate that would serve as there life boat, bringing up his Omni-tool Naoto made a quick recording then set the Ptolemaios on a suicide course for the alien fleet. Giving the burning hanger one last glance he ran aboard the Ikaruga and closed its hatch, messaging his wife he said,

"Get us out of here Lieutenant, second we exit the hanger hit FTL and use the Ptolmey as a shield...we're done here"

The few remaining enemy frigates jumped out of system as their burning dreadnaught charged the approaching fleet, Rius had to admit he was impressed by their courage, a last stand rather then dying like a prey animal, honorable. As the fleet surrounded the vessel a male voice transmitted a message the VI's still weren't able to translate,

"Dum Spiro Spero! All Hail Britannia!" And with that the vessel exploded in a chaotic green flash, arcs of viridian energy spat out instantly detonating any ships unfortunate enough to be licked by their lashes and many more were struck down by the flaming debris. When it all cleared the task force was reduced to less then a dozen heavily damaged cruisers.

"Well...that just happened," was all Adrien could say, nodding dumbly Rius felt rage begin to replace his shock and it crystallized in his chest. This waste of Turian lives was the end result of one pompous mans desire for glory and Rius wasn't going to just stand by and let it go unanswered chain of command or no, he quickly brought up the report draft from earlier attaching all the data the alien vessel had been transmitting. Finalizing it he filed it with a high priority stamp and forwarded it to Councilor Tevos just before Sparatus ordered comm silence; there would now be no covering up what happened here. Content he'd done all he could he began scrubbing his computer of all traces of his misdeed while eavesdroping on the command station to hear a rather furious Saren yelling.

"They killed my brother! The bastards killed my brother and wiped out most our fleet with a suicide attack! We can't let this stand sir!" Sparatus was pacing back and forth grinding his teeth together in frustrated anger, turning to face his subordinate the admiral finally came to a decision.

"You're right, I'm going to order the twelfth and twenty seventh fleets to meet up with us here and we'll transfer my flag to one of their ships, we'll see how those primitives hold up to an armada eight thousand strong." As this was being said Rius couldn't help having a traitorous thought,

'Primitives that just wiped out the majority of our fleet with one vessel...'

Imperial Colony Shanxi sixteen hours later

Princess Nunnally vi Britannia was not a happy woman, she was only here because Nii-san had asked her to come out to the sticks to fix some engineering snafu which had initially buried her in her one true bane; paperwork, after a bit of digging she had finally gotten some answers. Apparently the shoddy work that had caused thirty seven deaths when a bullet train derailed all came down to the corrupt colony administrator embezzling funds, after stripping the man of his title she took on temporary governorship until a new one could be appointed.

The position had been amusing for a bit but after publicly executing the official the job had stopped being fun and she'd been spending more and more of her waking hours redesigning the entire transport system, sooooo lame. Grumbling about how she missed being a terrorist and how getting an engineering degree bit her in the ass her thoughts were interrupted by the blinking holopad on her desk; jumping at the distraction she accepted the call immediately.

"Princess Nunnally here, please please please tell me this is interesting!" As the image resolved itself to display her nephew her cloudy mood switched gears instantly, "Naoto! How you doing honey! You and Hanners still poking dead planets with a stick hoping something will pop out? Fingers crossed that we'll find space elves, that'd be tits." Smiling sadly at his Aunt he began speaking,

"Err, actually we were found by aliens, unfortunately they're also dicks and wiped out my survey fleet, I've only got three frigates left and outside of my escape ship they all took heavy damage, we need to prepare for invasion." Staring incredulously at the younger man her trademark smirk fell as she began to rub her eyes, seeing that he was in fact still there and not a hallucination she replied,

"Oh...k... well that's certainly interesting, Shanxi only has half a billion people living on it which means our defensive fleet is barely four hundred ships strong, I'm assuming that since this is the first I heard of it your signal was jammed?" Brow furrowing in consternation Naoto nodded,

"Yeah we ordered the Winter Contingency but when we jumped out of system we realized everything we'd tried to send out on the extranet had been blocked at the comm buoy, we just arrived and they'll be hot on our tail." Sighing a bit the man swept his hair back continuing, "Genna was also lost and we kind of overcharged the Ptolmey's primary weapons capacitors and gutted their fleet...they won't be happy about that."

Frowning at the loss of an AI Nunnally filed that away for later, Yui was very protective of her children and this would piss her off something fierce, she motioned Naoto to continue as she stuck her neural jack into the base of her skull and began ordering the planets defenses to mobilize. After the man had given her the play by play she nodded and routed his deathtrap Ikaruga frigate to the systems flagship,

"I'm putting you in charge of the Courageous, she's a newer Everest Class Dreadnought, totes OP honestly but if they crush us in numbers it won't matter, hmm. I'll put Hannah in charge of the Defiant, her last play through the military was navel so I'll just make up a Captains commission for her so she doesn't have to expose her identity, she always did like heavy frigates."

Impressed that his normally slightly unstable Aunt was taking control so handily Naoto just let the woman keep talking, "I've ordered several message drones launched to the core worlds since the buoy is likely down for us as well, also ordering General Williams to mobilize the national guard and to deploy the planets orbital defense platforms. Shit...this backwater only has twelve...oi oh well nothing to do for it." Taking a breath she glanced at her nephew as his image fluctuated, seems he had docked with his new command. He stared at her for a moment then dropped his head,

"I'm so sorry Aunt Nunnally...I fucked up hard, I should have ran instead of fought and it cost me several hundred good men and women and my oldest companion." Smiling sadly she cut that off right there,

"It isn't your fault you ran into asshole aliens honey, Euphia owes me fifty quid by the way I was right first contact would be violent. Look don't blame yourself, you got blindsided and were in a ship as old as you and Marianne, you did what you could, now shape up and prepare your new crew, they need to see a vi Britannia not a bitch." Standing a bit straighter he saluted her and said,

"Yes ma'am," and with that the signal cut off, as she ordered the National Guards deployment she opened access to the vaults beneath the cities to evacuate all noncombatants, which meant anyone under the age of eighteen. Conferring with the Shanxi's central AI Nunnally drew up her plans for war, glancing up at the ceiling she let her smirk return,

"I totes get to kill E.T., wait till i tell Timmy about this one."

Shanxi high orbit, system defense fleet October 30, 2222 A.T.B

As the various frigates, cruisers, dreadought's and carrier's arranged themselves facing off against the systems Mass Relay Hannah Shepard couldn't help but feeling deeply nervous about the coming assault. While the ships currently arrayed against the alien invasion were two hundred years more advanced then Naoto's lost command something told her they'd have shear numbers thrown their way, and quantity had a quality all on its own. Sighing her thoughts were interrupted by Aunt Nunnally's announcement,

"Mass Relay showing signs of travel, on my mark fire F.L.E.I.J.A warheads at these coordinates, no limiters." Confused by the order but professional enough to follow it Hannah ordered her two warheads armed, as the first alien ships jumped in system she felt her spirits fall instantly, in less then a few seconds hundreds of vessels had appeared. Seeming to not notice the incoming tide Nunnally shouted "Fire!" and a hundred sakuradite enhanced nuclear missiles flew towards the approaching enemy fleet, it took only a few moments for Hannah to grasp what the Princess had planned, and it was brilliant.

"Oh Nunu you beautiful psychopath..." she whispered as the stagger fired warheads each took out massive groups of alien vessels as they jumped in, she would find out after the conflict that their initial F.L.E.I.J.A barrage had consumed over two thousand of the alien ships. As their nukes ran dry the true fight began, Nunnaly ordered weapons free and the collected capital ships opened up with their pulse cannons sending a wave of green energy towards the approaching armada, the beams burning through the rounds fired by the aggressors along their way.

Admiral Sparatus' eyes widened in shock as he jumped in system to a wall of green light slamming into his fleet, commanding his normally orderly firing lines to spread out to avoid more mass firing tactics he glanced down at his display in horror, the operation had been in place for less then four minutes and he'd already lost 2,435 vessels. Growling he bellowed,

"Launch all fighters, frigate groups 3, 7 and 14 FTL jump above the ecliptic plane and strike their dreadnaughts from behind, cruiser group 12 focus fire on the central dreadnaught, all-" his next order was cut off as four massive bulbous dreadnaught sized vessels jumped into the middle of his fleet. Staring wide eyed at the suicide move the ships disgorged thousands of fighters then just as quickly as they appeared the four ships jumped back out; scanning the fighters he saw they were shaped like an asari' with glowing blue, red, and green wings. Before he could fully grasp what the hell these things were they began spitting energy blasts throughout his fleet, the nimble machines spraying multi-colored energy darts at anything that moved, a cruiser just off his dreadnaughts port bow exploded instantly as a white light penetrated its eezo core silhouetting the fighter that killed it. Turning to face his ship the midnight blue machines eyes glowed fiery red and rushed towards his flagship.

The alien cruiser exploded in seconds, apparently shields were a foreign concept to these blokes so the Valkyries baryon shot burned through it in seconds, poor show really. Glancing over at the much larger vessel approaching her Nunnally ignored the massive fire ball marking the death of her first kill, grinning she flicked a switch and started broadcasting "Don't Fear the Reaper" on unencrypted channels and rushed forward. Drawing out Gungnir while activating its blaze luminous blades she twirled the spear leaving glowing blue lines in the sky, landing heavily on the dreadnaught she began carving its hull like a Christmas turkey. Glancing up in thought as she sliced massive furrows in the steel plating she spoke out loud,

"Right, daddy asked me to be home this Christmas, he wanted to spend more time with Timeo and the boys, hmm, oh shit is that a fighter! Sweet!" With that she dove off the splintered hull and fired a pair of slash harkens at an approaching alien fighter, countering its momentum she swung it like a shot put into the dreadnaught she had been savaging, "She shoots, she scores!" Nunnally announced happily. Glancing back at the ship realizing that even she couldn't sink that beast on her own she contented herself with destroying the nose of its main cannon and went in search of softer prey.

The Citadel, Asari Councilor Tevos' Apartments

Councilor Tevos sat at her desk with a cup of tea after yet another hectic day of meetings, the damn Hanhar were demanding that a Prothean excavation be cancelled due to "religious reasons" and unfortunately one of her closest political allies daughters was supposed to head the research project. Vaguely wondering if Benezia could divert Liara elsewhere she began reading through her backlog of messages, first was from the Turian councilor Dravis, apparently it was a forward from a first contact event report.

'At precisely 2206 hours yesterday my task force detected an unauthorized activation of a dormant mass relay, upon investigation we encountered an as of yet discovered race who immediately took aggressive action upon our entry to the system. After a protracted battle my task force eliminated the alien threat with minimal losses and I am now coordinating with Turian high command to prevent future incidents. -Vice Admiral Sparatus Narridus'. Sighing at yet more violence in the galaxy Tevos cycled to her next message and her eye ridges rose in interest at the sender.

'I'm aware I may very well be dooming myself and my family but I cannot let Turian social norms keep me quiet on this subject, at precisely 2206 hours today we made first contact with an alien race activating a defunct mass relay. The aliens made several attempts to contact us but my commanding officer one Vice Admiral Sparatus Narridus ordered us to launch an unprovoked attack against the newcomers. I've enclosed all the information the aliens transmitted as well as recordings of the following conflict, suffice it to say they wiped out ninety percent of our forces with a single dreadnaught and I can only assume that further conflict with these people will be detrimental to the Council species as a whole. -Lieutenant Rius Vakarian'. Now very curious she processed the alien transmissions through a translation VI while she took a shower, as she sat on her futon wrapped in a towel she said,

"Play translated recording," leaning her back against the thick cushion she listened to a deep voiced male, "This is Commander Naoto Kozuki of the Holy Empire of Britannia, we are peaceful explorers and wish to make first contact on friendly terms, I will be rebroadcasting this message for the next twenty minutes along with copies of our language and history in hopes that your ships AI can quickly process the information". Sitting up in shock Tevos realized a few things at once, THEY were the aggressors against this Britannian Empire, the aliens had offered a peaceful hand and had been shot at, and most importantly they had AI's.

"Oh...hell..." was all she could say

Damocles In Orbit Above Earth

Emperor Lelouch vi Britannia was lost in thought as he perused the information on his tablet, the Prothean ruins recently discovered on Eden Prime were unlike any that had found before, for starters there was signs of still relatively intact bunkers and faint energy signatures. It was all made even more interesting due to the fact they had no idea what the facility was intended for; this was a big deal since the Protheans had been many things but subtle wasn't one of them. Mumbling to himself as he made his way into the atrium his thoughts were interrupted by an exuberant whoop,

"Death from above!" was the only warning he received as a small figure dove from the upper balconies, at the last moment it was sheathed in a glowing blue energy field and slowed to daintily to sit on his shoulders. Tilting his head back to stare at the grinning child looking down at him he drawled,

"Well hello Joanna, am I interrupting you?" his granddaughter giggled a moment then chirped,

"Heyya grandpa, I'm learning to fly!" smirking at this he teased,

"Keyword 'learning' I see," pouting slightly the small redhead sniffed then replied,

"The trick is forgetting how to fall, I'm still working out the kinks," chuckling as he continued his way to the central gardens Lelouch then asked,

"Are Marianne and Jack still in their video conference?" Shaking her head in the negative while gently swinging her feet she pointed towards the gardens gazebo.

"Finished twenty minutes ago, they're having tea with grandma C.C. and grandma Kali." Nodding he was about to put her back on the ground when his Omni-tool began beeping, opening the message he came to a dead stop. Worry in her voice Joanna asked,

"What's wrong grandpa?" pausing a moment he replied incredulously,

"Apparently Nunnally is fending off an alien invasion on Shanxi," that elicited a gasp from the girl quickly followed with,

"Cool!"

If you guys don't like the dramatis personae I'll keep it out of future chapters, hope you enjoyed, and if you want this to keep going going PLEASE REVIEW!