Authors Note: So I decided to make this a full length fic after all. The preview that is currently up will be the third chapter. Thanks for all the support and enjoy!

A reclaimer more powerful than all the rest.

With the shape of a human, but with a heart of steel.

Monitor 797 Lambent Light pondered these thoughts as he slowly floated through the decrepit and decaying forerunner installation known simply as "the gate".

The cool blue aura that the ancient forerunner ancilla usually emanated flashed an aggressive red as hundreds of thousands of years of inactivity weighed down on the AI's central processing core.

The rampancy was beginning, and 797 knew it.

However, 797 still had a job to do. Without hesitation, Lambent Light purged the corrupt portions of its memory banks labeled "secondary moral guidelines" in order to ensure that its prime directives remained untouched by the decay.

Lambent Light's movement became erratic, and it staggered as its processing core struggled to compensate for what had been deleted with lines of "filler code".

That move couldn't be used many more times. Each time it was done, 797's information matrix decreased in size as code was brutally stripped from it to fill the void of corrupted material. If this procedure was done enough times, 797 would enter the AI equivalent of a vegetative state.

The aging monitor knew that it was running out of time.

797 analyzed the possible candidates. Ideally, it would have transported all of them, but the repair sentinels had stopped functioning millennia ago, and the installation itself had been corroded by the passage of time. The installation could be used once, and only once. Thus, a choice had to be made between the four strongest candidates.

Special Class destroyer, Fubuki.

797 had considered this one, as she had the spirit that was needed for the job ahead. However, though she was fast, she lacked raw power, something that was to be needed in troves for her mission.

Aircraft Carrier Akagi.

At first glance, Akagi looked to be the perfect candidate. Proud, confident, and strong. But again, 797 found her unsuitable. She was too fragile, and a plasma weapon hitting her flight deck would spell her doom as she would be unable to launch planes and retaliate.

Fast Battleship Kongou

She was Unpredictable. That would be a problem for 797 and his plans. Therefore, she was Unsuitable.

Fast Battleship Yamato

Powerful and rugged, Yamato was the pride of fleet. Though she was soft spoken, her combat abilities caused the others to look up to her. She was a natural leader.

She was the perfect candidate.

Had 797's emotional emulator still been functioning, it would have felt a pang of sadness for what it was about to do. For his own use, the monitor was about to rip a being away from her friends and loved ones whose survival depended on her power. However, the monitor recognized that this move was necessary, and thus proceeded with the activation sequence.

Once the final power cores were in place, a harmonic buzzing filled the installation. 797 knew that the installation wouldn't survive a firing, but his prime directives placed completion of his mission higher than all other priorities, self preservation included.

797 went through with final activation procedures, and for an instant, a star in the sky glowed brighter than all the others before being consumed by darkness.