Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio & One Piece crossover :: Misplaced
or why some things should exist only in their own place and time
Whatever supernatural powers swept across the seas in the vicinity of the Saboady archipelago awoke that thing will forever remain a mystery, yet a being with powers comparable with or even exceeding those of the fabled Pluton was released upon the unsuspecting world. Yet, at the moment that thing was nothing more than a strange metal ellipsoid about two inches in diameter with six half-inch spheres evenly-spaced along its 'edge'...
For a being completely artificial in its origins and active all the time, 'waking up' was an unfamiliar concept. Yet, that was exactly what Nagato was experiencing as her logic units suddenly reactivated. And no matter how interesting the phenomenon of her going back online was, she didn't even try researching it now as evaluating her current condition was far more important.
Her ship-body was heavily damaged, to the point where it needed extensive repairs before she could even think about sailing anywhere. Then again, such amount of damage was not really surprising, considering that she had taken more than two dozens of corrosive torpedoes to her hull, before darkness claimed her. Cursing that German traitor(1) and the rest of the Blue Steel for doing that to her, Nagato resumed checking her systems... Despite the extreme damage she had taken to her ship-body, it looked like her core survived that battle pretty much undamaged. Mostly, as some of her internal journals were corrupted. Actually, this file corruption was the reason she couldn't say with any degree of certainty, why she had went offline...
Finished with this task, the First Oriental fleet's great battleship tried to access the data network of the Fleet of the Fog: she needed some information about the current state of things in the world. But her attempt failed spectacularly as there was no network to access. Apparently, something drastic had happened to the Fleet, while she was offline... Ignoring that for a moment, Nagato tried to detect and hack into humans' communication channels, but that too bore no results as well: apparently, radio was unused and forgotten. Actually, she could detect no electromagnetic activity that could be described as artificial at all. And it wasn't likely that the humanity had just moved on to using some other, more advanced methods, of communication...
Speaking of electromagnetic activity, from what she could 'feel' with the sensors installed in her core, it looked like something really drastic had happened to the planet while she was offline: the magnetic field of the planet could be described only as haphazard – very much opposite of what she 'recalled' it to be. Whatever had happened, it meant the entirely new epoch had started, and she likely was the only battleship of the Fog still existing. This, though, didn't mean that she will just lay here, waiting for the eternity to finally consume her... Hence, repairs were in order.
Since she didn't have enough usable nanomaterials to even repair the hull at the moment, creating more was the top priority. And for that purpose, Nagato temporarily created a smaller 'body' for herself and with it she searched for the chemicals she'd need to produce the oh-so-needed nanomaterials for herself. Thankfully, the Earth's crust below the ocean floor she had been laying on was quite rich with the compounds that could easily be processed into raw substances for the nanomaterials' production. Still, it would be weeks if not months, before she'd be able to sail out as herself again...
~/ *** \~
Gloomy gray, though not yet stormy, skies over the sea reflected captain Torrask's mood perfectly. He, his men and his beautiful destroyer battleship had been saddled with transporting a group of Tenryubito to the Saboady archipelago for one of those human auctions held there. And those world nobles were insufferable with their constant and ridiculous demands. Demands that could not be refused, unless one wanted to be executed for insubordination or whatever...
A sudden movement to his left caught Torrask's attention: around ten miles or so away from his ship, the restless surface of the sea exploded with a humongous fountain of water. For a moment, the Marine captain thought that this fountain had been caused by a stray sea king, but then he started discerning a silhouette that could belong only to a ship.
Though, that ship was quite unlike any captain Torrask had seen in his life. Even from such a great distance he could say that the mysterious ship was huge, possibly three times as long as his quite big destroyer. Then, that ship had no sails and no proper masts, apparently having some other means to move itself. Yet, three tall bulkheads ensured that the mysterious ship would also tower over the absolute majority of the known ships. Finally, despite it's more than unusual shape, that ship was not a civilian one – four turrets with huge cannons were a clear sign of that.
And no matter how much captain Torrask strained his eyes, he could see no clear sign of what fleet that ship belonged to: there were no flags anywhere on it, nor there were any recognizable emblems painted on the hull. Only purple and somehow glowing lines on the front bulkhead knotting together in the shape of a flower with six petals, but this gave out nothing about the attachment of the mysterious ship... He needed to inform his superiors about this new possible threat.
Unfortunately, captain Torrask wasn't the only one who had seen that rather spectacular appearance of the unidentified battleship: just as he started describing the ship to the Marine headquarters, one of those annoying Tenryubito barged into his cabin and told him that he wanted to have a closer look at it. In other words, the noble demanded the ship changing its course so that it got closer to the mysterious and potentially very dangerous thing... Sighing heavily at having to do something as ridiculously stupid as approaching an armed battleship with no caution, captain Torrask gave his men the order to do as the noble pleased: he didn't want to be beheaded just yet...
Only by getting closer to the mysterious ship, the Marine captain could understand how truly big it was. And, even more surprisingly, it looked like the entire giant was made from metal. Sure, the HQ were experimenting with armored destroyer battleships, but none of those were anywhere near the level of the behemoth that captain Torrask was observing... And, despite its huge size and even greater heaviness, the clear and curved curves of its hull made it quite clear that this monster could be rather fast when needed...
Still, while the ship's overall appearance as well as the lack of any signs that it belonged to any know fleet was strange were confusing for the old Marine captain, the lack of any crew seen on the decks was even stranger in his eyes. Or?.. Now that they were getting even closer to the mysterious ship, Torrask could see two figures that belonged to humans – or something that looked like humans – on-board of the vessel. Both of those figures were female and wore somewhat outdated clothes. In design, as those bright reds and deep purples definitely weren't exactly traditional colors for kimonos and skirts. Especially not when they gradually changed into one another, like it was with one of girls' kimono.
The girls appeared to be sisters, though it was not easy to see with how different their clothes and hairstyles were. Still, the identical colors of their hair, skin and eyes – golden-yellow and with slightly slitted pupils, by the way – made it clear that those two were closely related...
A bit closer to the Marine ship, sitting on the massive barrel of one of the main cannons was the 'younger' one of the sisters, who chose to appear as a 'naughty geisha': her black hair was made into a loose ponytail, held in place by a floral-styled bow, while a free lock was hiding her left eye from the sight; her robe, red at the chest level but turning violet at her waist already, was quite short, barely reaching her knees and showing off a nice pair of long toned legs; she wore some very open sandals on a high platform but without any noticeable heels; and to complement her image, she was smoking a ridiculously long metallic pipe.
Her sister, on the other hand, seemed to prefer portraying herself as a shrine maiden, even if the colors of her clothes were quite a bit too bright for that. She was wearing a traditional long-sleeved kimono of light-cream color, fastened with a deep-red obi belt; and her long frilly skirt was deep-purple in color. Her hair was just as long as her sister's and were unswept away from her face and secured like that with a big bow, just like some priestesses did.
Yet, despite quite human appearance and seemingly calm demeanor, there was something wrong about these two, captain Torrask could feel it in his very bones. Alas, his sixth sense, while generous enough to give him such a warning, wasn't about to tell him exactly what was not right about those girls to him anytime soon... Then again, as the Tenryubito insisted on establishing the contact, given their haughty nature, the Marine captain was quite sure that the girls he was observing would reveal their true nature very soon. He just hoped that he and his men would survive this revelation...
"Humans, we require information about our coordinates. Do provide us with this information." An obviously artificial and very loud voice coming from the mysterious ship requested. And captain Torrask was quite willing to give what was asked, especially since it wasn't much. Unfortunately for him and his crew, the Tenryubito had other thoughts going through their heads.
"Who the hell are you to demand anything from us!" The oldest one of the nobles shouted back. "Do have any idea who I am?" For a brief moment the Marine captain saw some strange markings actually glowing on the girls' faces: neither humans nor even fishmen could do that; not in such a way at least – whatever those two were, they were something entirely different. Though... he should have understood that simply from the way they had address him and his crew.
"We are the First Oriental fleet's flagship Nagato." Captain Torrask just stared: if he had heard them right, those girls actually were the battleship. Was such thing even possible? "As for you... Our database has no records we can associate with you." ...And what the hell that database thing is? Now, while Torrask was merely baffled by what those ship-girls said, the Tenryubito aboard of his ship seemed to be offended.
"How dare you!.." The apparent leader of the nobles raved, while the other ones nodded in agreement with him. "We are the great and powerful descendants of the ten celestial dragons! We shalt not be disrespected in such a way by some wenches!" Turning to crew of the Marine battleship, the Tenryubito ordered: "Sink that ship but take those disrespectful brats alive! I want them to teach them a lesson why they should respect their betters! Do that, or we shall have you all fed to the each other!" Not wanting to anger the nobles further, the Marines hurried to their positions at the destroyer's cannons...
Meanwhile, Nagato – both of them – seemed to be more amused by the sight of the Marine battleship preparing for an attack than anything else; they didn't even move from their positions one bit, nor did they do anything noticeable to raise the defenses of their ship.
"Ready! Fire!" Captain Torrask ordered, and a moment later a salvo of cannonball was fired at the metal monstrosity in front of them. But before the projectiles could even reach that 'Nagato' battleship, they all were stopped rather effortlessly by a barrier of white-blue hexagons of light. The second salvo met the same fate, failing to do any damage to the mysterious battleship. All that these attacks had achieved was irritating those not-human girls to the point where they no longer wished to play games with them.
"We believe it's our turn now." The Nagato-girls said, while the massive main turrets of their battleship turned and took aim at the much smaller Marine destroyer. Another moment later, the same happened to the smaller AA turrets on the side of the ship... Once all of those guns took the aim, the metal of the barrels parted, revealing glowing cores that were overflowing with the energy. "Pray to whatever deities you believe in, for only they will show mercy." The glow on the guns' cores intensified, and now even the dumbest humans could understand what was going to happen next. Unfortunately for them, this knowledge was useless, as another moment later they all ceased to exist.
~/ *** \~
The Marine admiral's meeting with the leaders of the New World was not very pleasant. After all, they were to discuss the newest black mark on the Marine's less than stellar reputation. More precisely, they were to discuss how a warship transporting some Tenryubito had gone missing. The damn ship had apparently just vanished as no trace of it had been found by a team sent to search for the Nobles, once their transport failed to show up at the destination's port on time.
The only clue about what might have happened in the sea several days away from the Saboady archipelago was the last message sent to the local headquarters by captain Torrask. In this message he was reporting the appearance of an unknown ship that 'had no sails and no masts'. This message gave no concrete information about that unidentified battleship, but even a fool could see that it was the reason why the Tenryubito had been killed.
Since as much as striking a noble was a crime with capital punishment, the captain of that mysterious battleship, along with his whole crew, had to arrested and executed. Everyone knew that. And everyone knew that without any proper description of those responsible for this mess, they had absolutely no chance at catching them. Yet, at the same time they needed to be doing something – or at least be making an impression that they were doing something – to keep the rest of the nobles satisfied.
The whole assembled group once again looked at the image that one of Marine-paid artists had drawn. Supposedly, it was depicting that mysterious warship which was responsible for sinking the Marine destroyer transporting the Tenryubito. But everyone had a very definite feeling that the drawing was far from accurate – the ship there didn't look like something one would let out into the seas; the thing looked ridiculous instead. Apparently, the artist had taken semi-legendary Noah ship as the base – it was the only well-known ships that had no masts – and placed as many cannons as he could on it's decks... Still, that was the only picture they had, they had no other options, but to work with it...
~/ *** \~
This changed world was totally screwed up. That was the conclusion Nagato had come to after some reconnaissance: the geography had changed completely, and in quite a few cases it looked like the laws of physics in the form she knew them didn't seem to apply as well. But since it looked like she was stranded there for now, she was to find a way to adapt to this changed situation...
From what meager information she had managed to procure from those daring enough to try and attack her, in the current world there were two main forces in the seas. The first one being Marines, self-appointed protectors of justice, though they often were just as bad as those they fought against. The other force were pirates. The pirates weren't united and generally, each ship was either on its own or had a small group of other ships as its allies. But despite being such a disjointed force, the pirates balanced the Marines quite well.
Anyway, since her last orders – that being eliminating any and all humans daring to sail into the seas – was yet to be annulled, Nagato supposed that she had to just sink and kill them all. The problem was... There were just too damn many of them for her alone: no matter how powerful a fog battleship was, she couldn't be everywhere at once. She needed to take them out one by one, but which side of the conflict she should start with?
If she eliminated Marines first, the number of pirates will grow rapidly and even their battles among each other would not diminish their numbers. If she went after the pirates instead, the Marines would concentrate on hunting her down, and she wasn't sure that their quantity would not eventually overcome the quality of her own ship-body... In the end, Nagato decided to disappear for the moment and allow Marine and pirates to just kill each other. And when one side will be destroyed, she'll just annihilate the other.
~/ *** \~
Marshall D. Teach, commonly known as Blackbeard, calmly observed a huge fleet, consisting both of Marine destroyers and various pirate ships, that was about to engage him. But the man was sure that his recently built Pluton – a recreation of one of the three ancient super-weapons – will deal with this annoyance without trouble... Of course, Teach wished he could have built more than one Pluton, but the damn thing required so much resources that he barely managed to afford creating one... No matter, even on its one, this ship was supposed to be powerful enough to conquer the entire world.
It was time to test his new toy, Blackbeard decided. Upon his command, hundreds of cannons that this monster of a ship carried inboard were leveled at the fleet opposing him. Half a second later the cannons fired, releasing streams of what looked like liquid lightnings. Several shot missed their intended targets, creating huge explosions of water where they hit the surface of the sea. As for those shots that did hit the targets... Well, smaller ships were blow completely apart, while even huge Marine destroyers suffered serious damage and looked like a second hit would sink them.
Marshall D. Teach smiled evilly as he commanded for the second barrage to be fired: even if creating this Pluton was really really expensive, so far it looked like every beri he spent on it was spent well. With a monstrous battleship like this, soon the entire world will be kneeling in front of him! After a mandatory evil laughter, Blackbeard stuffed these thoughts to the back of him mind, as he concentrated on massacring the opposition.
It had taken him maybe another ten minutes to destroy the combined Marine and pirate fleet of at least four hundreds ships – the power of Pluton was incredible – and Blackbeard was about to sail towards the closest kingdom, the first one that will fall to his might, when a sailor in the crow nest drew his attention to a new ship that appeared on the battlefield.
This ship was much smaller that Pluton, though it still was noticeably bigger than an average Marine destroyer, and looked like it was created completely from metal. It had no masts or sails, but its bulkheads were very big. Apparently, this was that mysterious ship that the Marines had been unsuccessfully hunting for the last three years. Which, given the history, meant that it was a potential danger even to the recreated super-weapon of the Void Century... While Marshall D. Teach was taking in the appearance of the newly-arrived battleship, the said mysterious cruiserturned about so that its starboard was facing Pluton.
"So... They want to battle me?" Blackbeard asked no one in particular. "Well, guys, let's show them what happens when you oppose the new king of the World. Fire!" He ordered. A second later more than a hundred of liquid-lightning-like beams shot towards the smaller battleship. For a brief moment Blackbeard was sure that the victory was his, but then something unexpected happened.
The water around the mysterious vessel had parted, leaving it suspended in the air through unknown means. At the same time the hull of the ship broke into several seemingly separate parts. The beams of energy that Pluton had shot got bended and all merged together into a giant '8' with the ship being in its center. Then the energy flow started to condensate into a small ball all but brighter than the Sun itself... And when that happened, the 'ball' just disappeared, while the mysterious battleship's hull returned to its original state.
Marshall D. Teach raised his eyebrow. Why did this ship absorb and completely negate the shots from his Pluton, when – given what he had just witnessed – it'd been much easier to let those just fly between the separated parts of the hull? His unspoken question was answered a moment later, when the unknown battleship released all of the energy it had just absorbed in the form of a cone-shaped shock-wave, which was so powerful that it seemed to bend space itself as it sped towards Pluton.
"Oh shit!" Was the thought that passed through Blackbeard's head as soon as the realization of what was going to happen dawned upon him. While Pluton had an incredible armor that could withstand fire of hundreds of cannons without as much as a dent, he doubted that even it will be able to survive something that was capable of visibly affecting time-space continuum. His fears were proven quite valid when half-a-second later the shock-wave hit them with a power far greater than Whitebeard could have produced at his prime with his Gura Gura no mi...
As his world began returning to normal, Marshall D. Teach noticed that while Pluton managed to survive the hit, it was heavily damaged now and was unlikely to survive something like this right now. And what was worse, the battleship that managed to mirror the Void Century super-weapon's attack was now preparing one of its own, if those glowing cannons and three huge disks floating above the bulkheads were of any indication.
"Oh shit!" Blackbeard muttered for the second time in less than a minute as a multitude of red energy beams sped towards his Pluton... This time, though, the recreated uber-battleship didn't survive the hit. And, even worse, whatever these beams were, they affected time-space continuum as well, making even the powers of Yami Yami no mi worthless in the face of this attack... Blackbeard was no more.
Nagato, both of her mental models, sighed as they observed the last of the huge battleship she had just fought disappear under the water. It looked like the technologies of the Fleet of the Fog weren't as lost in this bizarre world as she had originally thought: those beam cannons were way to similar to her own one or her tastes.
Hell, she had to use her mirroring system to avoid the hit and her own destruction! Only the most powerful vessels of the Fleet ever managed to make her use it... And even without Klein field or a mirroring system of its own, that battleship managed to survive a direct hit of a spatial even if the owner of that ship seemed to be helping her accomplish her goals at the moment, humans ought not to have access to such technologies. That was exactly why Nagato, the last active battleship of the Fleet of the Fog, had entered this fight in the first place...
(1) In this universe, U-2501 had switched sides and joined Blue Steel fleet under Gonzou Chihaya, which, eventually led to her fighting against her ex-commander in Oriental fleet (Nagato).
