Roon x Nero (kinda) (no cringy sex ahead)

ARC 0 (III and IV)

ARC 0 (III)
After M's birth, the commander had completed two fundamental steps of his plan: finding a wife to hide M's true nature and creating an artificial KANSEN which would be educated in naval studies and inherit the title of Commander. With the completion of these two steps, the commander could proceed with the additional precautionary step to make sure his plan would succeed: discouraging other candidates for the succession.

In order to do so, the Commander wanted to exploit two elements of the Azur Lane: the old woods and the heavy cruiser Roon. He intended to use the former to his advantage by gradually spreading intimidating myths about it and creating an actual "fake crime scene". He began developing yet another artificial KANSEN just for this: it would have no nationality or identity whatsoever and its only purpose would be to die. But even though it would have no name, it would still have feelings; but our commander has never cared about those. This KANSEN, which was named simply "X" after its birth, was a girl like any other, but with no peculiar physical traits: white hair, white eyes, pale skin, average physique. During her short life, she was often compared to a mannequin by other KANSENs, not only because of her appearance, but also due to her behavior: she wasn't open to dialogue, and when she was immobile, she looked like — you guessed it — a mannequin. Even her clothes were completely white.

Although she had feelings like any other KANSEN, X looked emotionless because the commander had told her about her fate right after she was born. She knew she would die and she also knew how she would die: and knowing that, she did not really look forward to living. The only reason she was made public by the commander was because she had to be known by all the other KANSENs in order for his plan to work properly. When she was first introduced, he described her as an "incomplete KANSEN" which needed more data to be complete. According to him, she would gather said data by interacting with any other KANSEN: naturally, this was a lie, but it doesn't matter much: despite knowing she needed to socialize, the other KANSENs never cared about her. The commander let her live for a month or so before executing his plan.

"7th of March 20XX,
Tonight, she will die."
This was the only sentence written on his diary related to March 7th of that year. He had orchestrated her death by telling her to go into the woods to complete her "tour" of the island. Later that night, he visited Roon personally and told her that a Siren mimicking a KANSEN had been spotted wandering the woods: Roon had never met X before. Upon receiving the order to annihilate the "siren", Roon rushed into the woods in the middle of the night and massacred her after finding her on the path which had been traced to prevent visitors from getting lost. Knowing it was unsafe and unsightly to leave a corpse in the middle of the path, Roon dragged it deep into the woods as it left a trail of blood behind it. Using that same trail, she found her way back and returned to her room as though nothing had happened.

The commander concluded the play the next day, when he told Belfast (his personal maid) that he would go for a stroll in the woods: once he had seen the trail of blood, he followed it and, as he expected, it led to X's lifeless body. He called Belfast and, pretending to be shocked, asked her to reach him into the woods. When she arrived, she felt indignant and the news of X's death spread quickly within the Azur Lane and also outside of it. Following this "incident", as the commander wanted, the prestige of the Azur Lane dropped, even thanks to the usual media terrorism which was spread by multiple journals.

To land the final blow, sometime later, the Commander suddenly confirmed the theories which affirmed that Roon was behind that murder: to exaggerate the situation even further, he had classified Roon as "dangerous" and contained her into a cage inside his office. This maneuver had worsened the Azur Lane's reputation even more.

His plan was finally done: he had a successor and multiple excuses to pass his own title to M. Even though he had deliberately accused a girl of murder after encouraging her to commit it, he didn't care. After all, KANSENs were only tools to him.

ARC 0 (IV)
M, the super battleship developed by the commander's wife and her team of engineers and scientists, was born at 6 years old. Yes, it sounds really weird, but that's exactly what happened: as soon as he came to life, he was 6. Although that was definitely an abnormal phenomenon, the commander's wife still decided to accept him and adopt him as her son. She obviously wouldn't want to call her son "M": therefore, she baptized him as "Daniel" and always called him that for the rest of her life. The first year of his life was peaceful: after the commander had announced that he adopted a child (a human child, as he said), Daniel started to become familiar with the Azur Lane and all the KANSENs. He was received quite well by them: nobody hated him, on the other hand he was very appreciated and always put a smile on everyone's face with his curiosity and joy.

But that period of serenity would soon be over. As soon as he was 7 years old, the commander began tutoring him and introduced him to naval studies. But that wasn't a problem for Daniel, since he had always been fascinated by riggings and warships in general. He wanted to become a naval historian, since he preferred the classic 1:1 scale warships rather than miniature versions of them, but he'd soon find out he wouldn't be an historian in the future.

His mother was always so happy to hear him talking about the history of modern navies and the curious anecdotes of many warships: she could see that he had a passion just like a normal child. He would often ask KANSENs themselves about their histories and thanks to them his knowledge of the World Wars became rich.

Daniel would continue his studies until he was 13 years old. By then, he was an expert in naval engineering, administration and history. He was technically ready to take his father's place, but he didn't want to at all; the commander still had no intention to retire either, even because he was still very young. But little did he know, he would not live long enough to see his son taking his place...

Memory I
Daniel was sitting in his room during one of the few occasions when he had some free time. His father wasn't in his office or in the Academy, as he went into the woods together with Belfast and a couple more maids. He didn't explain the reason for that to anyone, but Daniel didn't worry about it so much. He was organizing some notes about the history of the heavy cruiser Trento, when suddenly someone knocked on the door.
"Come in!" he said while writing. The unexpected visitor was the aircraft carrier Impero: the two of them got along well, but it was still quite rare that she visited him. It was also hard to tell what she wanted to say, since her expression didn't suggest any emotion.
"Hey Daniel." She walked closer to his desk.
"It's great to see you, Impero. What brings you here?" He asked her, genuinely curious about what she had to say.
"... Now, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective and almost everyone else's, this is great news... But you might not like this at all." She continued; her expression became gloomy after she had finished this sentence.
"What happened..?" He asked as he began worrying after seeing the sudden shift in her mood.
"The commander has suddenly died some minutes ago in the woods. The maids who were with him have no idea what happened, since he dropped dead on the floor all of a sudden... They didn't hear any groan or sound from him, so it's impossible to assume anything..." She explained. Daniel remained silent for several seconds as he was caught by a sudden shock. He had never loved his father particularly, since his father himself had never shown any sign of love to him. He wasn't overcome by any sadness or depression: he was just unprepared to receive such a shocking announcement so suddenly. Furthermore, he knew what his father's death meant: he had to take his place.
"... I see." He replied in cold blood. Impero didn't know how to act from that point on, so she quietly sat down on the chair which his mother sat on next to him. Daniel didn't say anything else either as he simply resumed writing his notes. A couple of minutes later, his mom entered the room and hugged him tightly after approaching him. He knew she wasn't comforting him because of his father's death, but rather because of something else entirely. He'd have to become the next commander in charge very soon. Because of this, his mother began sobbing on his shoulder. He hugged her back tightly and began sobbing too, since he couldn't stand seeing his mother in so much pain.

Memory I end