CLOSED MAIN STORY The Dreadnought -- A Fight For Rome

[Wade Von Doom]

LAST TIME​

Deep within the belly of Pathfinder, there was a temple. A literal temple. From some unknown planet, the AI had cut out an ancient temple from the earth and placed it within the station for study. Within the temple rested a large, black rectangular obelisk, which emitted a dark power unlike anything, and had protected the marble walls of its temple from the AI to keep it out. Only for the AI to pick up the whole thing and find a way into it by force. Yet, after the station was liberated, the temple opened its doors to a small team of heroes, and upon closer inspection, teleported them all to a realm of pure darkness.

Within that realm was a man called 'Nux,' claiming he could help them find someone important. Someone who had gone missing, and was vital to the mission. The Doctor. In return, he would keep the black piece of crystal they had obtained from The Doctor himself. It held the same power that fueled the obelisk, and resonated throughout the dark realm Nux lived in. Walking through the dark space of galaxies, Nux showed them that The Doctor was located in Rome, in the year 1500. While he could not say where they were exdactly, he told them to 'look for a box that doesn't belong.'

And in their search of the city, made enemies of the city militia, under command of The Borgia family, and also made contact with a creed calling themselves The Assassin's. With a quick return back to the Pathfinder, a new team now arrives back in the city to continue their search.

What they do not know is that someone is waiting for them. Someone who has been watching them during this whole journey through the eyes of another. And has prepared for a battle massive and deadly. A being referred to as...

THE DREADNOUGHT

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

Last they were here, the team had agreed to visit the Pyramid of Celcius. They were looking for a group working for the Borgia called 'The Followers of Romulus,' who had been kidnapping scattered beings who have showing up in the sewers and old ruins of Rome. Always, scattered show up under the city, never above. Like something draws them there as they are taken from across the multiverse. There is believed to be an entrance to their lair above around by the pyramid itself, and indeed there was.

​

There was an old sewer hatch built into the old walls of Rome, with a small skeletal head decorating the top. A sign of whose territory this belonged to. Fortunately, this team wasn't scared by it, and a simple hard kick would open the hatch and let them slide through the opening. It would take them to an old burial ground of skeletal remains, the dead of old Rome that were forgotten by time. Venturing through it would take them through a maze of coffins and skeletons, but the further down they went, the more the architecture changed. From decaying bodies and crumbling ruins, to something more alien.

The pathways that lead down to below even the ruins were recently excavated. The Followers were digging to reach this place. It was massive and awe-inspiring to look upon such strange architecture that seemed to still pulse with foreign energy, even after what may have been thousands of years buried under the ground without anyone to care for them. To touch the rock, which felt more like smooth obsidian glass, would give an electrical buzz to their bodies. These certainly weren't built by the Roman, even during the days of Romulus and Remus. This was older. More complex. Built by beings older than humanity. And at the center of this massive room,


Was a box

One that didn't look like it belonged, even in this place. Moon Knight, who had accompanied the new team to continue this quest, had brought along with him the remains of Thea. Or, her head really. While Thea was currently in a strange limbo existence, her body was still in good enough condition to salvage the sonic technology the Doctor had installed in her. And since she was given some sort of strange frequency while studying the broken sonic screwdriver back in the tomb, it was only natural to try and use that to open the box.

And, while holding her decapitated head with both hands, aimed her screwdriver tongue at the box. With a jolt of electricity from a small battery Moon Knight brought along, the screwdriver buzzed back to life and began scanning the body. It only took a few moments before it began to open. Sitting inside, strapped to a chair, was The Doctor herself. Finally found after all this time. And on her lap was, strangely, a large metal briefcase.​

 

[Awinita]

Xeir observed the strange box, it didnt belong there, She had been by, with some help from either Ruby or Weiss, she couldnt exactly remember them, the girl had red hair and carried a gun, or was it a scythe ? She couldnt exactly remember as she had never seen Weiss use her own weapons yet, either way, the girl had instructed Xeir on how to make a weapon with the weapon fabricator on the Pathfinder, and she had the new massive fusion sword on her back; she'd seen several Spirit Masters use such weapons before and wanted one for herself.

She still had her bloodgod sword at her hip, but she had repaired and enhanced it using the weapon fabricator and now its blade edge shimmered a pale purple hue of brand new steel. She observed the strange box again, then turned her vision outward. Getting to the Pyramid was easier then expected, so was getting under it.

But somehow they had found what they were looking for, and also possibly what they were looking for. Upon seeing the state of the Doctor however, Xeir said what was on her mind. "She does not look good" She had her attention however split between the design of the ruins of the pyramid, and the fact they never met up with anyone, execept for their Assassin Friends ever so briefly before arriving down there. The ruin reminded her of where her species was possibly from or had visited, a planet simply known as Abeline.

She turned to Moon Knight, as if asking, "What do we do now ?" She was only asked to return to Roma because she too had agreed to visit the pyramid the last time they were there. At first she had no idea where she was, when she first woke up in Roma, but now she was back, and knew who her enemies were and so now she was better prepared. She looked at the group briefly, she saw other then Moon Knight one other that she recognised, Sevestre.

And somehow she felt relief, someone she recognised among a ragtag bunch. She wasnt alone.

 

[Amber Franklin]

The 13th Doctor - Character Sheet

"Oi! Thea, my clever girl! I knew you would find me." The Doctor exclaims upon seeing Thea's face through the doors. Her smile is a beam of light in the darkness until she raises her brows and recoils. "Oh.My.Word. What happened to Thea?! Quick, get me out of this." The Doctor demands, shaking her bound hands urgently.

Once free, The Doctor grabs the case and runs to Thea's head. "Alas poor Thea, I knew her well, Horatio." She says reaching out to first touch the cheek and then to feel around the neck.

"Oh no." The Doctor takes her hand away, rubbing her forehead and sighing. "The beacon module was in her torso. Is the rest of her here? Or do you have another beacon? We need to get this back to the station immediately." She tells the group, holding up the briefcase over her head.

 

[Wade Von Doom]

Confusion was the word of the day.

This was not The Doctor. The person Moon Knight was looking for, the one who made the teleporter he found back on his Earth, was both a man, and also most definitely not a blonde. Did that son of a bitch Nux mislead them?

Did they just give away their most powerful item to that guy over a false lead? Whatever the case, Moon Knight was both confused and very annoyed by the switcheroo, and upon 13 begging to be released from her confinement, he helped pull them off as she frantically fidgeted in her seat like a ten-year-old wanting out of their parent's car to use the bathroom.

She grabbed Thea's skull from his hands, then muttered something about a beacon in her body and needing to bring the case somewhere safe, all of which was said about a mile a minute. "Hold on!" Moon Knight, still controlled by Jake Lockley, physically grabbed 13 by her shoulders to make her stop moving.

"Who are you?" He then asked, "We're here looking for A Doctor. Do you know where he is?"

"I am The Doctor, who are you?" The Doctor asks incredulously and put her hands up, still keeping hold of the case.

"Someone very confused and who you don't want to mess with," MK threatened, "The Doctor we're looking for is not You."

"Oi, calm down, let me explain as succinctly as possible, but let me go first." The Doctor negotiates with her hands still up and her voice calm.

It took a few awkward moments, but Moon Knight decided to see where this was going, and slowly raised his hands off her.

Freed, The Doctor takes a step back from him and nods, picking up Thea's head that had been dropped when he grabbed her.

"I am The Doctor. Unlike most you might have met, I do not exist in one form on one linear timeline. The Doctor you met was a man, correct? Brown hair, gangly? Right, so that was me as a younger man. As I age I take on new forms, so now I'm an older woman. Is that clear enough?"

"So you regenerate, essentially," MK clarified, "good to know. Thea is fine, by the way. She got hacked by one of those AI minions and had to self-destruct before she did any damage to us. The head was all we brought."

"Strange, I didn't see a self-destruct mechanism during her upgrades." The Doctor shrugs, sighs, "Not important. Do you have another beacon?"

"... She had some help," best way to describe her self-destruct at the moment.

"But yes, we have a beacon, we came here to find you and bring you back to our new base. What exactly is in there? He asked next, since she was so determined to get it somewhere else.

"Brilliant." The Doctor lets out a sigh of relief and smiles, slaps the metal case. "A piece of that interesting and dangerous ore. The one the AI is hunting. With this, we will have at least two pieces they don't. Now enough chit-chat, take out the beacon and get us out of here before the AI detects this."

'TARGET CONFIRMED'
​

Too late. From out the shadows of the old ruins high above, the sound of an artillery cannon went off, and traveling fast towards the box was a massive white ball of energy. Moon Knight, seeing this approaching from out the corner of his eye, pushed The Doctor away. The ball hit the center of the box where The Doctor was seated only a few minutes before and exploded.

The blast was huge, a twenty-foot radius of pure explosive power that sent a shockwave powerful enough to knock a person off their feet, and even made the ground tremor. Moon Knight was unfortunately only a few feet away from the impact itself. His charred body was blasted off almost halfway across the room, smacking into one of the alien pillars and landing back on the ground with a thud. There wasn't much remaining of his body, and what was left of his suit was now a charcoal gray.

The shooter didn't waste any time in revealing himself, jumping down from his position to the floor. It was a seventy-five-foot drop, and landed with enough force to crack the ground; dust flying everywhere by the wave of wind. It was easy to make out who it was, even in the dim lighting of the room. They saw him not long ago.

PASSCHENDAELE
​

"Hello again~" Passchendaele spoke up, his voice calm as back on Pathfinder, but with more menace behind it now that he was finally face to face with them. "So glad you could join me. I was wondering how much longer it would take for you to find this place." He stood up straight from his kneeling position as he spoke, but remained where he landed from the team, about forty feet away from them all. "And so soon after we last saw each other, too. A shame Thea couldn't be with us, I was hoping me and her could have our duel. But, I doubt she would give me a real challenge like the rest of you can~"

He analyzed the team, picking out which among them was the strongest. "So... who goes first?"

 

[Valkan]

Both Ryan and L'Arathras remained silent as they moved about after arriving in Rome. They had different reasons, however. Rath wanted to be ready for any inconvenience or major issue that arose. He didn't want to be caught off guard yet again. Ryan wanted the opposite. He wanted to prove his own newfound strength, but also size up the might of certain teammates of his. Who knew? Maybe he'd find a reliable leader here.

And much like the reason for their silence, they both acted differently upon the energy blast pulverizing the Doctor's former prison. Rath dashed towards where the Doctor and Moon Knight were. He caught the lady and jumped away from the blast area, near where the crazy warrior's remains landed. The blue flames incorporated into the undead's head, who looked at the Doctor and Moon Knight while asking "Are you wounded? I'll patch you right up..." to both, as he focused mostly on healing with prana whatever injuries the Doctor may have gotten from that blast... And he had seen Moon Knight survive some stuff that made him question if being charred to a crisp would be too much for the madman. Rath took a symbolic deep breath and scanned the area for his soul, had it actually left his body.

As for Ryan he stood his ground to the blast, feeling the pressure of the shockwave reverberating in his crystalline ribcage. He caught the sound of something heavy falling nearby shortly afterwards, and immediately turned his attention to it. Summoning his blade, he was now face to face with that one machine big fish. "It has been a while since we last met in person, tin can. Have you gotten larger?" in truth, despite remembering his fight against this machine alongside Chika, the details were blurry in his head. Probably the work of the other one, if he had to guess. As for now, the challenge was up once again, and Ryan most certainly wasn't backing down. He considered turning into his dragon form, since this thing was so tall, but he wasn't fighting alone and he certainly would need all the space if he wanted to fight comfortably as a dragon. So that meant he'd have to concede the size advantage. He wasn't conceding much else without a fight, though. His blade ignited a bright red, a thick liquid oozing from it like volcanic lava. "Please, allow me."

Having said his piece, Ryan vanished from where he stood. Instead appearing as a red blur around the hulking robot, dancing in a seemingly random pattern around it before striking from the right side, at shoulder height. From there he made a downward slash in an attempt to slice the robotic arm in half.

 

[Wade Von Doom]

SOMEHOW,

Even with all that damage, Rather could sense his soul was still inside his body. Moon Knight wasn't dead yet. Though how he was going to bounce back from this, only his God knew.

Ryan, in the meantime, volunteered first. As he flashed towards Passie, The Dreadnought didn't move at all. As fast as Ryan was, the machine was calculating his movements just as fast and predicting where he would strike first. Even when Ryan appeared right besides him, Passie still hadn't moved. Yet, right as Ryan's blade touched his metal body, an electrical current suddenly formed from underneath the armor plating. Like a flash of lightning, it moved across Passie's arm, up along Ryan's blade, and straight into his chest with enough force to zap him through the alien pillar behind him.

A blast of dust and debris blew into Passie, while Ryan smashed into another wall that broke off into pieces that fell on top of him when he landed back on the ground. The Electrical current would cause Ryan's entire body to seize up; unable to breath until the shock passed. If he was human, that attack would have possibly disintegrated him into chunks of meat like he charged as a Telsa Tower.

And Passchendaele himself was left without even a scratch on his armor, even with the red lava gently dripping down his arm. He slowly took his thumb from his other hand to swipe it off.

"Next," he simply said.

 

[Girania the Knightess]

Ichigo was unsure of this place. It was not as eerie as Hueco Mundo, but it had a very alien feeling about it. The large, polygonal structure with the glowing lines and near-silent hum were off-putting on their own as he and his current group of companions explored this hidden place beyond the ruins of Ancient Rome. The out-of-place box only added to the dread, but the woman trying to open said box with what looked to be a toy lightened the mood for the substitute Shinigami with confusion and surprise. Anything to distract him.

Of course, this would only last a mere moment before the source of that dreadful feeling made itself known. A hulking robot had crashed down on the party and the woman, and challenged them for a fight. Normally, such an individual wouldn't faze Ichigo, as they would just be another person looking for a fight. This one, however, was different. The robot itself was not intimidating to Ichigo, but rather its connection to a recent enemy. This large machine supposedly had a connection to the previous robot the boy had fought, and if it was anywhere near as troublesome as the last one… Well, the thought of it concerned him.

At the moment, Ichigo is weakened. After he had been abducted during his rest after the battle against Ywhach, the robots had somehow drained him of his strength. Which resulted in him barely escaping with his life and needing to be healed by a Brotherhood of Assassins in this world. That is to say, he currently does not have the ability to fight this thing on his own. Not only that, he was unfamiliar with the people comprising the group he is with. A mix of acquaintances he had met recently, and new faces from the Pathfinder. He didn't know anything about these people outside of the small bits that he witnessed earlier. Case in point, the man named Ryan. Ichigo didn't know Ryan. He didn't know what he could do. He definitely didn't know the man was willing to charge headfirst on his own with only a few words to serve as a means of communication. Ichigo also didn't know that Ryan, who apparently knew this robot, would go flying after a failed attempt at harming it.

This did not bode well.

Ichigo, whose gaze focused on the robot, drew his weapons.

"Hey, guys", said Ichigo to the others. "I'm going to try and keep this thing's attention. If you think of something that can help. Try to do it fast."

He pointed the shorter one of his two swords at the robot.

"Gestuga Tenshō"

From the tip of the blade, a concentrated blast of energy sped towards its target, and Ichigo dashed forward, believing that just one move would be enough to dismantle it.

 

[Wade Von Doom]

Once more, Passchendaele didn't move. He stared directly at Ichigo, watching him form his little 'magic trick,' and waited for the hit. The blast was huge, engulfing the robot in golden light, and causing yet more dust and dirt to fly around him. But, once again, when it all settled, Passie only had a minor scratch on his chest plate from where the strike landed. He moved his hand over it, studying the small particles of metal that had now fallen off his body.

Actual damage. "Good," he commented aloud, "one of you Can kill me. My turn now." The plates along his back extended outwards, revealing over two dozen small launch tubes. In a matter of moments, smoke blew out from under them, and out launched twenty missiles two feet long. Half were aimed directly at the group, the other half flew up around the room to destroy the alien structure itself; blasting off the pillars that kept the room stable for all these centuries. He was trying to bury everyone alive.

At the same time, the machine raised both his arms up at Ichigo. Two large barrels protracted from each of his wrists, one arm aimed at Ichigo himself, another aiming for calculated movement when he attempted to dodge. What then followed was a barrage of gunfire so intense, it vibrated the floor and deafened the whole room. 24,000 plasma rounds per minute, and if none of that hit the Soul Reaper, it would sure as hell hit the others if they didn't get blown up.

There was a reason this twelve foot behemoth of a machine was nicknamed 'The Dreadnought.' They are finding out now why