The Ascension of the Imperium IC (All Tech, TG for interest)

[Ignis States]

As soon as the guns fire at Zen, releasing absolute Armageddon towards his torso, his eyes grow wide, time seeming to slow down for him as he's met with eminent destruction.
The first thought to go through his mind? ''Ǫ̴̣̲̘́̈́̏͠ͅḩ̵͖̗̥̐,̷̟͎̬̻̏̑͜ ̶͕͈̲͉͑̈́͐̋̑b̵̫̰̏̒ò̷̹̺̦̤̂͘͝l̴̲̼̒l̵̬͑̿ö̷̮́̇̎̽̊͜c̵̠͖̳̕k̶̰̓̓͝ͅs̶̮̫͚̰͐̍̂"

A truly stunning conflagration of white hot flame, a force that could sunder universes, explodes in a bubble around the hapless fox-like android, plumes of gaseous metal erupting in all directions as he's impacted.
First, his artificial skin melts away...and then the outer layers of his endoskeleton. It visibly tries to repair itself, but the energy fights back against it. It's only thanks to Zen's accelerated energy regeneration for his core that he even survives without instantly disintegrating. The only solace aside from this is that the fox's soul remained intact. This isn't an Istoria repeat. That is to never repeat.

Yet...as he's reduced to a skeleton of flickering rainbow and black metal, he abruptly flickers into a mere hologram, vanishing in a burst of static. The endoskeleton that we once knew as Zen emerges in a dimly lit endless void of pure white. Around him is a nearly endless pile of parts. Just what he needs. Especially if those two are to show up....the Archangel of Order especially.

No reason to fret. The Machine-Lord has sought to claim all. The fangs of Order seek to pierce through Nothingness. Everything is falling in place.

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As Strein flies through the void of space with her mentor by her side, she's keenly aware of...a familiar energy signature just behind her! As she prepares to turn around and face it, a telepathic signal interrupts her train of thought...or more accurately, enters it.
As she takes in the full magnitude of what the Countess is saying to her, the wolf turns around, facing the ship headed towards them. Mark pauses, following her lead. At once, both fade into shadow, rushing forwards immaterially at lightspeed squared.

Behind Ambrosia and Vishala, Mark and Strein appear from nothingness, as if they teleported inside. Strein offers her hand to Ambrosia, though it's very clear that something changed about her. The gaze in her eyes is far stormier, far more clouded with anger than it's ever been. It has the same piercing, battle hardened quality as Mark's own stare, actually.
"Ambrosia, I need to say this: Thank you. I wouldn't have blamed you if you only watched...if I can be honest, I'm scared. I'm scared about what might happen with my people. The fact that you're willing to help with this, that you want to alleviate some of their suffering...You're one of the best people I've ever met aside from Seren. But I digress. Whatever you want to talk about...I'm ready to talk about it."

Mark simply nods in response to what Strein said, his mechanical arm on full display as the aura of Khorne begins to spread from the limb so that it covers his entire body. A violet light accompanied by a pitch, midnight black radiates from his fists and eyes.
"What she said. That mechanical dipshit gave me an excuse to hand his ass to him on a silver platter like I'm the butler at the mansion of kickassery. If you're here to help with that, too...Yeah, we could use the extra help. It's your war just as much as ours anyway."

[Il Passione]

Italy

The reflects would do their job well in the first round of lasers. As the ground exploded Reaper would feel it along with every last one of the initial lasers. Past that however, J'eil knew that his reflect had run out and that if another wasn't applied to him and the organics again they would be reduced to ash in a few seconds. While in the middle of a reflected beam, J'eil could see the beginnings of yet another and if his calculations were right he had around 10 seconds to apply another round of Reflect. Since Mista and Cannolo had already been pulled to J'eil before the building was raised Mr. Roboto was able to apply the Reflect orbs to the two organics from each of his hands, but then he realized he would be unable to apply it to himself. As the seconds went along J'eil began panicking as he saw the beam approach closer and closer and with every second he spent thinking the more panic built up inside of him. 8.554 seconds had past and J'eil could have stuck out his fake tongue to taste the laser when he finally yelled out in equal measures of desperation, terror, and realization, "MOUTH!" With that shout, Mr. Roboto formed a massive gaping hole in his face and shot out the Reflect orb from it, just in time to save J'eil. Mr. Roboto was able to keep the reflect on the group causing Reaper to feel each one of his lasers blasts reflected on himself. And then the bubble dissapeared.

As J'eil, Mista and Cannolo dropped, Mr. Roboto hovered in front of J'eil calmly. With a series of beeps the stand said, "User J'eil is in danger, what concept would you need to live." J'eil looked at the situation around him and came up with a response near instantly

"Flight! Give us flight!" Pulling a white bubble from J'eil's head, Mr. Roboto began shooting these orbs at the group and as they were hit they would feel themselves slowly ease into a sort of flight. Stabilizing himself, J'eil looked at the others, "We should move somewhere far away from here. If he hits us now we're dead." With that J'eil would begin flying to his North going no where in particular.

The other two gangsters seemed confused and frightened at the entire ordeal they went under, Cannolo notably surprised when the warehouse went up and was decimated by the laser attack, but ask the flight kicked in, Cannolo had only seconds to formulate a plan of his own.
"Oh god... WAIT!" Cannolo said, surprised as he acted like he had a vision. "The Consiglieri is in Florenzia! If we can reach the city in time, there's a bomb bunker from World War II that the Unita Speciale occupy. I'm not sure if anyone's in there, but the Consiglieri often comes by. We just need to get over there, and hopefully we'll lose him in the meantime!" Cannolo said, looking to Mista.

"I'll hold 'im off..." He said, flying backwards with the group while aiming his gun at Reaper. "Let's do this, fellas!"

"Ready when you are, Mista!"

"SEX PISTOLS!" He cried out, as several miniature humanoid stands mounted the two bullets he fired at Reaper, one on each as the other four were behind him, letting out a simultaneous cry of "YEEHAW!"

[Sildorian Empire]

Battle of Ziamon

The Artillery ships fired first, lighting up the void of space with bright flashes sending shells aimed directly at the station shortly before the rest of the fleet fired. The fleet comprising of 40 Artillery ships, the Dreadnought headed by Tk'Rantar, 90 Battleships, 100 Battlecruisers, 2 Carriers, and the rest being smaller ships such as corvettes and cruisers all fired at the station as Drone Fighters were deployed to swarm the station while also testing the strength of the planetary shield of Ziamon Prime with bombing runs. The battle was predicted to last a few minutes before the fleet could turn their full attention to Ziamon Prime. Hopefully the planet would be reasonable and surrender itself leading to a good success to this invasion though some AI noticed some oddly moving debris. For now it could be ignored. It probably wasn't going to be an issue.

Battle of Ziamon
Ziamon Starbase, Ziamon

"We're sustaining heavy fire" an officer said, taking a look at the screen in front of him. His tone too calm to him to be in anything but total and complete panic pertaining to his near-inevitable demise. "We survived the first volley, but the shields are down 38%. Two more hits and we'll be out of deflectors." His superior narrowed his eyes. "Could the hulls hold the volleys back?" she asked. "Not for long, sir. I estimate we'll have, at best, a few minutes."

"Evac anyone that we can afford to fight without." Major cur'Sene sighed. "Let them join the military and civilian evacuation. We'll have to hold them back for you.". The officer, a commander in the Sildorian Navy, raised an eyebrow. "But ma'am, protocol-" cur'Sene snapped without turning from the viewport. "The battle's lost, commander. We're just delaying its inevitable conclusion for meager minutes."

Ziamon, Sildorian Space

While the fighters challenged the Octavian drone fighters -and when possible larger voidcraft- the two bomber squadrons had other orders. Knowing that there was little they could do to stop the swarming of the Starbase or the orbital bombardment of Ziamon Prime -the planetary shields seemed to be holding for now anyway-, they engaged the Octavian Dreadnought, alongside most of the guns aboard the three stationary Sildorian Targets.

Swarmed by enemy fighters, the Starbase engaged what amounted to its Point-Defense system. The swarmer missiles chased smaller ships -corvettes, cruisers, fighters- while the Cutting Lasers and the Autocannon both concentrated on the Dreadnought. Alongside the station, the two platforms did the same by countering the swarming tactic by their light laser repeaters and aiming their kinetic launcher at the larger ships. It wasn't much, but it was all they could do.

Planetside on Ziamon Prime, evacuation was underway. While planetary atmospheric surveys had revealed some strange, oddly moving debris, the pilots were certain they could navigate their way to orbit, and from there, jump to Hyperspace.

---

Orbiting Sildora Prime

---

As Victoria had been beckoned by her superior, Ambrosia, to head into Sildorian Space and hopefully gain an audience with the Archon himself. She was most certainly not about to be dilly-dallied in such an operation and no bureaucrat or law enforcement would spend more time than was needed with her as she attempted to get deeper and deeper into Sildora's core sector. Soon enough, she was orbiting the planet itself but as expected, it would not be simple enough to walk straight into the central government's relevant bureaucratic holdings and demand for a parley with the Archon himself. It wasn't so simple, especially as she had realized when she encountered the Silda border patrol. Great, another obstacle to her goal. Victoria Hoffmeister was a blunt, quick and short-tempered woman but her wits were quick and she knew how to push someone off of her path or persuade them to step aside. In this case, it was the former. She bluntly told the enforcer that she was here on a diplomatic mission and that she should pass this message onto the Archon, stressing that it for his eyes only or else. An enchantment was laid on the letter: Anyone else's eyes would be fried if they tried to read its contents unless the Archon physically hands it over for someone to read or simply burns the letter, destroying both the letter and the information with it. The enchanted letter in question contained the following:

My dear Archon vur'Jaffab, this letter is written by a Bloodshadian representative. I come here on behalf of the federal president, to represent the interests of my people and to offer you a lending hand in these trying times. I shall say this bluntly: I understand just how suspicious a letter such as this would be but rest assured, I shall fully submit myself to your hospitality and Sildorian law. I would kindly request that we begin talks with one another. Simply put, Bloodshade has thousands of ships at the ready, with millions of soldiers ready to deal with the Octavian menace.

P.S: I apologize in advance if anyone's unwanted eyes were burnt spontaneously. That was my doing. I did not want anyone other than you to see the contents of this letter unless you so decided to hand this over to a trusted advisor.

Yours Sincerely
Victoria Hoffstein

Sildora Prime, Sila System

The Archon rubbed his chin. This was, indeed, surprising to hear of. He was, of course, aware of the fact that the Octavians were engaging multiple hostile civilizations in combat -that much had been obvious from both the so-called Paramount's missive and the Surveyors' Guild's own findings- but he hadn't thought any of those civilizations would give an offer of help to the Sildorians. Hm. This could... help. If it was legitimate. "I've read your missive, madam Hoffmiester," he mused, "and I am quite interested to enter negotiations for a future friendly to the both of us."

[The Auraverse]

|☉|Orbit of Ziamon Prime|☉|
|Glimmer of the Pale|

---

"They've engaged."

"I see that."

There was a sourceless sigh in the echoing chamber. Greg's undulations took on a somewhat more erratic pattern.

"I suppose it cannot be helped. Shall we?"

"I'll start us off on the attack front, but the Sildorian station seems to be sustaining fairly heavy fire. Anything we're going to do about that?"

"Short of removing their opposition? I think I may have an idea. Do you still have that DT imprint saved somewhere? The micrometeor-clearing one? Scale up the broadband for indiscriminate mass/energy targeting, and limit by scale."

"...Huh. Not a bad plan. Command: advanced input."

There was no audible sound for the next few seconds, until the second voice resurfaced.

"Got it. Now that the prelim's settled... ahem. Command: engage."

"Acknowledged."

---

Nigh-immediately, the "debris" field scattered throughout Ziamon Prime's orbit sprang to life. Individual pieces of plating were warped and distended, creating openings into spaces that did not conceivably exist. And in those spaces were barrels, of a sort, and from each and every one of them sprang slug after slug of magnetically-packaged neutronium, streaking towards any Octavian vessels in its cone of fire at just under lightspeed. Most were aimed, initially, at the vessels headed for the planet itself, though a few barrages were already being flung over to the capital-ship cluster bombarding the Sildorian station. Of course, packaging each and every shell with its own, permanent containment mantle would be tedious and time-consuming. So they weren't permanent. And this was only the start of the Octavians' problems.

But the slugs were still sublight. High sublight, yes, but still vaguely within the realm of physical possibility. They were not enough.

Nigh-invisible, nigh-undetectable pinpricks of light seemed to split off from the plating itself, here and there, and streak out into the void. A few moments post-detachment, each was enveloped in a tiny maelstrom of twisted space, and seemingly vanished.

Elsewhere...

|✧|Ziamon|✧|
|Ziamon Starbase|

---

Almost as quickly as they had vanished from the general vicinity of Ziamon Prime's orbital shroud, the minuscule light-darts popped back into realspace, mere hundreds of meters from the Sildorian starbase. And then, there was a great big cloud of mathematics.

The Translocator was a wonderful invention. Little more than an unimaginably powerful and highly specialized computing array, its directed algorithmic imposition of quantum effects onto superatomic space allowed for a vast number of the scientific "miracles" worked by the Syndicate on a daily. Among other things, it gave allowance for those selfsame arrays to be crammed into a space no larger than a millimetre-diameter cylinder, alongside a capital-grade FTL propulsion system. It also enabled the moving of things... elsewhere. The possible definitions of "things" were many and varied. As was the definition of "where".

So it was that the clustered mass of projectiles, energy and assorted miscellanea flung at the station by its attackers would suddenly find its velocity impulses reversed. And promptly streaked back the way it came - shells, missiles and all. Left unimpeded, they would re-strike whatever it was that had fired them. The great mathening seemed to touch Sildorian munitions as well - missiles appeared to gain additional speed, and have their trajectories subtly adjusted for better hit probability. Lasers seemed to curve towards targets they had missed. Even the occasional meteoroid and bit of space debris was added to the great big whirling death cloud now headed for the Octavian fleet at relativistic speeds.

All in all, it seemed as though anything smaller than a ship currently passing through the area had been snatched up, and repurposed as a weapon of defense. And this was when the second wave of micromissiles jumped into position.

[The Zravvisk]

Armada Staging Point
The system was filled by the entirety of the Armada. Most of the ships had a ramshackle look to them, with additional armor seemly haphazardly rived or wield on and the guns weren’t much different. Some ships were even crude Frankenstein amalgamations of several different classes. No two ships were the same, even sister ships had completely different armaments and armor schemes, no common look or style to them besides the ever present obvious additional armor plates and the Zravvisk dragon uniting them. Some casual observers would likely remark that most of the Armada looked more ready for the scrapyard rather than the tough and reliable vessels of the masters of void combat. Experts would realize that the lack of unity were from the fact that many of the ships were spoils of war while most of the rest were salvaged.

Two ships were in front of the formation, if you could call it that. They were the first ships of the Armada, the precursor ships handed down to them so long ago. The first ship was the Dragua II, the behemoth of armor and guns easily dwarfed any other ship present. The second was the Lunastra II, though much smaller, it was no less impressive than the Dragua. Both ships were spared the haphazard nature of most of their fellows and could only be described as elegant. Each commanded respect in its own way, the Dragua commanding it though size, while the Lunastra had the air of a predator always ready to pounce.

Suddenly a beam shot from each ship to a seemly random region of space. As soon as the beam collided a small vortex of energy opened, growing steadily larger. Soon the beams separated and wrestled the vortex to larger and larger sizes until it finally grew to a massive size able to swallow several ships at once. Several ships had already began moving towards it while it was growing and plunged into it with no hesitation. The Armada continued to pour into the vortex until only the precursor ships were left, still wrestling with the vortex. Finally, they took the plunge themselves.

Other Side of the Wormhole
With the Dragua and Lunastra safely though the wormhole, they finally turned off their beams. Instantly the vortex began to shrink until it disappeared, the wormhole returning to its slumber. The Armada had already began assembling into a formation, leaving holes for the two legendary ships. While the Dragua took its place in the middle of the formation to command, the Lunastra took the lead always wanting to be the first into the fight.

With the formation formed, they jumped to ftl. Their target was a primitive world just outside the last known Imperium borders. If the Octavians were in the middle of an invasion or just finished one, they would not be ready for void combat and be easy prey. If they had not begun one, they could drop defenses to let the planet defend itself until they returned. Either way was a victory for them. The Imperium was in for a very rude awakening as not only the Armada appeared nowhere near where they were expected to, but had also unwittingly moved into position to threaten the Sildorian Battlegroup’s main supply line.

Other side of the Imperium
The Solemn Dagger had kept itself busy. Having changed its armor to that of a heavy cruiser, it could afford fighting normal patrols. As long as it kept a few systems between it and the main fleet, it could dispatch a small station or combat patrol and flee before the fleet could arrive. Between the stealth cruiser’s constant harassment and the leaked false battleplan, the Imperium seemed convinced that this sector would the site of the invasion. As they beefed up their defenses the Dagger saw less and less targets of opportunity. But the fleet was moving out, and looking at their vector, their most likely target was Ridley’s Rest.

While their original plan was to reunite with the Armada on the other side of the Imperium, this could be a problem. While Ridley’s Rest was heavily defended and could hold off a fleet by itself and its defense flotilla, the Armada was completely out of position to support it. The Dagger began shadowing the fleet, if they did make a move on Ridley’s Rest they could support it.

[The Rapture Republic]

Italy

The reflects would do their job well in the first round of lasers. As the ground exploded Reaper would feel it along with every last one of the initial lasers. Past that however, J'eil knew that his reflect had run out and that if another wasn't applied to him and the organics again they would be reduced to ash in a few seconds. While in the middle of a reflected beam, J'eil could see the beginnings of yet another and if his calculations were right he had around 10 seconds to apply another round of Reflect. Since Mista and Cannolo had already been pulled to J'eil before the building was raised Mr. Roboto was able to apply the Reflect orbs to the two organics from each of his hands, but then he realized he would be unable to apply it to himself. As the seconds went along J'eil began panicking as he saw the beam approach closer and closer and with every second he spent thinking the more panic built up inside of him. 8.554 seconds had past and J'eil could have stuck out his fake tongue to taste the laser when he finally yelled out in equal measures of desperation, terror, and realization, "MOUTH!" With that shout, Mr. Roboto formed a massive gaping hole in his face and shot out the Reflect orb from it, just in time to save J'eil. Mr. Roboto was able to keep the reflect on the group causing Reaper to feel each one of his lasers blasts reflected on himself. And then the bubble dissapeared.

As J'eil, Mista and Cannolo dropped, Mr. Roboto hovered in front of J'eil calmly. With a series of beeps the stand said, "User J'eil is in danger, what concept would you need to live." J'eil looked at the situation around him and came up with a response near instantly

"Flight! Give us flight!" Pulling a white bubble from J'eil's head, Mr. Roboto began shooting these orbs at the group and as they were hit they would feel themselves slowly ease into a sort of flight. Stabilizing himself, J'eil looked at the others, "We should move somewhere far away from here. If he hits us now we're dead." With that J'eil would begin flying to his North going no where in particular.

The other two gangsters seemed confused and frightened at the entire ordeal they went under, Cannolo notably surprised when the warehouse went up and was decimated by the laser attack, but ask the flight kicked in, Cannolo had only seconds to formulate a plan of his own.
"Oh god... WAIT!" Cannolo said, surprised as he acted like he had a vision. "The Consiglieri is in Florenzia! If we can reach the city in time, there's a bomb bunker from World War II that the Unita Speciale occupy. I'm not sure if anyone's in there, but the Consiglieri often comes by. We just need to get over there, and hopefully we'll lose him in the meantime!" Cannolo said, looking to Mista.

"I'll hold 'im off..." He said, flying backwards with the group while aiming his gun at Reaper. "Let's do this, fellas!"

"Ready when you are, Mista!"

"SEX PISTOLS!" He cried out, as several miniature humanoid stands mounted the two bullets he fired at Reaper, one on each as the other four were behind him, letting out a simultaneous cry of "YEEHAW!"

“There not just clowns, they’re perverts too. How I am not surprised?” Reaper as he quickly jumped out of the way, moving at supersonic speed, stopping at the former place, where the Warehouse, and next launched himself into air, and created blocks of air to walk upon, and dart at the gangsters. Keeping his distance, ready to dodge again from another attack, and also began to launch his counterattack. He would materialize a bazooka, took aim at Mista, and unleashed a high-powered magic-powered volley that reigned a storm of starry lights, packing a destructive force of 400 megatons, speeding at the enemy at record-breaking speeds. And taking amount of the enemy’s reflection ability in his assault, he placed a enhanced shield around himself to not be strucked by his attack, and also take measures given how large the attack is, he focused on additional defenses such as magical mirrors and gravity manipulation to avoid unintentionally harming innocents.

[Il Passione]

The other two gangsters seemed confused and frightened at the entire ordeal they went under, Cannolo notably surprised when the warehouse went up and was decimated by the laser attack, but ask the flight kicked in, Cannolo had only seconds to formulate a plan of his own.
"Oh god... WAIT!" Cannolo said, surprised as he acted like he had a vision. "The Consiglieri is in Florenzia! If we can reach the city in time, there's a bomb bunker from World War II that the Unita Speciale occupy. I'm not sure if anyone's in there, but the Consiglieri often comes by. We just need to get over there, and hopefully we'll lose him in the meantime!" Cannolo said, looking to Mista.

"I'll hold 'im off..." He said, flying backwards with the group while aiming his gun at Reaper. "Let's do this, fellas!"

"Ready when you are, Mista!"

"SEX PISTOLS!" He cried out, as several miniature humanoid stands mounted the two bullets he fired at Reaper, one on each as the other four were behind him, letting out a simultaneous cry of "YEEHAW!"

“There not just clowns, they’re perverts too. How I am not surprised?” Reaper as he quickly jumped out of the way, moving at supersonic speed, stopping at the former place, where the Warehouse, and next launched himself into air, and created blocks of air to walk upon, and dart at the gangsters. Keeping his distance, ready to dodge again from another attack, and also began to launch his counterattack. He would materialize a bazooka, took aim at Mista, and unleashed a high-powered magic-powered volley that reigned a storm of starry lights, packing a destructive force of 400 megatons, speeding at the enemy at record-breaking speeds. And taking amount of the enemy’s reflection ability in his assault, he placed a enhanced shield around himself to not be strucked by his attack, and also take measures given how large the attack is, he focused on additional defenses such as magical mirrors and gravity manipulation to avoid unintentionally harming innocents.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?" Cannolo said, raising an eyebrow as he fired a bullet at the projectile before firing a third bullet with its' own Pistol... though it came with a twist.
"Let's do this, Mista!" One of the Sex Pistols said, jumping up as they rode the bullets in a sharp turn before attempting to take him down as they increased the power of the .357 rounds by kicking them towards Reaper with the force of an anti-tank round. Even though it would most likely prove useless with the shield, at the very least it would distract him while they flew away, with six tiny humanoid beings kicking bullets back and forth at him until they were either destroyed or lost velocity.
"C'mon, pass pass paaaass!" One of the cried out... though the remaining pistols that stayed back would smirk as they flew towards the missiles... and delivered a roundhouse kick to the volley of lights in an attempt to send it back towards reaper, causing the three other Pistols to withdraw and fly back to Mista. According to their mannerisms, it was still a projectile to them, and hopefully a deflectable one.

[The Rapture Republic]

“There not just clowns, they’re perverts too. How I am not surprised?” Reaper as he quickly jumped out of the way, moving at supersonic speed, stopping at the former place, where the Warehouse, and next launched himself into air, and created blocks of air to walk upon, and dart at the gangsters. Keeping his distance, ready to dodge again from another attack, and also began to launch his counterattack. He would materialize a bazooka, took aim at Mista, and unleashed a high-powered magic-powered volley that reigned a storm of starry lights, packing a destructive force of 400 megatons, speeding at the enemy at record-breaking speeds. And taking amount of the enemy’s reflection ability in his assault, he placed a enhanced shield around himself to not be strucked by his attack, and also take measures given how large the attack is, he focused on additional defenses such as magical mirrors and gravity manipulation to avoid unintentionally harming innocents.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?" Cannolo said, raising an eyebrow as he fired a bullet at the projectile before firing a third bullet with its' own Pistol... though it came with a twist.
"Let's do this, Mista!" One of the Sex Pistols said, jumping up as they rode the bullets in a sharp turn before attempting to take him down as they increased the power of the .357 rounds by kicking them towards Reaper with the force of an anti-tank round. Even though it would most likely prove useless with the shield, at the very least it would distract him while they flew away, with six tiny humanoid beings kicking bullets back and forth at him until they were either destroyed or lost velocity.
"C'mon, pass pass paaaass!" One of the cried out... though the remaining pistols that stayed back would smirk as they flew towards the missiles... and delivered a roundhouse kick to the volley of lights in an attempt to send it back towards reaper, causing the three other Pistols to withdraw and fly back to Mista. According to their mannerisms, it was still a projectile to them, and hopefully a deflectable one.

“Think you are smart, eh?” Reaper remarked, snapping his finger, causing the starry lights that were and weren’t knocked off to break up into a whole new storm, and break the sound barrier every second they made a drastic turn, operating like they had a independent mind, as they came closer and closer towards Mista as they rushed at him. Reaper would be move some by the incoming bullets, hitting against his shield. But distracted? No. Far from it, as he boomed four more swarms of starry lights at the Mista with his bazooka.

After doing so. He manifested a cloud of bane particles to drowned the enemy with, as these particles would feed on the Ethernano in the atmosphere and contaminating it, thus causing magic users (including stand users) who breath it in to become lethally poisoned and weaken their magic prowess. Also cause them to have their vital organs to break down, and uncontrollably cough up their decaying inhales, and their eyesight to become blurry or even permanently blind. Overall, in its conclusion, the victim would be nothing more than a magic-less hallowed out corpse on the ground.

[The-International Space Organization]

As soon as the guns fire at Zen, releasing absolute Armageddon towards his torso, his eyes grow wide, time seeming to slow down for him as he's met with eminent destruction.
The first thought to go through his mind? ''Ǫ̴̣̲̘́̈́̏͠ͅḩ̵͖̗̥̐,̷̟͎̬̻̏̑͜ ̶͕͈̲͉͑̈́͐̋̑b̵̫̰̏̒ò̷̹̺̦̤̂͘͝l̴̲̼̒l̵̬͑̿ö̷̮́̇̎̽̊͜c̵̠͖̳̕k̶̰̓̓͝ͅs̶̮̫͚̰͐̍̂"

A truly stunning conflagration of white hot flame, a force that could sunder universes, explodes in a bubble around the hapless fox-like android, plumes of gaseous metal erupting in all directions as he's impacted.
First, his artificial skin melts away...and then the outer layers of his endoskeleton. It visibly tries to repair itself, but the energy fights back against it. It's only thanks to Zen's accelerated energy regeneration for his core that he even survives without instantly disintegrating. The only solace aside from this is that the fox's soul remained intact. This isn't an Istoria repeat. That is to never repeat.

Yet...as he's reduced to a skeleton of flickering rainbow and black metal, he abruptly flickers into a mere hologram, vanishing in a burst of static. The endoskeleton that we once knew as Zen emerges in a dimly lit endless void of pure white. Around him is a nearly endless pile of parts. Just what he needs. Especially if those two are to show up....the Archangel of Order especially.

---

BRIDGE OF THE UNITED GOVERNMENT CRUISER 'STARFURY'

---

"Target has been eliminated, captain." The gunnery officer called out, as the CIWS snapped back to idle positions. "We're clear to proceed with the plan, captain. Recon Intel has passed us the position of the hostile combined fleet. They've waltzed right into position for us."

"Good. Helm, you know your orders."

The Cruiser rapidly left the star-system where yet another battle had happened in an instant- Vanishing off to only the Gods knew where, to engage another foe...

---

COMMAND OF THE ICN 'SCARS OF IGAL' - EN-ROUTE TO THE IGNISIAN STATES, LEADING TASK-FORCE 'STARBOUND'

---

"We're at the border now, Captain." An aide said, as Novum turned, gesturing for the aide to continue. "All ships arrived in formation- A few tugboats are low on fuel, but they'll last until we get into the rally point, and can refuel them from the support fleet. The fleets ready to make full speed."

"Make it so." Novum simply said- The Aide scurrying away, as Novum turned to another staff member. "Get me a line to the Ignisian States- It'll be important that they know we've arrived, lest we end up trying to maul each-other by mistake."

"Right away, Admiral."

---

Hailing, the Ignisian States;
This is Admiral Novum Romanum, of the International Space Organization Inter-Cluster Navy, commanding Task-Force starbound. We are here to provide military aid against the Octavian Menace, and economic aid to help rebuild your country. We are but a short jump away from your nations borders, and are prepared to enter when the all-clear is given. I shall be awaiting your response.

---

FINITY'S END - INTELLIGENCE POST BRAVO

---

The heavy sensor arrays of IPB had been turned to study the Octavian galaxy- An array of the full galaxy sprawled on chart-tables, as holographic dots moving about indicated fleet movements, planets, mega-structures- And, more importantly, known battle locations. Each of those was marked out carefully- And a few had drawn the attention of Fleet Command in full. A wide scale invasion- Of another space-age nation... Forty-nine systems under octavian siege- (Well, fifty, but fleet-command was currently refusing to acknowledge that system existed) A dangerous scenario by... Most accounts. Especially for an empire of the size fleet command had estimated 'Delta' to be... And a chance to drop the hammer on the Octavian Fleet in yet another battle-line.

After that information had been uncovered- The orders had been sent out. Fully ready forces from the First Expeditionary Armada had been pulled out of their patrol duties, refueled, and then pointed towards the distant galaxy. BFDs readied for the transit, as a second force was prepared behind them- A far more logistically orientated force than the blunt hammer that was preparing for departure, even as crews rushed about to see the ships serviced-

And then, with the less-than-subtle movement of a BFD... The first ships were gone in a flash to reinforce this new [hopefully] ally in the fight against the Octavians...

[Imperial-Octavia]

Ziamon Prime

A few corvettes were damaged and one was even destroyed by the Sildorian station as well as a few hundred Drone Fighters, though going little to dampen their numbers. Then, the munitions turned themselves around along with a wave of micromissiles. Suffice to say the damage was extreme. Though point defense and evasion were used to their fullest extent, hundreds of ships went down leaving the debris of Octavian ships littering the system. The Dreadnought was heavily damaged and Rantar was given a heavy stream of Cymopolia flashbacks. The Silda station would have never seen a fleet go the opposite direction so fast before. It would seem that on this day the Sildorian Empire would achieve victory.

Outside Prime's solar system, the fleet began repairing itself with layers of nanites applied onto damaged hulls and shield generators worked back into working order. It would be best to go around Ziamon Prime for the time being. At least until that debris business was sorted out...

Ridley's Rest

Tal'Talen's fleet had finally arrived at it's destination and found a quite well defended station. Mine fields and already prepared guns, though Talen was sure her 500 strong fleet would be able to smash through their defenses. Hundreds of drone Fighters were deployed from the carriers to scout out the station and see the fighter force of the station. The rest of the fleet moved forward shooting down mines where they could as the Artillery ships focused on the station itself in the back. The Sword of The Imperium itself was behind the artillery ships and began firing it's planet shattering rounds at Ridley's Rest while the other 50 Dreadnoughts in the fleet stayed close to the front using their point defense to protect the rest of the fleet while also taking out mines with their secondary weapons and firing at the station with their primary cannon.

Designated Mining Planet 122

The Zravvisk would find a world starting the assimlaton process as the old and young were taken away into massive facilities where they'd be subdued and operated on, removing their brains and using a spiked device uploaded all of the data within into a chip. The newly assimlated would be paraded outside on the streets of the many cities on the planet while their organic bodies had their DNA harvested for procreatioal purposes and thrown into massive incinerators, never to be recovered. As expected this operation required millions of Mechanators and even more garrisoned MK2 judge drones. In accordance with new Imperial policy a shield generator was set up despite being a little below the standards of the rest of the Imperium due to the limited resources of the planet. A Karsh'Ka destroyer was placed in orbit around the planet to put down any brewing rebellions before they could start and a station was being built by a legion of worker drones. As the Zravvisk fleet came into sight, the destroyer would charge into the first ship it could see all the while shooting at what we it's AI could see while on the planet Mechanators and drones alike began preparing for orbital bombardment. They were surprised the war had come to them, but they were no less ready to fight it, that was for sure.

Italy

J'eil watched in amazement as Mista began bouncing the magic back towards Reaper and was surprised that an organic was possible of such a feat but congratulations would come later. For now concentrating on the magical emo would be the best choice and J'eil's stand would give him the opportunity to do that, summoning his stand and looking around at his surroundings mid-flight he could see nothing but air and that was all he needed. Something in his mind told him that as long as he didn't hit himself or his allies the flying effect wouldn't vanish. Suddenly Reapers missiles seperated themselves and he filled the air with a type of poisonous gas. Luckily he didn't need to breathe, but his organic allies did. First he focused on the gas where he could see it using his sensor capability overwriting the Etherion gas then moving on to the light missiles aimed at Mista using his enhanced senses and calculation potential to aim the path of the orbs into the missiles and finally would turn to Reaper and began firing a tidal wave of air concept orbs covering the area that he tried to follow the group, "Let's see you get around this one, eh?"

Allied Fleet

Luckily the Deceptions had joined with the fleet, unluckily the system Zen was supposed to be in hadn't had any action in the last minute. That was not normal. This could mean only two things, either Zen had died or had betrayed the Paramount both were plausible options. The Octavian vessels stopped mid jump multiple systems away from the Cruiser. A message was sent to the rest of the fleet

Hello allies
A important Imperial asset in combating the United Government has been removed. Until a solution is found the optimal strategy is to take care of other threats to the Imperium, namely, The ISO and Laniakean Alliance. Thank you

The Octavian vessels in the fleet would begin moving in a patrol around industrial worlds and some especially important trade routes, all expected targets of the attacking forces. It wasn't as much of a threat as the cruiser but it was an important duty nonetheless.

[The Rapture Republic]

Reaper retained his calm demeanor but internally he grew frustrated as time went on, and desired to finish this game of cat and mouse. He utterly despised the reflecting gangster that stood in his way towards victory and a break from his mission to eliminate his circus-obsessed comrades. Yet, he was curious about that figure, and wanted to know more about him before putting him in a grave. In his next move, Reaper just shrugged.”It seems you have bested me. Congratulations, you win this round.” Reaper said, turning away and teleported out of sight and mind. However there was a caught, as in a span of what? Three minutes? Mista would be witnessed by his comrades to be disgustingly dismembered as he would be disgustingly diced and chopped into microscopic pieces, made unrealizable, and Connolo made suddenly blind in one eye, and losing his right arm. Along with tearing out J’eil’s right cheek making a hole in his mouth.

How? Reaper initiated his time manipulation magic, just as he disappeared, sealing his magic presence entirely, and waited for a time to strike, and strike he did, when they made signs of a false celebration in surviving the man that took out two of their buddies without hesitation or thought. As they perceived to congratulate themselves, Reaper initiated his time spell, and used much of his time slicing and dicing Mista, letting out his frustration for the imbecile’s mockery of his initial assaults, and with the remaining time left. He would take Cannolo’s eye, and took his arm, and used copy magic to take whenever ability he had, though, it would be unlikely for Reaper to utilize it, as he was satisfied with the abilities he had copied over the years as a member of the Clockmakers, but in the closing nanoseconds he tore out J’eil’s cheek, and copied his spell that would bring him much benefit, and make their next fight less stressful, as Reaper preferred.

In conclusion, Reaper was gone, and would be discovered back in Venice, appearing at a cafe, and entering to begin his break session from the battlefield with a latte, and perhaps a sandwich, if such things existed in this plague-ridden country, as his enemy was made witness to his handy work, and probably would give the reaction. He was initially tasked with getting from the foe, if not, his mission would continue until every Passione gangster was destroyed. Regardless, he sat back, relaxed, and removed his plague mask to take a sip of his hot beverage, and have a bite of his meal.

[The Auraverse]

|☉|Orbit of Ziamon Prime|☉|
|Glimmer of the Pale|

---

"It seems we've got them on the retreat."

"Already?"

"It would appear so."

"Dammit, I hardly fired a full volley. The Void am I going to do with all the converted feedstock?"

"Convert it back. Most of them have already jumped - you aren't going to hit anything with sublight munitions."

"We still have the Resonators."

"And we also have the directive to not cause undue confusion among the primtech crowd. They're already going to be curious as to why a collection of orbital debris has the capacity to fling neutron shells, nevermind the velocity reversal we pulled on incoming fire. Do you really want to add "nigh-undetectable FTL non-radiation" to the list?"

"...Point taken. Ah, but wait - what about the missiles?"

"What about them?"

"They're already deployed, and practically in position. I doubt anyone would pick up on a few more microjumps in the wake of the mass retreat."

"I suppose I could do something with them. Considering the resources at our disposal, there would be little point in returning them at present."

"Try hitting the big one. Losing a flagship'll probably break morale - good deterrent, and all that."

"Breaking morale... I do believe I have just the thing."

|✧|Ziamon|✧|
|Outer System Limits|

---

The loose cluster of projectiles-to-be, idling in the wake of the Octavian retreat, were suddenly set into motion once more. Each barely a millimetre in diameter - functional mass notwithstanding, their sudden disappearance into FTL would be nigh-unnoticeable through the warp-signatures of an entire fleet. And yet, their impact would come to be felt in just a few realspace-planck-seconds. And it would be considerable.

The sequence of events that followed would come to be known in SynSec ranks as "the Greg maneuver". One wouldn't think that something named thusly would be very intimidating. One would be very, very wrong.

The Alcubierre bubble surrounding the Octavian dreadnought was glaringly visible - such a distortion of physical space, however brief, flared up on what passed for the strike system's sensors as a de-facto beacon. So it was that the assembled Translocators set out to un-distort it. A great whiplash of calculatory force struck the FTL drive's mass factor head-on - faced with the overwhelming theoretical burden of pure, unbridled superlogic, the semi-conventional physics backing the exotic-matter core simply gave up.

The Dreadnought snapped back out of FTL - ordinarily, the recoil impulse of such an action would be enough to flatten the vessel nigh-instantly, or tear it apart atom by atom. On this occasion, none of this had time to happen, because the micromissiles had caught up.

Into each millimetre-thick dart, the fabricators had crammed enough processing mass to fill a frigate. And while a matryoshka brain or two was, in fact, required to make sense of the consequences of twenty-odd frigates slamming into the dreadnought at what amounted to an infinite multiplier of the speed of light, even the average modosophont could discern that these consequences weren't particularly fun for the dreadnought or its occupants.

In an exertion of energy too inclalculably massive to be even glancingly compared to any explosion ever known or witnessed by mortal eyes, the dreadnought vanished. In deference to the fact that said energy probably wasn't going to be healthy to the surrounding galactic cluster, the majority of it was promptly caught by siphon-nets, and poured off into a purpose-crafted foldspace pocket. This being said, the remnant energy bands were still going to look like a small supernova to anyone with functioning sensors.

|☉|Orbit of Ziamon Prime|☉|
|Glimmer of the Pale|

---

"...Did you hit a single ship with all of them?"

"Yes."

"I'm still rerunning the sensor logs. You actually used the FTL momentum of their own jump to exacerbate impact damage."

"Yes."

"The warp shockwave alone would have pulverized the ship a trillion times over. But you scaled that up by a number our sensor arrays can't even process."

"Yes."

"I've seen planecraft destroyed with less. Why?"

"You recommended that I damage their morale."

"I think you damaged every piece of realspace sensing equipment this side of the galactic arm."

"Imagine how demoralizing that must be."

"I need another cup of tea in me."

"Brew me one as well."

[Gladian Imperium]

800th Armada, Octavian Periphery

The 800th Armada had been cruising in Interstellar Space for some time, seeking out a new target for their hunting. Then they spotted it.

The System was a minor shipyard, nothing too important, but it would make an excellent stepping stone to start running circles around the Imperium's borders. Within minutes, the massive Armada transited through a Wormhole, arriving soon after...


...To a barren system. The shipyard, planets, everything was just...destroyed. An unknown vessel sat where a Gas Giant used to be. At least, the Sensors believed it was a vessel. A massive, black orb, wrapped in a spatial distortion. Taking a cautionary distance, a hesitant hail was sent to the alien object.

GLADIAN|DREADNOUGHT|WALLS OF IRON
"This is Warmaster Lutherus of the 800th Armada, requesting identification for unknown vessel."

At the same time, a brief transmission was wrapped up and sent out to Ol' Reliable, detailing the Armada's current situation in the event this anomaly was hostile.

AW-VIII 'Twas But A Jest and IMC Blind Prophet, former Rendezvous Point

With the Cruiser vanishing after its brief tussle, 'Twas But A Jest and Commander K'thor were left to themselves. After a few minutes of waiting for enemies to arrive, the Commander and Warmind began conversing.

"Well, yond wast quite malapert."

"Indeed it was. Not so much as a second thought, even after that transmission."

"Sooooo, what anon?"

"Well, we have nigh-infinite jump range with regards to being anywhere in Octavia's territory, I have a hold full of missiles and a wormhole drive, and you have subspace sensors and the ability to get us both out of trouble quickly."

"Ah-hah, i seeth anon. I'll beest making the behoveful preparations."

And with that, 'Twas But A Jest began rapidly creating Subspace Infrastructure, the vast chaotic growth creating impossible geometries as Subspace Impositions began forming. At the same time, Blind Prophet began loading up its silos, missiles slamming into tubes as the massive ordnance distribution system leapt to life.

Sentinel Arrays Alpha-1 through Beta-3, Galactic Space

The Sentinel Arrays, after escaping their destruction, knew that returning to their previous positions would be impractical. Thus, they made do. Taking up numerous positions a respectable distance away from the conflict, they formed another web. Interstellar Space, the depths of Gas Giants, and the Coronas of Stars became the new refuges for the spindly sensor arrays. Settled down, they began remaking their Impositions. Subspace rippled as its typically chaotic topography was warped and obliterated, replaced with a perfect imitation of realspace-if not somewhat vague, due to having to start over from scratch-that would maintain eyes on Octavia at all times.

However, they noted movement beyond the Imperium as well-an Octavian fleet attacking some black hole system, numerous matter-antimatter detonations, and a massive spike of energy at the edge of another system. Quickly analyzing these, it was revealed that there were two civilizations that would need potential aid-while both had no name just yet, the information would be transmitted back to the Alliance's Phase Gate, and the Strategic Minds in charge of the Octavia Campaign would begin drafting numbers and assignments for a Humanitarian Fleet.

[Sildorian Empire]

Battle of Ziamon
Ziamon Starbase, Ziamon

"Gentlemen, ladies, my comrades in arms, it's been an honor" cur'Sene ground out as she turned her head away from the viewport in front of her. "My only hope is that our sacrifice here will give our charge more time, even mere minutes, to escape. Let all who-" "Ma'am," the same officer who had mentioned the lack of shields on the Ziamon Starbase cut through the beginning of what was probably going to be a dramatic speech. "The battle's over."

She turned her head back to the viewport. It was true. Curiously enough, the battle was over. What had, even mere second ago, been a hopeless situation only minutes from an inevitable death was now the site of a full retreat from the hostiles. At least half a dozen corvette-type enemy voidcraft were drifting along in the system, somewhere between Ziamon IV and Ziamon V, with a few scores of what seemed like hangarcraft, not to mention a not-too-shabby number of larger ships, leaving the resulting debris -one that the Surveyors' Guild would probably find impressive to investigate later- and destruction only evidence that there had even been a battle in the system. Even more surprisingly, only seven fighters had been destroyed from Sildoria's side, with both Stations -and the Starbase- undamaged outside of shattered deflectors and battered armor. It was a victory. One far more impressive than anyone had even dared dream.

"We did that?" Major cur'Sene said, amazed at what she was seeing. "Negative, ma'am." Her second-in-command denied. "Maybe some of the fighters or the Corvettes, but nothing in this system -or this sector- has the firepower you'd need for that kind of carnage. This was-" "Something else in its entirety. Things moved, ma'am." It was the Ziamon Station's Artificial Intelligence, Bolwuth, who interrupted this time, tone -and artificial, holographic expression- too distressed to allow protocol. "Projectiles don't just- just decide to return back to the guns they were fired from. For crying out loud, Light doesn't curve in a trinary system. I'd say this was the result of a Psionic Mass-Charge, but no psionic my databases are aware of has that sort of ability. Something happened, and this does not look to be psionic."

"Calm down, Bolwuth." cur'Sene pinched the bridge of her nose. "All hands, return to your posts. Call the fighters back to their hangars and start working on the repairs. And someone notify poor Governor Rophyte he doesn't have to evacuate just now. And someone give me that Dreadnought's trajectory. Where did it even jump for?"

"The Dreadnought-type enemy voidcraft breached out of and unknown form of FTL roughly eighty-seven ticks ago, ma'am. Its signs were noticed somewhere along the Ziamon-Delara Hyperlane. Vanished again a tick afterwards with a massive outburst. Current Status Unknown." Bolwuth stated dramatically. cur'Sene just continued pinching the bridge of her nose.

---

Utaris Complex, Sildora Prime

"Well Varoth, my friend, it looks like we aren't abandoning your Sector after all." Grand Admiral Rubyclaw mused as she looked at the reports that had arrived from Ziamon only second earlier. "Ziamon is not yet lost. And at this point, we can't let it be. I'm calling my Qresta here. We have to notify the Star Orders to converge in the Sector Capital. It's time Sildoria went to war."

[Imperial-Octavia]

Italy

"Looks like he's go-" suddenly J'eil found a part of skinsuit's cheek cut off and looking around, J'eil got the least damage from what he could see, Cannolo was missing an eye and a arm and Mista...Mista was barely recognizable and though he didn't much care for him, he was starting to care for the organic...odd how that happened. Mr. Roboto claimed the concept of togetherness and fired it at Mista, putting the scattered pieces of Mista back together before grabbing him (along with Cannolo) and floating them back to the ground. They would land next to a small clinic and J'eil would take the concept of healing from it applying it into Cannolo hopeful for his healing. Carrying Mista's body in his hands he would try and apply healing onto Mista's body to little use. He checked the time on his internal clock to find it was 4:44 pm in Earth time, maybe the organic was onto something when he was ranting about the number 4 in the car..., "...We should get going then Cannolo. I must talk to your boss..."

Sector V
Sildorian Empire

For whatever reason the fleet assigned to take Ziamon Prime told the fleet to avoid the system. An odd anomaly to investigate later, but for now the border regions of Sildoria would need to be secured. The fleets would go around the Ziamon system surrounding it hopefully avoiding whatever that fleet wanted to avoid so badly.

Outside The Ziamon system

The rest of the fleet AI moved to join another fleet since it's dreadnought was destroyed quite strangely. The occurance could be researched later. Meanwhile Tk'Rantar was dead, he didn't even have a chance to change his consciousness into another body. Of course he had a backup and was returned to the world screaming with one of his backup consciousness chips. Though he was fine, he had to wonder what happened to his original consciousness...

[Il Passione]

Italy

"Looks like he's go-" suddenly J'eil found a part of skinsuit's cheek cut off and looking around, J'eil got the least damage from what he could see, Cannolo was missing an eye and a arm and Mista...Mista was barely recognizable and though he didn't much care for him, he was starting to care for the organic...odd how that happened. Mr. Roboto claimed the concept of togetherness and fired it at Mista, putting the scattered pieces of Mista back together before grabbing him (along with Cannolo) and floating them back to the ground. They would land next to a small clinic and J'eil would take the concept of healing from it applying it into Cannolo hopeful for his healing. Carrying Mista's body in his hands he would try and apply healing onto Mista's body to little use. He checked the time on his internal clock to find it was 4:44 pm in Earth time, maybe the organic was onto something when he was ranting about the number 4 in the car..., "...We should get going then Cannolo. I must talk to your boss..."

Cannolo seemed incredibly nervous as he looked on at Mista's body, looking up at J'eil. "R-right... we need to get going. He shouldn't be too far off from where he said we'd meet him in Firenze!" Cannolo said, running towards the nearby city of Florence.

Florence, Italy
A young boy in a pink sweater with magenta hair was minding his own business, sitting on a bench and feeding some sesame seeds to a bunch of pigeons. He enjoyed the air of this city, and in the meanwhile of waiting for the group, had been to museums and other sightseeing joys. Suddenly, he dropped the entire bag, his pupils shrinking as he stood up, swaying slightly.
"TURURURURURURURU!" He called, mimicking a phone as he held his head, looking around to find the 'phone.' Most people would consider him utterly insane if they saw this boy, as he then suddenly grabbed a pigeon with superhuman reaction timing and held it to his ear after calming it down. "Hello, Boss?"
"Doppio, have they arrived yet?" A voice spoke to him, as Doppio turned to J'eil and Cannolo coming towards him.

"...sure looks like it, Boss."

In conclusion, Reaper was gone, and would be discovered back in Venice, appearing at a cafe, and entering to begin his break session from the battlefield with a latte, and perhaps a sandwich, if such things existed in this plague-ridden country, as his enemy was made witness to his handy work, and probably would give the reaction. He was initially tasked with getting from the foe, if not, his mission would continue until every Passione gangster was destroyed. Regardless, he sat back, relaxed, and removed his plague mask to take a sip of his hot beverage, and have a bite of his meal.

"According to this brochure here, Venice has all sorts of amazing scenery to check out, like this guy in a white hood! HE LOOKS AWESOME!" Okuyasu chuckled, Josuke sighing as he took it from him.
"Okuyasu, that's an Assassin's Creed novel." Josuke smirked, chuckling slightly as Okuyasu seemed disappointed.
"Oh... I-I knew that." He said as he briefly oversaw Jotaro Kujo on his laptop, typing away on some miscellaneous research. Koichi and Yukako were out shopping, and Joseph was back in the apartment watching some television, so this left him with Okuyasu and Josuke. As much as he'd prefer a solo mission once, the two teens begged to join him for whatever reason. Right now, his priority was looking to numerous articles and sources for information on Reaper, but... then he looked over, seeming estranged by the visage of Reaper. He looked back at the photo, and the bodily figure seemed similar...

"Oi, Josuke... is that guy an Assassin or-" Okuyasu said quietly as Josuke shushed him.
It was then Jotaro got up out of his seat with his drink and walked to a nearby table, keeping his distance yet leaving room to communicate.
"Hey." Jotaro said. "So, you heard about that laser that drove a hole into Naples? It's all over the news... they probably won't stop talking about it for a few days. Infact, I'm thinking myself there's gonna be more to come." Jotaro stated.

[The Zravvisk]

Mining Planet 122
The Lunastra II spotted the suicidal destroyer easily and rushed forward to meet its challenge. The Lunastra zipped about, making sudden changes in direction that rendered the spinal weapon of the Karsh'Ka useless. Then the Lunastra vanished, only to instantly reappear on the Karsh'Ka’s port side at point blank range. The broadside of torpedoes was launched almost instantly. The closeness of the ships and the suddenness of the Lunastra’s movement gave the Karsh'Ka little time to defend itself. The anti-capital ship torpedoes soon reduced the Karsh'Ka into a heap of scrap.

The Armada continued onto the planet unhindered. A few broke off to capture the station being built but most vectored themselves into high orbit. The Dragua II continued past high orbit, on a collision course with the shield itself. The Dragua’s shield was modulating itself to match the planetary shield to allow the ship to pass though. This was dangerously reckless most of the time as the ship’s shield couldn’t protect it from anti-ship weapons and it traded the safety of the void for the dangers of atmosphere. Of course, with such a new planet it was unlikely to have enough heavy weapons to hurt the Dragua and the zravvisk weren’t in the mood to be cautious.

As the Dragua passed though the shield, it began to glow as it hit atmosphere. As the replaced the star’s glow with its own for an entire city and the groaning of the engines against gravity filled the air, dots could be seen flying out of the hanger uncaring of the heat of reentry. The zravvisk warriors, transports of the Auxiliary Armored Corps, and fighters and bombers of the Auxiliary Fighter Corps unwilling to wait any longer. Behind them more ships followed them though the shield. Destroyers, battleships, cruisers, and even mining ships following the example of the Dragua and began rotating their guns onto targets.

As the sky filled with plasma, ships, zravvisk, and fighter-bombers it was quite clear that the liberation of the planet had begun. Flashes reviled zravvisk teleporting on the planet eager to begin cracking the enemy’s defenses from the inside, not least among them chief Valstrath and Councilwoman Chyrvalth.

Ridley’s Rest
Ridley’s Rest was a massive station with armor, guns, hangers, and shipyards covering every spot on its surface. Currently almost half of all its guns were firing at enemy fleet. Waves of plasma, ion shots, mass driver rounds, heavy lances flew from the station and its surrounding defense platforms. Normally the defense platforms were arranged for 360-degree defense, but thanks to Ridley’s Rest’s powerful sensors had detected the enemy fleet early enough that they were rearranged to focus their fire.

Surrounding the station was a large coalition of ships. Augmenting the station’s normal flotilla were flotillas from several other factions that wanted to see it remain in zravvisk claws. Mercs and arms dealers that relied on it for military arms came to its defense and called in favors. Merchants and local powers that made money off the trade that went though it called in even more help, though nothing they wouldn’t have plausible deniability about. Finally, the smugglers that called the station home delivered supplies and provided a few fire ships. It was an impressive force that almost matched the Octavians in numbers, but not tonnage. There was only a handful of battleships and the coalition won’t have stood a chance without the heavy weapons of the stations and its platforms.

The defense forces focused on keeping the smaller ships of the enemy in check while the battleships and the station’s own defenses focused on enemy capital ships. They were determined to take every advantage they could get. The Rest’s advanced targeting computers improving everyone’s accuracy while it also filled any predicted enemy frequencies with random noise to try and hinder them. The fire ships disguised themselves as civilians and went up the small clear lanes in the minefield near the fleet to get past them then turn and ram them with their cargo bays full of hidden bombs. They increased their complaints about being civilians whenever their point defense shot down a fighter to keep up the illusion that they we civilians and not bomb drones being operated by communication lasers in the Rest. They even hidden more goodies around the battlefield as one Octavian ship found out as an asteroid filled with hundreds of tons of ship fuel next it was shot by the defenders and detonated.

The legendary Auxiliary Fighter Corps lead the coalition fighters to counter the enemy fighters. The Auxiliary Fighter Corps showed their prowess by shooting down many times their number in the skirmishes while the other fighters had more even trades. Heavy bombers filled with hundreds of swarm missiles shadowed the fighters ready to unleash a wall of missiles if the drone fighters got too dense. Still despite their efforts they could stop the drones from scouting the station and reporting back that the majority of defenses were focused where the Octavians had came out, with less mines on the sides and almost none in the back. They also saw that almost half of its guns had nothing to shot at as one one drone found a bored gunner trying to snipe it with a heavy lance.

Despite this it was clear the station was losing. The shot from the Sword of the Imperium had knocked out most of its shields and even fired a few shield generators making the engineers scramble to fix them. The sheer volume of incoming fire was slowly grinding down the rest of the shields. While the station was even more armor obsessed than the rest of the Armada, having kilometers of armor in places, no shields would expose the defense fleet and platforms and force them to rely on their own weaker shields. Plus while the station had spent the entire time since the war beginning reinforcing bulkheads, they weren’t sure they fixed all the mistakes in the old sections that came from building the first station in your species’s history.

Then the Solemn Dagger entered the system. They were a bit late since they were limited to slow speeds, but they immediately got to work. Seeing that their old friend the Sword was in the back they sneaked over to its rear and uncloaked. Immediately its powerful graviton cannons and torpedoes bypassed the Sword’s shields and crashed into its engines. The Dagger’s teleporters also fired up, but instead of teleporting bombs onto the ship it was four squads of 5 zravvisk boarders each. The boarders quickly destroyed nearby surprised defenders, the suddenness of their arrival giving them an edge while the defenders’ armor was no match for a zravvisk’s natural weapons. The squads set about their objective of preventing the Sword from firing its main gun a second time on the station.

The Solemn Dagger remained uncloaked behind the sword, using it as a shield against its allies and most of its own guns. It was waiting for its powerful weapons to reload for another shot into the engines and the teleports to recharge so they could support the boarders. The battle had gotten much more interesting.

[The Rapture Republic]

Italy

"Looks like he's go-" suddenly J'eil found a part of skinsuit's cheek cut off and looking around, J'eil got the least damage from what he could see, Cannolo was missing an eye and a arm and Mista...Mista was barely recognizable and though he didn't much care for him, he was starting to care for the organic...odd how that happened. Mr. Roboto claimed the concept of togetherness and fired it at Mista, putting the scattered pieces of Mista back together before grabbing him (along with Cannolo) and floating them back to the ground. They would land next to a small clinic and J'eil would take the concept of healing from it applying it into Cannolo hopeful for his healing. Carrying Mista's body in his hands he would try and apply healing onto Mista's body to little use. He checked the time on his internal clock to find it was 4:44 pm in Earth time, maybe the organic was onto something when he was ranting about the number 4 in the car..., "...We should get going then Cannolo. I must talk to your boss..."

Cannolo seemed incredibly nervous as he looked on at Mista's body, looking up at J'eil. "R-right... we need to get going. He shouldn't be too far off from where he said we'd meet him in Firenze!" Cannolo said, running towards the nearby city of Florence.

Florence, Italy
A young boy in a pink sweater with magenta hair was minding his own business, sitting on a bench and feeding some sesame seeds to a bunch of pigeons. He enjoyed the air of this city, and in the meanwhile of waiting for the group, had been to museums and other sightseeing joys. Suddenly, he dropped the entire bag, his pupils shrinking as he stood up, swaying slightly.
"TURURURURURURURU!" He called, mimicking a phone as he held his head, looking around to find the 'phone.' Most people would consider him utterly insane if they saw this boy, as he then suddenly grabbed a pigeon with superhuman reaction timing and held it to his ear after calming it down. "Hello, Boss?"
"Doppio, have they arrived yet?" A voice spoke to him, as Doppio turned to J'eil and Cannolo coming towards him.

"...sure looks like it, Boss."

In conclusion, Reaper was gone, and would be discovered back in Venice, appearing at a cafe, and entering to begin his break session from the battlefield with a latte, and perhaps a sandwich, if such things existed in this plague-ridden country, as his enemy was made witness to his handy work, and probably would give the reaction. He was initially tasked with getting from the foe, if not, his mission would continue until every Passione gangster was destroyed. Regardless, he sat back, relaxed, and removed his plague mask to take a sip of his hot beverage, and have a bite of his meal.

"According to this brochure here, Venice has all sorts of amazing scenery to check out, like this guy in a white hood! HE LOOKS AWESOME!" Okuyasu chuckled, Josuke sighing as he took it from him.
"Okuyasu, that's an Assassin's Creed novel." Josuke smirked, chuckling slightly as Okuyasu seemed disappointed.
"Oh... I-I knew that." He said as he briefly oversaw Jotaro Kujo on his laptop, typing away on some miscellaneous research. Koichi and Yukako were out shopping, and Joseph was back in the apartment watching some television, so this left him with Okuyasu and Josuke. As much as he'd prefer a solo mission once, the two teens begged to join him for whatever reason. Right now, his priority was looking to numerous articles and sources for information on Reaper, but... then he looked over, seeming estranged by the visage of Reaper. He looked back at the photo, and the bodily figure seemed similar...

"Oi, Josuke... is that guy an Assassin or-" Okuyasu said quietly as Josuke shushed him.
It was then Jotaro got up out of his seat with his drink and walked to a nearby table, keeping his distance yet leaving room to communicate.
"Hey." Jotaro said. "So, you heard about that laser that drove a hole into Naples? It's all over the news... they probably won't stop talking about it for a few days. Infact, I'm thinking myself there's gonna be more to come." Jotaro stated.

Reaper looked up from enjoying his coffee at the oddly normal-looking man, and motion him to take a seat. “It’s quite strange to someone who’s not dressed like a stripper in this forsaken country, and yeah, there’s probably a lot more to come, no doubt about it. Also I heard about the laser, can’t say I feel sorry for the prisoners, and that one guy, what’s his name? Hm. Can’t remember, but I do hope whoever did it, regrets taking out the security guards, because I personally wouldn’t be able to live with myself. If innocents got killed.” Reaper said, being genuine in his tone, and guilt being present. “Mind if I ask what are you doing here? Everything’s going to hell, and it ain’t safe here, no matter, how buff you are. But as I stare into your eyes, you don’t care, and actually believe you can survive the coming storm. Well, I won’t stop ya aside from just my curiosity regarding your business.” Reaper stated, putting the coffee down, and stared in silence at Jotaro, making zero signs of hostility, for the moment, at least.

[Il Passione]

Cannolo seemed incredibly nervous as he looked on at Mista's body, looking up at J'eil. "R-right... we need to get going. He shouldn't be too far off from where he said we'd meet him in Firenze!" Cannolo said, running towards the nearby city of Florence.

Florence, Italy
A young boy in a pink sweater with magenta hair was minding his own business, sitting on a bench and feeding some sesame seeds to a bunch of pigeons. He enjoyed the air of this city, and in the meanwhile of waiting for the group, had been to museums and other sightseeing joys. Suddenly, he dropped the entire bag, his pupils shrinking as he stood up, swaying slightly.
"TURURURURURURURU!" He called, mimicking a phone as he held his head, looking around to find the 'phone.' Most people would consider him utterly insane if they saw this boy, as he then suddenly grabbed a pigeon with superhuman reaction timing and held it to his ear after calming it down. "Hello, Boss?"
"Doppio, have they arrived yet?" A voice spoke to him, as Doppio turned to J'eil and Cannolo coming towards him.

"...sure looks like it, Boss."


"According to this brochure here, Venice has all sorts of amazing scenery to check out, like this guy in a white hood! HE LOOKS AWESOME!" Okuyasu chuckled, Josuke sighing as he took it from him.
"Okuyasu, that's an Assassin's Creed novel." Josuke smirked, chuckling slightly as Okuyasu seemed disappointed.
"Oh... I-I knew that." He said as he briefly oversaw Jotaro Kujo on his laptop, typing away on some miscellaneous research. Koichi and Yukako were out shopping, and Joseph was back in the apartment watching some television, so this left him with Okuyasu and Josuke. As much as he'd prefer a solo mission once, the two teens begged to join him for whatever reason. Right now, his priority was looking to numerous articles and sources for information on Reaper, but... then he looked over, seeming estranged by the visage of Reaper. He looked back at the photo, and the bodily figure seemed similar...

"Oi, Josuke... is that guy an Assassin or-" Okuyasu said quietly as Josuke shushed him.
It was then Jotaro got up out of his seat with his drink and walked to a nearby table, keeping his distance yet leaving room to communicate.
"Hey." Jotaro said. "So, you heard about that laser that drove a hole into Naples? It's all over the news... they probably won't stop talking about it for a few days. Infact, I'm thinking myself there's gonna be more to come." Jotaro stated.

Reaper looked up from enjoying his coffee at the oddly normal-looking man, and motion him to take a seat. “It’s quite strange to someone who’s not dressed like a stripper in this forsaken country, and yeah, there’s probably a lot more to come, no doubt about it. Also I heard about the laser, can’t say I feel sorry for the prisoners, and that one guy, what’s his name? Hm. Can’t remember, but I do hope whoever did it, regrets taking out the security guards, because I personally wouldn’t be able to live with myself. If innocents got killed.” Reaper said, being genuine in his tone, and guilt being present. “Mind if I ask what are you doing here? Everything’s going to hell, and it ain’t safe here, no matter, how buff you are. But as I stare into your eyes, you don’t care, and actually believe you can survive the coming storm. Well, I won’t stop ya aside from just my curiosity regarding your business.” Reaper stated, putting the coffee down, and stared in silence at Jotaro, making zero signs of hostility, for the moment, at least.

Jotaro sighed, seeming quite contempt with himself, as he sat back. "My name is Jotaro Kujo. I'm searching for information on the identity of whoever this entity may have been that attacked Naples, and simply question on his motives and power. What I do next will depend on his intentions for me."

Jotaro then slid over a photo of a certain Frenchman with him, dated 9/21/89. "I am also looking for a man by the name of Jean-Pierre Polnareff, on the side. We were acquaintances and colleagues a decade or so ago, until I lost contact with him after 1997." Jotaro stated, looking up at him in intrigue. "Would you have any information on his whereabouts, by any chance?"

[The Rapture Republic]

Reaper looked up from enjoying his coffee at the oddly normal-looking man, and motion him to take a seat. “It’s quite strange to someone who’s not dressed like a stripper in this forsaken country, and yeah, there’s probably a lot more to come, no doubt about it. Also I heard about the laser, can’t say I feel sorry for the prisoners, and that one guy, what’s his name? Hm. Can’t remember, but I do hope whoever did it, regrets taking out the security guards, because I personally wouldn’t be able to live with myself. If innocents got killed.” Reaper said, being genuine in his tone, and guilt being present. “Mind if I ask what are you doing here? Everything’s going to hell, and it ain’t safe here, no matter, how buff you are. But as I stare into your eyes, you don’t care, and actually believe you can survive the coming storm. Well, I won’t stop ya aside from just my curiosity regarding your business.” Reaper stated, putting the coffee down, and stared in silence at Jotaro, making zero signs of hostility, for the moment, at least.

Jotaro sighed, seeming quite contempt with himself, as he sat back. "My name is Jotaro Kujo. I'm searching for information on the identity of whoever this entity may have been that attacked Naples, and simply question on his motives and power. What I do next will depend on his intentions for me."

Jotaro then slid over a photo of a certain Frenchman with him, dated 9/21/89. "I am also looking for a man by the name of Jean-Pierre Polnareff, on the side. We were acquaintances and colleagues a decade or so ago, until I lost contact with him after 1997." Jotaro stated, looking up at him in intrigue. "Would you have any information on his whereabouts, by any chance?"

“Well, Mr. Kujo. This entity based on sources seems to have a vendetta against the local mob here, he’s taken out three guys in total. One was that dude in the prison, who’s name still alludes me, but for the others, Luca, and Mista. Luca was last stance trying to sell on some street that I can’t recall, and then getting into an argument with a man, as he sold drugs to a kid, and then feel dead and made dust, after the kid told this man, his life story. From the bites, I know of it, it was a tragedy, and perhaps the man that killed Luca took the kid as his own, and put him under his wing to have a brighter future or something. I chose the first option to not my allow mind to doubt the goodness in people.” Reaper quickly wiped a tear from his eye. “As for the other guy, he was called Mista, don’t know much there, as the source is vague and said there was an explosion at some warehouse and a war in the skies. For your Frenchman. I know nothing besides noting a couple of armed hippies running off somewhere, preaching about justice.” Reaper concluded.

“I usually don’t give out this info for free, as my gut tells you are in the same boat as this man or entity. Not sure why but I just got this feeling, you know?” Reaper said, returning to his coffee.

[Luna Amore]

Jotaro sighed, seeming quite contempt with himself, as he sat back. "My name is Jotaro Kujo. I'm searching for information on the identity of whoever this entity may have been that attacked Naples, and simply question on his motives and power. What I do next will depend on his intentions for me."

Jotaro then slid over a photo of a certain Frenchman with him, dated 9/21/89. "I am also looking for a man by the name of Jean-Pierre Polnareff, on the side. We were acquaintances and colleagues a decade or so ago, until I lost contact with him after 1997." Jotaro stated, looking up at him in intrigue. "Would you have any information on his whereabouts, by any chance?"

“Well, Mr. Kujo. This entity based on sources seems to have a vendetta against the local mob here, he’s taken out three guys in total. One was that dude in the prison, who’s name still alludes me, but for the others, Luca, and Mista. Luca was last stance trying to sell on some street that I can’t recall, and then getting into an argument with a man, as he sold drugs to a kid, and then feel dead and made dust, after the kid told this man, his life story. From the bites, I know of it, it was a tragedy, and perhaps the man that killed Luca took the kid as his own, and put him under his wing to have a brighter future or something. I chose the first option to not my allow mind to doubt the goodness in people.” Reaper quickly wiped a tear from his eye. “As for the other guy, he was called Mista, don’t know much there, as the source is vague and said there was an explosion at some warehouse and a war in the skies. For your Frenchman. I know nothing besides noting a couple of armed hippies running off somewhere, preaching about justice.” Reaper concluded.

“I usually don’t give out this info for free, as my gut tells you are in the same boat as this man or entity. Not sure why but I just got this feeling, you know?” Reaper said, returning to his coffee.

Jotaro was still stoic about this manner, but at this point, it was obvious he knew a bit too much information about this person... and in a corrupt part of Naples this was in, there was no doubt maybe this destructive behavior was the activity of stand users, which concerned him greatly, since he'd run into one too many of these kind of criminals back home. Nonetheless, he did mildly sympathise with him.

"Look, friend... I can tell you and this entity might be the very same." Jotaro began. "Unless you try to attack me or do something pointlessly destructive, I won't be likely to harm you at all... infact, I'm more intrigued in what forced you to resort in such a heavy manner against those people, though if I'm gonna guess... they were stand users?"

"Stand users!? IN THIS PLAC-" Okuyasu yelled before Josuke shushed him once more.

"You may not be aware of what a Stand is, but it's a manifestation of the soul caused by a recent phenomena. I've seen many stand users for years, but not one who could produce this magnitude of destruction... though what is your justification for this? How powerful were the enemy?" Jotaro questioned.

"Actually, if anything, Mr. Jotaro, I'd be more concerned on how many of them might be around?" Josuke said.

"Yeah! Maybe they're the reason that this Polnareff guy you won't shut up about is gone!" Okuyasu mentioned before Jotaro's eyes widened at the potential.

"...who are these people you've been going after?" Jotaro said.

[Bloodshade]

Somewhere in Deep Space

---

The sudden appearance of Strein and Mark teleporting inside of her ship takes Ambrosia by surprise, startling her to the point where she ends up flipping over the 'Pandemic' board on accident. Vishala had already set her eyes on the approximate area where the duo was going to appear in, she'd already felt their presence much earlier than Ambrosia, probably because the latter was too focused on defeating her.

"So are these our partners in crime, Ambie? That wolf's definitely packing." - Vishala

A quick but stern glare from the vampire shuts down any attempt at teasing from the lapine, prompting her to mutter under her breath in frustration.

"Glad you could join us, Strein! Didn't exactly think Mark would join but he can entertain Vishala. She's grown bored of my company" - Ambrosia

Ambrosia warmly accepts Strein's extended hand with both of her own while gesturing for her to sit down on the spaceship's floor, hoping that it would somewhat alleviate the pain present in her eyes. She had a feeling the wolf needed someone to lean on and hopefully, in this case, Ambrosia would be the support that Strein needed for the time being at least.

"Well, here's the thing Strein, I'm not here to watch. Not anymore. My people are going to war and they're rather enthusiastic but solemn about it. Me and Vishala? We're after the same target. The Paramount." - Ambrosia

"We're going to grind him to a fucking pulp!" - Vishala

As if that wasn't enough indication about her intentions with the Paramount, Vishala enthusiastically palmed her fist, with a smile that did betray her unhinged nature before she quickly collected herself and smirked at the thought of being able to engage the Paramount in battle.

"Please...just ignore her. Anyways, I'm not going to be a destructive force of nature in this war. I would like to be a constructive one. I promised a dear friend of mine back home that I would do what I can to save rather than destroy. If you give me the go-ahead, I'll have a humanitarian fleet sent your way. Food, water, shelter and clothing will be built and supplied. The generations ships that we're going to be sending into Ignisian space have the capacity to house around four million people and we can ferry them back to my home planet if need be. There's plenty of space to house refugees on my home planet. Alarielle is more than capable and willing to make our homeworld's natural environment more Ignisian friendly. We might not be able to help everybody but we'll try our hardest! How does that sound? You just give me the green light." - Ambrosia

Vishala couldn't help but find herself intrigued by Mark's colourful language as well as the fact that the atmosphere and light around his body were being manipulated by himself. Finally! A like-minded individual!

"Hah! Sailor boy's got some neat tricks up his sleeves. Yeah, I'll give you front-row tickets to the ass-whooping I'm going to be delivering to Perry. Put me and him in the same room and he'll come out with a new hole of my own making." - Vishala

"Language!" - Ambrosia

"Stop being a buzzkill!" - Vishala

Sildora Prime, Sila System

---

Victoria was ecstatic to hear of the Archon's inclination to her proposal but she reeled in her emotions and ensured that she presented herself as one that befits her rank and station. She needed to make this sweet, simple and enticing to the Archon. A defensive pact struck between the two would be much more preferable than fighting divided against their mutual enemies.

"Thank you. If I might state the intentions of my people to start off, Bloodshade is willing to commit thousands of starcraft and millions of soldiers in fending off the Octavian tide. We will be more than willing to manipulate the arcane sources of this universe to aid in our fight against the Octavians. In other words, magic. You must've heard about it You may wonder about our intentions but simply put, the fall of the Sildorian Empire would result in the Octavians having free reign to terrorize our home system and end our civilization as we know it. We do not want anyone to suffer such a fate. This is a matter of survival."

For a second, Victoria ended her statement with a rather sombre, realistic tone. She suddenly realized the weight of her own words and it felt rather suffocating in her ship all of a sudden.

"Archon vur'Jaffab, one more thing before I conclude and not waste your time any further, assuming that you accept our aid, would there be any system or planet which would require special attention from our forces? Rest assured, you will get in contact with the top brass of Bloodshade's military but an answer would help speed things up. Time is of the essence in this star wars."

[Guuj Xaat Kil]

In orbit of Ziamon
CSS Intrepid, Monolith-Class Exploration-type Ship

The sounds of drills and inner armor plates being rustled emanated through the weapons section of the ship, a closer look would reveal a certain Captain Max Hiram and an assisting crew member hard at work, taking off the coverings of an inner armor plate. A few minutes of jostling the tough cover would result in it popping off and falling to the ground with a hard clank, and revealing the glowing white innards within. But the captain was far from done, carrying a dense wire leading and connected to the information ray, he began cutting off its covering to reveal the high-power metal wiring lying beneath. Untangling said wiring, he readied a torch and exposed the wiring to immense heat, while the assistant began pushing it into the plating; the coppery looking metal would then slowly soften and merge into the armor plate, and a few moments later, the job was complete. They had connected their weapons systems to the inner plating consisting of those queer stones they stole and replicated. The captain then left quickly for the information ray's chamber, where engineers and programmers were readying something.

"Got the light through the prism yet? I'm looking for green." a half-joke, half-inquiry from Hiram, with the programmers nodding, "Good, ready the beam for firing-" The thrum of the ship entering slipspace and the slight vibrations going through the craft interrupted him. Shaking his head, he looked around to see if everyone was alright, "So can anyone explain why we're in slipspace and those vibrations?" The holodisk on his palm would begin to shake slightly, prompting him to flip and flick his hand over to activate it. "They blew up the dreadnought so hard it got atomized, not a single atom left of that ship." was the AI hologram's answer for his questions. "Well belay that last order, get the blue and red ready so we can swallow that remnant energy into hyperspace and green it later." Moments pass, and where the white of a beam preparing to fire was, in its place was a strange, otherworldly blue. Then it fired, and then it stopped. The remnant energy from the dreadnought's death was gone, along with that strange little frigate on the sidelines.

Hyperspace

"Everyone alright from the unorthodox and impromptu transverse jump? Alright good, because we ain't done yet, switch to green then fire at the energy." Quick nods and 'aye aye's all around, and soon the rumble of the beam right next to them silenced all. Outside in the strange dark blue realm of hyperspace, a green beam brightly shone, and raced towards the rapidly fading energy. Soon encased in a time anomaly, it seemed as if within said anomaly, time flew backwards. The remnant energy of the previous explosion began to glow brighter and brighter, eventually outshining everything within hyperspace, and soon enough, that explosion began to fade away into nothingness, and revealing a slowly reconstructing Octavian dreadnought. This was the moment Captain Hiram chose, ordering an end to green and to ready red and blue. They would then attach a tug to the barely repaired dreadnought, lugging it through hyperspace and towards some undisclosed destination.

[Imperial-Octavia]

Italy

J'eil looked at the man in pink and realized that the organization's fashion sense extended throughout the higher levels of leadership. It didn't matter though as more important matters had to be discussed. Dropping all pretenses of stealth J'eil removed the face mask showing his robotic head to Doppio, "I represent an empire willing to help Passione, I just need to see your boss, please connect me to him on anyway you can."

Ridley's Rest

With the current developments the full force of the Drone Fighters were deployed as thousands of Drone Fighters were deployed and sent forward to engage the Auxiliary fighter crews while a contingent of a few hundred Drone Fighters moved back to attack the Dagger and then another, slightly larger group moved forward to harass and potentially destroy the civillain ships on the orders of Tal'Talen. The Dagger would find itself fired upon by the particle cannons behind the Sword and also the occasional missile barrage putting the stealth craft in quite a bit of danger. On the inside the Zravvisk boarders would find a large number of Paramount's Chosen rushing to their positions, around 50, and they would begin opening fire on the Zravvisk with their close range weaponry leaving superheated plasma shots hurtling towards the boarding force.

The rest of the battle was going reletively well for the Octavian fleet. The Dreadnought's layered shielding was able to withstand much of the fire directed at them and with their position in the front of the formation many of the smaller craft would be saved from what could have been mortal wounds. That isn't to say that the fleet hadn't taken any casualties, a few cruisers had found themselves caught by a particularly nasty barrage leaving their shields compromised and their hulls pieced resulting in a few large explosions on the battlefield. However, the battle still raged and with that came new tactics. EW cruisers began looking for vulnerabilities in the station's systems looking for any system that could possibly be disabled. Using the information found by the Drone Fighters scouting efforts a force of Corvettes, Frigates, and a Battleship would begin flanking it's way around the right side of the station looking to cause damage to the unprotected flanks of the station. From her flagship Tal'Talen looked upon the Zravvisk station as a doomed station filled with doomed raiders waiting for the next few shots of the Sword to end their pitiful existences. She slotted in a flavor insert while waiting for their demise...

Mining Planet #122

"Mechanator Kranz, I believe the Zravvisk attack has begun."

The Seendi Mechanator looked at the Mechanator telling him about the Zravvisk attack. As the highest ranked Mechanator on the planet he would be in charge on the Mechanator's military response. Their approach was unexpected, but nothing that the reinforcements he called in wouldn't be able to deal with. The four armed robot turned to his subordinate and spoke, "Yes, tell the Mechanators to start imbedding themselves in cities. Let's see how the organics deal with urban combat. Keep the civillains inside too, that's very important, I think they're hesitant to shoot on fellow organics seeing as this planet hasn't been glassed." The Mechanator nodded and began to make his way out of the make shift bunker they were in Kranz stopped him again, "By the way, could you pick up some of those flavor inserts for me? I'm in the mood for the orange one."

"it's called G-"

"It's called Orange as far as I'm concerned." With that the Mechanator made his way out not looking to get reprogrammed for insubordination.

On the planet itself the Mechanator's would begin the plan moving into large population centers with as much heavy equipment as they could get as well as herding civillains from the planet's countryside's and towns into the cities hoping that the Zravvisk would not bombard civillains. MK2 Drones would begin shooting at the dropping Zravvisk from wherever they came from, using anti-aircraft rockets to target the Zravvisk and their auxillary marines in Dropships. The Tactical Codex knew that the forces on this planet would not be enough to stop the Armada's assault, but if they could hold on long enough for the reinforcing fleet to arrive the battle would surely be won.

Allied Fleet

Octavian sensors began to pick something up near the fleet. While not at the same size as the cruiser, there were two of them. At the moment a victory was needed to prove to the alliance the Imperium was not entirely doomed and with Deception and to a lesser extent Hobbian support the battle could be won. The fleet jumped into the system and the thousands of Dreadnoughts in the fleet immediately shot millions of missiles from the rocket pods in their posession and shortly after began firing their main guns. The many million Drone Fighters also let out a slavo of their anti-ship missiles at the other ship as to keep both occupied with a barrage before the Fighters plot off and began to swarm both. Hopefully, this battle would show the strength of the Octavian fleet in these trying times across the alliance.

[Gladian Imperium]

'Twas But A Jest, Battlespace.

Time had slowed down for the Warmind, looking across the Subspace Imposition. Missiles and fighters crawled along sluggishly, the currents of electricity bringing life to the enemy railguns practically standing still as the Jester moved across the miniature model. In the time it had taken the Octavians to notice the duo of ships, 'Twas But A Jest had manufactured and planted several distractions across the system. A flick of a wrist and the flipping of bits heralded several smaller craft emerging from craters and from the tails of comets. These were, essentially, massive boxes of VES Micromissiles moving in a collective Drive Manifold. With a single motion, the boxes flew apart and the VESMs broke up into swarms, the miniscule projectiles would be difficult to intercept, but each one packed sufficient firepower to bust a planet. As one, the Swarms dove in towards the Octavian Fleet, generally ignoring the fighters in favor of the larger, juicier targets.

Also in Realspace, the Warmind swung around, shielding the Blind Prophet from hostile fire as missiles practically poured out of the Warmind, each one wrapped in a bizarre, glowing light as they created a formation around the pair, creating a veritable no-go zone for fighters thousands of kilometers across.

Massive weapons the size of small ships swung around to bear on the Octavian Fleet. A few seconds passed before they fired, each one shooting a pair of particle beams powerful enough to pulverize a planet, and another pair two seconds later, and another two more seconds later, again and again as they fired with ungodly speed. Gravitic Railguns rotated, the massive anti-capital guns taking a few seconds to alter their ammunition before belting forth bursts of 3000mm shells, loaded with warheads calibrated to produce massive conical explosions, hopefully strong enough to puncture the Octavian shielding. Even on top of all this firepower, there were three...spheres, that seemed to rotate in their sockets to get locks on the Octavian Fleet.

IMC Blind Prophet, Battlespace

"BATTLESTATIONS, BATTLESTATIONS!" Shouted Commander K'thor, the Blind Prophet sheltered from attack by the massive hulk of 'Twas But A Jest. Crew rushed across the command center, as sensors began establishing target locks on the inbound fighter and missile swarm, and the hostile warships themselves. Micromissile Racks were emptied in tiny flashes of light, filling the air around it with an invisible field of death even as silos slid open and Effector Warheads slipped out of the Blind Prophet, shooting around the Jest and barreling towards the enemy fighters. Once they had gotten to a safe distance from the ships and close enough to the fighters, they'd detonate, subjecting all fighters within around 3000 kilometers to intense force, hopefully dealing significant damage to them as well as dispersing their formations.

Back at the Blind Prophet, Photonic Cannons began powering up as the Arsenal Barge began adding its own missiles to the swarm, making the area around the pair of ships reminiscent of a bunched-up string of Christmas Lights, even as Jest continued their inexorable barrage and Blind Prophet loaded up another battery of missiles.