=== Brother Aegis - Harbinger of His Fury ===
The world burned.
Screams echoed across the blood-red sands of Geonosis. The sky was a roiling mass of smoke and fire, shot through with the streaks of descending drop pods and shattered ships. Amid the chaos, the shattered remains of the Leviathan lay cracked open, its once-gleaming hull now twisted and ablaze.
Deep within its armored core, he stirred.
Clamps hissed and pressure seals buckled as ancient hydraulic systems sputtered to life. Runes flickered on faded displays. Cracked cogitators whispered broken litanies. And then—
Piston-locked arms groaned and moved as Brother Aegis, Harbinger of His Fury, emerged from the ship. Smoke bled around his massive frame, and light gleamed off the purity seals that still clung—burned and soot-streaked—to his hulking form. His sarcophagus visor pulsed with an angry crimson glow, and his voice emerged through vox-grilles like the bellow of an angry god.
"I… RISE. IN FURY… IN FIRE!"
Outside, scattered squads of Obsidian Crusaders and Astartes forces struggled to organize a defensive line amid the battle. The Battle Barge's crash had sent wreckage in every direction, igniting half the battlefield and drawing the attention of every hostile force in the region—Republic forces, Separatist droids, Necrons.
A shattered hull plate blasted outward as Aegis tore free from the ruins. His Assault Dreadnought frame, three times the height of a man and four as wide, hit the red sand with a thunderous boom. He strode forward, each step grinding shattered plasteel beneath his feet. His right arm—an enormous autocannon—spun up with a shriek. His left—a Redemptor fist that doubled as a flamethrower—growled to life, fire already leaking from the nozzle.
"PURGE!"
The first line of droids was torn to shrapnel as his autocannon ripped into them, sending limbs and twisted metal flying in every direction. The flamestorm followed, belching gouts of fire so hot it turned sand to glass, engulfing the enemies behind the first wave.
Clone troopers turned and ran, shouting orders and scrambling for cover. Their armor was no defense against the barrage that followed—Aegis cut them down without hesitation. In his war-ravaged mind, all who served not of the Emperor's will were deemed useless.
An AT-TE walker tried to bring its cannon to bear. Aegis intercepted it mid-charge, his heavy legs pounding across the battlefield. He slammed into its hull, ripping through the side plating with his power fist, tearing the weapon mounts free with a screech of sundered metal. The pilot barely had time to scream before the flamethrower reduced the cockpit to slag.
Behind him, wounded Astartes were being dragged to extraction points. One of them, Brother-Sergeant Morn, turned his bleeding face to the towering Dreadnought.
"Brother Aegis," he rasped, "hold them! We are evacuating!"
"I AM HIS WRATH MADE FLESH," Aegis roared, turning his cannons toward the next wave. "LET NONE PASS."
From the dunes, a Necron Monolith emerged—its black form hovering with impossible grace. Gauss weaponry began to streak toward the downed Battle Barge's wreck. Aegis roared defiance.
He planted his feet, opened his chest-mounted missile launcher, and unleashed a fusillade that chewed through metal and machine. The Necron warriors fell in droves, but the Monolith continued its advance. Its particle cannon glowed with green malice.
The Dreadnought charged it.
Missiles slammed into his shoulder, scorching holes into his adamantium carapace, but Aegis didn't falter. He reached the Monolith's base and plunged his power fist into the machine, gripping cables and conduits and ripping them free with blinding force. The Monolith staggered—impossibly—and before it could react, he poured flames into its internal core, incinerating whatever hellish tech resided within.
It exploded.
The blast threw Aegis back across the sand, but he rose again, half-covered in smoking debris. Chunks of his left shoulder were missing. Armor plating sizzled where plasma had melted through. But still, he rose.
Across the battlefield, clone forces and droids alike began to retreat, mistaking him for some kind of apocalyptic war machine loosed upon the world. Even the Necrons began to withdraw—unusual for their kind, but even they seemed to recognize the fury of the awakened Dreadnought.
Aegis turned, standing between the shattered remnants of his Battle Barge and the final group of evacuees. Blaster bolts pinged off his frame, lasers scorched across his chest, but he didn't move. He didn't falter.
"ALL ENEMIES OF THE EMPEROR," his voice thundered, "KNOW THIS DAY THAT HIS WRATH STILL WALKS AMONG YOU!"
As the final Thunderhawk roared into the sky behind him, carrying his brothers to safety, Aegis turned back to the battlefield and advanced
And Geonosis burned.
His vox-grille growled with sacred fury as he turned his attention from the retreating Necrons and broken Republic lines to the advancing tide of Separatist droids. They came by the thousands: B1s, B2 Super Battle Droids, spindly Commando units, and the towering forms of HMP gunships and AAT tanks gliding forward across the dunes.
Aegis' crimson optic flared.
"XENOS FILTH… YOU DARE ADVANCE?"
His words weren't heard—they were felt, vibrating across comms, rippling through the minds of those nearby like a psychic aftershock.
His autocannon roared to life. Hundreds of shells per second tore through the droid ranks, shattering metal frames and pulverizing gears. B1s fell like wheat to a scythe, their metal limbs flying apart in showers of sparks. Those that didn't die instantly were reduced to crawling heaps, dragging themselves pitifully before being crushed beneath his massive feet.
A Super Battle Droid charged, its arm-cannon spewing plasma.
Aegis caught it mid-stride. His massive servo-enhanced fist clenched around its torso and squeezed, the durasteel chestplate collapsing with a sickening crunch, before he slammed it into the dirt hard enough to crater the ground. Then, with a furious spin, he lobbed the broken machine into a trio of advancing AAT tanks.
The tanks fired. Plasma bolts raked his flanks, burning gouges into his shoulders and back. But Brother Aegis did not stop. He marched forward through the fire, through the storm, his massive silhouette illuminated in the red glow of burning wreckage.
"BURN FOR YOU SINS!"
He raised his Flamethrower, and with a howling roar, unleashed a torrential inferno.
The fire was not natural. It was holy. Blessed promethium mixed with sacred oils, creating a stream of white-hot flame so intense that it cut through durasteel like parchment. The first AAT exploded in seconds, its droid crew immolated. The second shuddered, ignited, and detonated in a fireball that lit up the desert for miles.
The droids began to falter. Their cold logic could not compute the fury of the Dreadnought. They saw the losses and began to fall back, but Aegis did not give them the chance.
He triggered his mounted missile pods—launching a salvo of micro-warheads that arced across the sky and rained death upon the retreating droid divisions. Hundreds were obliterated in mid-flee, their bodies turned into scattered scrap across the dunes.
Then the gunships came.
Three HMP droid gunships swept overhead, raining blaster fire down upon him. Rounds tore into the ground, sending plumes of sand into the air. A missile struck his back, knocking him off balance for half a second.
"BRING OUT YOUR WOMEN AND CHILDREN! THEY WOULD PUT UP A BETTER FIGHT!"
His autocannon locked onto the lead gunship and fired with relentless precision. The stream of shells punched through its cockpit, and it spiraled down in a fireball, smashing into the ground with enough force to create a shockwave.
The second was faster, darting to the left—but Aegis was already turning. He charged across the open field, scooping up a broken AAT's severed barrel in his claw, and hurled it into the sky. It struck the gunship dead center, skewering the hull and sending it tumbling out of control.
The third opened fire with all weapons. Explosions flared around Aegis, concussive force buffeting his damaged armor. He weathered it all—advancing one step at a time through the smoke, like a titan striding through a storm.
With a roar of over-pressurized hydraulics, he leapt—yes, leapt—his ancient frame lifted by burst thrusters in his back. He crashed into the third gunship mid-air, grabbed hold of the hull, ripped open the engine nacelle, and poured fire directly into it.
The ship exploded.
The wreckage landed in a smoldering crater, but Brother Aegis had already landed, standing in the center of a field of corpses and twisted metal. Steam hissed from his damaged joints. Servo-motors whined. But his voice remained strong as he lifted his arms towards the sky.
"I AM HIS FURY! FEAR ME!"
He turned toward the Separatist rear lines, where spider droids and droidikas had begun a full retreat. His vox crackled as a distant Astartes signal reached him.
"Brother Aegis… the wounded have cleared the drop zone. Fall back."
There was a long silence before the Dreadnought responded, voice like rolling thunder:
"NO. THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPEROR STILL LIVE!"
And with that, the Harbinger of His Fury surged forward once more, a one-Dreadnought crusade, carving a path through the Separatist war machine with blessed steel, burning flame, and the fury of a God behind every step.
=== Captain Rex ===
The sky over Geonosis was thick with dust and smoke, casting everything in a hellish amber glow. The air stank of promethium, plasma scoring, and burning circuitry. Even from the elevated Republic command ridge, Captain Rex had to squint to see anything past the haze.
But he saw him.
That towering juggernaut of death and fire.
"What... in the name of..." Rex whispered, visor catching the glow of distant flame bursts.
The Republic lines had stabilized for the moment. Clone troopers formed perimeter trenches, Jedi barked orders through comms, and the medics were dragging the wounded back toward LAAT gunships. And yet, no one looked away from what was unfolding on the other side of the ridge.
The Dreadnought was a mountain of metal and roaring fury, its frame glowing in places where heat vents failed to contain the burning wrath inside. Its autocannons thundered like rolling avalanches, and its flamethrower sent out curtains of incineration that turned waves of B2s into piles of smoldering ash.
"Sir," one trooper muttered beside Rex. "That thing just took out three AATs and a few gunships… on its own."
"I counted four," another corrected grimly. "And he hasn't even slowed down."
Rex said nothing. His helmet's internal systems were recording everything, feeding the tactical data into Republic command. He tried to focus on the readings—mobility speed, armor thickness, energy output—but the numbers made no sense. It wasn't a tank. It was a walking cataclysm.
As the Dreadnought crushed a fleeing crab droid beneath its feet and unleashed another inferno into a droid bunker, Rex felt something alien crawl down his spine.
Fear.
Not fear of death—he'd accepted that long ago. But fear of what that thing represented. That if it ever turned its gaze toward the Republic… if it decided they were the enemy...
"Sir…" another trooper said, voice quieter this time. "Is it… on our side?"
Rex didn't answer at first.
From the haze, the Dreadnought raised one massive, clawed arm and fired a barrage of missiles into the last fortified Separatist position. The explosion bathed the battlefield in white flame, the shockwave reaching all the way to the Republic lines. Rex braced himself, feeling the tremor in his boots.
Over the distance, a low, grinding vox-growl echoed faintly.
"THE EMPEROR'S WILL IS FIRE! I AM THE STORM THAT DOES NOT BREAK!"
The firelight reflected in Rex's visor as he muttered, almost to himself, "If that thing decides we're the enemy…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He looked toward a Jei, who was kneeling near a command post, his expression grim. Even they seemed disturbed by what they were witnessing.
"It's helping us now," Rex finally said aloud, his voice tight. "But if it turns on us…"
He paused again. The Dreadnought crushed another droid column, flamers still belching. It didn't pause. It didn't breathe. It didn't stop.
"…then we'll have a really nasty fight on our hands."
For a moment, the Republic forces stood in silence. Watching. Waiting.
A sudden roar of engines drew Rex's attention skyward as another wave of Separatist reinforcements dropped from orbit. Dreadnought or not, the battle wasn't over. Rex straightened.
"Alright, boys—war's not done yet. Let's help that metal monster crush those Separatist clankers!"
The clones nodded grimly and took up positions. But even as they did, their eyes kept drifting back to the lone warrior wading through metal and fire.
And somewhere in Rex's gut, he couldn't shake the thought.
What kind of faction creates something like that?
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