← Back to overview

Warcog and Baseddoggo Crossover

The Scent of a New World

The forest was too quiet. For a man who had spent the last decade of his life cocooned in the rhythmic thrum of starship engines and the discordant symphony of plasma fire, the silence of the American Midwest was deafening. Ghost moved through the undergrowth like a shadow given weight, his cloaking field shimmering with a faint, oily distortion as it struggled to reconcile the vibrant greens and browns of the foliage with his charcoal-gray armor.

He stopped by a creek, his internal HUD flickering with a series of amber warnings.

*Bio-integrity: 42%. Internal Hemorrhaging: Stabilized. Nanite Reserves: Critical.*

He knelt, the interlocking plates of his greaves hissing as they adjusted to the uneven mud. He reached out a gauntleted hand, dipping his fingers into the water. His suit’s sensors immediately ran a chemical analysis.

*H2O content: 98.7%. Trace pollutants detected. Biological contaminants: Negligible. Status: Potable.*

He stared at the readout. In his time, Earth—Terra—was a world of sprawling marble monuments and hyper-industrialized foundry zones. The water there was filtered through a thousand miles of Roman plumbing, tasting of ozone and recycled minerals. This water felt... raw. Living.

Ghost stood up, his ripped black cloak snagging on a thorn bush. He ripped it free with a sharp tug, the fabric fluttering like a wounded wing. He needed to find a vantage point. His suit’s long-range scanners were hampered by the local electromagnetic noise—a chaotic web of radio waves, cellular signals, and satellite pings that felt primitive yet overwhelming in their density.

He engaged his thrusters for a micro-second, a silent burst of kinetic energy propelling him up the side of a steep limestone ridge. He reached the summit and looked out.

The sight that met his red-lined visor was a slap to his tactical psyche.

A highway stretched across the valley below, illuminated by the orange glow of sodium lamps. Vehicles—clunky, wheeled boxes powered by internal combustion—flowed in a steady stream. But it wasn't the technology that froze his blood. It was the occupants.

A billboard loomed over the highway, brightly lit. It featured a massive, anthropomorphic wolf woman in a business suit, smiling alongside a human man. The text read: *VULPINE LOGISTICS: BRIDGING THE SPECIES GAP SINCE 1994.*

"What in the name of the Senate..." Ghost’s voice was a low, distorted rasp, barely audible even to himself.

He zoomed his optics, the 4 red lines of his visor pulsing as the lenses shifted. He saw a gas station at the edge of the woods. A group of teenagers were hanging around a modified sedan. One was a human boy; another was a creature that looked like a bipedal, blue-fleshed lizard with a flame flickering at the tip of its tail. They were laughing, sharing a bag of fluorescent-colored snacks.

Ghost’s hand drifted to the grip of his Malorian-style pistol. His mind, conditioned by the brutal xenophobia of the Roman Empire and the terrifying biological horrors of the Phfor, struggled to process the scene. There was no combat stance. No scent of fear. Just... coexistence.

"Degeneracy," he breathed, the word tasting like ash. "Or a hallucination. The EMP must have fried my neural link."

He turned away from the highway, retreating into the deeper shadows of the ridge. He couldn't stay in the open. If this was a Naro-induced illusion, he had to break it. If it was real, he was in a tactical nightmare. He was a post-human weapon of mass destruction dropped into a playground.

***

A few miles away, Alex was finishing a cigarette on the porch of his suburban home. The night air was warm, and the sounds of Lucy and Sady arguing over a Netflix movie drifted through the screen door.

"Alex! Come back inside!" Lucy called out. Her voice was deep but had that soft, canine lilt that always made him smile. "Sady wants to watch that horror documentary about the 'Slender-Sighting' in the woods again, and I told her it’s just Gen-Z clout-chasing!"

Alex chuckled, stubbing out his smoke. "I’m coming, Lu. Just enjoying the quiet."

He looked toward the dark silhouette of the forest. For a second, he thought he saw a flash of red light deep among the trees—four distinct, glowing lines that vanished as soon as he blinked.

"Probably just a Charizard passing through," he muttered, though a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze crawled down his spine.

***

Ghost had found a derelict barn on the outskirts of an abandoned farmstead. It was perfect—shielded from thermal scans by the thick, rotting wood and far enough from the main roads to avoid casual detection.

He sat in the center of the hayloft, his back against a beam. He had deactivated his cloak to save power, his black-and-red armor gleaming in the moonlight filtering through the holes in the roof. He pulled the Naro data-spike from his thigh compartment and laid it on the floor.

He needed a link.

He picked up the smartphone he had taken from the boy in the woods. The screen was cracked, but the device was still functional. He looked at the lock screen—a photo of the boy and the pale, faceless woman. They looked happy.

Ghost felt a twinge of something buried deep beneath the nanites and the scarred tissue of his heart. A memory of a girl in a Roman colony, her hair smelling of jasmine, before the Phfor glassed the planet. He pushed the thought away with the cold precision of a combat file being deleted.

He pressed the data-spike against the phone’s charging port.

*Interface established. Brute-forcing local network protocols...*

The smartphone’s screen began to bleed lines of green and violet code as the Naro tech tore through 21st-century encryption like a hot knife through butter. Ghost watched as his HUD began to populate with a deluge of information.

*Global Network: Internet. Current Date: August 14, 2021. Dominant Species: Homo Sapiens, Hominid-Anthro Hybrids, Elemental Entities (Colloquially: Pokemon).*

Ghost scrolled through the search results. His processors worked at speeds that would make a supercomputer weep. He saw the history of the "Furboys" movement. He saw the election of President Laura. He saw the videos of Kaiju celebrities and the "Hera" worshipers.

"A world of pets and playthings," Ghost rasped, his metallic fingers tightening on the phone until the glass groaned. "Where is the steel? Where is the fire?"

He dug deeper, looking for anything that resembled his own reality. He searched for "Rome," "The Phfor," "Naro."

The results were empty. Rome was a fallen empire of antiquity. The Phfor didn't exist. The Naro were a myth of science fiction.

He was alone. He wasn't just in another place; he was in a reality that had diverged so far from his own that he was a literal alien.

Suddenly, a notification popped up on the phone. It was a social media app—TikTok. A video was trending.

Ghost tapped it. The video showed a shaky, night-vision recording of a clearing. It was the clearing where he had landed. He saw himself—a hulking, armored nightmare—rising from the dirt. He saw the boy, Michael, and the Slenderwoman.

The caption read: *NEW KAIJU TYPE? OR GOVERNMENT CYBORG? #WoodsStalker #UnknownSpecies #FurboysWatch.*

The comments were scrolling by at a dizzying pace. *“Is he single? That armor is lowkey hot.”* *“Looks like a fake. Probably a promo for a new movie.”* *“My cousin lives near there, says he heard a sonic boom!”*

Ghost felt a surge of cold fury. He was a Ghost of the 14th Legion. He was the man who had crippled the Phfor Hegemony. And here, he was a "trending topic."

He crushed the phone. The device sparked and died in his palm, a small puff of acrid smoke rising into the air.

"They have no idea," he whispered. "The galaxy is screaming, and they are playing in the dirt."

He stood up, his suit’s power levels stabilizing at 60%. He checked his weapons. The AR with the chainsaw bayonet was locked and loaded. The Malorian pistol was holstered. His compound bow was collapsed on his back, its pulleys gleaming.

He needed to move. If he was on camera, the "authorities" of this world would be coming. He didn't know if their weapons could hurt him, but he wasn't about to find out while his nanites were still repairing his lungs.

As he turned to leave the barn, his suit’s proximity sensor chimed.

*Biological Signature Detected. Distance: 15 Meters. Classification: Unknown.*

Ghost moved with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for a man of his size. He vanished into the rafters just as the barn door creaked open.

A woman walked in. At least, she had the silhouette of a woman. She was tall, nearly six and a half feet, with the powerful, digitigrade legs of a Dobermann. Her fur was a sleek, dark brown, and she wore a high-crop tank top and denim shorts that looked painted on.

It was Sophie. She held a flashlight in one hand and a heavy-duty pepper spray in the other.

"Michael? Slendy?" she called out, her voice echoing in the hollow space. "I saw your car on the road. This isn't funny, guys. Daniel is waiting in the car and he’s already freaked out about the 'alien' rumors."

Ghost watched her from the shadows of the rafters. His HUD highlighted her vitals.

*Species: Canine-Anthro. Heart rate: 110 BPM. Threat Level: Minimal.*

He could drop down and snap her neck before she could scream. He could vanish into the night. But something stayed his hand. He saw the way she moved—the twitch of her ears, the wary scan of her eyes. She wasn't a soldier, but she had a predator’s instincts.

Sophie stopped directly under his position. She shined her light up, the beam cutting through the dust motes.

"Hello?" she whispered, her tail tucking slightly between her legs. "Is... is someone there?"

Ghost didn't move. He held his breath, his ruptured lung stinging with the effort.

Then, her flashlight caught the edge of his cloak.

"Oh, shit," Sophie gasped, her eyes widening. She didn't run. Instead, her grip on the pepper spray tightened, and a low growl began to vibrate in her chest. "I see you. Come down here. Now."

Ghost realized then that the "peace" of this world had made its inhabitants strangely brave—or incredibly stupid.

He dropped.

He didn't use his thrusters; he just let gravity do the work. He landed five feet in front of her, the floorboards groaning under the weight of his power armor. He stood to his full height, the four red lines of his visor burning in the dark.

Sophie let out a muffled yelp, stumbling back. She instinctively raised the pepper spray and fired.

The orange mist hit Ghost’s faceplate and dissipated harmlessly against the pressurized seal. He didn't even flinch.

He reached out, his gauntlet moving faster than her eyes could follow. He plucked the canister from her hand and crushed it into a ball of twisted aluminum.

"You... you’re him," Sophie whispered, her voice trembling. "The thing from the video."

Ghost stepped forward, the mechanical whir of his suit filling the silence. He didn't speak. He didn't have to. The sheer aura of violence he projected was enough to pin her against the barn wall.

"Please," she whimpered, her hands going to her stomach in a protective gesture. "I’m... I’m pregnant. Don't hurt me."

Ghost froze.

The word *pregnant* triggered a subroutine in his mind. A memory of his brother Jaiden, weeping over the husk of his fiancee in the Phfor detention block. A memory of the Roman code: *Protect the innocent. Preserve the lineage.*

He looked at her stomach, then back at her face. She was a crossbreed, a biological impossibility in his world, a creature that shouldn't exist. But the fear in her eyes was human. The life inside her was a heartbeat, faint but steady.

He lowered his hand.

"Leave," he rasped, the voice of the suit sounding like grinding stones.

Sophie blinked, her ears pinning back. "What?"

"Leave. Now," Ghost repeated, stepping back into the shadows. "Tell no one. If you bring others... I will not be as merciful."

Sophie didn't wait for a third warning. She scrambled for the door, her claws clicking on the wood, and vanished into the night. Ghost heard a car engine roar to life outside and the screech of tires as a vehicle sped away.

He stood alone in the barn, his visor dimming to a low pulse.

"Mercy," he muttered to himself. "Trajan would have laughed."

He looked up at the moon through the holes in the roof. It was the same moon he knew from the 28th Millennium—the same craters, the same cold, uncaring face. But he knew better. He knew that in his world, that moon was a graveyard.

He didn't know what this world was, but he knew one thing: he was a soldier without a war, and that was the most dangerous thing in the galaxy.

He turned and walked toward the back of the barn, his cloaking field humming as it re-engaged. He had to find a way to contact the Roman fleet. He had to know if the rift was a one-way door.

Because if he was stuck here, he wasn't going to be a "trending topic." He was going to be a nightmare.

***

Meanwhile, in the 31st Millennium, on the bridge of the Super Dreadnought *Romulus*, Aetius Augustus stared at a holographic display of the Cyberpax front.

"Centurion," a bridge officer said, saluting. "We’ve detected a localized energy spike in the southern quadrant. It matches the signature of the Ballous rift."

Aetius turned, his red plume swaying. "The Illuminate?"

"No, sir. It’s... different. It’s older. We ran it through the archives. It matches the warp-signature of a Naro-tech jump from the Pendulum era."

Aetius narrowed his eyes. "The Pendulum era? That’s three thousand years ago. Nothing survives that long in the warp."

"Actually, sir... there is one legend. A warrior who vanished during the final assault on the Phfor capitol. They called him the Ghost."

Aetius felt a chill. He looked out the viewing port at the burning world of Cyberpax. "If the Ghost is back, he’s in the wrong century. And if he’s where I think he is..."

"Sir?"

"May the gods help whatever world he landed on," Aetius whispered. "Because he doesn't know how to stop fighting."