Following the Doctor's grand introduction, Jeanne turned her gaze back to the massive structure of Rhodes Island. The warship looked remarkably pristine, bearing absolutely no visible wear that would suggest it was a relic from the Doctor's ancient era.
Had the Doctor not explicitly stated otherwise, Jeanne's first impression would have been that this iron leviathan was a newly minted state-of-the-art vessel manufactured by Columbia or some other highly advanced nation, rather than something recently unearthed from the depths of the earth.
Jeanne stared at the colossal warship slumbering before her. It felt like a great prehistoric beast crouched against the subterranean floor, projecting an eerie aura as if it might awaken from its centuries-long slumber at any given second.
"It's a miracle your people managed to bury such a massive thing in a place like this," Jeanne said slowly, having studied the vessel for a long time. "Looking at it up close, the scale of this landship truly is... breathtaking."
She had crossed paths with her fair share of mobile cities and military landships during her time on Terra, but none had ever left her with such a profound sense of awe.
Perhaps the visual impact was heightened by its subterranean cradle. Navigating the dark, winding depths of the tunnel only to suddenly be met with a massive fusion of raw bedrock and advanced, sleek steel was an incredible, novel sight—one Jeanne had never experienced before.
"What's the matter, caught you off guard? Or did the sheer scale of it leave you speechless?" The Doctor asked, walking over after noticing Jeanne had fallen silent.
The energetic, cheerful lift in her voice had grown even more pronounced. She had gone so far as to switch off her vocal modulator entirely, speaking to Jeanne in her natural voice.
Jeanne couldn't quite fathom why the Doctor was radiating such pure, unadulterated happiness. It was the distinct joy of an eccentric child recovering a priceless, long-lost treasure, or a person unexpectedly reuniting with a beloved friend after decades of separation.
"It really is spectacular," Jeanne offered, following the Doctor's lead and praising both the strategist and her vessel. "I never would have guessed you possessed the engineering brilliance to design a landship of this caliber..."
Hearing Jeanne's genuine praise clearly delighted the Doctor; after all, who wouldn't be pleased to hear their hard work recognized?
Given that this vessel was her absolute crowning achievement, the Doctor was practically walking on air, quietly humming a faint, unfamiliar melody. Jeanne assumed it was a song from her original era, as the tune sounded entirely foreign to her ears.
A moment later, Theresa and Kal'tsit emerged from the tunnel entrance, leading little Amiya down to the platform after finalizing the administrative matters above. They stared at the Doctor—who currently looked like she had just won the grand lottery—with expressions of collective, dry amusement.
It was blindingly obvious that both Kal'tsit and Theresa had endured the Doctor's enthusiastic show-and-tell sessions on multiple occasions. The strategist had a habit of bragging about the vessel to every single person she crossed paths with, making it painfully clear just how deeply she treasured Rhodes Island.
"To be fair, I didn't construct the entire thing entirely on my own..." The Doctor began, her voice trailing off as she swallowed the rest of her sentence. A sudden shadow crossed her expression, her mood dampening slightly as a stray memory flashed through her mind. "Well, there's no real point in bringing up a ghost of the past anymore. Come along, let me show you the interior!"
Jeanne was entirely unfazed by the Doctor's volatile, rapidly shifting temperament. Once you fully accepted that this brilliant strategist was prone to occasional bouts of eccentric madness, a sudden swing in her emotional state was hardly worth batting an eye over.
The three figures trailing behind them were equally desensitized to her behavior. Kal'tsit merely let out a quiet sigh, offering no comment, while Theresa maintained her trademark, gentle smile.
Together, the group guided little Amiya inside the massive hull. The young Cautus child was wide-eyed, her gaze darting with intense curiosity across every mechanical panel since it was her very first time witnessing the interior. As the heavy airlock door slid shut behind them, the outside world faded back into its habitual, subterranean silence.
Walking through the corridors of Rhodes Island, Jeanne found herself marveling at the sheer, cavernous interior of the landship, though the current state of the vessel was distinctly chaotic.
Loose bundles of wiring dangled precariously from the ceiling panels, spitting occasional showers of bright electrical sparks into the dark hallways. The scenery vividly mirrored a malfunctioning research laboratory from an old cinematic film.
"We are strictly in the foundational repair phase," the Doctor explained, guiding Jeanne around a cluster of exposed, sparking cables. "While the vast majority of our primary, high-grade systems are completely intact, the simple reality is that thousands of years have passed. The auxiliary circuitry and baseline power grids have thoroughly degraded over time."
As they moved deeper into the ship, the physical toll of the centuries became undeniably apparent. Every console and bulkhead bore a distinct, ancient patina, reminding Jeanne that this vessel had slumbered in total darkness for an unimaginable length of time before finally being brought back into the light.
They passed several heavily reinforced metal blast doors, all locked tightly down. According to the Doctor, these were automated pneumatic doors, but because their current engineering teams lacked the power surplus to cycle them open, they were being left alone until the primary power grids could be stabilized.
When the group finally arrived at their main base of operations—the primary power center of the landship—Jeanne was greeted by the sight of a frantically working engineering department, with Closure leading the charge. The Vampire mechanic was in a state of absolute, manic euphoria.
That specific look of unhinged obsession was something Jeanne had only ever seen on Warfarin's face whenever the medic plotted to steal a sample of her blood. Yet, bizarrely enough, this particular Vampire harbored absolutely zero interest in Jeanne's divine bloodline; she seemed to derive far more raw satisfaction from a fresh canister of industrial machine oil.
Jeanne couldn't help but wonder if the rumors circulating through the barracks were true: Is she truly a mutated Vampire who survives solely on machine oil? To stumble upon a cybernetic Vampire within the heart of Terra made Closure an exceptionally eccentric anomaly among her bloodline.
The moment they entered the chamber, the Doctor offered a brief, exhausted greeting to the engineering crew before completely collapsing into a nearby swivel chair, remaining entirely motionless. She had pushed her physical limits to the absolute brink over the past few days, and her energy reserves were entirely spent.
Jeanne's attention, however, remained locked on the structural architecture of the power center. She froze, a wave of profound familiarity washing over her; the distinct mechanical alignment and geometric configuration heavily mirrored a structure she had encountered once before—the sacred, central machinery of Laterano.
The design wasn't a literal, mirror-image copy, but it possessed the unmistakable signature of two complex machines engineered by students of the exact same master. The shared aesthetic and technological philosophy were undeniable, especially to someone like Jeanne, who had studied the Lateran mechanism with her own eyes.
Jeanne chose not to keep her confusion to herself. Since the individuals standing beside her were living remnants of that ancient era, they were bound to possess a superior understanding of the continent's lost history.
Upon hearing Jeanne's observation, the Doctor fell into a brief, contemplative silence. It appeared she didn't possess an absolute grasp of the correlation; after all, even in her past life, she hadn't been entirely omniscient, nor did she have the infinite time required to monitor every rogue scientific project on the planet.
"I can't give you a definitive answer regarding that specific connection," the Doctor replied, her voice quiet. "It's entirely possible that a breakaway research faction was conducting localized development without my knowledge. However, the foundational mechanical schematics you are looking at were standard baseline architecture during our era. It is completely natural for separate installations to share a striking visual similarity."
Hearing the Doctor admit her lack of insight left Jeanne with a mild pang of disappointment. She had hoped to finally unravel one of the deep mysteries weighing on her mind, but it seemed she would have to settle for an open-ended answer.
Jeanne was primarily desperate to understand the exact mechanism behind the sudden, historic divergence of the Sankta race. While the descent of a divine miracle certainly played a role, she was entirely convinced that the transformation was fundamentally tied to that bizarre, ancient machine in the heart of the holy city.
"On another note, there is one piece of logistical news I neglected to mention earlier," the Doctor spoke up, pivoting the topic to a somewhat less-than-ideal development. "When your massive Originium meteor impacted the sector, the kinetic force struck a highly unstable fault line, causing a severe localized collapse. The entire core is currently buried beneath hundreds of tons of solid rock, and our teams are actively working to excavate it."
Fortunately, Jeanne wasn't in an exceptional rush to claim the prize. If the excavation proved too slow over the coming days, she could always call upon her draconic summons to act as a localized excavation team to tear through the bedrock.
"But on the bright side, we managed to recover a few pristine structural samples," the Doctor continued, attempting to brighten the mood as she reached into a nearby containment crate. "I must admit, the elemental purity of this meteor is absolutely staggering. It matches the density profile of pure Originium Prime. To think a solid mass of that size exists... if a trader ever managed to bring that to the open market, the sheer monetary value would be unfathomable!"
With those words, the Doctor placed several lustrous fragments into Jeanne's palms. These were pristine shards that had fractured off the primary mass during the initial celestial impact, serving as a perfect indicator of the meteor's overall quality.
Jeanne held the fragments up to the light, inspecting them with meticulous care. The stone didn't possess the rough, uneven texture of raw, wild Originium, nor did it share the crimson coloration typical of standard industrial-refined clusters. Instead, it radiated a beautiful, amber-yellow hue that bled into a deep, brilliant orange.
The material was almost perfectly translucent. Had the Doctor not explicitly confirmed that these shards were gathered from a raw meteor impact, Jeanne would have assumed she was holding a collection of flawlessly refined, high-grade Originium Prime.
She had witnessed meteor-induced Catastrophes before—most notably the strike that had decimated the northern Ursus snow plains just weeks prior. But comparing the radioactive clusters of that tundra impact to the absolute purity of the shards currently resting in her hands was like comparing a common garden ant to a towering giant.
If the entire subterranean mass maintained this flawless level of purity, Jeanne realized it would be an absolute waste to utilize it merely as a basic fuel source to replenish her personal magical reserves. Besides, given the sheer physical dimensions of the primary meteor, she didn't exactly possess the teeth required to chew through a solid mountain of crystal.
Perhaps, with an unadulterated energy source of this magnitude... she might finally possess the power required to manifest her "partner" into this world.
As that breathtaking realization crystallized in her mind, a quiet, brilliant smile graced Jeanne's lips.