Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 24=

-TUESDAY-

3am, the living room...

Slipping out from the couch, Emma almost dropped the foot and a half drop down to the floor, but managed to stop herself before she actually hit the floor. The chill of the night air bit at her body, the precious body heat already bleeding away. Looking around the living room guiltily, she made sure that everyone was still asleep before rising back up and rubbing her hair down, making sure that it was straight. She may have been a deity, but taking on human form meant that she had to obey the laws of physics and electrostatics. Namely, when you kept rubbing your hair against a pillow, you would get a bed head. Licking her palm and smoothing her hair down, the to-be God Emperor of Mankind strode out to the hallway, mustering as much dignity as she could with four feet seven inches of height and dressed as she was in rubber ducky pattern pajamas. They had once belonged to Michael's cousin, and had been stored in the attic. One spin through the washing machine and a psychically enhanced drying experience later, and they were wearable.

Emma's mouth twitched into a smile. Compared to other things she had worn over the years, though, they were practically sterile so there wasn't much to complain about.

The hallway of Michael's house was like the spine of this building; everything flowed through it. The front door hung on its hinges, the only thing stopping it from opening a flowerpot used as a doorstop. Emma sighed as she looked at it; the lock had still yet to be replaced.

On the tables and windowsills around her, people moved. They were the tiny, miniature warriors of the Imperium and beyond. An amalgamated squad – under Michael's orders – was on watch tonight. Rotating in and out through the night to stand guard, the combat team of five Space Marines, bearing the heraldry and colors of Imperial Fists and Ultramarines, crouched cautiously beside the squad of ten Imperial guardsmen. They also had in their mix a trio of Ulthwe Rangers and the seven surviving members of a once twelve strong Tau Fire Warrior team.

Sensing her approach long ago, the Imperials supplicated themselves before their God Empress, much to Emma's annoyance.

"I have yet to earn the right for your respect." She intoned softly, and lifted her hand, palm up. The Imperials rose, and shuffled about awkwardly. "So until that time, Space Marine, rise and be back to your duty."

A wry smile came to her lips as she watched the Marine – a veretan of centuries of warfare as well as thousands of battles – defer to her and rise as she had commanded. She hadn't talked like that since her name had been Joan.

The culture shock of such a carefree world had been one thing, which made the presence of Chaos almost welcome. Problems regarding the size difference between the untrained, untested Michael and centuries-old warriors as well as the fact that this allowed the former to kick about the latter like a child's toy (or adult child, as it were) was a whole new can of worms for her. But for the Imperials, the knowledge that their God-Emperor had, in a rather twisted way, come to aid them was... comforting.

Her size and gender were a source of some confusion, but the psykers and religious figures – Jeremiah and Morteus especially – had convinced the rest of the miniature Imperials that she was what she claimed to be; her psychic fingerprint had been absolute identification for those that could see it, as well as the fact that she could quite figuratively blind people with the brilliance of the 'light of her soul'.

Through this, her worship began a few thousand years – almost twenty – too early. The Emperor of Mankind sighed, pouting with her arms crossed and brows knitted, in the childishly infuriating way that would send people to the ground clutching at their chests, had it not been for the steel in her eyes.

Emma looked up as a door clicked shut.

Batel was standing there, just outside the study with her hand on the doorknob. What was she doing? The shortest of the Terrans arched an eyebrow, and watched as the repentant witch slunk off back to her bed.

Going to the door herself, Emma pushed it open, thanking Michael's maintenance of the house; the door opened with a whisper quietness, and the contents of the room couldn't help but make Emma feel something tugging at the corner of her lips. Vincent was asleep, again at the keyboard, the positioning of his ear promising a long line of Zs in the morning. Something about his sleeping face made her giggle, simply because of the contrast between the much more animated face he showed around his friends.

His glasses lay a few inches from his face, neatly folded and placed carefully on top of the table. On his shoulders was a blanket, carefully wrapped around the youth, and no doubt recently placed. Emma chuckled once, and closed the door.
Meanwhile...

It was a sea of green. Thankfully, it wasn't a sea of Orks. The green color was, in fact, coming from a field of grass. Looking at it more closely, it was obvious that they weren't really biological grass; the astro-turf like 'grass' was completely rectangular.

A work in progress, at the least.

Kneeling down, I placed my palms against the vibrant blades of grass and the soft, damp earth underneath, and as my fingers moved through the green shafts, they gained definition and became more realistic, becoming steadily more defined as I concentrated on their details..

I closed my eyes, and focused.

There.

Opening my eyes, I watched the ground. Soon enough, it happened: A single white shaft, no bigger than a strand of wire, sprouted from between the emerald glass.

It gained color, deepening in hue. The shaft sprouted leaves. The sapling grew quickly. Branches shot off in different directions, leaves burst out of the hardening bark, they shone in the morning dew, grew bright orange, wilted and fell off. So the cycle continued.

The clouds in the sky charged along overhead as time flew, crisscrossing the sky above in the eternal daylight.

The tree matured, shed leaves, and regrew more.

All through this, I carefully directed the flow of its artificial life. Branches zigzagged above me by my will, and each leaf that fell down was done at my bidding. I stood, and watched as bark layers hardened, cracked and peeled off.

Reaching out my hand, I held it in front of my face.

Growing at thousands of times its natural rate, a branch reached out, a single blossom bursting open, an apple forming as months were compressed into seconds by my will alone.

The weight too much, the stem snapped, and a perfect, blood red apple fell into my hand.

Holding it up, I inspected it, gave it a buff with my shirt, and bit into it.

A voice behind me accompanied the clapping of hands, enthusiastic and excited but soon tapering off into a rather self-conscious silence.

"Impressive, M-michael." Zara the younger stumbled over her words, but the appreciation was there.

That, in itself, was already more than enough.

"Too rushed." I admitted, chewing through the crisp white-green flesh with obvious distaste.

I looked up at her, my face carefully neutral as I relayed the grave news: "The apple tastes like chicken."

Zara the younger giggled, her eyes bright as she watched my face contort into an expression that was predominantly made up of confusion and amusement.

Just how the hell does an apple taste like chicken, anyway?

I looked up at my companion, who was standing just outside of arm's reach. Her chosen form had not changed very much; her long black hair had been tied into a pair of long, brush-like tails. Her skin seemed less pale, more healthy as it showed the beginnings of sun-kissed browns. The almost frail appearance before had become that of a comfortably healthy, if rather slim, young woman in a plain white summer dress, with a wide brimmed sunhat (little red ribbon included) and a pair of sandals with decoration to match.

Her ensemble was... appropriate. Knowing the psychic prowess of the person she was a part of, I shied away from more... uh... appreciative words.

Damn right you'd better. Chuckled another aspect, from a far off place.

Hefting the apple, I offered it to her. Amused, she gave me a timid smile and accepted it. Turning it over in her hands, she flushed almost as red as the apple itself as she looked at it.

"D-does it really t-taste like chicken?"

"Find out for yourself." I chuckled.

Zara the younger brought the apple up onto her lips, and after a slight hesitation, she leaned forward to take a bite out of the fruit. There was a sharp crunch as enamel met apple, and then a yelp of surprise. The Eldar girl sputtered as the sharp sweet/sour taste of the apple was suddenly replaced with a rather more different flavor.

"Mel'ksna! That was what your chicken tastes like!" She yelped, and thengiggled. Her smile was infectious, and it took an effort of will superior to that at my command to keep myself from giving back a bashful smile.

Although...

"Uh... Mel'ksna? This is chicken. You know, cock-a-doodle-doo?"

I pictured a chicken, then tapped the ground. Soon enough, there was the cluck-cluck-cluck of a hen as it pecked at my toes. Zara stared at it, wide eyed as she inspected the ruffled feathers of the dark brown hen.

"That doesn't sound like cock-a-doodle-doo, Michael."

"That is because it's female."

Frowning, I tried again.

A cockerel joined the hen, and choked out a few sounds.

Finding some paper, and a pen, I wrote COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO on it, and pointed at each letter in turn.

As if understanding, the cockerel stared at the paper, then crowed out.

"DOCKLE-DOC-A-OOD!"

Great. I had just – somehow – created a dyslexic chicken.

Zara the younger burst out in peals of gut-busting laughter, which shook her shoulders and belly as she clutched helplessly at her sides. Her legs became unsteady, unable to support her as hysteria threatened her balance. She fell to her knees, and I caught her before she fell and started rolling around and staining her dress on the grass.

"... wait. That's not a Mel'ksna!" Laughed Zara. "They're... bigger." She stopped, and smiled again. "Let me show you."

She waved her arms, and out popped a chicken.

CLUCK.

Oh?

CLUCK.

Oh.

CLUCK.

I looked up to stare at the massive cockerel that towered over us, easily twenty feet tall.

Oh. Crap.

Luckily for us, gravity was will at Earth's normal: 9.81 meters per second per second, downwards. And this chicken was to scale with the smaller, more terrified bird that had just crapped on my right toe. Even the legs. Especially the legs.

It took a half step forward, and its left leg snapped underneath it.

The giant chicken collapsed without much ceremony and one terrified cluck later was struggling on the ground, sending up feathers the size of surfboards as I screamed and ran, dragging Zara the younger along with me.

The screams were answered by Zara the Farseer, who stepped forth from a halo of light, before getting a face full of alien chicken feather.

"What have you done this time?" She shielded herself from a second feather, and then looked at me as I collapsed, Zara the younger collapsing on top of me as she too fell down, exhausted. The stern Zara the Farseer looked down at us, as Zara the younger rested her head against my heaving chest.

"Why is it that every time I leave you alone with my... other self... that I will soon return to find you on top of each other?"

I ignored her, instead looking back to where the giant chicken had once been. "What. The hell. Was that?"

"Mel'ksna. A large food beast found on the low-gravity world that you humans called 'Old McDonald'." Recalled the Farseer, almost off-handedly, before adding another detail. "Before the Biel-Tan Craftworld reclaimed it, anyway."

"Ah."

I reached behind me, and pulled out a flamer from thin air – the kind used by the Space Marines. It was bloody heavy as I hefted it at the chicken, and I wasn't quite prepared for the recoil, which sent flames everywhere except – thankfully – at the younger Zara. I teetered, and regained my balance as the chicken started grilling. Newton's Third Law, right.

I grinned sheepishly at the younger aspect of Zara's personality. The other aspect – the Farseer – was not amused.

"Want some breakfast?"

9am

And on the third day, Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

Well, Emma had explained that she hadn't been quite dead back then, but then went into far too much detail on how complicated re-structuring your body was after the trauma of crucifixion was. Getting hung up like that lead to a lot of strained muscles, complete and total exhaustion and then after that getting lanced in the heart was really, really painful.

I walked – perhaps even staggered – out of my bedroom, listening to the rain drown out the ambient noise with its smooth, steady drumming on the roof. Thankfully, the mood was rather dissonant from the weather, with a cheerful if soggy atmosphere drifting around the house as everyone got to fixing up the place and their equipment.

"Mother Terra sends her cleansing rain." Murmured Samisha from below, and I found myself smiling. At the miniature scale, getting hit by a raindrop would be... hmm... I did some quick maths in my head, and found that it would be like getting hit by a terminal velocity basketball, or something similar in size and weight.

Which would, of course, really ruin your day.

I descended the stairs, down into the hall that was the main artery of in-house traffic. We had re-arranged things again, so now I had my bedroom back. It was just that we had moved the bed out from the Space Marines' Fortress-Monastery and shoved it on the other end of my bedroom. It was a bit of a tight fit, but now we all slept comfortably. Except for Vincent, who was getting back troubles from falling asleep at my/the computer too much. Emma had refused to heal him up, saying that it would be a valuable lesson for him.

Speaking of Vincent, he was holding my new phone; the other one had become a relic; blasted apart by cannon fire then butchered for electronics later on in the aftermath of the battle.

"Mike!" Shouted Vincent, who ran up to me with a flustered urgency. Wait, it wasn't just urgent; it was borderline panic. A chill settled into my gut, something that made me want to curl up and hide in a corner.

I braced myself for bad news. "Yeah?"

"Phone for you!" He hissed. Vincent pressed the black cordless phone into my hand, and then ran off.

Confused, I pressed it up against my ear.

"Hello, Michael here."

"He~ey!"

Oh.

"Mike?"

Oh.

"Mi~ike."

Oh. Shit.

"Are you there, Michael?"

I looked around desperately, trying to find some place without the sound of machines and men preparing for war. Things were getting really busy now, with everyone gearing up and getting better, and that meant that things were also getting noisy. As in, drills and welders and hydraulics all over the place kind of noisy.

"Uh... hi, sis."

Vincent was nervously glancing in my direction, while already beginning to organize routes of retreat for everyone as I made the call. He seemed awfully sharp today, considering the week so far. I put it up to the fact that my younger sister had always scared him so much. Something about 'the Ree' had made him all tense whenever she was mentioned in a conversation, or – god forbid - actually turned up. At seventeen years old, with a head of blonde hair in a short haircut and supported by a gymnast's build, I didn't quite see why Jane scared him so much. It was probably the whole (as Vincent described it) 'goddamn ninja' level of stealth that she could use when she decided that she wanted to be moving around quietly, with the sudden popping up when you least expected her and, when the three of us were younger, making everything seem like an accident or our fault when she wanted to get us into trouble.

"Mi~ike, Vinny handed me off..." She singsonged. "Again."

"Really?" I deadpanned. "I wouldn't know why..."

"So, what'cha doin' today?"

"Uh..." I watched as an Ork buggy rolled past, a modified RC dune rider that Miles had brought in. It had been upgraded, plastic parts replaced with metal and scraps of armor welded or riveted on in the most crude of repair jobs. The paint was still wet, which was why they were riding around it; it was like blowing on the paint to dry it faster, they said.

"...stuff."

"Like?"

The fake smile in my voice was still there as I passed through a door and almost stepped on a passing platoon of Guardsmen. "Projects. Building things."

"Oooh, sounds fun. What are you building?" Jane queried playfully.

Machines of war, weapons, armor and vehicles, you know, the usual... "things."

"Can I help?"

"No!" I replied, a little to quickly and sharply even for my tastes. It felt like a really rushed, lame excuse, so I quickly apologized. "I mean, no, we couldn't use your help."

"We?"

"Miles, Vincent and me." And the Tau. And the Eldar. And the Imperium of Mankind.

"Ah. Why can't you use my help? I've been doing a lot of tinkering with your old scooter, and Sal at the junkyard said I could start working for him, taking apart engines. And stuff."

I sighed. Again. "I'm sure we don't need your help."

"Why not?" Whined my sister.

"Because... it's... uh... complicated?" I asked. There were a few furious nods from the people around me. "Yeah, let's go with that. Complicated."

"Really? Why is it complicated?"

Ugh. This routine again. Questions, questions, questions until you gave in. It was like waiting for the Orks to run out of ammunition. (We had been waiting for almost two months now)

"Because it's delicate. Dangerous."

"Oh." Jane deadpanned. "How?"

"Uh... lots of big things moving around?" I ventured. Also, half of the stuff that we were handling could kill you if you didn't handle things properly. You could – as Miles had assured me – set it on fire, but you'd better damned well handle it properly, because otherwise things were going to get really interesting around the house.

"What are you doing to grandad's house?"

"Fixing the carpet. I'm thinking of re-doing the floor."

"Ouch, bro. So what happened to the carpet?"

A bunch of mini-sized idiots with flamethrowers, laser weapons and plasma artillery happened, but I couldn't quite say that at the moment...

"I made a bit of a mess last weekend. Oh, and someone totaled their car just outside, so we've got to re-do the garden as well. I'm thinking of adding a barrier wall." With gun emplacements, bunkers and a minefield. Maybe a few hydrangeas, too. And perhaps an apple tree that has fruit which doesn't taste like chicken.

"Are they okay?"

"The driver was a bit loopy when he came out of the car, so we had to call for some help." The truth. Technically.

"Uhm... can I ask what the details were?"

"He's... taken care of. We sent him on his way."

I turned a corner, out into the kitchen, just as Batel opened up the fridge door. The one that was level with my face.

Well, to be frank, it hurt.

Batel's face drained of blood as mine drained out through my nostrils. She squeaked, and backed away. "I'm sorry!"

Vincent joined in as well. "Michael?"

Goddamit, it was like a Jackie Chan movie. I didn't know which, and I'd tell you, but my movies were kind of crispy at the moment.

Alice poked her head around the corner, and for once spoke. Her voice was scratchy, a little strained but still distinctly feminine. "What happened there, guys?"

Oh boy.

Jane piped up.

"Michael. What are two girls doing in your house? I can hear them, you know."

"Uh..." Actually, there was more like just this side of two hundred than a mere two...

Batel frowned, and synched with Jane as both asked the same question. "Who's that?"

Vincent mouthed the word; 'sister', then pressed finger to lip.

"It's Alice and her friend. They've just dropped by to say hi."

"And that's alright with you."

"Yes, it is."

"Then I will, too!"

Click.

...

The 'dead line' tone was like a tolling bell of doom.

Crap.

Ashen faced, I looked at the silent masses, all staring at me with faces that begged for an explanation. Slowly, I thumbed the red 'hang up' button, and then scratched the back of my neck nervously. Weakly, I asked the rest a rather obvious questions. "I really dug myself into this one, didn't I?"

Vincent nodded sagely, though I could see his fingers trembling as he pushed his glasses further up his nose. Emma stared at me blankly while Batel flushed red with rising panic and rapid fire apologies.

Alice facepalmed, and nodded again. "Yep."

"This is... unique." Commented the soon-to-be God Emperor of Mankind.

"The Emperor's finest will not cower before a mere girl, Michael!"

Emma raised an eyebrow. So did a few Space Marines.

All the blood left the brash Lieutenant's face.

"Uh... I uh..."

Sighing, I tapped my foot irritatedly before looking around the assembled commanders, leaders, friends and Emma.

"So," I began. "how are we going to bluff our way out of this one?"

"I can simply Ask her to leave." Emma suggested, her voice emphasizing the 'A' enough that it warranted a capital letter. She had returned, both disappointingly and reassuringly, to the almost emotionless, completely focused state that she had initially presented us with.

"No." I flat out refused her. "I'd rather not screw around with someone's head – especially that of my sister - unless we really can't help it, Emma."

"'cuz we all know that she's screwed up enough already." Muttered Vincent.

Around me, the Imperials began to shout and protest as I sat down and waited for her response. They had accepted her now as the past life of their Emperor. What I was doing right there was blasphemy, pure and simple. Refusing a God(dess?) as she gave me advice and offered me her help.

Instead, she nodded once. "Understood."

The crowd became silent.

Emma cocked her head to one side, and asked a second question. "Alternatives, then?"

Zara flashed a grin, victorious and proud. "We use an illusion, of course."

I turned to face the new speaker, as she strode across the kitchen table as regally as a two inch tall figure could stride up to a much taller and more imposing five foot something human.

"Buh?"

Zara was – as usual – enjoying my confusion. "We create a construct of the mind – essentially, we make her see what she expects. A more 'transparent' kind of mind scape layered on top of reality."

I looked at her, and nodded. "So basically we pull the wool over her eyes?"

Zara snorted. "A gross simplification, Michael, but it captures the spirit of our purpose. Considering that we have at our disposal some of the more powerful psykers in existence, it should be simple child's play for a vanilla human to be fooled by us." She grinned, before turning to Emma.

Child's play. How appropriate.

Vincent shrugged as he shook his head. "She's a sharp one, so don't underestimate her. Even if I'm not sure what kind of stuff you'll be slinging, she'll know that something's wrong if everything doesn't add up."

"Noted." Deadpanned Emma, who nodded quickly to confirm that.

"Then let's get started." The Farseer motioned around us. I blinked, and then grinned. Already, the Eldar psyker had created an illusion; everything appeared as if it were four months ago. My house was actually tidy, for once.

But a few seconds in, things started going wrong; a throb usually associated with headaches pulsed in the back of my mind, and I clutched at the back of my head as the pain grew, setting my head aflame.

I was fighting the illusion, I realized. My mind was fighting against the illusion cast over my senses.

Michael?

Zara? Her psychic echo resonated within my skull. What was going on?

MICHAEL!

I stepped forward, and immediately felt the pointy ends of the invisible but not intangible Exorcist rocket artillery vehicle plunging into my heel. There was a squeak from an invisible Sister of Battle as Zara screamed from her perch on the dinner table, and through the pain I could see everyone fading back into view.

Damn.

My face was probably really, really red, but that wasn't the matter as a century's worth of soot and fume stains went into my foot.

I'll spare you the purple prose: it hurt like a bitch.

Vincent shot forward and was in a heartbeat's time behind me, arm whipping around my neck, clapping a sleeved wrist over my mouth as I screamed into it like a cloth gag. Victorian era/Orkish surgery procedures at its finest.

"Fghnn fhhk fffghnhnn!" I choked like that for a while, screaming bloody murder into his sleeve, before calming down and finally tapping Vincent twice on the arm. He let me go, my obligatory expletives expended, and then stepped back. I sat down gingerly, and inspected the damage. I now had a series of heads turning to face the Farseer. She had already dropped the illusion, and was staring at my feet as Emma placed her healing hands over them and began to seal up and disinfect the wound.

The feeling was... pleasant. Like having your feet rubbed in warm oils, I found the skin under my foot was now smooth, missing even the scars I had worn on them since a child.

"We're gonna have to work on that." Zara managed, after we hung around in an awkward silence.

I noticed that she was tired – though my powers were limited, I could still sense the 'cost' of the illusion. Amadeus had explained to me that it was like momentum; 'smaller' souls, like the minis, could be cast under illusions much more easily than 'larger' souls like Vincent, Alice, Miles and myself, which were more massive in our presence. Just like how she tried to fry my brain, she would strain herself greatly to get an illusion of the quality that was needed to get my sister to believe that everything was okay.

"No. No illusions; you're straining yourself, even I can see that. Plus, it's just way too dangerous if she starts stomping around the Tau base. Or upstairs. Stepping on one of our hospitals is the last thing I want her to do."

To that, we had the first unanimous agreement that I could remember since these guys had appeared in my house.

So in the end, we decided on using as little large-scale warp-magic illusions as possible and had everyone hide as best they could; in cupboards, mostly, as well as anywhere that was either impossible for my sister to get at or somewhere that was explainable. I didn't have anyone hiding in the bathroom cupboard, although my study room now had an extra dozen (or three) tanks inside. The Orks were told in no uncertain terms that they were to not leave the basement under any circumstances.

And so, the preparation for Operation: Sister Invasion continued.

'Diorama project' was the best excuse that we could come up with to explain the field camps, which did not have Terran mobility in mind when we built them. Vincent had been complaining about it, and so we settled on the agreement that yes, if we had the time we would start thinking about getting the bases more mobile once all this mess was over. He then argued that the Tau weren't Terrans, but were geared up more like Protoss with a penchant for long range.

I told him to shut up.

Miles had packed away his guns, stowing them carefully inside of the Space Marine's bedroom cupboard, and hurried outside to do some quick gardening (despite the rain. It didn't seem to bother him that much), covering up shell holes and the remains of the small bonfire that had consumed the bodies of almost two hundred Chaos cultists (well, the body parts added up to roughly two hundred, although battle recordings had placed their numbers further into the four, maybe five hundreds. Kind of says something about 41st millennium tech, doesn't it?).

Vincent had brought his camera out, having dug it up from inside his truck (which had been parked inside of his garage). His laptop was set up on the kitchen table (and the Adeptus Mechanicus absolutely forbidden from that area). He had also picked up a very large number of circular bases from inside of his car – he played Tau and IG – and dished them out to anyone in the 'high risk' areas. The amount of stuff he was ferrying from my house through to the garage was best classified as 'worrying'.

He was helped by Alice, who had gone out around the back to get the gardening tools. She was – despite her lack of a voice – as energetic as I had seen when she had returned with the Sisters of Battle, and was hurriedly picking her way through the entrance hall, doing her best to cover up whatever she could.

Batel rushed around in her newly given ensemble of blue jeans, white shirt and a black pullover vest. She was aiding everyone as best she could, but soon enough found herself bouncing between Vincent and Alice, helping either as they hurried to get the place looking as normal as possible with the incoming threat of my little sister.

Me? I was hobbling around on one foot, trying to get myself a bandage or something.

Emma tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to face her, and was handed a white box with a red cross emblazoned on the front. Re-inspection for the wound.

"Thanks, Emma." I accepted it as she knelt down and inspected my wound.

"Y'know, getting nailed in the foot is quite painful."

"Learned from experience, huh?"

Her next words held a grizzled maturity that could only make me laugh.

"Damn right I did, boy."

After that, it was coordinating with the minis to get them hidden.

"Contact! Small blue car, single passenger. Appears to be a female, can't be much older than twen-"

"Yeah, we know. That's my sister." I crisply interrupted over the vox, signaling at Emma. She nodded, and disappeared up the stairs, to hide up there until Jane left the house. Looking around, I felt a tingle of pride in the fact that everyone was already diving for their hiding places, packing up into the swift hover vehicles of the Tau and Eldar (and, surprisingly, an Ork hovertrukk). Completely unnecessarily, I shouted out. "Take cover, everyone!"

They did, and I smiled to myself as Tau were hauled on board Eldar Wave Serpents by the human passengers, Space Marines welcomed onto a Devilfish and Orks allowed to climb on top of them (there were now a multitude of grapple points – essentially staples and creatively re-shaped paper clips that had been welded on to the hulls – for them to hang on to).

"She's passed marker two-five!"

That meant that she was exactly twenty five feet from the front door. Assuming that she had been walking, that meant we were three seconds away from getting visitors.

TV, on. The last of the Devilfish banked around the corner, and climbed up the stairs.

"Two seconds!"

"Watchman Two-Four, break contact and get in cover!" Barked Lieutenant Ambrose, who then clipped himself onto a rappelling line and jumped from the top of the table down into the safety of my DVD cupboard's unused back sections.

"One!"

I turned around, and walked towards the door.

"Contact!"

SLAM.

A bright pain exploded in my left toe, mainly because a door had been practically kicked open into it.

I stifled a howl of pain, and in burst my little sister.

"Ya-hooo!"

What kind of a greeting was that?

The door burst inwards, and like a miniature hurricane my sister flourished into the room. She was grinning like a cheerful maniac, and quickly made her way across to where we had been gathered. Spotting Miles and the others, all crowded around the dinner table, her smile widened (how was that possible?).

"He~ey."

Quickly, Vincent disappeared, running away from the short, blonde haired girl. She had the same, dark blonde hair as I had, but rather than wear it long like she used to, I saw that it had been cut short into a rather messy version of a pageboy cut. Her bright yellow rain jacket had been undone, revealing a rouge red shirt underneath, which was just too short to cover her entire midriff. She was also wearing blue pants, with various trinkets hanging off each belt loop, and red shoes that were rather soggy from the trip up the driveway.

"Jane." I hissed, through gritted teeth.

"Hmm?"

"That. Hurt." I grimaced, pointing down at my feet.

Confused, she arched an eyebrow. "Huh?" Her eyes followed my fingers, looking at my battered toe.

"Oh!"

This was arrival plus fifteen minutes, and the lot of us were sitting around the kitchen bench; Alice, Batel, Miles, Jane and myself. Vincent had left the party.

I was still getting weird looks from Jane as I let my gaze drift around the room: My house was as it had been when my grandfather had decided to give me the place. It was quite the change, with the only reminder that this place had been a place that had held many warriors within its walls being the Tau base sitting in a corner of my living room.

Given that we had less than an hour's warning before she actually walked through the door, it was quite an impressive feat of cooperation. Even though the more expensive ornaments had now been stowed away, things looked like only I had lived in this house, and not that sloppily, either. Floor was clean, shelves were neatly decorated.

It... almost made the place seem... normal.

And had not, only a few days ago, been the battleground for the clash of five armies.

I hadn't seen a single moving mini in quite a while now, as we introduced each other and got up to speed. Miles was still a checkout boy at his family's place, Jane had now started applying at the local colleges and beyond. Alice was working on a new piece, and I had been doing a few sketches - of the minis, of course – and had them laid out on the table in front of me. Couldn't really help but smile to myself; Jane alone out of my family was the most social. Even shy, evasive Batel was talking to her now, although she still had a lot on her mind.

And lonely.

Jane was chatting, getting to know Batel, who was dodging her questions as best she could.

"So, how did you get to know my brother?"

"We met at a supermarket." She answered, a slight quaver of uncertainty outlining her voice. "He and Vincent helped me with a problem I had."

"Oh? Recently?" Jane picked at the explanation.

"Yeah... not too long ago."

It had been just four days ago, in fact.

"So, did they fix your problem?"

She hesitated, almost flinching from the pain of her memories. Psychic domination like that was never pretty. I found myself nervous, too, with my mind reliving that moment where she had stabbed me with the dagger. I found myself drumming my fingers against the wood of my table

"Its... a work in progress." Batel admitted.

"Ah. Is Vincent working on it in the garage?" Jane queried.

Batel's head shot up at the mention of my friend's name, and cocked her head to the side, wondering... oh, right.

Vincent had cleared out pretty quickly when my sister had come in, and now he had practically locked himself in my garage, working on the 'fabber' project that he and the Adeptus Mechanicus had started up yesterday. That, and the fact that most of the dismantled vehicles were sitting around on the floor or up on the benches meant that it was getting rather crowded in there. Oh, and Emma was hiding in there as well – we couldn't go crashing about with her being upstairs.

"I suppose..."

The corners of my sister's lips curled up into a smile.

"Then let's give him a visit!"

Jumping up, she almost knocked over the chair (nice reflexes, Miles) and marched Batel with me in tow off towards the garage.

"H-hey! Wait up!"

Vincent sighed, tapping a few keys on the keyboard. Dammit. He was a geek by definition, but his specialties lay far from that of a programmer.

"Dammit, I told you I couldn't program a fabber..."

The online community had given him a lot of help, and admittedly his progress so far had been the results of careful and painfully 'cramped' instructions from a website, and a lot of copy and pasting in the way of lines of code. Tapping in a few more commands, he pasted another chunk of code and saved it.

He looked at the jumble of electronic components on the table in front of him. The base of a fabber – in this case a 'reprap' freeware 3D printer – sat on top of a bench, the parts for it were scattered about. It had been like that ever since late last night, where they had finally started on the project. Right now, only the motors that would move around the 'printer' part of the the 3D printer had been completed, and with Jane in the house the production had ground to a standstill. Sighing, Vincent palmed his face one last time and looked at his roster; the roster for the technicians and skills under his 'jurisdiction'.

Most of the Adeptus Mechanicus weren't that very good at programming; they were mostly mechanics and technicians, people who repaired and refurbished and reassembled, not program. Generally speaking, combat engineers and the like were what he had on hand, and they were more into the physical side of machines, rather than people had a job that involved chasing electrons around in a circuit or program a machine... especially one in what was quite literally a foreign language to them.

He wondered if Luke could help him with something like this.

Tapping a few more times on his laptop, he sighed and pulled the lid closed. On cue, the laptop obediently went into stand by mode.

Picking himself up, Vincent fished out the bluetooh headset vox-caster and hooked it up to his ear. The funny thing was that with their tiny electronics and the big-scale electronics running, he had a radio and communications system that would have taken up an entire backpack, or at the very least a much heavier brick-like object that he had to strap to his belt. Or something like that.

He tapped the send button. "Akameka Actual, do you copy? This is Vector. Oly oly oxen free."

"All in the free, we're all free." Came the crisp counter-signal.

From inside a drawer, a red-robed tech-priest pulled herself out via four tentacle-like mechandrites fixed to her back. Wryly, the leader of the Skitarii – a female Tribune with a deceptively young face by the name of Amisa - let her feet touch the ground and walked over to the boy she now called – affectionately – her 'apprentice'. Despite being a part of the Tech-Guard, the rust-red shield and white-hot lance of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Amisa was also a well learned Tech-priest, and would have made herself into a fine Enginseer were it not for her bloodlust and applications thereof. She had been teaching Vincent the more rudimentary basics about the Cult Mechanicus, allowing him to act as a heavy lifter (something he excelled at) while the others worried about the finer points of vehicle maintenance.

"Akameka Actual copies five-by-five, boya." She chuckled, intoning a term of endearment from her native planet. "How is that fabber coming along, Vincent?"

"Slowly." Vincent admitted. "Programming has gone to hell, so I'm thinking we just download the standard software from the reprap website, but I'm not sure if it will be functional."

She peered at the contraption around her, letting the agile mechandrites carry her around until she was resting on top of the main crossbars. The idea of a reprap taken from the internet was readily accepted, once the wording was changed so that the designs came from 'Terran info-banks' and would only be slightly modified in a way that had been found to be 'morally acceptable' in the faces of the more conservative tech-priests, since any deviation from the original plans were heretical.

The fact that a large number of melta-guns were being waved in their general direction at the time helped smooth things over immensely.

"The x-y-z axis motors should work just fine." She concluded. "All I'm worried about is the feed system, since we've changed it around. We're just swapping out the soldering iron for a tuned up plasma cutter and changing the hopper so we can fabricate using metal parts."

As Amisa continued on, Vincent let his fingers idly traced out the sheet of rumpled paper, smudged with pencil and ink, one that had been their guide and blueprint up until now. He frowned as he tapped on a deviation from the original schematics.

"There isn't anything that needs to be changed when it comes to operating the thing..." Vincent frowned, tapping the paper one last time. "I'm just worried that there might be problems with how that tip is going to work out; it takes a lot more energy to keep that composite metal melted than it does plastic."

"... I see. In moments like this, I can only say that I hope that the Omnissiah shall guide your hand."

A sigh, coming from the larger, followed by a bang as he Bowed in Frustration.

"Alright, alright. I'll see if I can do something..."

Looking across to another box, Vincent opened it up and whistled. A red-robed techpriest poked his head out.

"Ulrich?"

Silence. Vincent let out a sigh. He was always like this...

"c0gb01?"

A mechandrite saluted from the depths of the darkness that enshrouded its owner.

"j0."

"What do you think about this?"

"p12337y fxxxin 7121pp1, b055." [Pretty fucking trippy, boss.]

Outside and in the hallways, Batel was worried. She was chewing on her bottom lip, which was a red flag of warning to me, and I was starting to hear her click her tongue – never a good sign from the normally silent young woman.

Miles stood between the garage door and Jane, unmoving as he stared her down.

"I'm not sure what you're hiding in there, Miles, but I'm pretty sure that I can at least look at it."

"No." Miles replied. "Its probably safer for Vincent that you stay here. He's worried about static." he explained, going back to the semi-rehearsed excuses that we had come across while we were talking about hiding him in there.

Bang.

Something hard hit something hard.

Well, something not-quite-hard hit something hard.

"What was that?"

Momentarily distracted, Miles half-turned to try and assess what had happened to Vincent inside of the garage without actually opening the place up. "Uh..."

The soldier didn't stand a chance.

Jane rushed him, crossing the half-meter with ease, her palm connected with his chest, and he was thrown off balance by the girl as she pushed her way past him with graceful ease. Michael's heart caught into his throat as he dashed forward, sending Miles into a graceless tumble at the mercy of gravity as he chased after his sister. Batel jumped lightly over his prone form as he groaned something about being careful, which left Alice to kneel down in front of him and poke him in the cheek with her fingers.

"You alright there, Miles?"

"CONTACT! She's outside the garage door, maker one-zero!" Shouted a Tech-priest. "Miles is stalling her, but I don't think he can keep her out for long!"

"Bolt!" Hissed Vincent, as he went back to his stuff, shoving mini-scale keyboards and mice into their pottles then sealing them.

The twenty techpriests and engineers (they were like rabbits, in Vincent's opinion. One would happily go about its business alone, but put more than two together and suddenly you had twenty staring at your microchips) scattered, running for hidey holes an-SLAM~!

"HE~EY!"

The most feared girl in the house (Zara excepted) practically knocked the door open.

[-FREEZE: Codeword: Mike Foxtrot-]

Jane's expression went from cheerful to puzzled as the machine-code burst through the air, freezing tech-priests and their in place, sending skull probes and servitors to the ground. It was too late to recall them now, so they were frozen in place. Bonesingers halted in place, letting their armor protect them as they hit the ground and posed themselves.

"Huh?"

"That was my computer!" Vincent lied, gesturing first at the laptop which had been brought into the garage and then at the dismantled rapid prototyper sitting on the bench. "I'm trying to get this to work."

"Looks like one of those claw-grabber machines you find all over the supermarket and stuff. What's it do?"

"It makes things." He replied. "Using these motors here, make objects by building it up, layer by layer. I'm trying to mod this reprap to make parts using metals, rather than plastic."

I nodded in agreement, getting lost as Vincent explained the process that would hopefully boost our repair ability.

"But wouldn't you need to get the metal really hot? I mean, melt the machine kind of hot?"

Yes, it did, but then again we were using a 41st Millennium Tau fusion gun set to a more dispersed projection level and placed directly against the metal components. It had proven to be quite effective at getting around that problem.

I nodded, pointing at the arrangement of fusion and melta guns, formed into a cross and shrouded by grilles, that would move with the fabricator arm. "My friends and I worked around that problem."

Jane nodded, understanding dawning across her face as she inspected the components. They were unrecognizable, under the shroud that made them look like perforated cylinders, and continued her wide-eyed inspection of our efforts.

Her gaze drifted across the table, to the dozen or so technicians that were left in the open. She moved over, despite the protests from Vincent, and inspected the models. "What are they?"

Amisa, a half-dozen other techpriests, a trio of bonesingers and a Drone (Pringles, with appropriate logo) were frozen, stock still as they held themselves in either regal poses or in comfortable crouches.

Oh. Shit.

I facepalmed, and quickly explained. "They're 40k figures."

"Oh. Toys? Like, for that game you and Vincent used to play?"

A spark jumped across the shock-pistol attached to Pringles. Thankfully, Vincent was in the way.

"Yeah." He nodded, trying to keep someone from losing their temper and deploying 41st Millennium cutting tools on my sister's face.

Walking over to the table, Jane ignored the nerd's protests and picked up a bonesinger, picking the slim Eldar woman up in between her dainty fingers. She turned the armored figure over in her hands, running a third over the smooth plastic-like wraithbone plates.

"Wow... you've really done a great job with these..." Jane smirked, shooting a glance at Vincent as he slowly ripened to a tomato-like red.

The psychic wraithbone engineer had activated something similar to an armor lockup, freezing her joints in place as the pincer-like fingers clamped down on her stomach, holding the Eldar woman in place.

I wished he could snatch the Eldar out of her hands, but it would probably injure – if not outright kill – the Bonesinger if they struggled. So, we were forced to watch on helplessly as the statue-like bonesinger was inspected by my sister's probing fingers.

As her digits explored the armor, which stood stock-still on the outside, but inside the bonesinger was squirming about in her suit. I could feel her mind panicking, transmitting like crazy to the other psykers.

Eldar shared a unique relationship to their armor, made of wraithbone, a material that was essentially condensed warp energies turned into a psycho-reactive plastic, which – according to technical reports from the Adeptus Mechanicus – actually shifted around to accommodate the wearer when they were running around or moving, and had a limited self-repair function to its already resilient nanostructure.

In simpler terms, it was superior armor weight-for-weight to all examples found in the main front-line troops, though it didn't increase the strength of the users when being worn, unlike the some of the armor deployed by the Tau and Imperials, and was used in rather thin sections rather than the thick armor plates.

Most likely because it wasn't very fast at moving around, and huge armor plates would have been cumbersome, forcing the Eldar into slower engagements that didn't suit their fighting style. The semi-psychic soldiers of the Eldar – the Aspect Warriors – were always looking for hit-and-run tactics rather than long, drawn out engagements.

"You've got every little detail here... its almost like they could spring to life at any moment..."

A second Bonesinger twitched, still holding the massive, reality shattering D-Cannon normally reserved for Wraithguard in held his hands, slung at the ready and sitting comfortably at his hip like an '80s action hero. Zain'han may have been a Spiritseer and Bonesinger, but before that he had been quite the Dark Reaper and knew his way around weapons of war; heavy ones were a specialty. He also did not tolerate the man-handling of his subordinates well. A machine-priest had learned that lesson well.

Yeah. Just you go ahead and grab her in the wrong place, lassie, and I'll show ye how we can spring to life right in your face!

Jane jerked around, turning to face Vincent. "So, did'cha make this model yourself?"

"Huh?" Vincent looked up, just in time to see the Bonesinger's chest pushed in front of his face. Jane was pointing accusingly at the rather ample amount of deformation found on the breastplate.

"I mean... her boobs are like... y'know, out here." Jane set down the model and demonstrated, placing her palms pointing inwards, held out about half a foot from her own ample bust. "An' I know what a Bonesinger's supposed to look like, and... well, y'know... figured that you must have pushed out her breastplate. And stuff."

Silence reigned as Vincent and Jane stared at each other, and in the corner, a Tech-Adept was slowly bashing his way through a wall, his head leading the way as he attempted to not succumb to his Weakness of the Flesh.

Vincent shook his head at Jane, and sighed. "Nope. I didn't make these guys."

"No? I thought these were the space elves, and they were supposed to be... y'know, flat."

"..."

Everyone, with the exception of Jane facepalmed. Hooo boy... someone was going to have to pay for that later on.

"They're an entire race of peoples, Jane. There's going to be a bell-curve variety in... sizes." Vincent painfully explained, palming himself in the face as he tried to not think about what would have happened to Jane had she known about these guys.

"Yeah, but look at... huh? Where did it go?"

"What did?"

"That model..." Jane's voice tapered off as her train of thought tried to find the rails again, pointing at the now bonesinger-less tabletop.

"Oh, never mind, never mind!" Vincent jubilantly proclaimed. "You wanna see what we've been building them for, right? Ri~ight?"

I grinned as we lead her off, with Miles and Alice chuckling as they followed. Goddamn it was good, finally getting a one up on her...

Gasping, panting, Adora stumbled back into the safety of the darkness as Vincent, Michael and the others staggered out of the room, hastily leading Jane away from the minis. She had bolted as soon as she had been set down and the woman had turned away, and now she staggered along an unknown tunnel, probably freshly constructed by the servitors which now roamed the floors

She tripped, her mind already racing with vectors and trajectories, the cold, calculating brain of the Eldar engineer pathing her fall and inevitable impact with the box full of nails.

Until a pair of metal mechandrites, slender tentacles of steel and motors, coiled around her arm and waist, pulling her back from the abyss.

Amisa caught the Bonesinger in her arms, and dragged her back from the sudden drops.

"'salright, hun." She chuckled, as the exhausted and (admittedly) violated Eldar fell unconscious in her arms. "We'll take care of ya. Hey, greyskin!"

"Yes, Gue'la Amisa?"

"Go find the Eldar leader... Zaim, I think his name was. Tell him we found his friend."

"N-no! You shouldn't go in there!"

"We have shared a room before, Michael. I'm thinking you're hiding something from me!"

She barged into my room, practically kicking the door down as she stepped inside. It had changed a little since the battle for my house, with a mattress on the floor beside my bed, transplanted from the room across the hallway. I now slept on my bed, Miles the mattress and Vincent the couch downstairs

Emma was sitting on the bed, dressed in a borrowed singlet (although she was wearing some pants that had formerly belonged to a fifteen year old Jane), a scrunchy in her mouth as she held her hands up behind her back, ready to tie her hair into a ponytail.

She stared back at us, then calmly continued tying her dark hair.

Jane blinked a few times, then turned back to me.

My mind wasn't quite functioning at the moment, with me panicking and all. Jane turned to face me, and pointed at the room.

"Your room is... kinda normal. Kinda smells funny, though... like... Are you hiding something?"

…

Normal?

…

What! ?

Emma faced me, and mouthed a word; cloak.

So she had let herself become invisible?

I thought I was going to have a heart attack there, and slumped against the doorframe with a sigh of relief.

"Hey, hey!" Jane turned around as she heard my head hit the wall. "Hey, Mike? You okay there? You are hiding something from me, aren't you? You got drugs in the house or something, cuz I'm still smelling something that ain't right!"

"Must've been the Indian we had last night." To be honest, I never mixed well with really spicy curries, but Emma had insisted when she and Alice came back with food for the night. I tried to look pale and sickly, something that I was exceedingly good at given the moment, and Jane bought it. I think. "I gotta go... just need to grab a drink."

We lead her back down into the kitchen, dancing the tango of the deceiver and the deceived as she began to inspect and question, her suspicions raised as we drifted off to the corner of the living room that was normally occupied with Tau.

Shall we Ask her to leave now, Michael? Chuckled Zara, who no doubt sensed my frustrations. And thoroughly enjoyed them, too. I sighed, watching as Jane scanned the house around her, eyes narrowing as she scanned the tables and the cupboards. She was suspicious already? What of? Zara and the other command teams were hiding in the back of the pots and pans stored in the lower cupboards, so it would take a lot of rummaging and time to get at them.

Though I am amused by this, you must remember that I do not take any actual pleasure from seeing you fall over each other in trying to appease your sister, that would be too Slaaneshi for my tastes.

So what exactly would these tastes be?

Chocolate, cookies and cream. Maybe some vanilla if I'm feeling a little imaginative with the rum.

... what.

My question still stands; do you wish for us to Ask her to leave?

I shook my head, and gave her a firm 'no' in response. That was worth the strange look I got from Jane, as my hair settled back into their usual places. I wasn't going to have someone mess with my sister's head. She was unstable enough as it was. The psychic presence of the Farseer retreated, and I found myself face-to-face with my sister.

Her face was inquisitive, puzzled. She stared at me, her eyes piercing as she worked to overcome the difference in my height and hers. Jane was holding herself steadily, locking the two of us into an interrogation without questions, but would yield many answers.

She might have made an excellent Inquisitor one day. Murmured a voice. Raquel?

Jane blinked, and looked at me. She was thinking about something...

"Hey, Mickey?"

"Yeah?" I answered, if a little nervously.

"You're spacing out on me again..." She giggled.

"Hmm?"

She game me a friendly, if slightly worried, smile and then gave me a light punch to the shoulder. "What have you been doing, anyway? Its almost been three months since you last got in touch with mom an' me."

That's right... I gave her a call the week before the miniatures appeared, and then... I guess I had just too many thing on my my mind.

"Dioramas." I blurted, cheeks flushing red. "Lots and lots of dioramas. Things have been... busy. Its quite a big project that I took up, and I can't afford to lose on this one."

"Competition?"

We were walking and talking, and I was leading her back to the living room, and back to the Tau base. She was keeping pace with me, pretty much side-by-side with me as we made our way through the house.

"Pretty much, yeah."

"What's the prize?"

The privilege of existence was the answer I wanted to give, partially because it was true and partially because I wanted to see her eyes pop out like they did when she was surprised, but instead I restrained myself and simply sighed. "A solution to my problems."

"Money?"

I flinched, nodding. "I've been talking with a guy that works for Games Workshop since last month, showed him some of my sketches of the guys that had built these." I gestured at the buildings. "He likes what I've been doing, apparently, and I might start doing book covers and art for them. I've been selling the completed buildings to the model shop for quite a bit, too. Most of the stuff you see here isn't quite finished yet."

Well, the outer shells, anyway. Most of the internal components had been hollowed out and used in the new buildings. The minis – for the most part - weren't particularly fussed about having their buildings removed, since the had been expanding other parts of their bases anyway. I had also taken away a lot of the destroyed buildings, and had them ready to go and get sold. I gritted my teeth. The praises that had been sung in my name for the making of such realistic battlegrounds had stung me to the core.

Though people – once living and breathing beings, had shed blood for those same places... I... we... we needed to make room. Needed them for replacements. And why throw away perfectly good buildings that would set most people back a couple of hundred dollars for a set like the ones that we had made?

"Nice." She grinned, but there was something off about that smile.

There was an awkwardness around us. Jane knew that something was wrong, and so did I; I didn't usually act this way, nor was the house usually so... sterile... and now she would be starting to catch on to it.

My sister Jane had moved on, now looking at the Tau hab blocks and buildings, curiously poking around the conical structures. It had been a while since she had last seen my work, and considering that the hurriedly fabricated Tau buildings were rather roughly cast, it wasn't a surprise that she probably thought that they were still a work in progress.

"Might sell 'em later on. Gonna have to finish them in the first place, though."

She nodded, crouching down beside them. Reaching out, her fingers closed around the Tau motor pool. I hissed at her in warning.

"Stop! I haven't finished that, so don't touch it!"

Jane's hand flinched away from the crane set on top of it as if it were suddenly red hot. Her head swung around, an expression of shock and surprise on her features. Not the good kind; she was afraid.

Oh.

I chewed on my lip nervously... I think this was the first time I had shouted at her in a while.

A long, long time ago, it had happened, but...

"S-sorry... it's just that. Yeah... things have been kinda... strained recently." Like, y'know, my sanity.

Jane nodded, ignoring the questioning looks from Miles and Alice, and continued to poke around the Tau base.

"You've really worked hard on this, haven't you?" She smiled, a lot less energetic now as she slipped into uncertainty.

I could almost read her mind; 'what's wrong with my brother?'.

Huh. Maybe I did.

"Michael."

"Hmm?"

"Are you alright?" She queried.

"Yeah. We've just been having a lot of trouble lately. Y'know... that stuff."

"Something to do with those bandages?" She asked, pointing at my collar. I nodded, covering them up with my shirt.

"Ran into some trouble."

"I see... something to do with Batel?"

How sharp. She definitely would have made a good Inquisitor.

I agree. Chuckled the mind-specter of Inquisitor Danilov.

I smiled, sadly, and nodded. Jane shifted around uncomfortably, looking around her.

"Yeah."

"Wanna talk about it?"

NO. SAY NO, MON KEIGH!

"Its... complicated." I admitted, as Jane nodded, her eyes distant. Distracted.

Mon-keigh, you will not give us away! I will not have you hint at it like that! Its like playing chicken with a Wraithlord, and Gods forgive me, I know what that's like! Are you listening to me?

"Girl trouble?" Grinned Jane.

"Kind of." I admitted.

If you start talking about flowers, Michael, I will personally end you, do you hear me?.

Jane tapped her chin, thoughtful. There was a sudden tension in the air, like the feeling you get when standing near a big radio tower.

"Troubles... what about some random voices threatening you from the shadows?"

Oh. Zara was stammering, audibly shaken even through the psychic channel. Oh Gods.

My sister sucked in a deep breath, and let it out.

Your sister! She's a psyker! She's a flurgen sensitive!

What?

SHE CAN HEAR US!

I was faintly aware of a thrum of power, of my skin prickling from a sudden cold as Jane's expression perked up, her eyes darting around in a searching pattern, trying to find Zara. The way it felt, I could almost visualize a sphere expanding out from the core of my sister's soul, and then it all focused, her attention tunneling towards the kitchen where the Farseer hid. She fixed upon the kitchen cabinet, and started moving towards it, before Emma stepped out from nowhere, palming the back of my sister's skull, and sending a pulse of refined warp-energy through her fingertips.

Jane suddenly and wordlessly went limp and simply dropped into Emma's waiting arms, which struggled to keep my sister from crashing into the ground. 'Went out like a light' was the best way to describe it.

Emma knelt down beside my sister, and did the usual checks – pulse, breathing, sleeping – as Miles set her down.

"She's unconscious, Michael. Her body and mind is already fighting... she's going to be up in the next five minutes." She grinned. "So, Michael, I'm going to make this into a lesson and ask you; what shall we do?"

"I suppose asking her is out of the question now, isn't it?"

Emma shook her head. "She's aware, Michael."

Well... damn.