Toyhammer

The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome.

A Fan fic in progress by Rogue Psyker

Chapter 1

"This is Inquisitor Iosef Danilov. What is your status?"

Ragged breathing hissed out of his helmet as the grey-armored figure tapped his Vox-caster.

"We are currently unsure. The terrain is most confusing as it bears little... coherence. The surface I am on can only be described as... springy. This place appears to be artificial, sir."

The sound of battle erupted around him as the lead Knight began firing his Storm Bolter, ripping a ragged line of holes in the cliff face. A slim, armored warrior stood before them, its spear crackling ominously with eldritch powers as it faced the four Grey Knights.

"You are outnumbered, xenos! Prepare to die!"

Then suddenly, there was a popping sensation as oddly armored figures emerged from nowhere.

"Alright, see ya 'round, Michael."

"Yeah. Tomorrow, then. Later, Vincent."

Trudging up the path to my house, I looked up at it. It wasn't a large house, but it wasn't small either.

Four bedrooms, two bathrooms on each of the two floors, a lounge, kitchen... you know, the stock standard thing for a growing family, except that I was in here alone. My grandfather had left me this house to piss off his sons, seeing as they were all married and sucking up to him so they could get the place. And... my father had left marks on me. Grandad was one hell of a guy if you pissed him off.

So, when he died his Will was one hell of a surprise: I was shipped in as the caretaker of his estate, and I had lived here with what few cousins I had going through the local colleges, but otherwise I was simply going to ply my trade as an aspiring artist. Right now, I was keeping the place down for when my baby sis would come along for her stint in college, so it wasn't a bad deal.

Unlocking the door, I opened it as a marble-sized, bright blue sun arced across the living room, instantly vaporizing a CD wide section of the carpet. Chattering gunfire, self-righteous shouts, litanies of hate and cries for medics filled the room.

What. The. Hell.

I recognized the small, table-top miniature sized figures were running around; some fighting in brutal hand-to-hand combat while others stayed at a distance in exchanged of brutal volley-after-volley barrages that more than damaged the furniture around the house. They all belonged to a game... Warhammer 40k, if I recall correctly. Good thing I had given most of the older stuff to aunt Linda, then.

My mind was going overdrive in shock, I found myself entranced, watching the battlefield as something settled into my stomach. I had played Dawn of War before. I had also tried (badly) at getting a hang of the tabletop games. Occasionally, I did a few sketches for friends who were fans. The little figures around me were from one of the most violent universes imaginable, and that universe had just deposited their most brutal warriors into my living room.

My knees buckled and I had to lean against a wall as Assault Space Marines traded blows with Eldar Banshees, Tau Fire Warriors sniped Imperial Guardsmen (which were occupying the doorway into the kitchen/hallway area, the closest force to me), and... an Inquisitor strangling his Vox-operator. A bright maelstrom of glowing skulls drew my attention to the Sisters of Battle, Grey Knights and other Inquisitional forces that were locked in combat with the other colorful Eldar and Tau forces around the couches.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN HERE!"

Everyone stopped as the booming voice above them demanded explanation.

Several heads turned, seeing me for the first time.

Okay, I'm not quite that much of a person in real life; blond hair that was rather long at the back, tied into a ponytail at times. I have blue eyes, which were right now more worried than angry, as well as some rather plain, mostly second-hand clothes.

If I bumped into you on the street, you're most likely to forget me in about two minutes.

These guys, however, looked like they needed sunglasses. Like I was some sparkling freak as I stepped in with the bright sun behind me. A few fell to their knees as they looked up in awe or confusion

But then again, I was about the size of the Empire State building when you thought about scale, so yeah.

The Inquisitor stopped strangling the poor vox-operator, and began to shout at the nearby tank - I recognized it as from one of the few factions of the game that I was familiar with: The Imperial Guard. This shoe-sized vehicle was perfectly identical to one of the tanks that my Warhammer 40k fan of a friend Vincent had shown me: A Leman Russ battle tank, the steroid enhanced T-34 of the 41st Millenium. It swung its massive cannon around to shoot at my knee. I panicked, and fell back to Isaac's – an old friend of mine, irrelevant to the story – usual lectures about idiotic things to try; such as shoving an umbrella into a gun to stop it from killing you.

An umbrella was ripped from the stand beside the door before I rammed the tip of the umbrella at the barrel. It missed, but sent the Leman Russ skittering off on its treads. The cannon fired wildly – hitting a wall – and stopping as its crew popped their hatches and wretched up their breakfast.

I picked up the tank - it was maybe the same weight as couple bricks - turned it upside down and gave it a shake. Screams and the sound of churning vomit and clattering high-explosive shells squeaked out from inside. A few Imperium tank-operators fell out screaming as they dropped the six inches/sixty feet to the ground. I hefted the tank in my hands, and looked around. Most of the figures around the living room were stock still in a tableau of shock.

That incident, if anything, steeled my confidence; I was much, much larger, and therefore could handle more people at once.

"Okay, if anyone else gets the idea of shooting me, I can - and will - throw this tank at you." A red-robed, half-machine man squeaked and fainted behind the Inquisitor. For the moment, I ignored him.

"So... I assume you all have leaders. Those leaders will tell their respective warriors to stand down and go sulk in a corner. Then they will meet me in the center of this room, now. And if you so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, I will introduce you to a HyperVac 3200."

The human soldiers at my toes all began to wonder what the HyperVac (my rusted old vacuum cleaner) was, but decided that it was better to ask me when I wasn't angry, so they all began to mill about, shouting orders and organizing themselves into their companies and taking shelter in the kitchen. The Inquisitor and his retinue quietly fell in behind me (but I could feel the hate being bored into my ankles).

Walking into the living room, I sat down on the sofa, waiting for the others to come along.

An angled, yellow-and-red armored suit flew on plumes of brilliant blue light as it hovered in the air as below, a large, hovering vehicle with very fish-like characteristics skimmed over the charred carpet. There was a faint 'pop', I smelled a hint of ozone (being in the same Chemistry class as Vincent during high school introduced you to a lot of new and often hazardous smells) and a walking armored bear, painted in royal blue and gold, stalked in with his massive left fist crackling energy even as he hefted a massive double barreled cannon. Glowing eyes and smoking scorch marks on his armor gave him a fearsome appearance. His retinue ran or jumped up to meet on the hard, wooden coffee table.

Something disturbed the air behind him, and a tall, elegant warrior armed with a glowing spear and swirling cape appeared. Holding a (geometrically) curvy pistol and moving with unnatural grace, I again was struck by the polarity of the two races: the Space Marine, of course, was brutally stocky and looked like he could barrel through any combat situation. The Eldar here, however, was tall and lithe, slim and... fragile. The large, dozen-and a half members of this one's council took me aback, though. There were simply so many!

Other warriors appeared around them, but it was they who grabbed my attention the most. Trawling through my mind, I recognized them as a Space Marine Force Commander and Eldar Farseer, respectively. The Farseer looked up at me, and I could see that it was visibly annoyed at me.

"We are here, as you have so kindly asked us, mon-keigh. Now speak," she hissed. "and let us be back to war."

The blue suit of armor whipped around, snarling something incoherent as it swung a mighty fist around. Coneheaded and willowy simply ducked under the blow, laughing with its rather odd yet regal voice. It brought its spear back up.

"Now that's more like it!"

Both of them were audibly pained as I slammed the Leman Russ down on them. Half the assembled leaders flinched from the impact. Shouts of frustration and agony came out from underneath the treads.

"Like I said; no fighting, damn you."

I lifted the tank off the two leaders, and they straightened themselves up, considerably chastened but probably uninjured, considering their mastery of combat. Scanning the faces before me as I sat on the battle-scarred couch, I considered my situation. There were characters from one of the most grimdark universes that humankind has imagined; military officers from the Imperium of Man (as Imperial Guard and Inquisition), Space Marine, Tau and Eldar factions were all assembled before me.

"Well, at least I don't have to deal with any Chaos or Orks." I muttered, rubbing my temples in frustration.

The races in front of me nodded rather cautiously, wondering what kind of game I was up to.

"Alright. So. Introductions first, along with whoever is your command squad. I'm Michael, I own this house and can crush you with a tank."

Thinking for a moment, I decided to add: "Repeatedly, if necessary. Or with something heavier."

A few glares were thrown in my direction. I sighed. "How about you?"

I pointed at the now very nervous Imperial Guard General and his command squad. After all, he was the most squishy one out of the heavily armored Space Marine and Inquisitor, the battlesuit-equipped Tau and the elegantly armored Eldar warrior.

"General Ulrich Faust of the Cadian 938th. My aides; Commissar Tomas Sturm, Father Bennedict, Kasrkin Leon Cadiasson, and Sanctioned Psyker Ishabeth." The man muttered, his hands resting on the hilts of his weapons; a sword and pistol. His retinue was composed of a black-greatcoat wearing man who fit the Soviet Russian Commissar stereotype perfectly, a priestly man with an eight foot chainsaw, a helmeted warrior who looked about as heavily armored as a human could get, and a woman who looked about the youngest of the group around me, cradling a staff with an eagle on its tip in her hands and gently whispering to it.

I moved my gaze to the armored bear. His voice was the modulated kind you get from someone trying to speak from the insides of a very echoey helmet.

"Eizak Arelius, Commander of the Angela Crusade. Ultramarines Chapter. With me is Chaplain Morteus, Librarian Vasili and Assault Sergeant Vinters." The other three Space Marine leaders were less armored, but not by much; the black-armored 'Chaplain' wore a mask that looked almost like a skull, and eyes glowed red as they bored into my soul. I quickly turned to the Librarian, who had a massive hood of metal and wiring mounted on his head. The man's eyes also disconcerted me. The last of these was perhaps the lowest ranking, his armor with very few decorations past a few lines of prayer engraved upon his shoulder-pads. What was striking was the large jetpack on his back and the chainsaw-meets-sword held loosely in his left hand.

A pointed look at the Inquisitor got me a very hard stare back. Thank goodness I couldn't make out his eyes; they would have made me piss myself if I wasn't careful.

"Inquisitor Iosef Danilov of Sebiska. Ordo Malleus. Also Canonness Samisha Ludmilla of the Sisters of Battle and Justicar Amadeus of the Grey Knights, as well as Arbites Judge Phobias." Phou-bai-ahs, I noted.

Nodding at the three others mentioned; a black-armored female with a rather incendiary theme about her, a grey armored knight with a crackling blue halberd and a man who looked like Judge Dredd after a shave, I quickly moved on to the Eldar, which met my gaze from the glowing vision slits of her conical helmet. She had, by far, the largest retinue of the forces around here.

"Farseer Zara, Ulthwe craftworld. My protege here is Councillor Alvus. Those standing around me are the Exarches of the Howling Banshees Lyndia... " She glanced behind her. "Shining Spears Iyanshir, Warp Spiders Gladosh, Striking Scorpions Yandeer, Swooping Hawks Al-Tair..."

I quickly held up my hand for her to stop, and shrugged. There were still probably another twelve or so to go.

"Thanks for introducing me, but... I think I can learn their names later on."

I was, also, on the verge of laughter at the sheer size differences and variety among them. They looked more like a troop of clowns, rather than warriors! Although I was probably going to have to ask her to introduce us again, it would have probably taken too long. I moved on, and looked at the battlesuited warrior.

"And last but not least..."

"Shas'El Fi'rios …" I saw hesitate, and then wave dismissively. "Gue'la have a hard time understanding the meaning of Tau names, but I believe my personal name in your language means 'Firestrike', and that will suffice.. Ethereal Aun'ui accompanies and guides us. I believe you can also learn the names of our other leaders later." The Fire Warrior replied, eyeing me with the tricolored visual sensors embedded in its helmet. The smaller Tau who had accompanied him was simply robed, and probably the only one among them who wasn't armored.

"Alright." I sighed, standing. "Its... interesting to meet you all, but now that you've shot up my hous~"

The three-dozen leaders all erupted into frenzied arguments, summing up their varied arguments as 'those people did it!'. I placed the Leman Russ on the ground, grabbed the coffee table and gave it a good shaking. The artificial earthquake subsided after a few seconds.

"Look. I'm pretty sure you all have your respective differences, but this is my house, understand?" I glared at the lot of them. "Would you kindly show some decency, since you are all such 'advanced' civilizations?"

The lot of them stopped their arguments, and a few sheathed their weapons. Then there were subtle murmurs in the tune of 'alright' chorusing around. I sighed.

"Good. Now lets find you some bases, and we'll draw up some kind of agreement and... " I paused, sniffing the air. The others noticed, and did the same themselves.

"Wait... what's burning?"

I looked from one face to another, before we all turned to look at the smoking cabinet of DVDs. A large hole was burned into the paneling. I noticed several soldiers nervously tuck away tubular weapons and flamethrowers. Inside, something flickered. My DVDs were burning.

"OH SH~"

Chapter 2

Thought for the day:

"The weak panic and act. The strong panic, think, then act.."

"Alright... is that it? Can any of you guys see any fire?"

I held the fire extinguisher loosely in my hand, which had been hastily ripped from its place underneath the kitchen counter, and prepared to squeeze out another blast of the carbon dioxide. The white powdery gas still wafted around the room as I coughed a few times. My DVD collection was simply ashes. The Tau stealthsuits boosted their way up into the cabinet, and were quickly joined by the Assault Marines and peered around inside. Their investigation lasted all of a brief few seconds.

"It appears so." They replied. Sergeant Vinters added his own report; "A lot of the crystalline structures also seem to be irrecoverably damaged."

"In English, please?" I grumbled, half sarcastically.

"Hmm?" Came the grunted reply.

"I believe that he means for you to speak simple Low Gothic, Sergeant Vinters." A black armored woman said, rather timidly. "English is one of the most archaic of languages... I believe it originated from Terra itself."

"Oh. I see. Well, then here's some simple Low Gothic for you: We ruined his disks."

I gave a great sigh of anguish and frustration, and turned to look at the assembled armies behind me. In particular the ones who held heat-based weapons; flamethrowers, tube-like weapons that I learned later were called meltas, plasma guns, plasma cannon, plasma rifles and the long, thin lances of the red-armored Eldar (called Fire Pikes, I believe). Their respective owners quickly tried to hide behind larger allies, who kept shuffling out of the way. They didn't want to get in the way of a titan's wrath.

It must have been confusing, to them, that a giant such as me could wear a face of absolute anguish. I mean, my entire DVD collection! Years of time and maybe hundreds of dollars simply down the drain because of one errant shot! The classics in there; Jackie Chan, Charlie Chaplain, Bruce Lee and the Three Stooges, I mean... they were irreplaceable! Most of them weren't being sold anymore. I tsk'd in frustration, and a few of the soldiers assembled visibly winced.

"So, what have we learned here today, folks?" I muttered sarcastically, hefting the heavy fire extinguisher onto my shoulder. Quick consideration of scale here; the actual fire extinguisher was maybe two feet in length, six inches wide at most. On their scale, it would be the size of the orange part of the Space Shuttle. In other words; very large and very heavy. I looked down at the various troops, who had come along to see what the commotion was about, especially with the large blasts of fire-suppressant smoke.

I let my back hit the wall behind me, and I sunk to the floor, with hundreds of eyes and optical sensors tracking my descent. My mind pushed away the matter of my DVDs, they could be dealt with later. What I needed to do now was to keep these guys from hitting my TV, or computer, or the other precious and expensive things in my house.

"Leaders, I know who you are. Come here."

The characteristic leaders of the three forces quietly shuffled forward. I looked from one to the other, seeing a mix of confusion, sympathy, disgust and apathy.

"Okay. The fighting stops now. I don't want you guys ruining anything else."

Protests came up, but were quickly stopped as I slammed down the fire extinguisher.

"Second: I'll try and give you guys as much breathing room as possible, but what I say goes, understand?" I looked on, and it was the Eldar Farseer who spoke first.

"You do not dictate our actions, mon-keigh!"

There was a chill in the air as she stretched out her hand, and lighting crackled from her fingertips. I felt an unbelievable migraine pulse in the back of my head. I quickly realized that she was doing something to me. I slapped down, smashing the Farseer to the side. She gave a cry of pain as she was knocked into the nearby Tau Battlesuit.

The Shas'El staggered as the impact caught it unprepared, his burst cannon going off and glancing off the armored figure of the Space Marine. For a moment, I thought the fighting would end. But then, the commander howled in rage, charging forward in concert with his retinue, and knocking over a green colored Eldar with a chainsaw/sword weapon, who swung the long, slender sword wildly in response.

That chainsword cut off the augmented limb of a red-robed cyborg, who gave out a synthesized cry as he fell over backwards, a plasma bolt shooting off from one of his mechanical arms, and hitting a Grim Reaper-esque Eldar.

The slug of sunfire splashed over his heavy armor, blackening the bright portions of his black carapace. The Reaper was stunned for a second as his suit dissipated the heat, and he quickly prepared his weapon – a large, pen-like weapon that was fired from the hip. He returned fire, sending a hail of mini-missiles into the black-armored Canoness as 'Sanctioned Pskyer Ishabeth' threw herself out of the way.

The return fire went wide as the tumbling Farseer and Terminator Commander bumped into her, sending a ray of pure heat shooting past my head. I fell back, and got back up to see the Inquisitor pull out a pistol and start shooting red beams at the Eldar. Behind them, the various armies were now re-equipping themselves to get into a fight – a big one. The escalation was magnificient; from a single slap, I had re-started a four-sided war.

I had enough now. A blast of carbon dioxide sent all of the non-helmeted faction leaders into coughing fits as their lungs struggled to breathe, while the others were forced to stop because of the billowing white smoke. By the time it cleared, most were again calm and peaceful. However, the Farseer Zara and Eizak were already in combat again, so I brought down the fire extinguisher on them. There was a strangled cry as the two were mashed into each other between a plate of metal and the carpet.

"Jeeze, is this going to be a running gag or something!" I growled at them, looking from one face to another. With the Sanctioned Psyker, I saw that she was looking past my shoulder. I looked up to give the burning lampshade a blast of CO2 .

"Anyone else want to start a fight?" I growled, my temper long since lost. I hefted the bright red fire extinguisher. "None? Good! Now sit down. All of you!"

Almost three hundred asses hit the floor. Those who weren't able to or were already sitting were excused.

"You are treating us like children, mon-keigh." The Eldar Farseer quipped.

SLAM! The fire extinguisher came down beside her, who jerked up in surprise as the giant red tube slammed into the ground beside her.

"Do you think I give a fuck! You guys have been tearing my house apart for who knows how long! A~"

"My chronometer says we have been fighting for approximately sixteen minutes forty one seconds from the first shots thirty minutes ago, when we arrived." The one arm less (though not harmless, ha ha ha.) cogboy piped up.

"I really didn't need that, but my point still stands: you guys took less than twenty minutes to almost burn down my house! And after that, you refuse to keep still!"

"Duly noted, mon-keigh." The Eldar grated her will against mine, and I simply rolled the giant tube of CO2 closer to her legs. She shuffled backwards a little.

"Alright, guys. My house, my rules: No fighting, full stop. If you want to have a fight, then prepare for the consequences, which will be either big, red and tubular." I hefted the fire extinguisher again. "The other consequence really sucks, too." I sat down, careful not to crush anything important – like, maybe, an Ethereal – and looked on at the faces around me.

"We can decide the niceties of your stay here, but for the moment I want anyone who knows anything to try and figure out why the hell you're here, the rest of you can get to work cleaning up this place. I'm happy to help either job get done."

In the distance, out in the back-yard, I heard a rough voice shout out.

"Oi! Lookit ovver dere! Go tellz the boss, yer fat git! Movvit! HEY BOSS! I SEEZ DEM PINKIES!" There was also a distinct pause as the scout goggled at me.

"AN' A BIG WUN TOO!"

I recognized the rough pattern of speech as belonging to a ramshackle buggy-thing, with a large, green-skinned ork riding on top. I let out a groan of anguish. Here were the orks.

"Damn..." Picking myself up, I quickly jogged out to follow the scout. In my back yard, there was a rather large battlefield, which had shredded quite a bit of the grass. Craters and scorch marks were liberally scattered throughout the back yard. There was also a few eviscerated corpses of greenskins. It was easy to see what had happened; someone started a fight in the mob, then it spread throughout the ork contingent. What remained had been rallied and put under control, and were now heading towards me.

Running back into the house, I picked up my only weapon; the fire extinguisher.

"So, Michael, what have you found?" The Imperial General asked me.

"Green guys, lots and lots of little green things. Orks, I think."

The ranks began to panic. The shout of 'greenskins' began to run through the armies as they attempted to bring their weapons around to bear. There were several cries to halt, particularly from the Eldar. I looked at the leaders of the elfin race, who were almost grinning at me. Oh shit. They were going to play by my rules just when it would be the most inconveniencing for me. Damn.

"So I'm taking it you won't fight?" I asked them, bitter.

"No, mon-keigh, we shall not. We will abide by your rules for as long as you live and nobody initiates violence against the Eldar." Zara replied. It was the same kind of tone that you'd get from someone being bloody cheeky.

I gave out a long sigh. "Ugh... fine, I'll go take care of them myself." Picking up the fire extinguisher, wondering if there would be enough CO2 in there to take out the assembled Orks, I walked out into the dining room. The Farseer just sneered at me, daring me to take out the Orks single-handedly.

Its about this time that you'd like to know a little more about the layout of my house, particularly the part that was about to become a battlefield. Well, the living room was connected by a wide archway to the dining room, which then lead out to the porch, where the Orks were currently assembling. There was a small table, with various bits of clutter and art supplies scattered about. A large piece of canvas was leaning against a wall, which had various sketches of things on it – damn, I hope they don't get ruined – and opposite that was a simple, square mirror.

The green tide and my weapon of choice met just before the door at the porch. The lead ork was a big bugger, with plates of metal all over him. A sudden impact from my fire extinguisher left him a green and red smudge on the ground. And the four or so orks that were just behind him. I hammered away like that for a while as the Orks looked on, jaws dropping from surprise. They then got over it rather quickly and continued their charge.

"Stop, damn you, stop!"

A series of gunshots sent my limbs on fire; it was like getting stabbed with a hundred needles. I simply wasn't used to that kind of pain. I fell to my knees, since most of the gunfire was concentrated at my legs, and tried weakly to keep hammering at the greenskins. In the distance, I saw the largest one I had seen so far raise an axe. He roared, and was soon joined by the rest of his army.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Slowly but surely, I was beaten back, trying to keep the stinging pain away from me as I swatted uselessly at the rocket-propelled orks that kept zipping past my head. They were going to bring me down with a death of a thousand cuts. One of those Orks slapped my nose with a little plate, which I managed to rip off and throw away before it exploded. A demolitions charge? I didn't have time to wonder as there was a series of pops, and a small swarm of missiles slammed into the greenskins around me, blowing them out of the sky. The Sky Ray missile gunship of the Tau lowered its twin pods.

"Gue'vesa'o Mi'kel! You have so far striven for peace with honor, and the Greater Good! We shall not abandon you to face the Greenskins alone!" The Tau were already marching out, their odd blue gunships hovering into position, deploying troops as the sound of the Ork war drums filled the air. The Tau's heavier battlesuits began stomping into the ground like sumo-wrestlers readying for a bout in answer. Large cannon glowed blue as they prepared to fire.

Behind me, there were the sounds of mechanical footsteps. The heavily modulated voice of the Space Marine Commander pitched in. "Michael, we shall also join you in battle." The booming vocalizations of Ultramarine Eizak reassured me, marching forward with his retinue, who were already grinning in anticipation, although with the fully helmeted Chaplain, I wasn't quite sure about.

"You may have harmed us, but it was for the sake of pacifying your home. For that, I bear you no grievances. And anyway, one less ork is one less trouble for us. So... ANGELS OF DEATH, PREPARE FOR BATTLE!"

I smiled at these two races, who were already putting aside their differences to fight a greater enemy, pepared to defend my house.

The Ethereal walked forward, a small device in his hand. Beside him was one of his bodyguards, who had a very large box mounted on his back. He turned to face away from the Space Marines, and it was there I realized what they were; a speaker and microphone combo. Behind him, someone had projected a simple battle-plan onto the wall. The Ethereal's voice was absolutely authoritative and a.

"Space Marines, if you would be so kind as to deploy in a staggered formation with our Fire Warriors, we will appreciate you to keep the greenskins from engaging our forces in close combat, we will strive to thin out their numbers from long range. And as Gue'vesa'o Mi'kel is more than likely to add, let us all attempt to keep environmental damage to a minimum. Imperial forces, if you are joining the battle, then deploy alongside our Fire Warriors, or in front of them if you are more inclined for close combat."

There was an almighty roar from the Space Marines, who all did a synchronized about-turn and began to march out into their battle lines, deploying alongside the Tau. From the Imperial lines, there was was some argument and quite a bit of pointing-of-storm-bolters-to-foreheads-of-Generals-and-assorted-officers, but soon enough and without need of executions they got the rest of the Imperial forces into the fray as well, deploying behind the Adeptus Astartes.

I got up, gave one final look to the bewildered Eldar, and joined the battle lines.

The coalition army advanced as one, the Marines spreading their bolter shots liberally across the front lines as the Tau whittled them down from the back lines. Missiles and beams of light – the hypersonic railguns igniting the air, I later learned – crisscrossed the room as I moved away from battle. There was an audible crunch as the two armies met, the revving of chainblades and the other, more exotic sounds of war echoed off the walls. I was still dizzy from the pain, so I picked myself up and looked on, half amused at the war in my dining room. The Marines were having the time of their lives in there, the blades and hammers and armored fists rising, falling, cutting, slashing and generally butchering whatever was green. The rear lines were lobbing artillery at each other, and I was thankful at the sight that my floor was standing up pretty well to the exchange.

Soon enough, I was able to join in by slamming the few Orks that peeled off from the flanks. It was almost comedic, how suddenly the battle would pause as a giant red tube would fall from the sky and smash a half-dozen orks. I was probably bleeding from a few dozen little holes, so I happily handed the battle over to the rest after a few of the extinguisher strikes.

"GET DEM, BOYZ! C'MON, YOU 'ITTLE RUNTS!"

The cries of the Warboss attracted my attention over the sounds of battle, and I briefly remember hurling the fire extinguisher in his direction. There was a moment of uncertainty as the Warboss was crushed under the weight of the heavy metal canister. Skidding across the slick blood, it rolled a few times, crushing this and that and knocking a few of their tanks over.

All of the orks lulled in their fighting as some cries going along the lines of 'the Boss is dead!' swept through the greenskin ranks. They all stopped for a second, before looking to the source of the large, red projectile that had smashed – no, smudged – their leader. A few front-line bosses looked from one to the other.

"Da big oomie did it!" One exclaimed. He prodded his armored companion. "Wot we do now?"

"Soz, if dat big oomie squidged the Boss, dat mean he'z da new boss now?"

"Naw, you silly git, dat wouldn't be orky!" A third barged in, his red eye aglow as his metal helmet/skull sparked from some exposed wires. "I'z the biggest Nob after the boss, soz I'm da new warboss!"

"Then eat my muzzles, Ork."

Justicar Amadeus, who literally appeared in a halo of light, dashed forward to punch the third Ork in the face, before unloading his double-barreled-automatic-rocket-propelled-armor-piercing-grenade-launcher into the choked maw of the big, red armored Nob. The greenskin's head exploded, for lack of a better description, sending bits of metal and skull – I'm not sure if the two were mutually exclusive – spraying into his friends. The stump that was left didn't have time to do anything but fall to the ground, where it got stabbed a few times with the glowing blue halberd of the Justicar.

"Any more complaints?" He asked the assembled Orks.

A fourth Ork Nob stomped forward, his armored claw clacking like a crab. "Yea, m~"

Anywhere between one to twenty flavors of explosive, armor penetrating, high velocity or extremely hot munitions were pumped into the Ork from every direction before he even got a chance to take a third step. When I had finished blinking the spots out of my eyes, there was a black smudge where he had stood without anything, even falling parts, to acknowledge his former existence. The other orks were simply awed at the display of pure, concentrated firepower.

"Now dat's lots o' dakka." One managed to say.

I grunted sarcastically. "Well, I guess there aren't any more, then?" My body was burning up, and I was so tired from both my college and from dealing with these guys that I had almost sounded nonchalant.

"No? Good." I looked at the assembled armies.

"Aun'ui Alva, please make sure the Orks are gathered up, co-ordinate with the others to search around the back yard to make sure that there aren't any more Orks running around. I'm going to go clean up." I looked at the remaining orks, maybe a little more than half of the initial army.

"Okay... you guys can stay, so I suggest you start learning manners, like not fighting. Start fighting, and you'll be seeing that thing." I pointed at the fire extinguisher. "Stomping on you. Understand?"

Overwhelmed by the firepower presented to them, the Orks were mostly smart enough to nod and bunch up. A few tried to WAAAGH! their way out, but were soon put down by the ring of firepower surrounding them.

"Now that that's sorted, lets get to moving you guys in."

Omake: Warped Spiders

"Exarch Arachnos, that last jump was off by three meters. Meters, Arachnos! What is the meaning of this?"

The Farseer watched on as the Warp Spiders adjusted their equipment. The mostly crimson colored armor of the Warp Spider Exarch shifted around as its owner's mind raced around the problem. His calm, modulated voice echoed through the bathroom. It had only been two days since their arrival here, in 'Belmont Steet'. But of more major concern was the fact that the Warp Spiders were missing by such a huge margin. The fact of the matter was, that the error of their jumps were mostly measured in centimeters, or even milimeters. But to miss by meters was simply impossible!

"The Warpways on this planet are disturbing us greatly, Farseer. We have not yet had time to calibrate for this new... factor."

"I have never foreseen such an event, Arachnos. Hurry, lest those mon-keigh catch us off guard. Especially the large one."

"So shall we focus on this temporal objective."

– - –

One of the more junior of the Warp Spiders, a certain Urual, was fiddling with his backpack. His Death Spinner sat beside him, ever ready, as did his helmet. He was blowing into the Eldar equivalent to a tin whistle/concrete mixer, a simple instrument of the Bonesingers. He had walked that Path, a long time ago. His first, in fact. The young Eldar was frowning now, wondering if he would be able to fix this error in his Jump Generator's complex mechanisms. He changed the pitch slightly, and that was enough to get the psycho-reactive wraithbone to shift around a little more.

There was a tube running from his suit. It was attached to the curved pack that housed the jump generator. It was this device which would rip a hole in reality to allow the Spiders to take a step at one place, appear somewhere else, attack with their monofilament Death Spinners, and withdraw back into the warp before counterattack was possible.

It made them the least trustworthy of the Aspect Warriors of Kaela Mensha Khaine, but also the bravest; only they among the Eldar faced the Warp at its most horrifying, unflinching with only a few centimeters of wraithbone separating them from the doom of both body and soul. Urual looked up as his battle-partner Nelas beckoned to him.

"Hey, Urual, have you adjusted your Gate yet?"

Urual gave a small nod in reply, his eyes focused on the small crystal mounted on the gate. The most vital component of each backpack was the miniature Webway Gate, which controlled the reality-rending pulse of Warp energy which allowed them t~

Several crystals hummed to life; they were activating! Behind him, Arachnos shouted out to him.

"Shut down that Gate, Warp Spider!"

There was the sensation of one's soul getting an electrified shock. Urual fell back and was plunged into the tunnels of the Webway. He stumbled around for a second, panicking as he looked from one tunnel to another. This wasn't meant to happen!

Shadows emerged, and some horrifying thing leaped at him. Urual discharged three of his Death Spinner's nets into the thing, watching the warp-spawn entangle itself in the mono-filament strings, tearing itself apart even as it spasmed in its death-throes. The mewling mess left behind was barely recognizable as having been living.

Turning around, he saw his flute on the ground. Hurriedly, he picked it up and checked his jump pack again.

Knowing that life or death would quickly be decided, he opted to tear into the wall of the tunnel with his suit, and jump through.

It was better to face whatever was on the other side of this tear – something in the real world - than to face the horrors of the Warp for too long.

Throwing himself into the bathing pool of the Howling Banshees Aspect Warriors... well, that made his earlier conviction more than arguable. With a splash, the young Warp Spider tumbled into the pool.

"Warp Spider. I do hope you have made peace with your fellow teleporters."

Ural was aware of something soft. Underneath him was the shapely body of the Howling Banshees Exarch. His armored hand was... somewhere near her shoulder. The Exarch – Lyndia – rose from the pool, her bathing robes falling to drift around her knees, her ink black hair clinging to her body, still wet. She was – like many Eldar – a tall, lithe beauty. But even among the race of graceful, elf-like beings, this woman had a beauty about her that was unmatchable to many. And along with that beauty came a fury to compete with it as her primary trait.

The Exarch – a being trapped in the Path of the Warrior - threw him out of the water with ease, her long, slim limbs belying her strength. The Warp Spider landed roughly somewhere at the edge of the pool, and then was suddenly the center of a ring of feminine rage. He knew that many men – human and Eldar alike - would kill to have a chance to be surrounded by half-naked women such as these.

Little did they realize that any one of these women would be able to cut him into neat pieces single handedly with their Mirror Blades. They were normally encased in wraithbone armor slightly lighter than his own, but now he could see them without such inhibitions.

Urual coughed. Blood leaked from his nose, yet he had never been struck in that whole time. One of the Howling Banshees bristled furiously, though she was unarmed, unarmored and even disrobed.

"Y-you perverted being! You still refuse to avert your eyes!"

– - –

In the distance, there was a scream of absolute anguish as the cry of the Howling Banshees went up. A former member of that sorority herself, Ranger Serafenn pulled back her camouflage cloak. She turned to face Boblee, the leader of the Ranger detachment, who was already crouched over his large sniper rifle.

"What was that?"

"It appears." He said, more than emphatically as he observed the scene through his scope, affectionately nicknamed 'the Oracle'. "As if an unfortunate Warp Spider has just appeared in the middle of the Howling Banshees... while they were bathing."

"Ouch."

"As a mon-keigh warrior would have put it; it must have taken cast ferric balls to try a stunt like that. Or a fool. Oh, they're wrestling him to the ground now... there goes his helmet... and the Death Spinner. The boy's putting up a good fight, though. He managed to get one of them, the lucky bastard."

"I see... Boblee, why is your nose bleeding?"

Chapter 3

Thought of the Day: "You shall not corrupt me, Chaos spawn, for my faith is armor proof against your blandishments, and I'm sure my Power Fist can pop your head open like a ripe tomato." - Terminator Virgil

"I SAID STOP, DAMNIT!" The large, barrel-like form of the rusted HyperVac 3200 slammed down onto the ground, crushing a squad of Terminators and the Seer's council, which had been locked in mortal combat up until a heartbeat ago. Now they were in mortal danger of being between a vacuum and a hard place.

Its been three days, now. I thought. And its been... fifteen hours since the last unauthorized skirmish. You'd think that fighting together against the Orks would mean that they'd start getting along, but nooo.

Farseer Zara and Captain Eizak were again impressed by my display of combat prowess. Well, in the I-can-see-my-dent-under-your-hammer kind of impressed. I looked as sternly as I could at the twenty odd combatants, demanding explanation with sheer willpower as my communicator.

"He started it!" Zara piped up, thrusting her spear in the Space Marine's direction.

"'He started it' So that is all that the Eldar's highly evolved brains can come up with!"

The two made a threatening move towards each other. Their retinues all made two smart steps backwards.

SLAM.

"Ow... arg... Apothecary!"

"That hurt, mon-keigh!"

I sighed. "Go back to your rooms, and please don't fight on the landing again..."

I had quickly learned after two days of sporadic skirmishing and running around with the fire extinguisher (both for fires and for the skirmishers), that it would be impossible for the varied factions around me to stay in the still and calm for very long, so instead I had allowed them some battlefield time, which usually happened just after the afternoon lunch-rush; a quick battle for those who wanted to get it out of their system, usually in the back yard to the sound of me playing around (badly) on my brother's old trumpet the first time, to muffle the various noises of battle. Both the Ork and Imperial Guardsmen forces involved later complained that it was worse than fighting the Noise Marines of Slaneesh, and after a little research into that particular soldier type, I stopped.

The Orky comment about it sounding like a Squig being kneaded with tank treads was also apt.

Of course, tensions were still high among all of the four groups, but the fact that I had moved the factions into the various rooms around the house that I thought would suit them the best was cooling them off rather well. Right now, I was down in the kitchen, grabbing my coffee and checking up on them, jug of coffee in my hand. Normally I'd only have a cup, but it seemed like these guys liked the stuff.

Tau's Earth Caste – the builders and scientists of the Tau empire – had been hard at work, using some clay I had to make themselves some buildings. The curved architecture of the Tau were apparent in the corner of my living room. They had chosen this place specifically because it provided great lines of sight and therefore were advantageous to their own style of fighting. The long rifles of their basic troopers were stacked neatly against the makeshift barriers they had constructed as their perimeter, and the drones patrolling around the perimeter quickly parted to let me through. Sitting down, I watched as they put together a glowing power generator, which had been salvaged from one of their wrecked vehicles. I wondered – briefly – what it might do if it exploded in my living room, but then again I decided it was probably best if I didn't tempt fate.

The various vehicles they had brought along with them were named after fish, and the dark blue armor of the Fi'rios warriors contrasted darkly against the bright gleam of my whitewashed walls. There was something very simplistic about the architecture of the Tau warriors; there were no scrolls of prayer or devotional trinkets like with the Imperium, nor the complex plating of the Eldar. Just simple, utilitarian curves that would deflect incoming fire and keep whatever was inside safe.

As I looked on, a few of the Tau were already getting themselves familiar with a game of chess. To them, it was an interesting intellectual exercise, and they used the Fire Warriors – the basic infantry – to haul around the large wooden pieces. It was interesting to watch. Beside the chess players, several Tau were rambling on, apparently arguing like good friends about which was better among the aircraft listed on the book of Second World War fighter planes.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a Tau 'Crisis' battlesuit drift up on pillars of plasma fire. "Good morning, Shas'El Firestrike." I greeted, already used to the Tau's peaceful demeanor. Of the many races living under my roof, I was most comfortable with these guys; they were the most cordial, most tolerant of them all. But then again, they were also the ones who had banged heads with the cogboys recently. I looked at Firestrike, who was now climbing out of his battlesuit.

"Morning to you, Mai'kel." His odd, almost Chinese-like accent made my name sound rather strange as it leaped from his tongue into the air. I nodded in reply.

"Anything happen recently?" I asked him, indicating the fact that most of his guns were pointed at the basement door; the Orks were down there.

"Well, the greenskins have tried yet another incursion into the living room, but we have managed to hold them off... err, we might need more cleaning supplies, too, there's quite a bit of blood around." He reported.

"I see. I'll go down and tell that 'warboss' to keep his boyz in line after I check on the Eldar." I replied, pinching my nose again. The Orks were easily my largest headache, since they were probably the most eager to get into a fight – heck, they fought each other when they got bored, so it wasn't a great leap in logic to tell that they were more than ready to start fighting the others when given a sliver of a chance. Excursions from their home in the basement had lead to the other races banding together to keep them down there.

In fact, the Orks were that much of an annoyance that they actually helped the other races to bond and learn to trust each other somewhat. I sighed as I walked up the stairs. Well, time to get to the rest of them. The Tau were easy... the others were hard.

The Imperium of Man dominated the upstairs, taking over two of the three bedrooms. Imperial Guardsmen now camped out in lego-brick habitats strewn across the floor of one of those rooms. I opened the door to the welcoming party. A few Guardsmen looked up and saluted, or cheered and cracked into smiles. In the tough routine of the military, it was nice to see these guys unwind. I smiled as I poured out a large glass for their rations.

"Good morning, Guardsmen! Here you go, strong and black like you guys like it, right?"

"Absolutely, Governor Michael!" The General managed, still trembling. Having conversation with a skyscraper was rather scary, if you ask me. So was talking to someone who was no taller than your thumb. General Faust had apparently decided to entitle me with 'Governor'. Sounded much more... awkward. He looked around to speak to the Commissar, but that black-coated man had already hurried over to get first dibs on the coffee. The Sanctioned Psyker – a term for a licensed psychic, apparently – Ishabeth giggled from her perch in the women's barracks.

"I've never seen Tomas get so... obsessed over anything before." She had exclaimed the second day, when he had first gotten a taste for coffee. "Apparently, he calls it the Emperor's recaf. I like it as well, but... Tomas has standing orders that I am never to drink any recaf... or anything with simple carbohydrates. I go... funny." The actual temperature of the air around us seemed to sink along with her disappointment, and a few Guardsmen nearby were already running.

I had someone explain that phenomenon to me: Another Psyker, this time the Librarian Vasili of the Space Marines, explained to me that she was rather less stable than other Psykers, but her ability was on par with many of the Primaris – or top rank - psykers, albeit outside of her conscious control, hence her classification as a Sanctioned Psyker.

Well, back to the present, I was lazing off and chatting to the Guardsmen around me and looking across to see a Sentinel – a two legged scout walker – stepping gently on the remote control to switch channels on the small TV set in the room. The only way the Guardsmen could channel surf, really, since jumping on the buttons was too tiring. Those guys absolutely adored watching cartoons, although I'm sure they were familiar entertainment, but not like this. Apparently, Elmer Fudd was their favorite for his hunting of the tall eared xenos.

A small squadron of tanks passed by underneath my feet. I saw one in particular, and smiled.

I had returned their Leman Russ to the tank crew, the commander of which was named Thujan. He thanked me for its return, and then asked what the Space-Marine and Farseer shaped dent on the underside was about. I told him to ask his General. Now that Leman Russ was nick-named Mikel's Hammer, and became quite well known among the Guard. I was already getting a small following for using a tank as a club.

The Guard were a proud army, all maintaining themselves to the highest forms of discipline when in combat, but still managing to relax somewhat when they were off the fighting. It was like seeing a whole army of coins: sometimes you were seeing their heads, and their more mellow demeanor. It was interesting to see the more exotic of the Guardsmen, who regaled me with stories of deathly jungle planets, frozen ice worlds and weightless asteroid colonies. Their command squad was even more impressive; there were psykers – combat psychics – and priests, mechanical monks and hardened veterans. To see simple, unaugmented humans who could fight – and win – against the likes of the Eldar and the Orks was simply impressive.

The head Commissar – Tomas Sturm - was one of the four combat commanders of this unit, since the General too often lost his nerve in the heat of battle. Instead, the stocky General organized the troops and gave out general objectives. The other three were the Laughing Priest Jeremiah, Lieutentant-Colonel Salacia Marsch and Sanctioned Psyker Ishabeth, who always combined forces with Sturm. It seemed a rather odd way to command, so I asked.

In the words of the Commissar himself as he answered: "He handles the big goals, we make sure that nothing goes wrong."

I nodded in reply, and moved on as he sat down beside Ishabeth to chat.

Moving on, I dropped in on the Space Marines, who were exercising their morning close quarter drills on a cinder block, which the Marines were steadily pulverizing by wave-after-wave of synchronized shoulder barges. As it turns out, the Marines actually came from a multitude of different Chapters, from all across the galaxy, having been pulled together to fight as a crusade. The leaders of this Crusade were the Ultramarines, and they had been joined by the Salamanders, Blood Ravens, Dark Angels, Black Templars and the Imperial Fists. They were now drilling constantly to achieve unit coherency, as only ten or so Marines of the seventy strong force came from any one chapter. They had brought along with them a Dreadnought, the squat walking tank named Tankred. He was among their most honored brothers-in-arms, due to the simple fact that he had warranted internment in this majestic, fighting sarcophagus.

Like the Imperial Guard, the Marines also appreciated my ration of coffee. The overall force commander, Eizak, sat on the beside table as I sat on the bed itself. I surveyed their room as he tried to meet my gaze. They had a central 'highway', which wove around in such a way that it was easy for me to move across the room. It was almost like walking, except that if you strayed to either side, you'd probably squish someone and get an army of supersoldiers up and gunning for you.

"Brother Michael, a pleasure to see you this morning. I have just finished my sermon." The skull-masked chaplain's voice was deep and powerful, and I chuckled as I poured him a few drops of coffee. He was the only one among the Marines who called me by a name that I liked. Brother. It sounded... plain. Nice and formal yet plain. I liked it. The Chaplain looked at Eizak, who was now being rather childishly sulky. Maybe it was because of the impression I left on him... and the tank... and the fire extinguisher... and the vacuum cleaner... and the floor... yeah, you can get why he was angry at me.

I looked again at the skull-shaped mask. What would Father Tim – the local church evangelist – have said if he had met Chaplain Morteus? I looked on to the other side of the room as a breeze drew my attention; it was the Librarian that had waved his hand, turning the page of 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' over with his mind. Dang, that was cool. The Chaplain chuckled. Many of the Marines were now more relaxed. For many, it was their first chance in centuries to unwind for a moment.

"Show off." Morteus muttered as he removed his skull-shaped helmet, showing a heavily scarred face underneath. Okay, scratch that. Showing this face to Father Tim would be all the more funnier. I sipped my own mug.

"Good to see its all quiet. I hate having to get the Adepta Mechanicus guys to repair all the shell-holes."

"Adeptus Mechanicus, Brother Michael. I hope that poor Genetor stops oiling his knee joints every time he sees another of your machines. It really is unbecoming of an Emperor's servant..."

"Bless these buttons, so that we may change channels..." I muttered, which got my drinking buddy to smile.

And that brings us to the Adeptus Mechanicus. The worshipers of machines. Red robed and I'm not sure which ones were man and which parts were machines. Some walked around in boots, others on tank-treads and a select few skittered around on spider-like appendages. One was carrying over an issue of Spider-Man; they were obsessed with Iron Man and Doc Ock. But besides our mutual fascination with comic books, that was about it: I had absolutely no skill whatsoever at fixing machines, except maybe the lucky slap that would get my lawn-mower going. They were a rather odd lot, with their odd cog version of the yin-yang symbol, but nonetheless impressed me by getting the old heater in the downstairs bedroom working again. These guys were the least troublesome of the many factions in my home, though a few of their actions really caused me concern; they prayed to my TV remote! And the microwave.

Oh good lord... the microwave! It was... spring loaded now. Like a toaster. Seriously... it spat out my food after it was done. Gave me and the Tau one hell of a surprise when that happened.

And speaking of toasters, where did mine go?

"Hahah. Well said, Brother Michael." The Chaplain's voice brought me back to reality.

"Yeah. Well, you have a fun day. There's some rats in the wall-spaces, so if you wanted to go hunting, feel free to eradicate them. But please, no high explosives, okay?"

"Rats? You don't mean those little sewer cretins that you find in the underhives?"

"Yeah, but for you, they'd be about this big." I held my hands apart approximately seven inches apart. That wold be about twelve, fifteen feet for the Chaplain, who just grinned like his skull-helm.

"Excellent."

Upstairs and into the attic, I was met by an oversized dual-barrel flamethrower – at least for their scale – being pointed at my face as I poked my head through the opening. A bright blue flame lit up my nose, making me lean back from the heat on my nostrils. But then again, that was only the primer for the main flame. The black armor, red drapery and white lines detailed the machine's origins from the Order of the Valorous Hearts. And the twin flamethrowers mounted on the Immolator class AFV really could melt my face. They were the ones responsible for slagging my trash can, too. And if I guessed right, my DVD case. I looked to see if I had identified her correctly.

"Canoness Samisha. Good morning... and... ah... please point that stove-lighter somewhere else."

"Stove-lighter? Are you making a slant at my gender, Michael?" There was the sound of promethium being dumped into the reservoir of the flamethrower. You've been reading my mother's books on feminist rights, haven't you? Samisha was a very touchy person, and that was before she had read up on feminism and decided to start teaching it to her sisters. I blinked a few times, and hurriedly thought things through. Well, I could apologize... my panic addled mind was very afraid of what that little flamer could do to my face. At such close distances, especially.

"Ah... No, I am not. I am merely pointing out that the primer flame reminds me of the one that I use." I replied, as calmly as I could. She raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry if it was insulting." I added on, and got a satisfied smile from the woman.

The turret – and the fate of my eyebrows to be burnt off by combusting promethium – quickly swiveled away, and I climbed up into the realm of feminism. While the Imperial Guardsmen and the Space Marines had set up camp in the bedrooms, the Sisters of Battle had opted for the two dollhouses that my aunts used to have, grand palaces of childhood as they were, up in the attic. A few short days of modifications later, those dollhouses looked far more... Gothic now. Repainted black, white, red and gold, with a large, three-petal flower painted in various places (I had given them access to some of the cheaper paints that I had as part of the peace treaty), the Cathedrals of Saint Linda and Mother Alicia were almost complete now.

I admired their work, and looked to the attics around me. The place had been stripped of a lot of the bits and bobs that had been around, mostly to be used as building materials. A lot of the machinery that had been up here now was used by the cogboys. The Inquisitor had been particularly interested in the sewing machine's repeated stabbing motions, but I banned him from testing it on anyone. So that was now Adeptus Sororitas property, since they were secluded, would notice anyone trying to carry off a sewing machine, and had the weapons to stop someone trying to.

"Everything alright in here?" I asked, pulling the little electric fan up with me. It was an old thing that I had put in one of the other rooms and forgotten about. Walking over to one of the four windows up here, I set it up to the plug nearby, and turned it on. Fresh air began to flow in, and I looked on, rather satisfied as the Sisters breathed in the fresh air flowing in.

"There. Is that better?"

"This air out here is almost as good as that at Tranquility." Samisha laughed, and smiled back.

"Tranquility?"

"One of our Abbeys in the Gothic Sector. It was a heretical agri-world before we went in. We completely purged the central continent clear; cyclone missiles from orbit, then Titan volcano cannon, then our purifying flames from the Immolators and Exorcists burned what was left, and then finally the Sisters themselves, with their meltaguns and flamers. After all that it was a very quiet place. We built a new Abbey there afterward, to train up a few of the natives, and called it Tranquility. Sister Meliya over there was one of them."

The shy battle-sister was masked by her helmet, which she apparently never took off, but nevertheless it was still a profound thing to see her slight nod. Meliya was one of the more prominent Sisters of Battle, as she was the only one who could understand the myriad of languages – she was a Sage, as they called her job.

"I see." I answered, ending the conversation. "Well, time to check on the xeno now..."

"Walk softly, Michael, and carry a big stick."

The Eldar were more mysterious, and altogether a little unsettling in that they had chosen the unused, but still clean bathroom downstairs. I never really used it, and wondered why the most advanced of the races here chose a toilet, but then again I guess the white ceramic tiles had reminded them too much of home. Several 'bonesingers' were already making progress with their bagpipes of creation, with Eldar structures popping up throughout the floor. The shower stall was now was a hydroponic garden of many colors, a motor pool for the various vehicles where the toilet had once stood, and various other buildings – most of them housing – building themselves up on the latticework around the room. It was almost impossible for me to move about inside of the room now. I sat down beside the door, the only clear space, as I looked on.

The musical tunes of the Eldar construction workers were much more melodic and easier on the ears than human construction, which – now that I had seen how the Eldar did it – I saw as very, very crude at best. However, I still smiled at hearing the melody of Iron Maiden in the background. The Howling Banshees were quite smitten by the band and heavy metal in general.

Think of it as the difference between a young child lumping sand together to make a sand castle, to the skill needed to building a skyscraper. I mean, the Eldar creates buildings by music.

"The difference is much greater than that, mon-keigh, but I will grant you that your analogy bears on the same principle."

I jumped on the spot from the sudden voice beside me. And the fact that it had just read my mind. The voice itself was distorted, feminine, and a little hostile. Standing atop a pillar of wraithbone, as I had come to know the building material, was the Farseer I had unceremoniously and brutally impressed upon the underside of Mikel's Hammer. She was dressed in her craftworld's colors of black and white, the former being predominant, with a green sash – her personal color marking, it seemed – wrapped around her waist. She had stowed the shuriken pistol – the curvy little weapon that had caused me no end of wounds that seemed like someone had surgically implanted a dozen splinters into my arm.

"Farseer Aldir." I managed to reply. Her gaze was... very disconcerting.

I hope she's gotten over trying to flay my soul apart. I've got enough migraines as it is.

Maybe it was about the sense of scale, but the Eldar Farseer had tried to rip my soul apart on the first day, when we had a bit of a spat. The psychic attack had failed miserably on account of the sheer quantity of soul which I had. Kind of like trying to shred a piece of paper, then doing the same with a phonebook. I had a migraine for about three hours later, though, while I was buying cleaning supplies for obvious reasons. The Eldar Farseer now looked at me, bemusement radiating from her gestures. She was reading my mind again, wasn't she?

"Yes, mon-keigh. Such unguarded thoughts are refreshing to listen to... however, I still wish to splinter your mind. But for now, you are more useful to us alive than dead."

It was seriously worrying me. I looked at the Falcon, which stopped to deliver a few of the 'Exarchs' These were – as I had been told – Eldar citizens who had become enraptured in the Eldar lifestyle of war, and had given into their warrior personalities. Now they donned armor that would forever become their faces, fighting for their Craftworld – their homeworld – until the end of their lives.

The first to arrive was surfing on one of the curved sides, the Exarch of the Swooping Hawks, Tameeran. Her aquamarine armor and glistening wings were all that anyone ever saw of her. A faint popping sound beside the Farseer revealed the presence of the Warp Spiders Exarch, Arachnos. They were teleporters, but had quite the trouble adjusting to this world; many a time, the Warp Spiders were teleporting into the (thankfully hollow) walls, and caused a small ruckus between the Eldar and the cogboys because of their sudden appearance in the fuse-box.

"Exarch Arachnos, I see that your suits are functioning again." I smiled, nodding my head to each of the Exarches as they appeared in their own ways. Most of them were inside the confines of the Falcon and the Wave Serpent vehicles, which were nearly identical barring the fact that the Falcon had a turret.

The red and black Exarch nodded. His voice was perhaps the most distorted of the myriad of voices that I had ever heard over the last week. It was... electrified, if anything else suited that description.

"Yes. I has taken us a while to adjust, but now we are fully materialized."

Materialized, I had learned, was the Warp Spider slang for ready.

"Good. Well, it was nice to see you all."

Now it was time for the Orks.

Chapter 4

Time to visit the Orks. Of all the forces here, they were the least controllable, so the others worked together to keep them bottled up in the basement.

The basement themselves were sparsely used, just four walls with a door leading up some winding stairs. Shelves were fixed into the walls, and all manner of junk was strewn about. The Orks moved in after I had removed anything vaguely valuable, dangerous, combustible or useable to create a weapon, so in essence I emptied out my basement – the shelves and cupboards excepted – to make room for the Ork horde that had to move in. It was only a small force, the fact that they had lost just over two thirds of their hundreds-strong force in the first day of scrappin'. But then again, the coalition of Tau and Imperium had only accounted for one third the total losses, The other two thirds would be because of the internal animosity between the greenskins themselves, especially after the confusion during the first few minutes of their arrival.

I looked at the encampment surrounding the doorway to the Ork domain. "Justicar Amadeus, Shas'vre." I greeted the two figures in command: a well decorated Grey Knight Justicar – the equivalent to a Major in this Earth's military rank, and the orange painted helmet of the Tau Shas'vre, the equivalent to a Lieutenant, or maybe Captain.

"Titan Michael." The Grey Knight stationed at the doorway said. The Tau and Imperium had both cooperated, and were keeping the Orks bottled up inside the basement. The Grey Knights, and Tau were stationed at the doorway, while the Sisters of Battle and the Cadian Guardmsen were keeping them from the window exits, along with the Space Marines spread between those two. I reached up, and grabbed the overhead pipe to steady myself as I missed the first step; that was where the Grey Knights were stationed, with the more fragile Tau units behind them. These guys got the brunt of the fighting, but I smiled to myself as I saw the ten Grey Knights sitting there and peacefully talking to the Tau. Armistices had never been so peaceful before, with the shared threat of the Orks below them.

However, one of them stood out. He had, for lack of a better word, a very large hat. It seemed to go with the theme of Inqusitors, so for the moment I looked on. This particular Grey Knight wasn't quite... standard. His weapons were a pair of bolters, their large, drum-like magazines about the size and weight of a man's torso. He waved one around like a toy, causing one Tau soldier to duck under an over enthused sweep of the arm as he tried to regale the stories he was no doubt spinning. There was a small, shared chuckle as the routine of the sweeping arms continued, and soon enough they noticed me. The Grey Knights – with one exception – snapped to attention. The hatted Knight just waved at me with his left arm, before realizing why there was a thump on the way up. A knocked out Tau soldier shook his head as he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes, his helmet cracked.

"Uh... hi." I managed to say, kneeling down beside the dazed Tau. The soldier took of his helmet, where I saw his markings around his armor's collar – unique among the Tau, almost, they were personal name-tags. This set belonged to a Tau Sergeant named Shas'ui D'lytir Nin'per... er... the name got a bit tricky. It meant 'Talon of... something', so normally we just called him the Gothic equivalent: Sergeant Talon.

"Good morning, O'Mikel... what just hit me?"

"This dude's bolter, Talon... why do you use a bolter, anyway, I thought Grey Knights used those wrist mounted things..." I looked at the wrist-mount, which had been shaved clean into a flat panel. The hatted Knight simply looked up at me. His face-plate and armor bore a lot of burn-marks and a corner of his pauldron had simply been slagged from a near miss with a heat weapon. Unlike the knight-like crusaders of the other Marines, resplendent in hearldry, this Grey Knight had little in the way of decorations, beside the hat and the bolters.

"What hap- "I DON'T KNOW!" The automatic response shocked everyone within hearing distance.

"Uh... the- "DONT EVENT THINK ABOUT IT!" I pulled my hand back as the mouths of twin bolters grinned at me.

"Alright then... Good morning to you..."

"His name's Silverite, from what I gather." The dazed Sergeant Talon said, pointing at the person who just broke his faceplate.

"O-kay... see ya."

And with that, I moved on.

"Mornin', gretchz." I greeted the outcast little goblins, who were tinkering away at a short, stubby Duracell battery. Though the rough equivalent to mechanics and repairmen, these guys often got the short end of the stick when it came to Ork society, and often were living in outposts at the fringes... or they could just have been the security teams, deprived of fighting while the rest of the Orks fought downstairs.

"Mornin', boss." They replied, wary of any whimsical punishment that might have come their way.

Now, with the Orks bottled up in the basement due to their inherent... well, the word for it would have been aggressiveness, although the difference between an orkish attitude and 'aggressive' was... vast. Like, from the Earth to the Sun kind of vastness. Although, thankfully, this attitude tended to implode when left in a small, enclosed environment. The large Ork 'WAAAGH!' had divided in their little underground basement. The mob had migrated into their respective 'clans': the 'Deathskullz', the 'Evil Sunz' and the 'Goffs', with their own color schemes and style.

The first were brutally cunning in their ability to mash two things together and make a vehicle or weapon, the second cunningly brutal in their speedy raiding and vehicular man/alien/people-slaughter, and the third were just plain brutality incarnate in in-your-face or stomping on your guts hand-to-hand brawling, with close combat weapons galore. They were fighting among each other, as I – their 'Big Boss' - had ordered them to stop fighting everyone else. An interesting loophole, but one that everyone was rather happy with having.

Descending the stairs and the jarring shocks that it shot up my legs reminded me of my injuries. My entire body was still sporting small scars from my skirmish with the Orks, which had made me look like I had been dragged through a garden of roses and shattered pottery. Actually... that would make a good excuse! I made a mental note to use that excuse for my appearances. Not wanting my house to be undermined by constant use of high explosives, I had told these Orks they were allowed to fight, but without anything that could punch through a tab of plywood at long range. That limited them to their axes and smaller caliber weapons. The heavier guns, the looted tanks and the rokkit launchas were right out.

Mind you, the black and white checks of the Goff's colors were very interested in my 'no big gunz' attempt at giving rules, too. They loved close combat. The Evil Sunz, red comets of the battlefield, were having a roaring party with their speedy vehicles, as the Deathskullz's blue facepaint and looted gear compressed into a dense formation as the two sides fought to get at each other.

Watching from the stairs, I was faced yet again with the reason why Orks were ignoring the others. It was simply that they didn't care who they were fighting. The three Greenskin factions were in a melee in the middle, quite happy to bash each other's brains in. The average Ork 'Boy' used weapons drawn from a very ramshackle arsenal; they used both home-made and looted gear, often from the larger of the Space Marines. The close quarters weapon of choice was the axe or cleaver/sword, collectively known as a 'choppa'.

The triangular battlefield was awash with Orks, all clambering over each other to get to an enemy, hacking and stabbing their large, heavy weapons. I quietly walked over to the underside of the stairs, pulling out a rusted old vacuum cleaner, affectionately known as a 'Sukka' by the Orks. I mean affectionately in the way a pyrotechnician would be affectionate to a pyromaniac. Plugging it in, I swept the long tube over the Orkish lines. A few of their still-living members were sucked up the tube, to be deposited into the vacuum bag. Wartrukks and buggies were knocked over as I slapped them with the tip of the HyperVac 3200. A few seconds of that, and the fighting had stopped.

One Ork looked up at me. A Deathskull Nob. His lower jaw was made of metal, a replacement jawbone of steel and whatever alloys they had cobbled together for him that was painted a deep blue. He held a drum-fed shotgun-type weapon, which he held as if a pistol, and waved the serrated blade welded onto the tip. A clumsily constructed dual-bolter arrangement was strapped to his back, which had all shades of blue in skin-pain painted on, and his left hand held on to the most stubby looking rokkit launcha that I'd seen. The greenskin turned around, bringing his rokkit up to launch at me.

He was promptly swept up into the tube that was my HyperVac 3200.

A Goff charged up to me. He was pretty young looking, still barely up to the chests of his seniors. Probably a young'un. He was introduced to the Sukka, and joined the Deathskull Ork that had gone up earlier on. A third Ork was booted as he tried to stab me in the ankle. Numbers four and five also went up the Sukka's gob as they came forward.

"Anyone else?" I asked, looking at the stunned Orks. There were no takers.

From the innards of the vacuum machine, though, there was a little clanging as a smaller scrap started inside. Picking up the heavy machine, I gave it a good shaking, jostling its contents violently. The screams subsided a few seconds later.

"Gork'n'Mork, that sukka's nasty!" A familiar voice echoed out from the innards of the 'Sukka'. I recognized it instantly, as the Deathskullz Ork that had too much dakka for his own good.

"Is that you, Gunna?" I said to one of the ventilation slits. There was a little scuffling around inside, before a shotgun-bolter-gun-thing went off, blasting a hole into the side of the Sukka. I had no doubts about it; the Ork was one of the 'Flash Gitz', an Ork who had it in for Dakka. He worshipped firepower and high lead-content in the air.

"Yep, 'ts me al-rite, boss!" The reply came. "'tho dere's sum sneaky smart'rses that're tryin' ta take me shoota!"

"What did I say to you earlier on?"

"A lie? You sez dat I 'ad too much dakka. Ain't no such ding as too much dakka, Boss." The voice protested, to the assent of many of his fellow Orks, both inside and outside the vacuum cleaner.

I sighed, and spoke again. "There is such a thing as 'Property Damage' or... how about 'Collapsing a house on top of yourself', Gunna. Too much Dakka around here, and there won't be anyone to fight, y'know. There won't even be a you, kapeesh?"

"Uh... soz does dat mean dere be no thing like too much dakka?" "Nothing is too much, but just point it in the right direction, okay?" "Okay, boss!" "Good."

"Uh... boss?"

"Yes?" "Can youz let us out now? Its kinda dark in 'ere."

Having pacifed the Orks for the moment, I quickly went over a few administrative stuff, namely: "Oi, boss, can wez make dat tin' goez boom?"

"No."

The Goffs chortled at this, as they were the Orkish clan that most preferred close combat, and therefore because of my rules they enjoyed themselves the most. Their 'ead nob was an Ork that used a massive powa klaw in combat, as well as a massive cleaver when - not if - it broke down. He was called 'ead-smasha for a reason, and a damned good one. The blue with black-and-white checkered trim banner waved about as he made his way over to me.

"Oi, boss! We'z gettin bored down 'ere! Can we go an' giv de'm el-dar boyz a liddle smackin'?"

"No, I don't want any more trouble with those guys... I'm getting enough migraines as it is."

"Oh... iz it okay to crump each other, den?" "Yes. I guess so. Try not to make too much of a mess, cuz you'll be cleaning it up."

Mounting the stairs, I went back up as the Orks re-started their skirmish without the Dakka.

As I was exiting the basement, I nodded to the hatted Grey Knight. He waved the torso-sized grenade launcher in one hand as I passed by.

My stomach rumbled, causing a few chuckles of amusement - even from the stoic Grey Knights - as I passed.

Breakfast time. I gently reassured my stomach that food was coming, so I began to make my way to the kitchen. This took me past my study room, of sorts: computer, books, all manner of reference materials, that kind of thing. Oh, mind you, I didn't study all the time. I sometimes played. The computer had been given all manners of upgrades, thanks to my tech-savvy friends. It also had CounterStrike and other simple multiplayer games, which let me play with them, on occasion. However... the Adeptus Mechanicus had also made this place their second home, as well as a small force of Imperial Guardsmen and Sisters of Battle. After all, the Cogboys were the ones who maintained their gear.

They had also found a little niche of Earth society in which they could find themselves comfortable.

"WTF! U n00b! Teh h4x0r in teh b0 1s n0t b3 4 l4m3rs!" The mechanical voice - I recognized it as a copy of the 'Microsoft Sam' program with a slight modification - mainly that it always had a rising intonation at the end, which made it sound like it was constantly asking questions.

"Huh?" A confused male female voice drifted to my ears.

"He says: What are you doing, you idiot. The computer is not for incompetents." A more bored, male voice intoned. I recognized the voice. Sohm Vekt, an Imperial Guardsman. He was a simple trooper with an interpreter's job back in his homeworld. The guy loved to pore over the more philosophical texts my grandfather had left behind in my care.

"Oh. Well, I'm trained in the Gestal pattern logic engine, which isn't too different from this... can you let me through, please?" The last word would have twisted many a man around its owner's pinky. The owner was... it was... Meliya, wasn't it? She was the Battle Sister translator, and the second voice coughed.

"Sure. STFU... no, wait... GTFO... is that right? Oh, here it is: 'GTFO t3h l337z way, n00b... uh, I'm not too sure... This neo-lexicon is confusing."

I chuckled, and suppressed my rumbling stomach in time for them to see me. The cogboy immediately went into ecstatic convulsions.

"PH33r teh 4w3s0m3! M1kk3y'z h33r!" He shouted in a semi-deadpan voice. It was disturbing, for lack of a better word. I blinked a few times, before turning to Sohm.

"Uh... What did he just... say?" I'm a casual gamer, sure, but I just had no idea what the bastardized language was supposed to mean.

"He says its good to see you... I think." Meliya said, a loud whisper in the room. I nodded, and looked at the red robed tech-priest, and the smaller mechanical constructs that chittered around it.

"Tech priest?..."

"Nuuu! Mah t4g b3 h4x0r-c0gb01!" 'Hacker Cogboy' shouted. He had been a rather mature-sounding, very serious worshipper of the machine before he had found the 'Temple of Pentium IV'. Sadly, he had now fallen into l337-tardation. No offense to the real people who came up with it, but some people were just... stupid.

"Wow, you're really getting into this." I looked at the two other Imperials, one of which nodded her head and the other gave an exasperated sigh.

"Yeah, he's... l337 now." Sohm muttered, (deadpan snarker mode, on!). "They've been like this since they found that... CounterStrike game of yours."

"KEKEKEKEKE! Ph33r da wr4t|-| 0 da 3mpr4! L0l0l0l0l0l0l, pwnt!" A cogboy jacked into the modem cackled, typing away furiously at the keyboard sat on his thighs, his mouse was being operated by his mechanical fourth arm - the third was a plasma torch. I tried to ignore the madness for a little while.

"... somehow, this worries me more than the possibility of the Orks attacking." I muttered. "Is there anyone here still sane?"

"That would be me, your lordship." A deep, vox-enhanced voice spoke. It belonged to, by the looks of it, the demented, crack-enhanced machine-human combination which would have put Doc Ock to shame. The cowl was thrown back, the mechanical collar (the kind you'd have on as armor, not the leather band around the neck) pulled down. Loose strands of green hair were shaken loose. It was cropped close to the scalp, barely coming to the Adeptus Mechanicus' ears. It framed the face of a young woman. She was beautiful, in that aesthetically pleasant way, but like many of the Sisters of Battle and the female warriors of the Eldar, there was that sense of absolute confidence in her position and strength that gave them a very valkyrie-like fashion. Flippantly, she flicked a lock of hair from her face.

"Boys and their toys." She sighed, to Meliya's most empathic nod and Sohm's snort of amusement. Amisa 238041-194513 (normally in barcode-like format) was a Skitarii lieutenant, and for all intents and purposes a second in command from the Artisan - the foreman, in other words. Her mechanical appendages - servo arms, plasma cutters, chain-bladed rippers and various other tools of mechanical warfare - curled around her like errant strands of her hair. After all, there were a series of cables attached to a metal plate on the back of her neck, which ran into her backpack and the armored suit.

"Forgive the Tech-Priests, Michael. Its just... well... all these ancient technologies..."

"Hey, its not that old!" Indignity laced my voice as I cried out. Most of my stuff was second hand, sure, but not ancient! Well... admittedly, some of it could count as ancient, but it wasn't that old!

"... again, forgive me, m'lord." She bowed her slender (and literal) frame, and looked back up at me. "Its just that... all these technologies have the hallmarks of pre-Here... no, pre-Crusade technologies... and even then, I'm suspecting them to be Pre-Dark Age as well. All considered, that would make this technology almost 30,000 years old."

"Hell no! My stuff isn't that old!"

DING DONG!

"3h! W00t, h33rz sum ppls!"

Oh shit. And I haven't even had breakfast yet.

"Yo, Mike!" A rather accented voice called out – Vincent! (Quick note: His given name was Vincent, he also had one in Chinese, but identified with Japanese more – anime otaku – and was born of Indonesian parents. Its complicated.) "... Hey, are you in there! I thought I heard voices... you know I can break locks, right!"

"Michael, ya in there! Its us!" A southern belle voice filled the house. Alice, one of my circle of friends. Tau and Imperials alike were running around, looking for direction.

OhshitohshitohshitOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!

Short Omake: Dawn of War

"What is this?" A CD was flipped over, and the cover art inspected. Force Commander Eizak peered at his Blood Raven counterpart. The Commander had... hair. He rubbed his bald scalp enviously. Turning to the Sister of Battle beside him, he pointed at the large, stone letters. They were merely printed on cheap paper, but nonetheless the effect was stunning. Such heroism captured in the heat of battle.

"I d-don't know, Force Commander Eizak." The white and black armored Sister replied, more than nervous.

"Dawn of War. I believe they use this program to simulate combat to allow for the training of a new generation of commanders." Sohm Vekt looked at a Cadian, standing there half-frozen in the snow. The Cadian 412th... he hadn't heard about that unit, and the Lorn V system was entirely unfamiliar to him. The two armored figures whipped around in surprise.

"How did you know that?" The Space Marine spoke first.

"It says it on the cover." Two sets of eyes were giving him confused stares. The Guardsman sighed "I read, I learn. My scholarium was based at the bottom of an ancient library, so we did a lot of reading into ancient texts, particularly how to read them. I learned how to read this... the Terran alphabet, when I was in my final year." He finished his little explanation with mutterings of how there wasn't any humor left these days...

"I see... and these?" Meliya looked at the other CD cases in the shelf. She peered at them as the Commander walked off to sulk.

"Those are the expansion packs, this one here is called Winter Assault, that one's Dark Crusade, and the other's SoulStorm."

"Ah, there's a Canoness from the Order of the Sacred Rose on here!"

"Yes, apparently the expansions includes data and the ability to lead other factions as well... it seems like in this particular expansion, the Sisters of Battle have been added, as well as the Dark Eldar." Sohm had also been a translator, back in his day, and would interpret all kinds of communications. So he was well versed in the myraid of languages – even more so than the rather sheltered Meliya. She crouched down beside him, looking at the blurb and 'system requirements' of the case.

"I see..." She murmured, leaning forward to look closer. A slight shift on the table – caused in part by the Mechanicus boys lifting a generator down and changing the weight distribution – caused the young Sororitas to tip backward. Hands reached out, and caught her before she could fall over, and pulled her forward. Into the arms of her Cadian counterpart. Both flushed red.

"..." Taking off his helmet, Sohm quickly separated from her. "My apologies, Sister."

"Just call me Meliya!" She grew red as her fleur de lis tattoo (it was on her neck).

"Alright... my apologies... Meliya."

She gave a small smile. It was... something he'd remember for a long time. Sohm scratched at the stubble on his jaw, looking back at the giant disk. He was getting a little uncomfortable when he looked at the white-haired young woman underneath the helmet.

"Fine. Now... how about if we see about playing this game?"

"I dibs the Sisters of Battle!"

"PWNT! j00 ju57 g07 0wnt b41 d4 c0gb01z!"

"... I think we'll have to get past those guys first..."

Omake: Farseer Days: Frustration

"I hate those mon-keigh." Zara fumed. "Stupid, barbaric primates..." She threw her shuriken pistol at the plush couch set into the wall of her room.

The slender pistol bounced off the backing, and then lay still where it came to rest. She stalked over to the mounting for her armor, setting her conical helm down on the head of her mannequin double. The Eldar Farseer sighed, her worn and torn cape unclasping from her shoulders, the psycho-reactive armor responding to her urges for freedom.

Zara caught the black cape, and threw it gently around the doll.

The mesh-like fibers of the doll was quick to catch the clasps onto the shoulder, affixing it into place. The armored wraithbone 'wings' came next, the mounting/backpack support and sensor systems that supplemented her already acute senses. They were carefully detached from her back, revealing the skin-tight suit underneath, and pressed the armored plates against the back of the mannequin. Those reacted to the mesh-skin of the doll just as her cape had, the two surfaces interfacing as tiny machines embraced each other with their eldritch adhesives.

Her armor began to slowly unravel, little seams appearing and separating, allowing her to shed the wraithbone plates without having to worry about missing or losing anything. She rested pauldrons, chipped and scarred from a thousand battles, and the breastplate, inscribed with dozens of runes, which had turned aside more daemon blades than she could care to remember. Of course, one blade was one too many for her. She continued to do this, removing sections of her armor slowly and meticulously, hoping that the almost ritualistic process and the prospect of her freedom afterward be enough of a reward as well.

Her frustration did not end with the sensation of freedom that came with being released from the skin-tight embrace of her armor suit. Zara ran a slender hand down her lithe figure, brushing off dust that wasn't there. A brush was snatched up, and began to work their way through her hair. Having shed her personality of the Farseer, Zara was now... Zara, the Eldar woman. She sighed, her comb tugging through her hair, searching for something pleasant in her life, as if grasping at straws.

Not even that worked, and Zara soon found her silky strands too smooth for any more brushing to help. She stood, and began to peel the thick layer of her undersuit off. The fibrous second skin was what kept an Eldar warrior comfortable in their form-fitting suit, as well as adding an extra layer of protection against impacts, the gel-like inner layers of the multi-layer suit helping to dampen blows. Now out of the suffocating black suit, she began to dig around her possessions for a robe or... something.

In the far reaches of her mind, her Farseer self screamed at the sulking woman to get up. Something is coming, you silly girl!

There was a disturbance behind her. Zara tensed as she turned around, her hand reaching out for the Singing Spear on the other side of the room.

Something came shredding through reality, landing in the middle of her living space as the Shining Spear heeded her call.

Her razor sharp (well... not razor sharp, since this blade had a cutting edge honed so finely to the point where a razor would be about as sharp as a sphere) weapon halted as its tip hovered scant inches off the nose of a bruised and battered young Eldar. Zara twitched an eyebrow.

His Aspect Armor denoted him as one of the warp-hopping Warp Spiders. Her memory dug up his name.

"Urual, was it not?" He flinched visibly, all trace of Eldar dignity and poise dashed to pieces.

"Don't hurt me!" Was his automatic response.

"What in the Warp happened to you!" She asked, twisting an eyebrow up in questioning.

He was muttering incoherently, his skin-suit showing damage equivalent to being clawed and twisted about in very painful ways. The only word she recognized was 'banshees'. Zara sighed, tossing her spear aside, and knelt down in front of the wounded Spider. Without his armor on, the Eldar had none of their Aspect Warrior selves to steel against the horrors of combat. The make-believe personality was what little mental protection they had from being consumed by the sensations of battle.

He looked up to the Farseer, the luminescent stone behind her framing her figure in a soft glow. "Uwah! P-please! No more hitting!" He tried to scramble away from her bared self, clutching his warp-piercing backpack along with him.

"Calm down, Warrior of Khaine!" She growled angrily. "What's wrong with you?"

"L-look, I'm sorry, okay? Please... just don't..."

There were the sounds of a stampede outside, and the door burst in two heartbeats later, a dozen half-dressed Aspect Warriors of the Howling Banshees shrine poured into the room. Lyndia the Exarch looked at the scene, and her face grew as red as the blood blooms in the Gardens of Radiance back on the craftworld.

"Farseer! Even you! You wretched, craven... grah! Nothing is sacred to you, is it! DIE!"

The pink haired huntress leaped forward, but her slap was intercepted by the Warp Spider's shoulder pad being raised in defense. The rest piled on, knocking over Zara's armored mannequin. The Farseer snapped as the rest of the Banshees dog piled on the Warp Spider.

"EVERYONE, OUT! THAT MEANS NOW!"

"Can't get any peace and quiet even in my own room... damn it... what the Warp was that boy up to, anyway?"

Zara continued to mumble as she walked beside the wall of the building, where the Seers and the commanders were housed. She sighed again as she played with the small brooch that held together her robes. Humans of Michael's civilization would see a resemblance between the robes she wore and Greek/Roman toga, but of a much finer quality. Like a cloud wrapped around a mountain (though she had none), they seemed to float as she walked to the gathering hall. A place where Seers would convene, where they could find friends to talk, to seek council and comfort.

"Something disturbs you, Farseer Zara?" A voice called out, making the Farseer turn around to face its owner.

"Warlock Yoza." She greeted, her ever cold facade melting. The older Warlock – he was maybe fifty years her senior - could have been a Farseer by right of skill long before she had even begun the Path of the Seer. But something had stopped him. His mind's parthenon of personalities had literally warred over the decision to become consumed in the Path of the Seer. The mind-war had become almost famous in the Ulthwe craftworld, as the powerful Warlock had exiled himself to an abandoned garden complex deep in the belly of the crafrworld, and the splinters of his mind had taken physical form to fight it out.

As evidenced by his still being a Warlock, he had obviously reached the decision to remain in the Path of the Seer, but not to become a Farseer. He made an excellent mentor and teacher to most of the Ulthwe Seers, as well as his reputation as an unparalleled spearman. She had experienced both first hand, ever since he had attached himself to her retinue as a bodyguard. And as the path of the Seer was the first Path she had come into, she had been taught... other things by him as well.

"Zara." He spoke her name again, concern edging into his usually detached voice. "Something troubles you?"

"Y-yes..." She was suddenly nervous as Yoza contemplated her facial expression, feeling like a child being scolded by her teacher. Of course, their histories considered, that was a more than fair analogy. Plus, since he had mentored her through almost six decades, he knew every quirk and tic of her subconscious. Zara regained her composure, and sighed.

"Then let us talk about it."

The Warlock gave a small gesture, completely physical, but Zara felt herself pulled towards him, falling in step with him as they walked off to a more secluded place. The meditation chambers for the Seers were perfect for that purpose.

Inside the Seer meditation vaults, they found a small room; white walled and circular with a large platform in the middle, which would facilitate the meditation of any Seers.

"The mon-keigh – the big one." She started as soon as the door had slipped closed. The security of privacy was comforting, and so was the presence of her bodyguard/teacher/confident. "He's... annoying. He doesn't act like the other mon-keigh. He's brash, he has an overwhelming desire to impress me onto various objects... yet he doesn't have that arrogance the mon-keigh we have known over centuries seem to call their 'rights'."

"However... he is not the real problem, is he?" Yoza queried. He never fluffed up conversation.

Zara gave a reluctant nod. The Warlock went on.

"The Imperials themselves have been shown in a new light, have they not? With the other Psykers, talk to them in their dreams, I have. That female psyker of theirs; little control, but much power she wields."

"Oh?" Zara looked up, half-confused. He spoke... differently now. The open-minded Warlock had changed since they had arrived into this place. She had faced the same problems herself.

"A pressure based dispenser, she is like. Expecting a small trickle, you turn the regulator, but a torrent you get. So turn it off again, you would, in"

"What is with that grammar, Yoza? I do not remember you speaking like that. Until... now."

"An interesting character, I saw. Yoda, he was called. Very entertaining, he was."

"..." Zara looked confused for a second, blinking a few times in disbelief. By a piece of mon-keigh drama, he was... wait! She was getting into that style too. Must avoid falling into that trap. So a piece of mon-keigh flat-screen drama had influenced him that much?

"It was a very good movie. One of the few that survived that errant shot from Fuero's Fire Pike. The Empire Strikes Back, it was called. A classic of a past age, as Michael had put it." The Warlock grinned, he looked surprisingly young when he did. Despite his centuries of age, most humans would not have put his age past the mid thirties. By comparison, Zara looked in her early twenties, and was only a century and a half old.

"So... back to the problem, we must go: Because the future is muddled, you are frustrated, yes? That you cannot see what is to happen? Confused, the futures have become. Out of a job, we Seers are."

"Warlock Yoza, please return to your old way of speaking, it is much less annoying."

"Fine, fine. So we've got a problem. To try and fix it, you need to relax. I've read into the depths of this space. She Who Thirsts has not touched this place. There seems to be a barrier of some kind. I believe that Macha's destined has something to do with this." The Warlock mused, again in a serious mood. The swings of his personae was obvious to Zara, who – like many before her – wondered for his sanity.

"In short, we can afford to be relaxed under Michael's care. That boy may well be a psyker. His influence, however, is more subtle. He persuades. We are at peace, are we not? Millennia of war has left our races bitter, but in one afternoon he has managed to bring us to stop. Annd create a treaty; an uneasy peace, but peace nonetheless. If I were to gamble on this, I would say he is a psyker.

However, this could also be a scale factor. Our minds are much smaller in size compared to his. He is, after all, that much more massive than we are. Therefore, his force of personality, however small it would be in his scale of things, is much more than ours. Other mon-keigh on this planet would not be affected, but... the more malleable of us – like the Imperial mon-keigh – would find themselves empathizing with him."

Yoza looked into her eyes, confiding in her. She looked back, her mouth agape. The idea that a mon-keigh could wield such power... she leaned back, against the wall. He stepped forward as she began to slide to the side, catching her and supporting her. His breath caressed her neck as he held her. Such comfort... Zara placed her hands on his forearms, supporting herself now. This man... he had always supported the leaders of Ulthwe, as a bodyguard and as a teacher and as more than just the relationship demanded of their Path.

What would have happened, had he lost himself in the Path of the Seer, or taken the Path of Command?

She gasped as he sat her down on the pad, a circular platform of springy cloth which provided a comfortable place to rest and meditate. Zara sighed as he sat down beside her, her breathing deepening as she contemplated the facts that he had presented her. So Michael was a psyker; at some level all living beings were, but him? In general, the concept was not well received: Michael was far too ignorant! Well, they had appeared in his backyard, and many daemons and other travelers of the Warp used psykers to guide them to their destination, so it was not a huge leap of imagination to think of what Michael had to be.

Yoza's face appeared above her, smiling gently. His hand began to tease her robes from her shoulders.

"Zara... relax." He whispered, lips inches away from hers.

There was, again, a faint popping sensation. Someone gave a squeak of surprise.

"Ack! Sorry, sorry! I didn't meant to interrupt! Those Banshees have been hunting me all day!"

The panicked Warp Spider was trying not to stare at the two figures on the platform, and was frantically fiddling with the warp jump generator cradled on his lap.

"You again!" Zara looked around, trying to find a weapon.

Yoza sighed as he casually tossed some wraith stones, the Eldar equivalent to tarot cards, to predict the future. They fell erratically, defying prediction. The Rune of Warning, however, landed side-by side with the Rune of the Present.

"As Michael would say: 'Oh crap'." Yoza quipped.

Banshees were close behind, followed by some rather uncomfortable Seers who had been caught up in the search. Yoza stomped on the ground, sending a psychic shock-wave that made everyone stop in place.

"Alright, enough!"

"So it was all an accident?" Lyndia eyed the Warp Spider, who was more than nervous at the prospect of being caught by her. Warp and Daemons be damned, an angry Banshee was far worse a foe!

"Y-yes..." He stammered in reply.

Yoza facepalmed, sighing in frustration. "For the love of dignity, Urual, please stop stammering!"

"Uh... sure!" Came the response.

"Now apologize to the Exarch."

"I'm sorry for teleporting into your bath-house! It was really an accident, but I ask for your forgiveness!" The Warp Spider bowed to Lyndia, who was now dressed in robes similar to that of Zara, rather than the hastily wrapped towel.

"Good boy. Now... Exarch Lyndia. What do you have to say?" Zara asked the Exarch.

"Sorry for assuming you were a depraved, teleporting pervert." She droned.

"And..." Yoza added.

"..."

"Something to do with why you were waving your Power Blades around." He hinted.

"And sorry for trying to cut you into small pieces."

"Good girl. Now that that's all sorted, lets just shake hands and get this over with."

Before the two could reconcile, however, something massive happened.

"GOOD MORNING, ELDAR!" Michael cheerfully boomed, throwing open the door. The gust of wind it generated threw light objects everywhere, including the rather airy clothes of the Eldar women.

Urual blushed as he tried to cover his eyes as Lyndia tried to push down her robes. "They're pink!" (1)

She flushed bright red as her clothing settled back to their place. That stillness that followed lasted but a few heartbeats as Lyndia exploded.

"YOU IMMORAL, DEPRAVED, PERVERTED HOUTAN!(2)"

[A/Ns: (1): He was not referring to the color of her undergarments.

(2): A Houtan is a type of primate native to a jungle world named Sumatra IV, often visited by the Ulthwe for supplies and jungle warfare training. It is well known for its mischievous playfulness and habit of stealing small shiny objects. Imperial forces in the area are therefore banned from polishing weapons and uniform in a unique exception to dress code regulations. Infractions are punished with the offender being deposited into one of the many local mud pools.]

Omake: Resurrection Destruction

In the dawn of time, the Necrotyr had always been a rather sad race. They were burned by their own sun, and their lives were short. The race of the dead had always seen the constant reminder of their own short lives. Bad luck and the Necrotyr race traveled hand in hand. Until the C'tan arrived, they knew little of what happened outside of their system, their science focused only on lengthening their paltry lives under the harsh glare of their sun. Gods of the Stars, they offered the Necron immortality, but as always, there was a price: Their very souls, their personalities.

Encased in living metal, they accepted this terrible price, and became the Harvesters of Souls, bent on eradicating all life in the materium. Billions died on millions of worlds as the war between Gods raged. In the end, the C'tan were beaten back by a third force created by the malevolent use of the Warp, and soon they decided to slumber, to weather the storm beneath the crusts of worlds spread throughout the galaxy.

Aeons later, the Necron rise again...

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

The hard dirt moved aside easily as the Flayed Ones sliced with their finger blades before pulling out the neatly sliced black rocks. They were impatient, if that emotion was able to be felt among the race of the dead. Their green eyes glittered as their fingers moved aside dirt. Around them, small scarabs the size of their palms picked up chunks of rock and moved it further away from the excavation. Emotion held little sway over the Necron, but if anything they could feel hate. Hatred and hunger. For the souls of those who were still alive, while they were cursed with such undeath.

The Necron Lord overlooked their progress as his warriors began to rise. Swathed in a black cloak, his decorated body of living metal glowed as he paced forward, rolling a green orb between his hands. The golden masked flared as it picked up a signal from the army around him. They were rising... they were rising.

Arcs of green energy danced between faded grey metal as the soulless machines staggered to their feet, ancient fingers grasping at ancient weapons. Some picked dirt off their metal bodies, while others shook aeons of dust and grime off. The green tubes of the gauss flayers came to life, and joined the Flayed Ones as they tried to dig their way out of their tomb. Behind them, a pyramid much larger than themselves shimmered to life, the green crystal mounted atop the giant structure glowing to life as its four turrets began to swing around, testing the limits of its motion.

All throughout this, small, miniscule spiders and scarabs moved between the rising Necron forces, assisting a Warrior here, assembling a Destroyer there, and pulling a Pariah out from under a seam of stone. Irritation's imiation pulsed through the mechanical processes of the Lord. Their teleporter had yet to be awoken in the Monolith, so they would have to get out the slow way.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

A parody of joy broke out, the shadow of elation spread through the ranks as the wall crumbled through, revealing an entrance into a second cavern. It was rough but almost circular, and the faster Necron – the Wraiths and the Flayed Ones – stumbled out into this new space. Most had barely enough room to move about, it was like a sewer. The Necron's abstract feeling of triumph did not last very long, as they realized that the darkness ahead was sealed.

They moved forward, the Necron Lord joining them.

Reaching out, a Flayed One pushed his claw against the seal. It was a brittle material, it realized. A collection of carbon fibers that were bound together by pressure and a crude bonding agent. The material tore easily once a tear was made. It was a dark, gritty red, but on the inside it was the purest white that they Necrons had every seen. Continuing to tear jagged triangles off the material, they found that it was a container: Now they faced another material, this time it was almost fluid: At the touch of the Necron blades, it seemed to absorb the blades, a dark pit leaving it. A very pliable, soft material. It was grey, although a lighter shade than their own metal 'skin'. A scarab went up to the wall of pliant resistance, and bit off a small section.

Analysis confirmed it as C7H5N3O6 , a semi-organic substance.

The Necron felt confusion for perhaps the first time in millenia.

What the hell was this stuff?

A sealant?

The Necron Lord waved for his minions to dig around it. The newly activated excavator scarabs swarmed, moving forwards now and digging around the pliant material.

Vestiges of emotion surfaced in the Necron Lord. His purge would soon begin. They would soon break free... A siren cut through the air.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" All of the Necrons froze in place, their weapons raised. Scarabs chittered as the voice boomed out.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" The second shout spurred the Necron Lord into a charge. The rest of the Necron tomb advanced, looking out at the bright tunnel. The cavern they had dug out into was massive... it could have easily accommodated a starship.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" He was suddenly aware of the big red pipe running from the pliant obstacle and out over the edge of the cliff.

The Lord turned back, a small section of his logic cortex pinging a very disturbing message.

C7H5N3O6 was the chemical formula for the explosives used many, many aeons ago, to blast out their tomb worlds.

The whole cavern lit up in a massive expansion of gases. The very air ignited as 200 pounds of C4 detonated in the enclosed space.

Foreman Dave Bernly pressed down on his hat as the explosives kicked in, ripping a massive chunk out of the mine. The wave of pressure slammed into the gathered team, buffeting them with a millisecond's worth of supersonic wind. Half the crew knelt on the ground for stability.

Dust rained down as the few who saw it cheered, whooping in pyromaniacal joy.

Beside him, Matthew Nickel chuckled as he stood up from the detonator. His short, curly hair was strewn all over his face as he cackled with laughter.

"Never gets old, does it?" The youngest member of the team, Henry, asked. He stood up, pulling his hard hat off as chunks of coal rained down from the sky. He walked over to the laptop, where cameras had recorded the explosion from far closer than it was possible for the humans.

"Never does." Matt agreed. "C'mon, lets get the diggers in. Whatever was in there's been blasted to bits. Lets go clean up."

"Okay. Vincent'll love this." Henry chuckled, quickly scanning through the recording. A few seconds before detonation, he stopped.

"Hey... hey, guys... look at this."

"Hmm? What is it?"

"Look there. A flash of green."

"What the hell was that?"

"Dunno."

Chapter 5

The banging on my door got a bit more anxious in its pitch.

Oh crap! If Vincent and Alice see this... shit! All hell would break loose... well, at least for them.

I burst out of the study, leaving the three Imperials behind and stepped out into the corridor. The front door was only a few meters away, but already the Warhammer 40,000 universe's denizens were already hauling their 1/56th scale asses, trying to get moving and were mass-migrating back to their rooms. They weren't stupid, and they knew what it could mean when the titan-sized friends came along. The Eldar were – for once – cooperative with me when I said that secrecy would be priority. Skimmers were used for this rapid evacuation, and it was surprising to see Space Marines boarding a Tau Devilfish troop carrier without complaint. Unsurprisingly, the heavy Power Armor caused one side of the troop carrier to dip down, the pod-mounted gun-drone scraped the carpet as they bugged out.

Chimera and Rhino APCs, the carriers of the Imperial Guard and Space Marines, rolled in formation with Kroot – Tau auxiliaries that looked like a walking, featherless chicken that could rip your head off - hanging on to the pintle mounted weapons. Others were more passive in their hiding, the Tau Stealth battlesuits running to the potted plant and activating their active camouflage system. Eldar Rangers were following suit, their 'cameleoline' cloaks shimmering as they raced across the floor out to the patio.

My head throbbed as an Eldar Wave Serpent hovered past.

Those headaches that I got more and more often were unbearable. Zara had made a habit of attacking not only my mind, but my very soul as well, trying to shred it into pieces and sending them into the Warp. It was just the sheer difference in size between us, with me being extremely large and her being so small that saved me. My soul was simply too large for her to shred; from what Justicar Amadeus and Librarian Vasili had told me, it was like trying to use a paper shredder to try and shred a phone book all at once, rather than a cheap paper business card.

Well, back to the rushing around.

The Space Marine Dreadnought lumbered past, his stubby legs propelling him in the manner of a bull-charge. The venerable veteran was maybe twice the height of a Marine, but was more the shape of a half-brick that had marshmallows for limbs. That made him a little less mobile than the others, although to be honest they were far more stable. He followed up the backwards charge of Space Marines.

"Guys!" I hissed as quietly as I could. "C'mon, c'mon!" I picked up Tancred and pushed him along, setting him down in the corridor, where he could make his own way. It wasn't much for us, but it had cut maybe a minute or two out of his travel times, though.

"Michael! We can hear someone in there! Don't try and hide from us, okay?" Vincent chuckled as he banged playfully on the door.

"I'm coming!" I turned around as a boxy Chimera APC sped past, ready to pick up its complement of Guardsmen to evacuate. I stepped down on it as it went on underneath me, and it shot off from under my foot as Father Physics did its job: namely, the tracks did not provide any traction whatsoever as they shot forward, taking my foot with me as socks were tangled with pintle and side mounted weapons. The fact that the treads were exposed at the top as well were no help. I gave a yelp as my leg kicked forward, and slipped.

Darkness swallowed me as I felt my head hit the floor.

I looked around, and saw that this was... a room? The light began to shine again, re-defining the new space that I was in. It was extravagant, to say the least. A richly decorated room with regards to the decorations, which were slightly over the top but still had some vestige of taste. Posters of singers and celebrities, a neat stack of teen gossip magazines mixed in with an expensive looking computer. Half the room was devoted to vanity.

I turned to the middle of the room, where a figure was sitting on the ground, her legs splayed out like a 'W'.

Blood leaked from her cuts.

She had cut herself more than once, the angry red lines crisscrossing her wrist, letting the blood slowly dribble along the grooves. A razor was held loosely in her other hand. She looked like a mess; brown hair fell to her shoulder blades, and rather pasty skin made her look like someone who had just gotten into hospital or something. Her body was slim, like a dancer or a gymnast. She was, to be frank, rather plain looking; neither beautiful nor ugly. Well, could have been leaning towards 'pretty', had it not for the fact that she had streaks running from her ears to her jaw, mixing makeup with tears.

Blood ran along the grooves.

Grooves that had been carved into the hardwood floor of her room, inscribing a circle just a little too small for her to lie in. Eight lines splashed out in even intervals, their random lengths ending in arrowheads.

I realized that she had been losing blood steadily over a long time; the grooves were acting like irrigation ditches, channeling the blood. It had filled most of the circle and spokes of the wheel already. She saw that her blood was beginning to thicken, to slowly heal the gash on her wrist. A quick slash let a fresh spring burst from her skin.

Eyes flickered up, meeting mine.

I froze.

"W-who?" She managed to stammer, in a hoarse whisper.

Her blue eyes were unfocused as she suddenly mewled like a newborn kitten, curling up in the middle of the circle. An invisible hand wrapped its fingers around her throat, and she choked out a whimper as I saw raw Chaotic power begin to take hold. She began to tremble, shaking uncontrollably as something took a hold of her.

Her blood offering began to boil. Not metaphorically, literally; steam was rising from the edges of the Wheel of Chaos. She shuddered, arching her back. Her bleeding wrist seemed fixed to their spot as she convulsed in front of me.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

I saw her change before me: her teeth sharpening into fine points. Her eyes were alight in pained despair as the blue irises changed to red. Fine hair tangled as she writhed on the spot, convulsing in silent agony as the forces of Chaos shook her body. Whatever was happening to her, it was happening fast.

Unnatural spasms spilled blood everywhere as she struggled to speak. Her hair had now turned black, and now changed to a bright purple as the Warp took it toll from her body. Around her, shadows began to solidify. Eyes fixed to mine, her red irises locking onto mine. She whispered into my soul, her own essence grazing mine.

"Kay... Kay-ohsssss... isss hee-eer." She said. I struggled to comprehend... Ch-Chaos... is here?

The wall imploded as reality shredded, and my body felt like it had spontaneously combusted. I screamed from the pain, the absolute agony of reality being rent asunder in front of me. The circular portal was a blood red maw of unreality, mixed with white points of light, and I saw it as what it was; a gate from the Eye of Terror itself. Falling onto my astral knees, I gasped for breath as it was sucked from my lungs, hearing the chuckles and the cries of the daemons around me.

A figure stepped from the shadows, its horned helmet swinging this way and that. Crackling energies splashed out from his fingertips as he looked behind him. The Chaos Sorcerer, one of the Thousand Sons of Ahriman, looked around his new world.

A crimson-armored amalgamation of Marine and Techpriest stepped out beside him, a Techmarine. He had with him armored servo arms similar to Amisa's, but more bulky and battle-scarred. His entire left arm was wrapped in an interface of some kind, as was his right shoulder. Servitors – nearly identical to the ones that the techmarine living under my roof had – spread out around him.

The mottled armor of another Chaos Marine showed me that the next Marine had arrived, followed closely by several dozen more Marines. Severed heads were mounted on a series of poles on his back. Tau, Eldar, human, Ork. Faces that I would never know. Some were trapped in eternal agony, others were ashen and blank. His daemon blade glowed with ethereal fire, and as he brandished it, the eye set into the crossguard blinked, looking around the room.

Obviously the leader. He looked at the Sorcerer.

"Why the hell are we so small!"

A bright pain flowered on my nose.

There was only darkness.

• STAB*

"Did it work?"

That voice belonged to Sohm.

"It appears not... shall I try again?"

Zara was a little too enthusiastic about the prospect of trying to... wait, my nose...

It was really, really hurting. Reflexes kicked in.

"AAAAAARGHWOWOWOWOWO~ARCK!"

"Yep, it worked." Came Sohm's satisfied voice.

You're going to pay for that!

The sharp spear of Farseer Zara was still driven into the tip of my nose, but more concerning was the fact that she had been standing on my lips when I screamed, opening my relatively huge maw.

Gravity did the rest of the job.

The Farseer dropped down into my mouth, screaming along with my choking as I sprung upright, throwing probably two-dozen concerned miniature warriors around. Others backed away, others ran. I reckon the latter were smarter.

I gagged once.

"PHTOOEY!"

Out the Farseer was spat. She bounced off the floor I had ejected her onto, her robes were slick with my saliva.

Most of the surrounding watchers gave a collective "Ewwww."

"That was utterly disgusting, mon-keigh!" Zara picked herself up, livid with rage, and promptly slipped and fell to her knees. She got back up, hissing with rage. 'Boiling kettle' was a rather good metaphor here.

"You tried to eat me, you overgrown, barbaric... rrrrgh... mon-keigh! Not event the most articulate words will express my rage!"

"Who in the hell told you to stand over my mouth, anyway!" I retorted, spitting out one of her shoulder-ornaments. Zara blustered as I tried to pick a shuriken pistol out from between my molars and my cheek without sending monomolecular ninja stars down my throat.

"Um... Gue'O Mi'kel? You still have a spear sticking out of your nose... its wound is bleeding quite profusely." Shas'ui Talon helpfully informed me. Dang, I hadn't realized it was there. I spat out Zara's little ninja-star-pistol, and then reached up to my face and pulled it out the spear - painfully – to throw it back at Zara and accepted a tissue given to me, freshly torn from its stand in the kitchen to stem the bleeding. My head was in absolute terror as it tried to suppress the pain... jeeze, what the hell happened?

"Mon-keigh, I am talking to you." The Farseer sternly intoned. She reached out, and tickled my brain with her powers.

"Okay, okay, and stop doing that already, I ran out of Panadol™ yesterday!" I shouted irritably at her, waving my hand dismissively. There was an 'I want attention' cough from behind me.

"Uh... Michael... when you're not busy with the Farseer, can you tell these guys to lower their weapons? I'm not looking forward to seeing what a meltagun can do to my face." Came a rather nervous plea. I looked up, suddenly aware of my visitors.

Vincent and Alice sat in a corner. Knees tucked up to their chins, and hands resting on top of their heads, they were surrounded by some of the largest land based weapons of the 41st millenium. Leman Russ MBTs, Hammerhead heavy gunships, Falcon grav-tanks, a Land Raider... well, you get the idea.

Oh, I should introduce them now.

Vincent, the rather stocky Asian, had a long mop of raven black hair that touched his shoulders, and glasses that framed his deep brown eyes. His awkward smile – absurdity in the face of adversity – looked rather slapped on, and could slacken into panic at any moment. He was wearing his usual blue denim coat over a short sleeved undershirt, and long cargo pants, with heavy boots. His ubiquitous 'Bag of Holding' was resting against his toes. He had a Space Marine with a Multi-melta on his knees, pointing the barrel of the literal 'heat ray' at his face.

Alice, brown hair and green eyes, tall and willowy, was a Southern Belle in appearance, but her manner was completely opposite. She wore a sleeveless turtleneck and jacket, paired with jeans and some high boots which scraped her knees. Her handbag was at her toes, and her bangles jingled as she rested her hands on her head. She had an Eldar Fire Dragon – anti-tank specialists – pointing a long barreled Fire Pike to her throat.

Both were looking rather unsettled at the moment, but Vincent was taking things rather well, comparatively speaking. The guy could accept anything, because of his rather... philosophical approach to things. His collar, however, was visibly singed.

The commanders of the prisoner detail – Commander Firestrike, Sergeant Vinters, the Dark Reaper Exarch and Commissar Tomas all looked at me for instruction. I gave a small sigh of frustration.

"Guys, point those things somewhere else." I said, and they obeyed over the next few seconds. Alice relaxed with a sigh. She looked like she was melting as her tense muscles uncoiled. Vincent was doing the same thing. He helped the Devastator Marine down, and leaned forward to look at a Leman Russ tank that had been threatening him earlier on.

Alice took this moment to absolutely freak out.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE THINGS!" She screeched. Vincent, surprisingly, stayed calm as he explained things to her. Mr. Exposition was a good nickname.

"They're people from Warhammer, I think." He mused, shifting gears from hostage to nerd. "1/56 scale models that people in the UK make to play a game. But... these guys have come to life."

"What! So we were being held hostage by a game!

"Not anymore, it looks like. These guys are the real deal. So, is this why you weren't around on Saturday, Michael?"

"Yeah. They arrived Friday."

"I see."

Vincent stood up, blinking. He looked calm, but I could see his mind going 'ohshitohshitohshit' underneath. How? I don't know... it was just a feeling I had. My friend knelt down beside the Leman Russ that had been taking him hostage. Thujan looked back up at him.

"'Malleus Michael'?" He read off the side. "Michael's Hammer... did they name this after you?"

"Yep." I answered, rubbing my lips as I looked at Farseer Zara, who was launching into the second chorus of her lecture-hymn. She was going on about things I did not understand, so I ignored her.

"Why?"

"I hit the Force Commander and the Farseer with it. You can still see the impression underneath it."

"Cool... can I see?" Vincent tried to lift the tank, but was quickly discouraged by the heavy stubber – a heavy machine gun – that was swung in his direction. He quickly backed away. "Uh... okay, never mind."

"O'Michael." That was Firestrike speaking. I turned to face the Tau commander. "What shall we do now? Even I see that the Greater Good requires these two to remain in secrecy, lest the local authorities decide to involve themselves."

"Alright, guys, go back to your rooms for now... and if someone could bring me some water, it would be appreciated... I got a funny taste in my mouth."

"How dare you!" Zara screeched. She reached out for my mind... again.

My brain exploded in another migraine.

It was the girl's room again. A quick look around showed me that not much time had passed; The shadows of the room were still in the same places, and that same rift of reality was there as well, except now there were a dozen or so new Chaos Icons, which made my eyes and very being ache from just looking at the alien geometries. Bodies mounted on pikes, some still struggling to get off, hung on each of the eight points of the giant Chaos Wheel in the middle.

The room itself was occupied by the upper echelons of the Chaos force that had no doubt just arrived here; the door had been given a few neat holes, and no doubt cultists had spread out throughout the house. I prayed to whatever God would help the family that lived here.

"P-pl-pleeshe! Hwee deed hwot yuu chol' ush choo!" A mewling voice cried out, her tone... pleading. Desperate. My internal translator again gave an almighty sigh. I wished for subtitles, but I guessed anyway: 'Please... We did what you told us to do'. I felt sorry for her instantly, even if she had intentionally summoned Chaos. They were standing in what had been the girl's bedroom, which had changed dramatically. A smashed mirror spread its shards around the floor. The eight spokes of the wheel of Chaos was a charred valley now, carved forever into the wood of her home. Their life-sized cultist was curled up defensively in the corner, and had gained many more wounds and slashes since I had last seen her.

"Did you think that would be all of it?" A rumbling voice teased her. "You give us a little blood, and we make your life perfect?"

"Hwee hat a deel!" We had a deal! She begged. It was not easy to understand her words. They were confusing, at best. I looked at her, and saw... well, it was hard to describe her. She had covered herself with the white sheets, stained red with her blood. The figure she was begging to was not visible. That figure stepped out of the shadows, the Sorcerer of Tzeentch.

"I am altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further." The voice continued on. "You have chosen to worship Chaos, mortal. For that, we have given you what you have always wanted. Change. The Thousand Sons of Ahriman and the Lord of Change has provided you with change. You wanted to be free of your father. Well, he is... gone. And you wanted to be different." He laughed, maliciously enjoying her despair. "Now... you are most certainly different."

I got a good look at the girl now. She had changed completely from the girl that I had seen before. Besides the change in coloring, her clothes had, for lack of a better word, been destroyed; now what was left was a tube top with too many holes to count, and a shredded excuse for a skirt, held up by a belt. The mark of Tzeentch was literally branded onto her right thigh, and was still smoking.

She had bound her arms in bandages, to stem the flow of blood; crimson streaked the white fabric and across the black tape that were used to secure the dressings to her scarred limbs.

"Hwee vanteed choo ve phrecchi! Nawt... nawt dis!" We wanted to be beautiful... not... not this! Her sobbing restarted, her hands cupping her face as she heaved in despair, her dark skin stained with tracks of tears.

His mocking laughter rang out, strong and clear.

"You pathetic, naïve little fool. Praying to the Warp, the Gods of Chaos for something as petty as juvenile vanity? Pah!"

"Bastard." I breathed, unable to stay silent. I stepped back as heads turned.

"WHO'SE THERE!"

"Hwat!" What! The girl's eyes looked up, and met mine. "Heelp m-"

"SILENCE!" The sorcerer roared, and at once her mouth closed. There was a breath at my shoulder, and something bony and clawed slashed across my back.

I hit the 'ground', and turned around to see a drooling mess of a daemon, its mouth making up fully half of its mass. It reminded me of Courage the Cowardly Dog, except with fangs and actual claws. The daemon howled as it leaped forward, and I managed to roll out of the way. The thing was surprisingly slow, and it growled in anger as it saw that it had failed to draw more blood.

"Hmm... It seems that His protection is helping you today." The sorcerer mused, but I was a little too busy trying to get away.

"ANYONE! GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE, NOW!"

The daemon grabbed me by the throat, choking off any more words.

Again, darkness fell.

• STAB *

"GODDAMMIT, STOP DOING THAT!"

I reached up to the source of burning pain in my nose – yet again - and threw off Farseer Zara, out into God knows where, and clutched at my bloody (literally this time) nose again. Looking around the room, I saw that Vincent had managed to convince most of them to head back to their rooms as ordered while the Asian had bodily hauled me over to the battle-scarred couch. There, I saw that he had followed instructions from the Grey Knights in making simple hexagram seals, like the ones that were pasted all over their bodies.

He looked at me, quite the picture of concern now.

"Michael... what just happened? You were... well... half the Psykers freaked out when you went KO, and... well, most of the Imperials tried to kill Zara."

I looked around the room: the Grey Knights, minus the hatted knight, were assembled, as well as the majority of the psykers in various places. The ones closest to me were the Tau and the Imperials. No Orks, though. We still kept them bottled up in the basement. I looked at Amadeus, who gave me a blank stare back – the faceplate of his helmet seemed especially good at doing this. I shifted my gaze to see other psykers; Vasili was sitting down, brushing his forehead with a cloth (Hey! That was my painting canvas!), sanctioned psyker Ishabeth was passed out under the watchful eye of Commissar Tomas, with a pair of other guardsmen nearby, cleaning up her vomit, and fully half the Seer council were limp (I later found out that they were only unconscious), and being administered to by the other half. Some of the Sisters of Battle were also down.

Chillingly, I saw that the other Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard weren't doing as well as the more mentally robust Psykers of the Eldar and the Space Marines; two were dead, their heads not even there anymore, and one was being given his Last Rites posthumously. Still, one other had survived relatively unharmed, but had half of his blood supply replaced by 'alchemical compounds designed to stabilize the psyche of the subject'.

"What happened?" I asked. Stupid question, I know.

"You managed to access the Warp, Michael." Justicar Amadeus said. His breathing was labored and laced with pain. "We knew what could have happened, and we didn't want you to have turned into a daemon, so all the Psykers pooled their power through Zara, and she hit you with the spear. We thought you were being possessed, you see..."

Looking from one to the other, I sighed as I rubbed my forehead. Alice gave me a glass of water, taken with a nod of thanks, and I gulped down a PanadolTM given to me by Vincent, who – sure enough - was holding one in his hand. The guy was Crazy Prepared, let me tell you. He had a freaking medical kit in his Bag of Holding. Zara was complaining – when wasn't she? - and brushing my blood off her spear. I looked at her.

"What is it, mon-keigh?"

"Would I really have become a daemon if you had not stabbed me?"

"The risk was great that you would have been so, yes."

"Then..." I paused, struggling for those two words. "Thank you. For helping me."

Zara looked as if she had been slapped in the face. With a wet fish. A wet fish the size of a truck.

"I didn't do it for you! Don't get me wrong, mon-keigh: a titan-sized daemon would have caused a lot of problems!"

I looked at Amadeus, and sighed.

"Gather up all the psykers. I need them to tell me what I just saw."

Omake: c0gb01

It was late evening as Techpriest Ulrich 293384-491832 wandered the house, his roving band of servitors and lesser adepts of the Cult Mechanicus following him closely as the three combat servitors swung their heavy bolters warily from side to side. No telling when the xeno might attack them, despite the treaty of peace with Michael. The sound of a humming fan perked his aural sensors, and he quickly swung around to see Titanicus Michael step from a room and wander off. He was mumbling something about his injured legs and too much... warcraft? Was he secretly a commander of some sort? All indications of his pacifistic qualities did have an underlying hint of a strong willed leader, but so far he showed little to no military intelligence; after all, trying to simply smash orks with a simple pressure-based fire suppressant device was utterly stupid, even by biological standards... well, maybe with comparison to the Greater Barking Toad of Catachan [1] it was slightly more intelligent.

[1: The Greater Barking Toad of Catachan is a roughly van-sized frog, normally docile but when surprised it triggers a self defense mechanism that would cause an explosion capable of leveling entire Death-world grade forests for miles around – the only clearings in the Death World of Catachan are known to be the blast sites of such surprises (no doubt for whoever surprised the Toad in the first place)]

Attracted to the sound of humming electronics, the band of mechanical priests stepped into his study. It had been a study, until it had been converted to the purposes of a gaming room. A large (24 inch) 2D projector dominated one corner of the room, with various wires and blessed electron pipes running feeding the Machine spirit. Surprisingly, it had no devotional decorations at all. Ulrich's heart – had it not been replaced with a more efficient mechanical replacement – would have stopped at the sight of such disobedience to the Rites of Activation... as well as perhaps a thousand other rituals.

"What have they done to this place!" Asked an adept, who had far less blessed augmentations and of course was more susceptible to emotional outbursts.

"Shhh!" The Skitarii bodyguard hissed, tapping away at an interface on her wrist. "I'm voxing the Magos. He will most certainly wish to hear about this mother lode of the Machine God!"

The team advanced, fanning out from the entrance and exploring around inside of the cavernous room.

The study was perhaps the nexus of Michael's wealth; it had a few decent gaming systems (although most of the games were loaned or traded) and a well to do computer on either end of the room, with a veritable library of tomes and polymer cases much like the ones that they had destroyed in his recreational space. Grappling devices (read: a thrown servitor) soon reached the top of the table, and lowered down a rope to allow the others to make their way up to the top.

"More permanent lifting systems will be most desireable." Ulrich noted.

The massive screen before them showed a pair of primitive Arbites, with short autoguns, snub pistols and flack jackets. Featureless faces hid behind masks and goggles. They looked cold and fearsome, despite their plain appearances; perhaps the lack of individuality was what made them so intimidating. Faceless legions. Anonymous and uncaring.

"Is this the army of this era?" The adept asked.

"Possibly. Can you decode this text?"

"Yes, the text is simple English, a language which derived Low Gothic many years ago... before the Emperor's Crusade."

"I see... shall we get started, then? I wish to explore the Machine Spirit's capabilities."

The lexicalogist muttered the Litany of Communication as he opened his eight eyes at the giant screen.

Ulrich grinned. "Let us consecrate this holy machine, so we may operate it without incurring the wrath of the Machine Spirit."

- - - - - Server 'P1', 2 hours later - - - - -

The terrorist labeled 'Vector' rapidly tapped on the keyboard, and threw away his not-very-needed gun away. He surveyed his teammates. The terrorists were all in their favored skins, with balaclavas and snow-camouflage pants. They all wandered around on the 'testing ground', a custom map thought up by the local programmers for testing out new guns, tactics, equipment or just to get used to playing again. On this Saturday afternoon, the self-proclaimed gamers were sitting together and playing on some CounterStrike for the weekly 'tournament' held at this particular server; anyone in the city who wanted to be considered 'l337' was in (although some were using the internet to connect to this game). This time, they were here to protect/hold the hostages stored inside of a warehouse's control room, and for that purpose the fifteen strong team had quickly organized into five man fire teams.

Among the veteran terrorists, twelve in all (there were three regulars), a newcomer stepped up, in his green sweater and brown pants to contrast with their Phoenix Connection skin schemes, running into walls, reloading and switching weapons, jumping... and... well... everything. Several weapons dropped to the floor, including a rather expensive sniper rifle. Eventually, that process stopped with a USP .45 in his hands, then he began to jump around like an epileptic on a pogo stick. To everyone around, it looked like the guy was simply banging away at the keyboard like a monkey at the proverbial typewriter.

"WTF! R U 7r1pp1n b01!" [What the fuck! Are you doing drugs, boy!] "R33d d4 m4nu4l, n00b!" [Read the Manual, newbie!] "Th3r3 15 n0 m4nu4l, _DRAGON_." [There is no manual, _Dragon_] "0h. 3h... l33rn 2 pl41, n00b!" [Oh. Eh... learn to play, newbie!]

"lol, ph41l." [Haha, fail.]

In the real world, the gamers of 'Team 3' looked with at each other with very worried expressions. Thankfully, this was only the friendly 'practice' round to let everyone stretch their proverbial legs. The real round was starting in ten seconds' time. C0gb01 was still jumping as he tried to break through a hole in the concrete.

Vincent (alias Vector) sighed, carefully removed his glasses, put the keyboard safely away and applied his head to the desk in a perfect 60 bpm tempo; bang – pause – bang – pause – bang – pause, rinse and repeat.

"This might not end well." Jarred (alias Tailcracker) croaked. Damian (Macadamian) nodded in agreement. The rogue terrorist among rogue terrorists was now out in the catwalks, jumping up and down. In the headphones, they could hear Microsoft Sam chuckling away.

Henry (ÆON) moved through, and quickly crouched down to exploit the shortcut. Seeing what had happened, the player marked as 'c0gb01' and Colwyn (Saravock)

Cyrus (alias Vladmir) nodded his agreement. "Who the hell is this... c0gb01 anyway?"

"Round starting!" Luke (Mr. Spot) warned. Everyone hefted their newly purchased weapons.

They waited for the Shakespeare.

- - - - - 1 minute, 28.294 seconds later- - - - -

"Vent tunnel, to the control room!" Vector warned over his mic from his post in the 'control room', spraying bullets in short, two-shot bursts from his weapon of choice, a Kreig 552, at the metal tube which linked the roof to their hostages. Two kills showed up on his screen. He chuckled with the success, only to yelp in panic as something drained his body armor and clipped his health bar down to 34.

"Everyone down!" Mr. Spot leveled his P90 and fired over the shoulders of the now-crouched terrorists, spraying bullets everywhere. He managed to pick off the surviving CT squaddie in a burst of 5.7mm death as he dropped down the busted grating. He returned to his task of making sure that the three sharpshooters weren't ambushed.

More counter-terrorists burst into the loading bay, to be met with crippling return fire from the terrorists camping on the catwalks. ÆON quickly racked up a headshot with his AWP. They lost Saravock and Tailcracker to a burst of Maverick return fire. Action was fast paced and brutal, with everyone losing teammates quickly. Vector ran behind into the room, his main weapon depleted. He picked up an AK-47 from a fallen teammate, and hurried over to join the rest of the combatants. A hurled frag grenade quickly ended that notion.

Then suddenly, c0gb01 was in among the Counter Terrorists, having jumped from the catwalks.

"n00b!" _DRAGON_ cried out as he ran across the catwalk, jumping and crouching randomly as he avoided the return fire from his liberal use of the machinegun. His legs were scythed out from under him as a shotgun was unloaded into his kneecaps, and a second blast brought his health down to 0.

There were ten gunshots as c0gb01 spun around on the spot, firing his USP .45 wildly.

Five bodies dropped to the floor around him, all gibbed beyond recognition.

The kill screen tallied up five head shots.

"Holy..." "WTF!"

"N0 w41!" [No way!]

A surviving CT player capped c0gb01 in the head with his UMP at point blank range, but his triumphant 'hah!' was cut off by his head exploding from the magnum sniper rifle.

The round ended, but instead of returning, c0gb01 had left. The players of Team 3 looked at each other, as Vincent again performed the Bows of Frustration.

"Who the hell was that!"

Ulrich flexed mechanical limbs in a gesture of irritation, looking at the Skitarii who had commandeered the rodent, the struggling servitor which had been operating the optical movement sensor beside it trying to get up onto its tracked 'legs'.

"D4 fr4k j00 d0, n00b!" [The hell did you do, fool!]

"I... I... I'm not sure... something just... t00k 0v4 m3..."

Chapter 6

Thought for the Day: "If not accuracy, saturation." - Primary Doctrine of the Dakka Offensive Stratagem

As the miniature armies moved around, unsure of what to do, I rubbed my temples as the Panadol™ took a hold of me. I had a headache, again. Those headaches were often the cause of the residents of the Warhammer 40,000 universe sitting inside my house, more often than not the Imperial Guardsmen say that its because of the psykers that I often had to pacify. Especially the Eldar Farseer Zara. I had seen her without her helmet once, and if she wasn't such a bitch (and not a 1/56 scale miniature woman) I think I could have liked her. But then again, even at her scale, she had enough bitch-ness to cover an entire highschool cliche.

"I heard that, mon-keigh." Her voice snapped at me, inside of my head.

"To be fair, you arepretty bitchy." I thought.

"Had there not been a danger of summoning a daemon if I were to attack you, mon-keigh, your soul would have been long ago fed to the Warp." The essence of her hate seemed to needle at my brain – literally – as I rubbed at my temples.

"Alright guys, listen up." I called out verbally, looking at the assembly before me, focusing my mind. Zara slipped out of my mind as her physical form turned to face me.

The psykers of the Imperium and the Eldar gathered around me. To my right stood the armored form of Space Marine Librarian Vasili, of the Blood Ravens Chapter, who was at the head of the Imperial psykers, along with most of the Grey Knights, the Sanctioned Psykers who had not died, and the pet psyker of the Inquisitor. To my left was Ulthwe Eldar Farseer Zara and her retinue of Warlocks and Seers, who were mostly recovered from the psychic shockwave of my interactions with the Warp.

My actions – whether conscious or not – had injured a fair few of them, especially the more sensitive of the Psykers. One had literally cried tears of blood as his mind was ripped apart by the Warp. Others had simply lost control of their powers; the combined might of the Seer Council going mentally berserk had led to a fair few objects overturned or thrown against walls. I gave a hollow stare to the gathered council.

"Okay, first we recap; what the hell just happened?" My voice was audibly dry, and I coughed a few times. I was shaking like the proverbial dice in the cup. My hands were unresponsive; Vincent told me later that I didn't have the animation of my usual conversations, I used to wave my arms around and generally accompany any conversation with those actions. But not today.

Four dozen voices rose up at once, either demanding explanation or trying to give one.

"Hold on! Shut up!" The voices died down as my hoarse voice smashed their shouting. Hey, being fifty-six times larger than they were gave you a huge advantage when it came to lung capacity.

"Can't any of you get along for a few minutes?" I pointed from Space Marine to Farseer. "Lets see... Zara, you got anything?"

Even through the faceplate of her helmet, I could see her intense glare, the sheer maliciousness of her gaze.

"As stupid as you are, Mon-keigh, you do have some of the traits typical of psykers with you. I must say that constant contact with Eldar pyskers has rubbed off on you, especially with the... intensity of some of those contacts."

"So you trying to shred my soul did this?"

"N-not like that!" She blurted, her composure cracking immediately.

Before she could lose it, however, a Warlock stepped forward, holding up his hand in a pacifying gesture. He was dressed – like the others – in a black robe with bone-white decorations, and oval gemstones set into the wraithbone of his armor.

"Psyker potential, all mon-keigh have. Amounts to little, these abilities sometimes do. Faster reflexes and a big mouth, some have. Others, move little objects, perform magic they can. By contact with us, increase your powers you have."

"... uh... thanks, Yoda." I drained my glass of water, feeling dizzy as I turned his words over in my head, trying to make sense of them. His words were confusing, and I began to wonder if my borrowed copy of the original trilogy had been a good idea.

"Yoza, is this one's name. Little greenskin midget, I am not."

"... right, back on topic. So what you're saying is that being around you guys has increased my latent psychic potential?"

"Little power, latent potential means not. Strong, you have been. In your house, why else have we appeared?"

"It stands to reason that your latent psyker abilities has lead to you becoming a magnet for our appearance." Vasili rumbled from my right. The Space Marine librarian hefted his force-weapon, a well-decorated staff, and set it down again. "After all, we could have all been scattered throughout the entire planet, yet your abilities have drawn us to you, almost like bright-flies to a flame."

"Correct. And just as easily, his lack of ability could have distorted our entrance, making us this small." Justicar Amadeus joined in, his silver armor glinting off his helmet.

So that's why... Well, I wondered why it had been me that had half a dozen armies deposited in my living room and... I 'hmm'd thoughtfully. 'Destroyed my DVD collection' was a short entry in the long list.

"So you're saying I've always been a magnet for Warp powers?" I asked the Eldar Yoda.

"Not so much a magnet, but more a channel. Think of a drain in a liquid reservoir, like the one you deposited Madork Gunna in when he almost killed that 'Talon' xeno. The water is an apt metaphor for Immaterium: psykers would be drains, all drawing power – water – from the Warp. Your drain is much larger than most others, and so therefore are much more likely to have an ork stuck into the grill."

"... I see..." The bespectacled Asian rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, crouched down behind the Imperial Psykers. "So basically Michael's head is a big hole in reality?"

Ishabeth piped up to join in the conversation, the two strips of red running from her eyes showed how much she had suffered from my mistake. She had literally shed tears of blood. It was a fairly common reaction to Warp overload, and it was fortunate that she had survived... I would have hated to have had Commissar Tomas' wrath upon me.

"Yes, cor-WHOA WHEN DID YOU GET THERE!"

"At about 'more a channel'." He replied, sitting down. We had been so absorbed in the conversation, that he had been able to ninja us in typical fashion – this guy loved to surprise people and mess with their concentration. I sighed in frustration, and gave Vincent a flat look.

"My head is not a black hole. No robot arms are going to be jumping out of them, okay? I have not had a psychotic girl hit me in the head with a Rickenbacker." I pointed at my forehead for emphasis.

"You watched that show? Anyway, doesn't the good Farseer Zara count?" Vincent did have a good point there.

"... Fine, have it your way. Okay... I almost turned into a Daemon portal. Can we stop this from happening?" I asked the Psykers.

The Inquisitor's pet Psyker raised a hand. "A simple mind-wipe operation coul-" I held up a hand to interrupt him.

"Let me rephrase that; could we stop this from happening without getting me killed or brain-dead?"

Mini-Yoda stepped forward. "Yes. If you allow me to cast a simple rubric, I can show you how, mon-keigh. It is the way we Eldar shield ourselves from a similar fate; a training of the mind... we shall simplify it. You do not need to replicate the lesson, only the results. I do not believe you would understand more than half of it anyway."

Justicar Amadeus voiced his protest. "Governor Michael, you can't simply let the Eldar cast a spell here! Who knows what results it may have on your home!"

"If we don't, Grey Knight, we'll end up with a titan-sized daemon in Michael's living room." Vincent said, voice deadpan.

"Yes, but we cannot simply allow the Eldar to cast whatever witchcraft they wish to cast! For all we know they would simply eliminate Michael to re-start a war!"

"Foolish mon-keigh! You think we are that fickle? It serves our purposes greater to keep that mon-keigh alive! You, however, we can gladly throw out!"

The Farseer and the Librarian met in a force of wills and weapons, her spear sending flashes of lightning off as his staff burned with the fire of his soul. Vincent sighed, reached behind the kitchen counter and tossed me the object that was most needed at the moment.

BLAM!

The fire extinguisher stayed down on Vasili and Zara, who were both struggling to get out from underneath.

"Y'know, I'd have thought that two leaders who lead some of the most capable armies in the galaxy would be a little more mature!" I growled, grinding the fire extinguisher into the two combatants. Protests and pain filtered out from underneath. The Imperial and the Eldar Psykers both looked on in morbid interest.

"So, in short: no more fighting." Vincent chipped in, his voice dripping with faux sweetness. "Do you both understand that?"

"Mmghmm..."

"I didn't hear you, Zara."

"ALRIGHT ALREADY!"

"Okay, Michael?"

I let them go, lifting the fire extinguisher and setting it down beside me. The two psykers gave an almighty inhalation, and flopped over on their backs, breathing heavily. It must have been stuffy, squashed together underneath the curved underside.

"Repetition, we must avoid. Wiser it is, to form a truce, it is." Yoza said as he knelt down to check on Zara's condition. Librarian Vasili nodded as he looked up at the sky.

"Can we agree that nobody takes a hostile stance to each other for the duration of our meeting?" He said, wiping sweat from his forehead. I wonder how he did that with a ceramic sleeve... maybe the Marine had a little cloth somewhere there?

"Deal." Zara replied, helping herself up by her spear.

I leaned forward, to face the two. "I'd rather you stop trying to kill each other altogether, but that's just fine with me for now." Hey, I felt like I had to contribute to the peace, if only slightly.

The assembled psykers looked from one to the other, and then back at me.

"Warp, no! We like fighting each other. Just for the meeting's duration."

I sighed. There just wasn't helping some people, were there?

"So, what are we going to do about this daemon problem?" I asked. "If what I saw was true, then we have at least one force of Chaos here, and another Earth-scale human is under their control."

The entire room turned around to stare at me, a few squeaked in surprise. Emotions ranged from disbelief, utter horror or simple shock.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU MENTION THAT EARLIER!" Half of them raged. The other half were still dumbstruck.

I held up my hands defensively. "Hey, you guys never asked!"

"... this is serious." Librarian Vasili concluded. I had just finished my story of what I had seen in the vision.

"No kidding." I sighed, rubbing my temples as I tried to wonder what was happening to that girl now. The Cultist was probably going through a living hell right now, and considering where the Chaos forces had come from, I was more than willing to bet on it that she was. My stomach churned at the simple thought of what the Chaos Sorcerer could be putting her through... it was entirely possible, however, that the scale difference could protect her, just as it did with me.

"You worry about a girl that you've never met, mon-keigh?" Zara asked, looking at me squarely, which was quite an achievement, considering the shape of her helmet. We had moved our conference along to the couch, where hey could talk to me at more-or-less eye level as I explained what had happened.

"Of course. I saw what happened to her... how she suffered. How could you not worry about her?"

"You mon-keigh will never cease to confuse me." She quipped, before turning away to re-join the council of Seers and Warlocks.

"As your apathy always shall continue to disgust me, witch." The Librarian Vasili replied. Zara flashed him a glare that I could bet would have killed, and then turned away. He looked at me, as if contemplating what to say next. I looked back, rather confused. Over the days since our arrival, we had gotten to know each other relatively well

Yoza, however, remained on the coffee table, having prepared it in a way so that several gemstones were arranged in a rough symbol... it was like playing connect the dots them; I recognized it as one of the runes sewn into his robes.

As I settled down on my lazy boy, I saw that Vincent had returned from his chatting with the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard. Knowing the half-crazy nerd that he was, the guy as probably enjoying himself. Alice was nowhere to be seen, but as he settled down to give me a drink – hey, who said you could take my coke? - Vincent was telling me about how Alice had encountered the Sisters of Battle, and that they were getting along quite nicely now. Sister Samisha was very excited to meet her.

He turned to me, his voice grave as he spoke. "I have prepared the soul-stones, mon-keigh. Are you prepared for this?"

"Sure." I looked at the arrangement. Occult was the only word that could describe the feeling I got from the shrine. It had the mystical quality to it, and I found my fingers trembling at the structure, which could be covered by my palm. Oh well, scarier things existed in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

"A place where you can't hurt yourself, sit down, sit down! Mon-keigh Vincent, watch over him, must."

"No problemo, Yoda."

"Yoza. Yo-za, my name is."

"Like I said, Yoda." Vincent gave me the 'dude, I am so enjoying this.' wink.

"... see into your mind, I can. Enjoy my frustration you will not, mon keigh." He deadpanned.

"Continuing on..." I muttered, looking at Yoza. "Shall we get started?"

"Of course... Michael."

"Governor Michael, surely you cannot willingly enter the ploys of the Eldar!" Vasili and three-dozen voices shouted out, more or less in that tune.

"Our causes are parallel in this moment, so it is in our best interest to cooperate with the large mon-keigh."

"That doesn't mean we can trust you, witch! Xeno never have the same goals as the Imperium's finest!"

"Of course, mon-keigh. You are – as always – unable to comprehend simple concepts such as common interests.

"SHUT UP!"

I slammed down the fire extinguisher in my hand, and glared at the Imperials. "Look, I don't want to turn into a titan sized daemon here, so why don't you just shut the fuck up! Unless you guys got a better idea. Look, the Emperor has not ascended to the Throne yet, as far as I can tell, so hell no you guys won't be able to pray to him... I'm sorry, guys, but the Eldar are my only choice here. But look at it this way; if she tries screwing with me, Vincent'll let you go cut loose on the xeno, understand?"

There was silence. Zara reasserted her authority now, and looked up at me. "I believe they would have done so anyway, mon-keigh. I agree to these terms. The mon-keigh book-keeper here still cannot understand that the Eldar have no wish to see a daemon manifest in this era."

Its hard to describe what happened after that, since my perception of passing time was... vague, at the most. A hundred years could have passed, and I would not have been the wiser. When my senses returned...

"...whoa."

I was in a... void. Colorless space of pure white stretched out in every direction. The endless area around me was... pure. I reached out with my senses, but I could not taste, nor smell nor touch nor see or hear anything. Even looking down, I could not see anything; it was like those First Person Shooter games, where you couldn't see your own feet.

"Where am I?"

"Absolute Territory, this place is. Your Absolute Territory, the holy ground of your soul. This is where a daemon will attack." Yoza's voice was out there. I could sense more now, the void was retreating, defining itself in vague shadows; patches of darkness staining white. "You, this land is."

"... I am not a blank sheet." I answered, my voice returning.

"Blank sheet, it is not. But undrawn map. A place to be explored, its true shape... defined."

"A journey of self discovery." I sarcastically replied.

"Precisely, mon-keigh." The Warlock replied in a flat tone.

The black-robed psyker stepped from 'behind' an invisible wall. He had removed his conical helmet, and seemed rather older than he had appeared; the wizened older man had greying hair, still dark but speckled with salt-white strands. However, as aged his hair was, his face showed none of it. Features still sharp enough to cut on, and built just like that of a wily fox.

"Yoza?"

"Yes, mon-kiegh?"

He stood, looking down so as to meet eye to eye. The Eldar Warlock eclipsed me by at least a head in height. His robes were reminiscent of Japanese kimono, a robe-like arrangement which had Eldar designs swirling all about them. I think it may have been made of wraithbone, because it looked quite solid before he moved around, which them made it appear almost liquid.

Soon enough, we were about five feet apart.

Dang... Eldar were tall.

"You're... larger... I mean... like... normal sized."

"To respect scale, our minds are not restricted."

"... Uh... what?"

Yoza gave a sigh as he raised his right hand, and palmed his face. The Eldar was soon shaking his head as his other hand went to cup his elbow. I pinched myself, just to make sure this was real. Eldar facepalming... dang, I wish I had a camera here.

A bemused cough made me turn around, and this time it was a 1:1 scale Zara that was in front of me. She wasn't clutching her gut in laughter, but I could tell that the black-haired woman in front of me was clearly enjoying herself as she watched me try to understand the situation.

"I can be as big as I want to be, mon-keigh." She stalked – I kid you not, she stalked – over to me, her limber frame wrapped in the robes I had seen the Eldar wear when not at war. They were like kimonos; hers was a dark grey/black, which looked like a bathrobe made of fine silky material; it was almost like fluid, and seemed to dance around her legs as she walked forward, giving me hints at what lay underneath before teasingly curling off.

I shook that distraction from my mind after I saw her coy smile. She was definitely enjoying teasing me.

"Okay... so then... what's the lesson?"

Omake: Christmas 40,000

Thought for the Day; "Jingle bells, jingle bells, CRUSH THOSE TRAITORS TO THE GROUND!"

"Good morning, Governor Michael." The soft voice of Sanctioned Psyker Ishabeth made me open my eyes a crack. As always, she was dressed in her parchment brown robes, with a green sash wrapped around her torso, its fabric emblazoned with the pillar-and-eye insignia of the Scholastica Psykana. Her two-inch long staff carried a similar symbol, with an eagle perched on top, poised to fly. The sound of her melodic voice was marred, however, by the constant beep beep beep of my alarm clock.

I turned to face the electronic offender, but laziness and sleep tired me down, so I only managed to get far as the ceiling, which still sported the flash-burn of lascannon misses. It had burned a neat hole just above my bed, and if anything happened in the night it was enough reason to send a small trickle of black dust down onto my face. My mind stirred around for the date. I remembered yesterday... it was the 24th of December today... huh. The little alarm clock that resided on my bedside table continue to put out its monotone beeps as it hit 6:31 am. I grumbled softly in my half-sleep, and gave the 'Sleep' button a slap.

"Owch!" The flaming torch/brazier thingies that decorated the top of Canoness Samisha Ludmilla's power pack bit into my palm, as well as giving them a good singe. The beeping stopped as I used a female warrior to press down on the snooze button, but soon enough I was having to deal with a much more violent kind of alarm.

"What in the God Emperor's name was that about!" Samisha raged as she hefted her pistol-sized flamethrower. I kid you not, that thing was pretty much a tube, lighter and fuel supply, which was mini-fist sized tank that could shoot out at maybe six-inch ranges. That weapon was truly representative of the woman that wielded it: Volatile contents under pressure.

"Ah... Samisha... should you really have been sitting on the 'off' button for the alarm?" I quirked an eyebrow at her.

"It was?" The woman stood up, and made herself busy with looking down at the table-sized button that she had been sitting on, and by result of our little impact had also impressed slightly with her armor skirt. Brushing herself down, she quickly made her way off my alarm clock.

"y34, i7 w4z, g1rl13! U n0 d155 d4 m4ch1n3z!" [Yeah, it was, girlie! Don't disrespect the machine!]

The rising intonation, the l337... it could only have been c0gb01. I turned to see the twitching form, reminiscent of a mechanical squid in red robes, which was right now making its way across the aforementioned table. Behind and around them, various other characters were casually wandering around my room, weapons at the ready. Oh bugger. Usually, they stayed out of my room in a vestige of respect in the way of privacy, but now...

"... What's happened?" I asked, grumbling out of bed. "Orks? Eldar?"

"Nothing, mon-keigh, all is quiet on the home front. Although I do note that your neighbors are much more active today... they are leaving, mon-keigh. Could it be something you haven't told us?"

"Huh? Oh, its just that it's Christmas Eve, is all." I muttered, before regretting it instantly. These guys had a curiosity that was practically insatiable.

The Imperium wanted to find out more about what this place was, since this planet was what would eventually become Holy Terra, for them it was the center of their faith, so it was understandable. Of course, the Adeptus Mechanicus had their own obsessions, and were clocking up quite the hours on my machines. I think they would break them sooner or later, I might want to bring Luke (a tech-savvy friend of Vincent's) over to have a check on my computer.

The Orks, of course and as always, wanted something new to fight, whether it be willing to fight back or not. Their philosophy of anything bigger than them. The resulting mess usually got me in a scrape with the cops, although to be honest, Vincent's antics with fireworks earlier on this year had given us more than enough excuse to do crazy things and get – more or less – away with any unbelievable explanations.

The Eldar were as mysterious as ever, though, their curiosities just as aloof and distant as their own selves. I wondered often, how they managed to do this kind of thing. Honestly, I don't think I wanted to know the thought processes of the Eldar. It might be the same as some certain highschool 'goddesses', and I knew what she was like.

"I don't believe we are as confusing as that, mon-keigh."

Stop reading my mind, dammit!

"So... do explain this 'Christmas Eve' that you speak of." The Imperial Guard's senior pastor – the chainsaw (read: An equivalent to a 6 foot chainsaw designed to cut through tanks, known as an eviscerator)wielding Jeremiah, aptly named the Laughing Priest for his laid-back attitude in battle and when in good company.

"... huh?"

"Eve suggests something is about to happen, does it not?" Now came the voice of Librarian Vasili. "A Christmas... do explain what it is, Michael."

"Well... its about..."

I paused. What was Christmas about? Sure, there was the obvious religious overtones, of the birth of Jesus Christ and his fate as the Messiah and the Savior of Mankind, and there were also the new meanings, of giving presents and of cake and turkey and Santa Claus with his reindeer and...

"I see your mind is clouded, Michael." The black-robed figure of Yoza mused, sitting on a nearby desk. I took a quick look around me as he spoke. "Christmas is a word of many meanings, it seems."

I finished counting. There were more than three dozen of the Warhammer universe's most deadly warriors sitting around and having a chat to me about Christmas.

"Will you guys just stop appearing out of bloody nowhere!" I half-screamed.

- - + The Study, 9:00am + - -

"Christmas is a celebration?" Father Jeremiah quizzed. "Of what?"

"Various things, nowdays." Vincent answered, sitting at my chair. I had invited this info-obsessed friend of mine over after I had gotten some breakfast into my stomach, as well as those of the nearly 400 strong army running around in my house. Luckily, it was a very small scale army, and a grain of rice was equivalent to a loaf of bread for most. The orks, it seemed, were insatiable.

"What do you mean by that, Vincent?" Tau Ethereal 'Aun'ui' asked. He, alone among the rest of the races, had never gave me his given name, only his rank in the Tau Caste System, which indicated him at the rank roughly equivalent to a Corporal or Sergeant... I believe it had something to do about his own belief in The Greater Good or something, that his individual identity was not worth mentioning when it came to that singular purpose that drove the Tau.

"Originally, Christmas was the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a major figure for the Christian faith." He tapped through my computer, ignoring the huge number of URLs leading to different CounterStrike: Source servers. In the end, he had a large image of

"I see... 'Christ-ian' here indicates that he is central to the faith, is he not? What did he do?"

"He is a person of divine conception, known as the Son of God for Christians, and among the many miracles he worked in Biblical times, he also sacrificed himself to atone for our sins."

"Uhh... how'd 'e dun dat, four-eyes?" Madork Gunna asked.

Vincent drew a crude picture of the Christian cross, and showed it to the assembled Warhammer 40,000 denizens. I looked on as well as he began to explain, picking up a Guardsman – I learned later that his name was Colonel Jimnaeus Angruss, of the logistics corps - to show how it was done.

"He was crucified on a Cross like this one... I won't go into details, but it involved hands and feet being nailed to a wooden structure, and commonly this would lead to suffocation and death because of internal trauma collapsing the ribcage and the lungs."

He had a very large interest in the gorier bits of history. It was the most interesting parts, he told me.

The festive atmosphere of the Christmas celebrations outside seemed to blunt the point of this lesson. Vincent sighed, and cupped his face in between his hands.

"Oh, but that's celebrated in Easter, Christmas is all about beginnings." He smiled wryly as a group of merry neighbors walked past the window. Across the street, Viaan – the kid from across the road, who I sometimes taught how to draw – grinned back at us as he shoveled snow into a wall, getting ready for our annual across-the-street snowball fight. Danica, his sister, threw a preemptive ball, which splashed in my half of the road.

Vincent's ramblings brought me back to the conversation at hand. I quickly sent a gesture of apology as I turned away from the window.

"But as well as that, it is the celebration of our friends and family, where we show appreciation for their relationships by sending each other cards and presents."

"Uh... Vince?"

"Yeah?"

"You forgetting someone?"

I pointed at Angruss, who was rather weakly trying to make himself more mobile as he struggled within Vincent's grasp.

"Oh."

- - + The Attic, 10:00am + - -

The attic was a lot more clean now that the Sisters had moved in, and I helped make sure of that every few days or so.

"Michael... is this truly embarrassing..."

"I'm sorry, Samisha, but I really couldn't resist..." Alice called out from behind the 'changing room'. She was apparently tying up a Sister of Battle's ribbon-belt.

Samisha twisted the Santa hat around between her fingers. She was standing there, resplendent in a Ms. Claus outfit. Her costume had been custom-made for her by Alice, who was really getting into this. She was a designer for a small boutique in the central mall area, and had absolutely loved having miniature models for her more expensive projects.

The canoness of the Sisters of Battle had a costume made of red fabric and trimmed with white, that came down to her knees. Her long, slender legs were wrapped in red stockings (I'm sure there was someone to help Alice this, there were no traces of stitches) and a pair of white leather boots came up to her calves. She looked like a red satin bell, or a very angry nun with a pistol-flamer.

"Uh... you look nice, Samisha..." The other Sororitas were dressed in similar clothes, showing the evolution of the design. A few were – like Samisha – wearing plain red costumes. Others were more decorated; some had ribbon-bows placed on their costumes, such as with Meliya, who had one as her belt. I chuckled to myself as I saw that her face was as bright red as her dress as she sat down beside a box of old toys, talking to Sohm. The other Sororitas which I could see had bells on them, mostly as a replacement for the white pom-pom at the tip of their hats, little angel wings (a very popular accessory, especially among the press-ganged Seraphim, it seems). Behind them, Alice chatted away with a pair of other Sororitas, talking to them about the design. She too was dressed in a Ms. Claus costume, which came down to her knees as well.

From somewhere, a Sister Repentia stepped from the changing rooms, her usual parchment clothes replaced by what can only be described as a candy cane cosplay. Her slim body was wrapped in overlapping ribbons of crimson and white. She looked at the Canoness, and then squeaked as she saw the rest of us, before diving for cover. The other Sisters of Battle were alarmed by the sudden cry, and whipped out their various weapons, ranging from rocket-propelled-grenade launchers to flamethrowers.

Oh jeeze... an army of Miss Clauses...

I looked at the reactions from the male characters, and almost snorted when I saw the unshakeable Commissar Tomas Sturm, who was literally trying to fix his jaw back into his mouth as he tried to recover from seeing his comrade, the Sanctioned Psyker Ishabeth dancing gleefully around in her new costume, a color-inverted version of the Miss Claus costume. Arms spread out for balance, she danced gracefully from foot to foot, twirling around as if dancing.

Justicar Amadeus suddenly gave a groan of spiritual agony as another figure came into view.

"For the last time, Silverite. Put. The hat. Away."

"Aww, but... c'mon, I already took off my other hat for you!"

I turned to see a rather flushed Sororitas Seraphim, complete with angel wings and Miss Claus suit, standing rather woozily by the side of the ever unorthodox Grey Knight Silverite, his helmet now topped by the white fluffy crown and red pointy bits of his new hat. The Justicar's dark-brown skin was livid with rage. He kind of looked like a bust carved from chocolate infused with raspberries.

"But that doesn't count!"

"Does too!"

"DOES! NOT! COUNT!"

"..." Vincent and I – plus the rest of the present Warhammer 40,000 characters and Alice – stared in shock and disbelief. Alice helpfully reached out and pushed my jaw shut. Two of the Grey Knights, among the greatest of the servants of the Emperor, bickering like little elementary kids?

Amadeus made a grab for Silverite's hat. The Justicar missed, tripped, and was treated with a face full of cherry-red blouse, which belonged to the aforementioned Seraphim. Both tumbled to the ground, although thankfully the Justicar managed to stop himself before his heavy armor crushed the Sister of Battle.

Samisha and a half-dozen Seraphim were on site immediately as the Justicar tried to extricate his many decorations from the extensive lacework of his impromptu crash-mat.

"Well, the only way we can top that is if we grab some Eldar and make them wear these costumes."

Silverite was now fending off a half-dozen still-armored Sisters as he cheekily avoided their grabs, sometimes slapping a humorously carved purity seal onto their armor (it was a crude smiley face). The Tau Shield Drone (which had his hat) was spinning around above him, chattering and beeping excitedly.

"Stop giving me ideas, Vince. Even good ones."

Space Marine (of the Salamanders) Mas L Jansock shook the ground with his vox-enhanced voice.

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THESE FRAKKING ARGUMENTS IN THIS FRAKKING ATTIC!" And hefted his multi-melta, which dislodged the santa hat from his dark-skinned head.

I pulled Alice from the line of fire, and the three Earth scale humans sat back as disorder ensued.

"... Hey, Alice! You make those costumes for any of the Eldar?"

- - + Eldar Base, 12:46pm + - -

"You will die, Mon-keigh, do you hear me! The Warp shall freeze over and be still and your stars will turn to dust and die long before I wear that costume!"

I was experiencing gut-busting laughter at the mere thought of Zara wearing a rather racy Miss Santa Claus outfit, which apparently she could see the mental image of it. The Eldar woman's helmet-less face blushed to a bright red as she did.

Normally, I had the mental presence to at least obscure my thoughts, which wasn't hard when you were at least aware of the dangers, but total denial of mind-reading could only be achieved by either having one of a variety of mutations such as being a Pariah, or by having no brain like some . Since, I was neither of the above, I had to resort to the fact that my mind was usually in a jumble when I was laughing my ass off.

"STOP LAUGHING, MON-KEIGH~!"

Vincent squeaked. "She's gonna use Mind War!"

The white void was somewhat familiar to me. I stood up from where I had landed face-down, and began to walk about.

A screech bounced off the nonexistant walls of the space. The scream of a woman in terror. I sighed, and began the short jog through the porcelain mansion that had formed around me. The place was neither Eldar nor Human, but I found my way through it easily enough.

"Who'se there?" A weak voice croaked

I peeked around the corner, to see a full-scale Zara, sitting in the corner with a very suggestive costume. It was a simple tube of red fabric, with white trimming. Simple black shoes and the typical santa hat completed the costume. She looked like a young girl ready for a Christmas party, were it not for the rather insecure vibes that came from her. Curled up in the corner, she had her knees drawn to her chin, and her head buried in her arms.

Eldar fostered and maintained multiple personalities over their long lifetimes, and the face they wore in front of friends and the faces they presented to enemies were totally different. It also served to save them from the trap of becoming too emotional and being consumed by 'She who Thirsts', by splitting their emotional attention to other ventures.

Yoza's lesson taught me something else: These personalities literally split when in a mindscape.

"Zara?" I asked, bewildered. This one in front of me was most definitely a part of Zara, her features identical yet completely different as she lifted her face. The black haired Farseer was much younger-looking now, almost as if in her late teens. The personification of all her insecurities was sniffling as I sat down beside her.

"Zara... how did you get into that costume, anyway?"

"I... I-I... I don't know... I just..." She hiccuped, and began to break down again. Wow. This caught me completely off guard. Such a vulnerable girl. Quite unlike the stoic if rather opinionated and outright violent Farseer I had seen before. I pulled myself closer, and was again surprised as didn't give me a biting remark or... anything. Just sniff sniff and a hiccup. I patted her shoulder, trying to be reassuring.

"Its okay, its okay... look, I'm sorry for saying those things to you..."

The splinter of Zara's personality snuggled closer, tucking her head between my neck and shoulder. It was a really sweet gesture, and I couldn't help but place my arm around her. So, Zara wasn't quite such a mean bitch as I thought she was... interesting. I reminded myself to treat her a little more gently from now on, to see if she could show her more friendly side, if it existed. I looked at her again, and realized that the soft whistling sound that I was hearing was coming from her, and that she was asleep. I chuckled as I looked on. Her sleeping face was so peaceful. Smiling to myself, I idly stroked her hair, pushing the ebony strands from her face.

A door opened, I turned around.

Three Zaras stood behind me. I almost lost control of my bodily functions. The lower digestive area, specifically.

"Mon keigh, I do dearly hope..." A short haired version wearing the armor of a Howling Banshee whispered.

"... that you have not been taking..." Another said, hefting the shuriken pistol and staff of a Warlock

"... ADVANTAGE OF MY OTHER SELF." Said the third. Her voice was like lead slabs falling down onto a marble floor.

I was ghostly white as I managed to drag my eyes to confirm the thing I was seeing, to see that the third was a red-skinned, lava veined monstrosity. Her eyes and mouth glowed with amber fire as she spoke.

Oh. Shit.

"L-l-look, its not what it looks like!"

Three voices joined together in concert.

"DIE!"

- - + Ork Encampment, 5:29pm + - -

"Boyz, ge' up, ge' up! Da Big Boss iz 'ere!"

I sat on the oil drum that had become their reservoir for water, since I was tired of them 'tapping' (to be exact, blasting holes in) the water pipes that already existed. Seriously, the hot water pipe and the explosive sewerage incidents were never to be repeated ever again.

My brain still hurt. From what, I do not know. I vaguely remembered it being connected to Zara, though. Later on that night, I would be haunted by an army of Zaras. I sipped the glass of water I had brought down with me, and looked on at the greenskins.

The Orks managed to pull off a parody of Imperial parade as I looked on, but then again it was a simple parody; their 'companies' were mostly circular as the orks just bunched up around the Nobs that were arranged in a vaguely grid-like manner. I looked on as Nob groups 2-3 (second row, third from the front) and 3-3 (same, except they were the third row) began to brawl with each other.

I reached out to catch Madork Gunna before he could join in, but alas, the rest of the Orks quickly fell, jumped and Waaagh!'d in. The Flashgitz Big Nob was waving his six-barreled machinegun(s?) around as I held him by his crude Bosspole, his rough, guttural voice (which – if full scale – would probably have reduced many of my bones to jelly) had been reduced to pleading me to allow him to join the battle, albeit 'pleading' in Ork terms really meant getting someone to do something without harming them or threatening to do so.

"WE'Z MISSIN OUT ON DA FUN STUFF, YA MIKKY!"

I sighed. "What... the... hell." I reached for the doorway, and hefted the 'BIG RED III' (The other two of my extinguishers were stored in the kitchen and by my bedroom doorway, respectively for I and II) and gave the Ork horde a liberal blast of the CO2.

"Aww, zoggit. Y'gits never let me 'ave any fun." Madork grumbled, hefting his big choppa.

"For the love of... can't you guys stop fighting for... will you just..." My brain caught up with my mouth, tripped it up and gave it a good kick. "Well... never mind..."

Hell, these guys couldn't even sleep in peace. I sleep with earplugs these days just because of the snoring.

"Alright, alright... so why did you call me down here?"

"We'ze got somethin' for ya, boss! Dat four-eyez oommie waz tellin us 'bout krissy-mas, soz wez gon 'n made'z ya sumthin'."

Something was brought forward. It was hard to describe, as I think there are few words in the English language to describe the mishmash of bizarre materials and machinery before me. There might be on in Eldar, though. They're assholes like that.

Vincent slapped himself in the face once, and stopped the Ork from trying a second try. He blinked a few times, pulled of his glasses, cleaned them very thoroughly, and then looked again.

"What the fuck is that... thing!"

Ah, that's a good word for it.

Chapter 7

Thought for the Day; "Frak this, for my faith is a shield proof against your blandishments"" -Alem Mahat, The Book of Cain, Chapter IV, Verse XXI

Inside the white void that was my newly-discovered, un-landscaped dreamworld, I sighed.

My heart was almost audible as it thumped away in my chest. I gulped down my nervousness, and looked at the Eldar before me. Standing tall with her blue eyes shining, Zara was as haughty as ever, and even Yoza was giving me a smile that showed that he was really enjoying my confusion. I let out my breath through clenched teeth.

"What's the lesson?" I repeated, looking up at the tall, lithe figures.

Their grave voices were all I needed to reassure me that they were now being serious.

"Do not worry, mon-keigh. We know we must take this seriously."

"Many lessons, you have yet to learn. A simple one, we start with. Explore this place, you must."

The black-robed Eldar positively grinned at me as his partner smile haughtily. He then gave a small bow, and stepped back into the white mist to disappear from my mind's eyes. Zara did the same, but with more flourish as her featherlight garments wrapped close around her shapely body, and then unraveled to show thin air.

Now I was alone, in my own soul... this was certainly going to be interesting. I stepped forward, and tried to feel my way around the obscenely bright space around me.

"You have got to be kidding me..." I sighed as I ran a hand over the ground. It had little in the way of texture, and was hard to describe. It was almost like a carpet of some kind. A piece of my mind told me that to fight effectively, you needed to know where you were, so this kind of made sense to me... but how the hell were you supposed to 'explore' a bright, empty room!

Explore. First lesson my ethereal ass. Yoza was just playing fetch with me.

Turning around, I began to walk in a random direction. I began to try and talk to myself, as crazy as that was.

This place was my soul, isn't it?

Then... why was it so blank?

"Could it be because you have nothing in your head in the first place?" Zara's mocking tone chirped over the empty void. She was there, a good distance away; at least two hundred yards, if I was guessing distances right. Ducking my head down, I began a fast jog to join her. Zara was still standing there, practically laughing at me as she danced about on the spot, and again disappeared like fading smoke. She was clearly enjoying this too much for my own good. Soon enough, she was standing atop a platform, like a catwalk, and beckoning at me. Like a living statue of a goddess, she smiled as her slim hips idly shifted from side to side.

Dammit. She was playing with me. I focused in on her, and began to take a step forward, running at her again. As I came within a half dozen yards of her, however, she quickly stepped back into the fabric of her clothes, giggling as she left me alone again. I began to sprint in a random direction, sure that she was following me. My eyes were dazed by the brilliant light of the surrounding halways, and I wasn't able to see anything.

So when I hit the front door of the massive whitewashed house, it quite literally came from nowhere. I slammed into the surface, which was as smooth as polished glass up until my face smashed into it. Now it had bits of me all over it. I peeled myself off, and stumbled to my knees. Before me was a giant house – a mansion – and it was stupendously simple in design. A white marble brick with windows and doors, if I didn't know any better.

Finding the door, I gave it a hard push, throwing the heavy white panels inwards.

I looked around the atrium of the large house – more a mansion – and , which was decorated in a rather plain manner; simple white pillars supported a blank sky of equally white plaster, and the walls were obviously made of the same kind of material. The place seemed like a house that was under construction, rather than one you'd live in. When you focused in on the edges of the surfaces, they seemed scratchy and unrefined, looking like they had been drawn by etch-a-sketch.

However, there were a few splashes of color in the next room, a square space with a gallery-like feel to it. The walls and the lines that defined them were even less refined now. Not even etch-a-sketch was this

Arranged around this room were pictures and paintings, which I realized were all drawn by my own hands: All that I considered my 'masterpieces'. A young woman sitting by a stream, a blazing sun in the hands of a smiling statue, Mark and Xiao Yang (two of my friends) sharing a seat... oh, and a few crayon doodles from when I was in elementary.

There were also photos, from my brief stint as a photographer. Smiling faces of my family and friends, or the intense gazes of the few models which I had been fortunate enough to work with. I looked at them all, the memories rushing back in. My soulscape, the world in my mind... was this what I was?

A small giggle came from somewhere in the vast room.

I turned to face the source of the voice, but only found a bust of a potato. That was smiling at me. With buck teeth. Grade 2 arts and crafts were kind of like that. I smiled at the old memory, and turned to look at the way I had come.

"Yoza... where are you?"

"He is gone, for now, young psyker."

I turned to see that the black-robed Zara had walked out from behind a pillar. Warily, I faced her. What was she up to? Having been given enough time to here was little doubt that she was about to test me... when and what and where, that was the thing I needed to know.

As I faced her, she allowed her face to crack into a smile that curved her lips, brilliant red ruby eyes shining. It was just as confusing in its meaning as the other Eldar of her race; both full of a fierce joy and also a tinge of arrogance; she and I both knew that she was holding something back from me.

"This is one of the things that you hold most dearest?" She asked, running a hand over a crude crayon drawing. "For such a thing to appear inside your mindscape, its obvious that you hold strong sentimental value for it, Michael"

My ears burned as my name slid off her tongue. It sounded alien to me (and not just because it was an Eldar saying it). Admittedly, those little works of toddler art were among my fondest memories, but still, to an outsider – Zara especially – this was humiliating.

"Can't we get back to stopping a daemon from bursting out of my brain, Farseer?"

Zara's bemused smile turned from the crayon sketch to me. "Of course. But first.."

She walked over to me, her legs shimmering under her robes as she came face-to-face with me for the first time. The other times, it was when she was the size of a miniature and had to climb a small building's worth of shelves to reach my nose. She was about the same height as I was, if a little taller, and while she wasn't as well endowed as most women, she was strikingly beautiful when she got up close. Like a dancer... a very powerful one at that. I found myself swallowing spit just to keep myself in check.

She didn't stop at two feet, though. Zara's face was plastered with a vampish grin as she practically walked into me, her leg stepping between my knees as she saw me backing up. Another step from her resulted in another two steps from me. My legs propelled me backwards as she continued to advance, but our chests kept bumping together as she pressed on.

Soon, I had run out of floor and she was pressing herself up against me, her loose fitting gown giving me quite the view as she chuckled at my plight. The woman before me knew how uncomfortable I was, even though it was a place where a lot of guys would have killed to be at. Zara's smile widened as she looked into my eyes, her right leg curling around my left, her ankle hooking around my waist.

"I suppose I should thank you for that compliment, my dear."

"Look, I only agreed to going in here because you'd teach me how to fight off daemo-ack!"

She threw us sideways, sending the both of us tumbling to the ground as she straddled my stomach. Her breathing was already ragged and shallow as it washed over my face, filling my nose with her dizzying scent. Zara grinned as she leaned down until her body was pressed against mine, her red eyes alight with daring as she looked up at me. The Eldar Farseer was grinding her hips against mine, and my ear felt like it was burning up as she kissed it.

A few things clicked into place in my mind.

"Zara?" I was breathless in her delighted state, and was happily beginning to claw at my shirt, her hips bucking excitedly as I gasped for breath. She wasn't heavy, but she was crushing my ribs with her knees, dammit! I looked up at her twisted smile.

"Yes, Michael?"

"You're not Zara, are you?"

I twisted my free arm, and swung it around, connecting at her left temple and forcing an immensely satisfying yelp from the thing on top of me. I was surprised in that my punch was managing to stun her that badly, so with that in mind I began to wriggle and shove, so I could get out from underneath her. Grabbing Not-Zara's waist, I heaved it off, sending the slim, female figure tumbling to the ground.

The Zara lookalike looked up at me, and blinked a few times as it re-set its neck. It was a bone-white liquid for a heartbeat, before resetting to a flesh-like pallor.

"First lesson, expect the enemy to take any shape and form." Yoza's voice called out to me. I looked around, but could not find him as I backed away from the Not-Zara

"Daemons will pick the forms of your friends, your family, those you love and those you hate... I'm not sure which I am, mon-keigh, but I do hope you learn this: to cut off something's influence to a dreamscape, you must kill its representation."

The half-sane incarnation of Not-Zara arched its back as it tilted its head, a jaw half-open with craven delight. Its foosteps were chaotic as it walked unsteadily towards me, and I began to look around, hands searching the various walls and displays.

Weapon... I needed a weapon.

I saw a little red box in the distance, inside of which was a trusted weapon: A CO2 extinguisher.

Not-Zara followed my gaze, and hissed.

We both broke into a full out sprint as I legged it for the box. Odd, that I hadn't noticed the fire-engine red box before. Again, my mind popped up with the explanation: This world was mine to make. I was the deus ex nox. The God in the Dream.

If so...

"Burn!" I waved an arm in the direction of Not-Zara's running form, my mind's eye imagining its entire body igniting, burning the Not-Zara into a crisp. That in itself would become a fondly remembered thought later, but right now, I focused less on thinky, more on burny.

But the Not-Zara wasn't burning or... anything. In fact, I think it actually got its black-haired head down and sped up from hearing my shouting.

Dammit.

The Not-Zara reached the fire extinguisher first, grinning madly as it twirled on the spot and stanced itself to block my way. I panicked for a second, before realizing something from my early years of Physics with Mr. Nickel. Kinetic energy equals half mass times velocity squared., or Ek = 1/2mv2. I was at a dead run compared to Not-Zara – who was standing still - and at more than 150 pounds, I was probably a bit heavier than my attacker was, since I had the chance of having it bouncing about on my stomach, I guessed that it was at 100 pounds soaking wet. Therefore, I had a lot more kinetic energy.

In other words: If we collided, it would be far worse off.

My left shoulder slammed dead center on its torso, throwing Not-Zara into the wall. My momentum carried me into her, slamming into her a second time. I felt a spinal disk pop out of joint as its back hit the edge of the emergency toolbox. Feeling her recoil, I reached out to smash the glass of the fire extinguisher. My fist went through the thin glass panel, shattering the clear pane into a thousand cubes, but as my hand stretched out to grab the red cylinder, a strong arm coiled around my neck.

Limber legs wrapped around my waist and squeezed the air out of my lungs before I could scream. Not-Zara had recovered from being run over, and had jumped on to my back. I gagged in the stench of its sweat and blood, and tried to shake it off. The malevolent carbon-copy (Then again, had the original been benevolent in the first place?) had run an arm around udner my armpit, keeping that arm pinned. The other was flailing uselessly as I staggered about, trying to grab its hair.

With a roar of defiance, I stopped, steadied myself and jumped over backwards. Air rushed out of Not-Zara's lungs as I landed on it. It went down, and I manged to get up on my feet for long enough to regain my balance and give Not-Zara a much remembered kick to the jaw. Scrambling over to the emergency box, I reached in to find a replica of Big Red IV, the fourth fire extinguisher that I had bought to keep the armies (and their fires) suppressed.

Behind me, Not-Zara hissed.

Hefting it, I brought the full fifteen pound cylinder down on Not-Zara's head. The etheral doppelganger kept on moving, trying to claw at me, so I repeated that motion again, sending the red tube down on its mouth. Bloodied teeth skittered across the floor. Again Big Red went up, and again the red cylinder came down. Something audibly cracked. Up again, down again. Again, again and again. I don't know if it were spinal reflexes or conscious pain that jerked its arms and twitched its legs, but I kept on going until the body stopped moving.

The results were... messy. My fingers were slipping on Not-Zara's blood when I stopped, and looked down at the results. Her face had been smashed right in, and... well... I'll spare the details here. I reached down and grabbed a clean section of her robes to wipe off the bits stuck to Big Red IV. As I was doing just that, a voice came from beside me.

"I think you enjoyed that a little too much, mon-keigh." Came Zara's rather shaky voice.

I turned to face Zara and Yoza, who were both looking at the results of their tests. Yoza was goggling at the near-decapitated body on the ground, and Zara was trying not to stare, with her blue eyes dark and brooding. I looked from one to the other, and pointed Big Red IV at them.

"Your fault. You sent this... thing to vamp me."

"An illusion, it was. A lesson, you learned." Yoza sighed, and waved his hand. The illusion of Not-Zara disappeared, and I found myself sighing in relief. To my surprise, Zara reciprocated the gesture.

"We'll call it 'even', as you mon-keigh say."

"Alright, fair enough. So, what was the lesson here? Is it that all Eldar are this weird?"

"No. The Dark Kin are, in some ways, worse." That statement from Zara sent shivers down my spine. I looked at where Not-Zara had 'died', and again shuddered from the thoughts of what might be 'worse'.

"O-kay... besides that, I'll guess that another lesson here is that nothing is fixed? I never spotted the fire extinguisher until I needed it." For emphasis, I hefted Big Red IV's ethereal copy, and sat down on the ground. There was a temptation to wish a chair into place, knowing that I could change reality. God of this place... wow. I smiled to myself, wondering how I could find this place outside of Yoza's spell-circle thingy.

Zara nodded and looked around her, where the brickwork of the walls were now visible; red brick with white mortar inside. When she spoke, her voice was grave as she explained the nuances of this place.

"That is correct. As this is your soul, its contents can be just as dynamic as yourself. If you are a what your society may call a 'douche', then the place will be set like stone, unable to change nor adapt. You, however, have some flexibility in you, so you can influence and change the flow of reality in this plane."

Yoza stepped forward, and picked up Big Red IV from my unresisting fingers.

"Dangers, such changes hold. Careful, you must be. Change your soul, constant influence creates. Chaotic, your inner world will become. Easy to change, easy to corrupt."

I looked at Yoza, and nodded. Of course, never was anything that easy, even if I were a god in this world. I stared at Big Red, and placed it on the ground. "Alright, so this mindscape is going to be a bit tricky to defend. I can't change whatever I want without repercussions, right?"

"Correct. Explore this place as you wish, go and dream of a world that you will protect with your life. Constructive changes are just that, mon-keigh; they will help build you up. As well as that, a part of us will stay, and be on call to help you when you need us, mon-keigh."

As if on cue, which they probably were, the two shadows cast by the Eldar psykers detached themselves from their sources. They were both obviously copies of the two, yet had a less serious feel to them. I looked from one, then to the other.

"I sense a 'but' coming up here..."

"How perceptive, for mon-keigh." Zara smiled. She seemed more comfortable now... I guess it was because she had been talking to a skyscraper earlier, her ego blunted by the fact that she didn't come above my ankle. She looked at me now, her eyes bright with arrogance. Yoza stepped forward and patted his shadowy doppelganger on the shoulder.

"Severely limited, we will be. Substantial help, we cannot provide. Only advice, we can give. Fight for you, we cannot."

"I understand... mostly..." I replied, throat dry. Dammit, I didn't want to have to fight alone... or fight at all, really...

"For now, enough it is. Rest, we must."

Again, we were in a world of white. In the distance, though, I saw my mind's mansion. Staring at it, I sighed as I found my body exhausted. Turning to face the two Eldar, I again saw them hazing from existance, and looked down to find my own body doing the same thing.

I blinked, seeing the ceiling of my house. I blinked again, and decided that now I was awake, and so looked down (past my feeth) and saw Justicar Amadeus, Librarian Vasili and the majority of the Grey Knights standing between the Eldar any myself, their many and varied psychic weapons and oversized automatic rocket launchers poised to strike at the Eldar, who were similarly stanced with their own wierd and wonderful weapons. I gave a loud cough, turning a few heads.

"Easy, guys." My voice sounded off, squeaky. Like when you pinched your nose while talking. I realized that my nose was plugged up wtih tissue.

"Michael! You're unharmed?" Amadeus asked, turnning to face me, although his dual-barreled storm bolter were still aimed towards the Eldar.

"Fine. Better, even." I waved off his concerns, and looked aroudn for the others.

"We were certainly worried when your nose started bleeding." Vasili reported, hefting his force staff. I realized that the tissue 'bullets' were tipped with my blood, and I quickly tossed them into the small wicker waste basket. My ears burned as I looked at Zara.

"It is simply the after-effects of our training, mon-keigh. I trust we were not away for too long?"

From behind me, Vincent shouted out.

"Nah, you weren't gone for more than half an hour... Uh... Michael... do you know anything about this hunting hobby the Chaplain has?"

Vincent was in the kitchen, dangling a decapitated rat from its tail, and holding open a plastic bag to drop it down into. A rather guilty-looking and bloody-chainsword wielding Chaplain Morteus sitting down on the kitchen counter-top, his body language radiating a rather dejected vibe about it. I gave a sigh. He had been hunting rats since day three.

"At least let me keep its head to mount on the wall..." He looked up and asked, hope lacing his voice.

"For the fourth time, Chaplain Morteus: No. I'm pretty sure that Michael would not like a rat's head mounted on the spare bedroom door!"

"Emperor's Pauldrons, you're a stubborn one!"

Chapter 8

Thought for the Day: "Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." - Murphy's Laws.

Crazy. The two boys were totally batfuck insane! Little miniatures, all running around the place with functional weapons! Alice was curled up in the corner of the living room, sitting beside the charred and looted remains of a cabinet. Michael was passed out on the lazyboy a few yards away. She looked on into the kitchen as Vincent seemed to accept the new arrivals, except with some of his usual 'obsessed nerd' mannerisms. He was attracting a lot of attention from tank turrets.

"Hey, I'm only looking!" Backing away from the command chimera, he held up his hands as the commander of the 1337th Logistics Corps (It was printed on the side of the tank, in vaguely alphabetical symbols) pointed the pintle-mounted gun at the skyscraper sized nerd.

"That's the entire problem, boy! Stay back from mah tank!" The man screamed up, his voice enhanced by the vox-caster.

"Aww, c'mon! I mean, I've seen some decently painted Chimera before, but this is the real thing!"

There was the sound of movement, the subtle rustle of clothes as Vincent squatted down and reached out. A quick whine betrayed the charging of energy cells, and there was a hiss of gasses escaping their vents.

Zip-zip-zip! The multi-las made a rather odd sound for a heavy support weapon, and there was a yelp from the younger (but much, much larger) boy.

"Ow!"

Cooling machinery smoked out their wrath at the boy, who had tumbled backwards in his attempt to avoid the attack. The sleeves of his jacket were thick enough to save him, but there was a cauterized scar on his left ear, and a nearby part of his hair was still smoking.

"Be thankful that it was on minimal strength!" The commander shouted up at him, before shouting some more at his crew.

The squeal of tank treads on polished wood ended the conversation as Vincent turned around.

"Cool, Land Raider."

Alice sighed. Totally insane. All of them.

She was curled up in her tight ball of transparent security, when a voice called out to her.

"Are you feeling alright, Gue'la?"

Alice flinched, turning to see a blue-armored warrior, with orange markings. Unlike the other races she had seen so far, the only decorations on its armor were simple painted strips, and the large, circular symbol on its massive left pauldron. Its helmet was marked with orange, and cracked on the left cheek, although it seemed to be mostly repaired. Save for the little sensory cluster on one side of the face, the rest of the helmet was a featureless, smooth surface.

The warrior, gun, helmet and armor, was no bigger than her two slim pinkies put together. The Tau soldier set aside its long pulse rifle as she looked at it, thoroughly confused. Alice took a few more moments to piece together coherent thoughts, apply them to her logic and suppress her disbelief, and then form a question.

"Who?"

"Ah... not familiar with Tau class system. 'Gue'la' is 'human'." The little warrior said, as similarly armored warriors loped over to look at the giant young woman. She felt like that gigantic girl from a recent movie.

"I see..." Alice mused, disbelieving that she was having an almost-casual conversation. Oh, and to buy more time for her brain so that it could get another question out. I hope I don't regret this. She thought.

"... and you are?"

"Shas'ui Fi'rios Yon'anuk Eldi'myr." The Fire-warrior recited, as if reading a label.

Silence reigned.

The syllables and apostrophes tumbled around inside the already traumatized brain of Alice O'Grady. The 'Shas'ui' and his squad mates looked up at her face, which had fallen into a blank expression of complete overload. Gears were metaphorically turning inside her brain, then hitting a metaphorical snag and metaphorically grinding themselves into a halt. Alice's eyes flickered slightly as she tried to process the information given to her.

I'm regretting this!

Desperate to keep up appearances, her mind managed to push and shove a single word to her mouth, where it then leaped off her tongue.

"Huh?"

Even to her, it sounded awfully lame as it dropped. The single syllable picked itself up and limped away from the scene of the awkwardness.

There was a sigh from the short Tau soldier.

"In Gue'la language, I think it translates to 'Fire caste Team leader of the Fi'rios colony, the Hunter-Bird's Winged Knife'."

Alice blinked a few more times. Her brain had ground to a halt as she tried to understand the choppy English that was coming from the tiny warrior.

Another sigh echoed through the helmet of the short, blue-armored warrior.

"If easier, I can be called Sergeant Talon; the other Gue'la already call me that."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Probably because he wanted to see your face when he said his name." His teammate chuckled, tapping a control panel on his left ear, and tossing a small chip – presumably something like a flashdrive – to the lead Fire Warrior. "I got it on combat recorders, Shas'ui."

The Sergeant eagerly slotted the data chip into his combat recorder, and began the playback, routing the others to the signal so that they could watch her face slowly transform from worried to utterly confounded. There were a few chuckles, others just began shaking in their armor and more still just howled like epileptic hyenas.

"H-hey!" Alice felt her cognitive functions return and flush her cheeks bright red, which only elicited another round of laughter from the Fire Warriors.

"..."

Prod. Prod. Someone was poking her toes. Alice grumbled, and shifted position. It was almost like her younger brothers trying to wake her up in the mornings, only with much more lethal prodding sticks.

"Forgive me, Gue'la..."

"..."

There was some frantic shuffling around as the Fire Warriors scurried about.

Shas'la Wu'bie elbowed his squad mate as Talon tried to attract the attentions of the giant Gue'la.

"How do we stop her from sulking in the corner?"

As Alice sulked, she could hear Vincent, who seemed like he had decided to relieve himself, and from the noises coming from the downstairs bathroom, he had also found out where the Eldar had been billeted. Screams of panic and the rumble of footsteps lasted for all of fifteen seconds before peace again took its place.

"..."

The assembled Tau and human girl looked from the corridor, where Vincent was profusely apologizing to the Eldar, to each other.

"... Uh..." Talon thought quickly and decided that some conversation might do the bewildered young woman some good.

"So... Gue'la... I'm curious about Gue'vesa'O Michael..."

Another confusing word. Alice hid her face as she pondered the meanings behind the word. Obviously this guy was either oblivious to his use of those words, or trying to get more pictures of her 'huh?' face. A lot of her friends had the same habit, so... yeah. She probably had an interesting confused face.

"Hmm? What's this Gue'seva... Oh... I got it wrong, didn't I?"

"Gue'vesa'O." The Sergeant patiently repeated. "It is much like Gue'la, but for someone of a much higher rank..." Talon explained.

Alice nodded her understanding, but also confusion: Michael wasn't any higher ranked than she was. The Tau seemed very wrapped up in their concepts of rank and one's place in society.

"I see... Michael's the same as us... I mean, Vincent and myself. We're just... mostly normal people."

"Oh? He is... normal?" The Tau around the Sergeant were also looking at each other. For them, Michael seemed to be a titanic figure of awe, and the source of red, cylindrical doom from above when one acted against his decrees of peace. Not anyone you'd consider 'normal'. Perspective was everything.

Talon posed another question.

"What caste is he?"

"... huh? What's this caste thing you guys have? You said Fire Caste earlier on... does that have something to do with that?"

"Correct, Gue'la. The Fire Caste is the... I suppose the equivalent to the Imperial Guard of you humans. The Fire Warriors of the Fire Caste – the Shas - protect the other three castes, we are their warriors and their guardians. We are there to step in if and when others are too blind to listen to the Water Caste – the Por - our diplomats and merchants. Everyone is watched over by the Air Caste – the Kor - our pilots and ship-crews. All of our tools – for war, commerce and transport – come from the Earth Caste – the Fio. They are builders and scientists, they develop new technologies to further Tau'va."

"Tau... va?" Oh goodness, this was starting to feel like a Wiki Walk.

"The Greater Good." Talon translated solemnly. Heck, you could feel the capital 'g's in his words.

"... Do I really need to say it, Sergeant?"

"Your face speaks for itself, Gue'la. No 'huh' is needed." Talon chuckled.

"The Tau'va – the 'Greater Good' – is the philosophy which drives the Tau Empire, from a lowly line trooper like me to the greatest of the Ethereals." Talon seemed as if he were reciting something. "The concept of this philosophy, Gue'la, is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, the individual." To emphasize this, he pointed first at himself, then spread his arms to encompass his squadmates in his broad gesture.

"We all strive for the betterment of the Tau as a whole, and for that we have come all the further."

"From the end of the Mont'au... the Age of Death, of civil war... the Tau have embraced this concept, thanks to the guidance of our beloved Ethereal Caste, and it has driven us forward into the Age of Expansion, the age of the Tau united."

"This philosophy is not exclusive for Tau alone. Anyone can become a part of the Greater Good without penalty, so long as they are willing." His partner added, pointing at Alice. "No matter what you may have done, if you embrace the Greater Good, we shall not refuse you."

"Of course, if you refuse the Greater Good..." The pulse rifle was hefted onto a shoulder. "... that is why we have Fire Warriors."

Alice looked on in awe. The concept of the Greater Good... it was simply one that was past human ideology... past human naivete, if she were to know the people that she had seen in the streets and in her own school.

"Well... that's great. But... what caste would I fit into?"

"That would depend on your talents, Gue'la. Michael would most definitely fit into the Fire Caste, although the fact that he uses a Fire Extinguisher would make the philosophers rather worried." Talon chuckled.

The human – a 'Guardsman' as Alice recognized – walked up to the Tau squad. He wasn't alone, there were maybe a large group of the humans approaching. However, two peeled off from the main group, who were telling the Tau that they had been put here as overwatch for Michael and his little mind-experiment.

The leader of the two – it was obvious that he was the more confident one - was dressed almost typically for any human soldier in history; on his head, he wore a rounded green helmet with a winged skull engraved onto the forehead panel. His breastplate had a similar marking, as well as '918' emblazoned in white numbers on the subdued green armor. Under the rugged plating was what appeared to be a dirt-brown overall, well kept and with a multitude of pockets. He had numerous pouches hanging off his waist and heavy-set boots. Between belt and boots were a pair of rugged pants and armored kneepads, by the looks of them worn and chipped.

The man appeared as if to be about thirty-ish, comfortable with the company about him.

"Greetings, Gue'vesa'la." Sergeant Talon turned to face the newcomers.

"Shas'ui Talon. For the fourth time; its Sohm. Or Trooper Vekt, if you must have my official designation." The man chuckled, extending an arm. Talon and the two humans shared a knowing smile, and it seemed like the usual routine for them to act like that, a routine for the three warriors. Well, it was a safe bet: All three held a weapon of some kind.

"Of course, Trooper Vekt." The two soldiers grasped each other's forearms in a bizarre variation of a handshake, and released at the same time to give each other a quick, friendly punch on the shoulders. Talon, being rather shorter and of a lighter build, staggered at the man's blow. But this seemed all in good fun, so he simply laughed it off. Turning to the fairer of the two, he executed a short bow.

"And greetings to you too, Gue'vesa'ui."

"Please, Sister Meliya will do just fine, Shas'ui."

Beside the human soldier was a woman, of the same height. However, her armor was much more intricate, looking more like a medieval knight's plate armor than his 'soldier' look: interlocking plates of black-painted and gold-trimmed armor covered her entire body. Instead of disguising her gender, however, the armored plates seemed to enhance the more feminine features, and there was more emphasis on decoration than the Guardsman beside her: her pauldrons were fixed with red fabric sleeves, which covered her arms up to the wrist. They were stained with various inks, and judging by the way they were done, it was devotional prayers that covered her arms. A large book sat on her left hip, and many small chains wrapped around her waist and looped through her armor, supporting many more trinkets – a stylized pillar, a gold human skull, a double headed eagle and a fleur-de-lis – which occasionally bumped against the parchment-and-wax seals, also covered in prayers to her deity.

"As the Guardsman Lieutenant has said: We are simply here to ensure that the Eldar do not try to escape, if they try anything malicious to Michael."

Alice's thoughts were again broken by the woman's soft voice. Her white hair wasn't an indicator of age: her voice was that of a young woman, maybe just past her late-twenties in age.

"Very well, Sister Meliya. It is pleasant to see you two again."

"Uhm... Nice to meet you?" Alice ventured, looking over her knees down at the three miniature soldiers. The three almost jumped in surprise: What the hell were they up to, forgetting about the hundred-meter tall giant sitting right next to them!

Meliya and Sohm looked up, with the latter smiling and giving Alice a wave as the former kept herself at a simple bow. They were used to giant humans, with Michael running around and all that. Alice looked on as the two gave their salutations.

"I'm Trooper Somh Vekt of Cadian Nine-eighteenth, pleasure to meet you, miss."

"Sister Meliya, of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. The same for me... uh..."

"Alice. Alice O'Grady." She responded. "Well... its a pleasure as well..."

Pleasantries aside (it seems like 38000 years did little to mar simple greetings, no matter how awkward), the assembled troopers soon got into camp, the Imperial Guardsmen – Cadians, it seemed – setting up their equipment and pointing them mostly at the coffee table.

A few minutes passed in awkward silence; Talon was either unwilling to continue his explanation of Tau society, or unable to because of the fact that Alice was now looking at the new arrivals, who had a much more familiar look to them, and therefore more pull.

"Ah... sorry about earlier." One of the men loading a rocket into a launcher-tube shouted up at Alice.

"... could you explain?"

"I was part of the heavy weapons team that pointed this..." He gave his rocket launcher a pat. "... at you. We fired the warning rocket, too."

"At Vincent's face?"

An awkward silence filled the air as the Cadian Guardsmen looked from one to the other.

"Yeah... a warning shot, right?" The man shifted nervously from one foot to the other, a 'krak' rocket still in his hands "He did dodge it, didn't he?"

"..."

"My apologies." It seemed like the only words that could save him from the look of pure, refined, feminine wrath that was being directed at him. Finally, Alice had found something to torture, something to focus her malice on. And then there was laughter.

A Sister of Battle, armored much like Sister Meliya but with far more decorations (if that were possible) and wielding a pair of flamethrower-pistols, stepped forward. She looked up at Alice while grinning, a 'just between us girls' kind of grin. Alice returned the gesture in a more subdued manner, and waved back.

"Uh... hello? You are..."

"Sister Herja, its 'Hey-er-ja'. Its good to see you." There was some looking up and down of Alice's appearances. Herja's grin grew wider. "Very good to see you. Alice, was it not?"

The brown haired girl smiled back nervously and nodded. The Sister had a very superior mood about her, and it seemed like she had really enjoyed seeing the Guardsman sweat under Alice's frown. From that, and having known Michael's aunt and the older woman's circle of friends, Alice could immediately label Sister Herja as a feminist. Who carried around a flamethrower on either hip.

"Good to see you too, sister." Assuming a more subdued, easygoing persona, Sister Herja rested her hands on her hips. "So very good..." Her grinning eyes disconcerted Alice, and the Guardsmen too, since now those troopers were busy inspecting the bottom of their canteens.

Alice sighed, and sat her head back, looking at the charred and battle-scarred ceiling. Certainly, Michael knew how to get people to redecorate. She turned to look at the Sisters of Battle, looking from one battle-worn face to another. They were strong. They were interesting. Alice found the one that had greeted the Tau earlier: Meliya, wasn't it?

"So... Sister Meliya? Do you mind telling me about yourself?"

"O-of course... where should I start?"

As they relaxed, the Guardsmen began to do what all social men did when they saw one of their number with a woman.

Sohm was jolted out of his caffeine high by an elbow to his ribs. Beside him was a Guardsman, and Alice listened intently as she heard his hushed tones.

"So... eh, Sohm. You and that Sage-girl were out pretty late last night."

More heads turned. Guardsmen began to come along closer. This was going to be interesting.

Sohm gave an exaggerated sigh. He looked up at his fellow Guardsman. Idiots, one look from a girl, one night spent poring over communiques intercepted by their vox and... well, half the regiment wanted to know if a Guardsman had managed to get a Sister to 'loosen their rosarius'.

"No, Web. We were processing this transmission... it was a flatvid, comedy entertainment. Yellow skinned caricatures."

"How about other kinds of entertainment, Sohm? By the Throne, you spend a lot of time alone with that girl. And she ain't no flatvid, either."

In the background, there was the revving of chainswords and yet another yelp from Vincent.

"What the hell... a rat!"

The Guardsmen's interest lasted only as long as the commotion went on, which ended in the Space Marine Chaplain's cry of anguish as the rat was hoisted into the air.

"With all due respect, Chaplain Morteus, Michael would not want a rat's head nailed to the wall!"

"Why does 'With all due respect' sound like 'frak you', Vincent?"

Alice couldn't help but snort as she overheard that. A very unladylike gesture, sure, but one of amusement nonetheless.

"Because the rat's head is going to stink, that's why!"

Chapter 9

Thought for the Day: "Wait, where did that Baneblade come from? HOW DID IT JUST APPEAR IN THOSE SEWERS! It must have taken a tactical ge-

CREEEEEEEEEEEEED!"

- Assorted Enemies of the Cadian 8th

"Michael, we are out of food rations... and recaf." Commissar Tomas pulled his hat down, face flushed with frustration. "Our foragers report that they have little to no food left to find. Only those 1337th pack mules have an abundance of food, and that is your grass." He sighed, his hand instinctively searching for the flask of recaf that he usually had slung at his hip. Commander Angruss from the Logistics Corps was also haggling me for more supplies, but being the equivalent of a Quartermaster-General, it was expected that he worry for his soldiers' nourishment.

"My warriors are running out of consumables, Michael. The loss of the rat to your friend was... a waste. It would have made good food. The Chaplain is still anguished at such a loss." Eizak looked up, palming his helmet as his solid stare looked up at me. "They cannot fight on empty stomachs, Space Marines they may be." His voice grave, the Space Marine Terminator turned away.

"Gue'vesa'O Mi'ka'el, we have stretched out our supplies, and we need more. How may we help you?" Commander Firestrike cocked his battlesuit's mechanical head, no doubt from the neural tic that he had. Already, Devilfish troop carriers were hovering with their cargo rigs, ready to help.

The slimly built Kroot Shaper – a tribal chief that looked like a cross between a falcon and the Predators from the movies – growled in agreement as he nodded his head. "My hunters are hungry, Michael."

"Thanks for your offer." I smiled. I liked these Tau, they were actually helpful. "But I think running around in the middle of the city would be more trouble than its worth..."

"Mon-keigh, perhaps you wish to starve my people to death?" Zara had her hands on her hips, in classic high-school bitch mode. She gave me a burning glare as I thought of that idea, before continuing the rant. My mind wandered as she rumbled on. "Is that a new tactic of... what are you thinking, that might be a good idea!"

I stepped out of the upstairs toilet, brushing the last of the vomit from my cheeks. Dammit, Zara, wasn't zapping my mind a bad thing to do?

Grrrrmmmgrrr...

Great. Even my stomach was rebelling against me.

"Oi, boss!"

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, I KNOW WE NEED MORE FOOD, OKAY!"

"'tually, we woz wonderin' if we'ze could, y'know, blow summat up..."

"Oi, boy! You have a call!"

Vincent swung around on the swivel of his Gamer's Throne, and tapped on his cell phone, which was blaring its new ring tone – the recording of an Imperial Guardsman shouting. He tapped past the face of Alice's hilariously confused face – given to him from a Tau Stealth suit Shas'vre – and pressed the cell to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Uh... Vincent? Michael here."

"Yeah? Something happen?" The Asian boy sat up straighter in his chair.

"Nah, its just... could I borrow your car for a couple hours? I need to buy some food."

"... Sure. I'll help you out, if you want. I need to get out of the house and stretch my legs."

"Thanks."

"Be there in ten. See ya."

"Here we are." The nerd driver announced, kicking into neutral as we coasted into the parking lot.

Pulling into the supermarket, Vincent's old but still functional pickup truck rolled into the parking lot. The engine died at his touch as we slotted in between the trolley stand and a silver convertible.

Vincent pressed on the brake, jolting my satchel forward. It slid off the chair, and crashed into the footwell.

Instantly, muffled voices cried out in discomfort.

The two of us looked at each other, the color draining from my face as soon as Vincent began scrabbling for the underside of his seat. I arched an eyebrow as Vincent pulled out a rather battle-modified looking wrench – it read '18" Stainless Steel Drop Forged' on it, and had grip-tape wrapped around its handle – and prodded the satchel.

Hurried whispers called out for other people to 'Shut the frak up before he hears us'.

Vincent gave the satchel a whack.

More cries, less muffled voices rose up in answer.

My hand darted forward and upturned the satchel. A pair of 'Blood Raven' Scout Marines in their bright yellow armor (What the hell? Scouts in bright red armor?), a squad of four Stealth suits that shimmered as they stood back up, three Eldar Rangers in their dark green cloaks and a fire-team of five Imperial Guardsmen swathed in cameleoline cloaks tumbled out onto the floor.

"Had to expect that one." Vincent muttered, breathing a sigh and Bowing to his steering wheel. It seemed – to me – like a gesture of 'I don't want to deal with this, it's all yours.' - and soon enough Vincent was just lying back.

I picked up an Imperial Guardsman by the back of his cloak as he tried to skitter away. The rest scattered and disappeared into the footwell.

Vincent was quick, and being as large as he was in comparison to the others and the fact that he knew almost every nook and cranny of his car made their own stealth ability moot. He had gathered up the others in short notice; The Eldar Rangers were the last to be retrieved, and soon we had some very embarrassed guys standing there in front of us.

"What. The. Hell." I stared from one embarrassed scout to the other.

"Well, I can expect curiosity..." Vincent sighed, leaning back against the door of his car. I looked up at him, then back down at the toy-sized soldiers.

"But they still disobeyed me and followed me! Look, I can't have you guys coming along! What if someone sees you?" I shouted, and saw that even Space Marines flinched at my voice. I gritted my teeth.

The Asian boy sighed, and flicked on the radio, and fixed me with his blank stare, his eyes giving me all the communication that was needed. I was too loud.

Oh. Right. I was shouting; someone could had heard us. Dammit...

I cleared my throat, and stared at the assembled scouts, who were now shuffling their feet, wondering about their fates. Looking from one face to the other, I sighed.

"Okay, you guys stay here, in the car. You should be able to hide underneath the dashboard and not be seen."

"Uh..."

"I'll take it as a yes... look, if someone found out about you guys... things are going to get worse for us if they do."

"With all due respect, Gue'O, but we are scouts. We are trained to not be seen or heard, nor tell of our passing."

One of the Rangers coughed. "As well as that, mon-keigh, Farseer Zara is one mean b... witch, as you call psykers."

"... Fair enough."

"What's that, Gue'O?" A markerlight placed a bright green dot on a box of cereal. I quickly jiggled my satchel, throwing them off balance.

"For the fourth time, I said stop doing that! Just save it to a recorder and I'll tell you later!"

Vincent's elbow dug into my ribs as he hissed a warning.

"Michael, down the aisle..."

I turned to see a woman was staring at us, her son tugging at her sleeves. "Mommy... mommy... what's the weird man doing?"

The woman's implacable stare made us start sweating. Shoot... if she reported us to security...

"Ehehe... heh..." Vincent smiled in a crack-happy grin, waving at the woman. Hey, having served a stint as an actor didn't do much to impede his ability to creep people out with a smile worthy of the Joker. His almost bugged out of their socket, and he flashed his teeth as he grinned.

The mother's eyes widened in shock as she was presented with a view of Vincent's insane Asian facade. Mother and son double timed it out of the aisle while still trying to keep a parody of dignity.

We exhaled a collective sigh of relief when they disappeared around the corner.

"Blue-skin? Do not do that ever again." The Eldar Ranger sighed.

"Frakkin' xeno never learn, do they?" Quipped an Imperial Guard.

There was the sound of a bolt pistol being chambered.

Dammit.

I gave the satchel a good shake, which caused all occupants to tumble about helplessly as I thrust my hand in and rummaged for a non-existent shopping list, bumping into the various human and not-so-human scouts inside as I did. Vincent busied himself with checking the price difference between bran flakes and corn flakes.

"Guys, just stop it already!" I hissed into my satchel, looking at the dazed scouts below me. The group were now all confused and very much unfit to do combat with all the shaking around, or otherwise had wised up to the fact that I didn't want them fighting.

It felt like I was trying to keep a group of irresponsible kids with guns to try and keep still.

"Finished?" Vincent asked, leaning backwards to talk to me. "The stackers are getting worried."

Sure enough, a quick glance around showed that two of the employees had made their way over to us, and were now very slowly unpacking and repacking boxes of foodstuffs. I sighed as Vincent hefted a box of Sugar Rings.

"Alright, let's hurry this up."

We moved quickly now, with the boys in the bag behaving as they satisfied themselves with popping optical scopes out the top of the flap and seeing the world outside as it was.

Vincent and I went about collecting a lot of coffee and cereal from the aisle as we were watched by the two employees, and we managed to slip away without any trouble. The cereal was good, since we had small bits that didn't need cutting up to feed the minis, and then were also filling enough to get these warriors through a day. A bottle of milk made it's way through when I talked to Commissar Tomas about additives to the coffee.

Quick detours down to the snack foods aisle yielded Kettle chips, special order from Justicar Amadeus. But since the messenger was Silverite, I doubted that was true, but got them anyway. A cruel part of my mind wanted to tie Silverite to an immovable object, and the~

• CLANG*

"What the hell was that?" I blurted, jumping up from my thoughts. I turned around to see Vincent grabbing a can of spaghetti, which had hit the metal bottom of the shelves.

"S'rry..." Vincent muttered, tossing the can back into place, and almost dropping another half-dozen. My bespectacled friend began to pick his way through the other cans, checking labels and wondering about their heft. His glances at the mini-Warhammer 40k characters did nothing to help with my imagination. The guy weaponized everything as a freaking hobby. I just guessed this guy was just bored, if he was thinking of using cans of spaghetti to fight off miniature soldiers.

"Gue'O Michael, what was that?" The voice from my satchel asked. Most likely the Tau Shas'vre.

"Just a can of spaghetti."

"Spaghetti?" The Space Marine Scout – I later learned his name was Iroquois Plisskin - looked up at me. "You mean those yellow magma worms from Roma II?"

"No. Its something you eat."

"You eat them?" Scout Sergeant Plisskin pulled off his eyepatch in disbelief, although he seemed more curious than disgusted. Maybe he wanted to try some out... I chuckled.

"N-no... its not like that. Spaghetti is just Italian pasta."

"... you eat industrial adhesives!" The Imperial snipers chorused.

I facepalmed.

"Seriously. Its just... food."

The gathered scouts looked at each other in a mix of disbelief, terror and curiosity. I just about Bowed in Frustration, but kept myself from doing so. Turning to the shelves, I quickly picked off a pair of cans – baked beans – and set them into the trolley.

Vincent was trying not to laugh as he grabbed an undamaged can of magma wo- spaghetti and throwing it into the trolley. A packet of flour followed, he needed some for himself (Vincent had also thrown in several packets of microwaveable meals and another packet of rice for himself).

"Yeah, and next is the packets of raw gravel." He chuckled.

"Vince..." I sighed.

"What? Seriously, you'd think so with the stuff they put in the candied popcorn."

As we moved on from the snacks aisle, we picked up several packets of twinkies (The Zombieland movie that I had picked up off Trent – another of my friends – had sparked both humor and curiosity, seeing as how – to quote Inquisitor Danilov - 'that man appeared to be more devoted to consuming that 'twinkie' than serving the God-Emperor in cleansing this vile infection'), and sno-balls just for laughs (Consistency, they say?). Popcorn seemed traditional for any future movie-going events, so I was throwing that in as well.

Besides the objects of curiosity, I also threw in a few random items for them to test out (but nothing sugary for the Orks. Madork'z boyz trippin' on Waaagh! was bad enough already. I didn't need them trippin' on sugar and energy drinks).

Vincent quickly decided on a little bit of ecological irony and opted to see if he could find as many fungus based foods to feed them – mushrooms were a good start. Also, fruit and meat. A lot of that went into the trolley, most of which were from Vincent throwing them at me.

Staple foods that didn't bleed or wasn't naturally green colored were bread and the various packaged meals that I had picked up, but then Vincent tossed me a five kilogram sack of rice, and with a promise of teaching me how to cook them (with a rice cooker, of all things).

"Let's see how that goes." He chuckled, leaning on the trolley. It rolled back, of course, and one corner slammed into my satchel as I moved out of the way.

"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF~"

"Sorry, Sergeant... really, I'm sorry about that..." Vincent and I were walking through an empty section of the supermarket, with the former of us doing a lot of apologizing to the Imperial Guardsman. Sergeant Taum McTavish irritably nursed his left arm, which had been severely battered by the misfortune of being between a steel trolley and my thigh.

"Ngh... could have broken something, you know." He finished with checking his left arm, and moved on to the nasty bruise that was forming on his forehead – standing beside the Stealthsuit during that event had gotten him a few more very prominent marks.

"Like your brain, mon-keigh?" The Eldar Ranger asked. "I would have thought that you would have cracked that a long time ago, your intelligence considered."

"Y~!" The Guardsman moved to attack the Ranger, who immediately drew his shuriken pistol, but I beat him to the punch, so to speak. Lifting the Eldar scout up by his cameleoline cloak, I gave him a brief shaking to completely disorient him (although, to his credit, the bugger didn't let go of his pistol), then threw him into one of the side pockets of my satchel, before zipping it up.

"Dammit, behave, will you?"

"Uh... heheh..." Vincent was giving another of his cheesy/nervous grins down the aisle, indicating with a small gesture to a girl standing there staring at us with a very confused expression.

She looked normal enough, with her long black hair coming down to mid-back, and a simple, oversized black t-shirt over a purposefully tattered pair of jeans. Slim and gracefully built, she looked as if she were a dancer – I was reminded of the Howling Banshees and the Seraphim of the Adepta Sororitas.

But when I saw her face as she grinned at us, I froze.

Sharp teeth, as if filed down to their shark like, triangular shape. Wisps of unnaturally purple hair waved around as she pulled back her veil of hair to see us properly.

Deep red eyes peeked out, which seemed to transfix my friend and myself as she gave us a grin of pure psychotic glee. The girl's expression changed, to one of malevolent joy and excitement. She seemed like a small child that had just found out she was getting a rabbit for her birthday... or the cat that had just eaten the canary.

"Hwee haff foud hyuu!." She giggled, clapping her hands together. The girl seemed almost on the verge of joyful tears. "Nao... hwee arr sorreh, but hwee haff to keel hyuu... hai vant chuu bee fwee."

Dammit. What kind of deal had she gotten herself into now? Find me, kill me to be free! What the hell was with that girl?

She reached into the tattered satchel she had at her right hip, and drew out a knife. It was a weapon made for flashing: The serrated teeth told me that much.

Well... shit.

The Chaos Sorcerer known as Tzarvos the Shadow-caller tsk'd in irritation as he looked out at the scene unfolding before him. The marble turned scrying sphere cracked in his hand suddenly, before falling to pieces in his hand. His latest daemonic gift – batlike wings - flapped irritably, then folded behind him. He could be there in mere minutes, with his new ability to fly, but for now he could not see how he could stop the girl.

"Not as planned." He observed. False hope was one thing, but killing a potentially powerful thrall? Not. As. Planned.

Chapter 10

"Hyoo mahst dai nao..."

"W-what are you talking about!" I looked at the girl in front of me. The sudden declaration of 'you must die' was certainly a way to throw a person off. But really, what threw me off was not what the strange girl had said, but who she was.

The unfortunate girl was as I remembered her, in that dream... no, in that vision. She was divinely beautiful, with a flawless form, her hair swung in silken strands of purple that danced over smooth, light brown skin. Her body was wrapped up in simple clothes, with a jet black shirt and blue jeans with some sneakers. She could have been a goddess of teenage desire, but... I got the feeling of her being almost ashamed of her self, or simply too shy to show it. Her arms were crossed over her body, hugging herself as she advanced.

"Hai mahst kheel hyoo."

Her murmured and badly mangled words were almost inaudible.

Vincent was slapping the side of his head - in a twisted version of percussive maintenance - to see if he could hear her right. He looked at me and caught my eye, then pointed all five of his fingers into a 'beak' of sorts, and waved it back and forth, his fingers pointed at his mouth. Italian sign-language for "What the fuck?". Russel Peters, thank you for that addition to Vincent's non-verbal communications repertoire. I shook my head in response to that. No idea.

"Uh... why?" My voice was shaky – afraid – and working hard to try and get something intelligible out.

"Hy hwan choo kou bhak." She sighed in her butchered English, her whispered voice almost in despair as she advanced towards us. "Haai hwant choo gho baahck." Needle-fine teeth showed as she spoke.

The girl swayed on her feet, as if delirious and about to collapse, although I could see that she was strong: Both her hands were clutched to her chest so tightly I could see the white knuckles through her light brown skin. One delicate step placed her at less than ten feet from Vincent, the miniature scouting party in my satchel, and myself.

The Imperials had ducked inside, and were now cursing and reciting litanies in their 'High Gothic', while the Eldar were scrambling up and trying to get their sights on to her. The Tau were confused at the excitement, probably because they had been stuck in a corner since the Markerlight incident. Vincent didn't seem to be bothered by her (apart from the normal confusion of seeing her start to whimper now), the packet of flour still in his hand as he tried to identify her.

I was entranced.

This purple haired slip of a girl moved with an unnaturally graceful gait, much like the Eldar that I had met in the past, but her footsteps sent my skin tingling. Everything seemed to haze around me as something akin to a strong smell hit my senses. My nostrils flared in the sudden assault to my senses, I was forced to squeeze my eyes shut as they began to water and throb, and I felt bile rising in my throat. Instantly, as if a small voice had whispered in my ear, I knew why this was happening.

Chaos. The Ruinous Powers that Be.

Vincent glanced aside as I gasped for breath, seeing the girl take a few more tentative steps closer. We were both backing away. His stance was lower now, centering and lowering his center of gravity for a fight. The Imperials in my satchel swore on several of the Emperor's anatomical features and armor parts (for the Guardsmen and the Space Marines, respectively) as the satchel swung around behind me.

"Uh... Michael... you know this girl?"

"From that vision. Sacrificed to Chaos." I managed to gasp. Vincent's reply was a faint 'aw...shite'.

The girl was in tears now as she passed by the shelves of spaghetti. MacTavish was howling at the vox, calling for backup.

"Hym sho shorreh..." She sobbed. The girl pulled back her white knuckle hands, to reveal a dagger.

Well, sorry my ass. Sunlight reflected off the mirror-smooth blade.

My eyes were forever burned with the shape and form of that weapon. It was a simple blade, straight edged and tapering in an exquisite curve to a fine point. The guard of the dagger looked like the typical Chaos symbol of an eight-pointed star, but in the center this time was an eye. The apologetic attacker's hands were covering the rest of the weapon, but I didn't need the rest to completely terrify me. The guard was enough, resting in the middle of the weapon. That eye blinked at me.

Cold terror filled me. It wasn't like in the movies that I watched. That fear seized up my limbs. I wanted to scream, but I choked. Fingers shook and clenched uncontrollably, my feet felt like they were welded to the ground and my breathing as fast as hers.

She ducked her head down into a run, her feet carrying her across the floor. I was too slow to dodge her tackle. The cultist hit me high in the chest, sending both of us down into the ground. My satchel was ripped off and cast away as we struggled on the ground. I was bizarrely reminded of Not-Zara's attack, although that time the attacker had been a lot more... composed. She was sobbing and crying as I tried to wrestle the knife out of her hand. Even with her one slim limb against both my hands, she was surprisingly strong. I gasped for breath as her left elbow dug into my ribs.

Vincent was swearing and shouting something incoherent, running over to the stack of shelves beside him.

"Haim shoo sorreh..." She repeated, over and over as she apologetically attacked me, her blade hovering inches from my face. I felt the daemonic weapon touch my left shoulder, and felt its fire-hot touch sear my flesh. I cried out in pain as the blade began to slip into my flesh.

"Hy hwant choo gho bahk. Bahk choo nohmaal."

She wanted to break free of Chaos. By striking a deal with Chaos. What. The. Hell.

"Sorreh..."

My vision began to blur at the edges as a new push stabbed the daemonic blade further into my shoulder, a dark ring closing around my sight. The taste of rotten eggs and the smell of brimstone was being burned into my senses as my skin sizzled from the touch of daemonic metal. My arms were starting to tire – I wasn't some kind of action hero, or even fit – and this girl was putting her entire weight into pushing the blade into my shoulder.

"Gue'El Vin'cent! DO SOMETHING!"

Vincent moved in my tunneling vision, his right arm whipping around behind me.

The blade in her hand roared and leaped back from me, moving to defend its user, almost dragging the girl along with itself as it did.

Spaghetti and two halves of a perfectly sliced tin can was liberally spread around the aisle. The taste of tomato sauce filled my mouth, and the feel of slimy noodles dripping down my face. The smell of Italian herbs and the sight of the blade whipping up and away managed to reboot my senses.

"Ah, fuck it." Vincent muttered as the psychotic girl rushed him, hefting another object.

The bag of flour sailed lazily through the air. I knew, instantly, that it would never hurt the girl in tears. Her hand again moved, dragged into motion by the knife, and shredded the flour bag in two neat cuts that sent the four pieces slamming into the floor.

White powder filled the aisle, and I almost tripped on my own feet as I scrambled to get away. Vincent's hand coiled around my hand and dragged me upright. He shouted some warning, giving me a 'get back!' gesture, and threw the burning scrap of paper that he had lit with the lighter in his other hand into the cloud of flour as he shifted his head into his denim jacket to cover himself.

The fireball that resulted with the igniting flour filled the air with the roar of an explosion, setting off smaller fires with the more flammable materials around it, and strangely enough the smell of burnt toast reached my nose.

Well, that's Vincent for you.

Behind me, the girl screamed in surprise as the fireball engulfed her.

I felt the heat as I fell to my knees, trying desperately to propel myself away. Vincent threw himself back and landed bodily beside me, rolling slightly before crashing into a stack of cans. He was clutching his left hand as he tried to bat out the flames that licked at his sleeves. No way was a normal human walking away from that without a few burns.

As the flaming mass parted, I sighed. No normal human.

"Emperor protect us..." The Guardsmen muttered. His prayer – whatever it may have been – was quickly cut off as I snagged the satchel and pulled it up.

This was a girl who had been granted perfection by the Chaos Gods. Of course they would protect their... investment.

I turned back as Vincent and I tried to scramble onto my feet. The alarms were screaming now, and water was starting to pour down from above.

The girl was standing there, her burnt arms still crackling with energy as she looked up at me with hollow eyes. Across her body, glowing lines of energy were beginning to break out of her skin. Water sizzled where they touched those lines. She gasped – whether in pain or something else – as Chaos powers poured into her. The girl fell to her knees, shivering in pain. She gave out a high pitched, almost whistling cry.

"Michael! We..." Vincent grabbed me by the sleeve. "... are..." He hefted another object from the shelves – a can of pumpkin soup – at the girl. "...leaving!" It was shredded into nothing before it got within two feet of her, although some of said soup was sprayed all over her face.

While that was happening, we were bolting away as fast as our legs could carry us without slipping.

RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN!

I was running on adrenaline and instinct right now. My left arm felt like it had been set on fire, and I felt like I would be nursing quite a few bruises later on – if I survived that long. Vincent was just running like hell, but I could see that his clothes were badly scorched by the flour-bomb. All around us, water was pouring down as the sprinkler system dumped years old stagnant water down on our heads.

We reached the end of the aisle, slipping and skidding, with Vincent was running like hell with me stumbling along just ahead of him. I almost slipped and fell as we slid into the main aisles and past the mini-butchery – even from such a short sprint. Vincent squeezed out a few words as he fought for breath.

"I... am... not... made... for... this... sorta... thing!"

A quick turn into the frozen foods section brought us out straight into the checkouts section. We saw the empty checkouts, their operators long ago evacuated, and picked our way through. Once out, we got to the final corridor – a ten foot span where everyone packed up and went after paying. There was a crowd trying to push through the double doors at one end, trying to escape the trouble of explanations.

Funny, that when we came in here they seemed huge, but now they were far too small for our liking. I looked around, seeing Vincent's well worn pickup truck only a hundred yards away, but with the crowd, the door and the sheet of glass in between us, it was far more than just that.

Glass? Wait a second...

"Vincent! Anything heavy, in this trolley!" I dragged a fallen trolley back onto its wheels, and pulled it back to the counter, where I began to pile in the heaviest groceries as I could.

"Huh?" Vincent looked at me with his 'are you high?' look, then followed my gaze. "Oh."

A sixpack and a watermelon was quickly added to the load. I pulled off my satchel, and opened it up at the nearest checkout.

"You guys, try and weaken a spot on the window!" I pointed at the glass sheet nearest to us, and got a few nods in response.

The Shas'vre hefted what was known as the 'Fusion Blaster' on his Stealthsuit. The Space Marine Scout beside a swearing Ranger picked up a rocket launcher, loading a missile with a needle-like tip. Sergeant MacTavish himself was busy hefting his sniper rifle into position, shouting us a warning.

"Heretic's right there! I'm taking the shot!"

Behind us was the girl, stumbling along in a mix of elfin grace and drunken staggering as she advanced, her sentient (there was no other explanation for what the blade had done) blade pulling her along. The Tanith scout-sniper leveled his weapon, and stroked the firing stud.

Crack!

The sniper's lance of red light split the air as MacTavish hung half-out of my bouncing satchel. There was the satisfying yelp of surprise, but no doubt the long-las blast had been stopped by whatever powers protected her. The knife screamed in rage as it swung around wildly, its mirror-smooth metal stained black by the heat.

Beside MacTavish, the other scouts were chattering away into their headpieces and communications gear as they pumped as much firepower into the window as they could – it wasn't doing much, with their light weaponry – and I could make out their reports as their voices overlapped each other.

"Shas'vre, adjust your focus! We are simply melting holes in that glass!"

Crack! MacTavish's shot glanced off the bubble of energy now protecting the cultist.

"This is Scout Marine Ventorez, we are in need of assistance at vector 40-203-994..."

The dakka dakka dakka of the Scout Marine bolters tore chunks off the glass.

"We are probably only ten-twenty checks out, over! It only took us four minutes to drive here in Vincent's vehicle!"

Blue pellets of energy spewed forth from the Burst Cannon of the Tau Stealthsuits, melting small holes into the glass.

"Chaos cultist! The girl that the mon-keigh saw in his vision!"

A krak missile blasted a chunk of glass the size of my fist.

"That heretic's getting closer!" MacTavish roared, his sniper rifle not caring for aim anymore, simply pumping as many blasts into the girl's knife as possible before it got to us.

"Mount up, Rangers!" A Ranger shouted, stowing away his rifle and grabbing his spotter. He threw her into the satchel and jumped inside. I grabbed one of the Tanith scouts, and he followed the Rangers in.

Vincent grabbed onto the trolley's bar, and I grabbed the other end. We both charged forward with the two-hundred pound load in front of us. The glass had been pockmarked by explosions and outright melted in others. Our combined weight and speed met with the glass. There was the sound of a terrific impact, the crunch of steel on cracked glass.

For a moment, I felt resistance, but the glass yielded. We smashed a hole just big enough to drive a Mini Cooper through, and I felt falling glass cut at my face and back. The trolley slammed into the railing at the edge of the sidewalk, and we tumbled to the ground.

We had gotten outside in one piece.

Picking ourselves up, we glanced at each other for a moment, then back into the store, and then started running as fast as we could.

"Well... we've caused quite the scene now, huh?" Vincent quipped between gritted teeth. We were skirting the edges of a mass exodus made up of panicking shoppers, with squealing tires and cursing people all fighting for a way out. I nodded grimly, and we both hurried towards Vincent's car.

"Incoming!" The Tau Shas'vre warned. I turned to look.

The girl was far faster than I thought she was. Either that, or the two of us – a rather lazy artist who barely had any exercise in his lifestyle and a computer technician that didn't propel himself faster than a swift walk on most days – were simply that slow.

She was gaining ground on us, and Vincent was starting to lag behind.

Suddenly, my mind ground to a halt.

Stop running! Stand and face her!

My feet twisted themselves into a skip on the asphalt, and my body did a pirouette one-eighty, turning to face the surprised cultist with a cry of surprise. What the hell am I doing! The occupants of my satchel were swearing and cursing in their native tongues. Her knife seemed equally bewildered, screaming out in rage or frustration - I did not know - but scream it did.

I saw hesitation pass through the eyes of the Cultist as she barreled towards me, knife raised.

Charge her! Get the knife out of her hands! It controls her!

We crashed into each other as I suddenly leaped forward, and I grabbed onto her knife-hand as we fell to the ground. My wounded shoulder was filled with an agonizing pain, but I managed to keep her down – this time, I was the one pinning her to the ground.

Yoza... is that you?

Good luck, Mon-keigh. That's all I can do for you now. The rest is up to you.

Zara... you utter bitch.

"Guys!" Gritting my teeth, I shifted my weight to let the miniature soldiers out of their bag. "Get. The. Knife!"

Instantly, they began to scramble from their pockets in my satchel, and swarmed up my torso. The Tau Stealthsuits – being jetpack equipped – were the first to get there. Second were the swift and agile Eldar, then at their heels were the lightly equipped Tanith scouts, and finally the Scout Marines.

All leveled their exotic weapons at the knife.

"The knife! Don't hurt the girl!"

The stealthsuit Shas'vre was the first to fire, his fusion blaster searing a deep gash on the perfect steel. The knife screamed and struggled, whipping around and lashing out at the scouts. An Eldar Ranger screamed as his left arm was caught in the tip of the blade. Blood boiled as the rest of the daemon knife was battered by the rest of the team.

"Break, damn you, break!"

I tried my best to keep the knife down, flailing my arm up and down to try and smash it out of her grip. The cultist-girl squirmed around underneath me, trying to get herself loose. She was still trying her best to kill me, it seemed.

Finally, one shot from a lasgun struck the eye of the knife. The weapon screamed in agony, the sound accompanied by the psychic ripple that stunned my entire body. I froze, my entire body refusing to move as the knife began to twist and deform from the rest of the scouts; they had seen how the blade had reacted when it had been shot in the eye. A fusion blast lanced through the hilt, piercing the eye. The blade snapped as it twisted into a horrifying new shape, and fell to the ground. The girl's hand slackened in a sigh of relief, and she dropped the rest of the knife. Her hand was burned and scarred as it uncurled, most unlike the flawless skin elsewhere. The girl gave a shudder and passed out, a half smile on her lips.

I rolled off, the stinging pain of my shoulder wound throbbing madly as I saw Vincent running towards me. Now that I had a good look at his face, I saw that he had lost some of the hair on the left side of his face – his eyebrow most prominently – and would be sporting quite a few burn scars there for a while. He pulled me up to a seated position, and began to look at the scouts.

Many were wounded, with the Eldar Ranger cradling a missing arm as his squadmates moved to help. Two others were dead on the ground. In the struggle, we had also lost a leg from the knee down on one of the Scout Marines, another with a stab wound that cut through his lower right torso, and finally one with an arm twisted completely the wrong way. The Tau Stealthsuits had written off a stealthsuit to battle damage – the armor was locked down now, so the fate of its pilot was unknown – and the rest were heavily battered. We also lost three of the Guardsmen – two nearly cut in half by the knife, before bleeding out as the knife had lashed out at us, and the third was crushed by the pommel of the knife.

By a long stretch, my injuries were far less. Running on adrenaline, I hadn't even noticed that I also had a few more nasty cuts on my arms and face, all shallow enough that I didn't have to worry for the moment. Now that I was coming off that high, I felt each and every ache and sore, and the creeping throb of my left shoulder as well.

As for the girl, she looked battered – bruised at best - but otherwise unharmed. I felt anger, that these good warriors had been forced to give their lives for us – for her and myself – because of her stupidity. Those Ruinous Powers were not child's play...

The bark of a pistol interrupted any other thoughts. Vincent and I both turned to look at the alleyway connecting to the carpark. I saw a man, his face obscured by the white bandana over his face. He was dressed in a crimson hoodie and black pants, the smoking pistol still in his hand. He had fired in the air, and now he lowered the weapon, holding it 'gangsta style' - on its side – to point at us. His boys were similarly dressed, but were armed only with wicked knives and crude clubs, and I could only assume that he was their leader.

My stomach dropped as I saw the symbols crudely painted onto his chest. They looked vaguely like a triangular figure-of-eight, with the top neatly split open to the sides, and bisected by a line. The Mark of the Blood God.

Frying pan. Fire.

You all know how it goes.

Chapter 11

Thought for the day: "Guardsman, the Emperor gave you a trigger finger for a reason. USE IT!" - Commissar Tomas Sturm, Cadian 918th.

"Aaah shite." Vincent muttered as he saw the gang that had come in.

The asian nerd was kneeling on the ground less than eight feet away, a look of borderline panic on his face. Eyes were flicking left and right, trying to find some way of escape. His hands were spread out and trying to subtly search the empty ground for a weapon. Vincent was obviously on the verge of losing it completely.

Curled up right in front of me, the purple haired cultist was lying there, unconscious, her right hand still smoldering from the intense Warpfire that it once held. Her clothes had been torn and stained by the struggle between us and the blood spilled during that fight, respectively. Hers or mine, I didn't know.

My entire body ached as I came down from my adrenaline high. My left shoulder – victim to a daemonically powered knife stab – was throbbing in protest from its overwork in wrestling said knife from the cultist it had possessed. The fact that I had been wearing a light blue shirt at the time wasn't helping with my secondary thoughts of having to wash my blood off. My leg muscles were strained from their relatively rapid use, and what passed for my shoulder muscles had been strained from the impact when Vincent and I crashed a trolley through the glass panels of the supermarket window. All of my clothes had a tear or stain on them.

Around us, the remains – maybe just more than a half – of the scouting party that had stowed away in my satchel were preparing for their final stand against the gang-boys that had assembled twenty feet in front of us.

On my side of the fight, we had miniaturized state-of-the-art Tau weaponry mixed in with the ancient but no less effective weapons of the Imperium; lasguns (the sniper rifle variant) and bolters. The Eldar were using their needle-launching sniper rifles as well, but the specialized anti-personnel weapons weren't going to be anywhere as effective against the gang before us.

In their hands weapons ranging from a freshly fired pistol to knives – both new and some seemingly rusted with blood – and crude clubs made of lead pipes and similar materials.

"Izzat tha boy K-horn wants us to fuck up?" The guy to the left of the leader asked.

"Fucked if I know." A third drawled.

"Fuckit, jus' cap 'em and go. Blood's all he needs. K-horn doesn't care where the blood comes from."

I sighed, inwardly. I knew this kind of group.

This was the kind of group that usually trawled the edges of the 'hoods: They weren't 'real' gang members, more like potential recruits for the actual ones. Posers, for lack of a better word. Wannabes. Their 'traditions' were derived from the bravado-fueled rap videos, and their behavior taken from the same. Mostly aggression-driven into a pack mentality like that of wolves, they strove to impress their peers and the real gangers... perfect prey for the Blood God with promises of power and respect.

Even so, there were five of them, facing Vincent, the scouts and myself. Normally, on a even scale, a single Scout – whether Eldar, Tau, Space Marine or Imperial - would have been more than a fair match for them.

But dammit, 1/56 scale sucked.

Okay... think.

Think... fuck!

I had some of the most brilliant tactical and strategic minds in the universe – the Space Marines, warriors that had survived centuries if not millennia of warfare, the Eldar chess-masters of stratagems, who had the oldest and wisest counsel to draw their plans from, and the naïve but no less effective Tau way of killing blow and patient hunter – and yet I had not learned a thing from these guys.

But I knew some basics, from games (of all things. Vincent would be proud). Assess the terrain... okay, okay... don't panic.

I can survive this.

Firstly, think of where you are fighting.

Our corner of the near-empty car park was devoid of anything that could stop a bullet. I had eighty – maybe ninety – pounds of unconscious female cultist at my knees, and all they had to do was start shooting; the only other cars around besides Vincent's pickup were your typical soccer-mom mini-van, and a hatchback that looked like it belonged to another suburban mom. Both were at too great a distance to actually give us any real cover. The hedges bordering the parking lot also hemmed us in, keeping us from escaping out into open road – it also concealed us from anyone trying to figure out where the shots came from.

Alright... how about consolidating resources? That was a good start. Leave nobody behind.

"Guys, get into my satchel." I muttered through clenched teeth. The stealthy scouts were crouched low to the ground, now, their cameleoline cloaks and battlesuit stealth systems allowing them to blend with the ground as they moved to sneak into my bag. Not good, not good. The miniature soldiers began to inch their way across the asphalt, backing their way into the battered satchel.

The Blood God's servants kept their weapons raised as we held up our hands in the universal 'Hey, I'm not a threat!' gesture. There were... lets count 'em... five of the crimson clothed gangers, one of which was armed with... what was that gun? I turned to Vincent, ignoring the conversation spouting from the gangers like water from the mouth of a gargoyle.

"Vincent, what kind of guns is that guy using?" I hissed to my friend. Said nerd squinted for a second, examining the weapon in the ganger's hand.

"Silver plated Colt .45. He's got six shots left if h-"

He blinked and then jerked to the left, an action followed by second gunshot from the lead ganger. The round skipped off the concrete behind us, then into the hedges. Vincent swore in surprise, the bullet had passed through his clothes, ripping a hole in the left back of his jacket. He half-rolled, half-tumbled to the side and came up stumbling, managing to throw himself into a run before the gun was brought back to bear. A third gunshot sent a bullet through the air where he had been.

All thoughts of thinking left my brain.

The leader managed to get off one more shot, which again went wide, before there was a surprised cry of frustration from him. I saw the outstretched pistol, still held one-handed and sideways, looking not quite right; there was now a copper-brown cylinder sticking out of the silver plate on the side, and the barrel was sticking out of the front.

A moment of confusion passed.

Big, bandana faced and nasty snorted in disgust and threw away the gun.

"OH-PAHN FAI-HAR!" Barked the heavily accented voice of MacTavish, each syllable emphasized by his bellowing voice. For a scout, he could sure make a lot of noise.

Suddenly, there was a bright mashup of firepower connecting the open satchel hanging off my neck to the throat of the nearest ganger – the one who had stepped forward as his leader threw away the gun. His fellows flinched and some yelped as bright lances of energy scorched their skin, but the leader was hit the worst. He clutched at the traumatized skin, letting the metal pipe in his hands clatter to the ground. Blood seeping out from between his pale fingers, I could see eyes widen as he gasped for breath. There was a choked gurgle, and the ganger pitched forward.

And then I truly felt the Hand of a God.

It came like a sudden pressure, pressing down on me from all around... You know, when you put on dishwashing gloves and then stick the hand into water? Apply that to your entire body. The feeling was crushing the breath from my lungs. The pure malice that was floating around me was tangible, and I felt the whispers of daemons as they passed by to dive into the gangers. A dry throat and trembling fingers were all that was needed to tell me that things were not going well on any of the planes of existance.

The four other gangers roared as they trampled their former comrade.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

I almost crapped myself right there. Instead, I decided to be more productive and run away. Bending down, I picked up the cultist, and found my estimates of her weight about right. Why I picked her up, I didn't know.

Pity? Maybe.

But what I knew was that she had a lot of explaining to do, and I wasn't going to let her get out of it by dying. I hefted her body up with my arms, and broke off into a run... well, slow jog, at best. My protesting feet carried me as quickly as I could, satchel bouncing behind me, as the battle cry of Khorne went up.

"SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

A ganger sprinted ahead of his leader, leaped and tried to beat at me with his improvised club. I felt the heavy blow crash into the space between my shoulder blades, went down like a log, the cultist and the scouts coming along for the ride, and was set upon by the others.

The cultist rolled away, more-or-less safe in this situation, and I felt the satchel bouncing off my left shoulder, sending another shock of pain through my nervous system. Blows rained down on me as the others surrounded my prone form, searching for the weapon that had felled their comrade,.

A quarter-inch thick line of blue lightning sliced out from the satchel, burning a nasty scar onto the forearm of one ganger. I managed to break free for a second, and threw it open, scattering the scout teams onto the ganger climbing on top of me, punctuating each blow with a word that sent my head into another bout of throbbing pain.

"BLOOD. FOR. THE. BLOOD. GOD!

SKULLS. FOR. TH~"

"KRAK GRENADE!"

In my state of concussed disorientation, my eyes seemed to decide that it was a good idea to be aware of what was happening in front of me; a Space Marine leaped from my shoulder, scampered his way up the ganger's bandana, and shoved a krak grenade into his ear. Earlier – maybe on the fourth day – the Space Marines had shown me the oversized, tin-can shaped grenades they used to crack open doors and armor that was too strong for regular frag-grenades, but too weak to waste a melta bomb on.

There was the almost familiar thunderclap sound of its detonation, and suddenly the ganger was dead weight in my struggling arms. I decided that he was thoroughly distracted, so my arm came around to give him a punch on the right temple. Kicking the limp body off of me, I managed to scramble onto my feet as a second round of gunshots split the air.

Two pops reported the shots of the pistol behind me. I prepared myself for the pain. The crunchy sound of a bullet hitting a human body was soon followed by a scream of pain. Around me, the remaining gangers got their act together, their morale – or what passed as morale among these guys – broken, and they turned tail and ran. The suffocating anger in the air seemed to lighten, and I could feel myself breathe freely again.

Beside me, the cultist shuddered.

"Khorne does not care where the blood flows from..." She whispered.

Still crouched behind the smoking pistol, Vincent collapsed with a long release of breath, his back to the lamp-post that usually illuminated the car park at night. The Colt .45 slipped out of his hand as three shell-casings rolled about. They stopped when they hit the body of the still writhing ganger, who was clutching at his thigh, shot through by the pistol.

"Thank God for YouTube. And Halvorsen." He muttered distantly, picking up the pistol again. I was busy with searching for the Scouts, who were amazingly unharmed as I rolled the unconscious – and still bleeding with an odd whistling sound to his breath – ganger onto his side, allowing the Tau Stealthsuits to pick themselves up and crawl out. The Shas'vre's front paint had been completely scraped off, revealing the off-blue metal underneath his stealth field thingy.

Barrel pointed at the ground and slightly away from himself, Vincent began to half-walk, half-stagger towards me. "Hey, Michael! You all right over there?"

"Just fine. Ugh... I think I might need a medic, though." I jabbed him with an old joke from our highschool days, trying to distract myself from the fact that we had almost been killed by crazy cultists for a blood god.

All I got was his blank face.

I sighed. "How about you?"

"First time I ever shot a real gun... didn't hit a thing I was aiming for, though." He stammered, giving his newly captured weapon a glance. Nerding out was overriding his freaking out, it seemed. However, the guy still looked like he was in an anesthetic daze, his eyes unfocused and distant, his movements jerky and... uncoordinated. It was like looking at a puppet with only half the strings attached. Stumbling across the carpark, Vincent fell to his knees beside the ganger who had once wielded the gun.

"Dasar keparat!" Vincent swore. I think it was Indonesian for 'damned fool'. "Didn't know how to clear a stovepipe... bodoh, they put the iron sights on top for a reason..."

He shook his head in bewilderment as he poked the guy once with the gun, and pressed the weapon to the guy's neck, finger on the trigger now, and began to rummage through his pockets. Pushing the guy over onto his back, Vincent began to pat him down, his hands digging into the hoodie pouch.

"What the hell?" I asked, confused. Vincent had moved on to the other side of his pants. A cellphone was discarded offhandedly.

"Just looking for..." There was the sound of a buckle being undone, and metal sliding on leather. "Ah, here we go."

Vincent produced a pair of extra clips, and after a little searching around he thumbed a button just behind the trigger, to eject the half-spent magazine already in the gun onto his waiting palm. His hands then pushed a new clip into the slot – the trembling fingers missed their mark the first few times - and clicked on one of the catches on the slide of the pistol.

"Eight shots." He murmured to himself, searching his own pockets for somewhere safe to store his newly captured weapon. A cough from a Guardsman alerted me to him. I turned around, lowered my hand to pick him up, and sat him on my shoulder. The man raised his voxcaster to my ear so that whoever was on the other end of the line could speak to me.

"Michael, the auspex is still reading life-signs from these cultists." MacTavish reported. I nodded, and moved onto the real concern.

"How many did we lose this time?" I muttered, walking over to the second ganger that we had put down.

Put down. Funny word to use. Not killed. Or murdered. Put down.

Like a rabid dog.

Too true, mon-keigh. However, these followers of Khorne must be... how do you say it? Nipped at the bud, lest they cause more lives – innocent lives – to be lost.

A few souls damned for many more to be saved.

The age old argument, mon-keigh.

Zara's voice... well, the shadow of her voice still echoed in my head.

I sighed as I picked up a knife, wondering the feeling of its weight in my hands. Was it anything like this? Feeling the weight of a man's soul, knowing that it was yours to use, abuse or discard? I shook those thoughts out of my head as I imagined the hundreds of miniature troops in my house. My head spun a little as I thumbed the safety catch and folded the blade closed. It would do for now. No blood on it, it should be fine. The newly looted weapon went into my pocket.

"Hello? Are you there, Michael?"

"Sorry... spaced out a little there... what's up? How many wounded?" I knelt down beside the cultist, who was still unconscious. How she had slept through all that, I don't know... I wondered if she had hit her head harder than she should have. Picking her up, I was again reminded of strained muscles and aching limbs.

"Surprisingly, we have nothing more than a few more broken limbs, but they are easily repaired." MacTavish grunted over the vox. "The Eldar Ranger who lost his arm is getting quite pale now, though. We have to get him to an apocetharian, or whatever passes for a healer for those Eldar. The Space Marine Scouts are doing pretty well, but that's Blood Ravens for you, never give up, do they? The Tau are doing well enough, too; I don't think they took much more than paint scratches during that little skirmish."

The wail of police sirens drew closer. Of course, being in a rather isolated suburban area, it would have taken the cops a while to get here.

"What was that?" MacTavish's voice was edged with worry.

"Police... I think your term for them would be 'Arbites'."

"Will they assist us?" MacTavish queried.

"No. I doubt they'd believe me even if I had you guys around. I guess the best thing to do is to get out of here..." I pulled myself up, and turned to my friend. "Vincent!"

Vincent snapped out of his shocked reverie, and looked up. "Yeah?"

"Time to leave."

He grimly nodded, and pulled out his keys as he padded over to the car. His fingers missed the keyhole the first few times. He stopped, clenched his trembling fingers together, and carefully slipped the key into the lock.

"No kidding, Mike."

The door popped open as he pulled on it, and Vincent climbed inside.

I walked over to the cultist, and pulled her limp form up. Vincent started up the car.

Behind me, someone fired off his bolter into the air.

"HEY! AREN'T YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING!"

Eventually, we managed to pack up everyone and leave just as the police came wailing down the highway. I don't quite believe that the time from the Cultist trying to knife us to the last shots of the rumble we had just survived had taken only ten minutes, fifteen at most.

And yet, almost ten minutes after that, I felt my hands trembling.

Vincent slowed the car down a little as we went down along the quietest roads he could find. Speeding would attract attention, that much we knew. 'No need to rush, we had all the time in the world' was all I could say to reassure myself. The five minute drive home from this supermarket would be the longest one I've ever taken.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of Vincent's pickup, with the girl between the two of us, sitting on the middle seat. The miniatures were on the dashboard or in the open glovebox, treating injuries and taking turns at watching the girl. Vincent was obviously uncomfortable: He had his wrench out again, wedged between his thigh and the seat.

"Where to now, Mike?"

"My place, I guess."

Bring me back that girl. She is the lock to the door.

Of course.