WARHAMMER 40,000: A Thousand Tiny Suns (40k/Exalted Crossover!)

You and Kit jerked back around the corner before the creature spotted you. You took all those...strange thoughts - schematic patterns of the Chaos Gods themselves, unfolding in your mind. You didn't want to know this. You were fairly sure it was dangerous - but you couldn't stop seeing them less as beings and more as continental concepts, floating in a vast, churning sea of endless possibilities. The fetish souls could be...fought. Talked with. Reasoned with.

Chained.

The Chaos Gods could be carved apart.

They could be altered.

They could be killed.

You had done it before.

You started to hyperventilate under your mask as Kit said: "...I'll go uh, kill it, aight?"

You nodded jerkily.

Kit stepped around the corner. With a rippling crunch you could hear his shifting and saw on the shoulders and chests of the Stormtroopers a rippling expression of shock - and then you heard a muffled squeak, thump, and squalling noise before a loud crunch and snap as cartilage and bone pulled apart. Something started hissing and sputtering as you tried to cling to the image of what you had seen, of the possibilities...but no, no, no, it was all so frustratingly vague. Dreamlike thoughts of golden blades and flashing chariots, pulled through the sky on wings of fire, and bows and arrows, knocked and ready. You groaned as Kit returned - and his massive, tigerish form loomed over you as blue blood dripped from his paws.

"Done," he said. "You okay?"

"...yeah..." you said.

Then you blinked. "Wait, you don't think I was scared, right?"

He shrugged his big broad shoulders. "It was a demon-"

"Kit!" You kicked his shin. "I just saw something. Amazing. Victory. We can...the...Chaos Gods, they can be killed."

"Well, yeah, of course they can," Kit said, amiably. "The Emperor would slay them, given time. That's what the Imperium's all about, isn't it?"

"No, but we can do it, I know how!" You hissed, forcing yourself to move again. The chain was all that was left of the Screamer - the chain and the splatters of blood and gore. Blue bits of organs hung from a lighting fixture, while splatters hit the walls and the floor. It seemed that most of the body had dissipated back into the Warpstuff that had given it form. "See, each God...uh..." You glanced at the Stormtroopers. "...later. I'll draw a diagram."

Kit grinned at you, toothily. HIs tail flowed in a sinuous sine wave, and every part of his being radiated a warm pleasure - in you. In all of you. Even your absurdity. Your cheeks flushed and you pushed aside the urge to kiss his nose. "C-Come on," you said, letting your Lens Lance float to the left of you. You grabbed onto the railings and started to clamber up the ladder, reaching the hatch. You put your arm on it, then pushed it up. When you peeked out, you found that you had entered into the lower levels of the hydroponic's bays...and breathed out a slow sigh of relief. The place was full of long, low, stacked troughs, each one full of thick slurries of water and nutrionic admixtures, with plants growing in powerful, thick shoots from them: Chirrak wheat, pittats, even some lurid yellow baneyas. There was no sign of Chaos Corruption, and you saw several civilians whose only adornment was an armband with the symbol of Nurgle on their arms. They were at work, glancing up nervously every few steps as they moved from tray to tray, watering and adjusting admixtures and checking on tubes.

You swung your legs up, then gestured with your other hand - your Lens Lance floated up, followed by Kit, his burly form pausing as he realized that his head fit through the hole, but his shoulders did not. He gave you a sheepish, cattish smile, then shrank with a silvery shimmer back to Kit. His purple eyes danced with amusement, then he came up to a crouch.

The stormtroopers started coming up afterwards, moving with an eerie silence and precision, their gloved hands creaking only softly, their weapons cinched tight to their backs. Barik used a Cadian hand sign to fan the squad out, moving them into cover while you and Kit slowly closed the hatch - well, you held it with both hands, straining to move it carefully back into place, and then he grabbed onto the back with one hand and gently set it down without a noise. He flashed another one of his smiles at you and you smiled back, with shoulders...and a moment later, with lips. You were...

You were practicing smiling under the mask. Trying to time it with your shoulders.

You know.

Just in case.

For later.

Maybe.

You turned back and found yourself face to mask with one of the heretic technicians. He was about six cycles out of the creche, with short blond hair, dark skin, and blue eyes. He stood perfectly still, his jaw opening in shock as he saw you and Kit in your raggedy uniforms. Then he grabbed onto his sleeve, yanking off the armband. He tore it off, then offered it to you, trembling.

He was perfectly silent - not raising a scream, not shouting an alarm. The armband was...an offering?

A surrender?

An apology?

You couldn't tell in those big, bright blue eyes.

However, you could see Barik. He was doing precisely what he had been trained to do, which was to silently step out behind the heretic, drawing a thick knife from his sheath. All you had to do was say nothing and that knife would go straight into the boy's throat. One less dead heretic. Which was what you were here for. To kill heretics. He was wearing the symbol of your enemy. Right?

---
What do you do?
[ ] "Barik, hold." - question the boy about the other workers, determine if they are willing to return to your side
[ ] Say nothing - and have the Cadians deal with the rest of the heretics down here
[ ] Write in

STATS
Health: Fine
Anima: Dim
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 7 | Solar XP: 8
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 46 | GXP: 15 | WXP: 3

"Barik, hold."

The words came out without you even really registering they had started from your throat. They popped out. And Barik did hold. The man before him blinked, jerked his head, flinched, stumbled away - but as he bumped into the hydroponic trough, the noise drew the attention of the other workers. They all spun around to face you - and Barik shot you an unreadable look through his visor. however, before anyone could do anything, the man who had reached to you spoke in a nervous voice.

"A-Are you here to rescue us?"

"Yes," you said, firmly.

The others started over. They moved quietly, their faces furtive. Soon, their armbands were piling up, and the man who had first offered his hand to you was speaking in hushed whispers. "T-They've enslaved us down here ever since the sky fell - they said that it was all the Imperium's fault, that the Emperor was dead. That there was no hope."

The others nodded along.

"A-Are you..." One of them stammered. "W-We've heard stories."
"A living saint..."

"The Emperor reborn!"

"Here to save us..."

The murmured voices and the awe in their faces was almost too much. You stepped back - and Kit stepped forward to help. "She is," he said, firmly. You snapped your head around to glare at him. But before you could kick his shin or say anything, he continued. "But we need your help - we need to get up behind the Chaos forces without being noticed."

"We can do that!" one of the habworkers said, nodding. "The muck tunnel."

"We can't send a living saint, the Emperor Reborn, through a muck tunnel!" An old woman said, her face wrinkling up like folded pleather.

"I-I've handled worse," you said.

"She's got a mask on already," another man said, nodding. "Prepared she is, like the tale of the Emperor and the Four Canid Cubs." The entire group all ooohed and awwed softly. Kit managed to not hide his smile in the slightest. "Come on, show her the muck tunnel."

"We'll be behind you, m'lady," Barik said, quietly. His voice had a faintly awed sound to it - like you had just pulled a miracle out of nowhere. You wondered what it would have been to gun these people down. How many of them would have responded with cries of joy, that the Emperor had come to save them? You frowned behind your mask as two habtechs led you and Kit towards a large hatch which they undogged and swung open. Muck splattered onto a much stained grating and you breathed slowly in through your mask.

"Ah, to be a Kreiger," you said, smugly.

"Heh," Kit murmured. "Dangerously close to pride there."

You rolled your eyes, then swung up into the tube. You scrambled through the muck, finding that the tube looped around once, twice, three times - heading up and up and up in the darkness. You resisted the urge to draw forth glimmering light and instead focused on putting one hand ahead of the other, your Lens Lance hovering behind you. Kit moved with the silence and grace of a great cat. The stormtroopers were further behind them, and the only noise they made was the occasional soft swear and oath as some muck went down some crack of their uniforms, to slither against bare skin. Your boots were a bit soggy and you ignored it. Finally, the tube came to another hatch. You undogged it carefully, swung it open, and saw that it opened into a small landing that was perched before the outer balcony of the hydroponics. There was a thin railing around the balcony, and standing on it were two men with long lases.

You were pretty sure they weren't mere slaves - their bodies had been transfigured, one with a tentacle emerging from his jaw, the other with the eyes of a huge bug. They had their backs to you. The crackling force dome that had once protected the hab from the orbital drop was gone - in its place was the familiar, smeary skies of Cathexias II. There were several rows of slabs, metal and stone, that had been set out down there, with civilians strapped to them. Two space marines moved among them - one was a black clad figure with a red cape, shuffling from slab to slab, looking down at the bound and terrified looking people.

"Yes, one...one, sacred...hmm..." The space marine muttered.

"Do you think sacred numbers and paltry souls will do anything?" the other voice was sarcastic and...familiar. Your eyes tracked left and you saw that the other space marine was the very sorcerer who had tried to kidnap you, who had slain so much of your squad. He was still wounded, his armor half off, revealing his broad, muscular chest, which was staunched with bandages. Hie helmet was off, revealing a bald, dusky scalp and dark, throbbing brown eyes. He had a sculpted cruelty to his features that reminded you of someone, but you couldn't say who or what. "Are you aware what has happened, Sindraxian?"

"Shut up, you meddlesome-"

"Or what, Sinner?" The Thousand Sons sorcerer sounded exhausted, annoyed, amused, all at once. He lounged in his chair, wincing as his extravagantly spread arms strained the rather impressive hole you had put into his side. "You'll tie me up next? I'll have your soul flayed apart with a word before you even move my way."

"If you and Kharkameron weren't so bloody useless, then we wouldn't have been left down here!" Sindraxian snapped.

"Hmm, well, Khark did know when the best time to leave was...before the lance battery was thrown together," the Sorcerer said, shifting in his seat.

You knew that Amberly was waiting for your signal. Now what was the best signal. You didn't need to worry about the snipers. They were already down, their throats open, blood puddling on corrugated metal as Stormtroopers crawled on their bellies to the lip of the stage, their hellguns settling into firing positions along the railing. But you saw a few options...

...and strangely, an impulse to go down there and ask Sindraxian and the Sorcerer what the hells they thought they were doing.

---
What do you do?
[ ] Direct the stormtroopers to open fire on the Sorcerer and Sindraxian while you free the hostages
[ ] Jump down there and demand an explanation.
[ ] Jump down there and challenge Sindraxian to a duel
[ ] Write In

STATS
Health: Fine
Anima: Dim
Willpower: 5/5
Personal Motes: 13/13 | Peripheral Motes: 28/28 (Committed Motes: 5)
Limit: 1/10 (Trigger: Being stymied by indulges around her)
XP: 7 | Solar XP: 8
Major Projects: 0/5
SXP: 46 | GXP: 15 | WXP: 3