And at one time this could have been considered a GOOD day by Rei's standards!!

Horus

Well, at least they did not attempted to kill me where I stand so I suppose that is a plus. With the helmet to my Terminator armor off I AM somewhat more vulnerable than what I had been before. Perfect target, really, for an opponent looking to take out a foe. IF they have a powerful enough weapon that is: Primarch are not so easily subdued even naked.

(Author’s note: for the sake of author convenience and giving Trek tech a ghost of a chance against Warhammer 40K armor, phasors like those Rei’s group has is just the thing that Horus is speaking of. And for the sake of making certain Warhammer people here more than carboard cutout villains . . .I did what I did with Horus here).

Much was put into my geneseed and I brag not when I say that I and my brothers are considered “superhuman” by most standards. It’s just the way our father, the Emperor, had made us when he took his own flesh and created the template for me and my brothers.

Though . . .given everything that has happened tonight I do not wish to wager what the results would be if I and these strange people before me should become hostile. Oh, they are tense enough right now, as it stands but at least they are all honorable enough to hear me out under my banner of truce. Glad, being that my Bolter is peace bonded (as would have been my chainsword if it hadn’t been destroyed in that last battle with that . . .flying power armor).

Thankful I am, really! Truly, I am considering that I fear that beside me NOT liking the odds of my Terminator armor withstanding disintegrator weaponry (from WHAT Xeno race did THAT come from and HOW do I get my hands on IT for the good of my legion and the Imperium as a whole?) in addition to whatever ability these strange people have in making my armor FIGHT my every movement there is more to this than questionable odds in a fight with “irregulars” who’s full abilities I’ve yet to encounter. Simply put, I have come to the conclusion that at least the beginning of the way OFF this strange world and back to the Imperium lay within this odd party.

I know now that you say I perhaps could have hijacked that spaceship that red haired Xeno woman and her crewmates had “beamed” down from? Besides probably having to attempt to fly an spaceship of unknown design being a rather impalpable thing (some Xeno instrumentation can be almost impossible for human’s to grasp easily with much study, much less “on the fly”), it would hardly be . . .honorable to do such. That red haired ship commander may have been a Xeno, but . . .she was an honorable person (alien or not).

And besides, not all Xenos ARE hostile and need to be exterminated! For the Emperor’s throne, I am NOT the type to shoot first in First Contact situation. As long as she and her species are NOT a threat to the Imperium (and don’t make moves to BE a threat) then for NOW at least we can be cordial.

And truth be told I rather did like the woman so wish to be cordial so the NEXT time we meet we can further things. Perhaps work something out to where we could peacefully incorporate them within the Imperium! That way they too could enjoy the peace and order the galaxy so richly NEEDED once the Emperor’s will was fulfilled and it was brought under Imperium rule and the light of the Imperial Truths! Surely it would be MUCH better by far than the chaos and death everyone ran risk of, otherwise.

. . .

What do you MEAN you do not know of the Imperial Truths and the Imperium? What that is almost . . . Just like what that Kalish woman had said when I spoke of such things.

I fear that I must be VERY far from Imperium space indeed. In some distant and remote part of the galaxy that thus far has been spared the madness I and

No, that’s for another time than right now. Right now it is time to attempt to parlay with the only people who that red haired woman said (before she beamed away) that seem to have any clues about how I got here and perhaps how I could return to the Imperium. She had been most evasive about just WHY that should be, but had stated that these winged women.

Hm. Sanguinius, did that one time you went “out and about” produce some daughters you didn’t know of here, I wonder. Or mayhaps one of those who recieved your Geneseed within your Blood Angels? A Warp derived mutation they got, perhaps? Something similar had gifted you with YOUR wings at around the time of your “birth“.

Whatever the case, those winged girls might hold the key to ME getting back to my people. It is not like I alone could stake out my own claim and build a small Imperium of Mankind alone by myself and my now VERY much abused Terminator armor and wait until the eventual linkup with my father’s Imperium sometime in the indeterminate future, right?

Smart money would have been that option, really. Almost . . .gravels me to have to come to a complete stranger with hat in hand and almost beg for help.

I mean, really! If perhaps even a phalanx or so of my Luna Wolves had come along with me, then perhaps I could accomplish it. For the better of all, in the end, if I opted on that course of action (and I could realistically do it). Could finally go and do something to make Father truly proud of me. Make something lasting besides fighting and death. Build something.

. . .

Some day, the war must end. Some day, all the enemies of mankind must be laid low and the Imperium shine as a bastion of peace and progress. Someday the Orks and Dark Elders must be put to death and I DO want to do what I can to bring that about as soon as possible. Even have been preparing for that future by having my soldiers study something besides war strategy and weaponry. Something that they can use after the fighting ends.

Is that too much for a soldier, even a Primarch, to ask for?

Pardon that unseemly display there. Don’t know what got into me.

Sigh, it is just that I am . . .growing somewhat tired of it all, really. Even having been proclaimed Warmaster had a hallow ring to it. Like there was something lacking to it when Father bestowed it upon me. Father shares but he is doing something back upon Terra and . . .did not trust me enough to share, even when he entrusted me to bring the rest of humanity under the Imperium’s flag.

So, I had been left to Harsh measures have to be used to bring it about, many times. Ah but I am more than just a thug in power armor. When diplomacy works to sway people, it is something of a sweet victory. A too rare victory, sometimes. And let us not go into what must be done to keep the Imperium going sometimes!!

But it is all for the best. I know that IF there was another way to do it but I promise that I and the Emperor. AND my brother Primarch do it for our fellow humans . . .and our subject alien races Keep them safe and . . .I hope eventually something much more than just safe and alive. Even IF those within the Imperium (be it human or alien subjects) have much better lives than what they’d have say under even the “untainted” Eldars. Not much more than servants, subject Xenos have under that yoke.

Do not even get me started what horrors those under the yoke of the Orks or (much worse) those of Chaos face!!

But that said, I cannot do much of that by JUST myself here, cut off from the rest of the whole. Not going to save the galaxy just my myself. Too easy to fail just by myself. I MEAN even I have limits and know them!! Aye, even a Primarch has limits and I do not feel like attempting to travel the road my Father did in his road to becoming Emperor. First unifying Terra under his banner and then spreading out to the stars to gather back all of Terra’s lost colonies back into the fold (and out of the hands of those Warp Xenos and their vile puppets like the Dark Elders). Too late to travel THAT route for the forces of the Warp would never stand by to allow that to happen again. I won’t be able to catch a march on them, that way.

Instead, I must do something I rather find . . .myself not comfortable in doing: ask complete strangers for help and trusting in their charity.

Galling to be in such a position for one such as myself, but . . .best to swallow ones overweening pride and get down to it. Sometimes one mustn’t one’s ego get in one’s way for the greater good...

. . .

Why do the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end when I say that? It’s almost as if I can remember something I’d . . .lost right before I found myself here. Where ever THIS place is, frething hells! I’m not even sure that they CAN help me. Just a small hope that lay on the fact that they seem to know about me and the Imperium in a much more substantial way than those children I finally managed to win free of, dropping them off (forcing them upon) those . . .policemen I found trying their hardest trying to IGNORE my existence.

I am given to know, however, that there is some hope. That Kalish woman? Well, she DID hint that

Said that her and her family were good at getting involved in “this sort of thing”, for reasons she failed to elaborate upon right before “beaming“ away.... Putting things to right and all that. Could use something like that right now, let me tell you!!

And if not that at least I wish to learn more about this business about this “Horus Heresy” from them! I DO want to know what that insanity is all about!!

And . . .I learn of it and MUCH more when I find out that magic (REAL magic!!) and Psycher powers do not easily mix. I had not been attempting to violate her mind. Only use my powers to passively detect falsehood and such. Fear that the leader of this group she had been doing something similar with me: spell works to detect falsehoods in MY words.

It’s just good sense, that. Learned MUCH from this synergy between two vastly different powers!!

Rei and her sisters are somewhat like me and my fellow Primarchs, but not. Rei had been lead to believe . . .

Well, you all know HER and her sisters tale, right? I must admit that I now have a MUCH deeper respect for her than before (not that I hadn’t looked down upon her). She and her sisters are . . .or should I say had BEEN of a warrior kind I can relate to her: Titan pilots.

Even if these EVA Units had actually been creatures of flesh and blood (with cybernetics to make them somewhat controllable). Even IF they’d been linked to their EVA units where they’d feel pain (even die) when enough damage was done to their Titans . . .ah, EVA Units.

Can smile as I recall her memories of that fateful day that she found that she’d gained a rather huge appetite something that had tasted rather horrible before her transformation into a full on human being and NOT a Xeno/human hybrid....

I . . .don’t want to even THINK about what it would be like to try to battle these Rules and Agents. Even somehow believe that the Chaos “Gods” would be short work to those kinds of Entities.

At least they don’t wish to be worshipped. Don’t think I could stomach that thought. Bad enough to think how my worldview just got a beating from actual personifications of nature existence like that

Many odd and amusing memories, really. Not EVERYTHING, but a lot. That she talks somewhat with a much more refined “English” accent than those monsters, Orks, is understandable now. Her English teacher had haled from the United Kingdom and her adopted parents ARE from . . .some alter-Earth’s United Kingdom so it stands to reason, really. Same for her sisters...

ButI’ll be damned if I really wanted to KNOW things like what it was like for Rei to have been deflowered for the first time by her husband!! Being taken as a woman. Done that enough times as a man with a woman but not . . .

Terra, I’ll never be rid of those sensations and images. Some things are just NOT to be experienced by men that way!!

And by the way Rei’s looking at me I believe she rather has a few things from ME that she’d not ratehr have, I shall wager!!

“Warmaster Horus, let us . .. Be more careful with our powers next time, may I suggest?” Rei demands of me quietly, a command in reality in the form of a question.

“Quiet,” I say softly, nodding slightly and wincing as I reach down to retrieve the flag of truce I’d dropped when I’d clutched my skull in surprise at the inrush of information.

“Did . . .I just miss something here?” Giles asks blankly, looking at me and Rei’s sisters, who are looking rather irate at me right now.

Why? It wasn’t MY idea for this to happen, damnit!!

Oh, right. That Angel of the Womb and the invasion of their minds and all that insanity.... And by her old standards I can say that this terrible day today could have been considered a GOOD day by Rei Takahashi's old standards!

1. Oh my frething skull....

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