//------------------------------// // Chapter Thirteen // Story: Compliance // by Mal Masque //------------------------------// Chapter Thirteen When Yamira returned to consciousness, she became acutely aware of two things: the bandages consuming half her face, and the handcuffs on her wrists. She attempted to stand up from an awkward sitting position on the floor, but when she found herself unable to get up, the clanking of metal on a hollow pipe and her sudden inability to move told her of her apparent confinement. She struggled a few more times, bracing her back against the piping, but to no avail. Yamira slowly sat back down, slumping against the pipe as her hair fell over her eyes. She surveyed the room, a mostly empty place with a few unmarked boxes and a large boiler. Judging by the brick-laid walls and the metallic door, she was still at the Boomshop. And, by proxy, near the Grots that had evaded righteous extermination. Her previously subsided anger bubbled up, reminded of the casualness of the shop’s owner in dealing with a serious threat. More relaxed and slothful mentality from the Merodi that made Yamira repulsed. To treat the Ork threat so lightly, it was as though these supposed greater than the galaxy interlopers were begging to be put to the sword. The door unlocked and slowly parted way, prompting Yamira to cease her struggles once again. She had expected the small shop owner, or perhaps Cage, provided the smoker hadn’t scarpered off after she went on her micro-Crusade. The small glimmer of hope she had was snuffed out quickly as thick green fingers clasped onto the door. It slowly parted, and entering the room was something far worse than a simple Gretchen. It was huge, a wide and bulky creature that stood nearly as tall as the Space Marines of legend, barely able to even fit through the doorway. Sharp, jagged teeth jutted out from rugged lips, further accenting the monstrous face of the gargantuan alien as it snarled. It lumbered into the room, one boot thudding against the floor, while a sharp clack echoed as a faux foot made from the head of a serrated axe followed suit. It kept getting closer, towering over Yamira and blotting out what little light was left in the room. She began struggling again, less out of anger, and more of a rising fear. She needed to get out. Needed to escape from the Ork. The Ork stopped short of Yamira, looming over her and casting a long shadow. It stared down at her with its beady red eyes, slowly breathing through flat, slitted nostrils. Yamira thrashed in her restraints, desperately trying to kick herself away, or at least kick the Ork. All for naught, her captors had chained her so low that she could barely bend her legs. Her ankles buckled and slipped on the ground, a wince of pain escaping her half-burned lips. She looked up and saw the Ork open his mouth, several jagged teeth jutted from behind grimy lips. Yamira was certain it was going to eat her, rip her apart and tear her flesh from her bones as many of its monstrous ilk had done to her comrades. Instead, it spoke. “Oi, good tah see me meat ‘unk didn’t kill ya,” it rumbled. “Jus’ means one less mess fer Vanna tah make me an’ the Grotz tah clean up.” Yamira stared up at the thing, baffled at what she was hearing. The Ork was taking to her, actually talking. Not the savage grunts and incomprehensible shouting she had heard so frequently on the battlefield. Either that or she must have hit her head harder than she thought. “You’z gonna say somefin’ or jus’ stare at me like a Squig et yer tongue?” “You… you speak Low Gothic?” Yamira asked. “Low whot?” the Ork asked. “Nah, I iz speakin’ Ork, jus’ like you iz.” Yamira’s brow creased, her bile-laced anger rising. “Don’t be absurd, you gargantuan hunk of putrescent meat,” Yamira snapped. “I don’t speak your guttural facsimile of language, I only speak the Emperor’s own Gothic, High and Low. Just like you somehow are now.” “I ‘ave no zoggin’ idea what you jus’ said,” the Ork said. “But it was Ork, not Goffic. I don’ e’en fink that tha’ Goffs even ‘ave their own talky-bits.” Yamira banged the back of her head against the pipe she was chained to. Unfortunately, it did not wake her from this apparent nightmare she lived in. “Actually, you both are speaking your respective languages.” Yamira lifted her head and saw the door open once more. An orange-yellow hoof stepped in, followed by a military boot and metal foot. “It’s just the Language Spell that Overhead Eve created to make communication much easier.” There was little warmth in Amber’s normally docile eyes, a definite change that Yamira had not seen in the small pony, but what surprised her more was Devon, who looked disappointed as he dourly stared at his Lady Commissar. The Ork snorted and reclined against the wall, clanging its axeblade foot on the floor. “About zoggin’ time you lot got ‘ere,” it said. “This crispy ‘umie done zogged up tha’ whole workshop! Tha’ Grotz is terrified an’ won’t work until dis git is gone. No respect for a workplace, no sir.” “I’ll give you no respect you degenerate Xenos-” Yamira resumed her attempted escape, rattling her cuffs feebly against the pipe. “RELEASE ME, DAMN IT!” Amber rolled her eyes and trotted over to the pipe. Devon spared wary glances at the Ork, the big alien decidedly more focused on finding whatever treasures it could in its nose than whatever was ongoing in the room. In a few seconds, Amber freed Yamira from her bindings, dropping the cuffs to the floor. “There, you’re out,” Amber said. “Now, move your flank.” Yamira glared down at the pony, but for once, Amber was not perturbed. “I said move, Commissar.” Yamira was taken aback by Amber’s suddenly commanding voice, barking an order to her though she were but a common soldier in the face of a commanding officer. She would have told the pony off, yelling at her for daring to tell a Commissar what to do, but looking into those big eyes told her the severity of such a decision. Instead, Yamira obliged and walked through the open door, followed by Devon and Amber, whilst the Ork remained. They had entered back into the shop proper, still reeking of freshly exposed ingredients and spoiled mixtures. The shopkeep, Vanna, stood there, accompanied by a small group of ponies and humans dressed in Justice garb. “What is this, an arrest party?” Yamira asked, creasing her brow. “You lot should be thanking me for attempting to stop the Ork Menace before it could spread and reduce this place to rubble.” “Lady Commissar,” Devon whispered. “Please, just stop. Don’t make it any worse than it already is.” Yamira’s eye twitched as she glanced to her sullen Guardsman companion. He looked like a kicked Cyber-Mastiff pup, a far cry from the boisterous and lax soldier she knew. “You should listen to your friend,” one of the ponies said. “We should lock you away for vandalism and assaulting an Expeditions Agent, but Ms. Vanna here dropped the charges.” Vanna shrugged and smiled. “With an Ork and his Grots living here, I’d have Justice coming here every few hours when something broke.” “That child is an Agent?” Yamira asked, prompting Vanna to frown once more. “No, I iz.” Yamira nearly jumped at the sound of the Ork’s rumbling voice behind her. It trudged around her and Devon, settling right next to Vanna, easily dwarfing her with his bulky size. “First an’ da bestest Ork Agent fer da’ Merodi.” Yamira’s jaw went rigid, staring between the Ork and the Merodi enforcers. Slowly, she pointed at the Ork with an accusatory glare. “That… is one of yours?” she asked. “His name,” Vanna said, planting a small hand on the Ork’s red-leather chest wear. “Is Gobnaz Gitwit. And yeah, he’s an Agent. Just like me.” Vanna poked her own cheek and smiled snarkily, while Gitwit just stood there, once again digging for nose gold. Yamira just kept staring, no doubt contemplating whether or not her brains were leaking out her ears. “Yamira, we’ve also got Tau and Harlequins here,” Amber added. “Along with a massive abhuman community. This should be the least surprising thing for you since you got here.” The Commissar didn’t move an inch, she just kept standing there and staring agape at the utter blasphemy before her. The lead enforcer rubbed her hoof against one of her legs in a clear sign of discomfort. “Well, if there’s no need to issue an arrest,” she said. “We’d best be on our way. Ma’am, sir.” The Merodi enforcers filed out of the shop, one by one, occasionally sparing harsh glares to Yamira in passing. The door closed behind them, leaving the shop once more in relative silence. “... You can leave too, you know,” Vanna said. “I’m not pressing charges, but I do want you out so we can clean.” She made an idle sweeping gesture to the door. “Go please.” Amber nudged Yamira along with a butt of her head, steadily pushing the prone and furious Commissar out the door, bit by bit. Devon followed behind, trying to avert the gaze of the Ork as he scampered out. Once the three were onto the streetside, the door slammed shut behind them. And Amber Dust exploded. “What in Celestia’s multicolored mane were you THINKING?!” Amber screamed. Her mane and tail were frayed and on end, her pupils shrunk to pinpricks and voice shrill as a banshee. “I know you jump the gun a lot, but are you legitimately insane?!” Yamira snapped of her stupor and whirled about, glaring down the Earth Pony. “Insane? I might as well be to continue dealing with this utter crock!” she shouted. “This entire Emperor-damned city is an affront to everything in this galaxy, and that frakking Ork with its Gretchen is just the tip of the Fenrisian glacier! Everything here is wrong!” “Wrong to you!” Amber shouted back, digging her hooves in the ground. “Only because your narrow-minded zealous thought-process can’t process the idea of there being a chance at actual peace for this galaxy! Look around you, Yamira,” Amber swept her hoof about, gesturing to the surrounding neighborhood. “Do you see anyone fighting here? Anyone scraping and struggling to survive? Any sign of strife or hatred in anyone’s eyes?” “All I see are heretics, mutants and Xenos,” Yamira replied, thumbling her acquilla. “Cavorting about and frolicking with each other, spreading a disease upon the galaxy while calling it a cure. No better than the enemies that seek to destroy our way of life.” “We just want to help fix this galaxy!” “You will bring RUINATION TO THIS GALAXY!” “BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!” Amber and Yamira turned to Devon, who had remained quiet throughout the whole shouting match. He was red-faced and sweating, like a boil about to burst. “You’re both acting like children, screaming at each other over broken toys!” Amber swayed in her stance a bit, but Yamira only seemed to grow even more embittered. She tightened her fists and stomped up to the Captain. “Captain Mangonel, you have no authority to tell me to silence my voice,” she growled. “Neither do you, Lady Commissar,” Devon snapped back. “We’re not under Imperial jurisdiction here, so neither of us have any authority, period.” “I have enough authority to declare you out of order!” “Declare all you want, Yamira,” Devon waved his arms about, stamping his metal foot on the ground. “Frakking hell, you can practically scream it all the way from here to Holy Terra, only ones who are gonna hear are you, me, Amber, and any sodding person who’s even giving a damn!” More than a few street-goers had taken notice of the conversation and started to congregate. A few ponies were tempted to call the authorities, but a few more curious humans and aliens preferred to see where this is going. “Then I might as well be the only sane person left in this galaxy!” Yamira shouted. She retrieved her pocket Lectitius Divinitatus and waved it in front of Devon’s face. “What does the Emperor teach in these words, Captain? ‘Loathe the heretic, the mutant, and the Xenos’, the very same words taught to us from birth, enforced in the schola, what you and I swore by when we joined the Astra Militarum, and yet here we stand now! Surrounded by heretics who know not the Imperial Truth, mutants free to go about and fornicate with normal humans,” A mother quickly covered her filly’s ears. “And worst of all, leashed to Xenos like we are mongrels and lapdogs! For 20,000 years, the Imperial Truth has protected us, and the very existence of this place puts that same truth in jeopardy!” “Well maybe the Imperial Truth isn’t right!” Devon shouted. By the time he realized what he had said, he clamped his hands over his mouth, eyes wide as the headlights on a battle tank. A hush fell over the crowd, as Yamira’s arm fell slack, nearly dropping her holy book to the ground. He pulled his hands away slowly, taking a slight step forward. “I didn’t mean it.” “Heresy.” Yamira whispered. Her breathing was becoming ragged, her movements stiff and rigid as a corpse. “It was a heat of the moment, Commissar, I didn’t mean it.” Devon pleaded. “Heresy.” Yamira repeated, slightly louder. She slowly put her holy book back into her pockets. “I’m loyal to a fault, it was just a slip of the tongue!” Devon begged, backpedalling a bit. “Heresy.” Yamira slowly started to advance. “Yamira,” Amber cautiously said. “Calm down, it was an accident, there’s no need to-” “HERESY!” Yamira shrieked. She reached to her side and felt around for her gun, drawing a panicked gasp from the congregating crowd. Again reminded of its lacking presence on her person, Yamira opted instead for a less elegant method. She drew her hand back, and punched Devon dead center of his face. The Guardsman staggered back, a trickle of red running down his chin from a split lip. He looked up at Yamira, horrified, only to be met with another blow to the face. Yamira advanced with every punch, swinging her fists with ferocious precision, each one staggering and bloodying Devon. A few ponies gasped in horror at the sudden viciousness, others just stared and watched it play out. Yamira knocked Devon onto the floor, his face bruised and stained in spit and blood, and straddled his chest, not once stopping in her unrelenting assault. She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to discipline the only Guardsman in the Imperium she confided in, but this was the traitor’s punishment. This was the price to pay for heresy. While a single bolt to the brain would be more preferable, it was a Commissar’s sacred duty to treat any sign of heresy amongst the ranks with as much discipline as possible. She needed to make Devon feel how it felt to be a traitor to the Imperium, even if it meant bludgeoning him to death. Yamira stopped feeling the sensation in her knuckles after a few minutes, but her gloves still felt wet. “GET OFF OF HIM!” Amber screamed. She reared back onto her hindlegs and shoved Yamira as hard as she could. The Commissar, unaware of the world around her, was pushed off Devon with a forceful blow, tumbling to the concrete. She quickly scrambled back to her feet, the bandages that partially covered her face torn clean off, stained a darkened brown and red, leaving Yamira to snarl like a beast. Amber rushed to Devon’s side, biting her lower lip as she looked over the Captain. One eye had swollen completely shut, blood trickled from his nostrils and several cuts on his lip. His teeth were stained red and his skin decorated in purple and blue blotches and bruises. The smile that oft graced him had been beaten from his very face. “Stay with me, Devon, please, just stay with me.” As Amber begged and pleaded with the prone Guardsman, Yamira inspected her now bloodied hands. The knuckles of her gloves had worn down, little tufts of grey poking out between little seams. Her breathing, once fierce and ferocious, had devolved into ragged, shaking gasps for air. She whirled about, taking in the gazes all around, from aghast ponies, to frightened humans, to unreadable aliens alike. Yamira’s mind had gone entirely blank from the ordeal, barely even registering all that had unfolded. It wasn’t until she gazed upon Devon, strewn upon the floor in his own blood with Amber desperately attempting to revive him that reality flooded her senses. All eyes watching her, born witness to her actions against her fellow man. Yamira could only do one thing, one thing she had never thought to do in her entire life. She ran. Yamira broke through the crowd and ran down the street, pain burning across her face from open tears in her scars and the stinging of tears in her eye. She ran between streetgoers and civilians alike, shoving a few aside in her path just to get them out of the way. Just for her to get away. She heard someone call her name, but she didn’t listen. She couldn’t listen. All she could do was run, let her legs carry her as far away as possible. The sounds of the City were all around her, indistinct chatter between the races of the multiverse drowning Yamira’s own vindictive thoughts. She screamed at the top of her lungs and dove into an alleyway, escaping into the shadows between two towering buildings. Yamira ran through the corridors, taking whatever twists and turns that came her way, regardless of where she might end up. Only until the raucous bellows of the City became distant murmurs did Yamira actually stop. Yamira lay slumped against a stray garbage can, panting and heaving. Her burn scars were stinging, she reflexively drew her hand to her face. As she pulled away, her once pure black glove had been stained an even greater red. She slapped her open palm against the wall, leaving behind a crimson print. Slowly, she peeled her hand off, and slapped it again. Again and again, she painted the wall in hand prints of ichor, until her palm stung and the smears started to fade. Yamira stepped back from the wall, a witness to her own flagellant piece of graffiti. “God-Emperor on the Golden Throne,” Yamira weakly said. Her hands were shaking and her stance dropping. “Why? Why must I be punished for carrying out your will?!” A spurt of blood stained an untouched portion of the wall, Yamira swiftly bringing her hand to her cheek. One of the sinews that held her cheek together had snapped, dangling from the upper part of her mouth and flopping freely on her jaw. She slumped to the wall, desperately attempting to piece her face back together. All her floundering led her black and gold uniform to be dyed red. Her vision was growing bleary, sliding down onto the cold, hard ground. “Why, Emperor?” she asked again. No answers before, why expect anything different now? A light trilling noise sounded above her. Weakly, she lifted her head up to see, her hat falling from her golden head and onto her lap. Crimson eyes in a hollowed-out skull stared back at her, a mess of thin mechadendrites trailing where once may have been a jaw snipping about with tiny claws. It hummed and beeped at her, as Bell would often do, then flew off to the left. Yamira weakly held her free hand out, desperate to reach for the servo-skull, only to be further out of her reach. Instead of more beeping, the response she received was footsteps. A figure had emerged from the shadows, bulky and grand. Her vision continued to blur as her hand peeled away from her fresh wounds as the visitor drew ever closer, accompanied by the servo-skull, flittering above like an errant butterfly. “You’ve made quite a mess of yourself, Lady Commissar,” the figure said to her, distinguished yet firm in tone. Yamira tried to say something, uncertain if this new arrival were angel or devil, but her tongue grew as tired as her eyes. The shadowy person knelt before her, placing a cold metal hand upon her shoulder. “Come now, let’s take you someplace to… clean this all up.” As her eye slowly closed and her mind gave way to darkness, she glimpsed something upon the stranger’s chest. Her last thing she felt she would ever see was a human skull, mounted on a gold and red ‘I’.