//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: The Blood Ravens Last Flight // by Nobodyslament //------------------------------// I awoke feeling like I hadn’t slept in months.That was mainly because I hadn’t, but I stopped worrying about that. I sat up and took a quick look around my destroyed workroom. For a champion, order was not one of my strong suits in the recreation department.  I whipped the room into an acceptable state before working in one of my drawings. It was an old favorite that I always went and spruced up whenever I had time. It was of the Emperor, the only time I saw him in person. I was one of the few lucky enough to see him prepare for battle. The picture showed him in full armor, striding across a ruined land to go meet Horus on the field of battle. It was always off just a little. My sketching was cut short as a scream escaped from my bedroom. I acted on impulse. I rolled off the floor and found my bolt pistol already in my hands. I couldn’t find my helmet and charged forward without it. I peeked around the corner and saw the source of the scream. Scootaloo was in the corner, the blanket still wrapped around her, cowering in fear. I looked around the room and saw the source of her distress. It was a poster I designed for the Guardsmen long ago. It showed a Blood Angel, ripping Deamons apart with a power sword while Guardsmen covered his sides. Scootaloo saw me and ran behind my leg.”I don’t like the scary man in the picture Mr.Marx.” I chortled a bit at her ignorance before carefully taking down the poster and putting it on my counter. “There, there young one. He was simply stopping a Deamon. He was saving people, like in my stories.” Scootaloo seemed unconvinced. “He was scary though, and he looked funny.” I still couldn’t resist from laughing at her ignorance. I looked down at her, gaining a somber expression. He was indeed a light-hearted marine. But, he was also dead, his gene-seed unable to be recovered. “We shouldn’t talk like this. We are speaking ill of the dead.” “Wait, what do you mean “ill” are we making the dead sick?” Even the innocence of such a comment gave me no falter. “No, the man on that poster is dead. He was one of my battle-brothers on a raid against the ruinous powers. His sword Mercy was worth nothing to him after that attack.” I sat back for a moment to gather my thoughts. “Let us think not of these things Scootaloo. You have had to do much thinking like this for one so young. Here I appear to have some mail and apples. I’ll take the mail and you take the apples. Deal?” Scootaloo looked at me with a grin plastered on her face. “Thanks Mr.Marx.” I patted her head and grabbed an apple for myself. It was a new sensation, eating an apple. It was unlike anything else I had eaten. I opened the letter for a quick read and have scribed it here for your convenience. Dear Marxie I’m Pinkie Pie and your new in town so I thought, Hey this guy needs to meet everyone, but Twilight said you were gone yesterday and I was like AAWWW, so I went and got some apples and wrote a letter. The letter said all this crazy stuff and Scootaloo started reading it over your shoulder. Then I thought WAIT you didn’t tell Marxie when the party was. So now I wrote that the parties at ten pm today. Bye Pinkie Pie I was baffled, indeed where the letter said Scootaloo had started reading over my shoulder. I looked at her and she shrugged. “Nopony knows half the stuff Pinkie knows. She seems to be able to do anything, even if it’s impossible.” I didn’t question it. I grabbed my helmet, which had been occupying the small table in the mess hall and prepared for the day. A thumping at the ramp interrupted my rites, but told me I had a visitor. I strode out with Scootaloo at my side, feeling like I was home. I flipped the switch and watched the ramp descend. A clang made me turn around. In my ship, beside Scootaloo, was a bright pink pony. She appeared to be walking on thin air. She looked at me and screamed. “WOOOOW, you must be somepony new. I left you a letter and some apples yesterday but Twilight said you were in Canterlot and that I shouldn’t come and talk to you. So here I am now talking to you today and Scootaloo is here and everyponies happy. It took me a minute to figure out what just happened. I turned around when the ramp closed and Twilight was there. I looked at her helplessly and gestured to the pink pony with my thumb. “Please Twilight, tell me this is a friend of yours.” Twilight looked between the two of us as her expression descended into confusion. “Pinkie pie, what’s going on? You were beside me until, like, five minutes ago.” The pink pony jumped up to Twilight and bounced around her. I maintained a constant amount of confusion. Scootaloo jumped up to my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “You get used to her, she just has a lot of energy and stuff.” The pink pony started talking again, much to my dismay.”Well Twi, you said there was somepony new in town and I wanted to meet him so I went to his house-ship thingy and started talking to him. We’re having a party tonight so he can meet everypony.” Twilight just shrugged her hoof at Pinkie Pie before walking towards me. “Well Marx, seems you’ve met our neighborhood party machine. I just wanted to tell you the construction-ponies here. His name’s Mech if you want to talk to him. I’ve gotta go check on AppleJack.” She said this while looking around my ship’s interior. I could feel her curiosity building. I thought of offering her a tour, but that seemed like a recipe for disaster. “Well Twilight, I shall go meet him at once. If I may, where exactly is he?” I tried to act friendly and sophisticated, but that was rather hard with an orange filly sitting on my shoulder. She looked from me to Scootaloo before responding, a small grin on her face. “Well, I guess he’s probably still at the library. If you hurry you might make it before he gets annoyed at you.” I didn’t even respond. I pushed the small ponies out of my way before running off towards the library. “Marx, where are you going?” I thought it was a stupid question, but I answered nevertheless. “I am never late. I must reach this, Mech, as you call him before I offend him.” I thought I heard laughing behind me, but I ignored it. A glance to my left showed me Scootaloo, using her wing and aerodynamic shape to glide using my shoulder to keep altitude. [What a clever little pony] I mused to myself. We reached the library in a half-hour. It was a nice little wake-up run since I hadn’t done much upon my arrival. I scooped my helmet off my waist and onto my head. I should look formal for a business meeting. I opened the door to find a large brown colored pony sitting down with a cup of similarly colored liquid. There was a small picture of a hard hat on his flank, a cutie mark, as I recall. I opened the conversation. “Hello sir. I am Crucius Marx, at your service. I was told by Miss Twilight that you could assist me in building a house.” He took a sip of his drink and looked me over. He stared for a moment before glaring at his drink. “Ah swear that this was only coffee when ah got it. Ah well, eyup Ah’m Mech. Ah owed Miss Sparkle a favour, since she took care of mah little filly when she was sick. Ah’ll give yah this house for free. Ah got a base idea for how tah build yah house. The only thing is ah need tah make sure. Y’all are a seven foot tall, unknown thingamabobber, correct?” I hear Scootaloo laugh from my shoulder and felt her move to the top of my helmet. “Of course Mr.Marx isn’t a pony, if he was he would be on his hooves.” Both Mech and I laughed at this and I took a seat across from him. “Well then my friend. Where do we start?” Mech and I spent an hour talking and debating plans on how to build and design my house. I got to sketch what I wanted. That was the main reason it took so long, I never got to design something based purely on what I wanted. It was an alien concept to me. In the end I took a bit of the design from my ship, Scootaloo’s suggestions, and Mech's pragmatic advice. We rushed outside and started building as soon as I finished the sketches. I raised up the last of the walls. Not three seconds after that, I saw the brown tint of Mech’s warp energy and jumped down. I landed with a thud and turned around. I saw the roof clamp on and some more warp energy melt all the walls and roof together. I called out for the young fillies undoubtedly watching us. “Hail Cutie Mark Crusaders. I believe if you want to help we could use assistance painting.” Three small heads poked out of a nearby bush. After a flash of orange my small friend had appeared in front of me. “Really Mr.Marx? I was hoping to be able to help.” I saw the other two show up and swamp me in an instance. I squirmed them all into a small little heard on my chest. “Hello my friends, yes you can all help. Provided you behave yourselves.” They all jumped off my chest and lined up beside me. I looked straight at Scootaloo. “Well, well, didn’t I say to stay clear of the construction zone.” Scootaloo smirked at me and had an instant reply. “Mr.Marx, I checked in the library and it said that construction sites were, legally, as far as the buildings walls could fall. We were clear of that by at least a few feet.” I had to hide my appreciation for the scholarliness of her venture into breaking rules. “That being said young one. I expected you not to listen to me. We finished the outer building and Mech is already heading inside to put up the walls of the rooms, so that leaves me to watch you guys paint.” The three little fillies beamed. I handed each of them a paint brush and checked how the house looked from the outside. It was towards the outskirts of town, Twilight said one of her friends lived nearby. The house, my house, was red, the same red as my armor in fact. It was much larger than the other houses to fit my considerable size. It was one story with the door already in place. I stopped my inspection when I realized that the house was indeed red. The crusaders had finished in an incredible amount of time. I walked around to the back of the house and sighed. Each crusader was covered in red paint. “How did you three manage to make yourselves covered in paint so fast?” Applebloom was the first to answer. “Well, ah figured we could paint the walls with our tails, and then we all started flicking paint at each other. Well, y’all see how it turned out.” I looked at their embarrassed expression, then to the near flawless paint job on the house. “Well young ones, you did such an excellent job on the house,” I picked a gauntlet full of paint up. “That you deserve an equal paint job with your work!” I flicked them all with the paint in my hand and ran behind the house. It was in vain, they were laughing too hard to chase me and gain vengeance. I could feel that this was going to be a good day. ______________________________________________________________________________         >Scout 1-1 report, I shall arrive at Champion Marx’s last known position in approximately three days. Current data suggests he landed on a nearby geocentric system. Investigation will continues as warrants.