I Blame You, Too

by Whitestrake


Ink costs more than human blood

@#@#@# Amos's POV @#@#@#

“So... I'm a game to you people?” I asked, not really thinking. Despair filled me, and Taylor was very quick to inform me that such feelings only served the purposes of Chaos, so I very quickly changed into a rather indifferent mood. “Like regicide?”

“When you get down to it, yeah.” Taylor took a long drag from something resembling a lho stick; it was a plant the changelings grew that boosted their hive mind's signal, which he said induced a rather euphoric state when smoked by psychics. He very quickly told me he meant to differentiate between psychics like himself and psykers, though I had yet to see the real difference. “The game's a bit more complicated, but it's essentially chess.”

“So, wait, you knew their god?” Shining Armor asked, leaning over the table at Taylor, who looked rather perturbed at the prospect. Despite myself, I chuckled as I recalled him saying he was an atheist. “Dude, you came from a world where you walked beside a god, then you came here and killed one.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, looking at the heretic. He shrugged and pointed to the back of his head, and it took me a moment to realize he meant the disks along his spine.

“It's how I got my armor,” he said, taking another drag. “Besides, man, their gods are real.” He put his hands out, like he was grasping an invisible sphere. “Hell, the Emperor is the only reason we're flying through the Warp right now, with a clear destination, instead of just wagging our dicks in the currents and seeing where we end up!”

“Speaking of wagging dicks, is Chaos-worship a thing in your home universe?” I asked, knowing that even having a basic understanding of the Ruinous Powers was to invite their insidious whispering. “You already have the basics needed to worship them, I think.”

“That's fucking rich,” he laughed, extinguishing the hand-rolled drug. “I'm too psychic for Khorne, too straightforward for Tzeentch, too dynamic for Nurgle, and too practical for Slaanesh.” He waved a hand and reached for a syringe, which, as he assured Shining Armor and I, was filled with a chemical that negated alcohol's effects. We were each on our third injection, and they seemed to do the trick. “But, no; the most that would have come from it would be some cults lonely nerds started to try and look badass.”

“So, if you couldn't feel them, how did you know about them?” Armor asked, looking at the Burned Man like he was some sort of wizard. Again, he shrugged and looked about ready to fall out and sleep.

“Horror, mostly. If the Warp exists, and I mean in my home universe, we were thousands of years from the technology to utilize it.” He stopped talking for a few minutes, thinking over his own words. His face went from bored, to scared, to shocked, to a look of dull surprise, marred by a bit of morbid curiosity. “Fuck.”

“Something wrong?” I asked, hoping he wasn't touching the Warp at the moment. I silently prayed the Gellar field would hold, but I'm not above syaing my hand drifted to the small autopistol I kept under my bunk.

“I just realized it's entirely possible for us to be from the same universe, separated by tens of thousands of years.”

@#@#@#@#@#@#

The Warp, an incomprehensible thing, an enigma that hid in plain sight, was not something to be tempted. Not unlike a pond, casting a stone would have ripples that reached far and wide, and even the smallest ripples could affect the shore. Driven by emotion, the Warp was a fickle thing, giving blessing and curses, alterations and mutations, at the whims of its chief consciousnesses. In a small blank spot, a mobile bit of calm waters in the crashing maelstrom of creation so often used by humans to travel the cold expanse of their reality, was a bit of shoreline never graced by the ephemeral waters of the Warp.

This little Gellar field could prevent direct influence, but not the whispering, the seductive whispering that plagued and enlightened so many. There were minds beyond this blank spot, inhuman, vulnerable, unseen in the Milky Way before or since. Forr such beings, ponies, stood watch on the other side, at the beck and call of their master, the illustrious, trustworthy, silver-tongued Burned Man. Their minds were so easy to see, their wills so easy to know, their motives so predictable.

Steel Tart was an earth pony from a small farming village near the Pridelands; she lost her parents at a young age, and had only the Inquisition to live for, an organization she knew had the very best in mind for Equestria. Surely, surely, the Viscount would send her marching off the fully pacify the minotaurs of Labyrinthine. Gilded Unity was a unicorn from Canterlot, and like many of her status, had no patience for the slow process of politics. She joined the Inquisition to makes waves in Equestria and beyond. Yet she was still stuck in Canterlot, using her magic to watch over a doorway to nowhere. What would her mother say about this?

Solemn Dirge, ever the stoic stallion, could not help but regard his companions with quiet contempt. They always tried to mess with standard protocols, change the status quo, never let themselves just rest a while. But, they were his comrades, and he would stick by them as he had for the past couple of years. Radiant Velvet giggled and flicked Dirge's horn with her bat-like wing, taking no small amount of pleasure in teasing the statuesque unicorn. She adjusted her sound cannon, tapping the steel barrel against Dirge's carbine as she went.

“I still can't believe they let some prissy thing like you in the Inquisition,” Tart sighed, slinging her shotgun over her neck. She didn't like Velvet, though it was more of a personality clash than any slight one had taken against the other.

“Says the blockhead who ran into a gun nest with a bayonet,” the pegasus replied, sticking her tongue out at the muscular earth pony.

“And gave me the time to get a target,” Dirge defended, tapping a hoof to the rocket launcher secured to his back. “If she hadn't distracted them, we might have died back there.”

“Only because you had to follow the Burned Man's orders like they'd lead to enlightenment or something,” Unity sighed, remembering the day her companions recalled, and how big of a fuck-up the entire ordeal had been. She ran a quick diagnostic on her amp and adjusted it for the umpteenth time since standing near the Doorframe, compensating for some of the freaky energy readings she was getting. “You'd have held the line until moss started growing on you.”

Yes. Chaos could work with these four, and where they went, more would follow.

@#@#@#@#@#@#

From the files of the Equestrian Inquisition: Incident No. 132 “The Genome Rejects”

On ████ AC, I began work on what is now commonly referred to as the “Incident at Sunny Shores”. As was Inquisitional protocol, a total area of ██ kilometers was roped off, with no aerial traffic allowed above the exclusion zone. With Princess Celestia's blessings, garnered only because she was not entirely informed of my pet project's goals or methods, we gathered fifteen (15) test subjects from the local populace, with a total of five (5) of each major subspecies of pony (Equus caballus sapiens)

After a total of ██████, they responded well to the hormone and augmentation treatments, resembling their former selves only in general body shape. Cognitive testing proved they retained their minds, with a measurable increase in intelligence in ██ of them. I thought, going into this project, that I would be saving lives, not those of the test subjects, mind you. Instead, I ended up making cybernetic, musclebound monstrosities that possessed a killing instinct that would make rabid shark-bears look tame.

Subjects were cleansed after █ years of testing. All records of their existence have been purged and Celestia has been told they died during clinical trials. She knows I lied, and it's only a matter of time until she wants the research findings. She asked me to make her super soldiers, gave me the freedom to do so, and didn't ask too many questions about how I did it.

She asked; I delivered.

Filed by the Burned Man.