A Helping Hoof
Brother Gentoo furrowed his brow--or, rather, what little was left of his organic brow. The right half of his face had long since been improved from the base model, with the left half about 50% of the way there. His eyes had already been replaced three times over, by increasingly more powerful lenses; his hands had been replaced with a massive claw for holding workpieces, and a set of fine manipulators more dextrous than any human hand could possibly hope to be. Naturally, he had already been fitted with two more arms, and had another pair on back-order.
"You want to...understand," Brother Gentoo muttered, "how a lasgun works."
In all his days in the Adeptus Mechanicus, Brother Gentoo had seen many things. He had seen towering, slavering horrors, evolved to catch prey at a distance with mouths that could be fired like harpoons. He had seen armies of green-skinned raiders, all clamoring for blood, all wielding firearms and riding vehicles that were crimes against the Machine Spirits. He had seen, on very rare occasions, a Space Marine turned traitor--usually the ones with the giant speaker stacks, actually. He briefly wondered if this meant anything. Perhaps Slaanesh was testing him with these mighty, hellish sound systems.
Certainly, someone was testing him. Whether it was a Chaos God or merely this small purple horse remained to be seen.
"Yes," said the small purple horse. It was a Xeno, of course. Xenos, nominally, were for purging. They aren't meant for talking to, or for explaining things to, or for research (as much as Brother Gentoo would like to research some of the things he finds). Xenos, according to all laws and rules of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium of Man, were for purging on sight.
But if there was one thing Brother Gentoo had learned in all his years, it is that sometimes one must break a few rules in order to follow others. At this very moment, Brother Gentoo was supposed to be shooting xenos, repairing this lasgun so he could shoot xenos, contacting their home base over a Vox-Caster that was also in need of repair, and--as the local contingent of Gray Wolves had insisted--leaving some xenos behind for the Wolves to "have fun with". In addition, he was supposed to be ordering an exterminatus, waiting for orders to begin exterminatus, confirming with his immediate superior that an exterminatus would be necessary, and waiting for that Gray Wolves chapter to get into position over the planet so they could hit the big red button.
"Are you...sure you wish to know?" Brother Gentoo scratched his head with one of his manipulator arms. He had taken to chatting with the xenos, purely for research purposes, and also because he had no reason to waste lasgun charges--or more importantly, risk cracking one of the lenses--just to kill xenos that would be dead soon anyway.
"I think it'll be a valuable learning experience," the small purple horse said cheerfully. "And if I can give you a hoof, it'll help you learn the value of friendship!"
Brother Gentoo tapped his chin. He could use a hand around the workshop. "Very well," he said. "Let me show you how I fix lasguns."
The little purple pony trotted up next to him and sat down, watching intently.
"First, I recite the Litany of the Machine Spirits, and prepare the Anointing Tray, so that I may guide the Spirits and prevent them from becoming lost."
The little horse used its heretical psyker powers to levitate a pencil and paper, taking notes as he set out the Anointing Tray.
"O Hallowed Spirits," Gentoo said softly. "In thy honor I beseech thee. I hath removed the battery, as thou will't, and in doing so laid thee to rest so that thou may fight another day."
"Sounds like Old Ponish," the xeno muttered.
"Quiet!" Gentoo hissed. "Now, as your eyes are upon us, we shall remove the screws which bind thy spirits to this holy weapon, and anoint them with the fourth Oil of Anointing, that they may find their way into their chosen place just as the beam of the lasgun finds its way into our foes' hearts..."
The screws click-clacked as they landed in the tray, and Brother Gentoo dripped a steady stream of oil into it from a bottle he kept in a pocket, next to the other twenty varieties of Oil of Anointing.
"O Spirits, hear my prayer. I see that the wires are frayed, and that this displeases you--"
"Hold on."
"what?"
"That wiring is awful. It's not organized at all!"
Brother Gentoo gasped. His servos twitched weakly as the little xeno started manipulating the wires.
"Also, these lenses aren't quite in the optimal arrangement. You're trying to project a beam from this device, right?" she said, pointing to the lasgun's main emitter.
"Yes, but--"
"For a lens of this size and thickness, the focal point is a little closer than this. You'd want this lens mounted about an inch closer, and the other scooted up about half an inch..."
To Gentoo's utter horror, the xeno began happily disassembling and reassembling the lasgun, rambling about the movement of light and the dissipation of heat, all the while juggling components with nary a care in the world. She didn't even recite the Litany of Reassembly before putting the whole thing back together!
"Also, you shouldn't have to oil the screws every time you put them back in. There's no moving parts in this thing, so you'll hardly ever need to oil it unless you're working in very dusty environments. I'd be more worried about getting a speck on the lens, but don't worry, I gave them a quick wipe down before I closed it up."
"How did--"
"I have a spell for cleaning magnifying glasses. Comes in handy."
"But you didn't--"
"Relax, I didn't break it. In fact, this should work better than ever!" As if to accentuate her point, Twilight casually placed the battery back into the lasgun's receiver, pointed it at a nearby fencepost, and pulled the trigger. Normally, at this range, this would have taken a chunk out of the post and scorched the surface; with the xeno's adjustments, it blew clean through the post, leaving the edges of the hole ember-ridden and smoking.
"H-how," Brother Gentoo said, quite emphatically. The post quietly burst into flames.
"You just have to know what you're doing," the xeno said. "Rote memorization and checklists are great--I know that better than most ponies. But they won't replace real understanding. You can always learn more, no matter how old or wise you are!"
"And then she kept going," Brother Gentoo whined, his lenses twisting in agony. "On and on and on! I showed her the Voxcaster, and, and she started talking about invisible light!"
"Invisible light?" Brother Arch muttered, staring down at the pitiful xeno's pitiful planet from the deck of the Imperial spaceship, Righteous Side of Hell.
"Yes! Like light, but not light. It passes through some things, bounces off others--she said they had something just like it, but bulkier and less capable. And that our wavelengths were sub-optimal."
"What does that mean?"
"I've no idea," Brother Gentoo said, wringing his manipulators. "But it sounded similar to the Litany of Attunement, so..."
They both stood in silence.
"Do you think," Brother Arch muttered, "that she had a point?"
"What do you mean?" Brother Gentoo whispered. "That--that maybe, all this business about Machine Spirits is just...how we remember how to do things?"
"It is possible," Brother Arch posited, "that the Xeno understands our technology better than we do."
They stood in silence once more. They stared at each other, searching for understanding or meaning.
"...NAAAAAAH," they both said in unison.
"Exterminatus approved!" shouted a Commissar from the doorway.
"Race you to the red button?" Brother Arch said.
"With pleasure!" Brother Gentoo said. "Last one there has to clean the servitors!"