Warhammer 40000: Imperial Guardspony

Chapter Two

Blinding Flash and Torchlight sent off their last- hopefully temporary- goodbyes. Torchlight was still stoked, and Flash still thought this was a huge mistake, one that they'd make together if at all. After all, that's what friends are for. They read over a pamphlet of recruitment guidelines together. It read that applicants must be unicorns of adult age with magical ability that was measurable, preferably high, and that no belongings were to be carried with them when they signed up. Torch was excited to see that they were both eligible, and Flash rolled his eyes.

"I was hoping it wouldn't say that." He muttered.

"Cheer up! This'll be an adventure like no other! We'll travel to lands that our ancestors wouldn't dream of, and we'll be fighting evil all the while!" Torchlight was almost explosively excited, to Flash's annoyance.

Flash's parents were accepting of his decision- they had promised full freedom in all decisions he was allowed to make. They were surprised, and his mother was very concerned, but still approved, making him promise that he'd come back. The promise was made, and he had departed. He had every intention of holding on for the whole ride if it meant that no harm would come of either Torchlight or himself.

Torchlight's relationship with her parents wasn't always the best. Whenever she had caused trouble as a filly her parents would have to pay for any damage done. And the fact that she was a self-proclaimed master of fire at the age of five- one that practiced often- didn't help matters much. They had consented to her volunteering to serve the Imperium, happy to know that the 'master of fire's' power would be put to good use instead of burning down the house.

The pair arrived at the entrance to the military base after a rather short walk. The complex smelled peculiar, even from the outside, and had very high walls and a gate, which they approached. There was a gatehouse, through a window of which stood a human male, who eyed them warily. Torch and Flash looked at each other, and Flash nudged her in the side with his hoof. Torch stepped forward and cleared her throat.

"We are here to volunteer." She said simply.

"Volunteer, huh?" He said. He disappeared from the window, and the gate opened, revealing the inside of the base. It was rather large, with three mammoth vehicles sitting outside a building with an equal number of large gates. Several humans were inspecting them. The two ponies were still glaring curiously the tanks when the gatekeeper motioned for them to follow. They did.

"What are those?" Torchlight asked the man.

"Leman Russ battle tanks. Built to last, and built to destroy." He explained.

"Why are they here?" Flash was uneasy.

"Just in case demons show up, or something." He laughed, then turned serious. "I'm not here for chit-chat. Get in here and tell these people what you're here for. They can help you." With that, he opened a door and motioned them in, then went back to his post.

The building had a glass window with a hole in it inside, through which a human female could be seen. She raised her head at the two new arrivals.

"Ah, not every day we have xenos in here. State your buisness."

Flash blinked, and wondered why she had referred to them that way.

"We're here to join." Torchlight said, trying to be formal and composed, neither of which the excitable mare was very good at.

"You want to join the Imperial Guard? You're sure? There's no quitting once you've committed." She was completely serious.

"We're certain. We want to help you guys fight evil and stuff!" Flash facehoofed. That had sounded utterly stupid.

"Right... right," the woman began, then reached downward and produced two sheets of paper and two pens, "fill these out."

The form asked for name, age, weight, height, coat color, mane color, and other general information, but it also asked about magical capabilities. Torch and Flash were known to be talented at their respective types of magic. Blinding Flash's talent was nearly self-explanatory; he was very good at light spells. He had used one to disorient a manticore to allow another colt and a filly to escape from it, earning his cutie mark, a gray-blue sixteen-pointed star, matching his white coat and short gray mane. Torchlight's cutie mark was earned during an exceptionally cold winter, during which even after the last of her family's firewood had burned away, Torch's fire magic had kept the family warm, prompting the appearance of an image of a flaming trio of logs on her flank, complimenting her dark orange coat and long red mane well. Both ponies noted their abilities, and also mentioned their other abilities such as telekinesis. Flash had been trying to learn to teleport, though he could only go about three meters. He noted this as well.

The two turned in their forms, and after an appraisal from the secretary that seemed to go on for tens of minutes, they were told to report to the spaceport. A guardsman was summoned escorted them there, and they left. The short journey across the base was in silence. When they got there, they were instructed to await transport to a ship in orbit. There was an hour to burn, so they each took advantage of what time they had to ask another waiting guardsman questions, which he didn't seem to like answering. Like other guardsmen they'd met, he was from Cadia, which was where he told them they were most likely to end up. When asked about his opinion of ponies in general, he stated that he'd volunteered for the assignment here, and that he had no strong opinions about them other than that they were heathen xenos, which, he explained, logically made them enemies. No further questions were asked by the duo, and the three of them sat in silence for a while, until the guardsman asked them what they thought of humans.

"We don't have any personal reason to dislike you, but you seem to dislike us well enough." Flash answered, flatly. The man narrowed his eyes at them.

"This is true..." He began to reply, but paused in thought, "but I have no personal reason to dislike you, either, do I?"

"Well, do you?" Torchlight asked, with renewed interest.

"No, nothing at all. I'm Briggs, corporal Briggs. What are your names, horse-witches?"

"Horse-witches?" Torchlight said, sounding it out, then giggled, "I'm Torchlight, and this is Blinding Flash, but you can call me Torch and him Flash."

"You ponies have such odd names..." He muttered.

"Why would you volunteer to stay here if you didn't have a good impression of us?" Flash asked.

"It's better than the front, that's why. Here, there aren't cultists trying to slit your throat and sacrifice you to Khorne in your sleep, no demons trying to destroy your brains and devour your soul, or any genestealer cults to deal with. All of those things happen on Cadia and its surrounding systems very often. This place is exempt, for some odd reason, which is why I volunteered to safeguard this peaceful, if heathen place." The man finished his lengthy explanation with a sigh.

"But now I have to leave. My term of service is done here, it's time to return to Cadia."

"Say, Briggs, what usually happens to unicorns like us?" Flash asked.

"I've only ever fought alongside one unicorn unit before, about five years ago. After the order was sent to withdraw from the area, they were sent against a horde of demons, almost as if they were a distraction. I heard that none of them escaped alive, but that they had managed to, to our surprise, destroy the entire horde. It wasn't easy for the brass to admit it, but they were essential to winning that battle. My perceptions of them have been mixed ever since."

"Mixed? Mixed how?" Torch was intrigued by the story.

"Mixed in that these xenos- the ones I'd been taught to be willing to destroy, and not to treat like another human- had saved my life, and that they might be just as worthy of recognition as any human." Flash noticed then that Briggs had been speaking in a very low voice, so that nobody else could hear him, as though he wasn't allowed to say that. Briggs sighed again.

"I'm not supposed to think that. It's treason."

"Treason?" Torch had lowered her voice as well. "Why?"

"It's complicated, you wouldn't understand."

A huge metal machine landed on a flat circular pad nearby.

"Well, that's our ride." Briggs said, picking up a duffel bag containing things he owned, "It anyone asks, we never talked."

The waiting guardsmen and ponies, twelve in all, boarded the vessel, which almost immediately took off. The ponies watched in amazement through a viewport as the ship climbed into the upper atmosphere, where even the most daring pegasi wouldn't dare venture. Before they knew it, they were in space, approaching a massive, oddly shaped vessel. Their view of the vessel grew and grew, until it took up the entire viewport. A moment later, the vessel was inside the other, and landed. The landing ramp dropped, and two guardsmen were awaiting the new arrivals. They harshly instructed the ponies to follow them, again refering to them as 'xenos'. They were lead to a large room, which contained dozens of ponies, all in a queue of some kind, waiting their turn for something. The two were instructed to get in line by one of the many guardsmen in the room, all armed with their peculiar-looking weapons.

Torch tapped the pony in front of them. He turned around, the cream-colored unicorn looked nervous. "What are we waiting for?" She asked him quietly.

"I-I don't know." He replied, simply, and turned back around.

The time went by torturously slowly, and minutes turned into an hour, then into two before it was their turn. Flash went first into the chamber before them. It looked like some sort of testing area, a few items strewn about. A black-clothed human wearing a talisman with a red 'I' and a skull emblazoned on it was visible in the corner of the room. He regarded Flash with what he took to be great dislike, even hate.

"I have been assigned to judge you xenos' abilities, and classify accordingly. Now, demonstrate, xeno!" He almost spat the word 'xeno', as though he hated the word. Not just how it sounded, what it meant, what it represented. Flash felt nervous, and decided to demonstrate his magic as well as he could.

He began with a light spell, a great flash that lasted a whole ten seconds, during which Flash moved across the room. He looked back at the man, who simply stood with the same look on his face. Flash summoned a beam of light from his horn, aimed it, focused the light to a point, and increased the power of the light, blackening the surface of the wall of the chamber. He decided to use his telekinesis next, and focused his power on a rock nearby, almost half his size, clearly there for demonstration, and lifted it. He looked back at the man, who still held the same steely, hateful expression, and threw the rock at the wall of the chamber as hard as he could, breaking it in half.

"That's enough. Proceed. You will recieve your evaluation results soon enough." Flash left the chamber, having strained himself quite a bit, he was tired. He entered a room again filled with ponies. This time they were waiting in small circles. Guards stood at all exits and entrances.

Torchlight was waved in by the peculiar man in black clothing, and asked to perform her magic. She loved performing, especially with her fire. She started with a spell that summoned a sheath of fire around her entire body, then released it in a short-ranged puff of fire. She took aim at a wall and shot three small fireballs across the room, each hitting the same spot. As a finale, she walked in a circle, spreading flame in her wake. She extinguished the fires with ease, and was asked to leave the chamber as well, finding Flash pretty quickly amongst the ponies in the room.

"That guy was weird." Torch remarked.

"Yeah, he was. It was like... he didn't like ponies at all, or that he hated us for some reason. Why do these humans seem to hate us so much if they're supposed to be our allies?" Flash was unsure of what that assessment was all about.

"Why did they ask us to perform magic? They already know what we can do, we wrote that down for them when we signed up."

"Maybe it's to make sure we weren't lying. Well, we'll find out soon enough, if what that guy says is true."

"What happened to Briggs?" Torch changed the subject.

"I don't know, but he probably has duties to attend to, or something. This ship is awfully big. I never thought I'd go into space, or even into the sky, for that matter. It's a shame we can't see outside." Flash said. The ship was so massive that they had no idea in which general area of the ship they were in. Knowing how long it could be before the results of their mysterious test were given, the two waited together.