The Imperial Vegan

By Tichfield

Rated M to be on the safe side.

Originally posted under a different pseudonym.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. The Warhammer 40,000 Universe is copyright someone else.

Thanks to Ardo on CoH, who remembered this story.

I'm tough, but the bamboo is tougher. Tougher than rations, tougher than my training, tougher than the two inches of alloyed steel that hide me from the greenskins.

Doesn't matter. I eat it and I FINISH it, because a soldier NEEDS three regular meals. Sharp. At all the right hours. Chew. Chew. Routine and pattern separate us from the enemy. Trust to order and the Empire, and the Empire's orders. So I chew. I chew for me. I chew for the squad. I chew for victory. I chew for the Empire!

All my teeth are flat now, like a cow's. Sometimes I have... thoughts. It's all those rabbits prancing about. They look at me and SNIFF. It's a big, honking sniff. Their noses twitch like little pink trigger fingers. They scope me out. As food.

Rabbit food.

I wish I could scope them back, but I can't. I'm vegan, and they're animals.

Sometimes, I dream of cauliflower. Then I wake up and see a rabbit and imagine it'll turn to cauliflower. And I'll eat him as a side dish to the bamboo.

Only it wouldn't work. The greenskins sit on the pepper bushes, and who ever heard of cauliflower bamboo salad without peppers? The alfalfa sunflower sauce, sure, I can do without if starvation threatens. But the PEPPERS? Can't have it without peppers.

Bloody greenskins.

Turning the rabbits into cauliflower, that's the easy part. This land's blighted, contaminated, tainted with chaos and magic. My digestive system knows.

I poo brownies. Not kidding you. Smell it yourself. Chocolate. Rich, thick, creamy chocolate.

I don't touch the stuff. It's a trick of the Greenies, a play to get me to betray my principals. Not sure why the greenskins mind my schooldays, but they do. They're odd that way. Sarge told me 'bout the principals, an' reckoned they'd do in hall monitors after that. This was before he died. Doesn't speak as much now, 'cept on special occasions.

It's 'cause the brownies have fat, see? MY fat. An' I'm vegan. Vegan for Empire. Now, I wasn't always, and I used to make brownies for the squad outings. But then the Emperor talked to me in my head and shared secrets known only to the Chinchilla collective, him and me. I can't talk about them, but I'll say this: animals are vengeful bastards, and half of them are mind-linked.

I've made brownies the proper way, in bowls what aren't porcelain. And I'm telling you, they take MILK.

Sometimes I dream about where the milk in my chaos brownies comes from. Them be messy dreams.

Those greenskins, they never WENT to school. Completely un-principaled. That's why they killed us. Jealous of our education.

I used to piss rainbows, too, but THAT was the antibiotics. Then they ran out, and that's when the brownies started. Right after I ran out of pills to eat for dessert.

I miss my pills.

I wish I'd more than bamboo to eat. Maybe mushrooms. Grilled mushrooms.

I'd be happy if the greenskins left the pepper bushes, but they SIT on them, hootin' an' hollerin'. Took my whole squad. Only me left.

Wonder what they eat. They don't touch the rabbits. And they can't be proper vegan, seeing as they were never schooled.

Where'd they all come from, anyway? Each time I blink there's another bunch of them. Darn things pop up like... like...

Like mushrooms.

Mushrooms is vegan eating. Wish I had some. They grow from animal poo, but the poo doesn't count, for some reason. You can eat them an' keep vegan.

Nothing grows on my chocolate brownies.

Now the rabbits, they leave a lot of their beans lyin' around, 'cept they ain't beans. They smell wrong an' when they burn, you can tell they have grease in 'em. That's animal stuff.

Wonder if you could grow mushrooms in rabbit beans. Whole bloody valley must covered in 'em. Sometimes them rabbits is so thick you think it's snowed. If the mortar team were still here, we'd haves snowflakes in summer.

Yanno, if I could go out and put it all in one spot - the rabbit beans - I bet I could grow so many mushrooms the greenies would...

Huh. Nah, that can't be right. Can't be.

'Cept when you think of it... My vegan buddy - we had a buddy system when it first started, so we wouldn't cheat an' steak. My buddy, he jumped off a cliff. Thought he could fly in his birthday suit, jes by flappin' 'is arms.

Ate a bad mushroom, see. The kind with red spots. Kinda funny, because he ended up as a red spot, hisself.

Mushrooms can do things to your mind...

So can I. Well, not YOUR mind. You know. Just... others. Not the greenskins. Tried to fry their leader with my mental blasts. Didn't work. He just kinda picked his nose. Blasted tin foil. They all have it. It's implanted under their skin, which is why my mind can't touch 'em. Might as well be broccoli, for all I can...

Huh. Yanno, broccoli is green. Don't have no mind, though. An' no nose...

But if wrong mushrooms can make you see what ain't there...

An' there ARE a whole bunch o' rabbit beans in that there valley.

Gotta think about this. Gotta think hard.

I've thunk, and it was hard, but now I'm done, and it's the rabbits. I'm sure of it.

Why else would they come about at night, staring at me with them hypnotizing eyes? I ain't food, or burrow stuff. I'm vegan. Just like them.

But we're different, they and I. THEY'RE enemies of the Empire. Won't even chew the bamboo 'cause they know it's Imperial bamboo.

They stare at me because they're shutting off my mind. Shutting off my psychic mind blasts.

I'd fry them all. Them and the greenskins, if I were free. 'Cept, I wouldn't, of course. They're fluffy, so it'd be against policy and procedure. Won't do for a small furry animal to be mind-melted by an Imperial vegan. Won't do at all.

They shit greenskins. I get brownies, they poop troops. There's something in the pepper here. That's why they guard the bushes.

Only they don't shit them straight, no sir. A greenskin wouldn't fit up a rabbit rectum.

They just lay a bed o' beans, the rabbits, an' they wait, an' the greenskins pop like mushrooms, sure as day, 'cause they ARE mushrooms. Don't you see?

All this trouble we've had, all these fights, wonderin' where the enemy comes from... they're FUNGI! Spread by crafty rabbits, pretendin' to be neutral vegan observers. That's why there's so many goshdarned greenskins popping up where you don't expect it.

Danged rabbits.

This is News. This is important news. HQ must know, which means I must get out of this valley and tell them. Tell them to start making the greatest batch of liquid laxative the worlds have known. So we can shoot it into rabbits. ALL the rabbits, before they take over, them and their beans.

Ten to one the greenies won't grow in what comes out of a shot rabbit. Rice don't grow in a desert, an' troops sure as blazes won't grow in that swamp.

The Empire must know this. We must neutralize the rabbits in a humane and sustainable fashion.

I need to get outta here, and I need to be strong, which means I need food. More food than this here bamboo.

Lucky me there's a whole valley full of mushrooms. Magic mushrooms, with green skin.

No wonder the long-eared tricksters kept the secret to themselves for so long. I might've been scared before, just a little. But not any more. I'm Empire. I'm vegan. And they're dinner.

Bet they'll taste like tofu chicken.

END