Dranon thought he was being clever by turning off the displays inside his Red Corsair helmet. Thus, he was able to give the illusion of looking Slaanesh right in the eyes when zhe summoned Cultist-chan and Dranon into zhir presence before the divine chaise lounge. The deity must have guessed the truth, because zhe gave no indication that zhe was impressed by Dranon's mock stare. As for Cultist-chan, she was looking straight at Slaanesh and beaming broadly. More powerful than even the most genetically pure Pariah, the girl was completely immune to zhir powers, her witless devotion shielding her with a powerful psychic cloak. Cultist-chan was where thoughts went to die.
"Are you sure you don't want to go out with me?" Slaanesh asked Cultist-chan, affecting zhir cutest voice.
The girl bit her lip. "Thorry, Slaanesh-chan. Hwue har holdingz outh for a gnighth in ebon aryymur."
Rejection was a strange sensation, and Slaanesh savored it.
"Why did you call us here?" Dranon asked, not even bothering to disguise the boredom in his voice.
There was no delicate way of explaining Slaanesh's intentions towards Cultist-chan: zhe wanted the girl to be zhir baby factory. Cultist-chan was a continuing source of fascination to Slaanesh, and zhe suspected the girl could serve as the cornerstone of a psychically immune army. Slaanesh licked zhir lips and imagined the girl at the center of an unending orgy, mounted time and time again by an endless line of corrupted men, Orks, Tau, Tyranids, animals… and periodically squeezing out psychically immune infants of every species. It was maddening. Any one of Slaanesh's devotees would literally cut off their right arm for such an opportunity. In a rare moment of introspection, Slaanesh suspected it was the girl's unattainability that made her so interesting to zhim.
"Why don't you go out with Dranon, then?" Slaanesh asked Cultist-chan idly.
To zhir surprise, the girl seemed to actually like the idea. "Yay! Hwue wouldth liek thzat!"
"Oh, no," Dranon said, raising his hands and taking a step backwards. "There is no fucking way that's happening."
Cultist-chan pouted. "Bwut Dranon-kun…"
"Then it's settled," Slaanesh announced with a smile. "I demand the two of you go on a date."
"I don't have to take orders from you," Dranon muttered.
Slaanesh smiled and took a drag of zhir opium pipe. In one corner of the chamber of silk and satin, one of the most infamous daemon princes was manacled to a wall, writhing in agony and ruing the punishment – or reward – he was enduring for his latest exploit.
"Oh, but you do. Unless you want me to invent some wonderful new pleasure for you to experience. You know, I've always wondered what would happen if I- "
Dranon stopped the rogue deity before zhe could finish zhir sentence. "I don't wanna know! Okay, okay, but I'm only going on one date with her."
"Fine, fine, but you have to promise me you'll give her a fair shot," Slaanesh announced, gesticulating with zhir opium pipe. "Sooner or later I'm going to find the right man for her, and then I'll be unstoppable…"
Obviously Slaanesh could simply use force, but zhe was afraid of disrupting the delicate balance of cheerful stupidity and absolutely pure-hearted devotion that made the girl so irresistible to zhim in the first place.
"Fine. But only one date, and no longer than two hours."
"Eight," countered Slaanesh.
"Two and a half."
"Six."
Cultist-chan was completely oblivious to the terse negotiation, and instead choose that moment to take a good whiff of her armpit. To her interest, she smelled vaguely of ham.
"Four!"
Slaanesh capitulated. "Four it is."
"And, since this is your idea, you have to pay."
Slaanesh grumbled something under zhir breath, and then grabbed a small pouch of jingling coins from a nearby end table. After ensuring they were negotiable in the Chaos worlds, Dranon slipped the Ork leather package along beside some Bolter ammunition in a hidden compartment in his armor. He turned to the girl in irritation. Cultist-chan was busy chewing on a hyacinth she pilfered from one of Slaanesh's many, well-appointed Ming vases.
"Come on, Cultist-chan. Let's get out of here before Slaanesh gets any more 'great' ideas."
"Yayy!" the girl cried, bits of flower falling out of her mouth and landing on her brassiere.
At Cultist-chan's insistence, the two walked arm-in-arm out of the Warp cathedral and back to the cratered and radiation scoured Chaos world that they called home. Meanwhile, Slaanesh got back to what zhe was doing before zhir sudden fit of pique. Daemon Prince Ronald Reagan winced in rapturous agony.
Dranon found himself at a loss. He hadn't been on a date since… last never?
"Um, so," he said, trying to put some distance between himself and Cultist-chan and failing due to her deathlike grip on his arm. "What exactly do you want to do?"
"Hwue wouldn liek to vizith the bwoardwalkh!"
In a way, that was a relief. The Boardwalk would be full of numerous rides and carnival games that might distract Cultist-chan from her obnoxious interest in the armored Chaos Marine. Still unable to break her grip, the pair walked arm in arm down the cratered boulevard under a lurid sky.
It didn't take them long to reach their destination. The Boardwalk itself was a leftover of the Chaos world's former time as an Imperium colony planet, and it had been unsubtly made over by the residents of the planet to better serve the unique tastes of Chaos devotees. A few of the roller coasters still worked, maintained by captured slaves or enthusiastic hobbyists, and though the blue sea had long since been Warped into blood, numerous lovers set up blankets and umbrellas on the sand as protection against the radiation of the Warp storm swirling above. The air was fragrant with the smell of roasting human flesh, which was served barbequed, deep fried, or stewed, and for the hungriest guests, you could even buy an entire roast human leg from food carts that lined the wooden deck of the Boardwalk. They stepped onto the Boardwalk itself and Cultist-chan dragged Dranon along like an eager puppy. A carnival game immediately caught Cultist-chan's eye.
"Dardths!" she enthused.
Dranon shrugged; it wasn't his money. He pressed a few coins into Cultist-chan's palm, relieved to have his arm returned to him largely intact. The carnival barker explained the rules while Cultist-chan tested the heft of the dart.
"Big prize for hitting his eyeball, small prize for hitting his cock, nutsack, diaphragm, or for knocking out a tooth. No prize if you kill him."
The captured guardsman already had several darts sticking out of him, and he'd gone into shock. Cultist-chan took careful aim and then threw, and to her disappointment she hit the man in the belly instead of one of the target zones. The man grunted in misplaced pleasure – apparently, Slaanesh had already gotten to him. Cultist-chan put on her best puppy dog eyes and looked up at Dranon.
"Houn more?"
Dranon passed her another gilt coin, and the barker gave her a new dart. This time she threw it as hard as she could at the man's face, and there was a solid thunk as she cracked one of his teeth apart at the root.
"Yay! Szmall prith!"
"You didn't knock it out," the carnie objected. "You only split it apart."
"That counts," Dranon demanded with a glower.
"Like Hell."
Dranon casually pulled out his bolt pistol, and the barker's eyes got wide.
"Okay, okay, your pick of the small prizes, lady."
"Ztuffthed Void Dragon!"
The man handed her a miniature Void Dragon plushie, and she hugged it tightly to her chest, enraptured by the cheap, slave-assembled Chaos tchotchke. She started skipping off, and Dranon reluctantly followed her. However irritating the girl could be, there was no doubting her relentlessly cheerful piety, and four hours with her did narrowly beat an eternity of being tortured by Slaanesh. A big wooden roller coaster roared along its track overhead, and Cultist-chan watched it rattle by in undiluted awe.
"Hwue wanth to ridzt the kay-ous coasther!"
"Okay, fine," Dranon sighed. "Let's go get some tickets."
There was a line of corrupted humans and daemonettes of all shapes and sizes, but they stepped aside without a word and let the hulking Chaos Marine and his creepy girlfriend to the front of the line. Dranon slid some money across the counter to the slave manning the booth in exchange for a few dozen tickets, which would hopefully be enough to keep Cultist-chan satisfied until he was contractually permitted to dump her. The girl grabbed a bunch of the tickets and stuffed them into the only space in her clothes available for item storage – right down the front of her panties. Dranon rolled his eyes.
"Kay-ous coasther!" she urged, tugging on his arm.
With a groan, Dranon allowed the girl to drag him into line for the Chaos Corrupter. There were a few dozen people in line ahead of them, but this group was obstinately taking their own turns instead of allowing the pair to pass. Cultist-chan whittled away the wait by singing a cheerful Chaos chantey about skull fucking. Dranon was almost impressed at how atonal and lispy she managed to render the popular tune. She bounced the little Void Dragon plushie in time with the song, making silly faces and almost managing to extract a laugh out of Dranon. He was careful to keep his silence. The line inched forward as one train after another went loaded up with passengers and clattered down the tracks. Cultist-chan rocked back and forth on her heels, beside herself with excitement.
Dranon felt uncomfortable with the silence, so he went for a generic filler question. "What's your favorite part of worshipping Chaos?"
Cultist-chan scrunched up her face and thought about it.
"Hwue liek the shmells ant the flafors ant the cohlors."
Dranon was legitimately flummoxed, but he was saved from having to think of a response by the ticket taker at the turnstile. It was a slave, a former Adeptus Sororitas, now standing completely naked and covered in tattoos marking her as the property of Slaanesh.
"Five tickets, please," the slave asked in a disinterested tone.
Cultist-chan rummaged around in the front of her panties for the ride tickets, and the slave accepted them with a look of mild distaste. The pair had gotten lucky; they were the first in line for the next ride. Cultist-chan dragged Dranon along by the arm and they took the front seats in the first car of the Chaos Corrupter. Despite the ride slave's best efforts, the lap bar just wouldn't lock over Dranon's giant Chaos Marine armor.
"I'm sorry, sir," the naked woman said nervously. "You're too big."
Cultist-chan cackled, but Dranon was indignant.
"I'm out there risking my life every day so you can be unfree, and now you're trying to tell me I'm not good enough to ride your stupid roller coaster?" he demanded.
"It's for your safety and the safety of other riders," the woman protested lamely.
Dranon glowered. "Fuck that, send me through anyway."
"Sir, please lower your voice, there are daemonettes present."
"Waith."
Cultist-chan motioned for the ride slave to lean over, and then she whispered something in the other woman's ear. The corrupted Sororita blanched while Cultist-chan smiled beatifically.
"Er, right you are, miss," the slave announced nervously. "I can hold your plushie for you if you'd like."
Cultist-chan surrendered her doll and soon the ride started thundering down the tracks despite Dranon's failure to adhere to lapbar safety protocol. The train car caught onto the conveyor belt that slowly dragged it up towards the apex of the first hill, and the machine was kept in motion by captured guardsmen running for their lives inside giant hamster wheels connected to gears that ran the belts. A few of the daemonettes jeered and whistled at the sweaty, struggling, naked men, and a few threw remains of corn dogs full of meat whose source was best left unpondered.
"Hwue sthee hour aparthmenth from here!" Cultist-chan announced excitedly.
Sure enough, the view from the top of the track was something to behold. The city was ruined, and what little that still stood was kept intact by foul magics of the Warp. The town sprawled over the radiation-blasted and bleak hills of the captured world. Tattered Chaos banners flapped proudly in the thin breeze. The bloody ocean was below a boil today, and even some slaves had managed to secure the day off to frolic in the vermillion waves. The sky was full of traffic, and warships jostled with civilian aircraft for position. Near the western horizon, Dranon could spy the small, blasted archipelago where Khorne worshippers were playing out miniature but still deadly battles, practicing for the next great Crusade against the evil Imperium. All in all, it was a nice day.
Then the coaster started plummeting down the first drop, and Cultist-chan shrieked so loudly the sonic dampeners in Dranon's helm meant to protect his ears from Noise Marine blasts automatically kicked in. Riding a roller coaster in power armor wasn't actually very fun; all the gyros and force suppressors kept him from feeling much of anything. Cultist-chan, on the other hand, was dizzy with joy. The train was carried by its own momentum up the next hill, and then it banked along the first broad turn, sending Cultist-chan slamming into Dranon from the sudden, jerky force. If anything, she screeched even louder. They went down the next hill and there was a brief flash as the coaster's camera took their photo.
When the Chaos Corrupter finally pulled into a stop in its station, Cultist-chan was shaking like a Chihuahua, completely overtaken by her excitement. Dranon had to help her out of the car and back onto solid ground. She retrieved her little Void Dragon, and then the pair threaded their way through the people slowly milling out of the turnstile at the end of the line. At the exit, there was a small crowd of daemonettes and corrupted humans jostling for position to get a good look at their pictures.
Cultist-chan pointed, and said, "Iths yus!"
Dranon peered down her finger, and saw that it was in fact a picture of the two of them in the very front of the train. The camera caught Cultist-chan mid-scream, and all of her sharp teeth were on full display while her eyes were completely scrunched up. Dranon, in full Chaos Marine armor, looked bored, if any such expression could possibly be discerned from his graffittied and disfigured helm. Before he was done examining the digital photograph Cultist-chan grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him away to the next attraction. He followed her gamely, and peeked at the clock in his HUD to see how much longer he had to entertain the irrepressible girl.
The line for the Haunted House was short, and the corrupted teenagers of all species coming out through the exit looked genuinely scared. After the fall of the planet to the forces of Chaos, the horrors had naturally been reskinned to terrify a new audience, and the attraction itself had been renamed The Terrors of Orthodoxy. It had been lovingly reshaped by a hobbyist with far too much time on his hands, and the first horror that caught Cultist-chan by surprise was a cardboard cutout of an Ultramarine, which popped up unexpectedly in one of the façade's windows. She shrieked so loudly that Dranon's aural dampners kicked in once again.
Two ride attendants dressed in flawless façsimiles of the uniforms of the Imperial Guards helped the pair aboard one of the ride pods. Cultist-chan clutched at Dranon tightly, and the ride slowly advanced along its track through several animatronic dioramas that depicted the horrors of an Imperium-run galaxy. A perfect Aryan family, with a mother, a father, a son, and a little daughter, had a picture perfect picnic along a beach under a blue sky. They all had blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin, and the same face shape, right down to the perfectly sculpted aquiline noses. A stone faced Inquisitor looked on, watching them for any sign of incipient heresy. The next room showed a miniature version of an Imperium city, flawless down to the tiniest detail, and not a single speck of trash or tarnish was visible anywhere in the high resolution holographic projection. There were no other species or even other races depicted among the crowds that thronged the tree-lined avenues – without fail, they were all white, blonde haired, and blue eyed, just like the picnicking family. It looked like something out of Cultist-chan's most terrifying nightmares. She cried out a little in dismay, and Dranon discovered he was holding her hand with his finger. He quickly drew away.
The next room showed a radiantly gorgeous, hermaphroditic Slaanesh cultist locked away in a cage while Imperial families jeered and threw trash. The boygirl cried piteously and cowered, and the crowd laughed and hurled unspeakable filth into the cage, trying their best to splatter zhir with rotten food and feces. A few guardsmen stood watch and periodically poked zhir with an electrified cattle prod, eliciting sparks and cries of agony from the agonized Chaos devotee. Cultist-chan shivered, moved to tears of compassion at the thought of her brethren being treated so coldly.
The last room was a clever arrangement of mirrors that seemed to project a lone statue into uncountable infinity. It was an Imperium guardsman, in full parade-ground dress, standing and gazing soullessly into the distance. There was not a single fleck of sweat, blood, or dust anywhere on him, just perfect sterility, replicated a thousand million times over in the mirrors array. A single floodlight illuminated the entire scene and cast lurid shadows off the profile of the soldier, which bounced around the room as the train car passed through. To Cultist-chan, it was the perfect depiction of a universe without Chaos – bright, bleached, and devoid of anything that resembled living humanity. A stray tear rolled down her cheek. Even Dranon was reverently solemn.
Once they stepped out of the haunted house and blinkingly entered the light of the Warp storm, their moods improved considerably. In spite of the horrors, Chaos still endured, proud and faceted like a diamond. Anyone could find a home with Chaos, whether they were a mutant, a freak, a heretic, a murderer, or even a xeno; Chaos was the Big Tent in a galaxy full of closed-minded squares. As if to prove the point, Cultist-chan accidentally bumped into a Slaanesh devotee who was cruising the Boardwalk and enjoying the beautiful afternoon. The woman's outfit seemed to be covering everything except her genitals, which hung out of her black gimp suit puffy and distended. There was a whip hanging off a holster in her side, and she had written "RUIN ME" in white nail polish on the black latex.
"Thorry," Cultist-chan said.
"Think nothing of it, dear," replied the Slaanesh cultist.
Once they'd passed, Dranon asked, "Are you hungry, Cultist-chan?"
"Hwue counld eath."
They stopped at one of the food carts lining the beach side of the Boardwalk.
"What can I get you?" asked a bored slave who gazed longingly towards the ocean whenever he wasn't actively engaged in filling an order.
"Could I get three protein tacos with extra rat cheese, a fried pickle, and, uh, whatever the lady wants," Dranon answered.
"Twhou thurroth."
The man blinked. "A what?"
"Thurroth!"
"What?"
"Thurr-othhhhhhh!"
Dranon rolled his eyes. "I think she's asking for two churros."
Cultist-chan nodded vigorously.
"Okay, whatever."
The slave filled their order, and Cultist-chan joyfully accepted custody of two sugary, lard-soaked churros. Dranon mechanically fed his snacks into the mouth of his armor, which did the job of chewing, swallowing, and half of the digesting all on its own without any further input from him. The pair sat on a bench overlooking the sea, and they watched as beachgoers threw Frisbees and played tag and committed unspeakable acts of sex and violence on the white, blood-soaked sand. A great Warp storm seethed overhead, and Cultist-chan noticed with some dismay that her pale skin had reddened with a radiation burn that would probably peel before it healed. A large mushroom cloud rose over the horizon, but it was just the Khorne worshippers nuking themselves in their enthusiasm for the combat exercises, so nothing of value was lost. Cultist-chan sighed contentedly.
"Hwue thinkth hwue shuld goh," she finally said. "Hwue are getthing a nasthy ratiashion burnh."
"Well, it was, um, hm… okay, see you later, Cultist-chan."
"Hwuill youh takth hus outh agahin?" the girl asked hopefully.
"No." Then he saw the look on her face. "Probably not. Maybe. I don't know. I'll catch you later, okay?"
Cultist-chan skipped off cheerfully on her way back to her apartment. Dranon watched her until she disappeared behind the building that housed the souped-up bumper cars, and he was astonished to find himself in the center of a maelstrom of conflicting emotions.