an: been wanting to do this for a while now, just never quite had the time to do it.

disclaimer: bullshit, you're just lazy.

an: well that too. But i'm doing it now.

disclaimer: you got permission from Lord-Of-Change for this right? the opening is pretty similar to his Death Korps of Justice fic.

an: he said i didn't need it, but yeah i did.

disclaimer: right. Young Justice is a product of Brandon Vietti and Greg Weisman (among others), and is owned by DC Comics and Warner Brothers Animation. Warhammer 40,000 is a production of… a whole lotta people, and is owned by Games Workshop.

"Spoken"

"[Spoken in non-English/High Gothic/whatever-dialect-of-Low-Gothic-is-the-planetary-lingua-franca]"

Thought

++Telepathic communication++

"Non-radio electronic communication"

[[Radio or similar communication]]

chapter i: down the rabbit hole

Earth-40201

Imperium Space, Segmentum Pacificus

Valyria Sector, Subsector Hantin

Hasondoong

5-312-137.M42 / 137.342+HVH.M41

Hasondoong was a beautiful, lush jungle world with tropical vistas and coral-lined coastlines good enough to make it a Paradise World, but that wasn't important right now. Beneath its vast oceans (it only had one spindly continent) lay enough oil, minerals, and metals to lubricate and fabricate an entire subsector, and it was for the latter two it had a vast network of tunnels and caverns dug beneath the seas. The inhabitants lived on massive floating cities that were almost as wide as they were deep, unless they worked on the land, in which case they lived on the many resorts. But that wasn't important right now either.

Right now, what was important was that one exploratory mining expedition had dug a little too deep for its own good. In a natural cave too deep to be truly natural, they had found an ancient temple dedicated to… something, with a circular altar in the middle with a great big red gemstone on it. It may have been Chaos, it may not have, but it was certainly xeno in nature, and it certainly had icons that vaguely resembled those used by the Ruinous Powers. Being 1) xeno, 2) potentially warp-tainted, and 3) presumably designed for summoning rituals (it was a temple after all), it had the unfortunate result of getting the exploration crew to 'receive' 'assistance' from all of the big three branches of the Inquisition, which meant three Inquisitors in one subsystem, which was always jolly good fun, and definitely didn't result in chaos of the non-Heretical kind (most of the time), because anyone who could claim that was dead. Usually in the form of collateral. They actually managed to get three Inquisitors because Hasondoong made just that kind of Thrones, and the planetary governor had those kinds of connections.

First, from the Ordo Xenos, Inquisitor Sartak Bensinger. A stout man, who reminded the odd Cadian refugees who chanced to meet him of a fatter Ursakar E. Creed, with a metal pipe and black-lensed bionic eyes that gave the impression of wearing sunglasses. He had left most of his agents on board his ship, instead bringing a few dozen Tempestus Scions and a pair of Deathwatch Marines – the cave system was large, but the caves were often narrow or low-ceilinged, and usually both, and he doubted he'd need more than two Space Marines unless things got really hairy, and that was what all three Inquisitors had brought Achilles truggies for, plus a Goliath for the Space Marines to fit in. The Goliath also had a few Scout Bikes in storage just in case the Marines decided they'd need to move faster than the speed of by next Sanguinalia.

Then, from the Ordo Hereticus, Inquisitor Hervor Callidus Scharrow. He was a thin and relatively handsome (if hawkish in face) man once, but now, well, if he had any more cybernetic parts he'd be accused of switching allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Preliminary reports had indicated that the temple had not been used in centuries, and the mining expedition had 'just' found it, so he had only brought a few acolytes, most of whom were of the research-oriented bend. Insufficiently cautious? Perhaps, but the other two Inquisitors had, in his mind and cogitators, brought more than enough firepower to the table. If not to kill whatever came out, then to keep it trapped and/or wounded until they could use their ships to finish it off. The seas here were pretty shallow after all.

Lastly, from the Ordo Malleus, Inquisitor Hildegarde Torretoros. Half Voidborn, the other half from a relatively well-off Agri-World that had the luck of being close to a regional Inquisition HQ. As a result, even before she became an Inquisitor she cut a towering, athletic figure, at almost seven feet tall. Much like Inquisitor Scharrow, Inquisitor Torretoros used a lot of cybernetics, however apart from an augur array which protruded like a pair of horns from the sides of her head above her ears, and an interface port at the base of her neck, almost all of hers were subdermal or deeper – synth muscle, bionic organs, and the like. She, like Bensinger, had brought a pair of Space Marines with more in reserve in orbit – in her case, Exorcists, with a handful of Grey Knights 'just in case'. In addition to her being the only psyker of the three Inquisitors on site, she had brought along a pair of young psykers as support, known among her other Acolytes as 'the Twins'.

This was a bit odd of a name for them – while the Ordo Chronos had confirmed they were born on roughly the same day (without being on the same planet, confirming dates exactly was rarely if ever possible even with the best of the Administratum working on it), they were both roughly the same height, and they were both female, that was where the similarities ended.

The first and (allegedly) younger of the two (but definitely better-looking of the two) was me, Maxine Isengrav, a rather vigorous young woman from Armageddon. Like most of Torretoros's agents, my uniform was largely based on that of my homeworld, or the world I most identified with – which was Armageddon, of course. I had the typical mustard-yellow trench coat with buttons below the navel and toggles above, the hip and chest pouches, the battery satchels, the boots, the brown syn-leather gloves, everything. The collar of my undershirt (and flak armor) was just enough to cover the pale skin of my neck if I were to lower her head. There were a few differences of course – my trench coat lacked any unit insignia and instead featured reversible cuffs that could go over the gloves – on the inside, the Inquisition's "I" was tessellated in burgundy and dull gold. The boots were likewise a dark shade of burgundy instead of pure black like regulation Steel Legion uniforms. I had a few extra pockets and pouches, plus an armband I sometimes used indicating her status as a medic – well, biomancy-specializing psyker, same difference. My mask was skull-shaped and painted, in such a way that made it seem like it was smiling – an illusion helped by my half-moon blue-violet augmented eyes. Skull rebreathers were usually reserved for officers of Major and above, so it often confused the hell out of actual Steel Legionnaires, more so than even the lack of unit ID. Out of my matte black helmet poked an unruly mane of shoulder-length blonde hair, which was currently blowing in the wind of rapid movement – more on that later.

The second and (allegedly) older was one Corona Aitacerbi. A Mordian, like Maxine her uniform was also modified. Mordians did not have unit insignia on their outward uniform, instead keeping it on a patch on the lining of their jackets – a rare example of deliberately hiding one's identity among the Iron Guard outside of scout units. They did have rank insignia however, and in Corona's case hers had been replaced with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica's solar eye on her left shoulder, and the Inquisitorial "I" on the right. Her epaulettes lacked fringe entirely, instead featuring further identification of herself as both a psyker and an Inquisitorial agent. They came off, of course, and the sleeve insignia had linings around them that could be used to hide them – the Iron Guard may not have minded it, but the Inquisition usually frowned upon advertising one's status as an Inquisitorial Agent 24/7 unless one was themselves an Inquisitor. Her red hair, bunned up as it was, was resisting the wind blowing past them with all its might – more on that shortly.

You see the initial plan had been to go in and see what's what, and if the temple needed smashing. A pretty routine thing. They took some Achilles When they got close to the temple, the cave started to show the typical signs of Warp fuckery being afoot, which lent more evidence to the notion that the temple was in dire need of Inquisitorial investigation. So when they finally got to it, Scharrow wasted no time in removing the gemstone for further analysis (read: destruction somewhere away from other heretical things.)

Turns out, the gem served two purposes. Firstly, it drew Warp entities and Warp-tainted things to itself. Secondly, the temple sat upon a natural Warp Hole – that is, a Warp Gate whose other end(s) had stopped working as Warp Gates – for which the gem served as an Empyrean cork.

And out came daemons like champagne from a bottle opened at high altitude.

So now, there was a new plan. The Goliath was destroyed near the temple to serve as a temporary roadblock, and the Space Marines had switched to the bikes – one of the Exorcists to ride ahead and warn those at the cave's entrance that it was probably going to be time for daemons soon, and the other three to move with the Inquisitors. A few kilometers from the temple, the cave split into three branches, through which the three Achilles would each try and slow the daemons down with as much covering fire as could be mustered from a truggy that technically did not have any weapons besides a mining laser. Anyone not out of the caves by the time we got to the mouths would have to be acceptable losses – one way or another, we were going to seal the cave. Most likely with explosives. The Inquisitors had decided amongst themselves which Achilles would be the lucky one to bear the obviously Warp-related sealing gem out to the surface, and however they did it, Torretoros ended up winning/losing and we had to carry it.

Which brings us to the present. Enter Achilles truggy, pursued by a daemon on what might be called a Juggernaut, but it was the scrawniest damn juggernaut any of us had ever seen – Inquisitor Torretoros may have seen scrawnier, but her eyes were on the road, as road-ly as a mined-out cavern can be.

I was operating a vox-caster built into the truck that also served as a music player, with Corona manning the mining laser, using it for purposes it was not meant for but neither she nor its machine spirit seemed to care much. What she did mind, though…

[[I got gas and oil flowing through my veins, I got wire and plastic in my brain, I'm Techno Destructo – Techno Destructo!]]

"Maxine."

"Yes, Corona?" Here it comes…

"Do you ever stop and think before playing such vulgar music over the vox-casters?"

[[I got steel in my skull, harder than rock – and rubber and iron in my cock!]]

"I never stop to think to begin with!" I proudly proclaim as I fire my lascarbine at a few daemons. I could use some bioelectricity on them, but using just the lascarbine let me divide my focus more easily on other things. Like aiming at multiple daemons. Or making sure the music player stayed loud enough to be heard over the horde of slobbering Warpspawn. Or not falling off. "And it's not heretical – this is an Inquisition-certified music player. If someone were to try and play something Warp-tainted on it, it'd explode."

"And if it wasn't warp-tainted, but still heretical?" She raised an eyebrow, as if she had a point to make.

"Look," I said, pausing to shoot a daemon in the gut – whether it did much more than slow it down was another question – "I bought the vox-tape on a reputable world, in a reputable hive, on a reputable level, in a reputable shop, from a reputable dealer, who was quite comfortable selling it to me with me clearly being an Inquisitorial Acolyte. Besides," I added, shooting another daemon in the leg, "it's all an act, and everyone from Armageddon knows it, but we play along for off-worlders. If this is heretical, so are videopicts of Sanguinius beating Horus back to whence he came."

[[We were each put in this world to suffer – we each have our own private pain]]

It didn't convince my fellow Psyker-Acolyte, but it shut her up. "And it draws the daemons here – makes it easier to shoot them, plus, when we do bomb the entrances, hopefully it'll kill a few of these bastards as painfully as possible." At the very least, Corona could agree with that. The sides of her mouth twitched upwards, which was her equivalent of a smirk, I guess. She wasn't the type to make substantial facial expressions, even for a Mordian. Left unsaid was that I had convinced the other groups to also play loud, abrasive and hard-rocking music on their vox-casters. Daemons didn't like it much if it wasn't tainted by the Warp.

As I mulled on that thought, another Juggernaut mounted by a Bloodletter charged towards us and our humbly loyal Achilles. Both the daemon beast and the daemon daemon were of the more typical sort for their misbegotten kind than the last one – big, muscular, and angry-looking. Dangerous too, even when they weren't covered with blood, skulls, or bloody skulls.

[[You can't – Kill me – You won't – Break me]]

Such a big, obvious, Khorne-worshipping target with limited places to run should have been an easy target for a lascarbine and a mining laser. But then that's the reason daemons are so dangerous – they don't give an ork's ass about what things should be. You might even say they deliberately tried to go for the opposite of what things should be, as this Bloodletter saw fit to move his Juggernaut around like the floor was covered in oil. Just skating around our shots. Even when we did hit, they were only glancing blows, or to areas that the daemon really didn't care about getting hit in.

[[Chain me – beat me – cut me – kick me]]

We were so focused on killing the daemon that we didn't notice that the container the gem was on had started to emit a purplish-red glow. We could also be forgiven for not immediately noticing the foul energies it began to emit – being chased by daemons, one more source of heretical psychic background noise wasn't enough to notice. Nor did the Inquisitor notice either – the box was low on the deck, far below the view of the rear-view mirrors within the cabin.

[[I came to this planet to get my men to conquer the world with them, I'm Techno Destructo – Techno Destructo!]]

By the time it finally was emitting enough energy to be noticeable over the screaming Warp-radiation of a thousand daemons, though, it was too late. Maybe we should have put it in something a little more transparent.

The warp-tainted gem soon revealed that our first revelation about it was wrong – It was not the cork to the temple's Warp portal. The temple was a cork to the gem. It forced open the container it was in and rocketed backwards – or did it simply slow down – coming to an apparent halt some ten meters behind us. A squadron of furies and screamers flew right towards it and promptly vanished as a tear to the Warp opened up where the gem once was. The Achilles began to slow, its tires scrabbling in the dirt as its wheels tried to pull itself forward while the hole in realspace behind it tried to pull it backward – and up. Being the least secured to the vehicle, the Warp portal soon started to pull me up. I let out a yelp, which caught Corona's attention, and she grabbed my arm just in time to stop me from being sucked in completely.

This helped for all of five seconds. The Warp portal quickly proved too powerful for the Achilles's engine (or weight) to resist, and it along with a handful of daemons was lifted into the air and pulled into the portal. It vanished with a pop along with the rest of the daemons in realspace on that planet, not that we were there to see it.

[[I said, "Come with me, and fly into the sun!" But they said, "Fuck no, we're having too much fun!"]]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I shut my eyes, covered my ears, and mentally flipped the switch in my mask that let in air through my nose, and it was not enough to block out the raw sensations of the Warp. I didn't float away from the Achilles – Corona hooked her arm in mine, and had latched onto… something, probably the mining laser. Dimly, over the trillions of screaming, hungry mouths, I could hear the music player explode, splattering a bit of shrapnel across us both. The Inquisitor said something in her native planet's strain of Low Gothic that I couldn't understand, but was probably an expletive. Someone screamed a stream of curses in an underhive version of Armageddonian – me, probably, but who could tell in the Warp?

The daemons that were sucked in with us fell alongside us – some being swallowed up by hideous tendrils of Throne-knew-what, to be eaten or worse. Others started attacking each other in a Warp-induced frenzy. Some tried to attack us, but were pulled away either by the tendrils or the other daemons. More came, some left, some said their fucked up heretical bullshit in unknowable tongues before (presumably) giving the daemon equivalent of rude gestures and leaving.

How could I tell all this with my eyes shut, my nose plugged, my ears covered? That's the fun thing about being a psyker. In real space, you get a bit of information on your surroundings, more or less depending on what your specializations are, but mostly it's limited to where things with some level of Warp presence are. Have I mentioned how much I hate Tyranids? So being in the Warp for a psyker is like being able to sense water and skin diving in the ocean during a typhoon. Except the water wants to kill/eat/mutate/molest/infect you and is full of sharks that also want to kill/eat/mutate/molest/infect you.

Had we anyone else – a Space Marine, a Guardsman, a Techpriest – Throne, I woulda taken a damned Servitor at this point – we at least would have been able to shoot back. Maybe if there were psykers of more experience, or if the Inquisitor wasn't stuck in the cabin, but no. She was clearly busy enough shooting out of the shattered windshield to do anything to help us directly. None of us were insane to use psychic powers in the middle of the Warp.

It was when I could practically feel a Fury breathing on my neck that something… odd happened.

The vague falling-in-whatever-direction sensation I had been feeling changed to a much more precise falling-in-one direction one, and the Warp faded away like the dying screen of a bad pict. In its place were the blue-black skies of evening on a planet with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, and the trees and grass of a non-hive city park. Reflecting off the water in a fountain, I could see that the Warp had seen fit to put the Achilles above us, along with a handful of daemons.

My first thought in this new place was that hitting the tree I was rapidly approaching was going to hurt. My last thought before going briefly unconscious was that at least I wasn't in the Achilles.

an: Doing this in first person was kinda last-minute. I felt it'd work a bit better to portray Maxine's rather less-than-disciplined mentality this way. May continue it, at least for a chapter for Corona and Torretoros, but I'm not sure – that really depends on if y'all like it. There are probably things I got wrong about WH40K here, as I'll admit most of my contact with canon is from the 2.5 main Wikis (Lexicanum, 40KWiki, and 1d4chan), a handful of comics, game videos, and a respectable chunk of the Ravenor omnibus. Even so, I brushed up on what I knew as I wrote this, so I hope it's at least acceptably accurate. The right proppa battle with the daemons to be done next chapter. I would have added it here, but thinking about it I felt, daemons being daemons and Young Justice's version of Terra being very untainted by daemons (but very tainted by villains), it could get chaotic (hue) enough to be a chapter in its own right. Feel free to point out what I got wrong in reviews, but do be gentle, it's my first time writing anything remotely 40K-related.