Chapter 2

Karachna was as angry as a sex-deprived slaaneshi cultist. Upon arriving on the chapter's space bound fortress, he had been informed that his entire scout company had been decimated. Apparently some idiot had decided it would be a good idea to send them to a nearby system for training. Without any weapon skill.

The last vox transmission (with screaming and what seemed like a woman panting in the background) had said

"Sir! We are PINNED DOWN! We were ambushed by a... –KHRSHHHT— ...suntan... –KHRSHHHT-- ...weapons training... –KHRSHHHT-- ...groin... –KHRSHHHT-- ...clawing at insides... –KHRSHHHT-- ...require... AAAAAAGH!! –KHRSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHT--"

Karachna wasn't quite sure what the groin was about and didn't want to be either, however the fact that his entire scout company was now gone meant that he had to do some recruiting. Fast. He decided that the best thing to do was call his honour guard in and have a bit of a brainstorm. He was about to head off to the war room when he suddenly realised he had killed his last honour guard. Time for trials.

Karachna stood up in the training cage hall and addressed his chapter. One thousand Space Marines, armed to the teeth from their personal armoury. Karachna himself was wearing his artificer armour (well, if it could be called that. It was actually eight layers of compacted, dense power armour, fused together and wired with artificial muscle bundles. Almost completely indistinct from power armour from the outside, the only difference being the shoulder pad fused to the right knee joint.) to make sure any flying chips of power armour didn't have him confined to the apothecarion, especially not after what had happened last time. The groin plate had been extremely hard to remove from his oolitic kidney. He threw his thunder hammer into the crowd, apparently pleased with the thud and subsequent groan from where it landed, and the trials began.

Two days later, the trials finished, and the five remaining marines lined up in front of Karachna, while the rest lined up for organ replacement. Karachna walked down the line of marines closely followed by a record servitor, calling out the men's name, medical history, and by what chance in hell they survived the tournament without injury. The first man in line was a ten foot tall suit of terminator armour apparently called Haren. He had chosen to take a large assault cannon and a chainfist into the tournament. Emperor knows what must have happened to his opponents.

"Haren Nathax." droned the servitor. "Terminator from first company. Won the tournament by punching every opponent full of holes. If this stratagem failed Haren would walk through up to the opponent and just punch it." They moved along to the next marine in line, a fairly thinly built marine wielding a pair of what looked like miniature power swords. "Kharne Arnek." continued the servitor, "Every time an opponent entered the cage, Kharne dropped from above and incapacitated them before they could react." The next marine was battered and bruised, seeming to be nothing other than a marine with a bolter. "Nathan Altha. Constantly drove round the edge, shooting his bolter into the middle. The bike blew up in the second to last round, knocking out the opponent. He won the last round when the engine of his bike dislodged from the ceiling and fell on the opponent." Missile launchers were the last thing Karachna expected in a confined cage match so the next marine caught him off guard. He was a fairly short (well, for a marine) squat person with a large missile launcher strapped across his back. The missile launcher had an abnormally long barrel that must have made it more accurate. "Sergio Reed. No opponent lasted longer than five seconds in the same cage as every time a marine entered he took a missile to his left shoulder." The final marine in the line was a fairly smug man with a flamer in each hand rested on his shoulders. "Charon Anvilus." started the servitor.

"Yes OK, I don't need to know how he got through this." moaned Karachna.

Despite this the servitor was determined to go on. "Won the tournament by..." was all it managed before Karachna shot it in half with his plasma pistol. To be truthful he really shot it into two thirds as one third of it was vaporised but that really doesn't matter.

Karachna turned to face the five marines as they regained their composure and looked them each in the eye. "Congratulations. You are the five lucky marines to have gained a place in my honour guard."

"Oh for fucks sake." muttered Sergio shortly before taking a kick to the groin from Karachna. This was a special occasion as it meant everyone in the chapter had now been kicked in the groin. Hatches opened in the ceiling dropping thousands of balloons and confetti. Karachna knew that the same thing was happening across the whole of the ship. He turned to his new Honour Guard and gestured for someone to help Sergio up.

"Here is your first mission." barked Karachna. "Destroy every single one of these balloons. And the confetti too." And so began the galaxy's first great balloon massacre.

The scout company is a reference to my friend's story 'The Forq Marines' by angry kid130. I will also be merging stories with Camion Lavair by Reedy180 and an orky tale by hell yer. Trust me, read them or this won't make sense later.