I'm back. You're probably going to ignore this bit and read what I've written here, but skip down to the bottom for the actual author's notes.

"Its about time you got back."

"Nggrrgh..."

"You've been out for a while."

"Js'anght."

"Your bed is on fire."

"B'llsht."

"Tut tut. Such dirty language around small children. It will not be tolerated!" With a gleeful 'hya!' Emma pulled me off the bed, shocking me awake as I spun in place. Gravity asserted itself, and the world came tumbling up to meet me. I yelped, arms tangled in my sheets, as my face made a crunching noise when its fall was inevitably stopped by the floor.

I could feel blood seeping out of my nose as I shuffled around. Urgh... this was bad. This was really really bad.

Above me, I heard a sympathetic hiss and a whimper from the fun-sized God-Emperor of Mankind.

"Uhm... whoops?"

"Goddamit, Emma!"

"Sorry? You were kind of in a dreamscape manipulation inception thing back then. I think you should be thanking me for getting you out." She pouted. Yes, pouted. The future ruler of a million words pouted, crossed her arms and puffed her cheeks.

That was criminally adorable.

Priorities, dammit! "What about the others? Zara? Where..."

"Got herself back together pretty fast after her aspects figured out what was going on. Your help was appreciated, though."

You were rather useless most of the time, however...

Appreciative much?

Farseer much? Get used to it, monkey-boy.

It took me another five minutes to calm down and get my brain back together. Staring up at my ceiling (especially the spot where the railgun round had passed through the alarm clock and continued on up. Made for excellent focus, but poor conversation), I weighed up a few of my options. I was down there for a while, as I let the color slowly return to my face. Emma, wearing an old sweater (red and white, my sister's, still far too large for her) stood with her hands pressed to her face, covering her cheeky grin as she tapped into the mental argument that Zara and I were in.

Actually, other things were more important. I pushed her away, and focused on getting myself back up off the floor.

"How did you know?"

"That you were 'under'?" Queried Emma. "Well, we knew that you were under, but thought it was something that you and Zara had thought up of, seeing as she was asleep above your bed, and you had a sticky note with 'BRB: Training' on it."

"... wait, what?"

"On your forehead." She continued, waving the aforementioned sticky note as evidence. "I'm only saying what I saw. I figure that someone compelled you to do it, or something. We just left you alone until the Farseer woke up screaming like a little girl."

Says the little girl.

Which is why I know what screaming like a little girl sounds like.

"Before we get into any more arguments; how did you get me out?"

"Digging you out, of course." I could practically feel the grin she now radiated.

"Whoa." I held up my hand. "You. Digging around my brain?"

"I shall keep your lust for me a secret, don't worry about it~!" Emma singsonged.

"Wh-wha?"

"Too easy." She sighed. "Don't worry, just kidding. But yeah, we dug around your brain. That Rose that lead you on a merry chase was... disturbing. Tried to leave all sorts of corruptions behind, started messing with your mind, your Self. We fixed what we could, and you should be able to adjust everything back eventually."

My look must have spoken volumes. Emma made a 'pshaw' gesture with a hand. "You'll be fine."

I looked outside. The sun was high in the sky, despite the time of year. "How long?"

"How long were you out? Just a day and twelve hours or so."

"Felt more like eight months or so."

"More on thirteen. Things get weird like that. Anyway, its almost lunch time now, so you should be pretty hungry."

I held up a hand. "Last question."

"What?"

"Why don't I remember it?"

"Because..." The girl smiled kindly, sadly. She brushed back ebony hair, and faced me directly, her chin pointed up and staring into my eyes. When she next spoke, it carried the weight of years, and the power of a god. "Well, because a certain old soul knows what happens to people who remember those things. Now get up, time for you to get some food. Alice is cooking something with Batel, so... hey, go check up on Vinny. I'll come around when you're done."

[Chapter 32: Warpath Week: Thursday]

"You can throw back grenades? Huh."
- Sergeant Sohm Vekt

"Well, yeah. It is a way of making sure you don't die." Vincent grumbled.

I chuckled as I poked my head in through the door of my 'study' room, which I recall had been converted into the motor pool and RnD labs. The odor of burnt wiring, ozone and plasma cell effluent was mixed into a distinctly tinny smell, sharp like a scalpel as it cut through my senses. But in the middle of it all, Vincent sat with a small gallery of observers.

"We usually just dive for cover." Sohm returned. "Most of the time. Sometimes we kick it away, but I don't ever recall anyone ever picking one up and returning it. Fuse timing is just too risky with grenades."

"Well, yeah, its a gameplay mechanic in a game." Vincent sighed, his voice turning into an indignant growl as the Space Marine and the Imperial Guard Sergeants continued to argue with each other over the little details of contemporary warfare, and yet he avoided mentioning that a month or so ago these guys were nothing more than a game for him. "Makes things a little more fun. Or interesting."

"No, you can't just wade through gunfire like that! And there you go again, throwing back hand grenades!"

"Why not?" Beside him, the hatted Grey Knight known only as Silverite shrugged to emphasize his question, his pauldrons rising as he raised his arms, hands held palm-up. From what was relayed to me by the other Space Marines, visibly shrugging one's shoulders was a feat of great control over one's suit. That, or they had auto-servos installed. From what I saw of the Grey Knights' archaic power armor, I reckoned more towards the former. "Just shoot them before they throw the grenade, its easier that way."

There was a groan from the Imperial Guardsman as he curled up to let his head touch his helmet, which was resting on his knee.

"We don't have auto-targeters like you do, Silverite." Drawled Sohm, palming the top of his head and scratching the stubble of his hair.

The Space Marine cocked his head to one side, as if confused. "I have an auto targeter?"

Beside him, the other power-armored warrior facepalmed. "Its standard issue for most of His Majesty's Blessed Power-Armor. Grey Knight Silverite... please tell me you use your targeter."

It was the first time that the Grey Knight sounded unsure of himself as he raised his hand. "Uh... well... okay then: 'you use your targeter'?"

"It comes standard with Marine armor, doesn't it?" Demanded the exasperated Guardsman, palming his face to join in the others.

"The activation stud is usually at your right temple, Brother Silverite."

"Oh, really! ?" Silverite immediately reached up to his helmet, and began to wrench it to the left and then the right, as if trying to look around the internal components of the helmet.

Meliya continued the palming of faces, tapping her index finger against her forehead as Silverite continued to toy around with the millenia old piece of polished ceramite and electronics. Was that really the way to go about... Suddenly, the helmet had been rotated a half-turn as the Grey Knight jerked it around sharply, eliciting a screech of protest from various parts of the neck as the back of the helmet slumped forward to touch the armored collar of the Grey Knight.

"What the f-"

"Emperor..." Sohm all but teleported backwards as the Grey Knight's arms slumped, stumbling on his last step and falling to his back as he tried to distance himself away from the Space Marine Psyker. Vincent and I both glanced at each other as we tried to figure out what was going on.

"Silverite! What... uh... getting your neck broken is still fatal, right?"

"Aww, its all right, Sohmmy! I'm all good! Just the helmet probably ain't."

The Grey Knight's voice was muffled, distant. Like... well, like he had a well-padded helmet between him and us.

"Uh... wow, gee. I didn't quite realize how much the back of my head stinks. Eww. Its still slippery... and its getting on my nose."

There were gagging noises.

"Okay... not talking any more..." There was a pause as he tried to wrench the helmet off his head. It took him a few minutes before he stopped struggling with it, and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Can you get me out?"

Sohm chuckled, and then shouted over his shoulder to the crowd of the Machine cultists down below. "Mechanic!"

I glanced at the former translator.

He was looking more and more like the grizzled Guardsmen that I had seen in the source materials for Warhammer 40,000, rather than the more Upham-ish translator that I had first met; perhaps he resembled a much more different Upham now; still lanky of build compared to the other humans, his armor was now a mix of burnt and worn, juxtaposed with the shiny and new(ish) battleplate now hanging across his left shoulder – probably because entire plates of the ceramic weave had to be replaced, freshly painted with a border that indicated that he was a Sergeant. The entire left sleeve of his fatigues was no longer there, instead wrapped in gauze that seemed to run up the entire length of that arm; punctuating his 'wounded warrior' look was the fact that over those bandagings he still wore his gloves and bracers. There were signs of upgrading happening as well; Sohm had a built-up neckline on his breastplate, a collar of armor masking his chin and some of his mouth. He now had a large pair of goggles – one that had a single glass panel that covered half his face rather than two separate eyepieces, though I wasn't sure if it did anything. Slithering up from his collar and around his right ear was a comm-piece, presumably related to the small pack he wore at his hip. Comm gear, I supposed; the Imperial and xenos tech crossed over rarely, and thankfully radio was one of them; it was all a matter of getting the right frequencies and the right codes for their comm gear to work.

Sohm still had his laspistol sidearm from the time when he was still a heavy bolter gunner, but now with his job as Sergeant, the former administration lackey had adopted a las-carbine with... wait a second.

"Oh hey..." I crouched down, taking in a better view of the weapon dangling off the scabbard at one hip. Well, in fact the weapon was more cradled than scabbarded; the simple matte black shroud covering the back half of the weapon seemed to make up the top half of the scabbard, while the other half – the one actually attached to Sohm - looked more like a playground slide that had been reshaped to fit the teeth of the blade, and given the size of its user the half-scabbard seemed a rather insultingly functional adaptation for the newly minted Sergeant. He seemed to notice this, and wrenched the blade free to show me; the chainsword was as dangerous looking cradled as it was when he finally freed it of its resting place, holding the functionally lethal 'working warrior's weapon'.

"Looks new." I observed, noting that one of those screws had long ago belonged in my 'bits box' in the garage. "Actually, that... looks like something I saw on eBay not too long ago."

The Sergeant grinned. "You can't believe how excited those cogboys have been at augmenting their tech with actual Terran designs, some that haven't been seen in... well, a long time. You haven't been to the fab labs yet, have you?"

= The Garage =

Well, now I know what happened to my garage.

The entire wall that had once contained shelves and my grandfather's workbench, a couple cupboards of knick-nacks and a stack of boxes now looked more like someone had taken out a slice of a manufactorum and transplanted it into my wall, like those cutaway picture books I used to pore over as a kid. Rigging for cargo and other pieces of machinery and equipment had been constructed literally overnight, and now tanks, machines and boxes of stuff were being hauled up and down pulleys. The fact that they had two titanic scale bodies to do their heavy lifting would most certainly have helped speed things along; with a Vincent or a Miles doing the work for them, a lifting process that would have taken a couple of hours instead happened in a handful of seconds; an example of this happened when the former engineer carefully lifted up a tank and gently fed in its treads, doing in twenty seconds a process that – according to him – would have taken the better part of several hours given that the tread and immobilized tank weren't the lightest of things... for appropriately scaled men.

For people like us, though, this was a pinch.

"It feels weird." Miles muttered, even as his finger moved in little circles to wind the tread around the sprocket and eventually set the tank down to let the more nimble fingered techpriests move up with a little pin that would let them secure the treads in place. "I did this once, before, with one of the Abrams tanks. Training, they said, in case we actually had to do something like this 'out on the field'."

"Oh?" I didn't even look up from where I was holding the sponson mounted lascannon of a Land Raider in place while the techmarine busied himself with welding and screwing and wiring it back into fighting condition.

There was a grunt from Miles's direction. "I reckon they wanted us to do it because someone needed tracks replaced."

"Huh. So someone let you noobs do the job for them?"

"Pretty much." He answered, setting the tank – a Leman Russ – down on the bench and standing up to move on to the next job. "Gonna head off now. Till later."

"Later."

Formerly a workbench, the centerpiece for all this assembly work was the giant motor pool that it had been transformed into. Three tanks were being refitted; two Guard Leman Russ tanks (one of which had newly fitted treads thanks to Miles' efforts) and the third a Space Marine Rhino pattern APC. I watched as the Leman Russ was packed with .45 ACP bullets – ones that would have gone towards the .45 Colt that Vincent had looted off a gangster some... days ago, wasn't it?

The second, a model armed with autocannon rather than the larger main guns, were being loaded with slimmer shells, ones that I noticed were half the size of my pinky. Despite protest, I picked one up, and read off the rim that they were .22 rifle rounds. Which would fit into an autocannon, just as the .45 ACP rounds would work for the larger battle cannon.

That's convenient...

Oddly convenient.

I turned around.

"Hey, Emma..."

= Michael's Study =

Rattling off gunfire, Vincent instinctively yanked his controller to the side as he forced his player character into a roll which sent him behind a wall. The green explosive rounds splashed harmlessly against them. The camera was sucked into the back of the figure's head, and play resumed, taking on the perspective of a helmet camera.

"Interesting... so his armor includes void shielding as well as ceramic plating?"

"Yep."

Rolling again behind a growling figure, the player character rose again, leaped up onto its back, and jammed a knife into the alien's neck. The camera spun out again, giving an almost cinematic view of the assassination.

More alien weaponry was brought to bear on the lone wolf, the blobs of plasma dissipated by the fluttering orange shields. Vincent frowned as he zoomed in and sniped at the offending xenos.

He glanced aside as he caught sight of the Techmarine scribbling on a data pad with his stylus-enhanced fingertip.

"Uhm... Are you taking notes there?"

"Yes."

"Huh. If it helps, that shield acts pretty much like an Iron Halo, in terms of wargear."

"I see. Grenade."

"Oh?"

There was an explosion on the screen. A player character died horribly, cartwheeling through the air. As the figure fell, purple needles and green pellets of plasma were fired into the body.

"Oops." Vincent deadpanned, releasing the tension in his arms. The Techmarine frowned as he looked at the body.

"Wait, that's not right. Where are the armor breaches?"

"Graphical limitations. Its too much bother to simulate damage on bodies that you only see when you die." The larger of the two gamers immediately supplied as he thumbed his way through to the last checkpoint. "Just go with it, Marine. This game a civilian made entertainment piece depicting fictional warfare, its not meantto be realistic."

There was a huff. "It should be. Unrealistic depiction for warfare in a simulated environment is dangerous. If you leave a flawed impression of what fighting is like, then a simulation-trained or educated soldier is liable to go into battle with those flaws in mind, and get himself killed. Like that cover system you showed me two games back; half those weapons should have been able to shoot through that wooden board, not be stopped by them."

"Its a game that plays well enough for me to enjoy it when I'm playing it. This is entertainment, not simulation. If you want simulation... hold on." He paused, then shut down the game. Thumbing through Michael's games, Vincent frowned, then brightened as he pulled out a slim case. He didn't have what he was looking for, but at least he found himself with something similar. "Hmm. Close enough. Anyway... there are other games that provide more realistic simulation, to a degree, but remember that this stuff is designed to entertain rather than educate..."

The techmarine nodded sagely. "I see... are there any contemporary settings? I am curious as to how Ancient Terrans conducted warfare."

The bespectacled boy nodded, pressing the button marked with a power switch icon. "Already loading. Again, this is entertainment, not simulation, but it'll give you a better idea of how we do things on 'Ancient Terra'."

Okay guys, its been a loooong, looong time since I last updated. Sorry about that ^^;

Not much has happened in this chapter, but that me trying out the characters again, getting used to their personalities and nuances. It might be a while before I post again on FF, but I've found that bouncing ideas off others helps, and so does their input. So I've decided to post primarily on the spacebattles creative writing forums from now on, and post things scene-by-scene rather than as an episode. Once those scenes can make up a chapter, I'll update it on here so for more frequent updates (and short omake-snippets) find your way to the spacebattles thread and check out the community there.