piper90 | 002: Offering Lessons.

I'm noticing a few of you are having trouble with Planker's combat training. And, all due respect to Lubitsch, but he's a little too distracted and has too little time with us to do more than give pointers.

[That's about as close as Armstrong's going to come to saying that he thinks Lubitsch is about as useful as tits on a bull.]

With that in mind, I'm willing to teach some of you.

I've been a boxer for thirty-two years. I learned the basics of combat at West Point and, when I became a Silver Avenger in 1986, I was trained to fight superhuman opponents and groups of armed human opponents. I've been doing that, and training others to do that, for just about twenty-five years now. I'm also decent with a blade and good with any kind of gun you'd care to name.

I'm not a fancy martial artist. Don't expect any hebijutsu or capoeira from me. This would be about surviving, not looking pretty. I may have picked up a few things here and there, but that's about it.

I'll work with you, whenever your time allows, gauge your level, and we can build up from there. I won't say it'll be the easiest thing you've ever done, but it won't be punishing. Some sessions will be more exercise. You need to be fit to fight. But it won't be a waste of your time.

Those of you with more experience, I'm willing to work with you as well, or just spar for the people who don't need it, but this offer is gauged more towards those of us who never needed to learn. If you'd like to help, by all means, meet with me and we'll see if we can't work something out. I'd prefer to do this in small groups or even one on one,just so I can cater to everyone as needed. More teachers would make that easier.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As long as they aren't daemons or oathsworn to Horus Lupercal, I can work with them [ However if they are either of those two categories he will straight up murder them. ]

[Well, that's a start. He'll just have to be prepared to rearrange students if Garviel's as good with xenos as Cain is.]

I haven't heard the name come up, so we're probably good on that front.

How do you know that name?

[A fellow imperial? Cain has mixed feelings on whether to greet them with relief or trepidation.]

I am his enemy, from now until the galaxy falls silent.

[lupercal's tits they're a dramatic one]

Well, that's one thing we have in common. I heartily approve of anyone who makes it their life mission to tweak the great enemy's nose.

Are you the one Saturday mentioned? Cain?

[If they're moderately acquainted with Saturday, then they can't be one of the more extreme Emperor-botherers who'd torch mutants and all that. That's one concern off his mind.]

She only mentioned good things, I hope?

Only that you were apparently from where I am, and are a "commissar" of the "imperial guard." Is that an Imperial Army rank I am not aware of? I am a Captain of the Adeptus Astartes, myself.

[?????]

[These quotation marks are certainly both.... puzzling and worrying. A normal astartes he could potentially see having very little interest in the minutiae of the ranks of the Imperial Guard, but a Captain?]

Not as such. I'm with the Officio Prefectus, a subdivision of the Adeptus Munitorum. I'm attached to the Valhallan 597th.

[That should make it more clear. Hopefully.]

Then it's a relief to see one of the Emperor's finest here. Can I ask what chapter you represent, Captain?

Edited 2020-05-05 05:45 (UTC)

Of course, the Munitorum. Does that mean you're a logistical specialist? [That would make sense, if nothing else, ] A chapter? I am no Ultramarine, Commissar. I function as one of Malcador's agents, though it would be difficult to prove this without my armor, which I am given to understand has been stored away from us unless a mission requires it.

Edited 2020-05-05 06:15 (UTC)

[Is this man mistaking him for a pencil pusher? Between this and the young lady with the chairs, he's not sure his reputation will survive this battering.]

Not a logistical specialist, unless herding guardsmen count as such. My role is more personnel and morale.

One of Malcador's agents? I'm afraid I don't follow.

[He's pretty sure that 'Malcador the Hero' fellow died about ten millennia ago, unless somebody has adopted a highly ambitious namesake.]

[ That is exactly what Loken did. But personnel and morale makes sense to Loken, so he does his best to answer truthfully without revealing too much. ] Simply put, the Regent has tasked a number of Astartes or otherwise with dealing with problems. I am amongst them.

I'm not the brightest bang in the armory, but I'm fairly certain that the Regent of Terra died ten thousand years ago.

That makes no sense. I saw him only a few days before I ended up here, after the ambush we sprung on the Sons of Horus at Saturnine Gate. [ Loken's mind sort of grinds through possibilities though. He met a human some 28,000 years in the past.... Is Cain his future? ]

At the Saturnine Gate? You mean in the Imperial Palace? On Holy Terra?

[Absolutely too much nonsense is happening right now and Cain doesn't know what conclusions he should be coming to.]

Yes. The very same.

[Okay.]

Unless Abaddon the Despoiler launched the most concise, successful 13th Black Crusade in history and marched right up to the gates of Terra without ripping up the carpeting all the way across two segmentums and alerting half the galaxy, and I've bloody well slept through it, you're telling me you're from M31?

Edited 2020-05-06 06:18 (UTC)

Yes. I take it you are not?

Last I checked my chrono, it was 937.M41.

[ That gives Loken a long moment of pause. ] We won, then?

We did.

[Cain sobers up a bit, reading those words. This must feel like a monumental revelation for somebody who was just at Terra's gates, and so Cain tries to treat this discussion with a little more respect.]

The Imperium's armies vanquished the Archenemy's forces. Not entirely, and with a greivous sacrifice of life, but we won. We still stand now.

Then all we have lost or sacrificed is worth it, if the Imperium stands. [ If only he knew what it had become ]

[Garviel is going to have a rough, rough time.]

By the Emperor's grace.

The galaxy isn't perfect, but we're limping on. Is this something you'd like to hear more about in person?

I am not sure, honestly. THis is a lot to take in.

I understand. It must feel unsettling, perhaps even anti-climatic to find out this way.

[He supposes even space marines can be overwhelmed. And the discovery of a future ten thousand years in the future would certainly be the cause of one. Cain's feeling fairly shocked himself.]

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