Pinkie had not introduced you to this one. You want to go talk to her but at the same time you’re afraid to interrupt those wonderful wubs she’s making. Best to just wait until she's finished and talk to her then. Pinkie sees you staring and get’s a glint in her eye.

”Who is that?” you ask Twilight. She follows your gaze.

”Oh, her. I don’t actually know her name, but she goes by DJ P0n-3 when she’s working.”

DJ P0n-3? That’s cute. You turn back to Twilight, hoping to finally be done with the interrogation. And then you notice the beautiful wubs are gone. You turn back to see what’s up and are met by Pinkie Pie standing there with the DJ pony. Gods damnit, Pinkie, why you so bro?

”Anonymous, meet DJ P0n-3!”

The pony holds out her hoof to shake.

”My real name’s Vinyl Scratch, but you can just call me Vinyl. Or Scratch. You can call me whatever the buck you like.”

You feel like drudging up an old title for the sake of impressions.

”Well met, Vinyl.” you say, shaking her hoof. “I am Anonymous, Black Foe of the Craftworlds.”

She looks over her glasses at you and smiles.

”Cool name.”

Damned well better be, took you the better part of a thousand years to get it. You stole so many fucking soulstones. You didn’t even sacrifice them to Slaanesh, you just stole them for the hell of it. You did feed them to a giant spider-daemon though. Wait, what’s going on again?

”So, I hear you wub good.” she says.

”You hear right.” you reply.

”Care for a little contest?”

”I can never decline a challenge! Name your challenge, tiny unicorn!”

She slides her glasses back up. “Wubs.”

”Anon, wait, you still haven’t answered my question!”

DON’T BE A COCKBLOCK, TWILIGHT.

”Questions later! Now we battle!”

Vinyl looks over to Pinkie. “Would you do the honors?” she asks.

Wasting no time, Pinkie bolts to the middle of the party and produces a microphone from... somewhere.

”Alright everyp0ny, back up! Anon and Vinyl are gonna go at it!”

She has such a way with words.

Vinyl makes her way back to her turntables and the ponies all stand back and watch intently. She makes a few adjustments to her machinery and throws a record on. She stares pointedly at you and hits a button. Then the wubs begin. The whole damned barn starts shaking under the assault. You swear a single tear forms in your eye as you hear it.

She’s going into overdrive at the tables, turning nobs, pushing puttons, constantly making mirco-adjustments. The changes she made were probably inaudible to the ponies, but to you it was like she was conducting an orchestra. Being a Noise Marine you hear things more acutely than any other being alive can hope to imagine. Every individual vibration of the air molecules around you is heard. Where others might simply hear a loud blaring note, what you hear is a veritable symphony.

Slaanesh must have some kind of influence on this Vinyl Scratch pony because no mortal should be able to perceive sound so acutely to do what she’s doing. You idly wonder how she’d feel about worshipping Chaos.

After the last discordant note from the turntables fades the ponies break out into thunderous applause. You join them, that was fucking amazing. As the applause dies down all eyes turn to you. You walk out onto the floor and heft your Blastmaster. Twilight and the other jam their hooves over their ears, remembering the last time you used it.

Except for Pinkie, she looks fucking ecstatic.

You turn a few nobs and turn it down to non-lethal levels of wub. This thing may be a weapon, but it was a little known fact that the Blastmaster was originally designed as an instrument for the Maraviglia. It was only ever debuted once though. Turns out that even used as plain old instruments the damn things were able to tear apart reality. And it wasn’t your only weapon of choice here. You had ten thousand years worth of wargear upgrades and warp mutations you intended to make use of here. Along with one or two surprises.

With a blink, you chose one of your favorite tracks from your armor’s memory.

The loudspeakers that make up your pauldrons begin to play.

”Prepare yourselves ponies, things shall get loud now!”

You squeeze the trigger of your Blastmaster and it lets loose a deafening discordant shriek. The Bass Cannon isn’t set to crowd control levels, but many of the ponies still recoil in shock as their senses are assaulted. Vinyl, for her part, barely twitches.

Suddenly the turntables blare again. You narrow your eyes and glare at Vinyl.

”YOU INTERRUPT?!”

This pony has no idea who she’s fucking with. You crank up the bass and Vinyl does the same.

”You wish to battle? Fine, come and hear the song of Slaanesh!” you yell over the noise.

Vinyl just keeps that smug smile on her face. The whole barn is shaking at this point. Pinkie was the only one not covering their ears. A beam falls from the ceiling. Alright, this is getting out of fucking hand. You are not going to lose a wub fight to a pony. You still had one more card. You just hope you don’t kill anypony.

”That is enough for now!” you yell.

You deactivate your Blastmaster, you activate your Doom Siren, and you scream. A single note, as deep as the void, as high as the firmament. The blast from your Doom Siren knocks all the ponies over and cancels out every other noise. You look at the ponies laying all over the barn, eyes rolling all over the place. Except for that grey one, her eyes are completely normal now.

Maybe the Doom Siren was overdoing it. Vinyl pops up from behind the turntables, glasses all askew and mouth agape.

”... Sorry.” You sure are apologizing a whole lot today.

Vinyl hops down from the turntables and walks over to you, still looking at you in awe.

”That was awesome!” she yells.

So you weren’t in trouble for using a weapon of mass destruction to win a contest with a pony? Completely fine with that.

”Yes. Yes it was, wasn’t it?”

”You bet your plot it was! How’d you do that?”

You tap your helmet. “My Doom Siren. Specially made for sonic combat.”

”How do I get one of those?”

”You have to give your soul to Slaanesh, for a start.”

"Is that all? Man, sign me up!”

Yes, these ponies would make fine allies. Pinkie bounds up to you as the rest of the ponies get to their feet.

”Anon, that was the coolest thing ever! Do it again!”

”As much as I would love to, that’s probably not the best idea.”

Pinkie pouts and its almost enough to make you turn on your Doom Siren again. You just can’t say no to that face. But before you get the chance to level the building, you’re interrupted by a sound.

It starts slowly at first, but quickly builds to a deafening crescendo. The ponies are all cheering raucously for you. You just assaulted them with one of the deadliest weapons you possess and they’re cheering for you. Truly, you have come home.

You feel your right hand jerk and see that Vinyl is making a show of victoriously lifting your hand into the air. It barely comes up to your chest. But fuck if it isn’t one of the most adorable things in the world. You decide to help her out and lift your hand all the way into the air. Vinyl yelps in surprise as she’s dragged up with it. And you stand in the middle of a crowd of adoring ponies with a little white unicorn laughing and dangling from your gauntlet.

There are so many good feels. You also take a second to realize that if any of your brothers saw this they’d never let you live it down. Chaos forbid a Grey Knight saw it, he’d probably suffer a rage induced stroke if he saw this much heresy. But if ponies were wrong then you didn’t wanna be right.

Pinkie trots out to the center of the room again.

”Alright everyp0ny, that’s a wrap! I hope you enjoyed the party!

The ponies all file out of the barn looking happy as can be. You feel just as happy as they look, you’d made some great friends today.

Friends. Not allies, not brothers, not minions. They were your friends. You had never had friends before.

”So Anon, if ya don’t mind my askin’, what the buck are you anyways?”

Oh right, Vinyl still had no idea what you were. That’s cool though, introductions were fun.

”I am a Space Marine of the Emperor’s Children.”

”Space Marine, huh?” she says. “No idea what that is but it sounds pretty awesome.”

Pony, you don’t know the half of it.

”Most of the time, yes. It’s just as awesome as you think it is.”

”That’s cool. We should hang out. Stop by my place sometime if you ever wanna lesson on how to really wub.”

Is that an innuendo? Normally you’d say yes, but considering the thing the words just came out of you really aren’t sure.

”Yes, that would be most enjoyable. Not since my brothers have I seen another being who possessed such a gift.”

She smiles at you. “Well I guess that’s a compliment then. See ya round, Anon!”

The pony trots off and leaves you smiling to yourself beneath your helmet. Gods it felt good to smile like this again. Why did you ever stop? Oh right, the thing with the Fateweaver. You’ve said it before and you’ll say it again. Fuck Tzeentch.

Once the last of the ponies leave Twilight trots over to you.

”So did Celestia say anything about where you’ll be staying while you’re in Ponyville?”

Huh. As a matter of fact she did not. You shake your head in the negative. Twilight puts a hoof to her chin and hums to herself thoughtfully.

"Well I guess you can stay at the library until you get a place of your own or you leave. Whichever comes sooner.”

Aw, how nice of h- wait a second. Library. Ew.

”Yeah, I could probably make some room in the basement laboratory for you. That’d work.”

Laboratory. This is relevant to your interests. By Slaanesh you were gonna make so much obscura. However, best to be polite first. That’s what friends do, right? Be polite to each other? Yeah, that sounds... right. You guess.

”I am fine with any accommodation, Twilight. As one of the Astartes I don’t actually have to sleep so I don’t even need room and board.”

Twilight waves you off a little too eagerly.

”Nonsense! You can stay in the library, a guest can’t stay outside.”

”If you insist, Twilight.”

Fuck year, obscura time!

”Alright then, now that that’s taken care of let’s head on over, it’s getting pretty late and I imagine you’re pretty tired from today.”

Fuck that noise. With the constant mire of stimulants and weapons grade obscura that your suit kept pumping into your veins you wanted nothing more than to go wrestle a carnifex. And then rape it. But she didn’t need to know that.

”Very well, lead the way.”

The two of you leave the party and head through the town to your new temporary dwelling. As you pass through the town you notice most of the inhabitants go out of their way to offer you a smile and a wave. You can’t help but do the same for them.

You finally reach a huge tree house and laugh to yourself quietly, of course it would be literal. Twilight opens the door and invites you in. you literally have to get down on your knees in order to crawl through. Why did these ponies have to be so tiny? You can stand up fine inside, it is a fucking tree after all. Then a little purple lizard walks into the room.

”Hey Twilight, glad you’re home, you got a let... ter..." he trails off as he sees you.

He walks out of the room. He walks back into the room.

”So that thing’s real then?” he asks.

Twilight nods.

”Oh, alright then.”

He walks back out of the room. You hear something open and close. Then you hear a muffled voice coming from outside and you and Twilight go to a window to see what’s up. He's running around screaming in terror and flailing his arms about.

”Should we... do something or something?” you ask.

Twilight shakes her head.

”Don’t worry, he’ll calm down soon enough.” she explains.

”If you say so.”

She shows you down to the basement laboratory she has. You are very disappoint. There is nothing down here you can make obscura with. Libraries suck.

Twilight levitates a few things around to make room and conjures up a small bed.

”Here you go!” she chirps. “All set. Don’t stay up too late, now! Night night.”

And with that she teleports out of the room. Well that’s weird, it’s almost like she wants you to go to sleep. She’s probably planning to rape you in your sleep or something. Boy was she in for a surprise if that was the case.

You ease yourself down onto the bed. You’ve barely even begun to rest your weight on it by the time it starts creaking violently. You should have figured. You pull the mattress of the frame and toss it onto the floor. Lazily tossing your various weapons about the floor and disengaging your raptor pack, you go to lay down on the mattress and try to get some sleep. Fear of being raped by tiny horse-wizards aside, you were actually pretty eager to get some sleep.

It had been ages since you slept properly, not since well before Commorragh. You literally had not slept at all since that venture, you’ve just been constantly juggling shut down parts of your brain ever since. It would be good to get some real sleep for once. Maybe this time you’d even dream.

You close your eyes and sleep finds you quickly. For the first time in ten thousand years you drift peacefully off to sleep with a smile on your face.

---

You are Twilight Sparkle and you’ve been sitting at the top of the stairs to the basement for hours now. It took him a while, but Spike finally calmed down and came back in. With a quick explanation about your guest you sent him off to bed. And now you played the waiting game. You have so many questions and almost none of them had been answered.

Interruption after interruption after interruption. But no more. Now that Anonymous was asleep you could simply use your magic to gently prod his mind and read his memories. Yes it was a very invasive thing to do, but this was a strange creature whose species burned entire civilizations to the ground for the crime of being different, you had to know more about him. It was for the good of Equestria! It was purely coincidental that you currently had an insatiable desire to know. Purely.

You hear the sound of snoring and creep down the stairs, casting a brief silencing spell to muffle any treacherous floorboards that may give away your position. You creep over to Anonymous’s sleeping form and prepare a spell. You're going to learn about this thing and no princesses or parties would get in the way.

Your horn glows, the spell is cast, and before you know it you’re inside his mind. It was an extremely simple process, honestly, what could go wrong?

Next Chapter: Memories Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 16 Minutes