Meeting of Immortals (WH40k/????)

[Academia Nut]

A really quick oneshot that has been stuck in my head. Enjoy and/or be confused.

---

The Emperor strode through his palace, the sound of his heavy armour upon the stone floor resounding through the cavernous halls of his realm. He had no bodyguards here, not in this impregnable fastness, especially now that Terra had been pacified, and any assassin that tried to strike him here would have to face the most powerful psyker in the galaxy. There were none who could challenge him, especially not in his domain.

Thus, it was with rare surprise when an individual he had not detected with his formidable powers peeled out of the shadows of a column and began to walk alongside him. Despite his initial surprise, the Emperor soon relaxed and allowed himself to raise a single inquisitive eyebrow at the presence of one of the few other Immortals come to see him.

“You have ceased moving in the shadows,” the petite female told him matter-of-factly.

“Humanity’s position is too precarious to do anything other than direct action, Slayer,” the Emperor said.

“So you abandon the moniker of Puppet Master to take up the title of Emperor,” the girl stated.

“Yes. There are too many threats, from without and within, to guide humanity from the background any longer. You disagree with this assessment?” The Emperor asked the Slayer.

The girl cocked her head slightly to the side and casually brushed her hair back before she said, “Your Imperium will be mighty indeed and stand between humanity and its foes long after it slips from your control.”

The Emperor bristled slightly but knew not to challenge the Slayer. Her powers of prediction were always eerily accurate, beyond any other seer he had ever before encountered, including himself. He also knew that like all powerful seers she preferred enigma to details with her predictions.

“How will it slip from my grasp?” The Emperor asked.

“You will no longer be able to tell your people how to act,” The Slayer replied.

“Why?” The Emperor asked.

“Your greatest enemy will rip out your throat, among other things,” The Slayer answered.

The Emperor mulled upon this statement for a time before he asked, “Will you tell me who my greatest enemy will be?”

“An Immortal,” The Slayer replied.

“The Hunter?” The Emperor asked.

“She likes you. Besides, she has far more fun tweaking the noses of the Ruinous Powers to ever join against any side that opposed them,” The Slayer replied.

The Emperor nodded. Despite being the most daemonic of the Immortals, The Hunter was the one he disapproved of the least the majority of the time. He then said, “It would have to be The Predator then.”

“Just before a warp storm consumed a world he flew in because the Plague God was the one taking over. The storm will dissipate thousands of years from now after the world is quite thoroughly sterilized of all life but The Predator. He will not be around for your downfall,” The Slayer replied.

The Emperor felt a slightly disapproving twitch of his face and he said, “The Predator always was a hot head. I wish I had found him before he was so much of a hassle to deal with.”

“You and The Hunter were busy at the time, and he is quite good at hiding,” The Slayer pointed out gently.

“If it is not The Hunter or The Predator, that leaves either you or the emergence of a new Immortal sometime between the creation of the Imperium and a few thousand years from now,” The Emperor stated.

The Slayer nodded enigmatically.

“Despite your… companion… I know that you do not wish for the destruction of humanity, so that means that one or more new Immortals shall emerge within the next few thousand years, at least one of which shall fight me and succeed, but the Imperium will not fall because of it,” The Emperor mused.

“Your foe will not succeed, you will just be brought low by the fight,” The Slayer replied.

“That is a small comfort, I suppose,” The Emperor stated uncomfortably.

“I can offer you one further clue, at a price,” The Slayer said after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Your price being?” The Emperor asked suspiciously.

“Your Imperium will be vast, its people a multitude, and their fear of the unknown unsurpassed. I would prefer to not have to fight with them as I carry out my tasks. I wish for your seal upon a license to perform my functions unmolested,” The Slayer answered.

“For that I will need not just a clue, but a favour as well,” The Emperor replied.

“What favour?” The Slayer asked.

“Let me shoot that bastard,” The Emperor stated.

Ancient eyes, older than the current cosmos, crinkled in a rare expression of joy and the young woman said to the air, “He’s gone now, you can come out.”

A small white and pink cat like creature with a remarkably long tail and ear tufts hopped out only to be immediately blown to an atomically fine red mist with a single glance by the Emperor. The Slayer smiled and said, “You know that doesn’t help.”

“I know. I’ll still vaporize that xeno every time I see it,” The Emperor replied.

“It’s why we only meet every thousand years or so,” The Slayer said with a smirk.

“In any event, your next mysterious clue?” The Emperor asked.

“Half the new Immortals shall fight against you, while half shall fight with you,” The Slayer states.

“You shall have my seal before the day is out,” The Emperor states.

“I know,” The Slayer replies before the buckler at her left wrist whirs and she promptly disappears.

[Mr. Coffee]

Ok, Dude, I'm gonna preface this by saying I really dig most of your writing. You've got a genuine talent for it and you write some interesting and entertaining stories. That said...

Have you ever actually finished a story yet? Seriously, I'm not reading another goddamn thing you do until you go back and actually finish or at least continue three of your other stories. Bonus points if you get around to adding more Mosegi stuff.

[Academia Nut]

Technically I finished Thousand Shinji... and then continued it with The Open Door, which wasn't finished.

And yeah... I have the literary equivalent of ADHD sometimes. It's one of the big reasons my public productivity has taken a nose dive over the past few years. I'm getting tired of starting stuff and never finishing.

[Darth Fanboy]

Haruko?

[White Haven]

While I don't go to the same extreme Coffee does in refusing to read new stuff, every time I see a new Academia Nut zero-reply post in this form I just sigh and think back over your fabulous library of Good Shit That Needs Finishing.

[Mr. Coffee]

Well,to be fair I read this before I posted. I'm just sayin' this time, try to not let another promising story die because your shiny object syndrome kicked in, Nutter.

[LadyTevar]

So, do enlighten me who the Slayer and her pet are, as well as whom the Hunter and Predator are?

[Xon]

The Slayer is Homura Akemi from anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Some what of a deconstruction of magical girl genre, thermodynamics explicitly exists and the universe is heading for Heat Death. Kyubey the 'lovable' familiar, is a sufficiently advanced emotionless race who will do anything to enable it's race to continue existing.

Homura Akemi is effectively immortal, with a crazy hax 'power' of being able to Spoiler

stop time and then once conditions have been met, reverse time

. She also has a hammer-space storage room behind that shield, which she uses for great effect. The final of the series has her looting stuff like Spoiler

submarines, battleships and enough ordinance to arm a small army.

Fairly sure the Predator is Alex Mercer from Prototype, and not sure who the Hunter is.

[Mr. Coffee]

Xon, from now on could you use the motherfucking spoiler tags? If that's what home boy has inmind thand a lot for fucking removing a lot of the story for us, you useless cocksmoke.

[Xon]

I did use spoiler tags, and it's half a dozen posts after the story itself. PMMM isn't going to be well known if you don't follow anime, and a lot of people get hilariously bent out of shape over it.

[Mr. Coffee]

I did use spoiler tags, and it's half a dozen posts after the story itself. PMMM isn't going to be well known if you don't follow anime, and a lot of people get hilariously bent out of shape over it.

Yeah, you used spoiler tags after I said something. We can see it when you edit fucking posts, moron.

[KlavoHunter]

You didn't even spoiler the important parts.

[Xon]

Coffee, Would it made you feel better if I wrapped the entire post in a spoiler tags and then put a spoiler warning before it or two? I did have to edit my post initially because [ spoiler ][ / spoiler ] doesn't work but [ spoiler=][ / spoiler ] does (obviously without spaces).

You didn't even spoiler the important parts.

It's not my fault people expect thermodynamics to be invalid in thier anime and find the concept of an open universe conceptually challenging. I guess the bit about being deconstruction/dark is just saving on saying Gen Urobuchi wrote the damn story. The other bit Kyubey could probably have been a spoiler, but he is so 'lovable'!

I didn't say that Kyubey: Spoiler

is xenocidal inhuman alien whom's plans to starve off the heatdeath of the universe are fueled by the tortured soul of little girls before their very soul implodes into a sentient (but not sapient) vortex of despair which can not die, and any shards which splitter off only create more once they absorb sufficient despair/grief by torturing normal humans into suicidal despair. And that "Puella Magi" (or "Girl of the sorcerer" literial latin->English) are Lich's who puppet thier own bodies after Kyubey rips their soul out and stuffs it into a Shiny gem.

All because the emotionalless alien stuff-toys found that magic explicitly violates thermodynamics and that strong emotional deltas (ie massive hope to literial soul crushing despair) causes the greatest energy production.

That's a spoiler.