Chapter 439: Grot Marjack, Truly Ascended to Godhood! Part 2
"Grot Marjack, Grot Marjack, we sincerely pray to you, please bestow upon us the magic monkey that brings happiness to all Gretchin!"
Inside the thoroughly plasticky puppet body, Kian's soul sat lodged in place.
Peering out through the eyes the Gretchin had painted onto the rice cooker, he watched the sea of kneeling, chanting Gretchin stretching out before him, and it took him a good long while to process what he was even looking at.
His soul, it seemed, had been physically yanked here by the Gretchin's WAAAGH field.
The WAAAGH field was, at its core, the psychic power unique to the greenskins, and psychic power in the Warhammer universe carried almost limitless possibility.
Ork WAAAGH energy could bend the rules of reality to a startling degree. A gun cobbled together out of junk, one that had no theoretical business firing at all, would fire anyway, simply because the Orks believed it would.
The same logic applied here. If enough Gretchin genuinely believed Grot Marjack existed, and prayed to him in unison, then Grot Marjack would, in fact, come to exist.
Tens of thousands of Gretchin gathered here all believed in Grot Marjack, and their combined prayer had gathered into a surge of WAAAGH energy that converged entirely onto Kian, saddling him with the full weight of that causality.
In the lucid-dream state, the wash-basin-sized ball of energy Kian had seen was exactly this: the devotional will generated by the Gretchin's prayer.
And because he had answered that will, his soul, before his body back at the Sanctum had even finished reconstructing, had been temporarily dragged into the scrap-built puppet the Gretchin had assembled.
Once he'd pieced together what was going on, Kian just wanted out of this puppet body as fast as possible. He had zero interest in having his consciousness trapped permanently inside a toy.
He fumbled around for a while and discovered the junk puppet the Gretchin had built had almost no range of motion. All he could move was the head, and the one arm gripping the plastic wand, and even that only by a tiny margin.
After struggling for ages, his psychic power wouldn't respond, and he couldn't move with any real range, he started to genuinely panic. Was his consciousness about to be stuck inside this plastic doll forever?
After more fruitless fumbling, unable to force his consciousness free of the puppet, Kian ran out of ideas.
All he could do was hope that once his respawn timer at the Sanctum finished, his soul would automatically disengage from the puppet and snap back to his real body.
With that thought, he had nothing left to do but wait quietly.
The wait was mind-numbingly boring. He watched the Gretchin in front of him keep praying without pause.
These little guys were surprisingly devout. Every so often one of them would drop into a full kowtow before him, though god knows where they'd picked that up.
Watching the sea of bowing heads, Kian muttered, exasperated:
"If you've got something you want, just say it! How am I supposed to know what you're asking for if you don't tell me?"
He'd only muttered it in his own head, but the instant he did, the kowtowing Gretchin froze solid.
Every single one of them snapped their heads up, staring at the plastic puppet with pure disbelief.
"Grot Marjack! Grot Marjack answered us!!"
"Grot Marjack is real! I knew it, I knew Grot Marjack was real!!"
Tens of thousands of Gretchin erupted into a sea of pure joy, screaming and shrieking, bouncing up and down in a frenzy.
Kian blinked. Oh, so he could talk.
Feeling a sudden itch to play along, he cleared his throat and announced:
"Ohh-ho, my dear little Gretchin, Grot Marjack has heard your sincere call. Now then, what did you summon me for?"
The Gretchin surged forward in a chattering swarm, crowding around the puppet, all shouting at once:
"Grot Marjack, we want Old Fart Kian dead! Old Fart Kian is way too terrifying!
Last fight, Old Fart Kian turned every Gretchin he could see into charred shish-kebab, the crispy, dripping-grease kind!
The Ork Boyz caught the smell and now they're grabbing us to roast and eat! There's Ork Boyz everywhere hunting Gretchin for barbecue now!"
Kian nearly lost it right there and had to fight back a laugh.
That would be from his grapple with Blackiron, when he'd blasted Blackiron's Gretchin cheering section with the plasma cannons.
The heat from those plasma detonations had cooked several thousand Gretchin instantly.
And apparently, the smell of roasted Gretchin had thoroughly awakened something in the Ork Boyz' taste buds, because now Ork Boyz everywhere were rounding up Gretchin to roast and eat.
Kian held back his laughter and, after a moment, forced his voice into something appropriately solemn.
"I'm sorry, my dear little Gretchin, but I cannot make Old Fart Kian die."
Kidding aside, not demanding "who dares bring charges before this court" was already him doing these Gretchin a favor.
Hearing that Kian (Grot Marjack) couldn't kill Old Fart Kian for them, the Gretchin were collectively stunned.
"But why not?! Grot Marjack, you're the magic monkey Gretchin! You can bring happiness to all Gretchin with your all-powerful magic monkey, so why can't you make Old Fart Kian die?"
Looking at the disappointed, terrified little faces in front of him, Kian had to run through every painful memory of his entire life just to keep from laughing out loud.
Then, in his most grave and weighty tone, he declared:
"That's because Old Fart Kian is the most evil being in this entire universe!
Our fine Gretchin tradition is to be cunning and deceitful, deceitful and cunning.
But Old Fart Kian is the complete opposite. He's righteous and kind and honest, he does nothing but good deeds, sunny and virtuous through and through, he even takes time out of his weekends to help little old ladies cross the street. It's pure evil, I tell you, pure evil!!"
A wave of gasps and chattering swept through the Gretchin crowd.
"So scary, Old Fart Kian is so scary, he's righteous and kind and honest?!"
"No wonder Old Fart Kian is so strong, he's THAT evil?!"
"He can't even tell a lie! He even helps old ladies cross the street! This goes against everything Gretchin stand for!!"
Too evil. Old Fart Kian was simply too evil.
Kian let out a mournful sigh.
"Old Fart Kian is so evil and so powerful, he can even shatter every enemy he faces with his adamantium buttocks!
So whenever you see Old Fart Kian, do not, under any circumstances, try to fight him. Run. Run immediately. His backside is harder than an adamantium clamp. One touch and it's instant death!"
At that, a trembling little Gretchin stepped forward and asked:
"Grot Marjack, so, so even the magic monkey can't handle Old Fart Kian? What are we supposed to do?"
Kian spun the lie further:
"Old Fart Kian may be evil and terrifying, powerful and merciless, but he's only one man. Just stay out of his way and you'll be fine. He's not going to come hunting through your little Gretchin nests and dragging you all out to eat!
But those loud, rude, unbearable Ork Boyz? They're the ones who'll show up right at your doorstep, drag you out, spear you on a stick, and roast you into a nice tasty shish-kebab!"
Another wave of gasps, and the Gretchin erupted into furious chattering.
"Ork Boyz are all bad guys, they want to eat us!"
"Grot Marjack, save me! Save me! Save me! I don't want to get eaten by Ork Boyz!"
"Grot Marjack, please use your magic monkey to protect us!"
Kian's grin split ear to ear.
"Ehehehehe!"
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