Reddunz Hit 'Arder (40k)

It only felt like a few minutes had passed until the sun began to rise, as it came I felt the sun's warmth tickle my leathery hide. Almost instantly I felt my cells begin to invigorate themselves, the lethargy that had slowly crept up on me dissipating quickly. It seemed my theory regarding a rudimentary level of photosynthesis was correct, which was rather surprising. I wonder how far this could be pushed, and how long I would be able to go without food in general. 

What was also pretty surprising was that the minor battle damage I had suffered the day before was already beginning to fade. It seems the regenerative factor of these Orks was much higher than that of humans, while it was not visible it was still quite remarkable just how fast I already felt better. 

On top of everything, there was no early morning fatigue, I did not need a morning coffee to get off to a strong start for the day. Pushing myself from my comfortable rock I picked up my only possessions stowing them away in a makeshift bandolier that looked as though it was going to fall apart. With a quick look around I noticed a few more Orks stirring, hoping to get out of the way of the boisterous Orks this early in the morning I made my way off to the training ground.

There were a few things that I wanted to test out there, I'd not seen any of the Orks around exercising in any other way than simply fighting. This was quite surprising as every single Ork was for lack of a better word, jacked. Even I had a substantial amount of muscle mass attributed to my body. I wondered how much larger I could get through exercising and learning the ins and outs of my new physical form. 

The training ground was in sight, as I saw before it was only barebones. A couple of training dummies with strange armour strapped up to them, there were no additional weapons to be seen and no additional ammunition. Strange... 'Well, I suppose I should try out this firearm and see how it performs.' I thought to myself.

While I'd fired weapons when I was in high school with the cadets I hadn't really continued this as a hobby into my adulthood. In fact, I hadn't fired a weapon since I was sixteen which was almost twenty years ago now. Pulling out my 'shoota' from the bandolier, I held the strange pipe-like device in my hand and inspected the weapon. Turning it over in my hands I got a good look at the firearm.

It really was just a hunk of junk, I honestly had no idea whether or not it would work in the first place. With an exasperated sigh, I held the weapon in two hands aiming it down towards the dummy. Slowing my breathing I remembered a technique back from my old cadet days, it was best to shoot when you had no air in your lungs at all, the complete opposite of what movies would have you believe. 

When I had entered the perfect state that I had wanted, my arms had stopped moving and my breath all exhaled I aimed the barrel towards the centre mass. The shoota had no iron sights to speak of making it that much harder to actually aim the weapon. After a moment of deliberation, I pulled the trigger and sure enough a projectile fired out of the weapon and flew forwards. The weapon had a noticeable kick-back and despite new well-developed muscles the muzzle flew upwards and a CLANG followed.

The projectile had actually managed to hit the intended target but not at all where he had aimed, the bullet had only just landed a glancing blow as a small chip on the side of the armour had formed. This weapon was not at all accurate, well maybe it wasn't the fault of the weapon. 

I repeated the previous steps from before and fired a few similar rounds and even tried compensating for what I believed to be the fault of the zeroing. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, the weapon was just extremely inaccurate. Letting out a sigh I decided to have a look at the barrel to see if there were any deformities. To my surprise, the barrel itself despite a lot of wear and tear looked to be fairly intact.

Tilting the barrel away from me I attempted to look inside to see if I could find any obstructions or issues inside. It only took me a few moments to realise what was wrong with the weapon. There was no rifling... The projectiles on the inside wouldn't spin and as such created an unstable round that was unpredictable at the best of times.

How was it that these creatures had managed to create cybernetic limbs and prosthetics that worked better than the human modern-day equivalent, yet they hadn't even invented rifling... Shaking my head a thought popped into my mind. 'I could raise through the ranks through a few tricks like this. If I can hit everything much more accurately than my companions, I should be able to distinguish myself.' 

Firing off a few more shots I tried to figure out what was going on with my ammunition situation. Eventually, the weapon gave a CLICK and no more bullets came out. Giving it a good shake testing to see if there was a jam I pulled the trigger a few more times before conceding that the weapon was actually out of ammo.

'Alright, it's time to pay those workshop Orks a visit.' I thought to myself as I slung the shoota back into its spot in the bandolier. With a purpose, I began to walk towards the Ork workshop. I had a few things that I wanted sorted, the most important being whether or not I could actually reload this weapon. 

After a few short minutes, I reached the large tent, and a few more Orks were surrounding it. Now that I looked around there seemed to be an even larger number of Orks surrounding the area than yesterday. It wasn't by too much but it was certainly noticeable. As I approached the workshop I unslung my weapon and held it out in front of me. With a grunt I spoke up "Howz do I reloadz my shoota?" I mimicked the way these beasts spoke to not raise suspicion in the Orks around me. If I was different in a significant way I was sure to be singled out in a less than savoury way. The Ork that I asked looked surprised as if I had even asked such a stupid question, in just a moment he retorted "Stupid runt, youz just gotta pour some scrap in da end."

I gave a look of surprise that the other Ork seemed to pick up on, with a gutter laugh he snatched my weapon from my hands, turned it so the barrel was pointing upwards and began to pour small bits of scrap down the barrel. With a shake, the scrap seemed to fall into place at the magazine. With a satisfied grunt, he handed it back to me and got back to hammering away at a piece of metal, shaping it into a pipe.

'What the hell? There's no way that would work would it?' I thought to myself in utter disbelief. Raising the weapon I pointed it towards the sky and pulled the trigger, sure enough, a metal projectile flew out the other end with a loud BANG. "See, youz got it." The Mech Boy spoke out. 

This was completely and utterly absurd and made no sense. I was struggling to find any sort of paradigm that these beasts followed. How in the world was I supposed to test out my hypothesis when there was no rationality to the variables. With an inward sigh, I prepared my next question.