In the Grim Dark Future of the 41st Millenium There Is Only Cringe

Percy, Imperial Planet Eight-One-Four-Five-Nineteen

"Are you some kind of idiot?!" Clarisse shouted; her face now as red as the bandana wrapped around her forehead. He opened his mouth to counter, but she shook him again and continued to yell. "Shit like that gets people killed!"

"I really doubt that," Percy huffed.

"What did you say?" The Catachan warrior snarled with teeth bared.

"Come on Clarisse, just let him go," Chris begged. "He's just a dumb rookie."

He opened his mouth to argue that he wasn't dumb- a reflex developed from before he could remember -when his ankle was freed of Clarisse's iron grip.

Sending him face first with his mouth open into the latrine pit...

----

Percy slowly trudged through the 3141st's encampment, feeling lower than the sludge and slime that coated nearly every inch, nook, and cranny of his body. He didn't have to worry about bumping into anyone, as everyone with a working nose and eyes made sure to give him a wide berth. The only bodies he had to avoid were the numerous servitors the regiment and the mechanicus used to haul heavy equipment- though he swore one of them deviated from their programmed path by an inch when the remains of its nose caught a whiff of him.

Nearly every guardsman he crossed who wasn't downwind of him laughed their asses off when they saw him. Some even paused from their duties to mime out Clarisse dropping him in the latrine pit, as the story had spread like wildfire.

All of it serving to remind how much he hated being in the Imperial Guard, and how much he missed his home.

A home he could never go back to.

He was a son of Poseidon, a backwater planet that the Imperium for the most part ignored. Like all worlds in the Imperium it had to pay the Imperial Tithe, which could be paid in natural resources, manufactured goods, or its sons and daughters for the Astra Militarum. Thankfully, Poseidon was a paradise world almost entirely covered by a singular ocean and paid its tithe almost entirely in protein rendered from its fish, so few joined the guard except by choice.

He joined, but he would not call it his choice. If things had been different, he would have been on some fishing boat or freighter in the middle of the ocean.

The guard was just the only way he could keep his mom and half-sister safe.

He shook his head to clear it of thoughts of home as he passed a group of beastmen. The abhumans, who looked like the satyrs and fauns of ancient myth, busily ate the regiment's trash that could not be recycled. It was the abhumans that were responsible for the 3141st's nickname, the Half-Bloods, as most of the Imperial Guard refused to accept them and their ilk into their ranks, under the belief that most were heretical traitors who would shoot you in the back the first chance they got. It was only from the commissar's insistence that General Chiron allowed them into the 3141st- most of the beastmen actually volunteering according to rumor.

"Hey! Hey, Percy!" A voice called out from behind a pile of corpse-starch tins.

He stopped in his tracks as the towering tins shifted and fell, crushing a blond-furred beastman who had been contently chewing on an old boot. A blur of brown, green, and red scampered over the falling rubbish with inhuman speed, and a moment later he found himself staring into the eyes of the closest thing he had to a friend in the guard.

"Hey G-man," Percy greeted with all the forced happiness he could muster- which was none. He held out his fist for the abhuman, who mimicked the gesture.