Chapter 470: A Little Head-Swap Number, Part 2
Greenskins were something like plants in a way, you could cut a branch from one tree and graft it onto another.
But cutting off your own head to graft onto a new body was a genuinely terrifying leap, an idea even the Gretchin found unsettling. They all froze, unsure.
Reform Old Fart hesitated for a moment, then his gaze hardened with resolve.
This idea had come from Grot Marjack himself. Grot Marjack was the greatest Gretchin there was, and would never lead them wrong.
So he raised his voice and bellowed:
"ALL FORCES, HEED THE ORDER! SEVER YOUR OWN HEADS, ASCEND TO GRACE!"
Some Gretchin didn't dare cut their own heads off, and froze in place.
But a good number of them, seized with fanatical devotion, heard the order and, without a shred of hesitation, grabbed a blade or a hatchet and chopped their own heads clean off on the spot.
Gretchin heads went rolling everywhere in an instant, the whole scene erupting into shrieks and chaos, and even Kian was genuinely stunned.
His intention had been for the Gretchin to go study the problem, to figure out how to actually graft a Gretchin head onto an Ork body, since Orks had necks the width of a tree trunk while Gretchin necks were thin as a twig. Grafting the two together properly should have required careful, painstaking work matching up blood vessels and muscle tissue.
Instead, in one instant, tens of thousands of Gretchin had just decapitated themselves outright. There was nothing left to graft onto anything!
Kian watched in horror as the ground filled with severed Gretchin heads, still blinking, their stubborn little life force keeping them from dying outright, all of them staring up at him with wide, excited eyes, waiting for him to work his magic-monkey miracle.
Being stared at by a field of conscious, disembodied heads was, to put it mildly, deeply unsettling.
But Kian still needed this Gretchin force to keep grinding down the Orks. If all these severed heads died right here, his credibility as a god would collapse, and he'd lose his ability to keep stirring up trouble between them and the Orks.
He shouted urgently:
"QUICK! Bring the Ork bodies! Graft them on NOW!!"
Reform Old Fart snapped into action, immediately calling the other Gretchin over, hauling forward their captured Ork prisoners, hacking off their heads, and beginning the grafting process at once.
That's when the exact problem Kian had originally worried about surfaced. Gretchin necks were roughly the width of a human calf. Ork necks were roughly the width of a human thigh.
If they'd had a proper surgeon on hand, someone to carefully align the vessels and muscle tissue and stitch it all together properly, the grafts might well have taken, given the Orks' absurd regenerative capacity.
But these lunatic Gretchin had just hacked their own heads off in a single stroke, leaving perfectly clean, flat cuts with nothing to work with, no tissue to align at all.
A handful of Gretchin tried shoving heads onto oversized Ork bodies by brute force, but nothing lined up right, and they shrieked in growing panic.
Kian was panicking too, watching these lunatic little heads bleeding out fast, his godly credibility on the verge of total collapse!
Then, suddenly, it hit him. Back when the Gretchin had summoned him last time, he'd channeled that ball of green energy directly into Reform Old Fart's body, transforming him into a hulking Gretchin giant!
WAAAGH energy was a boundless, idealistic force. If you truly believed, you could make anything happen.
Kian steadied himself, focused, and channeled that same soul-deep WAAAGH energy, forcing it through his own will, toward the swarm of headless Gretchin.
The next instant, the power of the magic monkey activated!
A faint green glow bloomed at the severed junctions between Gretchin heads and Ork bodies, and the once-flat, cleanly severed muscle, vessels, nerves, and bone began growing back, weaving and interconnecting together on their own.
Nearly ten thousand Gretchin, who had decapitated themselves in a fit of religious devotion, were held up by their fellow Gretchin and pressed against Ork bodies.
Once the green glow flared brightest and faded, the necks had fully healed, and the Gretchin found themselves in control of brand new bodies, standing upright on their own.
These newly re-embodied Gretchin stared, utterly bewildered, then looked down at their thick, powerful new arms and sturdy legs, and erupted into a wave of ecstatic cheering.
Tiny Gretchin, now standing in two-meter frames, bounced up and down in place, positively giddy with excitement.
The surrounding, still-small Gretchin watched their newly upgraded brethren, drooling with envy.
And at the same time, filled with genuine regret. Why had they hesitated, when Grot Marjack had ordered them to sever their own heads?
If only they hadn't hesitated, they too could have earned bodies this powerful!
It only proved the old wisdom: any devotion to Grot Marjack that isn't absolute is no devotion at all, and only absolute faith earns the magic monkey's blessing.
Once Kian had finished playing Street Fighter with nearly ten thousand Gretchin, the WAAAGH energy pooled inside him ran dry, and his consciousness began slipping toward unconsciousness.
Before his soul departed Grot-Kong entirely, he turned to Reform Old Fart and said:
"I've handled the grafting for this batch. From here on, you're on your own. You'll need to study this yourselves, figure out how to connect a Gretchin head to an Ork body..."
With that, Kian's connection cut out, and Reform Old Fart stood there, deep in thought.
A crowd of Gretchin swarmed in, eyes burning with anticipation, staring up at him.
"Reform Old Fart, Reform Old Fart, we want new Ork bodies too, what do we do?"
Reform Old Fart considered it for a moment, then pointed at the field of headless Gretchin bodies and severed Ork heads littering the ground.
"We can't keep bothering Grot Marjack with everything. Grot Marjack has more important work, whispering lies between Gork and Mork, keeping them at each other's throats.
He's already shown us this can work. The rest is on us now.
We've got a whole pile of Ork heads here, and plenty of discarded Gretchin bodies.
Let's start experimenting. First, we'll practice grafting Ork heads onto Gretchin bodies, so we can build up the experience we'll need before attempting Gretchin heads onto Ork bodies!"
These Gretchin were nothing if not practical. The moment the order was given, they got straight to work, gathering up Ork heads and spare Gretchin bodies and beginning the procedure.
Because Kian had already demonstrated a successful case beforehand, the Gretchin had absolute, unwavering faith that the surgery would work, and, sure enough, it did.
Of nearly ten thousand attempts, roughly 70% successfully connected, an Ork Boy's oversized head grafted onto a Gretchin's diminutive frame.
One of these Ork Boyz woke up, looked down at his own tiny body, and stared in utter bewilderment.
"Dat's wrong, dat's wrong, dat's wrong! I'm an Ork Boy, I'm an ORK BOY! How can I be a Gretchin?! I must still be dreamin'!"
His massive head took up a full quarter of his new body's total mass, giving him the look of a walking bobblehead, shrieking in disbelief at nobody in particular.
Just then, a small-headed, Ork-bodied Gretchin came running up and shouted:
"You're a Gretchin, you're a Gretchin, you're a Gretchin, who are ya?"
The big-headed creature, thoroughly lost, grabbed at his own oversized face with his tiny, spindly hands.
"I... I'm an Ork Boy!"
The little-headed creature spun the big-headed one around and shook him a few times.
"Wrong. You're a Gretchin, you're a Gretchin, you're a Gretchin. Who are ya?"
That finally broke him completely.
"I... I'm a Gretchin?"
"Dat's right! From now on you're a Big-Head Gretchin! One of the noble first class!"
Say what you will, but these Gretchin hadn't entirely condemned the Orks to their fate. They'd offered a path upward, of sorts. And any Ork granted a Gretchin body was now counted, officially, as one of their own.
Reform Old Fart issued an order to every Gretchin present:
"From today on, we're not sending any Boyz crawling out of the mushroom fields back into the ground anymore. Keep them here. We're going to use them for the operation, for body-swapping."
Within just a few days, Reform Old Fart's ranks were filled with a growing crowd of big-heads and little-heads alike...
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