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The moon hung high over the horizon, its sullen light smeared across the sky like spoiled milk on rusted iron. The battlefield, once a settlement, was now little more than a splintered graveyard of scorched buildings and broken bodies. Smoke drifted in lazy coils over the ruins, and the occasional crack of distant gunfire still echoed from somewhere beyond the hills. Near the outskirts, the Ork encampment sprawled in its usual slapdash fashion—a crude maze of scrap walls, jagged barricades, and makeshift towers built by overenthusiastic mekboys. Crude glyphs daubed in red and black adorned slabs of scavenged metal, and banners of flayed skin flapped merrily in the hot wind.
Two Ork Boys sat near a heap of looted gear, slouched against a slab of broken ceramite, as a makeshift campfire crackled between them. Both were battered and splattered with the remnants of their day’s krumpin’. One of them, Grubskrag, was idly gnawing on a severed limb—likely human, though he wasn’t too picky about his snacks. His teeth scraped lazily over the bone, cracking it with a wet snap. Beside him, Ruktoof methodically sharpened his choppa with a jagged scrap of metal, dragging it along the blade with slow, deliberate strokes. Sparks danced briefly in the dim light before vanishing into the dirt.
Grubskrag squinted into the distance, his heavy brow furrowed as though some glimmer of thought had lodged itself, uncomfortably, in his skull. He spat out a knuckle bone and scratched at his tusk with a cracked fingernail.
“Oi, Ruktoof,” he grunted.
Without looking up, Ruktoof muttered, “Wot.”
Grubskrag rolled the gnawed limb between his fingers. “I been finkin’… ‘bout dis whole Waaagh! business.”
Ruktoof snorted. “Wot’s to fink? We krump ‘em, we loot da shiny bits, an’ we shout real loud. Same as always.”
“Right, right…” Grubskrag mumbled, clearly unsatisfied. He reached into the pile beside him and pulled out a human child’s doll. It was filthy and torn, its stitched face half-burned away. He turned it over in his hand, staring at its glassy, half-melted eyes.
“’Member dat village we hit?” Grubskrag asked slowly.
Ruktoof paused his sharpening. “Wot village?”
Grubskrag frowned. “Da one wif da mill. Where da humie wif da crutch was all like, ‘Please, not me shop, it’s all I got!’ an’ den you caved in his skull wif a grot trap.”
A wide, yellow-toothed grin split Ruktoof’s face. “Ha! Yeah! Got ‘im good!”
Grubskrag gave a half-hearted chuckle but didn’t let it linger. He tossed the doll aside, watching it plop into the mud with a damp squelch. His fingers drummed against his knee.
“Yeah,” he muttered, “but den we stuffed a squig in da chimney fer a laff, an’ da whole place caught fire.”
Ruktoof’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Heh. Right funny, dat was.”
Grubskrag scratched his chin, still frowning. “Yeah… an’ den we was all, ‘Oi oi, make da young’uns run! It’s funnier dat way!’”
Ruktoof threw his head back and cackled, slapping his knee with a meaty palm. The sound was hoarse and guttural, like gravel spilling down a rusted pipe. “Hah! Dat was classic! Dey got tiny legs, see? Can’t run fast! All flailin’ an’ cryin’!”
Grubskrag didn’t join in this time. He let Ruktoof’s laughter die down before he muttered, low and almost uncertain, “Y’ever fink… maybe we’s da baddies?”
For a moment, there was only the crackle of distant fire and the occasional squeal of a squig being herded back into its pen. Ruktoof sat still, his hand frozen halfway through a sharpening stroke. Slowly, he turned to look at Grubskrag, his scarred face scrunched up in genuine confusion.
“Wot?” he asked, squinting as though he hadn’t heard right.
Grubskrag shifted uncomfortably and gestured vaguely at the battlefield. The horizon was still smudged with the greasy black plumes of burning vehicles and the occasional pile of what was once a building. A mob of Boyz in the distance were using a dismembered Beakie’s leg as a makeshift bat, whacking grots into the air and cheering whenever one exploded on impact.
Not much further, a mob of Boyz were jeering and throwing squigs at a group of captured humies for sport. One of the squigs latched onto a man’s face, and the Boyz roared with laughter as he staggered blindly, clawing at the ravenous beast gnawing through his eye socket.
Grubskrag shrugged. “I’m just sayin’… like… wot if we’s… ya know… da baddies?”
Ruktoof stared at him, then slowly blinked. “Da baddies,” he repeated. His tone was as flat and dull as a spent slug casing.
Grubskrag nodded hesitantly. “Yeah.”
Ruktoof furrowed his brow, looking genuinely puzzled. He lowered his choppa and jabbed a thumb toward the distant ridge, where a massive plume of fire was still rising from the wreckage of the village they’d razed earlier. “Grubskrag,” he said patiently, “dey’s humies. Humies is da baddies.”
Grubskrag rubbed the back of his neck. “Right, right, I know dat. But, like… wot if we’s da baddies to da humies?”
Ruktoof blinked again. He turned his gaze slowly toward the camp, where an Ork Nob was gleefully tying two humans together with barbed wire and jamming a stickbomb down their trousers while the rest of the Boyz placed bets. Nearby, a Weirdboy was cackling and summoning a warp storm just to see how many of their own Grots it could accidentally liquefy. Further off, a giggling Painboy was dragging another screaming Ork into a tent with his gretchin assistants.
Ruktoof squinted thoughtfully at the scene for a moment. Then he turned back to Grubskrag.
“Naaah.”
Grubskrag looked unconvinced.
“You’ve been hanging ‘round da Weirdboyz too long,” Ruktoof joked. “‘Sides, does it even matta’ who da ‘baddies m are? Long as we get to krump the gitz, who cares?”
Grubskrag scratched his head, dislodging a clump of dirt and what might have been a tooth. “I dunno, Ruktoof. I ‘eard some of da humies screamin’ ‘bout ‘justice’ an’ ‘innocents’ before we stomped ‘em.” He paused. “Wot’s a ‘innocent’ anyway?”
Ruktoof shrugged. “Dunno. Proppa’ weak, prob’ly. Like a grot wifout a gun.” He resumed sharpening his choppa, the screech of metal drowning out the distant screams of the stikkbomb victims.
Grubskrag wasn’t done. “An’ den dere’s da skulls.”
“Wot ‘bout ‘em?”
“We puts ‘em on everyfing. Our banners, our trucks, even me lucky shoota’s got a humie skull jammed on da barrel.” Grubskrag frowned. “Dat’s… kinda dark, innit?”
Ruktoof paused mid-sharpen, squinting at his own choppa. The blade was decorated with a row of tiny, crudely etched skulls. He tilted his head. “Huh.”
A long silence followed, broken only by the sound of a grot being punted into the fire by a passing Nob.
Finally, Ruktoof grunted. “Well, if we *is* da baddies…” He grinned, revealing a mouthful of jagged, yellowed teeth. “Den we’s da *best* baddies.”
Grubskrag blinked. “Eh?”
“Fink ‘bout it,” Ruktoof said, warming to the idea. “Baddies get all da best loot. Baddies don’t gotta follow no rules. Baddies get to krump who dey want, when dey want!” He stood up, choppa raised triumphantly. “An’ we’s da biggest, meanest, loudest baddies dere is! WAAAGH!”
Grubskrag’s expression slowly shifted from doubt to dawning realization. Then, a slow, wicked grin spread across his face. “Oi… dat do sound pretty good.”
Ruktoof nodded sagely. “Course it do. Now quit yer mopin’ an’ help me find more humies ta test dis sharp choppa on.”
Grubskrag leapt to his feet, all philosophical concerns forgotten. “Right! An’ dis time, let’s make ‘em *dance* first!”
As the two Orks stomped off toward the nearest group of terrified prisoners, the campfire crackled behind them, casting long, monstrous shadows across the ruins. Somewhere in the distance, a Weirdboy accidentally turned himself inside out, and the Boyz cheered like it was the best thing they’d ever seen.
Just as Grubskrag raised his choppa for a proper humie-whackin’, a stray rocket from a nearby looted tank—misfired by an overexcited Mekboy—slammed into the ground between him and Ruktoof.
BOOM.
The explosion sent both Orks flying in opposite directions. Grubskrag’s head, still grinning, spun through the air like a wobbly squig before landing at the feet of a scrawny grot who had been busy looting a corpse.
The grot blinked down at the severed head. He looked into Grubskrag’s eyes, then to the milky whites of the humie he was looting. She was holding a crude figure resembling one of the humie space marines.
The grot picked it up and scratched its grimy chin. Then it turned to the nearest Ork Boy, who was busy stuffing a live grenade into a tin can.
"Hey boss," the grot piped up, "are we da baddies?"
The Ork Boy paused. Looked down. Then, without a word, he punted the grot straight into the nearest squig pen.
“SHUT IT, YA GIT!"
As the squigs descended upon the poor grot with ravenous screeches, the rest of the Waaagh! carried on—looting, krumpin’, and spraying dakka with the kind of enthusiasm only Orks could muster.
Because in the end, it didn’t matter who the baddies were.
As long as the fightin’ never stopped.
And somewhere in the Warp, Gork and/or Mork chuckled during their eternal brawl.