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[i]"I apologise."[/i] Lelandros spoke, although there was no other human in the room. [i]"Although necessary, they showed you great disrespect, and I can only hope for your forgiveness."[/i] Slowly, his tremendous figure moved through the room, pinpricks of light appearing from the incense he lit wherever he moved. [i]"Machine spirit hear my prayers."[/i] He turned around, facing his armour. The displeasure... He could feel it radiating from the suit, the incense doing little to placate it. Although he had been as moderate in the application of the black as he could, it had still ended up being rather... Heavy handed. It had to be, for that was the nature of the Deathwatch, but he doubted the Deathwatch often had power armour with machine spirits this strong.

Mounted upon the wall was the removed right pauldron of the armour, left its original green and black. Replacing it was the new silver-and-black 'I' symbol- the Inquisition's own insignia staring back at him. Yet, despite all of the changes, there was still some familiarity. In the empty black space between the silver, he had received permission to show his honours, flames curling up to note his membership in the Fire of Ry'lan. Mounted underneath the power pack of the armour was his drakeskin cape, and emerging from it was his servo arm, the head currently in the shape of a simple claw gripper. It was a deceptively crude weapon, for he knew that the pressure such an attachment could exert was enough to crush ferrocrete as if it were an empty can. 

Finishing with the requests to his armour, Lelandros would depart the room reluctantly- feeling the unpowered eyes of the helm behind him follow his movement out.

[hr]

"Observe." The instructor gestured towards the weapon in front of him. Lelandros had to say, rather rarely for him, that he was unfamiliar with the make of it. 

"Is this xenostech?" He said, brow furrowing. It had a slightly egg-like barrel design, strange glyphs all over it, a drum-like magazine attached to one end and seemed to be studded with gemstones. His initial reaction was revulsion. It was an abberant thing, lacking a machine spirit, made by foriegn hands.

"It is indeed. Aeldari. Hazard a guess as to its usage." The instructor would indicate for Lelandros to pick it up, which he would do slowly. Turning the gun over in his hands, he would examine every facet of it as if it were any other weapon for him to strip and repair. He brought it close to his eyes, examing the grooves, the curves, the glyphs, anything that might glean some answers. The barrel seemed to be reinforced against vast quantities of heat, and the chamber of the weapon appeared to be a containment field of some kind. 

"A plasma analogue?" He held it as if he was to fire, feeling the weight. "It seems too flimsy for that however..." He frowned. "A flamer perhaps?" No, it felt too light for that- and there was no slosh or shift in weight to indicate that there was liquid or chemical fuel within it. He looked to the instructor.

"You were not far off with your first estimate. This is a 'fusion gun,' as the Aeldari call it- a melta weapon used by their elite armour-hunting groups. Now... See if you can dissasemble it."

[hr]

"This is not a weapon." Lelandros looked up at the instructor, confusion evident on his face. "You have placed a pile of workshop miscasts into the shape of a stubber. Do you intend for me to [i]make[/i] a stubber?" He could do that quite easily, yet when he reached for the weapon and picked it up, he found it was already welded together. Messily, by the looks of it. 

"That junk is an orkish-made 'shoota.'" The inverted commas around the word were audiable. "It can easily punch through flak armour and render a guardsman unto the Emperor. Do not be fooled by its crude construction- these weapons can penetrate the weak spots of power armour and incapacitate Space Marines, and have done so countless times. Never forget- the Deathwatch was founded to contain the threat that is the Orks, and despite their lack of sophistication, they are a great and terrible threat indeed."

Lelandros looked at the gun, then, carefully, eased out a few of the moving parts. "There is no breechblock." He paused for a moment, examining it further. "I... Is there no sear? How... How does this gun..." It was rare that a Mars-trained Techmarine was ever at a loss for words, but this gun had successfully rendered Lelandros so. 

"Orkish technology is... Ramshackle at best. From what little we understand of it, Orks appear to be able to make weapons work for them that would jam or fail entirely in the hands of anyone else. There is an Adeptus Mechanicus theory that you may have been exposed to that posits that without a Machine Spirit, Orkoids instead use some form of psychic powers to ensure their machinery works, and much as the Machine Spirit allowed for a Land Raider to operate without a crew, this psychic field allows otherwise worthless equipment to work. This theory has been indirectly supported by xenobiologists confirming Orkoids do, indeed, have race-wide psychic potential, however there are rare examples of non-Orks being able to use Orkoid equipment which puts this argument into doubt."

Lelandros shook his head. "Now then," the instructor continued. "As per previously. Dissasemble. Understand the inner workings- as crude as they are. Assess battlefield viability, and so on and so forth."

[hr]

After the ramshackle device he had analysed last, this new weapon, despite still being xenotech, was almost a relief to get his hands on. "What you now see is a Shas'la Pulse Rifle. The T'au have a more advanced understanding of plasma weaponry than the Imperium does, allowing them to fabricate these small arms. Despite being less powerful than Imperium plasma weaponry, they are safe and stable enough to be used as the standard equipment of T'au soldiers. Do [b]not[/b] underestimate T'au- despite lacking the speed of the Aeldari or the brutality of the Orks, they more than make up for it with a combination of these and diciplined firepower. This weapon is fully capable of punching through power armour given the opportunity.

"If what you say is true, the T'au must be a formidable foe to face indeed... I have not had the opportunity to match them myself." There was a soberness to Lelandros' words, and he had to admit a very small part of him was impressed at standardised plasma equipment. That feeling was quickly crushed as he remembered the videos he had seen- T'au forces scything down human populations, rounding them up like cattle, dragging sargeants to kneel over ditches, then sliting their throats and letting them topple into the mud.

"Now. Dissasembly..." 

[hr]

Lelandros had not had the opportunity to converse much with his fellows of Kill-Team Revas. As a forgepriest, he had spent much of his time in specialist training, sanctifying xenos weaponry, learning the ins and outs of their guns, how to make their vehicles run... And how to destroy them most effectively. Where to place his melta shots to atomise the crews, or what range bio-sculpted weapons were at their weakest. It had been a challenge- but the sort of challenge that one could relish and appreciate. 

Now, he was dragged to the presence. A friendly bout, against other marines. Hm. "Very well." He said with a simple nod.