"My booth here is a business establishment, not your personal brooding post."
The voice of the special orders booth owner rang from beneath its roof. Xeraph's audio recievers whirred to life. The Exo hunter's eyes soon after slowly brightened and he gave his body a moment to recaliberate. His vision transitioned from what he could only describe to biological races as a computer screen glitching to a clear image of the the Traveler, sunlight reflecting off its bright, cracked surface. A freight ship slowly cruised across his view of the Traveler, leaving a stream of air and water vapor behind it, making the snow white savior look like a miniature Saturn. Xeraph finally decided to acknowledge the words of the special orders postmaster. He leaned forward and crawled on his belly so that his head hung upside down over the edge of the roof and faced the Awoken woman inside.
"Is that what you tell the 5,000 other Guardians that show up here and nap at any given moment?" Xeraph retorted slyly, his hood and cape billowing in the wind above him.
Tess was pre-occupied with handing a newly recruited warlock an order confirmation for a rare Sparrow vehicle. The warlock, a female human with short tom-boyish brown hair and piercing blue eyes jumped slightly at the sight of the blood red clad hunter above her.
"Whoah how'd you get such brightly colored armor?" the warlock said, stunned.
"Killed a big fuck off Cabal commander. Had a gun the size of that banner pole." Xeraph exclaimed, pointing to a nearby banner behind the newcomer.
"Cool!" She said, her eyes shifting from Xeraph to the pole, and back again. "Wait… what the hell is a Cabal?"
The Crimson cloaked hunter tucked his legs quickly and pushed himself off the roof of the booth, pulling off a backflip/spin combo in process, landing with the soft clack of his boots meeting the concrete floor of the Tower plaza floor.
"You'll find out when you're older kid." Xeraph replied, turning in the direction of the hangar.
"Just…. make sure you wear some kind of nose plug once you head to mars." He added, shouting over his shoulder, forming a salute with his right hand and flicking his wrist to make the accompanying saluting motion. "My little light forgot to mention that little protip when I first headed there myself."
"How many times do I have to tell you, that is OUR word." rang the familiar digital voice from inside the hunter's comm system.
"We're both artificials here, Ghost." Xeraph responded, shrugging seemingly to himself as he passed through the green lit gateway to the Tower Hangar, a nearby maintenance bot nodding to him as he passed. "Besides, it's not like it's demeaning or anything, you are small by most other sentient species standards, and you are a portion of the Traveler's light."
"I'm not small." The smooth voice hummed, the smallest amount of irritation rising in his words. "The form I inhabit to aid you in is."
"Awww, is Ghosty ashamed of his wittle home?" Xeraph teased in a high pitched, sing-song voice, holding his hands in fists close to his chest, as if he were speaking to an infant.
"Keep it up, Guardian." Sighed the ghost, irritation slowly fading into exasperation.
"Now THAT is OUR word." Xeraph said sarcastically.
"May I… help you, sir?" Amanda Holliday's voice asked.
Xeraph's attention snapped back to the world outside his head. The shipwright sat before him, chuckling at the pose he was striking. His hands sat on his hips, which were cocked to the side in a very sassy manner.
"No I- I'm not-! I was talking to my ghost! It was a jo-" He stuttered, waving his hands frantically at Amanda.
"Relax," she said, cutting of the stammering Exo's explanation. "I've heard and seen weirder things come from even stranger looking Guardians."
"Hey now, I didn't choose this paint job." Xeraph snapped back jokingly.
He was by no means a standard styled Exo. Black carbon fiber shell, a purple underglow in his eyes and mouth, along with matching purple decorative audio receiver fins, and a neon orange paint splatter covering the left side of his face, a stark contrast from the rest of his relatively dark features. "I have no idea what I did during my past life, but whatever it was, I clearly needed a lot of attention."
"Apparently you still do." Amanda snapped, pointing at the hunter's bright red armor. "Where on Earth did you find that alarming shader?"
"Mars, actually." He said, correcting her. "And I happen to like it." He gripped the shoulder straps of his Queen's Guard vest, puffing out his chest in pride. "Makes me feel spiffy. Besides, I actually got to choose this, so it doesn't count."
"What the fuck does 'spiffy' mean?" Amanda asked, cocking her head to the right and smirking.
"It means…" Xeraph began. he paused, his face looked blank, even for an Exo. "...huh. Now that I think about it, I can't recall what it means."
"A lot of culture was lost during the collapse" Amanda said, looking down. "Perhaps it was a word you knew before your death and rebirth."
"Perhaps." Xeraph replied, running his head along his head. "It's weird, we can probe the memories of any and every maintenance robot in the city, but the mind of every living Exo, including me, is an enigma."
"Haha, yes, it is strange." Amanda said, chuckling at nothing in particular. "I guess that's another technique that was lost I suppose."
Xeraph chuckled back, unsure of how to reply. The two shared an awkward silence together, glancing away from each other. A tap on his shoulder alerted Xeraph and he realized he had been holding up the line. He turned to face a frankly frighteningly tall and bulky Awoken titan waiting behind him.
"I'm sorry!" he yelped, shooting his hands up in front of him, as if to beg the fellow guardian for forgiveness. He then spun back to Amanda.
"I was curious about the state of my ships repairs." He managed to sputter out, eyes facing straight ahead.
"Ah, yes." Amanda exclaimed, reaching behind her and handing Xeraph a small card. "She's ready to roll. Here's your ships ID card, the repair log has been added to it."
He nodded and took the card from the shipwright. "Have a good one, Amanda!" He called, heading back to the plaza.
"Goodbye Xeraph."
The final flecks of sunlight dimmed on the surface of the Traveler as the sun set upon the final city. The tower plaza was sparse of Guardians, as most had either gone to rest or were out and about repelling the various enemies of mankind. One of the few Guardians remaining sat on the frontmost set of stairs in the plaza, staring down at the gilded words before him.
"Atrium Propugnatorum" Xeraph said to himself, holding a blade of grass between his left index finger and thumb. The blade swayed back and forth swiftly in the wind.
"Pardon?" the voice of his ghost buzzed through the comm system.
"That's what those words on the ground say." Xeraph elaborated, shifting his focus to the grass that ached to be freed from his grip.
"... How do you know?" replied the 'Little Light'.
"I don't know." Xeraph admitted. He stared intently at the small plant he pinched so tightly in his hand. "I don't know what language it is written in, or even what that translates to. But for some reason, I know what noise each letter makes in relation to the ones around it and that despite the rules of English, the "V" in those words should make the noise a soft "U" normally makes."
For a while, there was no reply from his ghost. The guardian sat, eyes dead set on the small life he held captive in his hand. Suddenly, it replied.
"What prompted that tidbit of information?"
The Exo hunter made a noise akin to a small chortle and put his hand down, still gripping the grass. "Memory is a weird concept, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is, Guardian." The companion agreed.
"The shipwright can remember my name, the name of one of thousands of Guardians she sees on a daily basis." Xeraph said, looking towards the hangar. "Yet somehow, I can't remember the definition of a single word."
The ghost again had no initial response. After a minute of silence between them had passed the ghost asked, "You're thinking about finding a way to remember, aren't you?"
"Is it so wrong of me to want to do so?" Xeraph asked back, shrugging. "Clearly I had a life before this one. One that might not have been as violent. Is it wrong to at least want to know what that life was like?"
"Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. That really isn't my area of expertise."
The hunter laughed. "Yeah, your area of expertise is scanning, followed by floating, with more scanning close behind that."
"Ok, if calling me 'Little Light' wasn't offensive, THAT is." It replied, causing Xeraph to laugh even harder.
Once he had stopped laughing, Xeraph stood up, and put his hand out, prompting his ghost to form above his palm. It looked up at him, its singular eye growing larger. "Where would you even start looking to find out what you were?"
Xeraph paused, he lifted his other hand, which still clung to the blade of grass. "I guess I should look for it the same way everyone else does, go back to the last place I remember being…" He released his fingers and watched the blade wisp away quickly. "... And retrace my steps. Let's go back to the motherland, Ghost."
With a sequence of flashing lights, the ghost warped him and his Guardian into their ship.