Don't worry, I just made a few changes here and there to make the story sound less confusing and more realistic and descriptive.
He flew around the cars, scanning the bones in side of them, looking for someone with enough light to revive them until he came across a slightly weak feeling of heat, as if he had been sitting next to a smoldering fire. Looking around he didn't find a single bit of bone or dust except for when he looked down. Nothing but a few metallic pieces of it remained but it was enough. Light exists as long as some form of remnant of the body remained but metal replacements didn't retain as much as real bone but it was enough.
Beginning to pour light into the titanium the ghost began to fuse spinmetal with it, forging an artificial skeleton of durable alloy. When It was finished the metallic material began to coat itself with flesh and veins until it was a full human being. Naked, but human. Looking around the area the ghost made armor and a basic knife from spinmetal and a few prosthetic limbs that people in the cars had to fix the clothes situation.
Now fully armored in basic gear the ghost attempted to wake the newly forged guardian from their sleep by sending small jolts of energy through his systems via his new spinmetal/titanium skeleton. When they finally awoke their eyes were a deep shade of purple except for a few flecks of blue and orange that seemingly shifted and moved the longer you stared at them.
"W-what's going on? Where am I?" He looked at the small machine floating a few feet away from him but it didn't answer except for it turning it's star shaped shell in excitement and motioning towards the large cosmodrome that he had been going to tour when he was... shot. Quickly probing his chest for the wound he found nothing.
He looked at the small robot in confusion when an inhuman yell rang out from behind him. The Ghost looked at him in terror and gestured to the cosmodrome before disappearing.
Taking what I hoped was advice and not a warning I ran to the bubble shaped building and bashed the rusted steel doors off of their hinges. What followed was something I wish not to recall, but screw it.
I once again busted through the rusted doors and rushed down the corridor until I came across a platform with no way away from it other than a closed shutter and where I just came from. I heard a rusty creaking and looked over to see the machine motioning to the now slightly opened shutter. Sliding under it the metal slammed to the ground and I looked over to see it hovering next to an ancient rifle although it looked pretty familiar.
I picked it up and looked it over to find the make and serial number. The number was worn off but the name was barely visible. It was called a khvostov, a rather trusty Russian made assault rifle. Based off of the action of an Ak-47 it has a high fire rate and low malfunction probability. The white ball of metal bumped into me and flew towards another hallway before disappearing with a flash of blue light.
This was getting annoying. I ran down the hallway, wondering what a rifle was supposed to be used for when I saw what it was going to be used for.
"JESUS!" My scream alerted the aliens and they turned to me before quickly firing at me. Dodging around a corner I poked the rifle out and released quick bursts of rifle rounds, hoping that they hit there marks.
After the sixth burst the fire stopped. Poking my head out a small bolt quickly hit the concrete next to my face and caused me to pull my head back into cover.
"Fuck it." I sprinted out of cover and put the cracked holographic sights on the face of the nearest alien and pulled the trigger, releasing one 5.56 round into it's skull and popping it like a rotten melon filled with firecrackers. I repeated the process with the next one and was rewarded with another popped skull.
Upon further examination I saw that they had an extra set of stumps where I assumed that limbs were supposed to be but were removed in surgery or as an injury but with both of the creatures having them I doubted the latter.
I had to cap a few more of the creatures until I reached an Arcadia class jumpship that was able to make a trip to the moon in a few hours instead of a few days. I saw the little machine scan the old ship with a blue laser and seemingly repair broken sections of plating with a slivery metal. Not given the time to think about where it got the metal I heard the scraping of metal upon metal and looked behind me to find a much larger version of the four armed creatures crawl out of a sewer pipe. But before I could raise my rifle I was somehow teleported out of there and into the cockpit of the Arcadia ship and flew out of there with haste.
I fell asleep somewhere along the flight when I realized that I wasn't flying the ship and that I was extremely tired from the ordeal that I'd been through. When I awoke the ship was flying towards a tower with a large white orb behind it that had seemingly been scratched and torn up by something of a very large size, it's name was tugging itself from my memory but quickly stopped. I turned my attention away from the orb when I heard three beeps come from the console and was instantly teleported onto the railing of the roof with nothing but the tip of my boots on the railing. Needless to say I quickly fell with a yell of abject terror.
A blue-whitish grid surrounded me and I found my self once again on the roof, this time feet not on the railing. Patting my self to make sure I was there I laughed and slumped against the railing, exhausted, until the little white machine prodded me until I got up and then it flew towards a set of stairs before, once again, disappearing. slowly walking over with the feeling of being drained growing the closer I came to the stairs but once I reached them that feeling of being drained increased ten fold but I forced myself down the steps, knowing that it was important. Once I managed to make it to the bottom of the stairs I rested against a wall, a feeling of comfortable cold washing over me. Compared to before it was like I was sitting in a broiling sun and then sat in front of an AC unit at full blast with a bowl of ice-cream. Sliding along the wall I turned around the corner and saw the source, a woman in a brown cloak holding a ball of green fire. Rather than find out what she was doing I pushed off of the wall, towards the door way but as soon as I got out of a six foot radius of the woman it was like I was three inches away from an inferno.
Stumbling back I fell into the waiting arms of the woman who looked at me with disdain before dragging me through the door. That's when I realized that it wasn't her radiating the cold, it was her green fire which she put onto a tiki torch like rod although even without it she gave me a small sense of relief from the heat.
"This one is full of darkness. He shouldn't be here." She didn't speak very loud but it was as though she yelled into my ear. Maybe it's because I could feel the heat penetrate our barrier of cold, giving me a headache.
"Whoa now crazy lady, he wouldn't be wearing guardian attire if he wasn't supposed to be here." It was a metal man with a horn and glowing blue eyes. A black woman looked at him with a slight glare before turning to me and I got the strangest feeling that she could see right through my helmet's visor and into my purple eyes. A strange color, I know, but my family's been messed up since the stone age. Must've been something in the mushrooms they ate.
"Quiet Cayde. What do you mean Eris?"
"Look in his eyes and tell me you see no darkness." The dark woman walked over to me and pulled my helmet off before forcing me to look at her. With her this close the feeling of standing next to an inferno increased to feeling like I was standing not two inches away from the sun's core. She reached and forced an eye open with her free hand, what she saw shocked her. I could somehow tell that my eyes were turning a milky white with purple ringing it. She backed away and the heat lowered to a somewhat bearable level.
"Take him and give him some of your fire. Make him something to keep the light away." The blue skinned man at the end of the table said with such authority I felt compelled to swallow the icy fire ball my self. Apparently the woman named Eris felt compelled to do so as well as she dragged me back to her little kiosk and laid me on a mat she pulled from a urn while grabbing her fire from its stand. She somehow pulled a small piece of it off and pushed it into my chest, sending a soothing ice through my veins.
She pulled another piece off and dropped it into a bowl. Mixing it with a black, foul smelling liquid the fire was extinguished and the black substance turned green, the same shade as the fire. She then forced my mouth open and poured the liquid down my throat, a feeling like someone rubbing menthol down my throat taking over. Then it turned to fire. I tried to scream but only smoke came out. She then poured the black and foul smelling liquid down my throat and it tasted worse than it smelled. I wish she didn't pour it down even though it quenched the fire.
As soon as I could I sat up and did my best to cough up the foul thing she made me drink. Someone I didn't recognize pushed me down and I realized that I wasn't mat that Eris put me on. I was on a hospital bed. In a hospital.
I pushed her off and stumbled out the door, feeling tired but not being drained. The air was cool but it hadn't been more than an hour or two since I'd gotten here. As if something had turned the sun's temperature down a few hundred degrees. I stumbled to the hall where I was again, little white orb of annoyance close behind me. I expected the draining sensation to return when I reached the stairs but only a slight tugging sensation returned, as if a weak current was pulling me instead of a riptide. I reached the wall and the same chilling sensation washed over me, filling me with energy. But instead of relying on it I pushed away from it and walked around and straight into the hall where I'd collapsed. I felt the drain return but it was similar to when I was at the top of the stairs. Bearable, but just so but as soon as I walked through the doorway three guns were pointed at me, one of them somehow less so threatening that the others.
"Whoa!" My hands flew up, "what's with the hardware? I just got here." I added in a mumble, "way to make a guy feel special." The robot chuckled lightly while the blue man and woman just tightened their grips on their weapons.
"Alright, mind telling us what you're doing here, cause I don't really want to shoot ya, after all the cleaners just left." The robot.
"Quiet Cayde." Blueberry. "You shouldn't speak to this creature of darkness. You're corrupted enough as it is."
"Hey, watch your language Blueberry. I'm human, just like her." I pointed to the dark skinned woman." He seemed angered at the comment while the robot, Cayde, just laughed hysterically.
"Ok," Cayde holstered his pistol, "anyone who has balls big enough to say that to a titan is okay in my book. To make it official, welcome to the guardians." He walked forward with a smile until he was teleported to the dark woman's side with a flash of blue.
"Oh come on Ikora, I was just joking around." She scowled.
The small machine appeared from a blue hole in a wall before flying in front of me and giving them an angry look, well, as angry as a tiny machine with one eye could look. They seemed shocked.
"You- you revived this... creature?!" Asked the dark skinned woman, Ikora, and the small orb nodded. They seemed both satisfied and dissatisfied at the answer.
"Very well. It seems that you are a guardian, however much darkness you possess." That's when I noticed that the woman that gave me some of that strange icy fire, Eris, was standing in the background, listening intently and she also seemed displeased by the answer. Storming out of the room I was assaulted by a wave of what felt like artic water, the others seemed to have felt it as well.
"Brr, that woman is scary." The exo, I had just remembered what they were called although they were just an idea when I was alive, who was called Cayde.
"And we are so glad to know your opinion." Ikora sarcastically remarked.
"Happy to help. Now, should we initiate our new guardian?" The others grumbled their acknowledgments. "Ok! So, what's your name?" He looked at me expectantly.
I opened my mouth to speak it when I couldn't remember it. I tried to retrieve it from my memory but I only found a blank space. I was attempting to recall when I felt a hand on my shoulder, the owner had approached silently and had surprised the three in front of me as well.
"We are not meant to know his name, at least, not yet. Nor is he. He shall pick a new name, one that will suit his own abilities." The longer he spoke the more I felt my energy be drained.
"Maybe, but what is he?" Blueberry.
"Watch the pronouns, or I will whoop your ass."
"As you know," the newcomer stopped us before our murderous glares turned to more, "a child made of light will be born every three thousand years and they will bring us victory. But there is another side to the story you have yet to learn." Another small orb appeared above his shoulder and fired a blue light from it's eye, creating a hologram of a brilliant blue light. "The Traveler told me long ago that I should never allow this prophesy to come true, at all costs." The light changed to an orb of dark energy. "That a child was born, made from darkness and that he will disrupt the balance between the dark and the light. For better, or worse."
"So we should kill it." The dark woman pointed her fancy rifle at me.
"Not so. I believe that the Traveler was misinformed. Or maybe he did not realize what a dire situation we would be in but we need this man." He looked at me an the drain increased to a nearly unbearable level. I stumbled back. "Should he die, our one chance at winning this endless war would die with him.
"You better be right about this, Speaker."
"Finally, a little respect." I sighed after saying this, exhausted.
"Alright, let's get you geared up, and that's my specialty." Cayde picked me up and dragged me out of the room and I felt the weight on my chest dissipate. We were half way up the stairs when I started stumbling on my own. "Hey, you ever heard of a hand cannon?" I shook my head. "Well then my friend, you are going to have one hell of a time."
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We spent two hours searching for weapons when I finally found two guns that didn't feel clunky and heavy in my hands. The 'hand cannon', as Cayde called it, was close to a .44 magnum but felt much lighter and far more powerful than the one I'd shot before my revival and the sniper rifle was from a brand called Hakke with an A TB Long range scope, whatever that was. It was heavy, but stable and the magazine was unbelievably fast to change. I was ok with lugging it around shopping but I stopped Cayde when he held a rocket launcher up.
"I can't carry that. Even if I could I wouldn't."
"That's fine, your ghost can transmatte it into a storage space. Along with your other weapons."
"Wait, ghost? You mean the little orb of annoyance that's following me every where without a word?"
"Ah, yes. I forgot that your new to this. Your ghost is what brought you back to life and will continue to bring you back to life as long as it's alive."
"So do none of them speak?"
"No. Yours was captured by a wizard once and hasn't had the ability to speak since." The tale behind my ghosts silence, while short and more of a small comment, was sobering. Cayde then brought me to an armor shop and got me some recon armor with stealth capabilities and an interface with my weapons' scopes to enhance the accuracy further. It must have cost a ton but he said he had to much glimmer which I remember being an experimental type of energy from my time but it must've been currency in this time.
"Come on, lunch is on me. I know a great ramen place."
"Hmm? Oh, sure."
"Feeling a little antsy?"
"No, just a little confused. Back in my old life Exos were just an idea in some egg head's mind. I mean sure, The Traveler had advanced our technology by centuries but still." He turned to look at me.
"When was your 'old life'?"
"Well... The traveler was discovered in 2023 and Exos were dreamed up in 2025. I died about three years after that. I think." I scratched the stubble that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shave off. "So how long ago was this 'Collapse' that you keep talking about?" I could only remember things that made a big impact in my life but nothing like who I was or what I did for a living.
"We know the golden age lasted about three hundred years but we're not sure how long the Collapse lasted, I was created well after that. We think it lasted around seven centuries, or that's what Ikora thinks from old records. Exos weren't developed for years after the Traveler was discovered?"
"Just shoddy prototypes, they were called 'frames' I think."
"Oh yeah, we have a couple of those around here. Somewhere. Ah! Here we are, the best ramen shop in the city!" He pushed the doors open and sat down at the bar, quickly ordering himself a drink and food. I sat next to him, rifle slung over my back.
"Here, let me take care of that." He snapped his fingers and the weight lifted from my back with a flash of blue.
The server asked what I'd have and I said what Cayde was. "And to drink?"
"You have any vodka? It's been a long day." She nodded and walked over to a window in the wall. A few minutes later two large bowls of noodles came out with red peppers piled on top of the stack and steam rising off of it. I dove in with a vengeance. Cayde was halfway through his when I got another bowl and we finished at the same time. I downed my vodka in one swig after I realized that my mouth was on fire.
"Damn. I've never seen anyone eat an inferno bowl so fast."
"I guess not eating for a millennium will do that to you." I wiped my mouth, hoping to take some of the fire in my mouth with it. "Thanks for lunch, and sorry for costing you so much."
"Eh. As long as I get three or more people in here a week they give me a fifty percent discount."
"Ok, I have a few more questions."
"Fire away."
"What is all of this? What happened? You refer to this 'collapse' but your not telling me what happened during it." Cayde sighed and ordered something green to drink.
"All we know is that the Traveler had an old enemy following it, The Darkness, it was aiming to kill it but it was slow so we didn't find out about it until it was too late. The rest of the records are missing most of the data they once contained."
"Damn." I held the vowel in for a second or two.
"Ok, my turn. What was the golden age like?"
"Heh. We had something for every thing, cancer? Thing of the past. MS? Gone. TB? Out the window. The Traveler basically made every thing we had obsolete. The only thing it couldn't cure was..." There was a hidden memory there, I knew that, but I couldn't find it. "I-I can't remember." I grasped my head in pain as something banged against the walls of my psyche, scratching and pulling, hammering and banging, like an icepick.
Hello, our little guardian.
"Who-what are you?" I'm not sure if I said this out loud or not.
You know who we are. We, are your family. The... thing... sounded as if it was laughing as if it just told a hilarious joke I wasn't aware of.
"My family was killed... centuries ago... I think."
Not all of us... child.
"Who are you? What's your name? What's my name?"
You need not know these things. What you must know is that you are not one of these guardians! He spat the word more than said it.
"HEY! Kid? You ok?" Something jerked my head to the side. That's when I became aware of the distorted look of Cayde through a black fluid gathering in my eyes. It felt like blood.
"Kill me." It was a whisper.
"What?" I pulled my self up to his face by his collar.
"Kill me. Get it out. GET IT OUT. GET IT OUT!" My voice had a new tone to it. Deep and dark with my normal voice a whisper. The black blood flowed freely from my eyes and fell to the floor.
"Listen, you'll be fine. We just need to get you to Eris." He pulled my hands from his collar and put them at my sides. I grabbed his pistol from his hip, forgetting about the one at my own side and pressed it to my temple. I pulled the trigger back as far as it could and I heard it go off. I fell to the ground, red blood pouring from the wound but I wasn't dead. I pushed my self up and felt the wound, I felt metal instead of bone. Blood still leaked from my eyes and the wound on my head as pain flooded my receptors but I just laughed and laughed until my lungs hurt.
I stopped due to a metal fist flying into my face.
X-X
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My forehead pounded and I could feel something poking my brain and draining my energy. It hurt like hell.
I groaned at sat up and the same person pushed me down. I tried to get up but they held me down firmly and I got a closer look at them. They were female and wore a red leather trench coat and brown combat boots along with a strange golden helmet. When they left I reached for the thing in my skull and pulled it out, instantly the pain and draining stopped except for a light tugging sensation.
I sat up and found that my head was covered in bandages. I felt under them and found no wound so I pulled them off to notice that they were covered in black blood. Tucking them in my pocket I stumbled out the door and avoided every one until I was outside the medical wing.
I stumbled down the stairs and fell against the wall behind Eris' kiosk until I was awake. Once I was I struggled up and walked down to The Hall of Whatever.
When I entered I was given looks of disdain by Ikora and Blueberry but Cayde just gave me a look of concern, like a brother or friend.
"We heard about your little... attempt, to shoot yourself. Would you tell us what caused this." It was more of a command than a question.
"Why, I just wanted to see that beautiful nurse again." Cayde cracked a smile, that was good. "Okay, some thing was in my head." I said after several seconds of ice cold glares from Blueberry and Ikora. Back to concern form Cayde.
"What was it?" Blueberry.
"Okay, first, what the hell is your name?"
"Zavala."
"Thank you. Okay, now, it said it was 'family' although mine died centuries ago. The thing reeked of evil and darkness even from inside my head." I shivered and felt the urge to grab a gun even as I thought about it. "Does the phrase 'our little guardian' mean anything to you?" I wasn't sure why, it was a pretty dumb sounding thing to ask, but they all looked at each other with horror etched onto their face, and I'm pretty sure that Zavala turned a few shades bluer.
"Do you think-"
"Maybe it isn't-"
"No, it's definitely him."
"Hey! Maybe feather it in for the new guy?"
"It's nothing you should concern yourself with."
"Hey now! If this guy is family I deserve to know his damn name after you all dragged me into this god damn shit storm!" Now, normally I wouldn't act like this and it seemed strange, even to me, but I was pissed.
"Watch what you-"
"NO! NO I WON'T! I didn't fucking ask for this shit! I don't want all this shit your putting on me! For all I care you can all go to hell! Except for Cayde as he's the only one who gives a damn cause I'm sure that had either of you been in that restaurant with us that you would have put rounds into my metal skull until it broke!" I slammed my hand cannon on the table. "I fucking quit." I walked out of the room with two middle fingers raised, one for the bitch and one for the asshole. When I passed Eris the cold fire didn't change anything, it was an insignificant icicle compared to my raging blizzard. I could see the fire waver as I passed.
I saw the edge of the tower approaching and heard rapid foot steps behind me, dozens of them. I made a dumb decision and ran to the railing and jumped, my feet passing over the railing and down into the thousand foot drop. As I was falling I thought about the strange teleport that Ikora had used on Cayde, and suddenly felt a strange energy building inside my chest. It was cold. When I focused on the energy I felt inside of me and concentrated on the action time stopped, I didn't. I fell soundlessly and quickly until I hit the ground, as if I merely jumped from the ground and came back. Time resumed and I saw purple smoke trailing from where I started to where I was.
They looked over the railing in amazement and Zavala yelled at them to get down here and get me. I ran through the crowded streets of the last city, trying to lose them until the Arcadia jumpship my ghost flew here come in just above the high walls to avoid getting shot by the automated anti air cannons that likely hadn't been programed to accept us as friendlies yet.
My speed increased until I felt myself almost glide above the ground, how I accomplished this I have no idea but when I hit the wall instead of slamming into it like an idiot my boot hit the stone wall and I launched myself upwards, every step up the wall costing me speed until my foot hit a shadow. It sailed right through it and the rest of me followed until I was standing on top of the wall under my jumpship and so I hopped up and into the cockpit and pulled up the warp drive menu to find that we were missing one.
"Damn it. Ghost, set a course for the cosmodrome, Russia. We need a warp drive." I heard a beep and felt us pull up into orbit as the engines fired up and poured smoke.
Once we were in a far away from the tower I started checking the systems.
"Well, the grease monkeys in the tower certainly know their stuff." I said to my self as most systems were green and the rest were only semi damaged where only the very basics were operable and even then just barely when I had gotten it. "But they fucked the engine block up pretty bad. I'm reading an internal inhibitor, could you get rid of that." I saw a small bit of metal fly away. "Thanks." I flicked through a few more systems before we dropped back into the atmosphere and teleported me down to the ground.
One hundred and thirty six words is where the actual story stops from five thousand so this is definitely the longest chapter I've ever written as to apologize for the delay but as most of you know school is a bitch so I only had after school to write this and I never found a good place to stop in my opinion so I just wrote until an opportunity to stop was to reveal itself. I've taken enough of your time but here's another thing, when he fell through the shadows think of it like it's a portal from the game, Portal, where one is on the wall and another is on the ground. That's basically what happened. And once more, I'm sorry for such a long delay but like I said I've only had weekends and a couple of hours on week days to write this but to compensate for this I made sure to have extra long chapters.
If you guys like this extra long chapter and want more leave a review in the comments section saying you enjoyed this and would like more.
