In a dark, dilapidated basement, a dead man is leaning against a fallen bookshelf, clutching a sleek-looking Fusion Rifle with the inscription 'OMOLON' on the side. A little multi-faceted machine about the size of a baseball flies in through a hole in the roof. His single sky-blue eye acts as a flashlight as he looks for his perfect Guardian.
The Ghost, who's name is Spur, sets his light on the lifeless man wearing a tattered old camouflage-green soldier uniform. He's been searching for maybe ten years for his Guardian, and he thinks he might have just found it. His front facets spin as he scans the person up-to-down, his beam looking like one that would come out of a bar code scanner, but blue.
"I think this might be it!" Spur says, his voice like a human child. He then twirls in excitement. "Whoo! This is it, baby! My Guardian!"
He does a little cha-cha, swinging side-to-side in celebration. "Finally found it! Here we go!" His shell separates and his eye shoots a pure-white beam of Light to the corpse.
His joy is unmeasurable as he sees the person stir to life. A wave of nervousness comes over him. "Okay, don't be awkward, introduce yourself, get to the point, and don't be embarrassing."
"Alright, here we go, deep breaths, Spur. Deep breaths, well you can't actually breath but…" He jumps as he hears the person take his first breath. "By the Traveler he's come back to life faster than I thought."
There is a groan from the man, and one of his hands reaches for something to hold on. The Ghost doesn't know what to do and attempts to nudge a table nearby, but is far too light to be able to move it.
"Oh, what am I doing!?" Spur says to himself. "Hi! Hi! I'm your Ghost and you're my Guardian!" He says, the speed of his voice gradually increasing to the point where it is indistinguishable.
The man coughs, and lightly hits his chest a few times. He starts hacking, then clears his throat. His dull grey eyes make contact with the Ghost's single one, then he points towards a half-full water bottle on the table the Ghost tried to push.
"You want that water? It's been sitting there for a hundred years!" Spur says, his facets curving forward as he looks at the plastic container.
"Just…just give it." The man wheezes, then slowly opens and closes his hands, as if he was beckoning the water to come to him.
"Oh, fine…" Spur says as he flies behind it and slowly pushes it to the edge of the table.
"Oh no-" The bottle drops to the floor and rolls away. A paper underneath it floats down next to the man. "I'm so sorry!"
The man coughs a few more times, and his head leans back on the blood-stained wall behind him. His breaths are heavy.
"Oh, right! I can heal you!" Spur remarks out loud as he immediately starts blasting rays of Light onto his Guardian without any warning. The man tries to shield himself. "Calm down, it won't hurt you! In fact, it'll do the opposite."
The man's arms drop, and he takes one last long breath. "I'm okay, I'm okay." He whispers to himself.
"Yes you are!" The person screams and hurls the Fusion Rifle he was clutching at the Ghost. "Whoa!"
The man rapidly gets on his feet and he presses his back against the wall. "What the fuck are you!?" He yells at Spur.
"Guardian, I'm your Ghost!"
"My what? Ghost?" The man's brows furrow and his head turns slightly, so he's looking diagonally at the construct. "You don't look like a ghost."
"Not that kind of ghost!" Spur replies, almost offended. "I'm not one of those sheet-wearing weirdos that go around scaring people!"
"I can tell that." The man's voice softens. "Whoa…where am I?"
"You're on Earth, that's for sure." Spur replies. "I think somewhere in North America?"
"Alright, alright." He pauses, and relaxes his stance, then looks at the Fusion Rifle he flung to the other side of the room. "Sorry for, uh, throwing that at you."
"It's alright, I shouldn't have been so…excited." Spur says apologetically. "Here, I'll get it for you." He turns to the weapon and makes it disappear, then reappear in the man's hands.
"Whoa, you can do that?" The man says, looking at the weapon in half-shock and half-amazement. "Wow."
"So, uh, what's your name?" Spur inquires.
The man gives a good thought to it, looks upwards towards the hole in the ceiling, then shrugs his shoulder. "I don't know."
"Check that note that fell next to you?" Spur suggests.
The man pats around himself and grabs the piece of paper next to his leg, gently holding it so it faced directly with the light that shone above.
"Axol, if you do wake up from this and read this letter, just know that our division has been ordered to retreat towards forward base Specter, the invaders are pushing us way back-" The letter is unreadable from that point on.
"So my name's Axol." Axol says, cracking his neck. "I like it."
"I like it too, Guardian, now come on, let's go before-" There is a screech and a small pitter-patter originating from one of the two locked doors in the room. Something speaks in an unknown language and starts pounding on the blocked entryway. The old piece of wood starts to give way, and cracks.
Axol holds his Fusion Rifle tight, his index finger hovering the trigger. The weapon feels unfamiliar to him, like it was someone else's weapon. He holds his breath in and squints as he looks down the sights, waiting for whatever was on the other side to burst in.
A four-armed beast standing on two feet breaks in. It's holding blades on its upper set of arms, and a talon-like weapon sparkling with blue energy on the lower set. It screeches and lunges at him.
Axol barely taps on the trigger and a burst of purple bolts come out of his gun, eviscerating the enemy and cutting it in two from its waist section. The two separated body parts fall unceremoniously. From the corpse drops a shining blue dodecahedron.
Axol kneels down to grab it, but it disappears in his hands and forms a dark grey band that is big enough to wrap around his bicep. He snaps it on and inspects it, shrugging as he doesn't seem to mind its appearance.
"Wow, good shot, Axol!" Spur says, appearing out of nowhere.
"T-Thanks." He exhales. "Let's get out of here, before more of those things come."
"Good idea."
. . .
Axol steps through a broken glass door, the fragments crunching under his feet, and he steps onto an old, overgrown road. The asphalt of the sidewalk has various greenery growing on it, and the road doesn't fare much better. Moss grows on the buildings all around him, with a strand of it in front of the doorway.
He looks both sides. Ancient cars line the streets, all overturned and crushed by a massive metal beast that ran on tracks, its giant main cannon looked to be broken and was facing downwards.
On a well-worn white banner hung from the top of a building read: SAFETY THAT WAY
Underneath the words was a crudely-drawn arrow pointing to the left.
Axol looks that direction, where the ground is mostly reclaimed by nature, growing on top of a few bumps that are probably dead bodies. He starts heading towards the supposed safety, only to trip on a body in his first few steps.
He grunts as his uniform takes most of the damage, but his knees scrape. He looks at what he tripped on, seeing a skeleton wearing the same uniform as him. It is clutching a hand cannon in one hand.
"Sorry about this…" He mutters as he pries the weapon out, wrapping his hand around the grip.
"That's a Hakke gun!" Spur comments. "Not bad, a Bad News hand cannon!"
The name is a bit contradictory, but okay.
"Doesn't have any bullets, though." Axol flicks the weapon to the side, its cylinder popping out and no bullets dropped. "Probably what the bad news is." He chuckles.
"Shame." Spur says before disappearing.
"How can you do that?" Axol asks as he moves past the skeleton and hops over a crumbling road blocker, playing with his new weapon's cylinder by spinning it in its chamber with his finger.
"I can disappear and reappear at will!" He jumps at Spur's voice in his head. "Ooh, I should have mentioned that too…"
"Wow, um…" He doesn't know what to say. "Pretty cool, I guess?"
"I think we should keep going towards 'safety'." Spur suggests.
Axol silently nods in agreement and continues on his way.
. . .
Night is coming, and the sun is almost gone. The darkness of the night is close to taking over. Luckily Axol finds himself at what looks like a military camp.
A skeleton in a uniform sits inside a booth that seems to control the fenced barbed-wire gate.
Axol looks closely at the bones' clothing, noticing a little rectangular stitching that is divided in three parts: The two sides are red, while the middle section is white, and on the white is a red leaf. The name of it he doesn't remember. He shoves the former corpse away and presses a yellow button that has 'GATE OPEN' etched onto it.
"Huh, this place is still functional." He mumbles as the fenced gate slides to the side with a unpleasant screech. He steps into the base, and takes a look around.
To his front there are neatly placed colons of half-circle shaped tents, all uniform in their placement and style. Axol decides to go into one, making sure to close the door behind him.
He flicks a light switch, revealing nothing but rows of dull-green stretcher beds, a small fold-up table in one corner. There is a flickering tablet on it, the screen struggling to stay alive.
Axol shuffles in between a few beds and picks up the device, turning it around and smoothing his thumb over the soft-touch back as he woke the device. There is a single audio file to play.
There is a sigh. "Whoever is listening to this, the battle's lost. Government's surrendered a few hours ago to…whatever these things are." The voice is low, devoid of hope. "None of us know how to kill them, and…well, Rasputin just shot the Traveler, but I didn't tell you that." There is a dark chuckle.
There is gunfire in the background and screams as a horrible screech overtakes them all. "Well, I guess it's my time. If the Traveler wins this fight, against what the Speaker is calling the 'Darkness'. Then…to the future, I guess."
The recording stops.
Spur appears and scans the tablet. "This recording is dated…five hundred years ago! It's a relic from the Collapse!"
"The Collapse?" Axol asks.
"I don't know too much about it, but it's the time where the Darkness entered our solar system, and the Traveler had to fight it." Spur pauses. "It won the fight, but in its dying breath Ghosts, like me, were created."
Axol nods and hums. "Pretty cool, huh?"
"It's cool knowing the reason for your existence." The Ghost muses.
"I think I should call it for the night, I'm getting sleepy." Axol rubs his eyes and yawns, before climbing onto the stretcher closest to him.
/
Ishtar Sink, Venus
Guardian Nadia closes one eye as she funnels her vision through the scope of her Bite of the Fox sniper rifle, shifting her prone position a bit and flicking away a pebble that got stuck under her thigh. She holds her breath as her crosshairs set on a lone Fallen Vandal. She pulls the trigger and watches the alien's head explode and its body fall over, convulsing like a chicken without its head. She quickly switches targets, and finds a Dreg that took cover, but misinterpreted where the shot came from, meaning she still has a direct shot on it.
Her rifle barks again and the Dreg falls.
"Nice." She says to herself, then puts her fist in the air, and her Ghost materializes, bumping into it. "Thanks for not leaving me hanging." She mumbles.
The stock of her rifle is tucked under her shoulder and her legs are crossed. She is leaning forward a bit, her back arching, slightly. Her body tenses as she fires another shot, hitting a Servitor in its single purple eye. She follows up with another one and it explodes.
"Back straight, Nadia." Her Ghost says.
"Thanks, Cherry." Nadia grumbles as she straightens her posture. She hears footsteps behind her, and jumps up in response, her knife drawn. She leaps towards the source of the sound and a metal hand grabs her forearm.
"Oh, hey Amir." She says, pulling her hand back once he let go and sheathing her blade. "You reckon it'd be wiser to let me know that you're coming up?"
The Exo Titan grunts, and he shrugs. His malachite green body shines a bit, the gloss reflecting some light into Nadia's eyes. "You should've recognized when I'm approaching by now." He mumbles.
Nadia rolls her eyes. "Please, you Titans all walk the same way. I could feel myself inching forward to the edge."
"Whatever, I brought you lunch." He tosses her a bar. "All I could do, sorry." He says.
"Aw, thanks." She chuckles and tears open the packaging, leaning against the crumbled wall. She thinks for a bit, and her head tilts up.
"I know you're thinking of something." Amir remarks, crossing one hand into his armpit. "What is it this time?"
"It's getting kind of boring sitting here and picking off Fallen all day." Nadia throws away the wrapping and wipes her hands on her pants. "Cold as your balls too." She giggles.
Amir rolls his eyes. "I can get us a deployment to the Dreadnaught if you want." He snickers.
"I'd rather not, that place is too creepy, even with Oryx dead, I would rather the Cosmodrome but that's been closed off for a while now." She sighs. "Just need a change of pace, you know?"
"I understand you, but you're a deadly shot." Amir nods to her sniper rifle. She gives a quick glance before returning her gaze at him.
"I know…but I wanna be down there." She points towards ground-level, where the Vex have started to prowl in place of the Fallen. "We need a third."
Amir scoffs. "A third? Like who?"
Nadia shrugs. "I dunno, we'll find someone who's alone on the field." Her light-blue lips clump up on one side as she bites her cheek.
"We've been looking for a third member for weeks now." He says, crossing his arms. "No one's stepped up." He sighs.
"Is it cause everyone hates you?" Nadia giggles. "Kidding, who doesn't love you?"
"A lot of people, apparently." Amir laughs.
"If we can't find anyone here…"
"Nadia, no."
"We can go over to…"
"Nadia." He steps forward one step. It starts to rain, and the slightly acidic raindrops sizzle in the air.
Nadia looks upwards as she mumbles possible destinations to herself. "The Reef? No, the Awoken won't like that, even though I am one of them. What about the Manhattan Nuclear Zone? No that's off limits, even for me…"
"Nadia." Amir says, a bit firmer this time.
"What?"
"We're not going to be explorers." She ignores him and goes back to thinking, her Ghost appears to her side.
"What about in the north west countries?" Cherry suggests, her voice distorting and lowering in pitch a bit towards the end. "Whoops, sorry."
"You mean old Canada?" Amir asks. "My former self used to live there."
"It's a good starting place then, let's go!"
"Nadia, come on, you're being unreasonable."
"Am not!" Nadia disappears, presumably to go to her ship.
Amir sighs. "This woman…" He mumbles to herself before going back to orbit.
/
It's begun raining, more like downpouring. The raindrops' rhythm hit at a machine gun's pace and short bursts of lightning in the distance occasionally struck.
Axol peeks out from his tent once more to check if the rain's stopped, even though his ears functioned very well. A bit of hope can't hurt. His head returns back into the tent and his head is completely soaked, like the first few times he tried this.
"Oh come on, a little rain's going to put you down!" Spur teases, floating over to his Guardian.
"A little rain?" Axol tsks, and scoffs.
Another burst of rapid fire lightning.
"What kind of lightning strikes like this?"
Then an explosion in the distance.
"That's not lightning, Guardian." Spur says.
"Obviously, let's check it out."
Axol pushes the door to his tent open and steps outside, his boots meeting mud. He feels himself slowly sinking into it. Before he does, he moves his feet.
"The fighting's that-a-way!" Spur turns towards the way in which they came into the camp from. In the distance there are the cracks and small white flashes of small-arms fire. "You need to find an actual helmet, you know that? I can't interface with this one."
"I don't think this has any fancy tech in it." Axol taps his camouflage-green helmet, getting a tock-tock. He starts moving, his speed impeded by the mud that sinks even deeper every time he takes a step.
Once he's fumbled his way out of sticky brown dirt, he runs his way towards the source of gunfire. He dives into cover and waits for another round of bullets.
"Loot the bodies, and let's get out before they get revived!" A gruff, female voice says. Axol peers over and sees a group of people wearing crudely made armor crouching down against a few corpses with tiny blue dots hovering above them.
He reaches for his hand cannon, situated on his waist and gently pulls it out of its holster, holding it tight in his hand. Spur synthesized some ammo for it while Axol was sleeping.
"Thanks, by the way." He thinks.
"No problem."
"Hah, suckers were carrying their entire stock with them!" A man says. "It'll be a hell of a surprise once they get rezzed!" There is a boisterous laughter.
Axol peeks over and the hand that isn't in a fist balls up. He feels a sort of energy build up in his palm, and looking towards it, his hand is now purple.
"Uh." He doesn't know how to react to his newfound power. He peeks over again, the woman snaps her head his direction, and her rifle falls into her hands.
"We got another one, boys!" She howls, and fires a few rounds that ping dangerously close to his head.
Axol stands up and throws a purple sphere that splits into many little fragments once it makes contact with the woman's torso. His eyes widens as she is literally torn apart as the pieces that split apart explode and turn the person into mush.
"Whoa." He instantly crouches down as the other armed men started shooting their weapons at him. "I can do that?"
"You can do a lot of other stuff, but like a skill, it has to be refined!" Spur says, cheerily.
Axol's head flinches downwards as he feels a bullet make a dent in his helmet. He moves along his cover and peeks out once he reaches an overturned car on the sidewalk. It takes a few shots to adjust, but he takes a man down before diving back in.
He hears a click and then two clinking as a cylinder-shaped object lands next to him.
"That's a grenade." He mumbles to himself, then falls backwards, curling up into himself as the explosion sends him through the glass of a storefront.
Axol coughs as he reorients himself, and shakes his head. He lays on his back and his Bad News is aiming towards the shattered glass. He holds his breath as he waits for a person to show up, so he can riddle them with bullets.
"Come on, let's get out of here!" Air comes out of his lungs once hearing the voice and several sets of feet scurrying away into the distance. He groans as he sits himself up.
"Should I follow them?"
Spur appears. "Sure, just be careful, okay?"
. . .
The tracks of the scavengers weren't hard to follow. They all led to another military base like the one Axol slept in a few hours ago. There are considerably less tents most being replaced by crops. A few people tended to the plants, and would occasionally go in them with an empty bag and emerge with a full one.
The front gate is occupied by a few armed guards, two standing in watch towers that serve more to observe the people inside the camp than provide any usefulness to any external threat. A few mill about, looking bored with their rifles slung over their shoulders. Some converse amongst themselves, while others keep a vigilant watch.
Axol steps into the open, right into the guards' gaze. They all stop and turn his way.
"A person, wow. It's been a while." A man remarks, a lopsided smile on their face. "You one of those undead things?"
"Undead…what?" Axol asks as that same man pats him down.
"Do you have one of those floating things, you know, looks like a cube, blue eye…"
"I am not a cube!" Spur scoffs. "Do I look like a cube!?"
Axol shakes his head, then pops off his helmet. "Don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, come on in then." The gate slides opens. "Make sure to introduce yourself to everyone, they're dying to meet someone new."
/
"So…where do we look first?" Nadia ponders aloud as she visually scans an old map of Earth, one that's dated before the Golden Age. "Ooh, maybe we should look down here!" She points to a piece of land on the bottom right corner, marked 'AUSTRALIA'.
"Eh…that place is known for extremely dangerous wildlife. Plus, time there is all wrong." Cherry tilts herself sideways, in thought. "It'll probably annoy you too much."
Nadia hums in response. "Yeah, maybe you're right."
"What about here?" She circles in the general area of a country marked 'FRANCE'.
"Erm…that's where the European Dead Zone is. That place is pretty creepy." Cherry says, then hums. "Why not Old Chicago?" It shines a bit of light on the edge of a place called 'United States of America'.
"Someone's already been there, though. I wanna break new territory!" Nadia exclaims. "What about up here?" She points to Canada.
"Amir suggested that."
"Then he'll know where to find me! Onwards, TO VICTORY!" Nadia points upwards as she yellows.
Cherry sighs and programs the coordinates in.
