Quote of the Day: "I used to be an adventurer, like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee."-(Ex)Adventurer
Two Years Later...
"Okay, you're ready." Martin said, holding the braid up with one gloved hand. "Ghost's, prep for the picture."
"You're sure this is a good idea, Martin? Someone might see." Heather fretted from where she sat on the bench as Martin took up the large, white orchid in one hand. Both their Ghosts floated up to where they had a good view of the two of them, and Martin put the flower in his mouth as he took his gloves off, though it was a bit of a struggle as he still had to hold her hair up.
"I think it's an excellent idea." her ghost told them. Martin's own ghost nodded.
Over the last year, both of the tiny robots had acquired names; Wheatly for Martin's, as they had discovered a rather charming game called Portal. And, after watching a hilarious romance movie called The Princess Bride, Heather had named her own ghost Westley.
"I agree." Wheatly said in his monotone. "Every girl should have at least one picture with flowers in her hair. I think."
"Okay." she said skeptically, rubbing her bare arm nervously.
They had decided, or rather, Martin had, that since the weather was so fine, they should take a picture. A picture of Heather without her gloves and usual coverings, in a spring dress with flowers in her hair like any other normal girl. She wore a pearly white dress that went down to her knees, with a pattern of vines and honeysuckles running up one side of it to curl around the collar. The sleeves stopped short at her shoulders, but the top parts stuck out and down bit in a way that was reminiscent of some armor. She wore sandals, and Martin, wearing gloves, had put her hair in a french braid that went down, approximately, to the small of her back. In the braid, he had stuck various flowers, ranging from Blue Starlets to Saxifrage to a few tiny lilies.
The orchid came from a plant he'd been nursing for a while now, one that Brask had sent him for his birthday, from the jungles of Brazil. Growing the plant had been difficult; it was a Constantia, and keeping it the right humidity and tending the vellozia it grew on was a pain and a labor that rewarded him greatly with the sight of the flowers.
Heather had grown some more in the last year, raising a few inches higher. He still had yet to grow more than an inch since the day they had met, and he was beginning to fear that he would be destined to spend his life in the shadow of his now-towering best friend. She was nearly four-foot nine, while he was still stuck at four-foot and half an inch. Her hair had grown even more, and the brown part now went down to her shoulders. Despite her monstrous, pubescent appetite, she remained thin and elegant, though a spot of acne was still faintly visible on her lower left cheek.
"Okay, ready?" he asked, bringing the braid around over her left shoulder, still holding it up, and bringing the orchid up near her left ear. Both ghosts nodded.
"Ready." they confirmed.
"Right; smile, H.C.!" he swiftly tucked the flower behind her ear and dropped the braid at the same time, before bringing his now orchid-less hand behind her as fast as he could while letting the hand that had held her braid rest on her shoulder. At the same time, there was a faint click, and the orchid began to whither and blacken. The braid flowers that touched her skin did the same, and Martin felt a chill run up his spine. Like usual, he forced it down. For a moment, he thought he head a crackle in the bushes some distance away, but he dismissed it as his nerves playing tricks on him again.
"Well? How is it?" Heather pressed after a brief moment of strained silence.
"See for yourself." her ghost said, parting his shell and projecting the picture. She sat with her legs crossed, on the bench, smiling, flowers in her hair, Martin right behind her, the blue sky and a partial bit of the Traveler just visible in the distance behind them. The two of them grinned at each other.
"Perfect." they agreed in unison.
"Perfect?" a breathless voice echoed. They both froze as a figure stepped out into the light from the hall tunnel that lead into the courtyard. "You...you're a-some kind of...thing. A monster of some sort, you...you did...that...?"
It was another boy about their age, tall and well-muscled, with short, dark brown hair, and icy gray-blue eyes. He wore a dark blue tunic and black shorts that went down a little past his knees, with tan sneakers and a pair of finger-less gloves as if he'd been lifting weights. He was certainly sweaty and breathless-looking enough to have been working out. He stared at them with a mixed look of shock, confusion, fear, and rage.
Martin felt like the void had opened up below him and swallowed him whole. "Keep Heather a secret."
That was what he'd been told constantly for the past two years of his life. "Keep her secret. Keep her safe. Keep her from falling into the wrong hands."
And now, he'd failed that task. This boy would tell someone. And that someone would tell someone else, and then they would tell someone else, until the whole Tower knew about Heather, and Guardians came busting down their doors to take her away to who-knows-where for who-knows-what faction. I'm a failure!
"Please! Don't tell anyone! I'd never hurt anyone, I swear!" Heather stood bolt upright, begging. The boy backed away suddenly as she got up, as if afraid she could reach him all the way over there. "I didn't ask to be like this!"
"You're some kind of freak!" he spat angrily, backing up in a defensive position. "You were always a freak, but you're really an abomination, mutt!"
"Hey! Watch what you're saying! Heather's not a mutt; she's a person, just like us!" Martin flared up indignantly. There was no way he was letting this kid talk to his best friend that way! No matter what she might be, or what dark powers she harbored.
"YOU SHOULD DIE! Before you kill someone! And you should die with her!" the boy screamed. Shell-shocked, the two other children just stood there, staring, as he whirled around back the way he came...
...only to run face-first into the chest of an incoming Hunter.
Halting with an omf, he looked up at the figure, before pointing at Heather and Martin and screaming.
"She's a monster!" he yelled. The Hunter jumped back a little, surprised, and Martin wished the void would come and swallow him, him and Heather both. That way, they would at least be away from this place when everything started going wrong for majorly real. "She killed those flowers just by touching them! I saw it!"
The shadowy Hunter turned to look at his companion, whom Martin only just now noticed. He hunched his shoulders, pressing his elbows to his sides and wishing he could disappear. Heather was shaking, and Westley floated close to her head comfortingly. The dead flowers were still in her hair, and Martin reached up to pull the orchid out, letting it's withered shape fall to the ground.
"Well, is it true? He saw you do this?" the Hunter the boy had run into questioned, stepping out of the shadows and into the light much like how the boy had moments before. His companion followed, and Martin was both shocked and relieved to see the faces of both Tevis and Cayde revealed by the sunlight. He let out the breath he'd been holding, feeling like he was actually going to melt into jelly right then and there.
"Yes, Tevis." Heather answered guiltily, looking at the ground and fidgeting with her dress, though she, too, seemed to immensely grateful that their childhood role models had been the ones the boy had run into first. Tevis was looking down on them severely, and Cayde didn't look too happy that the secret was out, either. You know what? I think I want the void to come and swallow me again.
"Why where you risking being seen?" Cayde asked repremandingly.
"We just wanted a flower picture!" Martin blurted, before immediately trying to sink into his shoulders again as their sharp gazes turned to fix on him, pinning him to the ground. He muttered his next words, becoming more and more afraid of talking, looking at the ground. "You know...for spring...everyone else's got a few..."
He could feel Tevis's eyes narrowing in at him. He could only imagine how disappointed in them he was for taking such a risk.
"Well, that's understandable." Cayde spoke up matter-of-factly. Martin didn't look up, but a tiny flicker of hope lit inside him. Maybe they wouldn't get punished when their mother found out, if Cayde stood as an advocate for their decision.
"What?" the boy said, confused, the triumphant expression vanishing from his face as he realized the Guardians he'd found not only knew about her, they weren't doing anything to stop or contain her. He turned to run back to the tunnel, but Cayde held out a hand to stop him.
"Hold on just a second there, kid." he told him, before looking back at Martin and Heather. "Tell me again, though; how many times did we stress the need for secrecy?"
Martin quickly did the math in his head.
"Five hundred and seven times, sir." He answered shamefully, turning his gaze back to his feel and kicking at the grass.
"Er, you actually kept count?" Tevis asked awkwardly.
"Yeah. But we really wanted a picture!" he put on his best pouty face, and, head still down, he looked up at them in a way that made his eyes hurt, and he felt them begin to water. Their figures, as such, were blurred, both by the tears and the fact he was looking over the rims of his glasses. It was "the puppy face", and Martin had become an expert at it. So far, it had lessened several punishments for pranks, and even gotten them out of a few.
"Oh, gosh." Tevis exclaimed. Yes! He hissed inwardly triumphantly. Cayde, Tevis, and Brask had yet to experience "the look"; they had no idea what they were up against. For the coup de' gras, he let out a tiny whimper.
"Good grief, where'd he learn to do that?" Cayde muttered. Louder, he spoke again. "Okay, fine; we won't tell your mom!"
"We won't?" Tevis asked. Cayde gestured to Martin exasperatedly as a tear slid down his cheek.
"Can you say 'no' to that face?" he exclaimed as Martin let his bottom lip quiver. Tevis looked down doubtfully at him, looking conflicted, and Martin struggled to step up his game even farther.
"But-but, she's a monster! You can't just let her wonder around the Tower! Y-you're Guardians; you're supposed to protect us from the monsters!" the unnamed boy whimpered. Beside him, Martin felt Heather flinch. What a jerk! He backed out of "puppy face" mode, blinking ears out of his eyes, and was about to say something clever back at him, but Tevis beat him to the punch.
"Now you listen here." He told the other child, crouching with his hands on his knees to get to eye level with the boy. "Our job is to protect all of you from the monsters. But monsters aren't monsters because of what they can do; monsters are monsters because of what they do do."
Heather let out a tiny snicker and whispered through the side of her mouth."He said 'do-do.'"
"Heather here has lived in the Tower for two years without any incident." Cayde added. Again, Martin felt Heather flinch, but this time at the lie. What had happened to her previous caretaker still rung fresh in all of their minds. "She's been kept a secret to protect her from the monsters; the monsters that want her to become a monster as well. She's never hurt anybody, and never will. And if you know what's good for you, you'll walk away from this kid, and you won't tell anybody."
"Oh, yeah!?" the boy puffed out his chest defiantly, glaring between the two of them."And how're you gonna stop me?"
"Because, if you tell anyone, the monsters will want you, too." Tevis told him warningly. The boy immediately shrank, paling. "Think about it; they'll think you're too important. They'll decide to take you, too, to keep you from telling anybody else. And then everybody will be in trouble. You want that? You understand? Telling about her puts the Tower in danger."
"You can go now. Go calm yourself down, and never tell anybody." Cayde added pointedly. "Because if you do...bad stuff will happen. Bad stuff that's worse than what she is. A lot worse."
Shaking, the boy nodded, whimpering, and ran between the two Hunters through the tunnel.
"Hey!" Tevis shouted after him, turning. "What's your name?"
"Jimmy Flint!" came the fearful reply as the voice and footfalls faded. Cayde and Tevis turned to face the remaining children, and Martin felt guilt and remorse beginning to pound through him once more.
"You'd better be glad it was us and not Brask. He'd be raging right now." Cayde said after a short silence. Martin glanced up again, curious. Brask had never seemed to have short temper. But, then again, he'd been stuck in the wild with no one but Cayde and Tevis for company for over a year now. Perhaps his apprentices had finally worn him thin.
"Yeah," Tevis snickered, before putting on a husky voice, puffing out his chest, and planting his fists at his hips," 'I'm Andal Brask, and what I say, goes. No farting. No burping. No flirting with Tirtha when you can be practicing battle moves that have been second nature to you for years. And no making cheap impressions of my voice, because that's not what I sound like, Tevis.'"
Cayde snorted with amusement, and Martin couldn't resist laughing. Neither could Heather. Cayde and Tevis always knew how to make things look brighter. He wished he could do that; fix everything with a single joke. But he couldn't. For the life of him, he couldn't. That was all Heather and Cayde and Tevis and everyone else, but not him. Nobody got his quantum theory jokes, or his friction puns. And even if they did, they thought he was weird for making them all the time. Like he was too smart, too much of a scientist for his age.
Too much of a nerdy Warlock-to-be.
Heather was really the only person other than their mother he really talked to, with the much-admired Hunter "Golden Trio" out of the Tower and completely absent since their first departure on the day the Queen came. Martin blinked at the sudden realization of just who was standing before them, and he gripped either side of his head, jumping up and down.
"Ooo, oo, oo! You're back! I can't believe it's you!" he exclaimed. Heather seemed to register this as well, and she squealed, jumping, as the two Hunters grinned, soaking up the attention. Heather made a motion as if pulling a sword from a side sheath, and Martin, quickly catching on, copied the gesture, the two of them grinning at each other. Cayde and Tevis had approximately six seconds to look surprised.
"Chaaaarge!" Heather cried, running at them with her "sword" raised. Martin took up her battle cry and pose, and the two of them rushed the Hunter duo. Cayde collapsed dramatically as Heather tackled him, whilst Tevis crouched with his arms over his head, cringing.
"Please don't hurt me!" he whimpered pathetically as Martin beat him with his invisible sword. Meanwhile, Heather plunged hers into Cayde's chest, and he flopped around in a dramatic death throw before going still as she shouted.
"HONOR. HAS BEEN. RESTORED!" she cried victoriously.
Avin had been shocked to wake up. To be told he was dead, but alive once more. His Ghost had been very gentle about it. And now, he was getting a tour of the Tower, where he would live and train to become a fully-fledged Guardian for the next two years.
"The fourth floor and everything below is typically reserved for Guardians and their families. Children aren't typically allowed up to the top floor except on special occasions, such as fireteam send-offs, exhibitions on Guardian powers, school tours of the Vanguard inner-workings; stuff like that." Jarvis explained to him. He was the Hunter Vanguard, and Vanguard commander.
"HONOR. HAS BEEN. RESTORED!" a victorious, high-pitched cry split the air. Both of them jumped, and backtracked to the wide, open hall they had just passed the entrance of. Through it, they could see two Guardians; Hunters, judging by their cloaks, and they were being assaulted by invisible weaponry.
A tall young teenager had stabbed the exo through the chest with an invisible blade, and a smaller boy was apparently beating the exo's cowering companion with an invisible club.
"Uhh..." Avin started, though lost for words.
"And this is where I introduce you to what we call 'normal' around here." Jarvis told him. He placed his hands on his shoulders, and turned the new Hunter requite away and back on the track they were headed on. "Moving along..."
"So, what have you guys been doing?" Martin asked as him and Heather followed the two Hunters down a less occupied hall. Tevis had said that they didn't want to go anywhere crowded or announce their return just yet; to give themselves time to re-adjust to civilization, which made a good deal of sense.
"It'll be easy enough to blend in for a while, at least; we've learned a lot about sneaking about in the last year." Tevis had told them.
"Well, mostly we've been exploring. Trying to find out which planet we like the most, you know?" Cayde answered. "I'm liking Venus so far."
"I'm quite taken with Deimos, myself." Tevis announced. Cayde gave him a look.
"Barren rock and old outposts? Dude, it's practically the moon with no hive. There aren't even cabal or vex there. It's just rocks and dust. That is literally the most boring place in the system." the exo tried to reason in a voice that clearly said they had had this argument before.
"Exactly. It's quite peacful, and it was perfect for-" he broke of, glanceing at the two children.
"Yeeeeeeeees?" Heather inquired, batting her eyes charmingly. Martin warmed up his facial muscles, in case the puppy face was needed again. The two hunters stopped, shareing a look.
"What do you think, Cayde? Do you think we should show them before Brask breaks the news to Jarvis?" the indecisive hunter asked. Over the time they'd known him, Tevis had never really seemed to prefer one form of light over the other; he was constantly switching between bladedancer and gunslinger. He certainly wasn't a career in either profession.
"Hmmm. There's no rule that says we have to confirm to the Vanguard whenever one crops up in order to use it officially. Brask was just being uptight, you know how he gets." the bladedancer said, shrugging. Tevis looked down at them, grinning.
"Yeah, we'll show you. But, keep it quiet until brask confirms it with Jarvis." the green-eyed awoken urged, continueing to walk, leading them into a small courtyard.
"Yeah. Aparently, whenever a Guardian achieves that level of mastrery, we have to report and confirm it." Cayde told them, obviously distaseful of rule. Heather looked like she might explode.
"OH MY GOSH WHAT IS IT JUST SHOW US WHAT IS IT BEFORE I EXPLODE!" she screeched, jumping up and down.
Leaping to the side, away from the other three, Tevis, held out his left hand.
"BOO-YAH!" he announced, a shining bow materializing in his hand. An arrow of pure void light appearing between his right fingers, and he put it to the string, pulled back, and let it fly. Martin jumped giddily, and Heather squealed excitedly.
A Dusk Bow! He's become a nightstalker! Nightstalkers were rare; even rarer than stormcallers and sunbreakers. Sunbreakers were outcasts from the city(though there were a few exceptions), and stormcallers... he fought back a shudder. It took a lot of courage to face an arc storm, let alone meditate in the middle of one.
With lightning and wind all around you. Thunder so loud, you couldn't hear yourself think. The center of chaos...the center of power... limitless power...
Like you were the eye of the storm...
A pained screech interuppted his trance-like thoughts. Everyone jumped, and Heather flinched, pulling a hand up to brush her cheek where a spark of static arced over to her from Martin. She stepped away from him instinctively.
"LAAAAAARSSEEEEEN!"
Tevis pulled his bow close, hands to his mouth, and, from the hallway his arrow had flown down, limped none other than Andal Brask himself.
"Oh, dear." he exclaimed, trying to hide the bow(unsuccessfully) behind his back. It was clear that the nightstalker had, as of yet, master teathering, as rather than dissapateing on impact and pinning Brask to the hallway, the dusk arrow had planted itself firmly in the gunslinger's knee; and didn't seem to be going away any time soon.
Both he and Heather pulled 'that's gotta hurt' faces, and Martin sucked in air through his teeth. He took an arrow to the knee! It was actually a term hunters used, meaning 'getting married'. Not that Guardians stayed crippled for long; the light made it so that even a spinal cord injury could be recovered from in as little as three years.
So the term was rather quite redundant.
But that didn't stop Brask from looking completely livid. It didn't help that Cayde was snickering, and Tevis didn't actually look all that sorry.
"You... little..." their former mentor was beside himself, from both pain and rage. Heather was giggling, and even Martin had to admit; it was a bit funny.
"Er...sorry?" the offending awoken tried.
"GRAAAAAAAH!" to their suprise, Brask launched himself forwards, lunging at the two hunters with impressive speed despite his injury. Tevis seemed to go white for a moment, before taking off back the way they had come.
"Gha! Run for it!" he exclaimed, grabbing Cayde by the shoulder, the two of them running off with Andal Brask hot in pursuit.
"It's not our fault you took an arrow to the knee! So, who's the lucky lady?" Cayde called over his shoulder at the human. Brask tore right past Martin and Heather, seeming to ignor them in favor of chacing his prey, Heather breaking up with laughter, and Martin struggling not to, as knee injuries were not supposed to be funny.
But he couldn't help it. Just like he couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if Brask had noticed Heather's attire; according to the two younger Guardians, he would not have been as forgiving as they were for risking such amount of skin exposure as a dress.
It's not fair! He thought childishly, mentally stomping his foot. The people who had done this to Heather had not only taken her old life; they haunted her new one as well. There had to be some way to cure her deathtouch; there just had to!
I'll do it. he promised silently, looking at his friend. One day, I promise, Heather Chancellor; I will cure you.
It wasn't until later that night, as he crawled into bed, that his thoughts returned to the boy named Jimmy Flint.
Okay, so, Tevis has his bow, Brask is a beast, we meet who will become the jerk of the ages, surpassing even Uldren in cruelty, and Martin makes a promise he might not be able to keep.
MaybeALittleBroken: A cow? If you pull that off, you will be my hero. Personally...I want to find a way to get a whole bunch of people on board with flash mobbing the chicken dance.
Writers Pen 77: Simple... but evil. I like it.
Order and Chaos: Well, for the life-chosen, they cannot be taken either, because of their light. Light keeps Guardians from being taken; that's the fanon fact for this fic. But there will be limitations; particularly for the revived Guardians, and we'll get into that later on. For Petra... later, there will be a short backstory mentioned where she faked her age to get into the Corsairs and avenge her siblings during the wars.
jsm1978:Personally, I never got into Ghost Rider. Don't know much about it. Suppose I'm about to, though.
Jimmy Fishchips: Glad to hear you like it! Petra isn't emmisary yet; just an important war hero at this point, renouned for tactical genius, and all that. This is before she loses her eye and kills those guardians by accident. She's merely at the Tower because, as she says in-game, her assualt on the Silent Fang is "the only reason they won".
Okay, so I guess it's close enough to the school year that I should start posting again. ETA for next Heartbusters update is a while though; this is my senior year, so prepare yourself for the possibility of month-long waits. And I'm doing a co-op Wings of Fire fic. I promise you all, once I graduate, there will be more updates.
After I enjoy at least a week of expirianceing a freedom I haven't known since the age fo four.
Next Time: Martin is ill, Brask has a bad week, and Heather makes a very big choice.
Cheers!^^