I lied to me; this is most definitely NOT 8,000 words.
When humor hid horror...
Silverhawk was one of those people who couldn't stand to be unhappy. One of those people who seemed to act more and more cheerful and humorous the worse the situation got, because they believed that humor and happiness were rallying cries for the ones around them who kept sinking lower and lower into despair. One of those people who used humor to hid their true feelings, one of those people who preferred to be left alone so they wouldn't have to pretend, so that they could be themselves and leave their shield down.
One of those people who couldn't stop laughing at the world, so that the world wouldn't forget how to laugh.
But right now, Silverhawk hadn't made a single joke since they'd found it; the bloodied clearing. She still couldn't believe what had happened, and Martin was still beating himself up something stupid about it. But it was undeniable; Uldren was dead, he had to be. Either he was dead, or would be dead very soon, or he was getting eaten that very moment, as they stood, shocked, in the blood-covered clearing.
She had recognized the Fallen blood and gore immediately; every Guardian could. Martin had thrown up almost immediately. She had scoured the clearing, looking for any sigh of their awoken partner. All she had found was some blood, and a few torn pieces of what she recognized as Uldren's cloak, which were partially soiled by Fallen blood. She had even found part of a sleeve of his armor, the cuff of which was soaked with awoken blood.
There were so many things that could have happened in that clearing, there was no way to know for sure. Uldren could have been attacked by a Fallen, stabbed it, and then assaulted by some jungle predator that had felt the urge to rip the Fallen into unrecognizable pieces before leaving. Uldren could have been attacked by a Fallen, attempted to stab it, only to get his hand bitten off by some jungle predator that had tried to eat the Fallen, puked it up, and then decided to have Uldren for breakfast instead.
Uldren could have come across some jungle predator while it was mutilating it's prey(the Fallen), and then gotten carried off himself after having his arm bitten off and his sleeve torn off in the process. Why carried? because, the branches in the trees above the clearing had been disturbed, some of them broken, others bent, in a rough path away from the clearing. The talon prints in the ground around the scene of the crime stopped at the first tree, but they never showed up again when they reached the end of the trail.
The last of the disturbed, scuffed-up trees was at the edge of a small river, where she had found some more scattered droplets of awoken blood but nothing else. As she zoomed through the dark tunnel on her Sparrow, Martin a little ways behind her on his own, she couldn't stop thinking about how off the Prince's death seemed.
There had been no blood trail that had dripped down from the trees(little of it awoken blood, anyways) that the predator had climbed, and some of the claw marks had seemed oddly off. The scuffing on the trunk of the last tree had suggested that the climber had been wearing boots. Had a Fallen been climbing that tree before the predator had come along?
Or had the dead Prince(presumably minus a hand) used the trees to escape the monster, only for it to chase him through the branches? If so, had it caught him near the river, and eaten him in one bite, resulting in the lack of massive blood around the bank? But if a one-armed Uldren, maybe delirious with pain, had somehow managed to climb trees in order to escape the predator, why wasn't there more awoken blood on the ground and on the trees? A ripped-off limb would have caused a lot of bleeding, more than could be stanched without a med kit, even with an entire cloak pressed to the wound.
Or maybe I'm overthinking things.
She gripped the handles of her Sparrow tighter. She had never lost anyone. Not on a mission, and certainly never so quickly. Maybe if she hadn't forgotten her gun, this wouldn't have happened? Maybe if she had just used the Sparky-Sparky Boom-Boom Stick to fight the Fallen instead of charging them on her Sparrow...
But it had been so long since she had had so many potential victims gathered all up in one area like that! How could she not turn them all into road kill when the opportunity had presented itself so perfectly?
But more guilty than her was Martin, who had left the Prince's side to help her fight(which she was grateful for; she could only run over so many fallen before one got caught on the front of her ride and caused her to spin out), pulling out the Deathening and entering his rage zone.
Martin was but a feeble, humble nerd in a long line of nerdy Warlocks. But he was the nerdiest. He knew the every name of every star, he could recite about a hundred epic poems by heart, he could tell you how old you were just by looking at you, he could name every king or queen who had ever lived, tell you all about Earth's greatest empires and how they fell, he could list every name of every soldier who fell at Twilight Gap without so much as a glance at the memorial stone.
But when you gave him a machine gun, the Deathening specifically, or some other great weapon of mass destruction...he entered the nerd rage zone. Nerdy Warlocks, especially nerdy Warlocks like Martin, all had the potential for angry break-downs if you pushed them too far. Legend had it that it was an ancient self-defense technique passed down from nerds before.
The nerd rage was both unsettling and inspirational to witness.
But this time, it had cost them. Uldren had continued into the cover of the forest on his own, and by the time the Fallen had decided to run for the hills, it had been too late to save him. If they found the cure in Certech, their return to the Reef would be a bitter one. All the worse was that they couldn't even give the Queen a body; just the bloodied cloak they'd found at the scene.
Martin, consequently, blamed himself for letting the Prince go off on his own. She'd tried to reassure him that he would have been killed as well, that it wouldn't have made a difference, but he wouldn't hear any of it; he was guilty, and that was that.
She was beginning to think that she had maybe said the wrong thing then, but her thoughts were too busy right now to think up a proper apology. Thoughts about Uldren, thoughts about the disease, more thoughts about Uldren...and thoughts about Certech.
None of this would have happened if not for that stupid Certech disease. She squeezed even harder, but the Sparrow was already going as fast as it could. Certech.
It was all their fault. How many more people would die because of them?
None. I'll make sure of it; Uldren will be the last person ever to die because of Certech.
Her blood soaking the ground, forest floor cutting her back, her stomach cut open and strewn all about.
She banished the thought, but still looked down at her stomach briefly before putting her focus on the dark road ahead of her again. But it was hard, oh, it was hard, not to think about that night, after encountering so similar a scene. She had told Martin all about her; he was one of only six people in the universe who knew about...her, and on of five of those people who knew about her that trusted her completely and didn't care about what Certech did to her. Well, one of four, since Brask had died...
But even Martin didn't know about that night. Nobody did. Well, nobody except her ghost, Westley, that was agiven; she trusted her ghost more than she trusted herself, and didn't count as one of those three people because he had never given her past a second thought. He'd been, pun completely intended, a little light in the dark after she'd been revived.
If it weren't for Westley and Martin, she wouldn't be alive right now...
And maybe Uldren wouldn't be dead.
Let's not go there.
She didn't need to have worries about her capabilities as a guardian on top of everything else right now.
"There's an opening just up ahead." Westley's voice rang, loud and clear, from where he liked to sit in her hood. She had no idea why he liked it in there; it sounded like a musty, stuffy place to be. Maybe it was because she never really wore a helmet? Most Ghosts "pixelized" into their Guardian's helmet systems. Martin never really wore a helmet either, unless they were on the moon; his ghost, Wheatly, treated Martin's top pocket like a second home.
She still didn't get why Martin's ghost was such a scardy cat. You couldn't literally say the word "boo" as quietly as you could, and he would still give a little start of fright. If ghosts were people, Martin's would have about...oh, every nervous tick the world had ever produced since nervous ticks had been invented?
They burst out into the light, and she heard Martin swerve behind her. Glancing back, she saw him manage to regain control, and grin at her sheepishly. The grin quickly turned back into a frown, and she turned back to the road with a sigh.
At this point, it was unlikely that Martin would ever stop blaming himself for Uldren's death. I'll just have to stay strong for him; stay normal.
She didn't want her friend to worry about her when he already had so much on his mind.
Martin had the Deathening, a custom machine gun she'd made just for him, slung over his back in a large sack. She'd made it and her own overlord of heavy-weaponry mayhem, the Sparky-Sparky Boom-Boom Stick, as an experimental set about a year ago. She'd always been interested in guns, how they worked and how she might be able to modify them.
After them, she'd taken her old Renegade Mk.55, her first gun, left for her as a present by Andal Brask himself upon her graduation, and modified it so that it, too, could taken on the tougher enemies that usually only high-quality guns like Esyaluna could handle quickly. "Ol' Reliable", she called it. The gun she'd gone back to earth to fetch... mostly. Sure, she had left it there by accident last time they were at the Tower, taking it out for cleaning and forgetting to re-holster it, and Martin had left the Deathening(which was why she'd asked Cayde to bring it, but he'd forgotten to get Ol' Reliable while he was at it), but mostly the reason she had gone was because she'd heard her foster mother had caught the disease. Cayde had contacted her discretely and informed her about it on the way to Venus.
She hadn't told Martin about it yet; the last thing he needed on his mind was the fact that their mother was counting on them as well now... She shook the thoughts from her mind focusing on the valley ahead.
The sun was halfway down the sky, painting the glorious valley with golden light as it shone through the thin layer of clouds above. It was a surprisingly clear day by Venus standards; the sky was clear of the usual thick clouds, and the veins of blue light that poured from the mountains and through the sky like rivers shone and glittered eerily.
The valley was undoubtedly beautiful, but all Silverhawk could see was the darkness behind the beauty. It was undoubtedly the result of Certech terraforming. Everything was too perfect, and the rotting building at the other end of the Valley seemed to stand as a constant reminder of what the valley's creators were like, a constant monument to the evil that this amazing place had come out of.
As soon as Cayde had mentioned Certech, there had started a constant war inside her head. A war to keep the memories suppressed, and her projection of happiness alive. And now, that war reached its high point.
She kept silent the whole way to the building, fearing to talk lest her voice give away her true feelings. All the while, she fought to keep herself from thinking about Certech, about what they had done, how they had ruined everything for the entirety of forever.
And she failed. The images and memories still flashed through her mind, burning into the back of her sight until she felt like crying. As they approached the building, she struggled to regain control of herself, and barely managed to do so as they pulled up to the ruined parking lot.
"Kyyyyyaaaaa ahhhh!" Came Martin's startled cry, the sound of banging metal ringing out at the same time. She snapped her head around just in time to see Martin fly over the front of his Sparrow, the front of the vehicle apparently having hit the ground while he was breaking.
He landed on his back with a grunt, his robes spread out over his head. She snickered.
"Shut up, Silverhawk." He groaned, pushing himself to a sitting position. "I think I broke a rib."
"No you didn't." Westley floated out of her hood and gave the Warlock a quick scan. "You're perfectly fine; surprisingly resilient, actually."
"But what if he did?" Wheatly questioned, peaking out of his pocket.
"But, he didn't."
"And if he did?"
"So?"
"Exactly."
"What?"
"Calm down, children. Let not lose our heads, here." Silverhawk chided in her best Cal Johnson impression.
"Okay, you saw that show once, and you can do a near perfect impression as a woman. HOW!?" Martin snorted.
"Through great time and practice, young grasshopper. Now, let us continue with the entering of the great and nobel House of Black—"
"House of Black? I've never heard of that before. Is there a new House out there that we didn't know about?" Petra's voice came from over the comms worriedly. Silverhawk's heart dropped to the bottom of her gut.
"Hey, you're back! And no, that was just a reference, to a book. You know, Harry Potter." She replied. Martin looked down at the ground guiltily, plucking at a patch of grass with one hand.
"No. I don't." Petra said wryly, though there was relief in her voice. "Put Prince Uldren on, it's time we explained the plan."
Martin and Silverhawk looked at each other. This was the conversation they had been dreading ever since the incident. They nodded to each other, the tiniest of nods, meant to console each other in this terrifying moment of revelation.
"About that, Petra…he ran off without us." she started. She took a deep breath. "We were attack by a small troop of Fallen. They let a bullet volley loose, and Uldren went to take cover in the jungle. By the time the fight was over, he was long gone. We managed to track him, but there was…nothing left, that we could see. We're sorry Petra; Uldren's dead."
"WH—"the comms went dead, replaced by a high-pitched whining that made Silverhawk's ears explode (not really; that's just a saying).
"Ah!" the two guardians gripped their ears, the sound like one-thousand forks being scrapped across one thousand plates, making their teeth hurt and their bodies squirm with discomfort. But soon, there were other sounds within the noise as well, like faints echoes of people screaming in agony. The screams grew louder and louder, and the ghosts were just beginning to zoom away from them, taking the noise with them, when the signal suddenly cut.
Silverhawk slowly brought her hands away from her ears, which were still ringing faintly.
"What…the bloody…poop…" she said slowly.
"That's disgusting!" Martin exclaimed, voice high-pitched with fear. "And watch your language; you know I have language sensitivity!"
"Okay, deadly disease; check. Terraformed valley; check. Creepy, possibly haunted building; check. Nightmare fuel; check. Yup, this is Certech alright. Good luck getting to sleep for next, like fifty years of your life. Petra, you still there?" Silverhawk checked off before addressing the hopefully still-in-contact awoken.
"What killed him?" she asked shakily.
"Some kind of animal, it looked like. It was all very strange. We found a gored fallen, some torn cloths, and a knife. We found his sleeve, it looks like he lost an arm perhaps, but other than that, there was no sign of him. No tracks, no trail, nothing. Just some blood by a river. If he managed to run after losing his arm, he either got eaten whole somewhere along the line, or he bled out in a cave." Silverhawk explained solemnly. She had never felt this depressed, ever. Except maybe during Certech.
A loud, animalistic, snarling hiss interrupted them. They jumped. She gulped.
"And about what attacked him, Petra…I think we're about to meet it." She felt a hot breath on her neck. "It's right behind me, isn't it?"
Martin whimpered, nodding. She slowly turned around. It was huge, monkey-like, three person-sized talons on each foot; an exact match to the prints they had found near Uldren's death site. Its face was narrow like a dragon's, with two saber-like fangs at the front of its mouth twice the size of her. Its lips pulled up in a snarl, revealing that the only other teeth it had were in a row at the front of its mouth. Its eyes were non-existent, and there were merely hole where they should have been.
A glob of wet saliva dripped down and hit Silverhawk in the face.
"EEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" she exclaimed. "Ewwll!"
"Mommy mommy nonononononono! " Martin let out a long, high-pitched whimper. His Ghost zoomed into his pocket, which now quivered uncontrollably.
"Guardian, get out of there, now!" Petra's voice came from over the comms.
Silverhawk hit the gas just as the creature lunged, and its maw crashed down on where she had been mere seconds before.
"Can't believe I'm saying this but GET IN THE CERTECH LAB!" she drifted in a circle, trying to ignore the feeling of the creature's saliva dripping down her face. She grabbed Martin bay by the back of his robes and dragged him along after her.
"Ow, OAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" he screamed as she dragged him, the creature pounding after them, roaring and snarling. "ROAD BURN! ROAD BURN!"
She threw him forwards through the ancient doors of the building and crashed through them herself. Martin tumbled along the floor, and the creature let out a horrifying sound. Its head was lowered to their level, peering through the doors with no eyes.
Martin let out a nervous laugh. "We're gonna die. We're gonna get eaten whole just like Uldren, and we're gonna get digested and possibly puked up later for that thing's offspring. I don't think I have to use the bathroom anymore."
"And you called me disgusting?" Silverhawk scrunched her nose up at him. Ugh, and I touched him and everything!
Just kidding; everything that I could have relieved myself of, I threw it up earlier." He whimpered.
The beast scratched at the ground outside of the door. Silverhawk took out Ol' Reliable, took aim, and fired. The creature reared back with a screech.
That was for Uldren, you big stupid brute! There was, of course, no way to tell if it was the exact creature that had eaten Uldren; but there seemed to be some kind of closure that came with blaming it, and shooting it.
But the shot hadn't done as much damage as she thought it had; there was barely a scratch on the creature's scaly, furred body. She fired off another shot, and then another, and finally emptied the mag. She reached to her side for a fresh one, replaced the empty one, and took aim again, firing once more. The predator let out another screech with each shot, and after firing the first shot from her new mag, it seemed to finally give up, and it stalked away, growling.
"Well, at least that solves our problem until it discovered how to break down walls." Martin commented, voice still high-pitched.
"Are you two alright down there?" Petra asked as Silverhawk's Ghost came out of his hiding place in her hood. Martin groaned, pulling off his now-torn robes and lifting his tunic to reveal the bloody road rash beneath on his back.
"Road-burned, and slobber-covered," she tried to wipe the stick substance off her face with one hand as she dissmounted her Sparrow, but to no avail, "but otherwise alright."
"GOOD BECAUSE I'M GOING TO KILL YOU TWO WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU! ONE DAY, OUR PRINCE IS WITH YOU ONE DAY AND HE'S ALREADY DEAD?! WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED OUT THERE!?"
A loud groan shook the building, and a similar sound to that of the interference from before echoed through the comms once before fading again. Martin shifted nervously from where he sat.
"You know what, how's about we get this interference out of the way before you start screaming at us, shall we?"Silverhawk told her. Silence answered her. "Hello?"
Still silence.
"Petra, come in. Are you okay up there?" she tried again. There was static this time, but nothing else. She looked around the building.
"Okay, that's a bit odd. The signal just vanished." he Ghost commented.
"Ha! Odd?" Martin let out a nervous laugh. "More like 'undeniably creepy'. Is this place haunted? I think it's haunted. I'm definitely, one hundred percent sure that this place is haunted."
"There's no such thing as ghosts, Martin." Silverhawk snorted.
Westley made a meaningful cough sound.
"Except these ones." she pointed at him.
"You're sure it's not Uldren haunting us? He certainly seemed like the kind of guy to haunt people." the Warlock continued nervously.
"I ain't afraid of no ghosts!" she declared, walking over and pulling him up by the back of his robes. She dragged him with her towards a stairwell, ignoring his protests.
"No! No! Ow! Silverhawk! No, I'm not-ow! Heather! Knock it off! Let me go, I am NOT going into a haunted-"
A loud groan of metal interrupted him, and there was a loud snarl from outside, reminding them that they could hardly go back. Turning and releasing her grip on her friend, Silverhawk saw the creature prowling just outside the door again.
"You know what? On second thought, I think I'd rather take my chances with the building." Martin said, going even paler than before. He stood up shakily, wincing and putting a hand to his side, where the road burn had been most prominent. His normally net robes were now torn horribly in places, and he now sported a cut on the side of his face. It was no small miracle that his glasses were still intact after their encounter.
"Come on; lets start with these stairs." she told him gently. She halted in front of the first step, and looked back at her Sparrow. She could see martin's outside, getting tossed about and torn to shreds of metal by the predator. You know what? I think I'de be much more comfortable knowing my precious vehicle is in safer hands than that of this shoddy old front room.
She ran over, grabbed the handles, and, half pushing, half pulling, she lugged it up the stairs after her, Martin facepalming as she passed him, though he cast a mournful glance at the creature before following her.
"My shotgun was on that sparrow." he murmured sadly.
And so they set off up the stairs, winding ever upwards. Martin questioned several times as to whether this was the right way to go, but Silverhawk responded each time by telling him that they might as well start somewhere. Eventually, her Sparrow became too much of a hassle to carry up, and she left it in a room little more than halfway up. Other than that, the climb was done in silence, both Guardian's occupied with their own thoughts, Silverhawk's(unfortunately)about Certech, Martin's no doubt about Uldren, and how they would break the news to the Queen.
'I wonder if she'll have us beheaded' was only a small, vague thought in her mind right now. Right now, she was thinking about all the horrible traps that Certech could have left for them here, and why there weren't any Fallen in the building where the Fallen had gotten the deadly disease which was the reason they were in the building in the first place.
After a while, they had to pull themselves up the stairs with no small amount of effort; for the wounded, road-burned Martin, at least. The building was leaning at an angle, and it got steeper as they got higher.
"Can we please take a break?" Martin panted as they got close to the top. He lent against the wall as they came up on another landing, Silverhawk taking a good look at the sign by the door.
"We took a break three stairs ago." she replied, trying the door handle.
"That wasn't a break; that was a 3-second pit-stop at an Indy car race." the Warlock snorted. A hissing sound filled the air, making him jump. Silverhawk looked down, and saw a whitish green mist leaking out from under the door.
"Trap!" she shouted, grabbing Martin and hurling him at the next set of stairs. He yelped, and Silverhawk bit her lip, holding her breath as a foul smell invaded the air.
They scrambled up the stairs as fast as they could, and she kicked down the nest door.
"Are you crazy?" Martin yelled. She pushed him into the room, and he stumbled, catching on to a table to keep himself from sliding down the floor and out the broken windows.
"Yes." she replied simply, taking out a kinetic shield from her pocket and placing it in the doorway. The device activated, and a faint, blue barrier formed between them and the poisoned air outside.
"That was a close one." Westley commented. He flew out the window. Silverhawk let out a huff.
"Well, fine then! Good luck to ya!" she exclaimed.
"Next time, I would appreciate you being a little gentler." Martin said, pulling himself to his feet and supporting himself with the table.
Silverhawk's Ghost came back through the window and zoomed up beside her.
"Decided that the grass wasn't greener?" she inquired.
"No. The poison should be dissipated completely in a few minutes. I've also got a lock on the signal from earlier, though; it's coming from inside this room somewhere. And..." he trailed off. Silverhawk narrowed her eyes.
"Westley?" she asked chidingly. "What did you scan?"
"I...it could have been some sort of system malfunction, but for a moment I thought I...picked up life signs, some distance down the stairwell. Awoken life signs." he told them hesitantly. Martin groaned.
"I knew it." he wailed. "We're being haunted! Uldren's mad at us so now he's haunting us."
"Martin, for the last time; there's no such thing as people coming back from the dead!" she gasped. Her ghost gave a meaningful cough that sounded suspiciously like the word "Guardians". She sighed, facepalming.
"You know what? I should just keep comments like that to myself." she let loose a deep breath. "It was probably just a system error, like Westley said. That, or it was just a tiny system error and it's actually Petra down there. In which case, we should probably find the cure before she finds us, skins us, and hangs us up to dry."
Martin shuttered. "Gee, thanks for putting that image in my head."
"You're welcome." she stated. "Now let's go see what that spooky old signal is all about."
The Warlock let out a nervous grinding noise in his throat as she followed Westley's lead to a door near the back wall of the room.
"I don't think this is a good idea." he said, looking around nervously.
"Martin, I highly doubt that Uldren would be wasting his precious time haunting us, if he was a ghost at all. He'd probably go back to the Reef and look after the Queen, or haunt her guards or something." she tried to reason with him, unsheathing one of her blades and jamming it into the lock. She focused her light and charged it with arc energy, and the door burst open, the lock exploding.
She jumped back to avoid it, and her back smarted painfully against one of the tables.
"Ow! Stupid furniture!" she exclaimed, rubbing her back. Martin looked at her nervously as she regained herself and made her way into the room.
Well, we've had some cowboys in here! There were broken bottles and knocked-over containment units all over the place, and the whole floor was coated in broken glass. Westley illuminated the area, and floated over to an old, gray door, covered in rust.
"Too much to ask to turn just one door into ajar?" she commented, using the same door-busting technique she had just used.
The door creaked open rather than exploding this time, though; which was odd, seeing as it was made of much more metal than the first door. She pushed it open to find an old room, with nothing in it except an old computer, with an old, cracked screen, and an old, round device in front of it.
She heard Martin shuffle up behind her, and she entered the room completely. Walking up to the computer, she leant over it with both hands on the desk. A grin spread across her face. This is too perfect!
"Shall we play a game?" she asked her friend. He rolled his eyes with a snort.
"Don't do that."
She smiled at him more, and then looked over the desk. The round device was the only thing there, and she tapped at it a few times with one finger.
Suddenly, a small spike ejected from the top of the device, piercing through her finger.
"Yow!" she yelped, pulling her hand back. "Stupid thing!"
The spike pulled back into the device, and loud beeping sounds came from it.
"DNA identified." it eventually said in a broken, robotic voice. "Project Zero, confirmed."
Silverhawk felt her blood boil at the words, and her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Why? Why? What is this? Why here? Why here?
She felt Martin's hand wrap around her own, and the screen flickered on with what seemed to be great internal struggle.
"H-hello? Hello? Okay, good, it's on." the static on the screen was too bad to discern a face, but it sounded like an old man speaking. Silverhawk felt her stomach twist, recognizing the voice, and all the fear and pain it brought with it. "Listen, if you're seeing this...it means they've succeeded. They've made the super virus. And you're one of the few people I can trust."
Silverhawk and Martin exchanged looks. One of the few people he can trust? Why would he trust me?
"If you just so happen to be Project Zero...it means that I, too, have succeeded, and that you received these coordinates shortly after you escaped." he continued. What is he talking about? What does he mean? Unless..."It also means that, well, unfortunately, I am dead. If it truly is you listening to this right now, then your DNA will trigger another message to follow this one, a message that will explain much to you, and that you will doubtfully find quite useful. But for now, I think we should leave as this; yes, I am The River."
She felt like she was shape-shifting. Like every bone in her body was breaking and rearranging to form something new. But it was really everything in her mind that was breaking. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to run away; but most of all, she wanted to destroy this computer.
He... he was The River...he led my escape? The man who destroyed my life is the same one who tried to give it back? How...?
"Now, listen carefully, whoever you are. There is no cure for the virus in existence; yet. But I know how to create it. There is an equation; any competent scientist would be able to decipher it. I have engraved the equation on a metal cylinder, and I have left it hidden in compartment similar to this one at one of my personal labs, at these coordinates. 7.1221 degrees south, 106.4231 degrees east, Earth. You're going to need your lucky rabbit foot for this one, and a great tolerance for heat."
"Oh, nooo..." Wheatly moaned from inside his pocket. At the same time, Westley let out a similar sound.
"What?" Martin questioned looking down his pocket.
"The Coordinates set the lab at an active volcano. It was dormant for centuries, but has become more and more dangerous over the past few years. What's worse; the Fallen love it for some reason." the ghost told them, giving a nervous laugh. "We're all going to die!"
"Are not." Silverhawk snorted, turning back to the screen, as the blood drained from Martin's face.
There was an odd flicker, and a beep, and the new message seemed to begin.
"Now...I know that you hate me. It's perfectly within reason for you to hate me. Whatever I do, you will still hate me, but...I hope that, by freeing you, I can at least give myself some consolation. Project Zero Initiative must never see the light of day; your escape ensures that." the voice sounded more tired now, as if the old man had not slept in days. The old rage boiling within her at the sound of his voice was now uncertain, and her head was still spinning.
"What we did to you... what I did to you...was unforgivable. That is why, I decided, to terminate Project Zero Initiative, of my own accord. Unfortunately, it is not the final solution. As long as you are-" the feed cut off with a violent screeching sound, like a disk being mutilated within a player. The two Guardians jumped, covering their ears, and Westley hastily attempted to hack the computer and put an end to the noise.
"What the what!?" Silverhawk shouted.
The monitor crackled, the screen cracked, the side of the computer exploded, sending bits of circuitry and side panel everywhere. Silverhawk stared at it, mind drawing up a blank.
"No, no, no, no no no! No!" she exclaimed as she regained herself. She scrambled to pick up the bits of computer and shove them into a pile, as if they would magically fuse back into the monitor if she gathered them close enough together.
What was he going to say? Was he going to say if there was a cure? I have to know! There has to be a way to cure it!
Her vision blurred, and her hands shook. Giving up trying to gather the pieces, she gave into the tears that had pounded on the backs of her eyes since arriving on Venus. She felt a comforting hand on her back, her ever-faithful friend, the one she couldn't live without.
"Two hundred years..." she said, voice cracking. "Why can't they stop ruining my life, after two hundred years?"
"They may have ruined your life, Heather." Martin said quietly. "But it's up to you to choose which life they ruined more; this one, or before."
She tried to calm her breathing, moving her sunglasses up slightly so as to rub the tears from her eyes. Martin's right. But why? Why does Certech have to keep haunting me wherever I go? First The Ridge, then the Manhattan Outpost; and now this? When will it all end? Will they ever truly be gone from my life?
Well, she knew the answer to that question:
No.
"We...should probably go now. This building is incredibly unstable, and that Awoken life sign I mentioned earlier? Well, they're getting closer." Westley said slowly. "So unless you like the idea of getting skinned alive by Petra when she finds us, I suggest we move as quickly as possible."
Martin, eyes widening, pulled Silverhawk to her feet abruptly. She squawked in protest as he practically dragged her through the old storage room and out into the open again.
"Sorry, Madame; I don't want to die today!" he told her, pulling her in the direction of the other stairs, the ones opposite of the door they had come through.
"Westley!" she shouted, looking back at the oxygen shield in the doorway.
"Got it!" he called. With a quick scan, the shield turned off. Her ghost zoomed back towards her, let off a magnetic signal, and the shielding device shot towards him. She caught it just before it hit, and just as Martin hit the stairs.
She stumbled and protested as she was dragged backwards up the stairs; whereas Hunters are known for their expert footing, no-one was that good. She was shocked by the cold, crisp air of the outside world, and the dark colors overtaking the already-set Venus sun. The clouds that usually cloaked their skies were returning, and could be seen where the horizon would be the next morning.
She shook Martin's grip off her arm, but the Warlock was already fumbling for the transmat beacon strapped in his belt. A loud groan shook the building, and Silverhawk looked down at her feet uneasily.
The roof itself looked as if it had one been a landing pad at some point. The only footholds keeping her and her partner from sliding down and over-or through- the rusted safety bars at the edge of the roof were the large cracks and small fissures in the concrete, and deceptively slippery patches of moss and grass grew out of many of them.
Martin activated the beacon, and slammed it down, sticking it through the roof. Wheatly floated out of his pocket.
"The Timey-Wimey is incoming, the Wibbly-Wobbly will take just a little longer." he said, depressed. "Hopefully they'll get here before the building falls out from underneath us."
"Geez, what's got you so depressed?" Silverhawk questioned. The ghost turned to her with a whir and the closest thing to a doleful expression a ghost could obtain.
"The universe." he stated plainly. "And our uncanny magnetic attraction to bad luck."
Like a punch to the gut, realization slapped Silverhawk in the face.
My Sparrow! I left it in the building! She started back to towards the exit stairs carefully.
"What are you doing?" Martin called as the wind began to pick up around them even more.
"My Sparrow is still in the building! I'll just go up beside it, and then Westley'll transmat it with me onto the Wibbley-Wobbly. Simple." she called back, dodging inside and out of the wind before he could finish his protest.
She sprinted down the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her, not caring if the Queen's Emissary could or could not be waiting at the bottom to throttle her violently. She was just entering the old lab when a sound made her freeze.
Crunch.
She halted, heart pounding. Petra's going to kill me, she's going to kill me, she's going to kill me. It was the sound of glass dust breaking underfoot, the sound of someone moving in the old storage room.
Well, time to face the music then. She supposed she ought to get all the yelling with over right now, but she let her right hand rest on the handle of her right blade just in case it wasn't the raging, one-eyed awoken. She felt another pang of guilt over Uldren, and, putting on her best 'Yes, I am ashamed' face on, she stepped forwards.
But her eyesight was as fast as her reflexes, and expression shifted to shock before the occupant of the room could turn around. Her mind went blank, her brain broke, and all at the same time her inner subconscious was already at work putting the pieces together to solve the problem.
"Uldren?" she exclaimed, wondering for a second if Martin was right and the Prince was haunting them. The awoken whirled around, handcannon pointing, and a loud boom shook the air...and the air kept shaking. Wait, no; the whole building was shaking, the whole world, the WHOLE FREAKING UNIVERSE!
She fell backwards, and gripped the desk behind her as it smarted her spine painfully. Uldren's feet slid out from under him as the building heaved violently, the sounds of creaking infrastructure and breaking glass filling the air with a deafening orchestra of destruction.
Oh, no you don't! Ghost or not, she wasn't going to loose the Prince a second time. She landed forwards, on hand wrapped around the edge of the desk, and grabbed Uldren's considerably-in-worse-shape-than-before cloak as he slid past. The awoken twisted in her grip, legs kicking for a hold in the floor, and the cloak tore off from around his neck.
She dropped the cloth and her arm shot out to make a grab for his before her brain even had time to process the action. But the Prince was already sliding down towards the windows again, too far for her to grab him. Her stomach gave a lurch, to be replace with relief when Uldren's descent was halted by the wall beneath the window. He gave a start as he realized he had stopped falling.
"I'm starting to think Wheatly was right about our luck." Westley commented in a strained voice. "He's sending a transmission."
"Heather, forget your Sparrow; you can build a new one; now GET OUT OF THERE!" her best friend's voice yelled.
"Martin, get out of here! I'll get out fine!" Silverhawk yelled back over the din of the building.
"I'm not going without you! No one else is going to die today because of me!" he snapped in a very un-Martinish tone.
"Martin, Uldren's with me; he was here in the lab! Now GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I DIE BECAUSE I'M TOO BUSY ARGUING WITH YOU!" Silverhawk shouted back dramatically. "Westley, cut the comms."
"An YOU," she turned her gaze on Uldren, irritability mixing with recent stress, "have a lot of explaining to do, mister!"
Glaring up at her, Uldren had barely opened his mouth when the wall fell out from underneath him.
"Westley the Sparrow!" she yelled, for without another heartbeat of thought, she leapt out from behind the desk and ran at the window, legs pumping to maintain her equilibrium on the falling surface. The window loomed ahead in the space of a second, and she used the remainder of the wall to launch herself into the air.
She pressed the left arm of her sunglasses as she leapt, and then snapped her arms inwards. The arms of her glasses tightened, and white displays flickered across the black glass. She spotted the Prince's falling form, and counted to three.
She tried to ignore the debris that followed them, and she was at Uldren's side by the count of two. She snapped her arms out to catch the air, and she could literally feel her breakfast dancing around in her stomach.
"Hold on!" she yelled over the rush of wind. She seriously hoped that the straps on her fedora would hold.
"To what you idiot!?" he screeched at her.
Westley was at her side, clearly struggling to keep up with them. She smirked. A blue and black blur arrived at the edge of her vision.
She grabbed the handles of her Sparrow and flattened herself against the seat, fitting her feet into the peddles. Boy, am I glad I Martin-proofed this thing. She flicked the switch at the head of the vehicle, and felt the extension extend out the back. The ground loomed ever closer as the building fell forwards.
She looked back up just in time to see Uldren grab the back of her seat and the handle of the extension. No time for foot security! She decided.
She pulled up, pushing the upwards thrusters as far as they could go. Sudden weight jerked the nose up from the extension, and she angled to the left to avoid a piece of debris.
"We're not going to make it!" Westley yelled from where he had taken refuge in one of her empty ammo pouches.
She blasted the forwards thrusters, and her Sparrow pitched forwards. Keeping the nose up was one of the greatest struggles of her entire life, as debris flew past her and the ground grew ever closer.
Oh, poop, oh poop oh poop oh SNAP oh poop! Fart snapple pop!
Her teeth clacked together painfully as they reached the ground, the Sparrow striking the dirt violently. She heard Uldren yelp behind her, and risked a glance back to see if he was still on the vehicle.
Mamma mia...
Now she greatly regretted looking back. Uldren was still holding on, but the building was still falling, bearing down on them with a storm of debris that got bigger with each falling piece. She pushed the Sparrow harder, but it was already going as fast as it could, and it was still bouncing and skidding along the ground uncontrollably as they relied on luck alone not to get crushed by any of the large concrete chunks that were falling from the building.
"Woa, woa woa! NONONONONONONO WORSTE ESCAPE PLAN EVER!" she yelled.
"What did you expect, moron; you jumped out of a building!" Uldren yelled back angrily.
"Yeah; saving your hide! Which I wouldn't have had to do if you'd met up with us!" she countered.
Perhaps he would have said something else, if a large chunk of concrete hadn't landed in front of them. Silverhawk jerked the handles, trying to avoid it, but the Sparrow only spun to it's side as it made contact with the rock.
Both riders and vehicle went spinning through the air, and Silverhawk let out a sharp cry as her leg was slammed into the concrete. She rolled on the ground, dirt and debris raking her face. Groaning as she finally rolled to a stop, she quickly looked to the side to see the all-too-familiar pattern of blackened grass. A blade of green brushed her face as she turned her head, and she jerked back too late.
The crashing thunder of the falling building turned into a deafening roar, and she sat bolt upright, wincing. She could see Uldren staggering to his feet out of the corner of her eye as the building collapsed in earnest, the foundations crumpling and dust blooming out into the air.
"Oh snapple cracks." she said. She looked around frantically for her Sparrow, and spotted it laying a few feet away.
Scrambling up and trying to ignore the pain that sung through her body, and hoping that Uldren wouldn't notice the blackened grass, she rushed over and panickedly tried to flip the vehicle over off of it's back.
"Come on come on come on come on, no no no no!" Uldren joined her, and they had only just managed to flip the Sparrow over when the black cloud engulfed them. The roaring sound was closer than ever, and Silverhawk crossed her arms in front of her face in a vain attempt to shield her head.
A rush of air blew past her from another direction, and she had the sudden, queasy feeling that one sometimes gets in an elevator, or while preforming a Blink Strike; like her organs were having trouble keeping up with her body. Suddenly, the terrain under her feet changed, and so did it's speed, knocking her on her back with a yelp, Uldren making a similar sound beside her.
She opened her eyes to find herself staring at the familiar ceiling of the Wibbly-Wobbly, and to hear the crash of her Sparrow materializing beside her. She sat upright. She patted her shoulders, chest, face, and legs, making sure everything was still intact. She spent a little extra time on her hat, and pulled her cloak around for batter inspection. Confident that she was, indeed, alive, and undamaged, she raised her fists in the air.
"EXCELSIOR! VICTORY IS OURS!" she cried victoriously. "WE ARE IMMORTAL!"
"Shut up!" Uldren snapped from where he sat off to her side.
"Well excuuuuuuuuuse me, princess! You're in no position to be giving me the atomic glare; you're the one who ran off! We thought you were dead! We were sure you were dead! We were certainly absolutely certain that we were dead, once Petra got here." She scolded, fists on her hips.
"Petra? What's she doing here?" the Prince asked immediately, ignoring that fact that she was very, very cross with him. The nerve! Puffing up with indignantly, she picked up a glove that had fallen from its compartment in the ship, and slapped him across the face with it.
"OI!" she shouted as she did so. "I AM VERY CROSS WITH YOU AND I'M NOT MAD OFTEN BUT I'VE HAD A VERY STRESSFUL PAST TWENTY FOUR HOURS MOSTLY BEACAUSE WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD AND MARTIN'S BEEN ALL DEPRESSED ABOUT IT SO THAT MADE ME ALL DEPRESSED ABOUT IT AND CERTECH ARE A BUNCH OF JERKS AND I'M GLAD YOUR OKAY AND NEVER DO THAT AGAIN OR I'LL USE A TITAN'S GLOVE NEXT TIME!"
He continued gawking at her as she took a deep breath, preparing to continue.
The ship pitched, and they were both thrown onto their backs again. Silverhawk hissed through her teeth as the metal grated floor smarted against her spine. Stupid! Alarms blared in the air, and she scrambled to her feet, gasping as sharp pains shot up her leg.
"Houston, we have a problem! An ugly, smelly, four-armed problem." Westley announced from the ammo pouch. She staggered to the cockpit as more blows rocked the ship, and ended up throwing herself into the seat…backwards.
She scorpioned over the back of the seat as a particularly violent blow made the Wibbly-Wobbly give a massive heave, landing her half in her seat with her legs waving out wildly behind her.
"Snapple cracks!" she shouted. She stretched out her arms, trying to get at the controls. "Stupid short arms! Why can't I just grow a couple of inches for once!?"
Her fingers, with great struggle, managed to wrap around the controls, and she pulled up. This action also pulled her body down, and she slid into the seat with a strained grunt. Not the best of flight positions!
"Silverhawk, you're in the seat the wrong way!" Westley exclaimed.
"Yeah, I noticed, Westley!" she grunted, twisting her neck to get a better angle on the radar. She reached out and grabbed the other joystick.
"Hold on to something! Preferably your lunch!" she yelled, hoping that Uldren would take her word for it. My back...is not going to thank me later for this. She jerked the controls, pulling her ship into a displacement role attack pattern before pulling up into what she had planned to be a wingover. This turned out to be a bad idea.
Silverhawk slid backwards out of the seat until her feet were hanging freely, as she gripped the controls to keep herself at the front of the cockpit.
"Could you be any more careful?" Uldren's voice called up sarcastically.
"No." she shouted back. She could feel the ship going into a dangerously slow loop. She kicked out, trying to get herself in the seat. She felt her ghost bump against one of her legs in an effort to help. Her foot planted down on the back of her seat, and she pulled the other one up. With a small jump, she hooked her knees over the edge of her seat.
"Finally!" she signed with relief. She adjusted her grip on the controls. Time to get out of this bad loop before it come through. She looped into the top of the wingover, diving, and then evened the ship out halfway down to their original altitude. She could see mountains flying past below them. She heard someone hit the floor with a grunt somewhere in the back.
More gunfire shook the ship.
"Okay, that's it kids; play time's over." she hit the backwards thrusters. Almost immediately, the Fallen scoutships overshot her, and she was well within their planes. Silverhawk punched her thumbs down on the fire buttons and two of the ships were torn up by the Wibbly-Wobbly's guns. The third went down, one side aflame as it was caught in excess fire while attempting a break maneuver.
"Yeeeee-haaaa! Fish in a barrel, suckers!" she cried victoriously."Westley, how are our shields?"
"Tip-top shape, Captain." he told her in a scottish accent.
"Good work, Scotty; I told you you calibrated them right!" she said, grinning."How's our favorite passenger?"
"My head hurts." came the grumpy response. She took her eyes off the dark sky ahead to turn in her seat and look at him. He was sitting on the floor, hair looking...well wonderful in a sarcastic sense of the words, and rubbing his head, glaring at her.
"Yeah, I don't think you're going to get those dreadlocks out, mate." she told him in her best british accent. "Scissors are in the back."
"I swear, Silverhawk, if you-" he froze as she pulled out a mirror from the bag beside her seat, looking horrified.
"Get snipping, Bear Grylls. Something might decide to make a nest up there." she tossed the mirror to him and quickly turned away to hide her laughter, burying her face in her hands. She heard the Awoken stomp off, presumably to find a place to hide while he gave himself the emergency hair cut.
"Heather, are you okay down there? Please, don't play any jokes or yell into the comms or anything." martin's worried voice came from her ghost.
"Space tastes like raspberries." she replied, grinning. She turned her ship around back the way they had come. "And you might have incoming, so keep an eye out. The Wibbly-Wobbly arrived just in time, and Uldren's okay. Well, mostly okay; physically, he's fine, but his hair is a loss."
"What was he doing up there? Where did he go? How did we lose him? Did he get lost?" her friend bombarded her at ninety mile per hour.
"Whoa, whoa, settle down; the guy just fell about a thousand feet or so, lived through an aerial combat situation with me as the pilot, in all my ace genius, and now he has to cut half his hair off." she listed with a chuckle. "Look, I'll ask him about it when he gets back, but I was dead serious about those incoming. Fallen scoutships, which means a skiff can't be far behind. And where there's a skiff-"
"There's a Ketch." he finished for her.
"See if you can ring Petra up; tell her the plan worked, and that we found Uldren. Don't forget to mention he's alive, by the way. You know, just so she doesn't, shoot us out of the sky, or something." she added.
"Roger that, Houston." she could picture him giving a tiny solute as the comms went dead again.
She leaned back in the pilot seat, cushioning her head with her hands as the Wibbly-Wobbly flew back towards the Certech valley. What a day. Certech, Uldren, monsters, and Fallen, oh my! She flexed her injured leg, wincing.
"Westley, damage report." she asked, lifting her leg for the little robot to scan. He let out a ghost equivalent of a tsk noise as he scanned it.
"Several minute fractures, and your ankle is dislocated." he told her. He scanned the rest of her body. "You're going to be fairly bruised later as well, it seems like."
"Well, then, I guess there's nothing to it. Which way should I pull?" she asked, grabbing her foot firmly and finally noticing the awkward angle it was at. "And I thought dislocations hurt more than this."
"To the left. And your body is still in shock; the real pain should star fairly soon." he told her as she gave her foot a sharp tug. There was a loud, disconcerting snap, and pain shot up her leg.
"Snapple cracks!" she shouted before snapping her jaw shut, hoping that Uldren wouldn't come to investigate. She pushed herself to her feet, more pain shooting up her leg as she did so. "Keep her on course, Westley."
"As you wish!" he said cheerily, the triangles above his eye parting slightly and going up and down in a mock solute. "Remember, pain killer is on the left."
"Thanks, West." she said, limping around the seat and out of the cockpit.
Her Sparrow lay on it's side against the back wall, and she reminded herself to secure it later, and have Martin fix whatever was broken. She limped down to her room, which was off to her right. Though, it was much less of a room, and more of a small bed build into a wall that happened to be behind a door. Sincerely hoping that Uldren hadn't chosen this room to cut his hair off in, she opened the door and went inside.
Everything was as she had left it. Well, kind of; there were a few more things on the floor than usual, and her extra armor had slid out from under the bed. A few of her cloaks were on the floor, and her pillows and blankets lay among them. She sighed. As if there wasn't enough to do already. Picking up her bed things, she tossed them onto the bed before shoving her armor back under it. She reached under the left side, and her hands found the med case.
Pulling it out, she unhooked the clasps and pulled out the micro-splint. Lifting herself up onto her bed, she stuck her leg out, and began to remove her armor. Boots first, knees next, unhook the sheath, and up you go. That was the mantra that Cayde had drilled into all their heads during Hunter training. In order to get "down to business" with weapons and the like, the students all first had to learn how to equip and un-equip their gear properly.
She rolled the leather of her pants up, revealing the bruises that were already starting to form across her leg. She sucked in air between her teeth. Mamma mia...
She reached down into the left compartment of the med case and pulled out the pain killer. She looked at the label. Okay, no idea what that is, I won't even try to pronounce it. All she could tell was that it was the right one; she might not know the word, but she could recognize it fairly well. Turning her leg to get a better angle on it, she brought the needle up to her skin. Just do it quick; like a band-aid.
She jabbed the needle into her skin and shut her eyes tight as she pushed the injector down. She whimpered and hissed through her teeth. She felt the injector stop, and she pulled the needle out of her leg, and tossed it down into the med case.
"Snapple cracks!" she hissed. She clapped a hand to the bleeding needle mark, trying not to think about the point sliding in and out of her skin, slowly, smoothly, sliding against her muscles as is went in and went out...
Oh, no, oh, no! I think I'm gonna be sick! No, no, not on my ship, not while I have company! She clapped one hand over her mouth, and the other over her stomach. Think about puppies, think about puppies, think about puppies! Adorable, furry little puppies, with those big, cute eyes and their little noses, those cute little ears and the way they kind of stumble around the place because their paws are too big for them...
She steadied her breathing, and the throbbing pain in her leg gradually faded. She took the micro-splint and wrapped it around her leg. There was a click, and a beep, and it automatically adjusted itself to her legs' shape. She rolled her pants back down, and put her boot, sheath, and knee armor back on.
She stood up, and stomped her foot several times, testing her leg. Echoes of pain ran up her body, but other than that, her step was completely solid. She closed the med case and pushed it back under her bed, and hung her cloaks back up on the wall.
She left her room, closing the door silently behind her, and made her way back up to the cockpit. Looking around, she saw that Uldren had returned, and was sitting near the other hall, looking absolutely thunderous. His didn't look all that bad, actually; personally, she though he looked quite better with his hair short.
"Oh my gosh!" she gasped dramatically. "Uldren; you're bald!"
"If you speak one word of this to anyone, I will throw you out the nearest airlock." He snarled, gold eyes searing into hers. I wonder what he would think, if he could see my eyes?
Probably that I'm a freak.
"Dude, it's your face; everyone's going to see it eventually." She shrugged, rolling her eyes, though he couldn't see it. "So really, the only solution to nobody knowing about your hair, is to wear a paper bag over your head until it grows back. But then, people might think it's not your hair; they might think it's your whole FACE that got ugly. Not that you're ugly, or anything. I mean, at least it's not a dreg cut; now THAT is ugly."
Everything she said seemed to make him glare harder and hate more. But what did he hate so much? Was it in his nature, or something?
"I suggest you stop speaking." He said, a sneer playing across his face.
"Oh, yes. And I forgot to mention, it's time for you to start speaking. As in, about what the heck happened to you? I mean, daring rescues are blazing and all, but I'd like to know why I jumped off a building? I mean, I do crazy things like that all the time, but usually I know why I'm doing it."
"Why would you jump off a building for no reason?"
"The key word there was 'crazy'. And you didn't answer my question. Where were you, and what happened, and why didn't you try to find us?"
"I was. That's why I was there."
"Annnnnnd? Why didn't you come back to camp after the battle?"
"I was being chased. I killed a vandal in the forest, and then an animal came. I climbed up and ran from it in the trees."
"Then?"
"I wasn't going to risk going back. I questioned the vandal before I killed him, and he told me where the lab was. So I went there. I figured you would have the same Idea."
"So, the vandal tore up your cloak?"
"He snuck up on me."
"And your sleeve?"
"I cut it off so I could bind the wound."
"The monster? Wouldn't happen to be big, right? Brown? No eyes, big nose, smells like something died? Giant teeth, claws the size of jumpships? Slobbers a lot?"
"How did you know?"
"Met him."
They sat in silence, Uldren glaring up at her. His story made sense…but there was something he wasn't saying. Something he was keeping from her. There was a hesitance in his voice. Something she didn't trust.
"O-kay." She said, un-crossing her arms. "If that's what you're going with. Be nice to know what really happened, though."
"What do you mean? He snapped, looking surprised.
"You're not that good a liar. Whatever it is, just don't go off doing it again." She stretched, popping her back. "Cuz we've got a ketch to raid."
Wha-what is this?*brushes dust off of reveiw link*Could it be?
*clutches heart* I-it is!
A REVIEW!
*faints*
Owen Atticus: Thank you so much! And I totally agree with you; I got tired of waiting, though, so I wrote my own. And I don't know if it's your review that did it or not, but people seem to have taken a very sudden interest in my fic since yesterday. And about your block with fantasy writing; I suggest for practice, writing from a dragon point of veiw. It's not that different from Warriors, and it really helped me adjust into fantasy writing really well. People is the next step up I took; practice makes perfect!
By the way guys, I'm only posting this because of the sudden interest taken in this fic. Last chapter, I said that this chapter was going to be 8,000 long. Buuuuuut...it turned out to be 10,000. 10,800 words long, exactly. Soooooooo...yeah. Hope you liked it. And I hope you're all just a bit more interested in Silverhawk now. Something's messed up with her, there's no telling what. (BTW Owen, don't mention the thing I mentioned in my review, about Silverhawk's you-know-what. I actually regret putting that in a review, come to think of it. Man, I n gotta speedwrite this and get that part of the fic out before my review becomes world-known spoilers.)
To anyone who got curios and looked up my review; Silverhawk is not, and never will be, a Mary Sue. I think the broken leg proved that.
You know, I looked up actual aerial fighter maneuvers for this chapter. You know that "barrel role" from Star fox? That's not an actual barrel role; it's an Aileron Roll, and it serves no combat purposes whatsoever, except maybe in the "play dead" trick we saw Garret and Coulson do in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. If you're confused by any of the maneuvers in this chapter, just look up "Basic fighter movements" on wikipidia; that where I got my info. It's actually some very interesting stuff; almost makes me wish I wasn't an accrophobe, and that my glasses weren't part of my identity.
Plus, poor bald Uldren! He isn't actually bald; but I heavily considering it, and an accident with an incendiary device though, because...well, if everybody came out of this fic with their eyebrows intact it wouldn't be a Destiny comedy, would it, then. I just kind of wanted Uldren to have a different design for later than what he has in the games. I gots a bad case of OCD, and his hair always bothered me.
Just as a sneak peak; re-imagined Uldren looks like a mid-evil space pirate, LoL.
Next time: We return to Uldren's point of view*collective groan of the readers*, so we get some more Silverhawk-bashing, we raid a ketch, and Martin's dark side make another appearance...
PLEASE REVEIW!
Cheers!^^