DA99-Awkward enough for you? Lol, but seriously. I tried to make it realistically, awkwardly, good. I try not to divulge information I intend to reveal later on in the story, but she is in fact not Eliksni. All in good time. Thank you for your reviews!
Hi Guys, I'm back! Did you miss me? :P By now you have probably all seen the announcement for Rise of Iron. Yay for more Destiny and yay for more Fallen lore! The thing is, more lore means less leeway to play with the storyline and I've already got it all figured out in my head. If my headcanons are out there before I know different I'm cool with it, if canon gets out there and it conflicts with what I want to write, then I will feel compelled to change things and follow canon. It's just the way I am.
Chapter 14-Pronouns
That had gone notably better than the ghost had expected; granted, its expectations hadn't been that high. Still, there had been a few tense moments, especially when the vandal had drawn its shock blade, but it had expected much more than just threatening posture. The cautious approach and distant interaction over the past weeks had definitely helped, which it was thankful for because in her excitement she had rushed it. She had moved too quickly from simply touching to climbing into his lap, and that could have resulted in far worse than some irritated flesh.
The ghost was still trying to piece together why she was so excited. She had alluded to the fact that this vandal was special somehow, that this was not the same situation as the other creatures she had sought out. How she had determined that, it had no idea. It could only hope that whatever she was trying to accomplish by sleeping with these creatures would soon be resolved and then… well to be honest, it didn't know what they would do after that.
Since they had met, they had travelled to so many different places and the ghost had seen so many more things than it ever could have if it had paired with another guardian. It had learned all that it could and it had compiled all that it could, so that in the future… and from there it didn't really know. Gathering data had always been instinctual for it, even now that it did not have a guardian partner, but what should it do with all of this information?
Ideally, it would probably give it to the Vanguard to help aid them in at least understanding their enemies' capabilities and intelligence. The cryptarchs would surely find it fascinating as well; he doubted any records currently existed on the mating habits of cabal legionaries.
It would have to think upon it more in the future, but the situation at hand required its attention. The vandal had returned to a crouch, staring after the female that had left its lap, and failed to move again even after the ghost had addressed it. Finally, though, its head turned away from her, and stared at it instead. If the ghost didn't know any better, it would have said it, and possibly its address, was being keenly evaluated.
"What means this, 'You may ask your questions now?" The vandal's speech was quiet but direct, a low, gravelly sound somewhere between a hiss and a growl. The ghost made note of the differences between the fallen spoken words and its own robotic pronunciation, particularly the mandibular clicks that were not apparent in the written text it had used to learn the language. Are they necessary for the words to be understood or are they just an inconsequential result of having the mandibles click together during speech, it thought to itself, insatiably curious and secretly a bit excited to actually be speaking to one of the fallen.
"She knows that you are curious about both this situation and about her, so she is prepared to answer any questions you would like to ask." The female, done with her bathing, had clothed herself again and then moved to recline atop one of the larger rocks in the area. Her body was poised although her expression was mostly empty as she looked from one to the other, waiting.
"What do you want?" It said, turning back to the female.
Again, she sent with an unnecessary and unwanted visual reminder of what they had both just finished doing.
"She wants you both to return to this same place and do this again for as many times as you both want."
Silence was not exactly the reaction it had been expecting; prolonged silence even more so. The vandal just stared at it with that same look as if evaluating the words, or perhaps it was a blank look. Interpreting facial expressions wasn't exactly on the vanguard's top ten list of important things to learn when it came to their enemies.
Although, the ghost thought, maybe I'm saying things incorrectly. From all the fallen originated data it had combed through in its life, it had learned that they did not view time linearly as humanity did; they tracked it through the occurrence of events and recalled it the same way. It was both more correct than the linear model and much more difficult to convey. The ghost couldn't simply say 'she wants to see you every day' because the fallen did not have a word for day and even if they did, right now the vandal had no concept of what a 'day' was.
"Why does it not speak?" it finally replied without addressing the ghost's previous statement.
"To be honest with you, I'm not sure. She," the ghost said with more emphasis in its annoyance, "has never—" but the vandal cut off the rest of its answer.
"It does not speak. You do not speak to it, so answers are your own, not its," said the vandal with a tailing growl that might have indicated anger.
The little machine retorted with a hint of anger in its own voice as it was tired of the vandal's rudeness. "She is not an it," it bristled, all of its separate parts rattling as they pulled apart rapidly. "Show some respect!"
Ghost.
The female was amused at its anger, but that single word was still a reprimand. "No," it said turning to look at her while it spoke, "it is not accidental, he is being deliberately disrespectful. Fallen only refer to other creatures as 'It' when referring to species they see as beneath them."
It may not have known her reasoning behind thinking this vandal was unique, but she was correct in the fact that they had never dealt with a creature this intelligent or capable of independent thinking. They would have to be more careful around him, particularly in what they said but also in anything that was implied. He would be studying every move they made. She needed to avoid offending him if at all possible, but also not allow him to disrespect her. Fallen, like humans, put great emphasis on rank and status, and to them, nothing was worse than being weak. Since she had made her decision to interact with the fallen, it had tried to convey the importance of all of this to the female, and perhaps she had been listening because she replied with, Emphasis understood.
When the ghost finally turned back toward the vandal, his gaze was piercing and he did not speak again for so long that it did start to wonder if it should regret the words. What if I just messed this up for her? it thought, the worry setting in the longer the silence persisted. Unconsciously, the ghost floated backwards a bit to be nearer the female trying to detect any changes in her mood, but there was nothing to feel. She was not worried and that helped it calm itself, if only minutely.
"You say many unnecessary words when speaking," the vandal finally said in a tone, that it couldn't be certain of, but the ghost could swear was also reprimanding.
I can't believe I just got rebuked by a fallen for talking too much. The ghost felt almost indignant by the absurdity of that notion and it had completely avoided the previous topic! The female, however, transmitted nothing but amusement at the situation.
"Great, now that we're all done being funny…" it grumbled to itself in City Age English so the vandal could not understand. "She can understand you, she just doesn't speak aloud. She sends me her answers through transmission," it said returning to the conversation. It had really wanted to return to the vandal's rudeness, but had decided to leave it alone for now. Besides, next time he addressed the female in conversation, it would know his answer.
"Your answer is acceptable."
The ghost had figured it would have to wait for a while before receiving a response, but that was surprisingly quick. Why do I feel like I just passed some sort of test? it thought to itself vowing to pay even more attention to the vandal's speech. If it was not mistaken, the vandal had already known, or at least suspected, the answer to its own question, which meant it wasn't just seeking confirmation but evaluating their responses.
"Why he seeks fallen?"
The ghost was not familiar with this form of disrespect; using the incorrect gender pronoun was not something it had ever read about. It decided to let it slide for now and answer the question just in case it was some sort of slip. It probably didn't speak to females that often. "She does not 'seek fallen'. Right now, she is only interested in you."
"For what purpose?"
"Like I said before, she just wants to do this… a lot," it added on at the end in English eliciting an amused smirk from the female.
"To what end he wants to do this?"
"She. She is a she, not a he," it said holding back the exasperation. This vandal was trying its patience already. I mean how dumb does he think I am, like I won't notice him switching the pronoun from 'it' to 'he'?
"You speak in riddles, Nuur'az," the vandal growled out.
Ghost sighed loudly not bothering to hide the irritation this time. "'He' is a pronoun. You use it when referring to someone who is male instead of saying their name, which I know you already know. 'She' is the correct pronoun for a female, but you are intentionally calling her a 'he' to show your superiority."
"You assume much."
"Which means I am right," it said pointedly.
"No. Fallen do not have this 'female' that you speak nor do we say 'she'. All are referred to by their designation or 'he'."
"Of course the fall…"
Stop, the female interrupted with a forcefully spoken word and surge of unknown emotion.
"What?" it asked switching over to English for a conversation that was obviously meant to be private. "Of course the fallen have females. I mean we know the population is heavily skewed toward males for whatever reason; no one is quite sure why. There are many theories. The cryptarchs have postulated that the male is… ah, I'm getting off topic. Anyways, we know they have females and so does he. He is playing dumb to gauge our responses. Have you noticed that he hasn't divulged any information about the fallen? Of course not and I wouldn't expect him to, but that doesn't mean we should hold back everything we know especially when it's in our favor."
Dangerous. The warning came with a feeling that the ghost was incorrect, but about what it could not decipher. The feeling changed to a swirl of emotions with curiosity prominent among them and then her mind was lost to it in contemplation. The feelings cut off abruptly with, later, being the only explanation it was going to get.
It knew better than to prompt her for information when she was lost so deeply in thought, so instead it focused its attention back on their guest. The vandal had taken in the exchange, it knew, and would try to puzzle it all out later, but for now he had just stayed in his crouch and stared. Or that's what it had thought. The blades that previously lie against the path were now held loosely in each claw both downturned and inactive. Somehow, this situation had drastically changed and the ghost was a step behind; it did not know what was happening.
Retreat.
"We must leave. She wants to do this again and speak with you more. Always when the sun is on this side of the sky, we will be here," it told the vandal at her request although it thought it unwise to give that information away. They meant to depart immediately, but the vandal stood up in one swift movement and the ghost got the sense that it wanted to speak. Sure enough…
"You seek to deceive and confuse. Untruths and trickery are the words. I will not return," and then he was gone.
So what did you guys think? As always, let me know in the reviews! Favs and follows are much appreciated as well. Thanks for reading!
Just to clarify, when Ghost is speaking to Lykrosis it is in E'lik, which is why I will continue to make a point of stating if it switches to English. In case anyone is asking themselves, then why does Lykrosis speak so strangely if he is speaking his own language; I shall tell you. He is an alien. No way do aliens have identical speech patterns, grammar, syntax, sentence structure, etc. as humans even in their own language. It's one of my biggest pet peeves with aliens in all sorts of media and that includes fanfiction. I'm not asking for an entire new language, but at least try to remember you are writing about an alien and not a human with a funny name. (The frustration increases with the portrayal of personalities and mannerisms, but don't even get me started on that.)
So long story short, I adjusted his speech a bit. It follows what I know of the fallen and based on what we see in the game; sentences are relatively short and direct, but vocabulary is robust. Now, realistically their speech would probably be so different we couldn't understand a damn thing, but I'm not going to kill myself coming up with a funny way for him to talk. Just know that it will be a little different but as consistent as possible.