Hunter hated ghost towns. He hated silence, more specifically, but ghost towns were nothing but that, so he especially hated them. Whenever he'd do his usual runs to the usual places that were known for high amounts of Darkness activity, he'd often make round trips around the various planets and moons, and in his travels, it wasn't uncommon to find towns and cities. When he was in the EDZ, the constant worry of being shot or stabbed by Fallen or Cabal was often enough to keep his mind off thinking about it too much. But when he traveled further out, finding all the lost cities of Earth, or Mars, or Venus, or wherever he found himself, he couldn't count on the Darkness to give him something else to think about. And to him, that was infinitely worse, because his mind would wander, and imagine what it was like when those places had life; when families would walk around the markets, all the places where children might have played, and the noises of it all creating a joyful cacophony.
Sometimes, he imagined it well enough that he thought he could hear it. And as fake as they were at that time, a part of him wondered if they were echoes of him prior to becoming an Exo. Perhaps the children's voices were the voices of his own kids, or just his own as a child. Perhaps the uncoordinated mumbles of the public were voices he'd heard before the Collapse. Auditory hallucinations weren't uncommon to him, even without the various Ahamkara bone exotics he had not included in the list of reasons for them. He didn't like either of them, though.
The worst of them, though, was when he would enter the Old City. Auditory hallucinations of what might have been his past was one thing, but going through a city that he once knew, and was now dead, was like nothing he'd dealt with before. During the raid led by the Young Wolf, while he'd fought through the City, that was just that; he'd fought through the City. It didn't give him enough time to remember, not just imagine, all the life he'd once known was there, and he was grateful for it. Soon after that, though, when the Red War was over and he had his Light back, he'd make solo ventures, looking for anyone still alive, objects of importance to perhaps recover, and anything else that could have told him they hadn't lost everything. Eventually, he'd been willing to settle for something as basic as that little purple ball that'd get kicked around the Tower.
Despite several dozen trips, he never found anything but bones and broken memories.
The village where his party's current quest had taken them, though not actually a ghost town since he knew the last living residents were all locked up in the church, still gave him that unfortunately familiar sense of unease. It was nothing like the Old City, both in scale and his familiarity with it, yet he could still guess what it might have been like before now. If nothing else, he knew for a fact that the sounds he could swear he was hearing couldn't have been real. This town's roads were empty when they'd first arrived, and he had no reason to assume one of the residents would open the church without the knowledge that their problem was gone.
"Hunter, you're getting sluggish," Ghost said. To anyone else, this assessment wouldn't have made sense, as he seemed just as energetic as he ever did. But after all the time she'd spent with him, she knew what even the smallest of changes in his mood looked like. "You're hearing things again, aren't you?"
When he didn't respond, she continued. "I'd hoped that maybe being away from anywhere you could have possibly been as a human would have changed that. But no, this must be some lingering trauma from before you…"
"Died, yes, I know," Hunter said. "Just my luck, I'm one of the few Guardians who get a piece of their past, and my piece happens to be some kind of trauma."
She blinked into existence, her frame displaying a clear sadness at his state. "I know that you know this, but I'm here for you. No matter what might happen, you can count on that."
"You're saying that like you think I'm gonna do something drastic," he mused, then looked over to her. "Besides, I'm a Guardian; it's not like it'd stick, right?"
She was silent, before she spun her parts around herself, and flew up close to him, flaring her Light slightly. It was a common thing she did, the closest act to a hug she could give him considering her lack of arms. He appreciated the act all the same, though. "I love you, though I don't love those jokes."
He chuckled, and brought his hand behind her to hold her close to him. "Hey, you know it's my only healthy coping mechanism. Now, let's get back to making sure this place can have some life in it." With that, she blinked back into her little space in reality within him, and not a moment too soon, as he'd arrived at the front of the building the rest of his party was located. He stepped in, and headed up the stairs and into the room overlooking the road.
"How many did you see?" Blade Master asked without looking up, cleaning and sharpening her swords with practiced ease. She would have done the same for Death Cleric's axe, but magic weapons like hers had a talent for staying sharp that most mundane weapons lacked. It was something she'd need to get used to, since she certainly hadn't left on her pilgrimage with it.
"About 20 or so, going by Ghost's count. You know I could have taken them on my own, right?" Hunter responded as he entered the room, with all the expected amount of ego boosting. He lowered the hood of his cloak, removed his helmet, and stretched, his servos feeling as loose and as tight as they needed to be where they needed to be.
"The only who might not be sure about that is Death Cleric," Frost Mage was quick to remind him, "and I'm pretty sure even that's up for debate." Indeed, the fact that she somehow knew his name, despite having done little special that would have made him famous was strange, yet she did, and they weren't sure what to do with that information. Perhaps something to do with her god, they guessed, and left it at that.
"That's not the point to what we're doing, though." Death Cleric, now, spoke. "It is possible that those aren't the only imps around, and there might even be a greater demon somewhere nearby. In the forest, one of them could escape us easily in the haze of battle, but if one runs in the open, it can be followed, reasonably to that greater demon, which is exactly what we shall do. From there, we make sure nothing is left is cause troubles for these folk."
While Hunter could have probably done all of that in his own timeline, that was with all the advantages of technology this place didn't have. With no way to track them besides his helmet's limited range radar, which also required his active attention to it, it wouldn't take much to miss them running away. So, he slumped his shoulders, and accepted that his method might not have been effective here. "Alright, fine. But when we find the big boss, I call dibs on the first strike."
"You're free to do whatever you want whenever we find him." Death Cleric pulled her axe from the eldritch planes, ripping it from a scar within the air that closed just as suddenly as it had appeared. She swung and twirled it a cursory few times, as if testing its weight, despite how familiar its every trait must have been to the large woman, and leaned its haft against her shoulder with a loose smile. "Just make sure to leave one of the imps alive so we can follow it to its lair. Otherwise, we might leave a half-done job, and I did not make it to emerald rank by half doing jobs."
He nodded simply, and set to just waiting, with not much else to do in his spare time. His weapons were ready for use, though he'd need to use them sparingly, else he gets overzealous and kill all the imps. He sat near the window and stared outside, visual receptors scanning the area they expected the imps to arrive near far quicker and far more efficiently than his human counterparts could. Though, Death Cleric, apparently being an elf from the glimpse of a pointed ear he saw peeking from her long hair, might have had some propensity for scanning terrain. He didn't know enough about elven biology to be sure, though.
So of course, he asked as he scanned. "Hey DC, do elves have night vision?"
"To an extent," she began, "though, it wouldn't matter much right now. Perhaps a dark elf would have a greater ability to do such. Our ears, however, give us an impressive range of hearing. For instance, there is a squirrel scurrying along one of the trees out where you are looking." Hunter's eyes quickly began to scan the area outside the window, and sure enough, one of the little bushy tailed rat things came running out of the tree line barely seconds later, grabbing a small collection of berries from the grass before running back within the forest, out of sight once more.
So that's what those things are called, Hunter thought, and continued his scanning, keeping his eyes on anything else that moved out there. He could have waited for literal hours doing nothing but this, given his Exo body lack of most human needs. But he still had a human mind, and that mind was one that got easily bored, for better or for worse. Luckily for him, he didn't need to wait, as the first blood red imp came out into the open, followed shortly by the rest of its group. But they were acting… strangely, was the best that Hunter could say. He couldn't say he knew much about imps, what with his only knowledge being from word of mouth and the admittedly helpful Monster Manual, but stealthy wasn't their usual method.
The imps, numbered seven, half less than the already meager 20 Ghost had first counted, were sneaking around, their party looking worried about something, though he couldn't tell what. He called the others to the window, his allies silently moving towards it to look out at the demons that had arrived. "That's not 20," Blade Master said, stating the painfully obvious more to spite Hunter than anything else.
"I noticed," he said, scanning the perimeter of the forest edge to see if any more would follow. When none did, he tapped Huckleberry from its place on his hip. "Well, maybe that 19 was all they had? That might not explain their sudden need for stealth, but it's something, I guess."
Death Cleric furrowed her brow, but rolled her shoulders, fully prepared for the now, not the later. "Whatever it is, we need to deal with them. It's our mission, and we can figure out what to do about the rest afterwards. Frost Mage, help them 'chill out', as Hunter might say." As she finished her sentence, she stepped back, lined with the window for after his attack. Once he had the space, he began his incantation, three large icicles appearing in front of him, spinning in the air as they formed. With the final word of his spell, he pointed his staff out towards the imps, their slow approach failing them as they were still so close together. The spikes of ice shattered the window, and before they could react, three of the seven were already dead, each shard slamming into the heads with enough force to explode them, and the four still left were far more than surprised.
Death Cleric, however, was close behind the spell, flinging herself through the window and out into the open, rolling as she hit the ground from the drop and shoulder checking an imp into a wall. She didn't bother checking if it was dead, using her momentum to guide a swing of her axe into, and then through the neck of another, decapitating it in one swift motion. One of the two left began to fly away, as she had expected, and she threw her axe at the one that hadn't yet caught the memo, the blade travelling faster than it could have guessed it would be able to, and lodging itself into its skull, one more kill to her name.
She heard gunfire behind her, and saw Hunter firing at the imp she had shoulder checked as he fell to the ground, the demon still alive, if just barely. She didn't get the chance to thank him as he broke into a sprint after the imp that still lived, his speed more than enough to surpass the imp's, but only sticking behind it from the shade of the trees as he followed it deeper. Through various sharp turns within the woods, he stalked his prey to wherever it was unknowingly leading him, hoping it wouldn't send him just to where he first saw them. Luckily, they treaded past that, cutting through the small clearing and deeper into the forest.
When the imp stopped, it was at an unfamiliar clearing with the crumbled remains of a statue at its center, where it and the rest of its ilk, and a few extra they'd not known about, were hunkered down at. It fearfully warbled at one of them, whatever it was saying lost to Hunter and Ghost, but the emotion behind its language clear enough. The one it was speaking to angrily yelled back, and slapped it across the face for its transgressions. He would have been more amused if he could understand them, but as it was, he didn't speak fiend, and he doubted there was much reason to. Then again, he'd said the same thing about Eliksni, and now he felt rude because he couldn't speak to most of the Spider's men.
Moments later, the rest of his party had caught up to him, all breathing heavily from their chase. "You guys need to do some cardio," he said, and if he could smirk, he would, the fact that it would have been hidden under his helmet anyway be damned. "I don't think they're going anywhere, though. This looks like their base, as it were. So, we can do this the easy way where I just deal with them myself, or we can wait some more to see if there's anything up with this place."
He didn't have to wait long, though, as from another section of the trees, out stepped the Demon he had killed and been killed by, barking order in his fiendish language to the surrounding imps. He looked none the worse for wear, though he was decked out in more equipment than he had in their first encounter. His armor covered more of his body, a pair of gauntlets and thigh plating now adorning his body, and his sword was in his hands once more. When Hunter checked, that same sword was still on his back, so he made a quick guess that the Demon could replicate it. He felt like that was cheating somehow, but he figured, since that's how enemies of the Light felt fighting near deathless demigods, he could handle one demon.
Still, it felt like he was stealing their thing.
"Huh," was his only reaction, though Frost Mage and Blade Master were far less mundane with their reactions. Quiet, yes, but certainly not calm. Death Cleric had only been given a description of the Demon, so while she could tell this was him, she lacked the critical information, and more importantly, the part where he had killed Hunter. They hadn't thought it would be necessary to know, and now they were kicking themselves for that. "He's back, then. That's fun."
"Hunter definitely killed him, right?" Frost Mage asked, wary of what was going on. "This is bad. We barely got out of our last encounter with him with our lives!"
"I mean," Hunter began, "I could have killed him quicker, but I didn't think he was that tough first go around." Hunter wanted to make that very clear, though he wasn't going to deny that his cockiness had gotten him that time. Lucky him, he'd stored up on Light up to that encounter, else it probably would have taken longer, and a lot more bullets. "This time, though, no chances."
"He nearly kicked me through an altar," Blade Master said, brow furrowed at him, "and you're saying you could have used your Golden Gun that whole time?"
"Okay, see that makes it sound worse than it actually was."
"Through an altar!"
"Nearly through an altar."
"Be that as it may," Death Cleric interrupted before it could get too loud, "Hunter made sure everyone got out alive. There were no casualties, and though I may have preferred he did it differently, you still breathe this day because of him."
No one bothered to correct her on the technically false part of her statement. Instead, Frost Mage took a breath, and nodded. "I don't know about BM, but I'll accept that. Now, are we going to fight him again, or wait until he leads his horde somewhere else? I don't have the spells for two engagements."
"I say we take them now," Blade Master said. "As far as we know, this is all the imps, and there's no better chance to deal with them all at once. On top of that, we have two people in heavy, and more importantly loud, armor, so sneaking for too long is unreliable. It's not the best fight location, but I'm sure we can deal with anything that tries to escape."
"I can deal with the imps before they can run," Hunter said. "But the rest of you will have to hold up the big guy while I do that. DC, BM, Frosty, you up for it?"
"Ridding the world of foul demons is a task I am quite familiar with," she said with a slight smile, her fist tightening around her axe. He took that well enough, and raised a hand, three fingers extended. He counted down wordlessly, and when his fist closed, each of the four rushed out towards their intended targets. Hunter aimed down, taking 4 imps out in a spray of light infused bullets, while Frost Mage was the first to attack the Demon, ice spikes exploding out from the earth beneath him to impale his legs and freeze one solid, unable to move. Blade Master hurled a javelin at him, and despite his surprise, he was able to dodge it, though just barely. The imp behind him was not as lucky, taking the spear through its neck and pinning its body to a rotting tree stump. And sprinting at the front was Death Cleric, who cast a quick spell to cover her weapon in glowing white flames before she swung. Though the Demon blocked the strike, he cleared buckled slightly as he did, her attack far more powerful than he would have expected.
"It seems they have it handled," Ghost said from within him, as Blade Master gouged his sides, blood spilling from his wound while he struggled to free himself. Hunter shot another small grouping of imps, twisting his body to dodge a firebolt thrown at him from behind. He responded in kind, the staccato of Huckleberry and the sound of rounds impacting flesh telling him of another dead imp. His radar told him only eight were left, and a throwing knife slammed into the head of one that tried to run, a satisfying thunk resounding in the clearing soon after he did. He fired at two more, and before he could aim at the last ones left, he noticed a friendly signature on his radar rapidly heading towards him. When he looked over, Blade Master was about an inch away, tumbling through the air in front of him. She crashed into him, his shields taking the brunt of the hit, but nearly completely depleted.
"…They seem to have it less handled now," Ghost said, somewhat sheepishly. Just as suddenly, Blade Master rolled off him, dodging a kick from the Demon who, while missing an arm and the same horn he'd broken off last time, was free of the ice and healed of most of his mundane wounds. Hunter, luckily, was low enough to not take the full force of the kick, and dodged when he went for a stomp that sent a shockwave through the ground. "Behind you," Ghost told him, and he aimed Huckleberry over his shoulder, squeezing the trigger to kill an imp that tried to sneak up behind him. With his gun's strange method of refilling its ammunition satisfied, and only four imps left, he flared his Light bright, conjuring his Golden Gun like a spin upon his finger and dodging once more between the Demon's legs. One shot a piece was given to the remaining imps, each exploding into burning ashes on hit.
"Bastard!" the Demon roared at him. A part of him, however, laughed inwardly. He thought that the Hunter had wasted his three shots slaying the last of his imps, and with that gone, there was far less chance of that golden weapon felling him again. When the glow surrounding him instead continued, however, he realized his mistake. Hunter spun around, and another blazing bullet was sent his way, aimed right for his head. But, through some amount of extreme luck, highly stressed reflexes, or a combination of both, the Demon dodged the shot, and reached his hand out, suddenly grabbing and crushing Hunter with a telekinetic grip, breaking his shields in the process. When Blade Master threw another javelin at him, this time piercing through what should have been his heart, he squeezed tighter from his agony, and once more, Hunter was grateful for his inability to feel pain. The Demon then flung him to the side, sending him crashing first through what was left of the statue, then through several trees as he turned back to face her.
As he careened across the forest, skidding along the ground as he slowed to a stop, he groaned, the human part of his simulacra of a brain instinctively reacting to his simulated feelings of discomfort. "Well, that's new," Hunter said, standing up and entering a sprint back towards his opponent, ignoring the tightness he felt in his body. It'll buff out, he told himself, leaping over stones and fallen trees in his wake, as he crept closer to the sounds of battle, steel clashing against groaning steel.
7 seconds left.
He dodged an errant ice spike, passing by the shard as it scraped against his helmet and left another area of tattered cloak fabric in its wake. A yelp from Frost Mage told him that this was a desperate attack, and a scream of his name by Blade Master told him that whatever happened, he'd need to get there faster. He morphed the Light in his left hand, and a grenade conjured by his side when he finally saw the Demon again, standing over Blade Master, a now cracked shield raised over her head to protect against the incoming blow.
"Ghost, stand by for res, just in case," he said, firing his last shots, first into the sword, then into the Demon's back. He turned to look at him, more than surprised that he was back already, but already prepared to handle him. With his arm regenerated fully, he used one to grab Hunter in his telekinetic grasp once more, but instead of throwing him again, he brought him closer, stabbing him through his gut before grabbing him by the throat. His hold was crushing in its force, squeezing tight enough that, were he still human, he knew he would be scrambling for air.
"This time, stay dead, you worthless wretch."
His fury was cold as ice, and it was his hope that this new thorn in his side wouldn't find his way back to life again. His rage was given momentary pause, however, when he heard Hunter laugh despite the agony he should have been experiencing. His eye twitched, and he dragged him closer, impaling him further in an attempt to cull his incessant giggles. When he got a knife into his eye courtesy of Hunter, now in arm's length, he roared in pain, and got a fist wrapped around an Incendiary Grenade punching his teeth out to shut him up.
"You first."
There was far more Light in the grenade than any other normal one, a little thing Hunter had learned to do from watching the Sunbreakers before their extinction in the Red War. When the grenade exploded, it was massive, engulfing them both in burning Light. The Demon's head was evaporated in an instant, his fiendish constitution, already weakened from the battle and Golden Gun shots, doing little to protect him from the Light made flames. The rest of his body soon followed, a far more instant death than his one by the Golden Gun after their first encounter. Unfortunately, the same could be said with Hunter, the bomb just as willing to take him to the Great Beyond as blinding light surrounded them.
And just as suddenly as it started, it was over, the light and Light, as well as both combatants, gone like the wind. Death Cleric's mouth was agape, the powerful, cocksure Hunter dead before she had even begun to understand him. Yes, he had taken down a foe that would have surely killed her had she not had her allies, but in his act, he sacrificed himself. A groan behind her told her that Frost Mage still lived, and, solemnly, she took her mind off her fallen ally and sent it towards him. He was bleeding badly, an ugly gash going across his chest, but looking over it, the cut was shallow enough that it could be healed. It would take time to fully recover, but her magic would help with that.
"Frost Mage," she said, happy that two of her companions had not died today. "I'm impressed your barrier held up as it did. I doubt we would be speaking if it did not."
He chuckled, then roughly hacked, coughing in pain. "It hurts to laugh." When he recovered enough, he breathed heavily, and smiled up at her. "Yeah, I learned a lot in my time with Hunter."
At his name, she visibly cringed. "Indeed. It's good to see. I… I thought we had lost you, too."
"Too…?" he said, seeming confused even in his state of pain before realization swept over him. "Oh." He groaned again, and sat up to the patch of scorched earth where the Demon and Hunter once were, and where Ghost was rather calmly floating. "Oh."
Blade Master walked up, holding her side the Demon had punched her in. "I guess that secrets coming out now, huh. Probably for the better, honestly."
At their casual words, expression shifted to a very strange one. Their comrade had died, one that they had known for even longer than she did, and they acted like this, somehow. "What secret?"
Blade Master pointed towards Ghost. "Just watch. I didn't actually see it last time, so this is new for both of us." Death Cleric had seen her already, but she didn't know what she could do in this situation. Then, Ghost flared, a blue light pulsing out from her, and from nothing, Hunter reappeared in a flash of blue light, helmetless and sitting on the ground with his arms resting on his knees, looking as annoyed as an expressionless Exo could.
"Is this gonna be a thing?" He looked over to Ghost, the blue lights of his eyes following her as she moved in front of him. "Every time we fight that guy, am I gonna have to die?"
"You could have just shot him with the Golden Gun first," Ghost said. "Or, you know, used Hammerhead if you were worried about the imps escaping as well."
"Because I don't have much ammo for it." He said like it was obvious, which it was, but it didn't make him feel like he was winning the argument. "It'll get used at some point. For now, I'm sticking to my basic munitions."
"'Chekhov's Gun' doesn't exist in real life, you know," she responded, before blinking back to inside of him. He rolled his eyes, and stood up, walking up to the very confused looking Death Cleric. He gave her a thumbs up full of pep, and when her expression didn't change, he just shrugged and knelt next to Frost Mage. Hunter may not have been a healer, but he'd still make sure his allies were well as much as he could. They looked at each other as if nothing had just happened, the new scar the human male had notwithstanding.
"You gonna be alright, kid?"
"I'll be fine," he said, straining even as he said that. "Besides, I heard that ladies think that scars look manly. I will need new robes, though. And maybe some light armor." Hunter nodded, and patted him gently on the shoulder, his Light doing little to actual heal him, but it would make him feel better, in a sense. He looked over to Blade Master, who raised a hand to tell him that she was fine, and with another thumbs up, he went to search for the Demon's horn. It wasn't his to collect, so he'd have to make sure to get it to whoever had earned it.
By the time he'd obtained the horn, Frost Mage was capable of walking, and Death Cleric had exited her stupor, helped along with some minor explanations, and promises of more proper ones from Ghost after the mission. Blade Master, though she had once more been thrown like a ball, wasn't too worse for wear, and thus moved to help Frost Mage walk, He tired to say that he didn't need the help, but after nearly stumbling back onto the ground twice without, assuaged quickly to her half carrying him back to the village.
Within a few minutes, they stood at the front of the small town once more, now supposedly safe for a time. Though they could have done it far cleaner than they did, the job was done. The more zealous townsfolk would certainly question why four adventurers, especially when one was an emerald, had so much trouble with imps, but then, if they could have done it, the mayor wouldn't be paying so much to deal with them. It didn't matter to him, though; they didn't need to appreciate his help, just understand that they got it anyway. It meant this place didn't become another ghost town, which made him feel better than the money ever would.
Soon enough, they found the church, the tall, stark white steeples making it easy to identify. Everything about it was far more impressive than the general architecture of the rest of the town, even as plain as it was. There were no stained-glass windows, nor any filigrees or statues of any kind; it was a functional building, with form only in the sense that it was formed like a church. Hunter had little other experiences with churches, with the few Golden Age and Pre-Golden Age ones he had found being either completely destroyed or close enough to it that any grandeur it may have had was lost thanks to half of the building that no longer existed.
As they stepped inside, he looked out to the crowd of people, all looking uncomfortable in the cramped building. For as small as the town may have been, the church was just as compact, barely able to hold them all within, even considering the basement. But with their arrival, the citizens knew they were safe. These people could get back to their lives, soon.
And that was the point to what they did, he supposed.