"That's a hell of a coincidence," Kalina said. Min opened her eyes, looking over at her. Of all the reactions she'd expected, that hadn't been one.
"What?"
"Well, it is isn't it?" Kalina said. "We should start making that your nickname. It was a hell of a coincidence you were found on the same day as two other newborns, both from the Collapse, after Lev looked so long. It's a hell of a coincidence that the very next damned day, one of the Vanished comes back from the moon and it's someone you knew from that previous life. Min, that pretty much never happens- meeting a Guardian that was someone you knew before. And it's a hell of a coincidence that you're the only one that seems like she can go back and do what she and her fireteam failed to do-kill Crota."
Min had somewhat rehearsed everything in her head, every thing she'd say to Kalina depending on her reaction. Now, she was at a total loss, and blurted out the first thing that came to her mind.
"I knew Gen too."
"What?" Kalina actually seemed more shocked at this than the revelation that Eris was the mysterious redhead at the bar, or that she and Min had once had an admittedly brief fling.
"Gen," she said. "I knew him as Yevgeny. I'm almost certain it was him, anyway-"
"Does he know this?"
"Yes," Min said. "I told him in the Archive, right before we came to find you."
"What was his reaction?"
"He thought it was funny," Min said.
Kalina didn't smile. She was starting to look, in fact, like Min had expected her to look when she'd found out about Min and Eris. For one brief moment, Min was utterly confused as to why Kalina would be angry that Min had known Gen, or that the Exo had found it funny, before she suddenly realized the expression on the Hunter's face wasn't anger at all.
"Another coincidence?" Kalina said, almost to herself. "They really can't be, can they? I mean, do you know how astronomical it is that you knew one Guardian back then and ran into them almost the instant you were Lightborn? And here you knew two?"
"I don't know," Min said. "I don't understand it either, I mean-"
"And the stranger Lev mentioned, the one at the Cosmodrome. And…you know, that's a thought?"
"Kalina?" Min said. "You're…starting to not make any sense."
The Hunter's eyes abruptly seemed to refocus, and her expression cleared a bit. "Min, I just had the most interesting idea. Come with me."
Grabbing Min's hand again, the Hunter got to her feet and started toward the door. Min followed, baffled.
"Where are we going?"
"Back down to the Archive, I want to check something," she said, and tapped her ear. "Binky?"
The little Ghost appeared out of incognito mode. "What is it?"
"Put me through to Cayde."
A moment later, as they headed toward the lift, Cayde's voice filtered out of Binky. Lev, whom Min had woken up as well, was following them with just as much bafflement as Min had.
{Hey, Kalina! Please tell me you're throwing a secret 'We're About to Storm the Moon Party'?}
"Nothing like that Boss Man. Can you meet Min and me in the Archive for a bit? I mean, if you're done tooting her horn to anyone who would listen?"
{She pulls this off tomorrow and I'll never be done doing that,} he said. {How important is this? I think I may have talked half of Dead Orbit into coming-}
"I don't know how important it will be, but it shouldn't take long. I have a theory, but I need you to check Quickfang out for me."
{Quickfang? You know, that's a good idea. I should bring her with us tomorrow.}
"Whatever you want, Boss Man, but first I need you to check her out for me."
{Be there in a tick.}
As Binky's oculus dulled down again, indicating the call was over, Min asked Kalina, "Who's Quickfang?"
"She's not a who, but a what," she said. "She's a sword. Really powerful, quite dangerous. There's a handful of weapons that the Vanguard keep locked down in the Archive that only they can check out of digital form. Special cases they don't want just anyone wielding, or weapons that were unique to an individual that is…no longer with us."
"Which is Quickfang?" Min asked.
"She's a special case," Kalina said.
They stepped into the Archive. Only a few moments later, the doors burst open again as Cayde came striding through with a thrust of his hands.
"Dramatic entrance!" he said as he did, and Kalina laughed.
"Boss, it's not a dramatic entrance if you have to announce it."
"Petulant frown!" he said, and she laughed again.
"So!" Cayde clapped his hands together, heading toward archive equipment. "Quickfang huh? What's your theory? You know I can't let you use her-"
"I know, but I wanted to see something."
"You're leaving us on tenterhooks. I have taught you well. The proper use of suspense is almost as good as the proper use of a dramatic entrance."
He tapped some commands into the archive equipment, and on the plate a sword suddenly shimmered into being. It was a decent sized blade, about six feet in length from pommel to tip, and the edge gleamed so sharply it looked as if it could slice through diamonds with ease.
Cayde took the handle and lifted it, and as he did, the blade seemed to vibrate a little…hum almost.
"Ok, here she is," he said. As Kalina held her hand out he hesitated.
"I'm not going to use her, I just want to hold her," she said.
"I don't have to tell you what happened to the last Guardian that used this without knowing how," he said.
"What happened?" Minerva asked, and Cayde looked at her.
"Well, you see, Quickfang is a phase blade. She's safe enough if you just hold her, but if you swing her-"
He gave a light swing of the sword, and immediately both he and the sword seemed to shimmer and vanish, both reappearing with a dart of light on the other side of the room. Min gaped, and he grinned.
"She teleports!" Cayde said happily, promptly doing it again and appearing up on one of the catwalks. "She takes training to not only be able to swing her without teleporting, but to control where she teleports you."
"The last person who swung her without training ended up halfway in a wall," Kalina said. "It's not really conducive to life."
"It's also really gross," Cayde said, appearing in a sing of metal next to them again. "You ever try and scrape someone out of concrete?"
"Her range is limited, she can only teleport about fifty feet at the furthest," Kalina said, then held her hand out. When Cayde once again hesitated, she rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to swing it!"
"All right, but if we have to scrape you out of the ceiling it's going to ruin the party tonight," he said, then handed her the blade.
True to her word, Kalina only held the sword in her hand, looking at it with an odd little smile. Taking delicate care not to swing the blade, she then gently turned it and offered it to Min. "It buzzes," she said with some small amusement. "Here, feel."
Min reached out carefully and took hold of the sword. Kalina was watching her intently as she did, which was a little disconcerting. More disconcerting was the way Cayde halfway reached out as if to stop her, then covered his mouth with a far more amused expression on his face, as if he were trying to prevent himself from roaring with laughter, or was anticipating some immense joke.
As Min got a firm grip on the sword, Kalina released it. Min raised her brows a little. It was lighter than it looked like it would be, and it did indeed buzz in her hand. It felt like it had a very mild electric current running through it.
Being extra careful not to swing it, Min turned it over in her hand, admiring the craftsmanship, then looked up at the two Hunters. "It really feels….what? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Cayde's expression of open amusement had turned into one of shock, his mouth hanging open as he stared at her. Kalina as well, looked gobsmacked.
"Ok, this…I wasn't expecting to be…" Kalina said with a hopeless gesture. "What does this mean?"
Cayde was still gaping, and didn't answer.
"What's going on?" Min asked warily. "What does what mean? Kal-"
Cayde's mouth slowly shut. "Ok, this is really, really weird."
"What is?" Min asked, brows furrowing in irritation, and he gestured at her but looked at Kalina.
"See? There's the Titan."
Before Min could say anything further, he immediately turned to his own Ghost, Sundance. "Zavala, Ikora, tune in. Shaxx, I think you've finally got a miss."
{Cayde?} Zavala's voice came through, confused, a breath before Shaxx spoke loudly and very indignantly.
{I never miss!}
"I wouldn't take it personally; I think we've all missed this one. We're in the Archives if you can spare a tickle- me, Kalina, and Minerva."
{Would you please just explain?} Zavala asked. {We are extremely busy-}
"Min's holding Quickfang."
A beat of perfect silence, then Shaxx's voice again so loud that poor Sundance shook slightly, and Cayde winced with a faint 'ow!'
{WHAT!}
{We are on our way, Cayde,} Ikora said with her usual, unflappable calm. Sundance went dim again, then shook herself.
"Here, give me that. Carefully," Cayde said, holding his hand out for the sword. Still confused and more than a little frustrated, she passed it back to him.
"What is going on?" she asked.
"It's the sword, Mini," Kalina told her. "Only Hunters can lift it."
As Min blinked, Cayde nodded. "When it was first found it was actually used as a test to determine Hunters from the Warlocks or Titans, but it was too dangerous to continue doing it that way. Again- concrete, gory, scraping. Not fun."
"Ok, where's the damn stop button on this train? I want to get off," Min said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She felt Kalina touch her arm and shook her head. "This is getting fucking ridiculous!"
"I know, I-"
The doors boomed open again, Shaxx entering. Kalina tightened her grip a little on Min's arm but leaned toward the Hunter Vanguard. "You see? That is a dramatic entrance."
"If you are wasting my time, Cayde," Shaxx said in a low, warning voice.
"I would never do that!" Cayde told him, then looked around him as Zavala and Ikora also appeared. "Good! Gang's all here. Check this out."
He held the sword out again to Min, who only looked at it. After a moment, Cayde gave her a little side-eye, wiggling the handle a little and speaking out of the corner of his mouth.
"C'mon. Don't leave me hanging."
Rolling her eyes, Min reached out and took the sword from him. As soon as he released it, Cayde gave a flourish toward her as if he'd revealed a magic trick.
"This is impossible," Shaxx said, folding his arms and snorting as if he thought Cayde was pulling one over on him. "She's a Titan. There is no question."
"Yet she's holding Quickfang," Ikora said. "And she's a Thanatonaut."
"She's a what? That's preposterous. Only Warlocks can be-"
"Exactly," Zavala said, narrowing his eyes at Minerva. "And only Hunters can hold Quickfang."
"It has to be a joke!"
Zavala reached his hand out, and wordlessly Min passed him Quickfang. The moment she released it, the blade suddenly clanged hard to the ground, wrenching in Zavala's hand as if it suddenly weighed a million pounds. He gave it one single heave, but was unable to pull the tip of the blade off the ground again.
Ikora reached out and he shifted the handle into her hand, but she as well was unable to lift it. Cayde then took the handle and lifted it up, flipping it in his hand with a flourish.
"No joke," Zavala said.
"This isn't possible," Shaxx said, but now he sounded thoughtful. "A Titan, with a skill that only Warlocks have, able to lift a weapon only Hunters can. How was this discovered?"
"Min was telling me about her latest vision," Kalina said. "It got me thinking about how often people say that they'd think she was a Warlock if she was not so obviously a Titan, and it was a shame we couldn't find out if she had some Hunter in there as well, before I remembered Quickfang. It was just a thought, I wasn't really expecting it to be true!"
"Yet it seems that it is," Ikora said, thoughtfully. "In all honesty, this actually makes some pieces fall into place."
"What do you mean?" Zavala asked.
"I do not believe Minerva is a Guardian," she said. All their eyes immediately fixed on Ikora, various amounts of surprise showing on each face.
"Of course she is," Zavala said. "Her Ghost-"
"Lev himself is not like other Ghosts," she said. "He was one of the Wanderers. It is so rare for a Ghost to seek for so long, and yet he did. Why is that? And then we have Min herself- so clearly a Titan, and yet with traits only shown in Warlocks, and now revealed to have traits shown only in Hunters. Again, why is that? She can resist the Deathsong, something no Guardian can do. I do not pretend to know the reason of it, or what she truly is, but it is clear she is not a Guardian. Not as we are, or know them."
"Perhaps the Traveler itself is changing," Shaxx said. "We know that it created the Ghosts, created the Guardians, to serve where it no longer could not. However what do we truly know of the Traveler and it's mind or will? Perhaps Min is the first in a new breed of protector, to face a new type of threat? One that isn't constrained to simply being a Hunter, or a Titan, or a Warlock but instead embodies all three? Perhaps in a sense we are some sort of prototype in the Traveler's true plans, and Min is the first of the next stage in Guardian evolution?"
"If that's the case, we very well may be seeing more Guardians like her in the future," Ikora said.
"How many Guardians have been Lightborn since Minerva?" Zavala asked.
"Three," Shaxx said. "Rhonda and Ian were Lightborn almost the same time she was- they show no indication of these sorts of traits. Rhonda is a Warlock and Ian is a Hunter. The youngest was found three weeks ago on a derelict floating near Jupiter, an Awoken who has chosen the name Enve. I declared them a week in as a Warlock as well."
"Yes, I know Rhonda and Enve," Ikora said. "I would have to agree. They are both quite clearly Warlocks."
"So we have more puzzles," Cayde said. "I do like puzzles."
"I'm losing my taste for them," Minerva said gruffly, taking even herself by surprise. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm a Titan and that's all I care to be. And this doesn't seem to change anything about tomorrow."
"Forgive us, Minerva," Ikora said kindly. "We do not mean to talk about you as if you were not present. And you are correct- this changes nothing about what must happen tomorrow."
"If we had more time, I might try training her to use Quickfang safely," Cayde said. "Couldn't do anything but help against Crota, but without the training-"
"We cannot risk it," Zavala said, agreeing. "Yes. Tomorrow must stand on its own. Afterward, we can decide where we go. In the meantime, I am with you, Minerva. You are a Titan as far as I am concerned."
"Me as well," Shaxx said. "I don't know if I buy this idea that you embody all the Classes as such, or are a new breed of Guardian. You are skilled, to be sure, and there are some oddities that hover about you, but I'd be more inclined to believe that we misunderstand Quickfang itself, and it is a trait of the blade- not you- that allows you to wield it even as a Titan. And being a Thanatonaut is rare enough, it could be that any Class can do it, but it needs a certain amount of innate curiosity to pursue that only Warlocks usually show. Much as I trust the judgements of the Vanguard, I think we must recognize our own biases here. There are enough coincidences around you, it is easy to start attributing them to some innate and inane idea of a 'Chosen One' rather than see them for what they are- just coincidences."
"What of the Deathsong?" Cayde said, indignant, as if Shaxx had accused him directly of surrounding Min with this fanciful idea of a Chosen One.
To be fair, he had, but even Min knew he did it more as a joke than any real belief of that nature.
"Our full understanding of that may be similarly lacking," Shaxx said tersely. "Minerva, I don't doubt your skills, I don't mean to sound as if I do. And these things certainly raise some questions, I just don't think we're asking the right ones."
"Don't worry about it, sir," she said. "I'm with you. I certainly don't feel like any kind of 'next-level Guardian' or whatever, and I certainly don't want to be one."
"I think we can all understand that," Zavala told her. "For now, I think we all have enough on our plates to be going forward with. We can discuss these things again when we're on the other side of the Hive and the moon. Until then, we have only a few hours left before we depart. Let's deal with that first. The rest can wait."
There were murmurs of assent, and Shaxx and the Vanguard began to leave. Cayde paused only long enough for Quickfang to transmat into Sundance for the battle tomorrow, and looked at Min.
"Min, you're a good Guardian," he said to her, seriously. "A good Titan. You've got a good fireteam, and in the end that's all that really matters. You'll do all right tomorrow, I know that."
"Thank you, sir," she said softly. He clapped her on the arm, then headed away as well.
"I'm sorry, Min," Kalina said, when they were alone. "It really was just a thought I had, I didn't dream it would actually work. I didn't mean to-"
"Kalina, you never have to apologize to me," Min said, giving her a gentle smile. Then she held out her hand, and Kalina took it.
"Whatever happens tomorrow, I don't want you beating yourself up about it," Min said to her.
"The same for you," Kalina said. "Min, I won't pretend I'm not terrified about tomorrow. I don't care about what happened with Morn-"
"It was another life," Min said firmly. "You have nothing to worry about with her."
"I know I don't," Kalina said. "But I do have something to worry about with the Ascendent Realm and Crota. I'm so scared I'm never going to see you again, but I also know that something may happen to me. To Gen. Or any of the others. Whatever happens, however it comes out- I don't want you beating yourself up either. Ok?"
"I won't if you won't," Min said softly. "I just…Kal, I…"
Emotion passed over Kalina's face, and she was quiet a moment before she shook her head once, then wiped her free hand over her eyes in a quick motion.
"Just shut up and kiss me, ok? We have work to do."
Min shut up and kissed her.
