Stand as Titan

by Twisted Fate MK 2

Guiding Light had, for centuries now, sought out his partner. His Guardian. When earth offered nothing, and he found his purpose there ended, he reached out to the rest of his home - Sol. When even that failed, desperate, he pushed beyond it. Across the stars, he journeyed, seeking his Guardian. Until, at last and on a far-flung world, he found him.

4. Chapter 4

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Apologies for delays, got dragged out on a family trip. I don't have a laptop, so this means I can't do any writing.

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Cerulean stood in the warm morning sun the next day, watching the clouds drift by while he waited. The clouds were heavy and grey, pregnant with coming rain, but scattered. Isolated. A hundred of them splattered across the sky, none any bigger than Philipa's truck. The wind was blowing powerfully that morning, pushing the clouds along gently. Birds flew under and around them, banking on warm air and wheeling about on their chosen course.

It was… A nice thing to watch.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"It's a nice day." He said, "Blue sky. Breeze."

"It is, yes." Guiding Light hummed, hovering over his shoulder. "A wonderful day for a walk."

"Mhm."

"And a fight."

"Mhm…"

"Are you anxious?"

"Mhm."

"You know we could tell her we have changed our mind." He turned to the floating Ghost with a raised brow and Guiding Light chuckled awkwardly. "I-I mean, that you changed your mind, Guardian. Of course."

"I gave my word."

"Yes, but, well…"

"We'll be fine, GL." Cerulean assured the little light, turning to look back up at the sky with a small smile. Guiding Light may have been worried about him being anxious, but somehow Cerulean got the feeling that he wasn't the anxious one here.

Or at least the most anxious one.

He heard the front door open and turned to smile at the woman, "Miss Philipa. Good morning."

"Just Philipa. Miss Philipa makes me sound old." She chuckled, shrugging off the pack she was wearing and pulling the long, cloth-wrapped thing around her to hold it out to him. He took it gently and unfurled it as she explained, "She's an old girl, now. Kept her wrapped up in the cloak there, for safe keepin'. So, you know… Make sure she's right 'fore you head out there an' need it."

The rifle was old, with a solid wooden frame and stock and an iron barrel bracketed into a groove. The magazine loaded into the top, just past the front of the stock and behind a small furrow sight that lined up with a thin metal sliver for the front sight. The wood was old, discoloured and scratched in places, and a slot-bracket on the end of the barrel had mostly fallen apart, leaving behind nothing more than a jagged little hunk of metal no bigger than his thumb where a bayonet might have fit, once upon a time. But the barrel was clean, and its brackets solid, and the wood wasn't rotting.

Guiding Light confirmed as much after a cloaked once over, humming, "Acceptable. Better than I expected, honestly."

"It'll do the job." He nodded, setting the rifle stock on the ground, barrel leaned against his chest, to pull the cloak on. It was ragged, holey in places, but its dull green and brown splotches would mask him well enough in the forest. Pulling the hood up, he turned to Philipa and nodded. "Thank you."

"'Course." She smiled, tapping the back beside her and leaning against the wall. "Few clips o' ammunition in here. An' the rest I promised."

"Thank you." He slung the rifle across his chest in one arm, hand around the barrel and stock in the crook of his arm naturally, and came over to take the bag.

"You a soldier?"

"I don't think so." He answered quickly, the truth flowing out before he could catch it.

"What do you mean, you don't think so?" Philipa's brows furrowed and Cerulean pursed his lips, his confusion and curiosity compounding in his head. Before he could say anything, though, she waved him off. "Nevermind. S'just… The way you hold yourself. The rifle. It's like…"

She trailed off and, after a moment, Cerulean asked, "Like what?"

"Nothin'." She sighed, bobbing her head at the woods and murmuring almost… Distantly, somehow, "Best get on your way now, Cerulean. And happy huntin'."

Unsure of what to say, Cerulean paid her a nod in farewell, turned, and strode away.

He made it ten feet before he saw Guiding Light materialise just in front of and to the side of him, bobbing along at shoulder level. Gaze cast upwards, he weaved side to side and bobbed up and down energetically, humming to himself. For a while, Cerulean was happy enough to just enjoy it. The peace, the walk, the cool breeze, and the birds singing around them.

It was nice.

Eventually, though, Guiding Light whizzed ahead of him, looking around and then spinning towards him, "We can make camp here, to prepare."

"Alright."

"Good, now empty that bag out on the ground."

"What?" He blinked, confused even as he unshouldered the pack. "Why?"

"I'm going to break it all down, use it to repair and upgrade your gear." Guiding Light said simply, "Rifle first, ammunition too! I'll focus on those, so you can actually kill the monsters when they come. Then maybe some armor, hmm?"

"Armor's good." He nodded, turning the bag upside down and emptying it out.

A couple of pots, a pan, a few sheathed knives and a few logs of wood all tumbled out. Along with his axe, wrapped in a leather sheath Philipa must have thrown together for him, and a few cans of food and bottles of water. He sat the food and water aside and pulled off his new old cloak to add to the pile, leaning against one of the trees that enclosed the tiny little clear area Guiding Light had found. Ejecting the clip, he turned the rifle and pulled back the slide on the top until it clicked and the chambered shot sprang out. He added the rifle to the pile, along with the loose round and ammo clip.

"For appearances, I can't change anything too much." Guiding Light hummed as he scanned materials and processed them down, metal, wood, copper and whatever else atomizing in flashes of bright light. "But I can harden your weapons and enhance your bullets with Light."

"How does that work?"

"The Light flowing through me - and through you, incidentally - will strengthen your equipment." His Ghost explained, buzzing over the rifle to scan it and look it over in ways Cerulean couldn't quite grasp. "For you, the Light will come naturally, as you need it. It will protect you, and help you fight."

"How?"

"A barrier, for one." He said, "And… Aha!"

With a flash, a little metal ball with a blue button and grooved edges to grip onto sprang to life. It rolled across the floor to tap against Cerulean's foot, and he picked it up, looking it over and raising an eyebrow.

"That is a grenade." He said, "Press the button and throw. Ah, but make sure to get some distance. Grenades are quite dangerous, I'll have you know!"

Nodding, Cerulean did as he was told, pitching the little ball ten feet or so away. It slammed into the tree and stuck - then flashed a bright, blinding white, electricity curling away from it in wild arcs. It left the tree burnt and blackened across one side of its trunk, and a swathe of burnt ground.

As another materialised and rolled across the ground, Guiding Light said, "A simple enough Magnetic Grenade. Does what it says, for the most part - sticks on the target, flashes to blind, bangs to kill, and, in your case at least, electrifies everything while it does both!"

"Useful."

"Mhm!" GL bobbed up and down, "In time, we can experiment with other kinds. Seems like your natural affinity is lightning, though. With training, we'll iron the rest out. For now, while I work, I want you to practice gliding."

"Gliding?"

"Jump and… Focus." Guiding Light explained, "Will yourself to stay in the air, to… Sort of keep jumping, without touching the ground."

"Alright…"

"May take some time." The Ghost assured him in a clipped, distracted tone, "Which is fine. We have time while I work. And if you don't get it, we can just train later. Along with, uh, other Guardian stuff!"

"Alright." He sighed and stood to do as he'd been told.

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It took approximately an hour to fully familiarise myself with the weapon's intricate, if primitive and relatively simplistic, design. Much of that was, to be fair, spent ironing out its idiosyncrasies and then integrating as much as was possible into its original design, on which he was relying mostly for subtlety's sake. Normally, he wouldn't have concerned himself with it all - and in truth, he had enough raw materials for a proper assault rifle, if he so wished - but he was alone here.

Or rather, he and his Guardian were alone here, on Remnant.

Who could know what would happen if they exposed themselves now, with no intelligence on the world at large?

The final design was - at least visually! - virtually identical to the original. Its wood had been cleaned and refurbished using the wood around him, processed down and bonded to weak points at a molecular level. To reinforce it, he took the iron barrel and fittings, along with the iron pots and pans Philipa had given them, and then bonded them with carbon drawn out from the surrounding trees. Entire limbs had to be consumed for the intensive project, but it left the rifle with a reinforced stock-frame and additional barrel brackets, as well as a reinforced steel guard over the pistol-grip trigger assembly.

He did take the liberty of adding some, though, in spite of his desire to keep the advanced redesign as subtle as possible.

First, and simplest, he forged a steel bayonet that slotted into a locking bracket just below the barrel. It was a few inches long, enough to be lethal, but only nanometers wide, with a core of titanium-steel alloy at a ratio of nearly twenty-eighty, steel superior. More complicated was the sight. Without some manner of luminous substance, preferably non-hazardous radioactive material, he was forced to get… Creative.

The sight was a rather simple circular design, and had been formed of the same expensive titanium-steel alloy, with five hair-thin prongs inside to connect to a second, smaller circle in the center. The second circle was half the size of the larger, which was itself thumb sized, and set forward a few millimetres to add depth to the aiming mechanism. As the rifle lacked a rail system, he had essentially fused the sight to the frame, which would make sighting it easier - which scarcely mattered, considering he would almost certainly handle such himself.

Satisfied, he turned on the cloak, which he merely repaired - what else could he do with it? - and the last scraps of raw iron wood.

The iron wasn't enough for proper armor, or even a proper helmet. So instead, he settled for something lighter and simpler. A simple iron plate, stitched into the long sleeve of the simple shirt he'd made Cerulean, would offer some minimal protection when he used his rifle. And, using some of the materials around him to render out a simple rope, he modified what was left into a round heart protector, secured by a harness under each arm and over each shoulder. It would only really protect against instantly lethal blows to the heart.

But for a Guardian, that would be more than enough.

"Finished!" He called out cheerily, bouncing up to look down as his Guardian scurried over to inspect the weapon - oh, eager are we? - that Guiding light had made for him. When he picked the ammunition up Guiding Light explained, "I hardened the tips to better pierce enemy armor, since we don't know how well protected the spiders will be. But the ammunition itself is… Decent."

"It is?"

"The propellant will suffice." And was easily synthesised, at least for him, which would help with the subtle angle. "How is it?"

Cerulean pushed the magazine home and rose, pulling back the simple priming bolt like he'd been doing it for decades, and raised the rifle. Sighting down it, he held it for a moment before he nodded and turned. The blade whistled through the air and carved through a thin branch with little resistance.

"Good." He nodded, "It will do nicely."

Finally, he knelt and picked up the cloak. In lieu of ways to upgrade it, Guiding Light had simply processed down the backpack, used some of it to repair the holes and add a few layers of cloth and leather plates between those layers - around the neck, at least - and then hastily reconstituted what raw material was left into a small travel pack which was roughly half the size of the original, closed at the top by a simple drawstring.

"Are you satisfied, Guardian?"

"I am." He nodded, pulling the cloak on and then tugging the hood up. Shouldering his rifle, and his light pack, he turned and said. "Let's get hunting."

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By late the next morning, they had travelled fairly far, circling wide around the settlement in search of signs of the Webknechts Philipa had, more or less, hired them to deal with. Here the woods were thinner, the trees younger - signs of logging and replanting, which meant they were close to the logging grounds. Close to where the Grimm Spiders were meant to be lurking. Meant to be hunting.

"Guiding Light." Cerulean grunted, kneeling behind a tree and scanning through the woods in front of him. "Up - see what you can see around me while I advance."

"Why?" He asked, "Do you… See something I do not?"

"Something feels off." He shook his head, thumbing off his rifle's safety. "Keep a look out. Cloaked."

"Understood, Guardian."

Cerulean watched his little light flit away, circling a tall tree as he went, until he vanished into the leaves. Standing and shouldering his rifle, he crept along. Before, for the day before and the morning until now, he had been surrounded by sounds. Birds flying, distant animal calls, the 'rat a tat tat' echo of a woodpecker, drilling distantly for its next meal. Sometimes he'd even catch the distant, echoing thrum of an engine - someone coming or going from the town.

But here? Now?

The world was dead… Silent as an unmarked grave.

He didn't like it.

He took a step around a tree and found a thin, fallen stick that cracked under his boot. The sound sent his heart into over-time, for the second it took to calm himself. Taking a breath, he shook it off. Moving forward, he found more. Crunching and cracking as he made his way past a fallen tree.

"No, nott fallen." He mused, pausing by its stump. It had been carved through by an axe buried in the stump itself, with a thick segment of shattered wood where the tree had been too weakened to hold up its own weight and fallen over. He laid a hand on the long handle of the axe and frowned, "Still good…"

Which meant the owner hadn't left it behind for being old and useless.

"Guardian!" He heard Guiding Light call, voice manifesting over his shoulder, distance be damned. "Up, at two o'clock!"

Instinct drove him to leap to the side, vaulting the tree that ran along beside him. He landed on his back as something big and black came down, slamming into the ground with force enough that he felt the tremors under him. The abomination turned, hissing, and reared up, bone-white jaws flicking, and his rifle cracked.

Three shots, straight into the base of its head, just behind its jaw.

The rounds ripped through, carving away chunks of Grimm viscera, and nearly decapitated it entirely. As it sagged to the side, he snapped his aim over and up. Three more spiders, each as large as Cerulean and half again, were clambering through the trees. He had a fifteen round clip - twelve, now - and wasted no time emptying four shots apiece into the Grimm as they skittered down through the trees.

The first jerked as the rounds bit home - two slipping by its small head and punching into armor while the third and fourth caught it in an eye. Another, further up and behind it, lost one of its legs as his shots went wide. Suddenly off balance, it slipped and fell, screaming to smash against the ground. The other two were buch better clusters, each carving into their heads as he grew used to the rifle's recoil and weight. As they fell, he rolled over and staggered up, hands too busy ejecting and replacing the clip to help him.

"Five forty five!" Guiding Light hissed, "Close!"

He spun, hand gripping the barrel of his rifle like a spear as he thrust up and in, a strange sort of… Habit guiding him on where to strike as the Grimm reared up. His long knife carved through the monster's jaw as it came down, severing its mandibles, and the creature shrieked as it backpedalled. He followed, spear down and back, but as he thrust in the creature lashed out with a leg that cough him in the knee.

He felt something 'snap' and fell, leaving his rifle buried in the side of the dying monster's abdomen.

He tried to rise and snarled, "Agh!"

"I have you!" Guiding Light hissed, appearing at his side, a beam of light flashing out over his knee. As the pain subsided, he looked up and saw another spider scuttling towards them from further in the trees, where faint wisps of webbing curled around limbs.

Tree limbs, and human limbs, bound up with them against the trunk of a thick oak.

As the pain faded he pushed himself up and yanked his axe out of his belt while his other hand snatched up his rifle turned spear. He put the tree between them and the Grimm, as he expected, leapt over it, pronged legs spread. He braced the stock of his rifle against his hip and caught the Grimm as it came down. As the weight hit him, he slid to the side, letting the blow slip off him as the Grimm killed itself on his spear.

He turned at a chittering sound and brought his axe up and down, right into the open mouth of another spider that had snuck up behind him while the first distracted him.

A third, though, took that opportunity to drop down on him with enough force to shatter a shoulder. He kept the axe, though, dragging through the other monster with a wet 'schlick' sound and rolled over with a snarl. The one-handed blow was awkward, swung with his elbow pinned against his side, and only managed to take off one of its two mandibles. Snarling, the creature dove down, sharp fang ripping into his throat.

Grabbing the little grenade on his waist, he punched into its armored side hard enough to break his fingers and crush through the armor.

Then, the world flashed white…

He woke up with a start and a gasp of air, hands flying to his throat as he scrambled away from his spot on the floor. Around him, the ground had been churned up. Sticks, leaves and dirt hurled in every direction, and the ground and trees burnt by lightning around him.

"Breathe, Guardian!" Guiding Light said as he came around, his voice quiet. Soothing. "You're alright."

"I… Am?"

"Yes." He paused, "Or, well, you died again. But that's all normal for a Guardian, I assure you!"

"Ah…" Cerulean blinked, took a breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. "Yeah. I… Suppose it is."

"Mhm." Guiding Light hummed, bobbing up and back, "Now, up you get! I'm detecting motion. The last few of our little friends, I expect."

Rising smoothly, he stooped to recover his rifle and turned as four more spiders surged through some shrubbery a few dozen yards from him. Yanking his grenade free he pitched it at the closest spider. It struck and stuck to it on the back and went off with a flash of light and rolling, crackling electricity that arced through the monster. As it fell, he shouldered his rifle and backed away, taking the moment to aim his shots and cut down the second.

The third leapt onto a tree beside him and then threw the air, turning to present its armored flank to him.

He hurled his rifle instead, with pitched it off to the side. Then he snatche dup his axe and leap, bring ing it down on the joining between the Grimm's end and middle with enough force to carve it in two.

"Guiding Light." He grunted, yanking both weapons free, "Find me the rest."

"Already on it, Partner." He said, "Two more, at your four o'clock, forty one meters, approaching quickly with trees between you. I suggest a grenade surprise."

Turning, he slid his axe into his belt and traded it for the freshly replaced grenade, intending to do just that.

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DinoGuy2000 :

I think he did alright! With the interactions and the spiders, lol.

I mean, he died, but… that's just business, innit?

Classy Guest :

His sunclass isn't settled, regardless of the fact that here, he is using a grenade affiliated with the Sentinel class. His Magnetic Grenade, though, is Arc aligned. Not Void. I made this tweak for semi-obvious, pun related, reasons. Lol.

MM Browsing :

Glad you enjoy it, and I will try and upload when and where I can!

I made the quote myself.

He LIKES having food, regardless of if Guardians NEED to eat and drink. GL, at least, assumes they do for reasons mostly tied to me not knowing better lol. As for his Class, he's a Titan. His equipment will get more in line with that as time goes on.

The Baz :

He's not got a concrete class yet but here, he's mostly affiliated with Sentinel. Albeit an Arc Sentinel instead of Void. I dunno if that's how this works, but fuck you, I make the laws here. Lol.

Smokey Panda :

You've read plenty of my stories. You know how wonderfully kind I am to my characters.