A/N: This is veering heavily into crack!fic territory. Introducing, in all his glory, Tyler/Feraligreater's OC Badger. Featuring heavily questionable nautical scenes. Also only vaguely related to the prompt. I don't know, I wanted to write this.

Check out Dragon Ball Z: The Space Train for my other work alongside my lovely coauthor Feraligreater.

Prompt 19: CLOUD STRIDER

Badger-28 puttered his way across the deck of his shrimp boat, grouchily staring down at the ocean beneath him. Scratching his beard, which was not a beard and actually a chinstrap made of stinking seaweed, he pressed the button on the nearest control panel, hauling up his port side net. There were plenty of shrimp, and Badger grunted, pleased, as he released them on the deck of the ship.

That pleasure quickly turned to distaste as he picked up a shrimp that was visibly green. Giving it little further thought, he chucked it overboard, before realizing half the haul was tainted. He picked one up for closer inspection, and grunted again as he realized it was gray-green with three bright green eyes.

"Hive," he muttered, then immediately summoned his super and used two well-placed void anchors to suck the shrimp off his deck and back into the sea.

Badger headed back to the controls of the ship, and turned towards the shoreline. As his boat navigated him back to civilization, he crouched and retrieved a pistol from the glovebox underneath his controls. "Can't believe I'm fucking doing this," the Exo grumbled.

It didn't take long to get back to shore, to the bait and tackle shop that most of the fishermen in the area used as a kicking-off point. It was called, incredibly, Stoor, and was run by a Cabal legionary that had gotten himself lost on Neptune at some point and just never wanted to leave. His English was bad - but he was a nice enough fella.

Badger departed his ship, barely acknowledging the group of Cloud Striders that had gathered around, strangely infatuated with the ramshackle establishment. There were more inside, almost overflowing the place. "Hey, Lieutenant Dan."

"Still don't know the reference," the Cabal pointed out.

Badger shrugged. "You know anything about Hive?"

Dan tapped his chin, then pointed to a sign on the counter that said: Buy something before you ask stupid questions.

"Hm, all those words are spelled right," Badger mused, picking up a small container of gum and chucking it on the counter. "You know anything about the Hive?"

"Robots chew gum?" asked Dan, and once the transaction was complete, he answered, "When Thu'urd came to Neptune, no Hive on planet. Shadow Legion only. Now, something swimming under ocean. Big. Girthy."

Badger blinked. "Who the fuck is Thu'urd?"

Dan stared at him, swallowing unfathomable rage before he killed a paying customer. "You kill the Hive, I reward."

"Decent deal," said Badger, then turned and immediately left, gum sitting on the counter still as the Cabal legionary stared after him with an evil glimmer in his eye.

Badger was a man of few words and immediate action, possibly the result of being reset 28 different times, so he clambered back onto his boat, armed with knowledge and that gun he found, and started to search the ocean. It was pretty easy to find his quarry - he just kept skimming for shrimp until all the normal ones had gone, and only the Hive remained. From there, he pushed further, seeking the - er - big, girthy thing that Lieutenant Dan had talked about.

That was easy, too. It was a fucking Hive worm. Of course. When he got close enough, the thing reared its ugly head out of the water, and Badger watched with only mild interest as it went up, up, up - nearly blotting out the sun and dripping torrents of black water down onto his ship. Badger humphed in annoyance, aimed his pistol up, and fired a shot. The Hive worm… almost looked offended, turning to look at him with a confused roar, at which point Badger emptied the magazine into its gullet.

Suddenly enraged by the audacity of the good fisherman, the Hive god vomited an absolute audacious amount of Hive shrimp onto Badger and his boat. The fisherman stood there for a moment, and finally looked up at the Hive god and asked, flatly, "What the hell was that supposed to do?"

As its mouth raced forward to come eat Badger, the Hunter sighed and resummoned his void bow. "Can't believe this."

Then he loosed not one but a dozen shots, one after the other, straight down the worm's throat. The first three burned through its esophagus, five more to sever its head, and the rest… well that was just style. The severed halves of the worm god exploded into void energy, sending Badger's boat flying on a massive wave across the ocean. The usually-unruffled fisherman clambered his way to the controls, ready to steer.

Of course he was headed right towards the bait shop. In an impressive display worthy of the best Fast and the Furious movie, Tokyo Drift, Badger swung his boat around, using the broad side of it to slow down just enough that the wave broke around him, away from the shop, and his momentum slowed, slowed, and he parked perfectly parallel to the shop's dock.

With a singular nod, Badger reached for his straw fisherman's hat and set it on his head, adjusted his seaweed beard, and holstered his pistol as he headed into the shop. He thunked a dead Hive shrimp down on the counter. "Job's done."

The Cabal looked aghast, and suddenly very angry. "You killed Hive god! You! Thu'urd summoned Hive god as revenge against Cloud Striders! Not polite! Never leave tips! Look weird! And you kill Hive god immediately?! Now you must die!"

As Lieutenant Dan was reaching for a massive slug thrower behind the counter, Badger sighed and emptied another whole magazine into the Cabal who, being mortal, died instantly.

"Huh," Badger said, and busied himself dragging the body out. The Exo kicked it into the water, where it sank immediately - and he chucked the slug thrower after it for good measure.

A thorough search of the shop led to some weird Hive artifacts - also went in the drink - and a bunch of weird novelty conch shells with Vanguard voice lines, vaguely glowing green with Hive energy. He pulled the string on one, finding delight in Cayde-6's voice immediately saying, "Man, Hunter, you really blew that guy's brains out."

He pulled the string again. "Hey, quit pulling that. It's not polite."

Again. "I mean it, bud. I'm a person, here."

"Are you alive?" asked Badger, almost aghast. "What the hell kind of Hive magic is this?"

"The kind that makes novelty toys sentient, I don't know!" the Cayde shell whined as its string was pulled.

Badger hummed, and decided to set the shell up for success, at least. He set it in a rocking chair out front, the new guardian of Stoor, and patted it once before he headed back to his ship. A crowd of Cloud Striders were already gathering around to investigate the new purveyor.

Sailing out to sea, Badger stroked his beard, and pondered his future fishing boat endeavors.