Every planet the Guardian had ever stepped foot on was special in its own way. Venus, for example, was a mishmash of green jungles and cubic Vex architecture. Mercury was a sterile desert, burned clean by its proximity to the Sun. Then there were the great red dunes of Mars, the crystalline mysteries of the Reef, the oceans of Titan, the yellow canyons of Io. The wet horrors of the Dreadnaught.
The people of Earth.
The Warlock Vanguard, Ikora Rey, had once told him that she believed the universe was not fond of telling the same story twice. Some things had to be the same of course, such as the structuring of atoms, or the macro-physics of astral bodies, solar systems, galaxies, that sort of thing. If these details were not arranged just so, then nothing could exist. It was in the minutiae where things changed, and the true intricacy of the universe revealed itself.
Despite their initial similarity, Hakke believed he found where Remnant and Earth differentiated. Earth was a resolute world, an old warrior that bore the scars of a thousand battles. It had faced the cosmic armageddon of the Darkness, and by the grace of the Traveler, had survived to stagger to its feet once more. It was a world that had lost almost everything that made it what it was: the animals, the plants, the people. Gone, diminished, but what was left refused to simply lay down and die.
Remnant on the other hand and above all else, felt alive. There was a greater level of diversity to the plant life than anywhere he had seen on Earth, and of different types as well. The trees were of a leafy, deciduous variety, but the species were unfamiliar. The entire ground was coated in a thick blanket of green grasses, ferns, bushes, and dotted with an almost comical amount of uniquely colorful wildflowers.
A thousand different insects hopped and crawled through the undergrowth, and bees and other pollinators lazily swarmed the flowers in a congested, bumbling dance.
And then there were the birds. The mornings and evenings were a delicious cacophony of birdsong, more varieties than Hakke had ever heard vying for his attention at once. Each one unique. Each one memorable. When he was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one, he saw that they were as unique as the songs they sang. Small songbirds, large songbirds, and of every color combination of the rainbow.
Remnant wasn't just alive. It was overflowing.
There was so much to see, so much to investigate. He and Callie could easily have spent hundreds of hours back in the glen alone, cataloging and observing the traits and habits of the life around them. Even on their walk towards the settlement, which Callie had identified as the City of Vale, the chances to see wildlife of any variety was second to none.
Which is why, as he stood in a Valean intake line, he was so angry right now.
They had left the Glen behind almost a solid ten days ago. It was an estimated 72 miles to Vale. Even with Callie unable to summon his sparrow, as the hoverbike was currently held in digital storage aboard his personal jump ship in orbit of Titan, it did not take a Guardian ten days to travel 72 miles.
He blamed the Grimm. He absolutely blamed the Grimm.
He'd run out of ammo on day one. Normally, Callie could adapt ammo from his defeated enemies for his use. Hell, it was possible to use armor scraps and various equipment to make a bullet or two if push came to shove. Not with the Grimm, though. They didn't use ammo, so they didn't drop any, and they had the gall to evaporate after death.
Although he was curious where the vapor they turned into spirited off to.
Their attacks had been constant. He had nearly broken his Valakadyn in half over the head of a bear earlier, and had decided not to see how well his already broken Remnant auto rifle would fare as a bludgeon. This had limited his options to using stumps, rocks, Light, and Midnight Coup as a makeshift hammer to kill these things instead.
If he didn't know better, he would have said they were attracted to his foul mood. Though he thought that his Light was a more likely culprit, like some of the darker aliens back home.
He had to give them credit though, they were far more determined to kill him than nearly anything he had ever encountered. He had exterminated a frankly absurd number of them, and they just kept throwing themselves his way. They had even managed to kill him twice, once when he fell down a ravine and face planted in front of a pack of wolf-things; the second time when a giant crow-thing had shishkebabed him with razor feathers the size of swords.
After days of this, his enthusiasm for Remnant was dipping fast.
It didn't help that the Grimm weren't the only thing he had needed to keep an eye out for.
Day three rolled around, and a familiar whine began over the horizon. Hakke had taken cover as another egg-shaped VTOL had flown overhead, in the same direction he had just come from. Whoever was heading back towards the glen, well, they wouldn't find anything useful there now. Returning to investigate had been out of the question as well, as all that would have accomplished was undoing three days of brutal fight-walking.
A few days later Callie had warned him about a dense camera network that was set up across a large patch of forest they had nearly entered. She had managed to scramble the cameras that could have spotted them, and they had needed to dedicate even more time to circumnavigating this new problem. Why someone had bugged kilometers of raw forest was beyond Hakke for the time being. Either way, they both agreed that getting recorded here was not in their best interest.
Eventually, after what had felt like an eternity, they arrived at the city gate.
As far as static defenses went, it was a disappointment. Via his Ghost's research, he'd learned that there was a full perimeter wall around Vale proper, much like there was around the City. The city itself was located along the coast itself, in a position naturally protected by the bay, a series of mountains, and other natural features.
All logical, made total sense. He had even found a road and managed to hitch a ride with some sort of armored vehicle to the gates themselves. But after spending so many hours in the Old and New Towers, placed atop the titanic walls of the Last City, Vale's defense grip felt lacking. He didn't have much time to evaluate the wall itself before he had been swept inside. He estimated it to be roughly ten meters tall at the lowest points, with large caliber machine gun emplacements staggered across its upper lip.
No artillery that Hakke could see, no attack craft buzzing along its length, and far too few of those machine guns as well. He wondered how much was automated, and what its garrison strength was.
All in all, this defensive barrier had struck him as more of a speed bump than anything else. Did these people not expect pirate attacks? Or bandits? Hostile militaries? It felt like the only thing it would be good against would be Grimm.
The line moved forward a step.
At least the people he had met so far, minus a few glaring exceptions, had been both friendly and helpful. The armored car he had hitchhiked with had been rear guard for a supply convoy, and the men and women within had been more than willing to chat the Guardian up. They had let him out inside the wall and pointed him in the direction of some administrative entrance, saying it was where a visitor to the city like he was needed to go.
Which brought him up to the current moment. Standing in line inside a surprisingly spacious and clean office-style building.
Waiting.
He had been here less than thirty minutes. Those thirty minutes already felt longer than the ten days he had spent getting here. It didn't help that the only non-holographic display in this building seemed to be the keyboard the receptionist was typing on. Typing loudly and slowly on, to be precise. The receptionist was an older woman hunched over her station, her most defining feature being her dead, bureaucratic eyes.
Hakke was last in line. No one else had entered in the time he had spent here. The receptionist was processing the second person since he got here.
With a sigh, he walked over to a rack of pamphlets on the wall and pulled one out at random, before returning to his spot. It was a tri-folded travel brochure, flaunting the many wondrous sights and scenic locales of Vale. Usefully, it did have a map, although it was less than ideal, seeing as it simplified the roads and rendered most landmarks into cartoonish caricatures.
He nodded his head, letting the hand holding the pamphlet drop to his side. He wondered how illegal it would be to just break in to this stupid city, or how hard it would be to dodge law enforcement. At least that would be entertaining.
His train of thought was interrupted by the receptionist's voice calling out.
"Next."
Hakke walked up to the counter. "Hi, I would like to go to Vale, Ms..." He looked at the woman's name tag, and stopped for a second. Her name was apparently Jane Beige.
"Ms. Beige." He nodded awkwardly. "Yep."
"Sir, I am going to have to ask you to remove your helmet. May I ask what brings you to Vale." Her voice was a slow monotone, stating the question instead of asking it.
"Right." He said, removing the helmet manually. "I am here to... locate and retrieve some stolen property. It's fairly important, time sensitive, that sort of thing."
"Business, then. I see. May I see your ID."
"My ID? Like an ID card?" Hakke asked.
"Yes."
That was a problem, seeing as Hakke didn't actually carry an ID of any variety on his person. Usually, if he needed to identify himself, it was to prove he was a Guardian. And to do that, Callie would just hover over his shoulder, or he would ramble off some code phrases.
He doubted that either option would serve him well here.
"Truth be told, I don't have one."
Beige stared at him with her bureaucrat eyes, before speaking. "I take it you are from an unassociated settlement."
"You could say that. I doubt you are going to find it on one of your maps."
"I see, it was newly constructed then. May I have your name."
"Hakke."
"Is that your first name or last name. I will need both, sir."
Hakke stared at her for a moment. He honestly wasn't sure which category his name fit. He never needed anything other than 'Hakke'.
"It's Hakke. Just Hakke"
"Just Hakke. Thank you, sir." She returned to her typing, ignoring him once again. The Warlock nodded his head, muttering an 'okay' under his breath as he looked around the room again.
He should have jumped the wall. Breaking into this place would have been a much better option than this nightmare. With nothing better to do, he pulled out the earpiece from his helmet and put it on.
"Smooth work there, 'Just'." Callie snarked.
He took the earpiece out, Callie's laughter barely audible from the speaker.
Remnant was not growing on him. Quite the opposite actually.
He leaned against the counter for several minutes and waited, arms crossed. The lights above, arranged in horizontal strips, gave a slight buzz. There was a green potted tree off in one corner, an attempt to add some much needed color and life to this accursed room. It would have worked too, if it wasn't obviously a fake plant and covered in a layer of dust.
"Sir, I have your Visitor's Pass. This will act as your identification throughout your stay. It expires in four weeks, if your visit extends that duration you are required to register again at any Vale Registry Building. You may now proceed through the Green door. Thank you and enjoy your stay in our beautiful city." Beige slid a small plastic card across the counter, going through her entire speech all without actually looking at him. Off to the left a bell sounded, as the referenced green door finally swung open.
"Thank the Traveler. I will do that, thank you, goodbye."
Hakke grabbed the card, stuffing it into his bag as he nearly ran out of the stuffy room. Whether or not the receptionist noticed or not was no longer his concern. He was free.
The green door opened out into a series of courteously spacious hallways, all clearly marked with a combination of painted signage and holographic screens, before finally opening out into the sunlight. A surprisingly diverse collection of people milled about the space, some openly carrying firearms or bladed weapons, others obviously civilians. He surmised that some of them had to be part of the wall's garrison forces, with how well armed they were.
Not a lot of standardization, however.
Leading out of the plaza was a two lane highway, bordered by hard light banisters. Light vehicle traffic dotted its length as the road weaved its way across vast stretches of croplands, all leading towards an actual city.
Having paced out to a spot with a better view, He was able to finally get a proper view of Vale. The city sprawled out across the horizon, evidently content to take up as much horizontal room as it could. Air ships dotted the skyline, a barely visible network of raised highways and transport rails crisscrossed between tall skyscrapers. Deeply tapered roofs stabbed towards the sky along its length, hints of what he could only describe as gothic architecture. Even now, at midday he could see lights dotting its skyline.
A proper, living city, that was not the Last City. He had travelled more ruins than he cared to admit, the burned remains of once great metropolises on numerous planets. He never thought he would see one still kicking.
Now to find the club and find the Crown.
He put the earpiece back on. "Well, we're in, I guess. Now where exactly is that club you were talking about?"
"Right in one of the seedier parts of town." Callie told him. "Edge of the entertainment district. The place is just called the Club, and is owned by a man named Hei Xiong, or Junior, depending on who you ask. If you were to start walking now, we could arrive right around midnight, Just."
"Traveler's Mercy, do not call me that. Why do you think we should walk? A place this advanced should have some form of hirable transportation."
"Hakke, we don't have money."
"Yeah we do, we should have close to 80,000 glimmer on hand."
"We don't have any local money. The local currency is called Lien, it's distributed as highly encrypted plastic cards. I could convert some glimmer into Lien, but it would quickly eat through the very limited glimmer supply we have. Not to mention I'm not positive on all the security measures built in. There's a limit to what info I can find over the intranet.
"Besides, I can use the time it takes for us to walk to tell you all the marvelous things I've discovered about Remnant, Vale, and the Grimm. You're going to stand out like a sore thumb here if you have to question every piece of common knowledge after all."
He thought for a moment. "Why didn't you tell me any of this stuff on the way here?"
"You were busy fighting for your life at the time. I didn't want to distract you with fun facts."
"Ah."
Deciding not to waste anymore time, he began to walk towards the city, keeping the hard light barrier between himself and the highway itself. It was nice, he decided, to be able to walk without being attacked at literally every possible moment. He settled into a steady, mile eating pace and Callie began to discuss her findings of the planet to him.
Remnant it seemed, was divided into four separate powers. Kingdoms, to be precise. There was Atlas to the north, Mistral to the east, Vacuo to the west, and Vale in the middle. Each had their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to each other, with Atlas being the dominant power, both in a military and technological sense. Despite this, the Kingdoms kept to themselves and had been at peace with each other for about 80 years.
Hakke had stopped walking when Callie told him that.
A world without war. A world at peace.
From the moment Hakke first opened his eyes he had been fighting. He'd held the line against Taken incursions, and watched Red Legion drop pods rain on the Last City. The closest thing to peace he had known was down time between missions at the Tower. He knew Guardians who were centuries old and had never known actual peace like he was being told existed here. There had been lulls in the fighting of course, after large engagements such as the Battle of Six Fronts, but never an actual end.
A world at peace.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
Things only got stranger from there. There had been a conflict in the years between, when a group called the Faunus had fought for equal rights. Apparently they were a sibling species to humanity, with the only definable difference between the two being a host of various animalistic traits. Tails, ears, eyes, claws and teeth in some cases. For some reason they were treated unfairly by their human counterparts.
Why that was the case, Hakke had no idea. Surely there were bigger issues to address than the fact your neighbor had a tail. Maybe it was the fact that extinction wasn't constantly threatening the people here. They just had more time for that sort of nonsense.
Aura was next. Weaponized soul energy. It was found in literally everyone here to some extent, even the animals, but found most abundantly in sapient life. If properly utilized, it could act as a personal shield of sorts, preventing injuries and healing wounds at a rapid pace.
So the Crown thieves didn't have personal shield tech. They had been blocking his shots with their very souls. Seemed risky.
The most elite Aura users were called Huntsmen. They were trained from a young age to use their Aura to its maximum capability, and could use it to make themselves stronger, faster, and far more durable. They were the shield standing between the civilized world and the hordes of Grimm that populated the wilds. Their role, even how they operated was remarkably similar to that of a Guardian, actually. They either were solo acts or in a fireteam of four, and took bounties to keep the Grimm count to manageable levels.
With no military issues with the other Kingdoms, it seemed that the Grimm were in fact the biggest issue. There was surprisingly little actual information on them. Plenty on the varieties that existed in each region, and the best methods of killing them, but very little on their biology, habits, and behaviors. All the information that would be truly useful in combating them long term. Funnily enough, it turned out that Hakke was wrong on one of his assumptions. They were empaths, and were attracted to negative emotions such as fear and anger.
It turned out Hakke himself was the reason that so many of the accursed things had been on him during his hike.
Then Callie began to talk about Dust. If there was something that truly made this planet stand apart, it was Dust with a capital 'D'. It was the building block of nearly every form of technology that Remnant had to offer. Their guns, their ships, their communications, everything ran on Dust. It came in a staggering variety of unique forms, all with different elemental potentials. Combustion Dust for caseless ammunition, Electric Dust in place of batteries for power, and more esoteric varieties than Hakke knew what to do with.
If he could get his hands on a decent quantity of Dust, he could easily begin work on getting the rest of his arsenal up and running again. Converting his city guns to run with Dust munitions would be pretty easy he figured, once he had some research material on hand to tell him about its properties. He could apparently buy it in Vale at specialized shops. Hopefully by the time they found a shop en route to the Club, Callie could have figured out what components were needed to synthesize proper Lien.
With bullets in his guns, making money the normal way would be easy.
As the sun neared the horizon, Hakke and Callie ironed out a means of approach for when they finally arrived at the Club. The Warlock knew he was far from the best at improv, and would rather avoid winging it with what were most likely criminal elements. He didn't want to get killed again after all.
They entered the city itself by the time the sun began to set. Wide streets and tall buildings, similar to the style of the German towns he had patrolled back in the European Dead Zone. Apartment complexes, shops selling all manner of goods, many of which Hakke didn't recognize. All in all, the city of Vale didn't strike him as an alien metropolis, it felt like a continuation of what he had seen on Earth. If he had managed to go back in time, he felt this is what those European cities would have been like to explore.
At least he didn't seem to stand out for once.
There were still plenty of people on the streets, shopping in the stores or heading to their respective destinations. Most were human, but there were some Faunus mixed among them. For the most part they were dressed much like the people of the Last City, plenty of bright primary colors mixed alongside duller tones. Getups like his own were even fairly common, as every so often he would spot what he assumed was an armed Huntsmen or Huntress going about their day.
Not enough tunics and ponchos for his taste though. Not enough practical clothing.
After another hour or two of walking he did manage to find a dust store along his path, which he stopped in front of for a moment. The painted sign above named the business From Dust Till Dawn. The windows were smashed, and they had been smashed outwards for some reason, as if some large object had been tossed through them. Curiously, the shelves were completely stocked, outside of some sort of tubes along the left wall that were mostly empty. Yellow caution taped had been affixed across the broken windows, and a police cordon had been established on the sidewalk immediately in front. Judging by the fact that what he assumed were police officers were milling about in the front, one talking to an old man on the inside, he had to assume that whatever happened was recent.
Callie chimed in over his earpiece.
"Looks like an attempted robbery to me. There's plenty in the local news about this sort of thing. Apparently there's a professional thief running around who seems intent on gathering every gram of Dust in the city."
"Well that sucks." Hakke muttered quietly. He approached one of the officers.
"Excuse me, mind if I ask what happened here?" Hakke asked.
One of the officers turned from his partner, sunglasses still on even though night had already fallen.
"Whaddya think happened? That Torchwick clown came along and smashed the place up. Old Freddy there got lucky, had a huntsman or something inside who knocked around Torchy's goon squad. Why ya asking?"
"I was hoping to pick up some Dust for myself, mostly. Doesn't look like that's going to happen today. Way it goes, I guess." Hakke nodded to the cop. "You have a good evening, officer."
"Heh, yeah. Maybe next evening, with the amount of paperwork we're gonna have to do."
Hakke continued down the street, away from the crime scene. It was unfortunate that the first proper Dust shop he had come across was now more trouble than it was worth to get into, but there had to be others in the city still operating. Besides, it was looking more and more like Callie wouldn't be able to properly manufacture Lien from Glimmer until he got his hands on a sample. It was possible for the Ghost to access the banking system here in Vale to gather the correct data, but stealthily infiltrating data banks was not her strong suit. Brute forcing her way in was.
Better to be broke and ammoless for a bit longer, then get on the police's radar for bank fraud.
Maybe he'd give her the go ahead tomorrow, depending on how tonight panned out.
Finally, they arrived. Down a side street, under a monorail track, and with the main entrance built into the corner of a building. The Club.
Hakke nodded to himself. It was time to get some answers.
He strode into the building, past two guards in matching black suits and red ties who made no move to stop him. Someone had once told the Warlock that if you acted like you belonged somewhere, like you had every right in the world to go where you wanted, you could usually waltz right in.
It seemed to work.
It was a muted sort of quiet when he approached. A pair of twin automatic doors opened in front of him to reveal the interior of the Club. The club was a glossy two story place with a massive dance floor dominating the center. Everything seemed to be made of the same black material, with LED highlights running along every possible edge, from the stairs to the bar and tables lining the edges. On each corner of the dance floor large pillars shelled in glass and full of strobe lights cast the arena in a multitude of colors.
Or at least, two of them did. The other two had been smashed by the looks of it and were in the process of being rebuilt by a small legion of the same black suited men. They were also replacing several countertops, flooring tiles, and other assorted pieces of the Club. He swore he saw the imprint of a fist in one of them.
At the base of the dance floor was a small party of colorful individuals. On one end there was a gaggle of men and women in matching blue suits, with one in particular standing out. A tall, string bean of a man who had forgone the blue suit coat for a white tank top and an incredibly punchable, snarky grin. Probably the leader of team Blue.
On the other end was a man nearly as big as Lord Shaxx, glowering at the Blue Boys, flanked by two shorter women in white and red dresses, respectively. The red one had clawed gauntlets on by the look of things, the white one had claws on her boots. The large man was the first to react to Hakke's entrance, turning and trying his hardest to skewer him with his eyes.
He guessed that the giant was Junior. It felt like the right sort of ironic name for him.
The rest noticed Junior change the focus of his attention, and within moments the entire place fell deathly silent, every eye in the place falling on him. Several of the suits around the place not too subtly began to reach for weapons.
"What now?" Junior all but roared up at him.
"This looks like it's going to be unpleasant." Callie cheerfully informed him. "Try not to get yourself killed."
Hakke blinked slowly. "I hate this town already."
And began to walk down.
