Chapter 8, The Den (Part 2)


Three rounds splashed into a guard's torso, shattering a surprisingly pink Aura and sending the unlucky man toppling to the ground in a heap. Hakke spun about, lashing out with his baton fully extended to crack another man across the jaw. He hadn't waited for Tank Top to order his new goons to attack, seizing the initiative himself by charging the group. Normally this particular tactic ended with Hakke getting cut in half or riddled with bullets or something to that end.

Here though, it was actually working.

Despite the beating he had taken earlier, Tank Top still had enough energy in the tank to get out of the way and behind the guards that had come with him. One or two of said guards went down fast from Hakke's pistol, and more were dropped by Detective Cerulean opening up with her auto rifle.

The guards who were left panicked almost immediately, backpedaling into each other to get out of the way. Hakke went in fully expecting to have to endure the same level of pain as literally every other fight he had been in on this hell planet, and was pleasantly surprised to find these guys were more on par with any other civilian militia group he had seen.

They could fire a gun, but they couldn't take a hit.

The last several seconds of combat had proven illuminating for the Warlock. He knew that Aura gave his enemies a large advantage in almost every category, but now that he was pitted up against a bunch of goons that didn't seem to have any, that knowledge finally clicked into place properly. Without the strange, colorful shield to protect them, it felt more like he was fighting a swarm of Dregs than the normal nightmare scenario he was used to on Remnant.

Tank Top's original team of blue suits had been harder to take down than these clowns. Not that Hakke was complaining, it was nice being able to thrash his enemies properly for once.

His new companion had set the pace of their advance. She was more than competent with the auto rifle he had given her, firing in short controlled bursts and landing far more shots than she missed. But he was fairly certain she was in the 'no-Aura' side of things, or at least had more than three brain cells rattling around in her head, seeing as she was firing from proper cover and not rushing headlong into close quarters.

Being a suicidal idiot was Hakke's job, after all.

He rammed his shoulder into one of the last guards, pinning him against a wall temporarily and blocking a sword chop from another with his baton. A few pistol shots dropped the sword guy, and a palm strike tossed the pinned man clean through the drywall. He extended the baton between another guard's legs, slashing it straight up in one of the guaranteed best ways to incapacitate a human male.

Two kicks hit Hakke, one in the side and another in the shoulder. Tank Top was trying his luck again.

"Ya couldn't leave well enough alone, could ya?" Tank Top shrieked in his ear, trying to press his attack. "First you steal my deal and my staff, then ya thrash my guys, and now you're here to rub it all in!"

"You could definitely phrase it that way." Hakke said, blocking one kick and cracking the thug in the ribs with his baton. He shot the man twice, the shots pushing the thug back against a wall with the tell tale flickering of Aura flaring at the impact sites. At this point his pistol clicked empty, so he threw it at Tank Top's head. There were plenty more mostly-loaded pistols and other guns scattered on the ground amidst the fallen guards.

Interestingly, it didn't seem like many of them were actually dead; they were all either knocked out, or rolling slightly on the ground and moaning in pain. Heavily wounded, sure, but not deceased.

He had a few theories on why that was.

Firstly, the pistol he used didn't seem to be particularly good at what a pistol's primary function was: killing. The slower speed of the projectiles meant they didn't hit with the same kinetic payload to go clean through someone, and they seemed to almost explode on contact. This meant that they were extraordinarily good at creating extensive surface damage and throwing people around. Secondly, he had used his bullets mostly on the guys with Aura, and that seemed to have absorbed the absolute worst of the damage.

He had also noticed that the Detective was prioritizing nonlethal shots when she could. As she was the local law enforcement, he figured it would be good form to follow that lead.

"I ain't telling you nothing!" Tank Top shouted, shaking his head to clear it and attempted some sort of aerial roundhouse kick. Hakke responded with a preemptive palm strike, interrupting the flashy move and rocketing him through another panel of thick drywall.

He scooped up a new pistol from the floor, taking a second to ping Callie for any movement. She confirmed over his earpiece that no more grunts were on their floor, for the moment. It was obvious though that that would change rapidly. He returned his focus to Tank Top.

"Where did you get that glowing green stuff?" He asked, his new pistol leveled at the thug's head.

"I don't know what you're talking about." the man hissed out. He was no expert yet, but Hakke was fairly confident that the man's Aura was about to give out again. He guessed there was a limit to the amount of strain one could put their soul through on any given day.

Cerulean had advanced to the impromptu door that the Warlock had made with his adversary, before dropping her auto rifle and grabbing two pistols off the ground. Judging by the amount of steam coming out of the barrel of the auto rifle, she too had run out of rounds.

"Besides, when Murex gets up here, he'll carve the both of ya up, like a pair of stuck pigs." Interestingly enough, he seemed to mostly direct that last comment at Detective Cerulean. A dig at her Faunus heritage, maybe?

"Quit wasting time and knock this creep out." Cerulean told Hakke, stuffing one of her new pistols into her belt. "There's bound to be more of these thugs on us any second."

"H-hey! He's here! He'll mess you up!" Tank Top stuttered out.

"All I need is half a second. Just, do me a favor and keep an eye down the hall." Hakke argued, before returning his attention to Tank Top. "Green stuff. Where."

"Or what, huh, you gonna shoot me?"

Hakke stared at him, puzzled. "Yes, I thought that was obvious."

"My Aura will protect me long enough for the cop to stop ya."

Hakke sighed, before getting an idea. He reached under his coat and behind his back, pinging Callie as he did so. He pulled the freshly transmatted Midnight Coup out with a flourish and pointed the hand cannon at Tank Top's head instead. "Not if I use this."

Midnight Coup was a big gun, a clean 50 centimeters from tip to handle. Hakke was standing above the prone thug, but even then the barrel was less than 30 cm from Tank Top's forehead. His eyes were glued to the barrel of the alien weapon, its garish white and gold paint job doing very little to make it less threatening.

"I can pull this trigger faster than you can yell." Hakke said quietly. "Tell me everything you know about the green vial?"

"Y-ya wouldn't just..."

Hakke pulled the gilded hammer back with a loud click.

Tank Top's eyes widened.

"I-I don't know where they get it, I swear they don't tell me stuff like that. Magenta's been handing it out to everyone. Want's us getting it out on the street as fast as possible. They're calling it Boost. I don't know more than that, I swear!" He babbled.

Hakke holstered Midnight Coup again. He had the name of the person behind this, and a name to attach to the strange green syringe. Enough to work off of.

"Thanks!" He said cheerfully, giving the thug one last crack upside the head with his baton. Knocking people out on Remnant was surprisingly simple.

All in all, that had been the simplest interrogation he had ever conducted.

Also one of the only interrogations he had conducted.

He exited the hole in the wall to find Detective Cerulean shooting him daggers. Evidently, gunpoint conversations were not the ideal information harvesting tactic here in Vale.

"What was that?" She began, before stopping herself. "You know what? No. You and I are going to have a talk when we get out of here. This entire night is going insane around me."

"The gun wasn't loaded, if that helps." Hakke offered.

It didn't, judging by Cerulean's exasperated expression. He decided not to continue that conversation, instead looping back towards the side hall he had used to infiltrate the building originally. It seemed that the vast majority of guards here were focused more so to the interior of the building, right around where most of the elevators and staircases were located. He hadn't seen any scaffolding on the outside of the building, so that left the ground floor exits, the roof, and the construction site adjacent as means of escape.

Under normal conditions getting out of here would be child's play. A three story drop out of any window and Hakke would be on his way, but that wouldn't work as well for the Detective. And he definitely needed to exfiltrate the Detective. She represented a veritable goldmine of information, just waiting to be tapped into. Who this Magenta character was for example, or Murex, or this blue loving gang. She may even know something about this Boost material. And even if she didn't she would be able to fill in innumerous gaps in Hakke's knowledge of the world he was stuck on.

They hurried down the corridors, yells echoing behind them. The other guards in the building had begun to converge by the safe room, which was both good and bad. Good, because that meant that they now knew where a large number of guards were at this very moment, and the other floors were probably clear. Bad, because the place that the guards were gathering was directly behind them.

The dull thumping of gunfire reverberated behind them, subsonic rounds flying past the Warlock. He returned fire while backpedaling, dropping one and bowling over another. Truth be told, this was probably one of the easiest to shoot guns he had ever handled. It seemed to operate off a more compact version of the caseless cartridges his pilfered rifle used, and had a wonderfully mild recoil to it, one that did not at all translate to the knockback effect that the rounds seemed to have.

"Do you have a plan to get out of this building?" Cerulean yelled over the gunfire.

"We're going to the roof, we can cross over to another building and find a fire escape to ground level from there. Get some distance between us and this wasp nest." Hakke replied. Cerulean nodded, firing some hasty shots back down the corridor.

It turns out he was correct in the assumption that most, not all, of the guards were behind them when two appeared in front of them from around a bend. A shot from his pistol revealed that the lead guard had Aura, as the man threw himself at Hakke. The other guard engaged the Detective as Hakke and his adversary traded and blocked blows.

He managed to hook his baton around the back of the man's neck, using it as leverage to headbutt the guard's nose. It didn't break his aura, but it was enough to momentarily daze the man, allowing Hakke to get behind him and get him in a choke hold. Human shield acquired, Hakke opened fire at the swarm of guards making their way towards him, dropping a few more and causing others to duck into cover. Stray rounds flew at the Warlock, only to be stopped by the man's Aura. Once it popped Hakke shoved the man forward and struck him in the back of the head, knocking him out.

Cerulean meanwhile struggled against her guard who had also closed the distance to attack her with a machete. She ducked inside the man's guard, ramming an elbow into his face and shoving him back. Four quick shots in succession to the chest dropped the guard, and she hugged a wall to return fire down the hall.

"Elevator's close!" Hakke yelled, turning down another hallway. It led back to the central plaza or whatever the opening that stretched from the roof to the ground was called. Hopefully their fight here had drawn most of the remaining guards to the hallways of the third floor, leaving the center more open than not.

He fired off several more rounds before he felt the familiar sensation of a magazine being transmatted to his belt. A few more shots and the gun ran empty. He grinned as he ejected the spent mag and slammed the fresh one home. He may not have any ammo for his workhorse pieces, but it seemed Callie had been busy behind the scenes harvesting as much caseless ammo for him to use as she could.

"Got an extra?" Cerulean called out.

"Yeah!" He summoned another magazine and tossed it her way.

He didn't want to say it. He didn't even want to think it. But of course, the thought like poison seeped into his mind and squeezed its way to the forefront of his consciousness. The one phrase that had doomed him on more than one occasion. The single most cursed thought that any Guardian ever had. The Taboo Thought.

This was going surprisingly well.

Too late, and the thought was there. Hakke frowned slightly, barely noticing as a pistol shot splashed off of the pad of armor on his shoulder. He was staying more so in the open than Cerulean was in order to attract the majority of gunfire his way. The pistol shots so far hadn't managed to punch through either his Light or the armor weave of his coat, and he was able to summon enough Light from his environment to easily replace what the pistols took off, with room to spare.

They finally had the elevator in their sights, and luckily it seemed that the guards had used it to get to the third floor, seeing as there was a featureless platform suspended right where it needed to be. A handful of bandana clad guards were still here however, a rearguard to stop them from doing exactly what they were trying to do.

One guard was near enough to the sleek railing that Hakke was able to toss him over the edge with one well placed palm strike, the man's yelp being replaced with a loud thud three floors down.

A hail of accurate gunfire took down two more and sent the last man scrambling for cover. Unfortunately for him he chose to hide behind a sheet of drywall. Hakke and Cerulean both opened up, blowing holes throughout the sheet of plaster. The guard did not pop out after that.

They both ran into the elevator platform, and the Detective grabbed the controller. It was a large plastic block with only two buttons, a green and red button that both had stylized text saying which direction was which. Now that he was on it, it seemed that the elevator was more or less just a loose platform controlled by a hardwired pulley system.

Probably not the safest option, but it did the trick.

Guns held at the ready, the platform began to bring them up.

"So, Detective Cerulean. Mind if I ask what you were doing bound up for execution in a sleazy safe house?"

"That's a little… complicated. Hakke, was it?" Hakke nodded yes as she continued. "Well Hakke, you mind telling me why you just decided to assault a Syndicate hideout?"

"That's… also complicated." He paused. "I'm guessing that all of these guys wearing blue are part of this Syndicate then?"

"Yes, they are. The Syndicate is one of the biggest crime families in Vale. How do you not know about them?"

"I'm from out of town. It's actually my first day here."

She stared at him incredulously, only stopping to check if any guards had emerged anywhere as they traveled up.

"You managed to piss the mafia off on your first day in Vale?" She asked.

"That's gotta be some sort of record, right?"

She muttered something under her breath, shaking her head slightly.

They arrived on the fourth floor and were off immediately, Hakke pausing for a second to shoot the cables keeping the elevator working, sending the platform crashing down to the ground. He could hear shouting down below as the guards finally arrived at where they had just been, Hakke retracing his steps back to the roof staircase. They raced out across the rooftop, gravel crunching underfoot and the tied up roof guard yelling at them.

The roofs here were at an identical height, with a slight gap separating each building, no more than one and a quarter meters at the thickest. The Detective took a running leap across to the neighboring roof as Hakke kept overwatch, before he jumped the gap and followed.

They covered a few more rooftops before Hakke heard the dull thud of someone following them. But before he could turn around to see what was going on, the whistling sound of a projectile sang out, and Hakke found his foot pinned to the roof by a block of ice. He awkwardly managed to turn around to see what had just happened.

Standing on the rooftop directly behind them was a single, serious looking man. Like most of the most dangerous people he had encountered on Remnant, he was wearing what he now knew as Syndicate Blue formal wear. The suit vest he had on was the base blue, but even from here Hakke could see intricate designs stenciled in with a deep purple.

His weapon drew the Warlock's attention more than anything, and largely because he had no idea what the hell it was. It had two large barrels, the topmost smoking from whatever he had just shot at Hakke. The rest of it was an overly complicated and overly ornate block of metal with an absurdly long handle. He guessed it was some form of specialized grenade launcher. Or something.

It seemed the right kind of ridiculous for Remnant, after all.

"So you're the one who has been causing the racket tonight." The man called out. Hakke tensed. There was no bravado in his voice, no swagger in his pose, no sign of intimidation or an attempt to intimidate. It was a simple, professionally neutral tone.

Hakke had spent an ungodly amount of time inside of the Crucible, the live-fire training ground of the Vanguard. Inside of its innumerous arenas he had learned many painful and often fatal lessons at the hands of other Guardians. One of the more interesting things he had learned was how to read his opponent, at least to a limited extent, before a fight. The ones that came out loud and obnoxious were usually easier to take on, although sometimes that bravado was backed up by skill. There were some who were friendly and outgoing, they were either incredibly easy to fight or absolutely demolished everyone in their way. And then there were those that approached it like it was a 9-5 job. All business. Completely serious. They were the ones that Hakke had learned early on to watch out for.

This man had his 9-5 alarm bells ringing loudly.

Would he be as big a problem as he was preparing for? All things considered, he probably was. Remnant had made a habit of kicking his teeth in on a regular basis.

"Maybe? What's it to you?" Hakke asked, before also quietly asking his companion, "You know who this is?"

The man sighed. "Troublesome and with a smart mouth. Of course."

Cerulean answered in a whisper. "That's Indigo Murex."

"Is that bad?"

"Very."

Murex continued, ignoring their side conversation. "I don't know who you are, and frankly that doesn't matter. What I do want to know is why you decided to come here. You had already humiliated Glint and his men earlier tonight, even going so far as to steal his weapon. What could have possibly possessed you to come here and make an enemy of the Syndicate?"

"What possessed me? I'm not the guy you should be asking that question to."

"Murex, you can't do this without bringing the entire Vale Police Department down around your head." Cerulean tried.

Murex hmmed, pacing slowly along his stretch of roof. "Regardless, your actions here tonight are the most pressing matter. Detective, I must admit I am not overly concerned about you, or the VPD, at this moment. Even if you do somehow manage to escape tonight, I'm afraid you're already a dead woman walking. As for you, you have two choices. Either throw down your weapons and surrender, or I leave you to bleed to death on this roof."

Hakke focused Light into his leg and shattered the ice with a twisting motion. It didn't seem to be particularly strong, but it was more than enough to cause issues if he got hit while moving. Thankfully it seemed that Murex only had one more grenade loaded in his weird gun.

"Now that is one difficult decision." Hakke began. "So difficult in fact, that I'm going to need to take a moment to consider."

He turned to Cerulean and spoke quickly under his breath.

"Get to the street and find us a ride out of here, I'll hold off this guy in the meantime."

He first heard a faint growl and then the sound of gravel crunching as Murex began to make his way towards them. When he looked back the man was already vaulting over the last gap and was moments away from them. The Syndicate thug snapped his grenade launcher out to one side, and the entire weapon came undone as plates and pieces whirred and reorganized.

"Oh no."

Hakke barely managed to both unfurl his baton into a staff before Murex slashed his newly rearranged great sword against it in a shower of sparks. The force of the strike caught him off guard as well. As did the next one. And the next.

Hakke had already come to the conclusion that Aura aided combatants would be the single most dangerous enemy he would have here. Every single one he had faced down so far had hammered that fact home, and nearly always to a surprising degree. And even if he suspected Tank Top of cheating in that regard, he had learned his lesson.

He was learning it again.

Murex wasn't quite as fast as a Boost fueled Tank Top, but he was a significantly more skilled fighter, and far better at using his Aura enhanced mobility to its maximum potential. He twisted and jabbed, slashing out with his segmented great sword, each hit chewing into Hakke's Light reserves.

Hakke tapped into the Light, fighting past the Barrier as he did so, and threw himself backwards. His opponent blinked in surprise as the Warlock suddenly and without warning accelerated out of range, his great sword slicing harmlessly through a wash of Solar flame. He wasn't very good at using it often, but Hakke knew how to time an Icarus Dash to its maximum effect.

Before his boots hit the gravel, he began snapping shots at Murex's face. Two landed, splashing off his Aura before he began to slap the bullets out of the air with his sword.

He was slapping bullets out of the air with his sword.

Hakke hated this planet.

Holding the very end of the staff, he stopped firing just long enough to swing it like a sword, his opponent almost not catching it before impact. There was legitimate surprise written all over Murex's face. Why that was, Hakke did not know.

Especially since it was immediately obvious that engaging in a sword fight with this guy was the worst idea Hakke had had in years. Murex immediately regained control over the flow of the fight, pushing the Warlock back aggressively. Hakke saw an opening appear as if by magic, and took it. Halfway through he realized he had been baited, as the Syndicate thug switched his grip, grabbing the sword by the blade and swinging the cross guard directly into his head.

It felt like he had been hit hard enough to throw him into the air. Then he realized that was exactly what had just happened. He was dimly aware of the sound of some sort of explosion going off before he saw his opponent cartwheeling through the air at him. Cartwheeling in a controlled fashion, mind, in a successful effort to give the kick to Hakke's gut a significant boost in force.

He collided with an air conditioning unit a surprising distance away, the metal buckling against his spine as his Light shield broke in a bright flash. Before he was able to collapse there was another shot, and his shoulder and baton were coated in ice, pinning him in place. It seemed that the two barrels were not indicative of only two shots.

"I'd give up, right about now. There's not much you can do without your Aura." Hakke could hear Murex approaching him.

"My spine." Hakke groaned. "Just, just give me a moment. By the Light, that hurt."

Two gunshots went off in the distance, and Murex slapped both out of the air without looking. Without looking at all, in fact, Hakke noted. He checked the source of gunfire, confirming that it was in fact Cerulean who had been doing the shooting from several rooftops down. Those shots had been coming at Murex from out of his line of sight. He literally could not have seen them coming.

So how come he had no issue blocking bullets that he shouldn't be able to see, yet Hakke was able to surprise him when they had been a spitting distance apart?

"Don't think about trying anything rash," The Syndicate thug said, now standing a meter or two away. "I've run into Semblances like yours before. It won't help you."

Great. A new factor he knew nothing about.

"Really now, you've got me all figured out?" Hakke asked, clutching one hand to his chest as tightly as he could. "Then tell me, what's my 'Semblance'?"

"Negation."

Hakke was breathing heavily as the Light worked overtime to patch him up. He looked Murex dead in the eye and showed him what he had been clutching in his hand.

"You sure?"

Hakke's fusion grenade detonated with a thunderous roar, Murex leaping back and Hakke being launched in the opposite direction. It was always a painful experience when his Light ran away from him like that, usually he was able to shield himself from being burned by the energy. Thankfully, it had completely melted the ice he had been trapped in as well. He needed to figure out what Murex was shooting him with. He had seen that last projectile. It had been small, far smaller than the glob of ice it had formed. Small, and it glowed a light blue.

Suddenly, the answer came to him.

Dust.

Murex was far from down, the man leaping to his feet with the last singes of Solar Light cascading around like a highlight of his profile. He flicked his greatsword, internal pieces audibly shifting to some new configuration.

"That was… Unexpected." the man said.

"I'll take that as a compliment." Despite having blown himself up for the second time tonight, Hakke was feeling alright. He could hurt this guy, even if he didn't get some of the stranger elements that seemed to be playing a part in the fight. He felt his Light shield recharging itself as Callie drew in Light from the environment on his behalf, a battle plan forming in his head.

If he could play a game of keep away, he could break Murex's Aura while ensuring his own Light stayed topped off enough to withstand the man's attacks. He didn't lie to himself, he knew that the man he was facing would absolutely not make this easy, but it was the best chance he had. Hell, it would be a win even if he just managed to make him back down.

Staff in hand, Hakke prepared himself. Murex didn't disappoint, launching himself forward with frightening speed. Hakke dropped to one knee, sending a palm strike at his legs, making sure to pick up as much gravel and debris as he could in its wake. His opponent leaped over the makeshift shotgun blast, and twisted in the air above Hakke. His sword-gun-thing fired again, this time however the shot sprayed his own blade a dim black and the Syndicate thug fell like a meteor towards Hakke.

He got the staff out in front of himself to block the blow, which smashed aside his defense like it wasn't even there. The Warlock was thrown back, away from the cloud of dust that the move had kicked up, and off the edge of the roof.

He activated his glide on instinct, Light cascading out in a levitating cushion, halting gravity from dragging Hakke down to the street. He angled himself to float along the edge of the roof, gaining distance from his enemy. He watched as the Syndicate man emerged from the cloud, and paused to stare for a moment as Hakke turned off his glide and landed back on the roof.

Murex blinked. "Alright then." And then charged once more.

This time Hakke jumped into a glide as he ran down the length of the roof, fully aware that Murex would be on top of him in a near instant. He waited for the man to commit to a leap of his own, before tapping into another Icarus Dash, abruptly changing his direction to the side.

Murex flew clean through where he had once been, giving Hakke just enough time to identify a fire escape leading into one of the larger alleyways. Down at the bottom he saw Detective Cerulean hijacking a parked car.

Fair enough, he supposed.

He floated over to the opposite side of the roof, taking potshots at Murex as he went. He would need to figure out a good way to end this fast.

Apparently his enemy had the same thought, as a small shower of what he now knew was Ice Dust coated the entire roof in a thin, slick layer of ice. Right before Hakke could land.

When he did in fact land, it was unsteady. Hakke planted his staff into the ice to give himself some support as Murex rocketed forward. He was unable to bring his staff to bear in time as the man leveraged the same strange black Dust or whatever it was to bring the crossguard down against Hakke's chest like a pickaxe.

About as effective as well, as the crossguard buried itself up to the handle before he was violently pinballed off the roof and straight into the fire escape with a clang. The metal crossguard had just missed impaling his heart and outright killing him, but it had one hundred percent punctured a lung. He lay there stunned and with the wind knocked out of him as Murex appeared to look down at him from the rooftop.

"It's a shame it came to this, but I did warn you." He looked over to where Cerulean was slowly hotwiring some civilian car, and promptly hopped off the roof.

Oh, absolutely not. He didn't for an instant buy his earlier spiel about how the Detective wasn't worth his time or whatever, he was absolutely going to kill her. And his best source of figuring out what the hell was going on in this town with her.

He sucked as much air into his one working lung as he could before vaulting off the fire escape himself. A brief glide to halt his fall, and he sprinted down the alley towards the Syndicate thug. The man flicked his weapon again as it reorganized back into the same grenade launcher thing, and took aim at the now starting car. Then stopped, looking back down the alley.

Just in time to watch Hakke come out of an Icarus Dash, swinging his staff like a baseball bat as hard as he could into Murex's neck. The staff bent around the man as his Aura flared violently and he was thrown down the length of the street. The man twisted, landing on his feet and grinding along the asphalt a distance, before looking back with murderous intent.

Hakke jumped on the car and began slapping the roof in a frenzy.

"GO! GO! GO!" He screamed as Murex began charging once again.

Tires squealed as Cerulean floored it, peeling out and down the street as fast as it could go. The Syndicate was keeping pace, using the recoil from his gun to rapidly catch up. He would be on the car in the next few seconds, and Hakke knew that if he got there, he would get knocked off and Cerulean would get killed.

Unacceptable.

His mind raced. He had to have something that could slow this guy down. He found himself wishing he had some Ice Dust of his own. At the speeds the man was travelling at, an ice slick would be disastrous. Hell, if he had any Dust to use he could - oh wait he did.

He reached into his bag and felt one of the armored vials of Dust he had taken from that generator. He didn't know what kind it was, but it had to be better than nothing.

Cerulean took a turn hard, forcing Hakke to grab the sides of the car to stop himself from being bucked off. The perfect moment to use the Dust soon arrived.

A straight stretch of road, Murex catching up quickly. Perfect.

He pulled one of the vials out and hit it with a palm strike. Pure kinetic force crushed the protective casing of the vial, scattering a talcum fine powder throughout the air in a large cloud directly behind the car. Murex saw it just before he hit it, that same look of surprise on his face. He began to adjust, trying to get outside the cloud.

He was fast, but Hakke's bullet was faster.

The cloud ignited instantly, the entire street being struck by a ball of arcing lightning all at once. He heard a shriek from within the blinding cloud as Murex came ragdolling out, electricity arcing off his body and rolling down the street to smash into a light post at high speed.

Beautiful.

Chest on fire, he crawled to the sunroof of the car, and gave it a slap.

"Cerulean, open up. It's me, I took care of our tail." He attempted to shout.

The roof opened, and Hakke poured into the passenger seat, taking some time to readjust so he wasn't facing head down.

"Gods damn it, what the hell did you do back there? The whole damn street just lit up like the Vytal Festival!"

"He stabbed me a bit, so I threw some Dust at him. I'm going to need a moment, fairly sure he popped a lung."

"You are by far the luckiest and most idiotic person I have ever met. Hands down." Cerulean focused on driving once again, taking advantage of the lack of early morning traffic to break every rule of the road she could.

"Hey." Hakke asked. "Quick question. Very important."

"What?"

"You know where I could get a bite to eat?"


To the Reviewers in chronological order, because my sleep deprived brain hates doing things in a uniform fashion

ThePolishSausageRoaster - Another connoisseur of dumb youtube videos, excellent. Most Guardians in lore seem to be far weaker than the player controlled ones (see every Guardian-turned-crystal in the Savathun's Song strike), and I wanted Hakke to reflect that. Besides, there's plenty of time to turn a god into a gun. That's just tradition

ShadowRedZoroark - Stasis would be a game changer. Unfortunately, if Stasis does end up being included, that's going to be a ways down the line.

SpartanDelta-118 - Thank you! Here's hoping I can keep the quality going

Guest - Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.

The Baz - I unfortunately have to concede on that point. Titan punch is hands down the most fun basic melee in the game. However, I counter with the cold, hard fact that Warlocks have the best 'Delete This' supers.

Nobody Foot Soldier - Ahh, an individual of culture. I think Ozpin would seem calm on the outside, while screaming incoherently on the inside. I mean, Humanity nearly goes extinct almost every season. The world of Destiny is a significantly worse place to be for literally any living thing when compared to Remnant.