Chapter 13, Bad Ideas
After establishing a rudimentary security system using the sensors in his helmet as a base, Hakke had decided to spend a few extra minutes coming up with one or two decent ideas that would help him even the odds for the next inevitable fight. Nothing too intense of course, just some basic preliminary sketches to capture the basics of the idea down on paper. He did however take an extra minute to evaluate what extra components he could work with now that he had spare guns to tinker with, and the knowledge gained from taking apart and studying the insides provided some insight into ways he could integrate Dust alongside his usual designs.
For the most part he focused on the bolas launcher. The launcher itself was attached to the machine gun via Remnant's version of a picatinny rail, and had been designed in such a manner that the main bulk of the system was hanging off of the side of the gun. It was linked via a physical cable to its firing mechanism, a small button that attached to the grip of the gun on the side, to allow the user's thumb to fire the bolas. The shotgun style pump on the side pulled the bolas cartridge out of the magazine on the side, and positioned it between two thin flywheels. The wheels acted almost like a cross between a crossbow and a rail gun, using a twisting motion and accelerated by a steel string to launch and unfurl the bolas at a rapid speed.
The reason it had been made like this was fairly simple: it needed to allow for a sight to be attached to the rail directly behind it and not interfere with said sight. Since he planned on strapping it to his arm, most of the unique design elements could be thrown out and simplified. He would be aiming it less by mechanical means and more by feel anyways.
Somewhere along the line Callie reminded him of what she had demanded earlier, and he did remember, honestly he did. However, what he was planning wouldn't chew up too much time, of that he was certain. Getting some of the tools that he would need further down the line sorted out on the front end before he began prototyping was not a bad idea either, now that he thought about it.
It hadn't taken too long to get one of the milling machines up to a usable standard. Sure, Hakke had needed to dismantle the mill's head to access the main motor for some light repairs and to reapply grease to the various moving parts. And buff and clean out old metal chips from the various traversal screws. And remove the rust that had begun to accrue on the various pieces that needed to be rust free. Not to mention he had needed to cannibalize the other mill to reconstruct one or two minor features, which was slightly trickier than he had anticipated as they were different brands and therefore built to different specifications. That, and the idiosyncrasies that Dust had introduced had forced him to reevaluate his building plan, but once that was done, he was able to actually get to work.
Come to think of it, he could slap together a prototype pretty fast now that the mill was up and running. There were plenty of hand tools included with the maintenance kit from the Syndicate van, and he could use his Light as a makeshift arc welder to attach and cut the metal. Wasn't easy, and he'd probably burn the hell out of his fingers, and it would take longer than an actual welding tool, but it would work. Eventually.
Back home, he was able to at the very least spot weld thin metal like this by running a current of Arc Light through his hand and letting the stream leap between his index finger and thumb. Arc Light wasn't something he was good at manipulating, but he was capable of generating and controlling smaller quantities if he focused. Now with the Barrier running interference, he found that it was even harder than normal.
He rooted around through the scrap that was scattered all over the garage, eventually finding several lengths of some alloy of steel that roughly fit what he was looking for. Eventually, he planned to utilize some of the material he had harvested from the Arcology remains that had come through the portal with him for a final piece, but that was bound to be a ways off yet. The Arcology materials were far too precious a resource to waste on prototypes. He may end up being wrong, but Hakke suspected that he wouldn't find anything of that quality locally.
He began to plane down the metal to a thickness that he expected to be better for the design he had in mind as Callie said something to him. And then said something else, but louder. And then finally rammed his head.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Hakke! Really?"
"What?"
"I've been trying to talk to you for the last sixty seconds! A whole minute of you ignoring me! And before you tell me that's not a lot, I will force you to go through the same thing."
He looked at her twitching, floating, angry form before looking around the garage. Natural sunlight had infiltrated the building fully in bold midday beams. The entire garage was lit up by it in fact. At the same time, he could hear the occasional vehicle pass by on the street outside.
His eyes narrowed. "Wait, what time is it?"
"Just shy of noon. You've been at this for seven hours now" She sighed dramatically. "I should have known you would have gone straight for the mills. I swear, why didn't I end up with a classical, well learned Warlock? You know, someone who gets lost in a historical tome or studies the intricacies of Golden Age philosophy, instead of finding the greasiest machine they can and tearing it apart for scrap."
"Hey, don't insult your mechanical brethren, Callie. It's not a graceful thing to do." He turned back to the haphazard metal arm brace currently chucked in a vice. Unfortunately, he had been in a flow state during its construction, a mental state that he would be hard pressed to get back into. And that was a darn shame. Most Warlocks he knew had a specific path of research that they obsessed over all else. The nature of the Light was one topic guaranteed to have Warlocks arguing amongst themselves for days at a time, but there were others as well.
Toland the Shattered had obsessed over the Hive and their Sword Logic, a path that eventually led to him going mad and listening to the Deathsong to its lethal conclusion. Like an idiot. Apparently some claimed that it was possible to find his soul, or essence, or something, travelling the wastes of the Ascendant Plane or the haunted tracks of Earth's moon. Osiris was another, except his obsession had been in understanding the enigmatic Vex, one of the most ancient and truly alien threats that had nested in the Sol System. The staggeringly complex simulations of that machine race were so good that they could essentially predict the future.
Those were the most famous examples. Warlocks were prone to obsession over knowledge, and it would lead to madness if they weren't careful. Thankfully, Hakke's obsession so far had only been a threat to his schedule, not his mind. As he was immortal, an obsession that ate his time wasn't the worst thing he could have developed.
Hakke's love was machines and tech. How to build them, how to improve them, how to invent them.
Give him some materials and tools, and he was a happy man.
Especially when he got in a groove, like the flow state; it was like his mind had clicked into high gear, and he could almost see the final result and the steps needed to actually bring it into reality. He didn't reach that mental state often, and it was absolutely where he did his best work. For Callie to interrupt it meant that something important was going down.
Something violent.
He grabbed a loaded pistol off the bench. "We both know you never interrupt me unless it's important, so who and where are they?"
Callie shook her head. "No, it's not that. Put the gun away, we need to talk."
"Oh. Sure." He put the gun back. "What about?"
"We need to come to an agreement about what to tell Detective Cerulean."
"As far as I'm aware, we've already had that conversation with her."
"Are you-." She sighed. "Look, I know our go-to strategy is to wing it, but that's not viable for us anymore. Especially with this. She's a Detective, and from my limited research on her a good one. That means she'll know when a story doesn't make sense, and she also has the skill to look into figuring out why that is the case. And what that means is simple: she's going to eventually demand the truth about us."
Hakke shook his head. "I think we'll be alright. So far I don't think I've done anything to indicate that I'm too unusual, outside of one or two social blunders. But even that could be explained away by the very true fact that I'm not from any of the four main Kingdoms. Every little village in the middle of nowhere has their own quirks, and there's plenty of those scattered from hell to breakfast on this continent. Remember Örnsköldsvik or whatever that village north of the EDZ was called? The one that ate that six plus month old fish? Smelled so bad it kept the Fallen at bay?"
"I remember your adventures with surströmming."
"Dark times. My point is that the further out you go the weirder people get. And let's be honest, we're from pretty damn far out."
"True. That is a good point..."
Hakke crossed his arms. "I feel a 'but' coming on."
"But…" She swirled down to eye level. "No village on this planet has transmat tech. Or glimmer. Or guns like you use. Or Light. And yes, I can whisk away the arsenal on the table to digital storage, and we can claim that your Light is Aura, but our new ally is sharp and she will eventually put together the pieces and deduce that we are full of it."
Oh.
"Well. Yeah, okay. I can see that becoming an issue. But we both know the truth won't fly. We already talked about it a little bit a while ago. Being vague is our best bet for the time being, seeing as I very much doubt Remnant has dealt with aliens before, which by definition we are. I mean, their colonies can't be too expansive yet, maybe early Golden Age at the best. You know, research stations on the moon at least, but aliens are probably still bad sci-fi to these people."
"Hakke, they don't have colonies or moon bases. They don't even have satellites."
He visibly twitched. That exact detail had slipped his mind. "Right. We should figure out how they have hard light projectors and VTOLs but no satellites eventually. Back to the topic at hand, the point I'm trying to make right now is that the truth about who we are and where we came from would be considered insane, because from their perspective it actually is. I'm not sure what else we can do on that front besides keep on keeping on. That and prove we're a legitimate ally."
"I know. I just don't like it, is all. It just feels messy, and is bound to cause us some grief later on. It also doesn't really matter in the end, at least as far as getting our main objectives done. Specifically finding the Crown and finding a way home." She tittered thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about the events that got us here. A powerful Hive wizard opens a portal to the Ascendant Realm, which is transformed somehow by an artifact made by said Wizard that seemed to eat your Light. Then the Crown is sent through and directly into the waiting arms of a pack of mercenaries working for some wealthy client."
He stared, running through the events of his last day on Saturn's moon in his head. It had been relatively straight forward, even when he included the chaos and madness of the last week, but he hadn't sat down and laid out the play by play. It helped that he had been preoccupied fighting Grimm, and then fighting mafiosos. Still, he believed that he knew where she was going with this.
"You don't think that was an accident."
"I think the hunter we met at the Arcology was wrong, I don't think Dûl Yurnath ever wanted the Crown to reach Earth. I think she wanted it to come to Remnant."
Hakke didn't like that thought. "I don't like that thought. Especially, since it kind of makes sense. Earth is full of Guardians, all who know the basics of dealing with Hive garbage: IE, don't deal with it unless you absolutely have to. But here… have you found any mention of the Hive, or Hive-growth, or runes or anything that could be related to the Hive on that Intranet?"
"I haven't found anything on the public forums, not even on the conspiracy theory circuits in the city's forums."
"So the Hive either haven't shown up yet, or more likely the people here haven't found them, if they're on world at all. So why not? I can't imagine that a Hive Wizard would go through all this effort to make something like the Crown and not have an established presence to hand it off to. Just doesn't fit their M.O."
"Once again, we don't have enough information. Yet. The fact that our adversary is a daughter of Savathûn only makes our task harder. At least with the other Hive gods the City has run into, their plans have been understandable, even straight forward in comparison."
"...Right." Hakke knew what she was talking about. Hidden by means that were entirely unknown to the Guardians was the amethyst stronghold of the Awoken: the Dreaming City. It was the capital of the Reef, and the seat of power of the Reef's Queen. When the Hive God Oryx, arrived with his war fleet, one of the casualties of the resulting war was the Dreaming City. It was infected with the Taken, a literal army of the damned that Oryx had personally corrupted. After Oryx was destroyed, his sister Savathûn managed to complete the process of Taking the city itself in a horribly effective plot that had completely gone under the radar.
But that is what Savathûn, now the Queen of what was left of Oryx's Taken, was good at. Plots and ploys that are nigh undetectable, or designed so any action taken to prevent them would just further the Hive God's plan. And the fact that Dûl Yurnath's title was Deception's Prodigy, there was a very, very, very good chance that the evil plot apple didn't fall far from the evil plot tree.
"So how the hell do we counter that." Hakke finished.
"I've been thinking. If getting to Remnant was the goal, and Dûl Yurnath needed Light in conjunction with her magic to get the Crown here, I don't think she wanted us involved."
"What do you mean she didn't want us involved? That Crown chewed up an entire super's worth of Light to warp us here, if anything it sounds like she needed a Guardian to get things going."
"Exactly. A Guardian. Only one. She wanted the Hunter. Think about it! She told us that the Hive didn't destroy her Ghost, they only damaged it, and then only enough to ensure that she wouldn't have been able to be revived. And yet she was still well enough to use the Light. And judging by how they had wounded her earlier, and how physically traumatic the portal was…"
"The Hunter probably wouldn't have survived the trip. And even if she did, you know damn well she would have been in a rough spot, physically, mentally, and geographically." Hakke picked up the thread, nodding along. "Alone, badly wounded in the woods, and fresh out of a disastrous fight with the Hive. The Grimm are empaths, they would have been able to sniff out her bad mojo; she would have practically been a flashing neon sign for them."
"I bet that Yurnath didn't want, or expect, us to be the ones who went through."
Hakke raised an eyebrow at that, a smile creeping its way onto his face. "Sounds like we might just be the wrench in the gears then. I definitely like the sound of that." He clapped his hands together. "Still, no excuse to be idle. We're going to need a way to detect Hive crap in Vale. We still don't actually know jack or squat about whatever the Hive's plan is."
Hakke began pacing back and forth, rolling the problem over in his head. Detecting specific species wasn't actually something that a scanner could do, at least not the sort that he could build. He could whip up a basic biometric detector, but in a city full of life approximately the size of the average Hive, that would just be a waste of time. He knew there was a way, he had answered and helped disrupt more than one Hive ritual over the years as they were called out over open comms. Then the question became how they detected the ritual.
The answer came to him. "Power. Every big source of power out there can be detected with the right sensor. And I've never seen a Hive ritual that hasn't required crazy amounts of power, usually from really exotic sources. If we can rig up and plant sensors around Vale, we can create a referenceable grid to pinpoint energy spikes."
"Hmm." Callie tittered. "Has promise, except for the fact that the entire city runs on Dust, which also meets the definition of exotic energy."
"Well, yeah, but we can plan around that. All we need to do is make a database of what the city does normally, where the power plants are, when a normal spike or surge in energy, that sort of thing. Most of that info should be public domain, no hacking needed. Once that's done, it's just a matter of waiting for an anomalous spike to show up."
"Making something like that wouldn't be too challenging either. Well, most of the pieces at least. The more advanced sensor nodes I can make with glimmer. I would still recommend building as much of it as you can from local components. These things are going to be expensive to make."
"How much glim we talking?" Hakke asked.
"15 thousand. And that's the lowest estimate."
"And we have what? 80 thousand left?"
"Roughly. A little less than that."
"Looks like I need to get some materials. How much Lien do we have after the Junior bribe?"
"We have a few hundred, which seems to be a fair amount. At least enough to get some basics covered. I've been transmatting Lien cards off of the various Syndicate thugs you've put down. It's been pretty similar to how I'm able to extract glimmer from enemies back home. Now, back to the original question I had. Do we have any real plan besides 'wing it'? Because it sounds like we don't."
"Your right, we don't. Look, all my best ideas come when my back is to the wall."
"Hakke, your fireteam calls you the Patron Saint of Bad Ideas."
He continued, ignoring her quip. "Well figure out something that'll get the job done. Right now, we're going to milk that whole 'mysterious stranger with a sordid past' angle. Yeah, that'll work. Probably." He shifted his position, returning his attention to the bench of guns. "Any luck with prototyping sample Dust rounds for Midnight Coup?"
She floated over to the hand cannon. "Even better than prototyping. While you were tinkering and ignoring the world around you, I ran some simulations and I believe I have ironed out the best options. Originally I had about a dozen designs planned, but after the sims I have three for you. They're built into recycled ammo cylinders you typically use with the gun, so I should be able to recycle and recreate more rounds as usual from battles we engage in." A flash of light appeared on the bench, leaving behind three loaded cylinders for Hakke's hand cannon.
"When can we test them?" He asked, picking one up and inspecting it.
"Where. Where is the question you're looking for. We are in the heart of a city, Hakke. We can't open fire willy nilly in this garage. However, this is a seedier part of town, and there is a gun shop with a range relatively nearby. I think we could swing a deal there."
"Neat. We'll probably need to sign a waiver or something, in case I blow my hand off, but that should work. I'm going to continue working on this bolas gauntlet, should help even the odds for the next big fight when that swings around. And yes, I know, I'll catch my five winks once Cerulean is back up and running." he paused. "How long have I been up?"
"Since the last time you died, 116 hours, or 4.8 days. This is right around the time hallucinations would start cropping up, if you didn't have me to suppress them."
"Cool. Also thank you."
Callie tittered haughtily as Hakke returned to the task at hand. Within a few minutes he had returned to his happy place, measuring, marking, shaping, and modifying the arm brace into a shape that would allow him to mount the bolas securely. He had decided on a pull trigger, similar to a grenade pin, that would be operated by his other hand. He didn't have time to engineer an automatic loading system to feed new bolas into the firing mechanism, so he simply had the slide on the outside of his forearm. Not the most efficient thing overall, but it would do the trick.
As he worked on the launcher, Callie continued her monitoring of the building. The security system could work on its own, as it was mainly a basic proximity alarm system based off of sensors that had been built into his helmet. Thankfully, none of them were needed for anything that he would be up against in the foreseeable future, seeing as the majority were to help aid the helmet's built in radar. With Callie nearby, the sensors were entirely redundant.
Another twenty minutes went by, and by now the bolas launcher was beginning to take shape. And by that, Hakke could now actually see a physical item that could technically fit the definition of what he was trying to build. As he was attempting to use a tap to add threads to a recent bore hole, he heard the side room door open as Cerulean finally emerged, stifling a yawn.
"You know," The Detective began, "I was having the wildest dream, and then I opened my eyes and remembered that it wasn't a dream. Gods, what a day."
She walked over to where Hakke was working, giving the setup a once over. "I see you've been busy. Really busy. And… where did all of these guns come from? I don't remember seeing anything like this," she placed a hand on Hakke's City made machine gun, "in the van. Were they- no. Whatever I guess, you're just going to say 'close enough', aren't you?"
Hakke stopped what he was doing. "Am I really that… you've known me for like, less than twelve hours."
Cerulean shrugged. "I'm a Detective. Reading people is what I do. Look, I'm pretty aware that I'm not going to be getting a straight answer from you, at least not on the more personal stuff, I guess. And I am choosing to be okay with that, as long as you don't hold back details about this case. Or whatever this mess with the Syndicate is."
By now Hakke's attention was entirely on Cerulean. He wiped his hands on a relatively clean towel he had found in a cabinet. "Works for me. Speaking of the Big Mess, we should really hammer out our next move. The faster and the harder we can hit these guys the better, especially since that's probably not what they'd expect."
She raised an eyebrow. "Straight into it already. Okay. I can do that. Did you find any coffee or food or anything in one of these cabinets? I could use a pick me up right about now."
"I did not." the Warlock said, shaking his head. "There is some basic kitchen stuff up in that office space for some reason, alongside the only faucet in the building for some reason. Don't think that meets any building code I know. No coffee, sadly. There is an empty minifridge however."
"Dammit. I was hoping Pierre would have kept the place stocked. Well, I hope you have some Lien to cover some basics, because I don't have anything."
"I've got a few hundred to my name. Should be enough to get things moving, I hope. So. The next step."
"Alright, fine. To start off, let's assemble what we know. Somewhere in this city is a team of three mercenaries: Doc, Sage, and the last one."
"I called him Slick."
"They're working for the Syndicate, and had a hand in bringing me in to one of their bases, and were the ones who attacked you and took the thing you were guarding. I was targeted after I started looking into a missing persons case, although it is possible that they wanted me dead from one of my previous assignments." she looked over to Hakke and elaborated. "I work in the organized crime cases. Normally, it's just fraud or embezzlement, and even then they're just sacrificial pieces to appease the Handshake."
"The what?"
"It's a criminal code of conduct. You operate in Vale, and you're big enough to be someone, you abide the Handshake. If I could get my hands on my files at the precinct, I could start digging and try to figure out why I'm being targeted. At the same time, I have some other contacts that I can start calling up, I should hopefully be able to find a few that Ponci hasn't gotten to yet, and from them I can start piecing together what the Syndicate is up to, and hopefully get a bead on the Mercs. They're probably going to be our best source of information."
Hakke nodded along, before a thought struck him. "So, I think I told you this already, but I did pay a man named Junior to hunt these guys down for me."
She froze. "And I told you that trying to cash that in would be a bad idea. Hei Xiong's a known information broker, clean enough that we can't take him down, but absolutely connected to the big crime families. Sorry to say that that money is as good as gone."
"Not necessarily. Callie, wherever she flew off to, is great at digital information gathering. If I can get her in, she can yank that info right out of his computers, even if they're a closed system. I could definitely get in and out before he manages to call in the cavalry, that, I can guarantee."
"If I'm not mistaken," Callie said as she floated down from the ceiling to join the conversation, "Junior is an independent element. Which means he will not allow Syndicate men to linger around for too long, at least not while his club is undergoing renovations."
"It's still a terrible idea. If anything went wrong, it would put everything at risk, especially if they took you alive."
"Well, a quick phone call to the man wouldn't hurt."
"Phone call?"
Hakke blinked. "Scroll call. Same difference."
"I still think that doing that is a bad idea. Especially if you were there earlier, that means that they know what you look like, and that means that he will tell the Syndicate if they ask. The man's only interest is in his own self preservation. He will absolutely stab you in the back if it gives him an advantage."
"Wouldn't it be in his best interest to remain neutral? I doubt that many people would be willing to use his services if it gets out that he is willing to sell his clientele off to the highest bidder." Callie asked.
"None of us are clients, not in his eyes. I'm a cop, and you and your… you two are unknowns. Little better than drifters."
"Fair enough." Hakke said. "Well, now that you're up, I'm going to try my luck catching a few winks. I'm sure that both you and Callie can figure out... stuff." He waved a hand for emphasis and headed to the back room.
Truth be told, he was more than willing to let the two of them hash out the finer details of a plan. Hakke's skill set was more arranged towards executing a plan, rather than the planning itself. That and research and development, he was a Warlock after all. It was pretty stereotypical, now that he thought about it. Titans were the strategists and mainline defenders. He had once stumbled into a meeting between members of the Gatewatch Order who were arguing amongst themselves. They hadn't ejected him outright, and his curiosity had made him linger long enough to realize that he was in over his head. He doubted that Cerulean would talk to the same lengths about overlapping fields of fire or the most advantageous styling of structural murderholes, but it was close enough for him to be comfortable dipping out.
It was an interesting experience however. Made him sympathize with the poor Titans who stumbled into any lab that he or another Warlock was working in, even if strategy meetings were less exciting and had less of a risk of lab equipment causing disintegrations.
He began his usual routine, confirming that there were no weapons within arms reach and removing his jacket to bunch up as a makeshift pillow. Once that was done, he laid down on the bare mattress and stared up at the ceiling. It was plywood, and had water stains running along the northernmost wall.
He hated sleeping.
At least when he was awake, he was capable of controlling his thoughts. When he was asleep, he found that his mind tended to wander to places he didn't like. Maybe he could hold off on this, get some more work done on the Gauntlet or do some experiments with Callie's new Dust Rounds. With a sigh he began to sit up, before he felt Callie stop holding back the symptoms of his sleep deprivation. Now that his Ghost had done that, he fell back against the mattress with a thud, and within moments he was out.
No longer on Remnant. Back on Earth. The City. Home.
He was running through the cramped and crowded streets of the City, past abandoned food stalls and storefronts, heading towards the thunder of gunfire. Above him the night sky was glowing an angry red as warships and fighter craft dueled, individual ships vanishing in brilliant flashes of fire and light as they were torn into shrapnel that rained down on the city streets below. His progress was slowed by the throngs of Lightless civilians rushing the other way, desperate to get to shelters built for this exact eventuality. A kaleidoscopic nightmare of flowing people; men, women, children. Families.
Greasy smoke trails erupted out of an alleyway and tore into the crowds, accompanied by deep, harsh bellows tearing from alien throats. He saw the things in his sights, ugly brutes almost twice the height of a man, and almost as broad as they were tall. Watched as his bullets ripped them apart, staining their red-scaled armor black. Watched as his Solar Light turned flesh to ash. Monsters into corpses.
The only thing he felt stronger than his panic, was his anger. Not for himself, but for the Last City and its inhabitants as the forces of the Cabal and their Red Legion burned it down around him. As their machine enveloped the form of the Traveler itself high above him.
He killed and killed and killed, and yet there was no end to them. He gunned down a Psion that had taken aim at an Exo man in Militia clothing. He pulped the chest of a Cabal Legionnaire before it fired a grenade into a building full of huddling civilians. He hoisted a chunk of rubble off a pinned Awoken woman. But it seemed that for every person he saved, there were two bodies lying still on the street.
His comm told him that the Young Wolf herself had boarded the Cabal flagship to kill whoever their commander was. A swelling of hope took root in his chest as he charged across a plaza full of burning banners towards a Mag-train station where Guardians had been gathering civilians. An evacuation point. His fireteam was supposed to be there already, he could see them fighting tooth and nail along the station's perimeter.
Standing atop the burnt out husk of a City made Drake tank, a Red Legion Centurion waved a battle standard with obvious pride, as if the butchery around it was something to celebrate. The familiar heat of a Dawnblade burning in his hand, Hakke rushed forwards with a roar throwing waves of incinerating Light at the thing that dared - shrapnel hit his head.
His surroundings changed. He was standing in an Empowering Rift alongside other Guardians, sending a wall of lead to smash apart the Red Legion soldiers that dared attempt to break apart their defense, their bodies spread thick across the courtyard ahead.
It wasn't enough.
It would never be enough.
Guardians fell around him, their corpses dragged back to be resurrected so they could retake their position. Hakke himself fell, before having life sent back into his body so he could retake his place in the defense.
He had never cared about the Cabal. They were present in Sol, just another alien threat to be put down. But now they were here. The lives they had claimed could not be replaced. He had never cared about the Cabal before, but now? Now he had a reason to hate them, and a way to showcase that hatred. When these big bastards were pushed out of the city, even if it took him a hundred years, he would personally see to it that every one of them that dared set foot in his city would - shrapnel hit his head.
Okay. The shrapnel was worse. It hit again. Hakke whipped Midnight Coup around to kill whatever thing was trying to brain him only to find his hand was empty. He looked at his empty hand dumbly for a moment, and then to the enemy he had just tried to kill. It wasn't a Cabal Legionnaire, it looked like a human, albeit with strange, slightly larger and more floppy ears than most humans he had seen. He blinked before recognition finally kicked in. His hand reached back to his head and he massaged his eyes.
"Here." Detective Cerulean said, handing him a styrofoam cup full of something steaming. He took it and looked at the contents, a dark broth full of ramen noodles. "I know a bad dream when I see one. They're a hazard in both our lines of work."
"Thanks." He said. There was a set of cheap plastic chopsticks attached with a thin layer of plastic to the side of the cup. He pulled them free and returned to the Detective. "How long was I out?"
"Few hours."
"How did you…" he noticed several paper balls scattered around where his head had been. "Were you throwing those at me?"
"Oh yeah. I didn't need Callie to tell me not to get close to wake you up. She somehow gave me access to my bank information, so I got a bunch of takeout to stock the fridge. Figured that would be the best way to stock up without risking getting seen by any roaming Syndicate."
"Not a bad way to handle it. Anything noteworthy go down?"
"I used that Scroll of yours to get in touch with someone who I think can help us out, get us pointing in the right direction. Other than that, the apartment shootout is all over the news right now, no mention of us, though that is to be expected. News always leaves out some details to prevent a panic from starting, especially when they have that Syndicate hit team in cuffs."
"That's good."
"Not really. The rest of the VPD probably has something on us now, and seeing as the Syndicate probably has more than one person in their pocket, that might make things harder." She sighed. "Things could be better."
"Well, we can't fix that by being idle. Guess it's time to get back to it." Hakke grabbed his jacket and got up, meandering past Cerulean and towards his gauntlet. He tried the ramen, which seemed to be a vegetarian variety. It was good nonetheless, even if it wasn't nearly spicy enough for his taste.
"But," Hakke said between bites. "If the Syndicate are going to start using cops against us, we might want to consider stepping up whatever nonexistent timetable we have."
Cerulean leaned against the doorframe of the side room. "What are you thinking?"
"You said that Junior has connections to the big crime families in this city, right?"
"Why do I feel like I'm really not going to like what you're about to say?" Cerulean said nervously.
"Now hear me out," he said, pointing his chopsticks for emphasis. "I've got an idea."
RIP my uploading schedule streak. Now that I'm in my last semester, I have a pretty decent amount of material to crunch through. As such, there's probably going to be one or two more of these two week gaps instead of the one week gaps I've been using so far. I've debated swapping over entirely to a two week upload schedule until the semester ends, but right now that doesn't seem necessary. Time will tell if I have to eat them words later.
Yee haw It's that time again.
Artyom 1198 - It would actually solve almost every problem he's been having. Which I find hilarious, since Hakke missed the Stasis train by less than a week.
Master-ofmanga - Heck yeah, loot activates the goblin brain, the most important part of the average Guardian's brain.
The Baz - It is done.
aLostWanderer07 - It's a fun and wacky world to write in. Glad your enjoying it!
