Aurae sneaks into the place Luke's being held once he put on a black cloth to cover his face that the helmet didn't cover and found Luke's Ghost. His Ghost sighs in relief when they see Aurae.
"Thank the Traveler you guys are here! They're about to interrogate him!" His Ghost says with worry.
"Well, we better hurry up then!" Aurae says and starts running with the two ghosts behind him, invisible of course.
Other soldiers see him running and are confused, but then they assume he's running late to something and some even chuckle.
Aurae sees Luke getting dragged away through a hallway. He struggled weakly against his restraints and looked extremely tired.
'W-what happened to him?!'-Aurae.
'Now is not a good time for questions!'-V.
'What am I supposed to do?!'-Aurae.
'Beat them up!'-V.
Aurae, if he could, would've gulped. There's two soldiers taking Luke to an interrogation room, and they're more strong and prepared looking than the other two soldiers he knocked out. They seem to be laughing at Luke's struggle and Aurae hated that.
He doesn't exactly know how strong they are, but he's still worried about his own safety and Luke's safety without light.
'Welp, time to head in without a plan!'-Aurae.
There's no other soldiers around thankfully, probably because this was reserved for prisoners and these two soldiers only. But if he causes too much noise, the others might hear him. He's not gonna dwell on that because he needs to save his teammate now.
He takes out Borealis, and without thinking, he headshots both of the soldiers. They drop dead and he runs towards his friend.
'Aurae...you do realize you killed two innocent humans.'-V.
'They're not innocent! Well...I think they're not innocent. And...I forgot that they're not like us and can't be revived. Too used to killing guardians in the Crucible and Gambit. Oops.'-Aurae.
'You'll be labeled as a criminal in this place now!'-V.
'Er...let's think about that later.'-Aurae.
He puts away his sniper rifle then places Luke's left arm around his neck to help him up after he fell from the soldiers' grips.
Luke coughs then smiles behind his helmet's visor, "T-thanks, Aurae. Where's...Grace?"
"Haven't found her yet unfortunately. Let's focus on getting out of here first." Aurae replies.
Aurae let's go of Luke for a few seconds and Luke leans against the wall with a confused look on his face, "What're you doing Aurae?!"
Aurae pulls out one of his rocket launchers and blows up a hole that leads to the outside. Then he runs—well, more like walks as fast as he can with a limping Luke using him like a crutch—out. Luke is stunned by Aurae's course of action, but doesn't have any time to think about it as Aurae drags him away.
"What do you think you're doing? We're gonna get caught with all the loud commotion you're making!" Luke exclaims.
Aurae just shrugs and heads over to where the second soldier he knocked out was, "Hurry up and put on his armor. I didn't want to run the other way down or the soldiers will catch us. I'd rather be noticed outside the building instead of inside where we can easily get caught in closed spaces.
Luke nods his head, "True, I guess."
Luke's ghost scans the armor then transmat them to replace the armor Luke was wearing seconds ago.
"Alright, we're gonna head out of here and go to this school thingy I joined. Hopefully Ozpin won't be too suspicious." Aurae states.
"Who's Ozpin?" Luke asks.
"Principle of said school." Aurae mutters then starts walking away with a slightly less injured Luke following him. Luke's ghost was able to heal most of his injuries, so he's alright other then a few bruises.
"What'd they do to you by the way?" Aurae questions.
Luke glares at no one in particular, "They were chasing me everywhere I went. When I lost my light, I was vulnerable. So they took the chance to capture me while I was unconscious. Those bastards... After I woke up, I was cuffed to a chair and couldn't get out. They decided torturing me was fun, tried to get information out of me."
Aurae frowns, "We'll get them back for this, don't worry. Once we find Grace and maybe even our light, we can make them suffer."
Luke shakes his head, "I would capture someone I didn't know anything about too. It doesn't matter anymore, at least you got me out."
As they walk out of the kingdom, multiple soldiers are running around, looking for the escaped prisoner. Aurae and Luke tried to look less suspicious while also trying to get out of there as soon as possible.
"Come on, if you crashed nearby me, maybe Grace was nearby too. I didn't see any clues around that she was nearby, but that's how Grace is. Do you think she went to one of the kingdoms to find out about things?" Aurae wonders.
"Probably, unless she ended up somewhere else. Since we ended up at the same place though, there's a high probability that she did too." Luke replies.
"We'll worry about her later, I'm sure she's doing fine because I haven't seen any News reports about her yet unlike someone I know." Aurae quipped.
"Hey! I was vulnerable okay! You're lucky you ended up somewhere better." Luke complains.
"Not really, this world is really weird. You'll get what I mean once you see what exactly happens around here and know what's considered normal." Aurae responds.
"Can't wait!" Luke says with excitement. Aurae just sighs in defeat, Luke was too curious and innocent for his own good. He obviously didn't understand Aurae's misgivings about this planet.
Once they're back in the forest, they summon their sparrows and drive to Vale. Luckily, another day didn't pass so Aurae thinks he didn't miss much. Ozpin will probably question him so he'll have to think of an excuse quickly.
Then Aurae remembers something, "Did you hack into their systems while I got Luke out, V?"
'I did geez, I made an ID card for you. Since you didn't think of a name fast enough, your alias is _.'-V.
[Oof, haven't thought of a good name yet. Suggestions?]
'Not bad. Still wanted to name myself though.'-Aurae.
'Too late for that.'-V.
He quickly checks his inventory to look at the ID. He likes it, but the description kinda sucked. Aurae applies the Midnight Talons shader to his armor and puts them on. He tells Luke to put on his most normal-looking armor with a decent shader on.
[Time skip to when they're almost back to Vale but still in the forest]Abruptly, a voice is heard only by Luke and Aurae, "Guardians..."
Aurae turns around to look for the source of the voice, but sees nothing, "Uh...Luke? Isn't that the same voice we heard when we got our new subclass from those trees?"
"You mean the Traveler?" Luke comments.
"Yeah...could this be a lead for getting our light back?" Aurae asks.
"Maybe..." Luke beamed.
They wander around to search for said trees, and come across one. This time though, it looked more dark than usual.
"Guardians...I have managed to get my light to you guys. It is not the end yet, but here begins a new start. Your destiny...has been changed." The voice says, barely audible and just below a whisper.
Aurae stands there, stunned. He knew the Traveler chose them specifically for saving humanity, but this was insane. The Traveler meant for them to come here? But why?
Somehow, the dark tree manages to extract some light from itself and spread it out towards Aurae and Luke. A little of it disperses to go to the next guardian that's still lost.
Aurae feels way better now and was about to say something, but is interrupted by the voice, "You both now have new abilities. I trust that you'll use it for good. Both of you and your other friend will go through a harsh path. Farewell and choose your decisions wisely."
The tree disappears, leaving both of the guardians dumbfounded.
"We both saw and heard that, right?" Luke asks.
"Yep..." Aurae answers.
"Also, new abilities? I thought everyone had only two subclasses. Except you of course, you have four." Luke reflected.
"Well...we can try them out later. I don't want to be caught by anyone when using it," Aurae pauses after realizing something, "actually, we can try them out now. People will just think they're our semblances."
"Our what now?" Luke queried.
"Semblances are abilities almost everyone unlocks on this planet. They only have one though, so I advise that you guys only use one of your subclasses around people so they won't question us having more than that." V supplies helpfully.
Aurae checks his stats to see his new abilities. He notices that he got some new subclasses. He previously had four including Arcstrider, Gunslinger, Nightstalker, and Blade Barrage. Now he also has he other two: Spectral Blades and Whirlwind Guard. Which is amazing to say the least.
"OH MY TRAVELER. This. is. AMAZING!" Luke practically shouts out and is getting giddy. He only had two, but getting the rest was like a wish come true. He used to only have Striker and Thundercrash. Now he also has the rest. The only bummer is that you can only use the one equipped.
When you change your subclass, you have to wait for your super energy and abilities to load again. This makes things more fair so guardians don't instantly change to any subclass and use it. Guardians would be very powerful if that could happen.
Since there's no orbs of light from what Aurae could tell from killing Grimm. They'll have to wait even longer for their super energy to charge.
This seriously sucked but at least they got new subclasses and their light back. Maybe they'll even find Grace soon.
