I do not own Destiny or any of the characters.
Hunted
"Yes, I remember fighting alongside him," Saint nodded. "He was incredible. I was there the day he finally fell. We built a tomb to protect his body."
"Could you find that place again?" Hunter asked.
Saint nodded. "I could, if I was not going to track down Osiris today."
"Then tell us where it is," Hunter said.
"Very well," Saint nodded. "It is in Old Chicago. The Heart of the city."
Hunter nodded and headed for his ship. When he arrived, he found Elsie and Ana already present, finishing getting their gear ready.
"Where to?" Elsie asked.
"Old Chicago," Hunter said, heading to his armory. "If I know him and Saint, they were hunting whatever creature has a taste for Guardians there."
"What is it?" Elsie asked.
"Most likely some kind of Hive creature," Hunter said. "But we'll have to wait and see. Whatever it is, it's smart. It'll be hunting us."
Ana and Elsie both nodded, and Ana warped back to her ship. Elsie took the controls, piloting them toward Chicago as Hunter gathered his weapons, using his SIVA to form Worldline Zero as he grabbed a Rocket Launcher to go with it. Once he had everything, and had formed dozens of knives along his magnetized forearms, he sat beside Elsie, one hand on his pulse rifle and one hand tracing a finger around the button to activate the ship's defenses. Finally, they arrived, finding the sky blessedly free of Pawns' ships, but a thick cloud of Hive Magic surrounding the city, which had been swallowed by a swamp. Elsie, Hunter, and Ana warped to the top of one of the skyscrapers and sent their ships back to orbit. Almost as soon as they had, something, somewhere in the city, roared in challenge of them invading its territory. Hunter narrowed his eyes, Spark marking the exact coordinates Saint had sent of the cave system their target had died in.
They all started down the tower, Hunter keeping the Ace of Spades out as they descended, the others keeping their rifles shouldered. There was an aura of danger around them, and none of them could calm themselves. Hunter and Elsie's SIVA shivered constantly in warning, but nothing attacked them. The city was supposed to be overrun by Hive, but there was nothing yet. Finally, they reached the ground and something roared again, vibrating the ground this time.
"It's not happy we're here," Ana said.
"Yes it is," Elsie said.
"It's baiting us," Hunter said, staring in the direction the roar had come from.
"It's that way," Spark confirmed. "Three blocks to the caves."
They all started forward together, aiming at anything and everything around them, but seeing nothing. Finally, they reached the cave system and stopped. It was not a cave system. It was a tunnel. A perfectly round burrow hole like that of a snake, or worm. And lying at the top of the hole was an ancient, dessicated corpse wearing Wild Hunt armor.
"Please tell me that's him," Ana said.
"That's him," Hunter said, walking into the tunnel.
His feet suctioned to the side of the tunnel, and after a few seconds, he began to skid down the side of the tunnel. Trickling swamp water rolled down the tunnel past him, keeping the tunnel slick with mud. It also reeked of mud. By the time they reached the bottom of the tunnel and dropped into an enormous cavern, they all regretted entering from the smell alone.
"This place is massive!" Ana breathed, staring around at the cavern and the tunnels leading out of it.
There were dozens of tunnels in the walls and floor of the cavern, many of them leaking water, turning the floor of the cavern into a bog. The cavern itself was roughtly three hundred meters lomg and a hundred meters wide, and it was about a hundreed feet tall. However, at a glance, they could all see that it had been carved by something, as had the tunnels.
"On a scale of one to ten-" Ana began.
"Twenty," Hunter and Elsie said.
Ana sighed, glancing at her dogs, then nodded. "Which way?"
"It's the big tunnel in the center," Spark said. "Be careful. I'm detecting powerful Darkness energy nearby. It...It feels a lot like the Hive from the Pit of Heresy."
Hunter froze mid-stride, then growled in annoyance, swapping his rifle for Worldline Zero and the Ace of Spades. He started forward again slowly, and Elsie and Ana followed, both infinitely more tense now. Then, just as they neared the hole they were heading for, the ground below them shattered. All three managed to escape the strike, as did Ana's dogs, and a massive creature shot into the air, then fell back into the hole for a moment before stopping and lowering its head, roaring at them. Its head was that of a serpent, except that its lower jaw split outward in two sections, was entirely covered inside with a blanket of needle-like teeth, and had a pair of jagged, blade-like bone growths on the front corners of its lower jaw, likely for spearing opponents of comparable size. This creature was roughly sex feet across and probably over a hundred feet long. As it was, with most of its body still in its hole, its scaled body rose twenty feet into the air as it roared down at them, the pale green light of Hive magic glowing from under its dark grey scales and the inside of its mouth.
Everyone opened fire instantly, scattering as the thing lunged, snapping at Hunter. He landed on its back, driving Worldine Zero down into its back, only for the blade to kick sideways and snap before releasing an explosion of Void Energy, hurling Hunter away. The creature shrieked in pain, burrowing into the ground again as Hunter plummetted down a hole. Elsie shrieked and moved to run after him, only for the ground under her feet to suddenly give way as the creature burrowed path under her. The ground fell through a different hole than Hunter had fallen in and took Elsie with it, and a moment later, as Ana was sprinting to catch her, her dogs suddenly tackled her into a third hole to get her out of the way of the creature's jaws.
"Wake up!" Spark snapped, ramming himself into Hunter's forehead.
"That hurts," Hunter groaned, pushing himself up, mud and broken stone falling off as he rose to his feet, his SIVA finally regenerating his wounds. He glanced at Spark, noticing Spark's shell was heavily cracked and small pieces were missing.
"What happened?" Hunter asked.
"There was a cave-in while I was trying to revive you, then I had to excavate you partially," Spark said. "I'm fine. But we've been separated from Elizabeth and Ana."
"I know," Hunter said, drawing the Joker just as several shrieks rang out, these belonging to Hive Thralls. "We're not going to be late this time."
Spark nodded and winked out of sight, Hunter replacing the loss of Spark's flashlight with his SIVA's ability to give him red-tinted night vision. He ran forward, forming a pair of blades along the outsides of his forearms and past his elbows. A moment later, Hive swarmed around the corner, first Thralls, then Acolytes. Hunter opened fire, shooting past the Thralls to thin the Acolytes for a moment before holstering both and drawing his melee knives. Then, he spun as he reached the Thralls, all four blades shredding the Hive. As these blades weren't monomolecular blades, they weren't as fragile as he'd had against the Gegeines, which made it simple for him to all but dance through the Thralls, slaughtering them. Several Void projectiles flashed past him into the walls of the tunnel and Hunter launched himself past the last handful of Thralls to the Acolytes, shredding them rapidly. Several shot glanced off his barrier, and he moved faster, slaughtering the rest without taking another hit. He spun as soon as he finished, tossing his melee knives into the air and hurled a fan of flaming knives into the last few Thralls, killing them. Then, he caught he knives and returned to sprinting. Spark tried to call Elsie or Ana, but couldn't reach either. Instead, Hunter had his SIVA scan for Elsie's, then followed the signal. He heard gunfire somewhere in the nest, for lack of a better word for it, but couldn't tell where it was from. He sprinted faster.
A Knight stepped out ahead of him, firing, but he slid under it, then stood, jumping and spinning in the air, removing its head with his left arm's blade. As he landed, he slashed a Thrall, then stabbed two more before continuing to run, leaving his melee knives behind, recreating them instead. He sprinted into a large chamber, smaller than the last but swarming with Hive. Elsie was pinned behind a pile of rouble, the Hive blasting the pile, chipping away at it rapidly. Hunter sheathed his melee knives and leapt into the air, forming and hurling four fans of solar-charged knives, the explosions moving down dozens of the Hive. The rest roared, turning to him as he reabsorbed the SIVA from his arm blades, drawing the Ace of Spades and a melee dagger and shot forward, rapidly slaughtering the Hive around him. Elsie began to help, but stopped wasting her ammo when she saw Hunter had four SIVA tentacles extended from his back, impaling, crushing, or slashing any Hive behind him or out of reach of his melee knife. Within seconds, he'd finished and retracted his tentacles. Elsie threw her arma around him, kissing him, then pulled back, looking around.
"We need to find Ana!" Elsie said worriedly.
"No, you don't," Ana said calmly, walking down the sloped side of the chamber, her dogs following but spreading out to cover the tunnel exits. "I followed Hunter's trail of destruction."
"Happy to help," Hunter said. "Spark."
Spark flashed into existence in front of Hunter, and he held his hand out, palm just below Spark. SIVA swarmed up from his hand, merging with his shell and repairing it before Stasis crystals formed over his shell in a protective coating. With that complete, Hunter looked around as the ground shook. He narrowed his eyes, reforming Worldline Zero, this time with a monomolecular blade, just before the ground shattered. Instead of one creature, however, there were now three.
"Have I ever told you two how much I hate the Hive?" Hunter asked.
"Once or twice," Ana said.
"Be quick," Elsie said. "If we have to resort to Azidoazide Azide..."
"I'd rather not suicide bomb them," Hunter said. "Go!"
Elsie, Ana, and Ana's dogs all took off, pelting shots at their worms. Elsie hurled Stasis grenades and SIVA grenades as she fired endlessly, the creature she was targetting shrieking in pain, and off to the side, Ana was firing shot after shot into her creature with her Golden Gun, splattering it and the ground in pools of Solar Energy. Both creatures retreated into the ground just as Hunters, now bearing dozens of deep gashes that were bleeding glowing green blood, shrieked in pain and dismay as Hunter leapt at it, shifting his now thoroughly shattered Worldline Zero into a Lament, the thruster screaming. Then, the sword smashed through the creature's stony scales and severed its body just below its head. Hunter flipped to the ground, shifting the sword's SIVA into a grenade and hurled it into a hole nearby. A moment later the ground trembled just before both of the remaining creatures exploded out of the ground, a short flash of Arc Energy chasing them. Both crashed heavily to the ground, and Hunter shot forward, a pair of Dawnbreak swords appearing in his hands. He drove one into the first creature's side, then launched himself at the second, which was raising itself up to burrow into the ground again as the first thrashed in pain, smoke and Solar flames rolling out of its mouth and around the Daybreak sword. Hunter leapt into the air and the creature shrieked in victory, lunging and swallowing him hole, only for an explosion of Solar energy exploded out of its back. He landed on his feet, letting the Daybreak sword fade, and sighed, grimacing as the glowing green blood ran down his body.
"Your Blademaster skills are awesome," Ana said.
"You think mine are impressive," Hunter said, walking a few paces to his left and grunting as he lifted a boulder off of an ancient, armored body.
The armor what looked like an entire powered suit, pale green on the chest, helmet, shoulders and arms, belt, and outer thighs. The abdomen and knees were black, there was coppery brown over the tops of the shoulders between the raised collar-like piece and pauldrons, the insides of the elbows, the insides of the thighs, and a pale greenish-brown boots. The hands included fully-armored fingers, and the belt included several small leather pouches, and there was a broken sword hilt beside him. Hunter held his left hand out, and a Ghost appeared over it in a light brown shell.
"All yours, Daisy," Hunter said.
"This one?" Daisy asked, scanning the body. "But he's been dead soooo long! There's barely even bones left in there! And what's that thing in his head?"
"A neural implant," Hunter said. "It kept a back-up of his memories, and only stopped storing them when he died."
"But it's broken!" Daisy said, shining Light onto the body, despite her complaints.
"It's linked to the Blademasters' HQ main computer," Hunter said, just as Daisy's Light faded, Hunter forming his Reverie Dawn Casque. "You're all going to want to back up. A lot."
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