I do not own Destiny or any of the characters.
Weeding
Hunter walked across the platform in silence, his Pulse Rifle in his hands and his left also holding a pair of Proximity Mine Knives. Elsie stood beside him, but the others all waited at the surface. As they reached the final chamber, they found the enormous tower the crystal had once been on was missing. Hunter formed an enormous tube from his SIVA, setting it on the ground before firing a massive, Solar Laser up through the stone of the Moon's crust to the surface, clearing them a path for when they had to retreat after getting its attention.
"Ready?" Hunter asked.
Elsie nodded, and Hunter held his right hand out, forming a flashbang grenade from his SIVA and dropped it into the chasm below. When it detonated a moment later, Hunter's gut dropped. They'd underestimated one thing. The actual size of their foe. Its body consisted of one main trunk, which could have easly stretched for a mile, for all Hunter could see of it, and which was as tall as Hunter was, if not taller, at the end, which opened like a three-petaled flower, only to expose countless jagged teeth inside the flaps, then a mouth inside filled with pointed fangs as long as Hunter's arm. Aside from the main trunk, there were countess branches and off-shoots that each split into more and more tentacles, thousands of them in total, maybe tens of thousands. And as they rose, as the thing raised itself up to greet them, he saw him. His green Titan armor glinted in the glow filling the chamber. It was riddled with holes, and he lay lifelessly, impales on the thing's tentacles, but he was there.
Hunter glowed with Void energy, streaking up at the hole, Elsie following with a jetpack formed from her SIVA. As they flew, both dropped a dozen SIVA grenades, the thing shrieking in pain as the SIVA drones swarmed into its body and exploded. Then, the two of them were racing up through the tunnel Hunter had made, tentacles swarming after them, including the ones with the Reclaimer on them. As they finally left the tunnel, the tentacles burst out of the hole, only for Cayde to explode forward, pulling Worldline Zero back, then spun, buzz sawing through the tentacles and removing them all. The Reclaimer's body crashed to the ground, and the Slayer grabbed him, all but launching himself away. As he did, Elsie and Hunter formed rocket launchers from their SIVA just as the thing's main body exploded from the hole. Both fired, the rockets slamming into the thing's body and exploding before the SIVA drones they released swarmed into its body, exploding inside of it. One of the unpartnered Ghosts with Hunter appeared and raced to the Reclaimer, beginning to restore his body and armor as it revived him. The Ghost had a shell that was shaped almost like a box around it with the top, sides, back, and front all open, revealing its core.
The thing roared, its wounds sealing, but just as Hunter and Elsie landed, the Reclaimer pushed himself up. Hunter's SIVA swarmed from his back, forming into a trio of objects. The first was an Auto Rifle with the front half shaped similar to a wedge, a digital readout on the back of the top section of that to display the number of rounds left in the weapon, then the pistol grip built into the buttstock in the back by way of a thumb hole. The next was a massive hammer with a head the size of the Reclaimer's torso, a five foot shaft, and a large cleaver-like blade on the back. The last was a simple, slightly curved handle with a small ridge in the center on one side. The Reclaimer caught the hammer, attaching it to the magnets on the back of his armored suit, then the handle, attaching it to his thigh before catching his rifle. As he did, the hammer released SIVA, which swarmed into the Reclaimer's head. He went stiff for a moment before shaking his head.
"I wasn't expecting to wake up again," the Reclaimer said.
"Join the club," the Slayer snorted, sword in his right hand, a double-barreled, break-loaded shotgun in his left.
"Hello Slayer," the Reclaimer said.
"John-One-Sixteen," The Slayer said.
"One-One-Six," the Reclaimer corrected his grammar. "Actually, it'd be One-One-Seven, now."
"John, how do we kill this thing?" Hunter asked.
"It's main body is on bottom," John said. "A mass of whatever kind of plant it is. It's a hell of a lot bigger now, though, so I imagine it's going to take a hell of a blast to kill it."
Hunter grinned and Elsie groaned, rolling her eyes.
"What?" Cayde asked.
"Azidoazide Azide!" Hunter cheered, Elsie and Ana groaning the same.
John, the Slayer, and Cayde all grinned behind their masks. "Oh Hell yes!"
Elsie and Ana both slapped their foreheads as Hunter, John, Cayde, and the Slayer began to sprint around, blasting the creature rapidly with their guns. As they did, Hunter hurled Solar-charged Proximity Mine Knives, Cayde hurled SIVA grenades, which was the only thing he'd learned to make so far, and the Slayer and John both slashed any tentacles that came within reach with their swords, Hunter's knives also targeting tentacles. John's sword was the handle from his thigh wielded in his left hand, which projected two Arc blades, which were curved outward at the base, then straightened as they thinned and extended outward two feet, a narrow gap between the blades.
Hunter passed Cayde and took Worldline Zero in time to streak forward, slashing off a tentacle heading for John, then put it away, hurling a fan of Solar-charged Proximity Mine Knives into a cluster of vines, blasting a couple dozen of them. Then, he leapt into the air, forming a Rocket Launcher and sending the shot into the main body's mouth, the explosion flying back out. The thing roared, rearing back, and all of the tentacles lashed out at him. Just before they struck, John leapt up beside Hunter, holding his arms out to his sides, a spherical barrier of void energy appearing around them. The tentacles exploded into the barrier and sent it exploding into the ground with both of them, but it stopped the tentacles from impacting them directly, negating the majority of the damage. Hunter flipped back to his feet, hurling a dozen Solar-charged Proximity Mine Knives into the tentacles, blasting huge portions of them off. Again the thing shrieked before the Slayer and Elsie passed the thing's main trunk, the Lament's thruster shrieking as both of their swords split the thing's trunk. The gashes were deep, nearly reaching each other, and as the thing shrieked and reared back, its trunk swayed dangerously at the gashes. Hunter swung a hand back instantly, a Daybreak sword forming in his hand before he hurled it, sending it spinning forward in a blurred disk. It split the creature's main trunk along the remaining section between the gashes and the creature's trunk crashed to the ground with a final shriek. Instantly, Hunter and Elsie flew into the air, Elsie using her SIVA jetpack again, then each formed a massive chain gun, firing down into the opening. The bullets ripped through the creature's body rapidly, but just as it looked like they were making progress, the moon's surface erupted, a dozen more of the massive trunks tipped with mouths exploded up from it, a dozen tentacles exploding into the two of them, sending them crashing to the ground. Then, the mouths, all twelve of them, opened and fired massive beams of pure, pitch-black, untainted darkness. The beams set off massive explosions as they struck the ground, then tore around through it. As the beams faded, only John was still standing, his Void barrier having just barely withstood a direct hit, whereas the others had been thrown by the blasts.
"This is a lot worse than I was expecting!" Hunter shouted over the sound of the debris that had been scattered into the air crashing back to the moon.
"It's drawing power from the pyramid!" John shouted back. "It had only just found it when I died, but that was a long time ago, I expect!"
"Sure was!" Hunter shouted, hurling a pair of Daybreak swords at two of the trunks.
Both swords exploded, harming the heads but not destroying them, and he dove aside from a strike from a dozen tentacles. As he stood, his right hand's magnet pulled his Pulse Rifle back to him and he put it away, drawing the Joker instead and taking off at a sprint, firing rapidly as he ran, as well as hurling knives. Cayde was fighting similarly, hurling Proximity Mine Knives formed from his SIVA, Elsie was making use of her cloaking tech, Stasis Shuriken, and Pulse Rifle, Ana and her dogs were standing a long distance away and firing, though doing no more to actually put the thing down than the others were, John was firing his Auto Rifle near-constantly, having traded reloading for firing bullets formed from his seemingly bottomless Void Energy, and the Slayer was using his sword and shotgun, using his also seemingly bottomless Solar Energy to do the same as John, though alternating between firing buckshot and slugs. And still, none of them were making worth-while progress. And to add to the trouble, the heads were now firing their blasts one at a time every few seconds. They were able to avoid the blasts now that they weren't caught off guard about it, but even being able to avoid the blasts, they weren't making any meaningful progress at dealing damage themselves.
"We're not getting anywhere!" Ana said in frustration over their communicators.
Just then, a head exploded up behind her, already charging a blast. Before it could fire, a ship exploded into it from behind, knocking the blast off to the side before it exploded to the ground. The ship was shaped a bit like an arrow with two arms to either side of the cabin, or at least, it should have. One of the two arms had been missing as it fell, and the other exploded off as it hit the head, which the force of the impact blasted apart, amputating the head, the rest of the neck dropping back into the moon.
"Who the fuck is that!?" Ana shouted.
"No idea!" Hunter shouted. "Ana, check on the pilot! If they're alive, we could use the help!"
Ana nodded, sprinting for the ship with her dogs as the others continued to blast the massive swarm of tentacles and heads with everything they had, Hunter and Elsie both even going far enough as to send a pair of Stasis Storms raging around the battlefield, though the thing seemed resistant to Stasis, as instead of freezing, it was only covered with a thin layer of frost and only slightly more fragile than normal. As Hunter flipped over a sweep by several tentacles and countered with several Solar-charged Proximity Mine Knives, Ana reached the ship and opened it, only to grimace at the dusty suit of armor inside with the helmet lying in its lap and a skull where the head should be.
"They're long dead!" Ana shouted.
"One of you, go!" Hunter shouted, a ghost with a silver shell in the normal shape speeding over to begin reviving their new ally.
As it worked, Ana formed her Golden Gun, firing at the mass of tentacles and trunks, spreading pools of Solar Energy around the battlefield and splattering the tentacles with them. She glanced at the pilot as their flesh regrew, along with long, blonde hair. Ana blinked in surprise. She hadn't expected them to be quite so beautiful, especially not with the sleek, powerful battle armor she was wearing. When her sky-blue eyes opened, the suit seemed to automatically power up. Various yellow lights over it came on, and she used her left hand to put the helmet on, the visor lighting up as well. The suit's helmet was red with a strip of silver over the center of the top, two small strips of silver to either side of it, then a steel-grey breathing apparatus on the sides of the bottom. The upper chest was also red, then a golden-yellow for the rest of the torso and between the suit's legs. Its arms, legs, and the top halves of her spherical pauldrons were a pale orange with steel mechanical parts exposed on the bottom halves of the pauldrons, and steel-grey just above the knees. However, the thing that stood out the most was the right arm, which was a sleek, shiny, forest-green cannon from the elbow down.
"We need your help!" Ana said, pointing to the creature. "We have to kill that thing!"
The girl nodded, then leapt out of the ship, clearing Ana with several feet to spare, aiming her cannon at the creature and opening fire, the cannon firing spheres of plasma comprised entirely out of Solar energy. As they all continued to fight, the added help of their new ally did very little to change their situation. Finally, Hunter shouted in frustration and hurled a fan of knives.
"Do you think you can survive five minutes without me?" Hunter shouted.
"Yes!" everyone shouted back.
"Go, now!" Elsie shouted.
Hunter spun, immediately beginning to pray for their survival as he summoned his Sparrow and raced away from the fight. He knew where to find the path directly to the pyramid, but it wasn't a quick trip. He sped across the moon's surface as fast as his Sparrow could go, not letting up for anything, ignoring several Hive firing at him, scoring hits on both him and the Sparrow. Finally, the tunnel came into view and he leapt off of the Sparrow, racing forward through the air using Void Energy. He sped along the tunnel, racing deeper and deeper into the moon. Eventually he was forced to land at a sprint, but pushed himself to run faster than ever in his life. Then, at long last, he skidded to a stop at a cliff overlooking the pyramid and the creature above it. Its main body was truly massive, filling the cavern above him, but he knew full well he could easily blast it all with Azidoazide Azide. The only problem with that was the creatures appearing around him. Pawns. He swore harshly, spinning and hurling Solar knives into them. The knives exploded, hurling the Pawns, but they survived. This close to the pyramid, they were likely drawing power from it. He spun, leaping off of the cliff ahead of a volley of Darkness Goo, then formed his SIVA into a jetpack and shot upward, dropping a SIVA grenade that stuck to the ground and released Azidoazide Azide gas before detonating. The Pawns were all blasted apart instantly, and Hunter shot up to the main body before stopping and forming four massive tentacles of SIVA, driving them into the main body. Instantly, the creature shrieked in agony, its main body vibrating as the tentacles and heads began to withdraw from the surface, moving to attack him instead. However, it was too late. The tentacles detached, the SIVA drones making them up scattering inside of the creature's main body as Hunter spun, flying back the way he'd come quickly.
"Get clear!" Hunter ordered, everyone immediately warping to their ships and racing away from the battlefield.
He made it about a thousand meters through the tunnel before the drones all detonated their payloads. Even without looking, he knew the kind of damage it would cause to the moon. The massive chamber would be filled with the explosion, everything above it would be blasted into orbit, or would break orbit, and the moon's crust below would be shattered, only for the concussion to then rebound. But most importantly for Hunter himself, the surface of the moon for miles would be shattered and would collapse on the Hive tunnels running through them, including the one he was in. Sure enough, the tunnel began to collapse in a wall of falling debris behind him, and chunks began to break free and fall ahead of him as well. As he continued to race away from the collapsing stone, he began to have less and less room to maneuver. However, finally, he shot out of the exit and into a rain of falling debris, only for Spark to warp him to his ship, allowing him to crash into the roof of the ship at full speed, breaking his neck, but not being crushed to death. Hunter's SIVA quickly repaired him, along with Spark's help, and Hunter groaned, sitting up and reabsorbing his jetpack, then joined Elsie, Cayde, the Slayer, and John in the cockpit to survey the aftermath. A massive cloud of debris now obscured miles of the moon's surface, and a enough debris had made it to orbit that it had given Luna a new ring, but there was no way the creature itself had survived.
"Damn, Hunter," Cayde said. "I think you might have over-done it a bit."
"No half measures," Hunter said.
"I agree," John said. "Better safe than sorry."
Elsie nodded her agreement, then shook her head. "You just love to change history."
Hunter chuckled. "That I do."
He turned the ship around, heading for the Last City, and Ana followed with the others. As they did, Hunter wracked his brain to try and remember where the other Blademasters had died.
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