A Spark Reminder

"Keep it." John's words took a moment to sink in.

Not because she wasn't listening. She was. Kind of. But as she stood there, holding the helmet in her hands in a meek offer for him to take it back, all she could focus on clearly was the training area he'd taken her to.

There, laid out in front of them, was what looked like a very large and very distressed mix between a sports court, a paintball arena, and a jungle gym for adults off to the left.

Not that Nicole had ever been at paintball. Or messed about in a jungle gym. And the last time she'd been anywhere near a sports court had been during PE and that'd a) been a while and b) been horrible. She'd come last running. Hrm. Last at everything, really. Every time, too.

At least this place didn't seem to have a running track. Instead, it had walls and half-walls and entire small buildings dotting it. The more she looked and thought about it, the more it all looked like this place had once been a few blocks of houses, with roads and yards and garages and whatnots, but one day everyone and everything had decided to pack up and had simply left. What remained were a handful of frames (those robot things) loitering in the ghosts of what'd been streets once, surrounded by scorched walls.

She leaned her head to the side a little. The ground had scars.

Tap-tap. Two hollow raps made her stop staring at what'd stopped looking like a sports court and more like a war zone that'd had the war cleaned up.

She tore her eyes away from it and looked at John — who'd given the top of his helmet two quick knocks.

"Welcome back," he said, carrying one of his quiet smiles.

Nicole grimaced and lifted the helmet some more, enough to have the back of it nudge his chest. Take it already, the gesture meant to say, but John waved her off.

"Keep it," he repeated. "It was my first one and now it's yours."

"Ah—" Nicole stared at the helmet. "I don't know what to say."

Surprising no one, Ghost did. And he said it well, too. Full of genuine excitement and gratitude all wrapped into two simple words: "Thank you!"

Then the helmet vanished, undone by motes of bright blue light to be stored god knew where. With her hands empty, Nicole stood around looking exceptionally dumb — until a series of loud cracks snapped at the air in quick succession and there went her day.

CRACK CRACK

CRACK

She made an embarrassing little noise, dropped her hands — and almost dropped the rest of her to the ground right after. Gunshots. Not the ones that'd spat after her when she'd run from the Fallen, but gunshots anyway, and they made her flighty rabbit brain tell her to dig a hole, get in, close it up, and never come back out.

John hadn't moved though. Not even a step. He still stood there, perfectly straight, with only his head turning slightly so he could look out across the training grounds, an unreadable expression sitting on his brow.

"Just some target practice," he said after a beat. His eyes landed back on her — and then promptly jumped up to focus on something over her shoulder.

Nicole shuffled on the spot and turned around.

Dear Traveler,

My Guardian has a helmet now. Not just any helmet, either. It's the Young Wolf's. His first one! The very same one he wore when he fought Sepiks Prime. Isn't that awesome?

Yeah. Yeah, it was. So much in fact that Ghost had problems sorting through the complex arrangement of signals bouncing through his processing core while they spelled out giddy excitement — and that he almost missed his Guardian turning around to find Ikora Rey walking up to her.

The Warlock Vanguard wore a traditional set of robes today, ones made for battle, rather than the lighter one she wore while strategizing Vanguard business for hours upon hours. The fit was loose enough to allow for mobility, but it looked heavy and thick, with armour layered into already sturdy cloth. Though it still was mostly purple and had a high collar framing her neck.

At the sight of her, his Guardian's nervous energy (the one that'd been rolling off her on the entire ride here) rose.

"Welcome to the Drumfort grounds." Ikora's tone was firmly planted somewhere between flat and kind — until her gaze slid over to Shepherd, anyway. It gained a hint of mirth then. "You took your time."

Shephard showed his palms, the picture perfect image of innocence.

And his Guardian? His Guardian blurted how it was her fault because she'd gotten the scenic route on a sparrow and it'd been nice to see the City and and-and-and — as she went on, Ikora and Shephard looked on, bemused.

"I'm glad you're getting the opportunity to look around," Ikora said eventually, before indicating Drumfort training grounds with a slight nod of her head. "Come. Let's walk." She turned, the tail of her robe snapping behind her, and left his Guardian standing there with her jaw set tight.

It took Ghost inching after Ikora for his Guardian to finally take the first step and he wasn't sure what to make of that. Nor what to think of Shephard following them, rather than returning to his sparrow and taking off to do Young Wolf things.

Which were probably quite the things. Exciting things. Heroic things. Ghost's core gave an excited chitter. Maybe some of that'd rub off on his Guardian? Not today of course. I mean, I'm not in a rush or anything. But at some point? Between Ikora Rey and him, she's got to pick something up.

"I admit I'd been a little worried you may not accept my offer." Oh. Yeah. Right. Walking. (Or floating in his case). And all the listening to Ikora while she had her head slightly turned to regard his Guardian as she kept pace with the much taller woman. "But I'm glad you did."

His Guardian gave a shy shrug.

For a while after that, no one said a word, so Ghost scanned every inch of the grounds he could get his eye on. He'd not been here before. Sure, he'd visited other training setups; the ones closest to the Tower in particular. Those were always busy, buzzing with at least a dozen Guardians locked in practicing how to wield their Light and perfecting their aim. The Drumfort grounds though? They were practically empty, save for three Guardians occupying the firing range at the far end and the Redjacks standing by to have their bolts punched out of them.

Ghost sometimes thought Redjacks all came out with a little masochist coded in.

"How are you feeling?" Ikora asked once they'd moved a good way into the grounds.

His Guardian turned her potential answers around in her head. "Anxious," was what she settled on eventually. An honest answer.

Ikora nodded. She stopped and faced his Guardian. "Have you had any more visions?"

Ghost's shell clicked together. It was a reasonable question, but his Guardian shrunk at the mention of vision as reliably as things got wet when it rained.

"No," she said, her voice small as a drop of water. "I mean. I don't think so." She fidgeted and looked around.

Ghost did the same, noting how Ikora had walked them into a wide square loosely fenced in by three hip (people hips) high walls and one much larger at the back. They were reasonably shielded from prying eyes in here; no one would bother them.

"I've had a nightmare." At that, his Guardian's eyes cut to him. A plea for something rolled along with her look. Or some sort of request for permission.

Being clever, and oh so observant, he caught on. "It had her experience an involuntary Void Light discharge," he said. "Knocked me out for a moment, butIwasfine."

His Guardian grimaced.

"Fine," he repeated, leaning into her direction and slanting his top fin up.

Ikora regarded them both quietly for a moment. The look was… intense, Ghost thought. Felt a bit like she stared right into his Guardian's soul and right into his core, picking at their secrets (did they have secrets?) and laying out the foundation for some sort of judgement.

Then she smiled.

"Lets see to helping you control that. Would you like to start?"

No.

That was what she wanted to say. But Nicole said nothing. She nodded and swallowed her heart back down — since it'd gotten too good for living in her chest and seemed to want to move out by means of exiting up her throat.

And then she almost let it. Because Ikora lifted off her feet.

Not as in 'she jumped'. Or hopped. Or any variation thereof. She pushed forward with her back as straight as ever and, quite simply put, left the ground behind, her soles no longer connected to dirt and grass but a good few inches above it. The inches turned to a foot and the foot to like three or four and Nicole's jaw unhinged.

"She can FLY?" she blurted.

Ghost wiggled himself close to her head. "Guardian perks."

"Warlock privilege," John added. He'd come up beside her, his arms folded. "I'll bet you a cup of coffee you'll be up there with her in no time."

Up.

There.

With Ikora. Five or maybe six feet off the ground she was now, with one leg slightly tucked up and her arms extended in a welcoming gesture. Nicole's helplessly flailing mind scrambled for a reference to all of this, something reasonable to compare it to, but there wasn't anything. People didn't fly. Or float. Comic book heroes did though and so that was what she got; freeze frames of Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch locked in some iconic mid-air pose.

She snapped her mouth shut. This was ridiculous.

Ikora pivoted to the side, facing away from them. Her arms came up. The air inhaled — pulled in a breath so deep, it dragged at the knot of heat burning in Nicole's chest — and deep, dark purple Light began to coil around Ikora's floating form. It sprung up like a living thing. One with a deep seated want. A need that boiled under its surface; a current of galaxies coming apart.

Nicole had all but forgotten about comic books.

Ikora brought her hands together in front of her. She cupped her hands and rolled an invisible soccer ball between them — until the Light poured readily from her arms to fill the empty space. Tighter and tighter and tighter it twisted and, finally, demanded very loudly to be let go.

She did just that.

With a forward motion of her hands, Ikora cast the begging Light out in front of her. It swelled, the dark and rich purple dancing like the intimate doings of galaxies under a sheet. Larger and larger it got, until it could have swallowed Nicole up in one go, and finally crashed into the dirt with enough force to rock the ground under their feet.

Holy.

Shit.

That had been a nova bomb, as Nicole learned once Ikora had settled her feet back on the ground and had walked over to them with the same grace she'd carried while airborne. A small nova bomb. Tame had been the word Ghost had used to describe it. Nicole didn't want to know what a big one looked like. Or felt like, for that matter.

And now, with her insides still seemingly a little rearranged after what she'd felt coming off Ikora's Void Light, Nicole stood faced with a question.

"I don't expect you to conjure a nova bomb," Ikora reassured her. "We'll start smaller. A lot smaller. With this, for instance—" She raised her hand, palm facing up and fingers lightly curled, and there came the Light again. Purple tendrils spun themselves between her fingers and wrapped around her hand and wrist. "—by calling your Light forward." Ikora tightened her fist. The Light vanished. "No more."

Ha-ha. 'No more' her arse. No more than asking a penguin to fly. Because that was what she felt like. A fat, wobbling penguin standing in front of a royal sort of crane.

"Right. Uh. How?"

Ikora arched a slender brow. She'd folded her hands behind the small of her back and returned to studying her like she'd done back at the Revive the first time they'd properly met; with exceptionally keen interest.

… what could a crane want from a penguin?

"We've come to understand that you turn to the Void when you're frightened. To help you escape. To shelter you."

Nicole nodded lamely. "Suppose."

"So what is it you feel before it answers?"

"Anxious."

"More than you do right now?"

"Exponentially. So I guess it's more like… fear. Terror. I'm about to get eaten sort of thing."

"Hmmm. That's where we'll start then." Ikora gave her a small, encouraging nod. "Not with the being eaten part, of course. Don't worry."

"A-ha-ha." Nicole's nervous laughter came out all wrong. It was a miracle she hadn't gotten the hiccups.

"Bottle up your apprehensive energy. Exhale. Deeply." Ikora closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath. "Feel the beat of your heart, the flex of your stomach. Focus on the tension in your core. On the pressure of your fear trapped there. Then—" She opened her eyes again, immediately landing them back on Nicole. "—pull on it. And call it."

Alright. She could do that. She could be scared. She'd had a lifetime of experience after all — and a lot of intense practice lately. With her heart already getting a headstart, Nicole did as instructed.

This won't work, was her first thought while she stood there with her eyes closed and her head positively spinning from just how deep she exhaled, robbing it of oxygen. You probably look like you're horribly constipated. How embarrassing is that?

Very. That was how. So much, it added fuel to her anxiety and brought it to a quick and nasty boil. Which was probably why she ended up being wrong.

It did work.

Her fear welled from her chest — and on the way it flipped about like an upended table and brought its promise of vertige, of an escape into the cold that was not cold at all, and before she knew it, Ghost began chattering excitedly and Ikora made a quiet, approving noise.

Nicole opened her eyes. Slowly, of course. Carefully, afraid of what she'd find if she was to be honest with herself.

At some point during her breathing exercise, she'd lifted her hands to hold them lazily out in front of her chest. Those same hands were now sheathed in wisps of purple Light. It wasn't anywhere near as punchy as Ikora's had been. Compared to that, Nicole's was flimsy. And where Ikora's had seemed controlled and eager to fulfil some purpose or the other, her's shifted and drifted like liquid smoke without need for structure. It also kind of… fell. Again not much like light at all, because light shone and didn't leak like water to trickle down and collect in wispy pools once it touched the ground.

Nicole closed her fists much like Ikora had. The Light puffed from between her fingers and finally vanished.

By her feet— right where the Light had fallen —stood tiny, timid blades of grass framed by patches of rich green moss. She swallowed thickly and looked up.

Ikora wasn't the only one staring openly at the new greenery. A Ghost had appeared by her side, one with a dark shell highlighted with red painted on, and thin, sharp-looking extra fins slanting backwards. After an awkwardly stretched out moment of looking on in quiet fascination, Ikora and the Ghost finally exchanged a wordless look. It made Nicole feel a little as if she was intruding on a moment of sorts.

Her Ghost came to the rescue. Or, well, buzzed to the rescue.

"I knew you could do it!" The way he'd said it carried enough pride for the both of them, which was for the best, since Nicole hadn't quite figured out how to be proud about this yet. Her eyes flicked down to her hands. Her once again very normal hands with pale skin, fingernails that'd need a trim at some point soon, and no Light in sight. "Had no doubt, ever," Ghost went on and zipped about to let his eye scan the grass her Light had grown. It got him rambling about whatever readings he picked up and whatnots, all of which quickly drifted into the background of Nicole's mind catching up with what she'd just done.

That she'd done it.

It was a little overwhelming, she had to admit.

Was she meant to be happy? Giddy? Elated? Huffing quietly, she turned her head a little more to look for John. As if maybe he could tell her what she ought to feel — give her an idea on how she ought to proceed from here.

But John had at some point abandoned her. He'd wandered off to sit on one of the short walls, had Darrow glued to his ear chattering about the same readings Ghost was going on about, and a lollipop sticking out of his mouth while his eyes were solidly set on her. He smiled when he noticed her looking. A sort of heavily curled smile that favoured one end and gave the lollipop between his lips a lazy roll. He also flipped a hand up to give her a thumbs up.

So… Nicole fidgeted. Everyone seemed to think this was going well, yeah?

She squared her shoulders a little and turned back around to face Ikora.

"Alright. What's next?"

Ghost compiled himself an expertly put together montage of his Guardian familiarising herself with her Light. It was a bit of a tip-toeing kind of experience for her. An uncertain leap from one revelation to the next — from one set of instructions Ikora Rey gave her to the other.

"Breathe in…" she was told. "Then imagine yourself to breathe out elsewhere."

His Guardian did as instructed. Once. Twice. After frustrated breathing exercise number five— with her vitals indicating her head must have been swimming —Void Light rushed through.

SNAP

She was gone.

Not for long though. Blinking was instant. Good as, anyway, even if Ghost could measure time in minuscule enough units to stretch the moment from her vanishing to her reappearing.

SNAP

Turned out she'd imagined herself to breathe out closer to where he hovered. Here with Darrow, the ever-quiet Ophiuchus, and right next to Shephard.

A whirlwind of translucent Void came with her as she blinked back into view, dancing around her like so many strips of flowing cloth. Her feet touched down— she'd come back an inch above the ground —and she staggered.

Wait. What's that?

His sensors read a spike. Then another. An electric— Arc? —discharge reverberating between the push and pull of Void; some uneven, clumsy drag of a bow across strings of Light. Out of tune. Out of place.

It lasted all the way through her tripping and almost hitting her chin on the stubby wall.

Almost. She would have (though he could have fixed her right back up afterwards) — but Shephard shifted where he sat and caught her with a quick, decisive grab.

The odd flicker of Light (that certainly wasn't Void) spiked one more time and then it disappeared, leaving behind a chitter running up and down the waves of residual Void Light.

It was fascinating. Not only to him, either. Darrow and Ophiuchus had two keen eyes fixed on his Guardian — which he liked about as well as one would expect. Ghost puffed himself up and swung in front of them. There. That should ruin their sensor readings a little. Because what were they going to do with them? Darrow'd yammer on about how his Guardian's Light was off and Ophiuchus would quietly absorb it all. While he... he valued it.

He'd finally stopped thinking of it as if he'd done something wrong when he'd raised her and come to understand that this was what the Traveler had wanted.

This. Whatever this was going to be.

Yeah, he valued it. And so he packaged the readings up alongside the montage of his Guardian's first steps as a… Guardian. Then he wrapped it all between a Dear Traveler, look at this! and a Love, Ghost, and felt his core swell with so much pride he momentarily thought he'd need a bigger shell.

Though then he asked himself: Why is Shepard still holding on to her arm? and threw the Young Wolf the most suspicious of suspicious squints ever shaped by a Ghost's eye.

Nicole was famished.

Which contributed to how she'd already eaten half of the sizeable crunchy-foodstuff bar John had given her. Where he'd got it from she didn't know, nor did she very much want to care.

Nicole was also exhausted — and yet the farthest thing from it she could imagine. Where her body felt creaky and worn, stretched beyond limits that it hadn't ever before had to cope with, the rest of her was more awake than she'd ever been before. As if someone had pulled a weighted blanket off her brain.

It freaked her out a little.

She chewed through the confusion (and her food) while Ghost floated to her left, his shell giving off those quiet and familiar ticks and whirrs that'd become a part of her surroundings. To her right hovered Darrow. And next to him was Ikora's Ghost, whose name she couldn't remember no matter how hard she tried. A few days and a bunch of hundred years ago that would have freaked her out, too. Today (and maybe today in particular) it didn't.

Your normal isn't normal any more, she admitted to herself. You've made grass grow, got floating small people on your shoulders like devils and angels, and are about to watch two space wizards fight. All perfectly reasonable.

Said space wizards were having themselves a little conspiracy over in the arena Nicole had flailed about in earlier. Whisper whisper whisper they went, with their eyes occasionally shifting over to where she sat on the short wall.

Another demonstration was in order, Ikora had suggested earlier, right after John had asked her if she'd like a break and maybe a snack. A demonstration requiring a second Guardian.

Finally, John turned away and walked a good distance before facing Ikora again. Bit like two olden time gentlefolk getting ready for a… duel.

Nicole suddenly sat up, her shoulders tight, as a thought occurred to her which'd been absent until now. "Wait. Wait. They aren't going to— no one's going to get hurt, right?"

Gosh, how'd she not considered that earlier?

"What? No. They'll be fine." Ghost's shell wiggled with excitement so palpable she thought she could taste it alongside the last bite from the crunchy bar. Today seemed to be his personal cloud nine. Good on you, Little Light.

Darrow, on the other hand, intoned a scoff.

—and then Ikora's feet rose from the ground, equally graceful as the first time, ribbons of tight purple Light springing up all around her as if to carry her. It was eager. Ready. Barely contained.

Nicole felt it all. She shrunk back.

A hollow ooomph reverberated through the air, echoing all the way through Nicole's blood. Ikora thrust her hands forward. The Light collected in the palms, wove itself into a dark and threatening sphere before it flung towards John.

Not that he cared. Not a lick. The Light rushed at him and all he did was stand there, while Nicole good as fell forward with an alarmed squeak having a ball in her throat.

The blast hit him.

Or it would have, anyway. In the moment between two heartbeats, John set his feet and threw his right arm up. With the motion came a sheet of hardened, purple Light; a shield. A literal shield. Round, slightly curved, and evoking a likeness to the shield of someone who could 'do this all day long'.

The blast of Ikora's Light collided with the shield, and the shield abandoned its clear, tight shape to stretch itself all around him like a dome.

What followed was a bassy explosion rocking not only the air and the ground, but probably every bone in her body alongside it. So much, she was surprised some of them hadn't downright cracked.

Ikora's Light webbed across John's dome in a cascade of ferocious ripples, tearing at it as it went and finally cleared him to vanish as it touched the ground. The moment it'd gone, his dome broke with an audible snap and pulled itself back together into the shape of a shield. Which he then promptly threw. The thing shot up at a sharp angle and missed Ikora by a mere inch given by a slow and almost lazy twist of her shoulders. As if getting rammed by a spinning sheet of Light might sting at the most.

Somehow Nicole thought it'd do quite a bit more than that.

Once the shield had gone past her, John clenched his fist and— whamp the shield vanished, along with the last swirls of residue purple around his legs and arms.

And that marked the end of the demonstration, as it so turned out. Ikora came back down, landing gracefully and with a light hop for garnish, and immediately went to look at her. So did John.

Nicole dumbly stuffed her unhinged mouth with what was left of the crunchy bar and pretended to be too busy to chew to react to the look she was being given. They did not seem deterred. They kept looking.

She swallowed. Hard work, that. Her mouth was so dry the whole thing went down exceptionally scratchy and got her wheezing while she made her protest. "No way. You're mad. I'm not doing that." Wheeze. Wheeze. "Nope. No. You can't expect me to do that. Nuh-huh."

"Hey, I've seen you bubble up," John said. "Pretty impressive for someone who doesn't know what they're doing with their Light. But—" He glanced at Darrow and held out his right hand by his side, palm up and fingers curled. An exasperated sigh and roll of Darrow's eye later and a ball appeared in John's hand; a perfectly normal and perfectly innocent round and yellow thing. "—we'll skip the lightshow and start with this."

Nicole set her jaw. She'd have liked to file a complaint. Real badly. Especially to her heart, which'd got busy banging itself silly against her ribcage.

Could she?

Do it? No, not the complaint filing. The shield bit.

"You can," Ghost encouraged her.

"Your Little Light is right." John beckoned for her with a wave of his hand. "I bet you'll ace it."

And so Nicole tried, because what'd she have to lose?

She traded places with Ikora, who left her with another breathing exercise in passing. Something about exhaling sharply. And holding after she'd done so, thrusting her fear into it. It didn't make much sense, but nothing had yet and still it'd worked out.

But oh boy was this one different.

Didn't take long and she found out just what she'd had left to lose: Her dignity. That was what. Whatever little of it she'd had left crumbled away the moment John chucked the ball at her the very first time. He didn't throw it particularly hard, either. Just kind of lopped into her direction, giving her enough time to try and scrape up the anxiety from where it dwelled behind her heart.

But all she managed was to stare at it dumbly as it came her way and then… uh… catch it in her hands.

John snorted. "Not what I'd had in mind, but alright." He motioned for her to throw the thing back. She did so.

He snatched it out of the air with a downward grab and a quiet grin on his lips. "Eyes up."

The second throw had a wee bit more force behind it, though once again all she did was catch it. And that was how this went for a while, back and forth the ball went, sometimes picking up a bit of speed and then coming at a soft and more careful arc. Once, he angled it so she had to stumble back and jump. This one she returned with a twist of her hip and a snap of her shoulder.

And alright, this was stupid (fun) and she felt terrible (great), with every throw making it more difficult for her to focus on the fear she ought to pull forward. Hard to drag that from her chest when there wasn't any, since it'd apparently swapped spots with a charged, electric sort of delight.

Toss number who was counting? finally had her summon a weak roll of vertigo. Felt a little like she had to drag it kicking and screaming, really, and all she got for the effort was a faint flicker. Enough to block the ball an inch away from landing in her hand, but not enough to show up as more than a faint shimmer. It looked a little as if the ball had hit water that didn't know ripples were meant to ripple out and not… everywhere. Left. Right. Up. Down. In and out.

No, not much. But it'd been there. She could do this.

And she did. Not only that, but when John threw the ball again, she didn't even try and grab for it. She threw her arm up like she'd seen him do when Ikora had rained murder down on him and willed herself a shield. And a shield she got. A ragged, shapeless one built from vertigo holding her insides together, all bent and thin like a leaf, but with a crest hard enough to catch the ball and bounce it back the way it'd come.

Positively giddy now, Nicole hopped on the balls of her feet and flashed John a wide grin. "I did it," she said, her voice coming out a little breathless and her neck feeling like it'd probably turned every kind of shade of red. Exertion, mostly. Plus a current of electric joy for having found even just the smallest lick of control over what she'd been given without anyone bothering to ask her first.

"You did." He'd scooped the ball up and tossed it back and forth between his hands. "One more?"

Nicole nodded, too breathless for even just a 'yes'.

This time, John put his hip into the pitch. Was hard to miss the shift in his stance or how his arm snapped forward with a lot more purpose than before. Nicole was ready.

Ready.

Ready.

Ready—

Her arm came up. The vertigo she'd relied on tilted. Splintered. Delight poured from its cracks, electric and wild and finally free. It rushed into the violet Light, all sharp, bright and blue veins racing for the crest of her shield — and met the ball just as it cracked into it.

The ball exploded outwards.

Her nose filled with the smell of ozone; of seared air and burnt metal. Her throat constricted. Seized shut. Her spin lit up with pain so complete, she didn't even get a chance to scream before it went ahead and killed her.

Though at least death came quick.

And where she went, Darkness waited.