Langston and Jabes returned to Earth with Examinee 2 in tow, his hands and legs bound and a large potato shoved in his mouth to stop his insane ramblings. Whilst the sounds were pleasant at first, they took on a panicked, shrill tone after he had seen Langston take a picture of his wife off the spaceship's dash, toss it into the trash, and install an odd looking bobblehead in its place. Langston had been unsure of what could have started the shrillness, he was only cleaning up his new jumpship after all. Neither Jabes nor Langston could stand the high pitched wails. They tried many items, but the only thing which was firm, yet supple enough to stay in Examinee 2's mouth had been a noxious old spud.

They ejected him out of the cargo hold onto the roof of 'The Jabes Fire Wolf Home for the Mentally Ruined', which Jabes himself founded to silence the endless legal battles with the Tower. Examinee 2 broke both his legs upon landing but no one could hear his screams of agony through the potato. He wouldn't be found for hours.

Once the remaining pair of sane Guardians made it to the Tower, Jabes strutted to meet with his usual admirers, but this time there was another Guardian the crowd recognized by sheer virtue that Langston's will had not been broken so completely that he merged with the gray floors and walls.

As they made their way through the crowd they were immediately met with Zavala, sitting at his desk, a scowl so deep it could be called a ravine. "Gentlemen," he said. "What in the Traveler's name happened to Mr. Withers?"

Jabes plopped down in the chair opposite the Vanguard commander and put his feet on the desk, "Who?"

"Benjamin Withers!" Zavala bellowed. "The third member of your Fireteam!"

"Ooooh you mean Examinee 2. Well, it appears that his mind was as strong as his bones were brittle, and he crumbled like a soggy gingerbread house. Tragic. Nothing to be done. We'll always remember Smithers."

"Withers."

"Sure."

Zavala started to yell, but his eyes fell upon Langston. Standing unmarred and unbroken next to Jabes. He spoke, his voice low and quaking with rage.

"And you. Crumbler of Shaw Han. YOU seem to be perfectly fine." There was no justice in this world.

"Of course!" Langston said. "Mr. Smithers named me his conservator! Guess who has a fancy new Jumpship, bank account, and potentially, wife?"

"YOU SHALL NOT APPROACH MRS. WITHERS!"

Zavala pulled out an envelope from the Letters to Widows section of his drawer marked Jabes Related Incidents.

"Ok ok," Langston responded, "but can you check if he owned a home or any pets? I need to start the liquidation process immediately!"

"GO! Just… just go." Zavala waved them away with one hand, his face buried in the other.

Jabes and Langston left the office with no consequences for their actions, as was custom. Jabes stretched out his back, leaning his hips forward in a suggestive position directly in front of Dorris the secretary. "Well Examinee 1B, your brain has not collapsed like a dying star. I applaud you. It is time for the second step of your trial into the mighty clan of Fuzz. Are you prepared?"

"As you've said to Smithers, a member of Fuzz clan is always prepared. But as an Examinee, I'm not a full member, correct?" Langston was aware that Jabes wanted him to say that yes he was prepared, however Langston had no clue what was coming. He had to give himself some wiggle room.

"It would be hubris to think you were!" Jabes shouted.

"So, out of a 100, what 'percent' Fuzz clan am I, as an Examinee, at this moment?"

"I forget the rating I gave you for assisting me on the killing of Xol. But there are two stages to the initiation, and you have passed the first. My first trainee to do so in years. Stupid Lewis ruined my streak and now you do the same. Damn."

"So, 50%, right?"

"Mathematically, yes."

"Then I am 50% prepared."

Jabes' robotic eyebrows furrowed, puzzled by the recruit's answer. He was unsure about the mental gymnastics that had taken him to this point, as the correct answer had been 'perfectly prepared'. But upon review, the technically correct answer was obviously, 50% prepared. Jabes struggled between his love of Fuzz clan mottos and traditions, and his fetish for pedantry.

His obnoxious love of literalism won him over to the recruit's answer. Could he actually be a competent trainee? Oh well, only time, suffering, and murder will tell.

Jabes and Langston waited in the Crucible lobby for Shaxx to find them both a teammate and foes to terminate. Smooth Jazz played from the speakers. Jabes' short attention span had run out. He was bored. Which was bad news for everyone else. He searched the sofa cushions for any loose change. He found a single piece of glimmer, programmable matter made of pure energy. He took it in hand and hustled to the window. He opened it, took aim, and launched it with all his might down into the streets. It clocked a homeless man in the face. All the poor surrounding him pounced on the glimmer like a pack of frenzied sharks, or rather to Jabes' mind, sheep. He laughed and slapped his knee, "Foooolish peasants!" He thought back to what Langston had said, about the famine and smiled. "How could I forget!" He returned to the cushions and found a peanut shell. That, too, was lobbed out the window. "Ah, the burden of Noblesse Oblige… Go on serfs! There is your bread! Feast!"

As Jabes taunted the underprivileged, Langston experienced death after death at the hand of Lord Shaxx.

"You won't be getting my wallet Guardian!" The Titan bellowed as he tore Langston in half. The Hunter was back up in a moment, he slid underneath Shaxx as his fingertips barely grazed the leather pouch. Not close enough. Langston grit his teeth. The Hunter's Ghost zoomed in from behind, finally following orders to steal the wallet. He was kicked like a football into the ceiling.

"You realize that this game of ours is delaying your matchmaking! I'll PUT AN END TO IT GUARDIAN!" Shaxx stomped down on Langston's face, stunning him, and retrieved some duct tape from his inventory. The Hunter was hogtied and tossed next to Jabes on the couch.

"JABES FIRE WOLF! IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN!" Shaxx yelled. Jabes had become bored of taunting the poor and began electrocuting pigeons as they flew by the window. Their roasted carcass plummeted and bludgeoned random pedestrians in the noggin'.

"Likewise, Crucible man," Fire Wolf said over his shoulder.

"Your TRAINEE IS FULL OF SPUNK! But he has a lot to learn. Teach him well Guardian."

"Spunk is a Fuzz Clan requirement. Besides, the violence between you two has entertained me. Now go fetch us foes, my good horned chum! I must destroy new meat!"

"HA, confident as ever! Ikora must be proud of you, Warlock!"

"You'd think so, but that woman refuses to give me the respect I'm owed! Despicable."

"Keep trying, perhaps someday." Shaxx walked over Langston toward the door. The hogtied Hunter tried to hop and bite at his heels like a chihuahua in a gimp suit, still struggling for the wallet that had eluded him for so long. Shaxx ignored him and left the room.

"DAMN IT!" Langston shouted into the floor. "Agaaaaiiin…" He slammed his head onto the carpet to punish his own weakness. He was still far from being able to snag Shaxx's wallet. "THUMBTACK!"

Langston's Ghost appeared next to him. He spoke like a person a week overdue on sleep.

"Yes, Langston?"

"Yet again you failed to assist me in the procurement of Shaxx's wallet."

"I… I tried!" The nameless creature squealed in its defence. "He punted me through the ceiling!"

"SHAME!" His gaze bore into the Ghost until it felt naked, like it was lost in an ocean of Darkness. "I thought you wanted to struggle for your goals? I thought you would take your name from me."

It flinched away from his harsh call out.

"And now you give up? I should sell you for scrap. One day you will claim me this wallet, come back victorious. Or die forgotten. Now untie me."

The Ghost floated around to the duct tape and felt a horrible sinking sensation in whatever his mechanical equivalent of a heart was.

"Ummm… I don't think I can…"

Langston flopped to his side to be eye to eye with the machine, "Can't?"

"I don't have hands…"

Langston narrowed his eyes, disappointed, but satisfied that he had identified yet another source of insecurity with which to manipulate the once optimistic Ghost. "You can summon the dead but can't cut duct tape. At first I thought you should be ashamed, and now I know that I should be ashamed. Of you." The little bot sank to the ground in self loathing as Langston flopped to the other side. "Fire Wolf! I require assistance!"

Without a word Jabes took out his shotgun and blew a hole into Langston's head. The Ghost screamed in shock and revived Langston immediately in an immense pool of light, the Guardian now free of his bondage.

"Are you ok?" Shouted the Ghost.

"I am now. No thanks to you." Langston flicked his victim right in the eye. The Ghost wept silently and disappeared back into Langston's inventory. He would cry for hours. At that moment Shaxx returned with another Guardian, clearly a newbie.

"Just wait in here, rookie, and I'll find you three some opponents. Look after him, Fire Wolf, this one has potential." Shaxx closed the door and the rookie's eyes sparkled as he stared up at the monomyth before him.

"You, you're the legend. You're Jabes!"

Fire Wolf let the sound of awe and acclaim sate his non-existent nethers, "Yes, Jabes is me. Call me by my title, squire."

"Sorry Mr. Wolf, I just, I can't believe it's really you. I was resurrected just a few months ago and I'm a huge fan."

"You're a new Guardian? And you chose to disrespect me by referring to mine-self without the title BESTOWED upon me by the greatest Guardian of all time?"

"I'm sorry my lord, but aren't you the greatest of all time?"

"Silence!" The recruit staggered from a backhanded slap. The hand crackled with arc energy as it slid across the newbie's face. Smooth, practiced and terrible. "You are new and full of disrespectful spunk, just like my misanthropic friend here." Jabes gestured to Langston. "I'm sure you will meet my very low expectations."

"I'll try sir, I mean Fire Wolf. If you don't mind me asking, and pardon me, but why are you the greatest Guardian? What's your secret? What makes you so powerful?"

The Fire Wolf brimmed with pride, his chest puffed towards the sky. "Allow me to demonstrate my little pubic louse."

The newbie's eyes grew even wider, Langston had not thought that possible. His fists were raised in childish excitement. Fire Wolf took the unsuspecting lad by the arm and led him to the window, positioning him such that there was nothing behind the boy but empty air and some inconsequential buildings — that were most likely owned by those who did not have the resources to sue. Jabes walked to the center of the room, and pirouetted in a ridiculous flourish. A single word came from his mouth.

"Unibeam." A torrent of arc energy, powerful enough to rival the greatest Hive gods flew from his palms in a beam of pure orgasmic destruction. The recruit never had a chance. All that was left was a smoking pile of atomized dust, and a panicked floating Ghost.

The recruit spawned back to life a second later. He screamed for a moment and then stopped as the phantom pain receded from his nerve endings. "Oh, I see, Chaos Reach you must be a warl—-"

Fire Wolf blew the recruits head off with the fabled Sunshot. He swelled with light.

"That, gherkin, is not why I'm the greatest. I need to sprint." He said. Jabes ran small circles around Langston, panting and saying "Boots boots boots boots boots" under his breath. The recruit respawned. Fire Wolf's hands were on his knees as he gasped for oxygen.

"Unibeam". BWAAAAAAAAAAAM.

After the matter which had formerly composed the recruit became indistinguishable from the ground he stood on, Fire Wolf wiped the oil off his brow.

"That. That is why I'm the greatest Guardian of all time."

He had roasted the recruit alive twice with his godlike powers of light in all of ten seconds.

The recruit spawned again.

"I can get Chaos even faster if I do burpees." Jabes said proudly, hands on his hips.

Langston clapped. When the recruit had again ceased his screaming Fire Wolf began to explain his awe inspiring build.

"I wield Sunshot, the greatest and onliest of hand cannons that fires 150 rounds per minute. I am the smartest Guardian in the system, capable of regenerating light through sheer IQ alone. My boots, the mighty Geomag Stabilizers, allow me to sprint or otherwise perform aerobics which cap off my stores of light." He stroked his shotgun and whispered to it. "And you, heritage, my pretty. My threshy shnoogums. You allow me to charge unibeam at speeds unheard of in the crucible." He turned to the newby. "Mark my build boy, and learn from me well."

"Mr. Jabes, I don't know how to say this, but thresh doesn't work in crucible, and anyways, I can't copy your build! I'm a Titan."

Jabes' eyes narrowed, he cocked his 'threshy shnoogums' and aimed pointedly at the boy.

"You must be mistaken." He growled. The rookie raised his hands in meek appeasement. Jabes snarled. He despised the meek.

The noob went on, "The Tower put out a TWAB, thresh only -"

Jabes prepared to unleash Chaos, but before he could move, Langston took the shot. The noob screamed and fell to the floor.

"OH TRAVELLER! MY KNEECAP!"

"You must have read my mind Examinee 1B." Jabes stared at Langston with a look of… well not respect, but with the fondness of a parent watching their toddler's first successful trip to the potty.

"Of course, I claimed a kneecap, I defended the Fuzz clan's honor. I would be a fool to pass up a wonderful opportunity for Clan sanctioned friendly-fire!" Langston said. Jabes put his hand on the Guardian's shoulder, proud. Perhaps he has what it takes…. Jabes thought.

They watched the lad scream about on the ground. Langston pondered what action would secure him the most favor, the greatest chance of solidifying his place beside Jabes, and therefore, his wallet. As he watched the new Guardian roll around on the floor, the answer became clear: salting the wound.

"You're puny for a Titan, are you, perhaps, a Titanlet?" Langston's attempt to improve the atmosphere only worked for Jabes as he pinched his fingers together to demonstrate the Titans diminutive stature. It was hard to tell if the noob was paying attention through the pain, but he had stopped his squawking.

Jabes bellowed in laughter. "TITANLET! Titanlet! A Jest for the ages! Well done my new friend. I like your style. Bullying the young. Yes, yes. You'd make an excellent addition to my clan."

The new Guardian was shaken, but there was hope in his tearfilled eyes.

"Wait, me? I can be a part of the fabled Fuzz clan?!" Jabes didn't even look at him.

"Unibeam." BWAAAAAAAAAAAM and the noob was no more. "Not you. So what do you say, Examinee—- no, Lugnut was it?"

"It's Langston, Langston Hugs. And I would be honored, your grace."

Several hours later, Langston had proven himself in the crucible. His unorthodox build, comprised of nothing but rare armor, a bow, and the Stubborn Oak, slaughtered many veteran Guardians who were used to more competent styles of combat. Langston was inundated with angry letters over his 'broken bow' build.

The Handcannon meta had finally met its match. The newest member of Fuzz.