Chapter One: Welcome Back!
A small drone, shaped like a multi-pointed star, floats across a battlefield. It looks over different corpses, before settling on one that's laid up against a cargo container. Seemingly crouching down, as if a drone as tiny as your closed fist can do so, it suddenly bursts outwards. The edges of the star fly off the body before abruptly stopping, floating like geometrically-precise snowflakes in midair. The being it hovers over gasps suddenly and rockets to a sitting position.
And just like that, a Guardian is born.
The newborn Guardian continued to gasp for air for a few seconds before regaining their composure, looking at their hands. "What happened?"
"I don't know," the drone responded, peppily. "But it killed you."
"So then how am I talking to you?" the Guardian challenged.
"Well, I resurrected you." The drone's shell spun a few times.
"And you are…?"
"Pepperidge!" the little drone said brightly. "A Ghost. There are more Ghosts, too, but none of them are yours. Only me. I'm your Ghost."
A roar shook the crates, making the new Guardian wince fearfully. "What is that?"
"Fallen, I think. Alien scavengers. Not nice. Probably will kill both you and me!" Pepperidge chirped, entirely too merry. "We should probably get you a weapon."
"Yes, probably," the new Guardian groused. "Where's my rifle?"
"Oh, someone stole it," Pepperidge answered, still unbearably cheery. "I think it was a Warlord."
"Warlord?"
"No questions right now! Fallen!"
Right as Pepperidge said those words, a Wire Rifle shot hissed past the newborn Guardian's head. They dove for cover behind a burnt-out car, cursing in Russian. Two smaller, two-armed aliens began to charge her position, followed closely by one wearing more significant armor with an additional two arms. She waited for them to close the distance before jumping out and punching one in the gut, making it double over, and grabbing one of it's two arms. There was a sickly tearing sound before the arm came free, losing the grip on the dagger it was holding. The Guardian scooped it up off the ground and turned, hurling it at the other unarmored alien, and swept her leg under the dismembered one, knocking it to the floor, before stomping on their throat. There was a slight cracking sound as etherbone gave way.
The final alien looked at the sight of one wild-eyed lady, doused in ether, and began to back up before a shock pistol round hit it in the forehead. It fell backwards, curling up on itself like an arachnid, dead.
Pepperidge bobbed happily. As the Guardian drew in a massive, shuddering breath, they chirped, "Well, that was fun!"
"Mm-hmm," the Guardian muttered, slowly losing the adrenaline high that had come over her. "Fun."
"We should probably get moving."
"Yeah. Let us."
The Guardian stooped to pick up the wire rifle that the armored alien had dropped as Pepperidge hovered around their shoulders.
"I should give you a name," Pepperidge murmured. "What should your name be?"
The Guardian ignored the question, hefting the wire rifle as she looked for a way out of the area. A small slit in the wall around the area was the first thing she saw, so she moved towards it.
An armored Fallen leaned around the corner. The Guardian fired their wire rifle, hitting the alien square in the head. They hissed and fell as the Guardian hurried to the slit in the wall, checking around the corner quickly and finding a much larger Fallen with a huge fur behind their head. Acting on pure instinct, she threw a grenade.
She didn't have a grenade, but she still threw one.
A cold purple sphere of… pure nothingness appeared in her palm, and she threw it like a knife at the Fallen. It impacted directly on their chest and sent them flying backwards into one of their two-armed compatriots. Seizing the momentum of the fight, the Guardian hit it with two wire rifle shots before switching targets.
Her wire rifle ran out of ammo.
So she did the next best thing and flung herself at the Fallen as if she was Wei Ning, pummeling them to death with her fists and a smidgin of Light.
After the corridor was cleared, the Guardian continued to fight her way across the Wall. Long corridors provided sniper fights. A wire rifle shot burned into her's gut, and she cried out in pain. Some sixth sense, however, made her funnel the Light into a rift around her, accelerating the healing of the wound by what felt like ten thousand percent.
She re-peeked the corner and charged her wire rifle, removing the head of an armored alien at the end of the corridor.
After that, she asked what had happened.
"I don't know," Pepperidge responded. "There are a lot of things I don't know."
Shorter corridors, mostly ninety-degree turns, resulted in fistfights once more. Invisible Fallen made their presence known in these tiny areas, jumping with knives at her. The first one managed to kill her.
The dagger plunged into her gut, but not before she was able to slit the four-armed bastard's throat. Gasping for breath, she collapsed.
And promptly sat back up.
"I thought I died," she gasped.
"You did!" Pepperidge would've been grinning if she had a mouth. "I just brought you back again. It happens, you know?"
The next room she faced was far more open, with a fur-covered Fallen on the opposite end and two not-quite-invisible Fallen attacking from the shadows.
"Pepperidge?" she asked.
"Yep! What do you need?"
"Can you play music?"
"Name it!"
"Something… that fits uncertain times."
Pepperidge said nothing for a few seconds, before selecting a song.
"Once you were all sea-folk and you sailed upon the sea," Pepperidge began to sing, just as the not-invisible Fallen attacked.
She stole the knife from one of the not-invisible-anymore Fallen and stabbed it, then stabbed the other one, then charged the fur-Fallen, shoving the shock-sword directly into their throat. Ether hissed from the wound as they clumsily counter-attacked. The Guardian wavered backwards, so the attack just missed, and swung the sword upwards, slicing off the attacking limb, before stabbing the fur-Fallen again.
The little drone- no, Ghost- was still debating what name to use as their Guardian wandered across the plains of the Eastern Flood Zone. The lyrics of the song that Pepperidge had played earlier remained in the Guardian's mind as she observed the wide open field. "Crossed the roaring ocean with the Devils at your heels," she muttered.
"Oh, the time has come again now, I'll tell you how this will unfold," Pepperidge added. "I wanna see the western ocean painted black and gold!"
"Welcome to the seaside," the Guardian continued, watching a patrol of red-colored Fallen walk along the grass. "It's been occupied."
Pepperidge finished, looking over towards the future Lord's Watch. "Burrow to the bottom, and behold! The motherlode, of black and gold."
The plains taught her rough lessons. Lesson one; never take the obvious path. She watched two Fallen get ambushed by bandits on the obvious path, and vice versa. Their blood and ether tainted the mud and left the area smelling foul.
Lesson two; never rest in the open. She learned this lesson by stealing a rifle and ammunition from a lone bandit. Creeping through the tall grass, keeping noise to an absolute minimum, she approached them crouching with nothing but a stolen shock dagger. They were sleeping on a rough bedroll, with two storage pockets on the side of their sleeping bag for storage. Very, very slowly, she took the contents of the storage pockets, mostly food and ammunition, took the rifle, and then got cocky.
Nudging the bandit with one toe, she expected them to wake up. No response. So, she lifted their chin slightly, wedged her boot in between, and stomped downwards, crushing their neck. The bandit was then dragged from the sleeping bag, which was stolen, along with the bedroll.
Lesson three; just because something was cruel, didn't mean that it would automatically fix itself.
Day after day, she came upon dead refugees, stolen supplies, looted buildings.
How many more would die if no one stopped these thieves? An infinite, incalculable number. Something had to be done. But when no target presented themselves...
She slept in lofts of empty houses, with a rifle by her side. She held enough of a memory of her rifle to know that the one she used wasn't it. This one fired fully automatic, and wasn't very accurate. Her rifle was a semi-automatic, for one, and secondly, it was very, very accurate.
On her fourth day of this new life she'd been gifted, Pepperidge spoke up with something important to say.
"I've got it!"
"Got what?" the Guardian asked.
"Your name! You are now Mortica Richards!"
"That's not my name." Mortica sounded confused. Pepperidge couldn't fathom a reason why she'd be confused, however.
"Well, until you find something better, that's your name," she concluded.
Mortica shook her head. A detail about her rifle came to the forefront of her mind. An engraving, etched into the wooden stock.
"No. My name is Talahashi. Ema Talahashi."
"That's a nice name."