6. Where Aydin is Full of some Surprises.

Nicole made it a singular goal to ignore the warlock as much as she could. He seemed completely unperturbed by her sudden hostility toward him. In fact, he seemed quite happy about it. Campus 9 was, for the most part deserted. They would run across the occasional pair of hobgoblins, sitting high on the rocky cliffs or atop the taller vex structures. Nicole would dispatch them with little trouble, realizing they were outposts and scouts. Which meant the vex knew they were coming.

The warlock didn't do much to help. He babbled on and on as they navigated the uneven terrain on foot. His topics ranged so widely and jumped without a breath of notice that Nicole stopped attempting to pay attention. It quickly became a background noise to add to the distant sound of wildlife and buzz of vex machinery.

Nicole found his entire presence just slightly revolting. That he would start a rumor, and purposefully ruin the titan's chances of getting into a good fireteam, all because his feelings got a little hurt. She couldn't imagine someone being so self-centered like that, and furthermore, she couldn't imagine herself being associated with someone like that.

What if she did something to wrong him on accident? What kind of rumor would he spread about her? She honestly didn't care, she had no reputation to protect, and it didn't bother her what other guardians thought of her. She was loner for a reason. But the mere fact that he would try to hurt her that way. She just couldn't wrap her mind around it.

Her ghost was entirely silent on the matter. He didn't have much to say anymore, really. He knew how she felt now, and his earlier proposal might as well have been burnt to ash. There was no way she would entertain the idea of him as her friend now.

Rest babbled on until Nicole finally shut him up. They had gotten fairly far into vex territory and the terrain around them became more cut and organized, Nicole started to get more on edge. Especially with the warlock talking so much he was bound to give away their position. She whipped around at one point and smacked him across the chest plate. It wasn't particularly, but it was enough to stagger him and finally silence him.

She could practically feel the glare he directed at her but it was lost beneath his helmet. She made a motion for quiet, then for him to follow more closely.

"What? You don't like gorillas?" It was such an obnoxious question that Nicole rolled her eyes at him. But his voice was lower now, so she let it go.

She could feel them getting closer to the center of the vex directive here. The buzzing that had followed them all through the ruins had gotten steadily louder. The path they had been following ended very suddenly. The path itself was fairly well trodden, but the stone wall that had cropped up across the massive doorway seemed to been placed here on a whim. Nicole walked right up to it, putting her hand flat across the smooth surface. The stone was warm; unnaturally so beneath her gloved palm. It must have been pulled from some other location or time to keep us out. The humming was so strong here she could feel it reverberating through the stone.

"So now what do we do?" The warlock asked from the bottom of the steps.

Nicole didn't acknowledge his question directly. She took a few steps away from the stone wall to look up at the structures high above their heads. She traced a potential path up the structure with her eyes, every couple of moments taking a step down and away until she came to stand beside the oddly silent warlock.

She looked at him a moment later, practically feeling his exasperation. "You've got to be kidding me," he deadpanned.

She tilted her head in acted confusion, glad that her helmet hid the wicked little smile that was on her face.

"I know that all," he gestured wildly to the ruins above them, "seems fun to little miss hoppity hop, but I'm a warlock and I don't hoppity hop, okay."

She shrugged and walked away from him, lining up with the first set of rocks she needed to climb. If he was too chickenshit to try then she would see him when she finished. Might actually give her some peace and quiet.

He continued to yell up at her from the ground for a solid ten minutes, to which Nicole completely ignored. She had to focus on the climbing, afterall. She noticed he'd gone quiet after a while but only stopped to look for him once she had gotten to a relatively flat bit of cliff she could rest on. She wasn't entirely surprised to see him completely missing from sight. She couldn't bring herself to be all that concerned. She tried to squash the irritation. While yes, she was entirely prepared to do this alone, she didn't exactly want to. Dumb warlock, made her do all the work.

She rested for a few moments then continued on. She was over the top fairly quickly, and from there just leapt down, using her jumps to soften her landing. She hardly waited for her boots to touch the ground before she was jogging up the trail again.

"You think it's really wise to just leave him behind?"

Why not? He'll be fine, we cleared the area of vex.

"I'm actually concerned about you Nicole. We don't really know what we're walking into."

This will be easier without having to babysit him anyway.

She slowed to a walk as she got closer to the top, slinking down into a half crouch as the valley below came into sight. The air was practically singing, the humming so strong she could almost feel it. She didn't really look at the valley before something on the path just below her caught her attention with its movement.

She paused, nearly dropped to the ground, but stopped. There, using a large boulder as cover, torso practically laid out across the top, and spyglass out and focused on the distant vex structures, the warlock had beat her here.

how…

"How did you get over here before us?" Her ghost to her rescue, but she could feel his confusion as well, just as strong as hers.

The warlock looked over his shoulder at her, helmet blocking whatever expression he had. She couldn't tell in that moment. He seemed a bit blank altogether. "I went around," he replied flatly.

He went… around…? She felt really, really stupid in that moment. Her first instinct had been to go up. She hadn't even checked to see if there was a faster alternate route. He didn't seem inclined to heckle her about it, though, and for that she was relieved. Maybe he had an ounce of tact afterall.

He offered her the spyglass, and she approached and took it from him, looking out across the valley. The first and most obvious feature that took Nicole's attention was the absolutely massive vex time gate in the very far reaches of the valley, a good twenty miles in the distance. Between that and their side of the valley was a patch of jungle so thick it would give even a seasoned hunter like herself a moment of pause. The term 'rat's nest' came to mind..

"We have about three or four hours of daylight left," the warlock said after a lengthy pause. "What should we do?"

She looked at him in a flash of surprise. She wasn't expecting him to defer to her so openly like that. But in hindsight, she supposed that he was the younger one, and thus inexperienced. She looked down the spyglass again a moment later. The jungle only ended at the mountains that protected the valley because of the sheer rocky cliffs. They could try to skirt around the valley but if the warlock didn't want to climb the rock behind them there was no way she would manage to drag him across all those cliffs. On top of that, they would be exposed and out in the open for enemy fire. But the jungle was dark and dense and covered most of the twenty mile trek. They might be able to shave off some of the time by using their sparrows if they found any possible clearings, but both journeys seemed long. The jungle felt a better bet to Nicole. Vex could easily hide themselves in the thick of it, but so could a pair of guardians.

Her ghost relayed their options to him. As expected, he regarded the idea of traversing the cliff walls with disgust. She supposed she didn't quite blame him. As a hunter, if she slipped she could just recover if she had enough light to bounce herself up. But a warlock was so floofy that every misstep would be an unnecessary death for him.

"So we brave the jungle then." He seemed nearly as disgusted by that then the cliffs, but the dense jungle was what he ultimately chose.

Nicole would have chosen the jungle too, if she was honest. It seemed obvious. Then again, 'up' had seemed pretty obvious to her on the other side of the wall, and the warlock had proven her wrong, surprisingly. He didn't have anything to offer up, however, so she assumed his moment of intelligence had been short lived.

He was right about the daylight situation. Nicole wasn't sure how she felt about traversing the jungle at night. It would be dark beneath the canopy during the day so it would be pitch black at night. She hesitated on that thought for a moment. It wasn't that she was afraid of the dark, persay. She just… really, really hated it.

But she did have a sunsinger with her. She might as well put him to use. And if he proved useless again, she always carried a lantern with her. Not to mention both ghosts could generate light as well. Yeah, she told herself, it would be fine.


The jungle started very abruptly and it was as thick as it looked from atop the mountain they had come down from. They rode down the slope on their sparrows and were able to shave off some of the journey in very little time. But the jungle itself would be on foot, and that was slow going for the first few hours. Mostly due to the warlock.

At least he's not talking anymore. Although she suspected he was too focused on keeping up with her to be able to keep a running dialogue with himself again. Nicole had set a brutal pace through the trees, finding a groove and rhythm she could follow and flowing over the ground like a cat on the prowl.

The warlock on the other hand was like a cabal crashing through the underbrush behind her. They had made decent progress by the time it got too dark to keep going. Night had crept up on them fairly quickly once the sun went down. The painted oranges and yellows of the sulfur sunset faded quickly and the jungle was almost darker than she had imagined it would be.

At one point she slipped on a mossy vine and nearly fell, and that was when she realized just how dark it had gotten. She waited for the warlock to catch up, trying to keep her nerves under control. She hated night ops. Loved Venus, it was her favorite, but she could do without the inky dark jungle floor, thank you very much. Once the warlock was beside her, seemingly doing much better in the dark then he did when the sun was still up, Nicole pulled the phosphorus lamp from her inventory, shaking the powders inside to push the chemiluminescent to life. It bathed both of their helmeted faces in the sickly green light.

Nicole had taken to wearing light colors that day. The warlock, however, seemed to really enjoy blacks. As in, the solid kind that seemed to swallow light into any cloth he was wearing. Nicole only paid it any mind now because she could only really see the small metal part across his chest and his helmet even in the lamp light. She found herself reaching for him just in case.

Then Verz appeared at his shoulder, briefly blinding her and illuminating the whole area with their light. Nicole shielded her eyes but the warlock was already walking off, clumsily picking his way forward, where the humming was originating from. She hooked the lantern to her belt and followed.

After a while she watched, with no small amount of amusement, the warlock get more and more unsteady until finally the uneven jungle floor finally got the best of him. He tripped on something and fell ass over kettle with a short yell of surprise. Verz's light winked out and Nicole lost him in the dark until she got a little closer. She caught the flash of the top of his helmet and that was the only thing that stopped her from accidentally kicking him. She stood over him, trying not to laugh as he untangled himself from the bush he had landed in.

"I know you're laughing, okay," he snapped, sounding genuinely irritated for the first time today.

She made a small breathy noise loud enough that he could hear, just so that he would know that she was in fact laughing at him. He didn't seem pleased by it, making the noise back mockingly. He stood again, Nicole taking a step back when she realized she was standing practically on top of him (she couldn't lose him in the dark, why oh why did he have to wear black today?)

He fluffed his collar indignantly and began to walk off again, this time leading without Verz's light to guide them. Nicole had taken to following only because she wanted to keep him in her sights. It made it easier if Verz was out guiding anyway, but now the warlock was spearheading their progress through the dark and it made Nicole uncomfortable. She almost wanted to call on her own ghost to guide them, but that would defeat the purpose of the lamp and would mean that logically, she would have to take point (and she didn't want the warlock walking where she couldn't see him being dragged into the darkness by some monster out of her nightmares). So she walked beside him the best she could. And wouldn't she know it, but he actually seemed to be doing better in the darkness than she was. Of course, he wasn't nearly as graceful as her, but he seemed to be moving easier without the light. She wondered briefly if the stark shadows threw him off? She knew they could for her.

She thought back to her training days with her old fireteam. Davion more specifically. The hunter that taught her how to be, well, a hunter. The first several treks they had taken through jungle terrain, he had blindfolded her so that she learned to navigate with her hands and feet, not with her eyes.

"Feel the jungle," he would say to her. "Don't just look at it. That'll make her bashful and hide all her secrets. You gotta be one with the trees." Then he would usually follow up with his ridiculous talk and a laugh that use to fill her with such a fire.

The memory glanced off of her, but the sting of it still struck her and she staggered. She didn't fall. She never fell. Nicole regained her footing as easy as breathing, following the warlock through the darkness and leaving the warm laughter of her lover behind.


They made it to the far side of the jungle in the wee hours of the morning. Just like on the ruins side, the jungle ended very abruptly, but this time it was not the mountain slopes that drove the fauna back, but the vex themselves. A very neat waist-high wall surrounded a complex of structures and the massive gate on the far end.

Rest had his spyglass out and was surveying the area. Nicole decided that they should rest before going into that mess, and started clearing out a small space beneath the tangled roots of a partially upended tree. They were a fair distance from the gate still, but the valley sloped down very suddenly into a crater like formation that made it easy to look down at the operation. It reminded Nicole of a nest or a spiderweb, and that imagery was not helped by the veins of glowing vex technology that splayed out from the gate in a semi-circle.

She made a comfortable place to rest for a while, and was already settled onto her makeshift bed when the warlock returned. They didn't say anything to each other, and Nicole rolled over and fell into a light doze easily.

She woke a few hours later, according to her ghost. The warlock was still sitting by the entrance but he had dozed off too against one of the vines. Midday was closing in and Nicole felt sticky without her helmet on to regulate the temperature in her suit. The warlock had not taken off his, and that was probably why. Nicole usually liked the warmth, so it didn't bother her much.

She let the warlock sleep a little longer, taking up the time by sharpening her knives and cleaning her weapons. She had just finished putting her scout rifle back together when she noticed the warlock move. His head came up, he looked at her, then out at the jungle beyond the roots. It was an hour after midday and now was likely the best time to start their assault.

"You good?" her ghost asked him.

"Good as I'm getting," he replied, voice still thick with sleep even beneath the helmet. He stretched his legs out in front of him, rolling his shoulders. "So what's the plan, chief?"

"We take out the gate and its power source." That was all her ghost said at first.

The warlock was quiet for a beat before he clapped his hands together. "Yup, good plan. You do that, I'll stay here and count the bugs."

Both hunter and ghost glared at him. "Okay smartass, we haven't surveyed the field yet. Give us a break."

He rolled his head sideways in a way that gave Nicole the impression he was rolling his eyes. "There's about thirty or forty vex, five of which are minotaurs, two packs of four harpies patrol different sides of the area, one north and the other southwest. One harpy from each party is an Axis and has a shield. Two of the minotaurs are also Axis and guard what I can assume is the power source to the left of the gate. Hobgoblins are on lookout at eight points around the area, on towers. The remaining vex are armed to the teeth but are mostly worker drones. No Axis goblins that I saw."

Nicole blinked at him a few times. Well, okay then… "Any viable paths we can take?" Her ghost asked, riding her shocked curiosity to see the warlock keep going.

"Yes. We could kill everything. But that would take way too long and the chances of us getting overwhelmed and flanked is high. Especially with those minotaurs. We could pick off what we can and go in. Our main issue is going to be the hobgoblins and the minotaurs. Because the towers are placed in a box formation, it would be impossible to hide both of us beneath one without at least three more towers having clear shots at one or both. Furthermore, those hobgoblins are purposefully out in the open like that. We won't be able to take them out quietly.

"I can create a distraction. Draw the attention of everything in the area and you take out those hobgoblins. I'll need help with the minotaurs though, so you'll have to be quick. We'll need to deploy our ghosts on the powersource but everything will be too distracted by us to pay them any mind. I suggest they both go with me, and deploy when I challenge the minotaurs.

"By the time we have to deal with the harpies, hopefully the two Axis minotaurs will be dead. Then it's just clean up from there."

It was a decent plan. She didn't like that he was the distraction again. Why he insisted on making himself useful that way was beyond her. The plan was not particularly clever, and relied heavily on their combined firepower, but Nicole personally had nothing to add or anything to change. They did need something to distract the enemy, even if she didn't agree with it.

The warlock barely waited for her to okay the plan before he picked up, checked his weapons, and was sprinting through the trees. Her ghost phased through her and melded with the warlock's light without a breath of a thought. She was hot on his heels up until the tree line, where she broke off and hopped up into a tangle of vines and branches to get a better vantage point on the eight snipers. The layout of enemies was exactly as the warlock had said they would be, but Nicole was too busy to be surprised. She waited for the first detonation of his grenades before she started firing. She couldn't see him around the pillars but she could practically feel his light from here, pulsing like a second heart beside her own. It bolstered her own arc, and she could feel it itching down her skin in anticipation.

She focused on the hobgoblins. Aim, steady, squeeze, recoil. Four shots and she reloaded, then four more. The scouts had no time to realize they were being picked off until they were down to the last. Once the last metal body toppled down off their perch, Nicole was moving again. She leapt from her vantage point and met the warlock in the ring of burning light he had made himself. His radiance was coming to an end, his wings beginning to gutter and snap by the time Nicole pulled up beside him, rolling through the fire and letting it slip past her armor like water.

She pulled her blade the same moment his fire died out, arc energy snapping at the air between her and the ground. One of the axis minotaurs was a smoking heap of twisted metal already but the warlock had run out of fire before the second one could be taken down. Her blade made quick work of it and the gaggle of goblins that had advanced on their position. Both ghosts were already deployed on the control box beside the gate, but every vex in the area was too focused on the fighting duo just as the warlock had predicted.

The harpies showed up shortly thereafter, and pounded the ground around them in a hailstorm of fire. Rest grabbed the back of her armor as two of them opened up their assault directly above them, yanking her backwards and throwing a literal wall of fire between them and the assaulters. The heat roared in front of her but she was already moving again, ducking down beneath him and slipping through the wall like a phantom. She always kept more than one knife on her and arc crackled around her again as she closed the gap between her and the harpies in a blink. Her knife cut through the shield and gutted its eyes. It took the brunt of her weight but wobbled in the air unsteadily as it died. Nicole was already blinking to the next Axis, abandoning one knife for speed and executing the same leaping gut of the on the other.

The warlock's hasty shield snapped out then but he was focused on the other harpies at that point, turning them into strands of energy and plasma with a fusion rifle. Nicole started the cleanup of the other goblins that were advancing on them.

She was too focused on the task for a moment, tunnel vision making her forget to keep on eye on the novice warlock fighting beside her. She heard him yell and turned to look. He was on the ground, still firing wild and unaimed shots at another minotaur. There was a fizzle of a teleport and Nicole turned in time to duck beneath another minotaur swinging at her.

She rolled away and tried to get in a few shots but her scout rifle didn't have enough punch and the minotaur was too close. She retreated up the hill, wishing she could call for the warlock to do the same. There was another snap of a teleport, not quite a vex sound, but certainly not guardian. She turned and nearly knifed the warlock, but managed to flow the action into another rolling side leap away from heavy fire. They were being driven up the crater wall again, away from the gate. But it seemed the warlock had miscalculated or the vex had called for instant reinforcements but there were at least five minotaurs and they were all Axis, larger armored chassis, bigger guns, and tougher shields.

Both guardians were driven back into the tree line. There was an explosion shortly thereafter, centered near the gate. The humming in the valley suddenly stopped and the gate guttered and went dark. In that same instant, a wall of semi-translucent light shot up before them, knitting itself together like a giant complex puzzle until it met at the top in a dome. The vex on the inside had stopped firing and the guardians' bullets bounced away harmlessly.

A barrier?

Nicole stopped firing a couple seconds before the warlock, pausing in confusion and dread. This couldn't be good. The vex proceeded to ignore them once the barrier was up, turning and marching back down the hill again.

Ghost? There was a pause where she heard nothing. She felt for his comforting pulse inside of her but all she felt was the odd little feeling of not there when he was not merged with her. Ghost, where are you? Her heart skipped a dreadful beat and she felt her face drained of blood. A tremor shook her and her world nearly collapsed in an instant. No no, not alone, I can't be alone, alone! I can't be alone again! Where? Where?

His voice cut through the jumbled of heated dark thoughts that swirled up to swallow her. "We're fine, Nicole. Both me and Verz. We can't transmat out of here, but we've found a place to hide. The dome is made of some kind of solid force barrier. We can't phase through it. You guys have to take it down." His voice was a quiet tinny noise in her head, weak and full of static, but he sounded fine. He sounded unhurt, if a little scared.

She took a few deep breathes, trying to force calm into herself. Her heart was still pounding in her ears and it made the quiet of the post-battle jungle seem to ring. She sank down to the ground, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her. He was alright. He wasn't damaged, he wasn't a broken husk of ancient tech crushed beneath some minotaur. He was alive, just separated.

She could feel him sending calming vibes at her, trying to reassure he was alright. She could catch images of where he was; flashes of dark and light, fauna, wet soil, and mossy rock just behind her eyes. She sighed heavily. She had to get him. She had to break the barrier.

She suddenly remembered the warlock, glancing up at him in a flash of guilt she would never admit to. She was going to have to deal with him freaking out, too. Fantastic… More babysitter Nicole.


Afterword: Did I mention I planned to take a week off between 5 and 6? I don't think I did. Sorry about that. In my defense I wasn't sure if I was going to or not, but Venus adventures continued to fight with me. It's still kicking, too. Also, y'know, real life has a tendency to slap you in the face when you aren't expecting it. So there will probably an extra week between every five chapters to give me a break and maybe get a chapter ahead (not that I did this time, but hey maybe next time, right?)

So, onto a few things I think should be clarified. Every guardian can manipulate their power a little differently. So Aydin can conjure physical walls of fire. He's also not capable of self-rez coz he tries to avoid dying so much he hasn't really tried. Also, at this point, I doubt he's physically powerful enough anyway. Nicole on the other hand is a seasoned and practiced bladedancer, and can thus pretty easy channel arc energy. She can blink on command but usually uses her hoppity hops because it takes less energy and focus.

Also, I decided to do away with the little Aydin-POV-outros because i'm lazy, mostly. But also because I intend to tell his side of this story later in full chapters devoted to just him. So, yay Aydin? But if you look back in the near future, those little bits will probably be gone from the end of chapters.

A special thank you to Oozak12 and Orix (Very punny, you) for their reviews. They are much appreciated! Also thank you to everyone who subbed and Favorite'd!

I guess also thanks to Wolf Borne22 for... stuff... :)