The body flinched and stumbled backwards holding up their weapon, a hand-cannon with something etched onto its side, to ward me away. As I registered what I was about to shoot, I dropped my weapon from my shoulder and ran over to the now recognized hunter bleeding from multiple wounds across their body.
"Melody, g-get over here!" Was all I could sputter out as I tried to get the dying guardian to put down her weapon and sit up. Melody was up over the hill and on the other side of hunter in less than a second.
"What happened? Where did you come from?" Melody asked her, surprisingly calm given the current situation. She wrapped her hands around the shaking guardian's, who finally relinquished her powerful revolver to me, pushing it with what strength she had. She pointed back behind her to a large building that looked as it had been abandoned for centuries. Quiet chittering came from near the rusting garage and blue eyes poked around the corner, watching what the three of us were doing. Melody slowly stood up, taking the pulse rifle she relied on with her. I started to rise with her but she motioned me back down, making a gesture as if to tell me to stay where I was, with the wounded guardian. Melody began to slink around the building before disappearing under a ridge, surely going after the threat she knew was there. I turned back to the guardian in my arms, unaware that she had managed to get her helmet off, revealing a soft, pale face with deep red eyes and grayish hair to accentuate her looks.
"We need get you back to the tower, I can alert the medics that we are on our way in the ship." I told the unidentified woman, hoping to calm her were she scared. She simply looked at me and tried to smile.
"I'm a dying guardian without a ghost. I'm no use to the tower. It'll be okay. Besides, you ca-" she broke off her sentence with a pained grimace and tried to shift her body before settling back into the crook of my arm. "You can't leave your friend. She doesn't know what's down there, she'll need your help." The guardian lifted the hand-cannon she had earlier given up by its barrel, putting it against my chest. "Take it. Consider it my dying wish for you to go help that girl. She's strong, but she needs more help than you'll ever believe." I put my hand to the gun she had pushed against me and stared back at her.
"You've gotta live, though. We need you! We need everyone!"
"I will live. I'll live through you and that weapon. Just promise... Promise you'll keep it with you." She sighed, her voice getting quieter throughout the sentence. With one last breath, she fluttered out of consciousness and into oblivion. I laid her body down and picked up my rifle and her old revolver. With a flick of the hand and a quick beeping response between Fira and the ship, my rifle was gone, leaving the woman's gun in my right hand. I stood, and turning on my heel, marched towards the building, staring down at the hand-cannon and it's now noticeable inscriptions. On the left side of it's detailed barrel was written, "For the strong and for the meek. The Gray Legacy." As I reached the building's rusted wall, I turned the weapon over to examine the other side, with only one word written on it. A name.
"Ayateru." Frost dropped his hands to his sides, then readied to fire the revolver he now owned. He would help Melody. He would defeat whatever was down there. For their sake. For Ayateru's death to not be in vain. As he turned the corner and pulled off the first shot of the to-be long gunfight, the weapon shined like no other, with a sinister, red glow.