I do not own Destiny, Bungie, nor any affiliates. I own only the story and the Original Characters.

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One Who Protects

Chapter 1: Meet and Greet

Gale wasn't your average awoken warlock. She was pretty, beautiful to some, even. Like the mythical queen of the awoken, she had a fair blue complexion, and platinum blonde hair. Unlike the queen, however, Gale wore had green eyes and wore her hair up in a tidy bun; opting to go for the sharp and clean kind of beauty as opposed to the queen's wild and dangerous look. However, Gale cared not for her beauty. Above all else, she was a prodigy of the academy.

Gale was always on top, always the first, always the best in everything she did. The day she was reborn, Gale had committed herself, body and soul, to fighting the Darkness. In this war, half-ass got you killed. One could not become legend simply by being lazy. Only the best would be forever known, like Osiris. Though he is known as the "Exile," he was the best and brightest of his time. Gale had resolved to be like Osiris, only better, and she would let no one get in her way.

Which is why she had mixed feelings about her fireteam assigment.

Glancing at the bounty board, she had quickly located and read the names:

Novice Redacted-XX; Defender

Novice Sverre; Bladedancer

Novice Gale; Voidwalker

Vanguard Fox; Gunslinger

The Exo, Redacted-XX, was a new kind of anti-social all on his own. He, lacking any real name and refusing to simply make one up, simply named himself Redacted-XX. During the academy days, he tended to stay alone, unless he was forced to team up. He was an inexplicable anomaly, even amongst the other Exos, and Gale tended to dislike inexplicable anomalies (She loved the explicable kind, though). However, she could tolerate him because she knew that he would at least stay out of her way.

Just looking at the next name gave her nausea like no other. She had to pinch the bridge of her nose, ignoring the increasingly antsy line that was behind her

Now Sverre... Out of all of the others here, why in the world did one of her fireteam members have to be Sverre? The human had to be one of the most annoying, nosy, unmotivated jerks that Gale ever had the displeasure of knowing, in this life or the last. He always looked like he had somewhere to be, but just loafed around all the time, staring into space. To top it all off, he was extremely temperamental. He was fast; top of their class at the very least when it comes to sheer speed. However, he never gave anything his all, never tried really hard, never seemed to have any sense of class or respect, always just did things as quick as he could just to be done with it...

"Uggh," she groaned. "What a waste of Light."

The line behind her started to get really ornery. She could hear the impatient shuffle of boots on grass and pavement as the quiet whispering started to grow into shouts of discontent. The atmosphere grew heavy for a moment.

"C'mon! What's taking so long?" a titan shouted, "Just look at the names and get moving!"

"Of course it would be a Warlock holding up the line, so slow and indecisive," the hunter next to him murmured.

The warlock standing between the two scowled and threatened, "Just shut up you two, your rude and unnecessary shouting is only going to prolong our wait." He turned toward Gale and said aloud, "Take your time, sister, and formulate your plan to perfection!"

She smiled, and wished that her fireteam had been filled with entirely warlocks. At least then she wouldn't have to dumb down her own speech just so the gun-crazy idiots around her didn't strain their lobes trying to comprehend even the first word that she said.

She nodded toward the group of malcontents and the warlock, and then made off for her Vanguard mentor. While she would have preferred a warlock as a mentor, she knew how hunters, especially gunslingers, worked when it came to teaching. They ran a hands-off method, and would not participate much in the development of the team itself. This was because of their own tendency to be a "lone wolf" and therefor they teach how they were taught. To be independent. He would not interfere with her goals, at least. Vanguard by the end of the decade...

"Vanguard Fox, huh?" she mused aloud. "I've never heard of him before..."

It was a mystery, one that she was innately excited to solve, but she held it down as she scanned the bustling courtyard area for the guardian that matched the name of the one posted on the bounty board. With her tiny implant-like connection to the light, she and most other guardians are able to detect things that were nearby to them, like objectives and enemies. Also, each guardians name light up in her mind as she glanced at them, like a FoF tag.

She found her target sitting on a box and talking to Banshee-44, the gunsmith. Unlike the rest of the vanguard, he seemed to prefer to not be in the company of his peers, as speaking to Banshee was almost the equivalent of speaking to yourself. She cleared her throat to speak.

"I-"

"You're Gale, right?" Fox stopped her before she could say anything else. "I'm Fox. 'Course you probably already know that, but a custom is a custom."

Gale bowed respectfully and said, "Yes, I-"

"Great, now we just sit and wait for the others," he interrupted her again.

Gale felt her eye twitch. It was bad manners to interrupt someone, but doing it to a warlock was a heinous crime in and of itself. It was a pet peeve for the knowledge hungry guardians, and one that even the dumbest and most self-confident of the hunters and titans did well to remember. Gale decided to let it slide due to his high ranking status, and the fact that his loner nature had probably dulled his manners.

She bowed again, and upon sitting down continued to introduce herself. "I am a-"

"Save the extended introductions for later, you're just wasting your breath."

She had to actively disguise her feelings of intense dislike toward being cut off, again. She gritted her teeth and clenched her hands. This man was a veteran, he had to know the unspoken rule of decency when in a dialogue with a warlock. Even if he didn't, wasn't it still considered rude to do so, anyway?

She glanced toward the bounty board again and noticed that the line had moved considerably already. In fact, Sverre was already on his way over. His very posture only served to further increase her pent-up agitation. He walked with no hurry, his hands resting atop his head in an arrogant fashion, and made frequent stops to talk to his hunter buddies that were already meeting up with their groups.

When he had finally made it to where she stood with Fox, Gale was pretty sure that she was going to die of old age.

"Whatsup?" he asked in a dull tone. "The name's Sverre."

Sverre had light brown hair that he grew long and then slicked back. His dark brown eyes were hazed over with disinterest, while the rest of his body fidgeted and struggled with something to do.

Fox simply nodded and continued a one-sided with a grunting Banshee-44 on the importance of equipping the right weapon for the job before one were to get into a firefight.

Gale saw a look of clear agitation at being practically ignored cross Sverre's face. Unfortunately for the warlock, he turned his attention to her instead.

"What's his deal?" he asked. "The only thing interesting about Banshee-44 is his guns..."

The statement was made with no attempt to disguise it. Fox would have to have been deaf not to hear it. However, he simply continued on with his conversation.

Gale shrugged, and was shamefully delighted to see Sverre become visibly pissed off by the lack of meaningful verbal responses he was getting.

Internally, Gale was also seething. First, Fox did whatever he could to interrupt her, and now all of the sudden, he refuses to even say a word. As much as she hated to admit it, Sverre has a good point

What is this guy's problem?

A series of loud and disturbingly perfectly measured steps brought Gale out of her thoughts and Sverre's attention to a huge Exo. This was definitely Redacted-XX.

"Greeting, organics... Banshee-44." He nodded to the Exo standing behind a counter that was stocked with various Omolon, Hakkë, and Suros weapons. "I am Redacted-XX. I look forward to working with you to further our crusade against the Darkness."

He looked anything but eager to Gale.

"Redacted," Fox said, his attitude doing another 'one-eighty,' "How're you? Fine? Excellent. Let's get going with the introductions. You first Redact."

If Redacted-XX had actually chosen to use and show emotions, Gale was pretty sure he would be using the "Screw you" one right now.

"As I stated eight point six-seven seconds ago, my name is Redacted-XX," he said monotonously. "My class is Titan, my race is exo, my subclass is Defender, my purpose is to expunge the darkness from this galaxy through the light, my photoreceptors blue-42, red-16, yellow-8, my chassis is a type-A human male format, my primary and secondary shadings for my chassis are black and gray, respectively-"

"Okay, okay you walking archive unit," Sverre quipped. "We don't need the whole thing, just enough to, y'know, get to know each other."

"Your words are contradictory, is sharing a plethora of needless information not a human custom for 'getting to know each other?' please further explain your meaning." Ouch, it seems that even Redacted could torch an idiot real good.

"What was that?" Sverre asked, red faced.

Redacted-XX simply stared at him and spoke,"I said-"

"I know what you said, you scrap heap!"

"Then why did you ask the question? Your words continue to be confounding as well as needlessly derogatory."

Sverre, after having been slighted four times in a row and now absolutely raging, made a motion for his knife that was faster than even Gale could keep up with. His left hand closed around the hilt and was in the process of unsheathing the deadly weapon that hung on his belt when he realized that something was restricting his movement. He saw that a gauntleted hand had wrapped tightly around his own limb. When he looked up, he was staring into the helmeted face of Fox.

"That's enough, you two," Fox commanded. "You can save your rivalry and smart-ass comments for when you get into the practice ring."

Sverre gritted his teeth, and then realized something: Fox had to have been sitting at least fifteen feet away from the Sverre, and had somehow caught Sverre before he could even draw his knife. A Bladedancer on a blade draw was the fastest thing alive. This means that either Fox had been expecting Sverre to eventually lose his temper, or the Gunslinger had been faster than the Bladedancer.

Sverre resolved to believe the prior, as it was far less embarrassing than excepting that a slower sub-class had beaten you. At least he was a hunter, though. If Fox had been a titan, Sverre was sure that Redacted-XX would have been in pieces before the vanguard had even stood up.

The Bladedancer released his grip on his knife and glanced at his would-be target.

Redacted-XX didn't give any indication that Fox's observation that he had been intentionally playing stupid had gotten to him. Bet then again, nothing rarely did get to him.

Once Fox was satisfied that both of the two were done and weren't going to try anything stupid, he casually strolled over to his seat on the box again, and then motioned for Sverre to go next with a wave of his hand.

Sverre ground his teeth a little more, and said with barely concealed anger, "Name's Sverre. Bladedancer. I like knives. Done."

Gale was smiling throughout everything. Sverre must've been really ticked for him to define himself in only six words. She had been expecting to be here all day just listening to the novice hunter prattle on and on about himself, giving a long yet still somehow empty speech on the story of his life.

Fox either didn't notice or didn't care about Sverre's hypocritical lackluster dialogue. He nodded toward Gale to start her introduction. She nodded back at him, then turned to address the group as a whole:

"My name is Gale, and I am an Awoken Voidwalker. My order and I enjoy the gathering of vast quantities of new and long forgotten-"

"Alright," Fox interjected, yet again, "Now that we've gotten to know each other, why don't we do even better, and get with some sparring in the practice ring? Does a three-v-one sound good? You three against me?"

In the minds of both the Bladedancer and the Voidwalker, the vanguard Gunslinger was already on the floor, beaten and broken. In the mind of the Defender, the Exo wondered if he was going to be able to reach the end of the week without being dismantled by his own 'fireteam.'

-End-

Hey-o! Finally got it done. And it was all done on my shiny new lap-top. Yay!

So as I promised, this chapter is far larger (this was 2,300 words to the previous chapters 1,167, making it quite literally twice the size of chapter 1). The next chapter is going to pick up in the action a little (they are going to the sparring ring), but considering that I very rarely write action scenes, I'm going to need everyone's help in trying to make sure it is the best that I can make it, and that everyone can enjoy it thoroughly.

Once again, please review, fav., follow, whatever! It helps bunches and gives me inspiration to continue on writing!

(P.S., I play Destiny on the XboxOne, so if anyone wants to shoot me a request, my GT is th3blAkm1st. See you all in the upcoming DLC, Rise of Iron!)