4

On the tenth day of Rise of Iron, my true love gave to me:

Ten, gold engrams!

"Hey, uh, hey Brask, before you go in there... I swear, I had NOTHING to do with it." Cayde insisted. the human looked at him with narrowed eyes. They were outside of the Cryptarch archives. Muffled music could be heard through the door.

"Cayde." Brask began warningly "Where's Tevis?"

The exo looked down at his feet, shuffling them. Brask opened the door, and his jaw dropped to the floor. "Born to Be Wild" was blaring from Tevis's ghost, and the Nightstalker himself seemed to have gone off the deep end, pretending that his knife was a microphone. He was standing on a pile of exotic engrams, while Master Rahool tried separately to coax the Hunter down.

He looked a mess. His hair was ruffled, one side flat against his head. There bits of cereal stuck to his face, and there was some sort of sticky glob stuck in his hair.

"Please, Hunter Larsen let us decrypt them! I have a job to do!" Rahool begged. The overexcited hunter ignored him, doing a vehement air guitar instead.

"We kinda binged some Crucible... then we ate a lot of candy, and had too much caffien that's possibly healthy. Then, we may have had one or two bowls of... uh... sugar-saturated cereal. because we partied way into the morning." Brask glared at the exo, who shrugged helplessly. "Hey, we got like, a horde of legendary engrams. And he got a new gun. And it turned out, all those Three of Coins we dumped our savings on the other week... uh, they weren't broken; they were working all along. So we go to the postmaster, cuz they're all angry cuz we both got full inboxes, and what do we find; ten exotics! Each!"

The Hunter Vangaurd didn't look impressed. Cayde bumped him in the side with an elbow cheekily.

"Common, Andal; you know you're proud of us!" Brask gripped his apprentice by the front of his armor, shaking him.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US ALL!" he screamed. "I get none of that kind of stuff effects you, exo, but him?!"

"Oh, come on; it ain't that bad!"

Tevis let out a long howl of song, causing Andal to flinch and wave a hand wildly in the Nightstalker's direction.

"HE CAN'T SING! I know that. YOU know that! We ALL, know THAT! You have doomed us all, you here me! ALL!"

"HEY!" Both of them turned their heads, to see Tevis slide down from the small pile and rush up to them. he put one arm around each of their shoulders, swaying dizzily.

"I HAVEN'T SLEPT IN 36 HOURS!" He screamed in their ears, Brask leaning his head away. Cayde pat his sugar-intoxicated friend on the back with a mechanical smile.

"Ugh, Larsen, your breath, STINKS." he huffed. Tevis frowned deeply, mouth hanging open, looking mildly offended.

"YOUR BREATH STINKS!" he accused, looking like he might cry. He took his arm off from around Brask's shoulders. he looked at Cayde desparately.

"Cayde..." he asked softly. "He's being mean. He said my breath stinks."

"I know bud, I know. "

"He's the smelly one!"

"Yeah, I hear you Tev, I hear ya."

"I love ya, bro!" The Awoken collapsed on his friend, wrapping his arms tightly around him in a bear hug, sobbing. Rahool glared at them, casting a particularly dirty eye at Tevis's ghost, who was still playing the music. Cayde pat his friend on the back sympathetically, eying Brask with disbelief.

"Father, how could you!" he begged desperately. His expression soured as Tevis threw up over his back and passed out.

Brask burst out laughing, pointing. Cayde glared at him.

"Oi! It ain't funny! He's unconscious, this is serious!" When the Gunslinger merely bent double, laughing harder, he tried again. "He just threw up on me! That's not funny, Andal! It's not funny at all!"

"May-maybe you'll consider that the next time you overestimate the amount of sugar we mere organics can ingest before going insane! HAHA!" Brask wiped a tear from his eye, and began to walk away. Cayde watched after him desparately.

"Brask! Wait, Brask! Andal, you can't leave me alone with this! ANDAL! AAAANDAAAAAL!"

Brask ignored his screams for help all the way back to the elevator, grinning and waving goodbye at the exo as the doors closed. As the elevator music played, he let out a peaceful sigh, still smiling

Semi-drunk Tevis is blazing. enjoy.

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