Part 6: Fight the past. Giddyup.
"Nothing good happens when you get time travel involved. One of Cayde's little fibs is that a conflux node set a velociraptor on him once. Almost as good as " I stole the secrets of stealth from Rasputin", but still; you never know what the vex might mess with. One TRUE story I've heard... is that they pulled over an old nuclear warhead from the 20th century, and that's what caused Ishtar to sink. Blew it up underground. Guardians couldn't stop them in time; didn't know how to disarm the damn thing." -Tevis Larsen, Nightstalker.
"Okay, this time, I'm certain. One-hundred percent. Okay, ninty-nine percent, but who cares. This is the way."
"Okay, one; that is word-for-word what you said last time. Two; LOOK OUT! WEEPING ANGLE, WEEPING ANGLE!"
He let out a girly scream, leaping at least three feet into the air as he spun around in the direction she was pointing.
"GHAAA! WHERE!?"
Silverhawk burst into laughter, leaning against her sparrow for support. Recovering his breath with one hand over his heart, he glared at her. His face! Too beautiful!
"Silverhawk! Not funny! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" he reprimanded angrily. She knew he wouldn't stay mad for long, though; he never did.
"S-sor-ry!" she said between laughs."Couldn't resist! I-I mean, they do feed o-off of time ene-rgy!"
They had just tried the second tunnel, which had been a rather tight squeeze through some vex stone, eventually leading to a dead end. They were now going to try the wider tunnel towards the left side of the area they had first come out of the cliff into.
But as Silverhawk recovered from laughing, and they made their way down the stairs and around to the open space, they heard-and, for the first time, saw- the vex. There were at least a few dozen of them, all chaseing a lurching figure that obviously wasn't a robot. What-or who-the snapple cracks is that?
Reguardless, Ol'Reliable was in her hand in a heartbeat.
Mara Sov was currently running for her life.
She had left the cave she had arrived in when the first signs of vex arrival began to present themselves. She had somehow managed to sneak her way through a good portion of the Garden, looking for a suitable place to hide; whatever good hiding would do. It would only prolong the inevitable.
And then, her luck had run out. She had stopped in a smaller run off cave, and decided to once again make the best of the pletiful moss, which was eerily clean, likely from the fact that the vex were fairly sanitary. So much so, that Variks and a few other Fallen she'd spoken to about them said that it wasn't a scent that gave vex away; it was a scentlessness.
She'd been pressing moss against the area around the knife and it's wound, knowing full well that removing the weapon would only make things worse. It burned like fire whenever she walked, and she had wondered how her brother managed to carry on missions with similar injuries.
The mere thought of Uldren had brought a pang with it. She'd hoped he would rule her people wisely, not give way to whatever war Tay's employers wanted. She had allowed Petra Venj to stay in the Reef on account of her preformance during the disease crisis. Her and Uldren seemed to have worked well together; she hoped he would continue to rely on her military wisdom.
She'd learned much from her mistake all those years ago. She'd matured from that lying teenager, who'd been younger than she'd looked, fooling everyone all for the sake of vengeance. Hopefully, she would be able to play the voice of reason if Uldren did get unreasonable while on the throne.
He'd always taken Mara's advice with a sort of reluctance if it wasn't in his line of thinking; one of the reasons, she guessed, that he didn't ask permission to go on the quest for the cure. Tay was right about one thing; he was a very impulsive man, and it was his desire to protect her that had gotten into trouble so many times over the years.
She'd given him a nice, long talking to once she was well enough, and had heard the story from Petra when the Emissary had brought the cure over. And when she had questioned him about it, to hear the full version, she'd gotten the sense that he was lying about something; or several somethings.
Sometimes, getting him to follow orders was like loosing a leg. Agony the whole time, and you still get phantom pain afterwords. If agony was stormy glares and a fumeing expression, and phantom pain being the stubborn, arrogant cold shoulder you got afterwards.
But at least he was spared death at the hands of Tay, though she couldn't help but fear for him after what had transpired at the gate. Tay would most likely want revenge, and would probably want to wreck it against the Crow's master. She hoped Tay would think Mara's death as punishment enough for the loss of her eye.
As good as Uldren was, she didn't think anyone could survive a personal vandetta with Tay. He'd been hunting her... well, maybe he'd been hunting her ever since he was a child, after their mother was killed by the then 16-year-old assasin. A face-to-face meeting would be like his dream come true; a chance for revenge. But he would loose. Oh, she knew, he would lose.
Then, she'd been pulled from her thoughts by the screeching of vex drones. Giving the moss one last forcefull press, she had risked a peak outside the small, black, vex stone cave. And she'd come nearly face-to-face with a minotaur.
She'd frozen, keeping as still as possible, hopeing that it would back off if it didn't sense any more movement, that it wouldn't look in her direction if she held completely still.
But then... it had turned. And her platnium-blond hair had stuck out like a sore thumb against the dark metal of her shelter. The minotuar had screeched in a deep tone, charging up it's torch hammer, and she had reached down, and, with a sharp, pained sound, had taken the knife out of her wound and started to run at an odd, lurching, skipping gait.
"You're being shot at by vex minotaurs! Hobgoblins just beside them. No, stop running like some scared civilian! Weave, you green idiots! Don't let them get a lock on you, keep them confused! Get them to cross fire if you can! Himalay, you look like a chicken with it's head cut off; I said WEAVE, not run around in circles! Confuse them, not youself! DO I HAVE TO COME DOWN THERE, CYRISS?"
Words from a day observing her brother's training of Crow recruits rang through her head, and she had begun to lurch around in a waveing pattern through the ruinous halls, all the while trying to pry the inhibiting collar off from around her neck with the knife. If she could get it off...use her powers...
She'd thought, perhaps, if she could get it off, and focused hard enough... maybe she could destroy all the vex that were chaseing her, and perhaps lessen the severity of her wound. It would put her in serious danger, though; summoning harbringers made her dizzy, but such a focused use of her power, such as destroying all these single units of vex, could lead to a dangerously long period of unconsciousness.
She'd never tried anything like that. She'd never had to. She'd used her powers for all sorts of things; the harbringers, locating her brother, minor telepathy. She'd even used them to keep Uldren alive after the initial attack that had granted him the scar on his throat. But she'd never used them for feild combat before. Maybe, it wasn't possible.
But it didn't matter.
She'd just stumbled into an open room-the first open area she had encountered in the Garden-when what must have been a blast from a slap rifle hit her directly on her wound. She fell with a cry of pain for the second time that day, nearly stabbing herself in the throat as she fell.
Knowing full well that she would fail miserably at any impromptu knife-throwing attempts in her current state, and giving up on physically breaking through the collar, she focused every drop of her mental power in an attempt to psychically break the lock. Rolling over, she had just enough time to see the minotaur looming over her, raising it's metal foot to stomp down on her torso and crush her ribcage. I suppose... even Queens must end at some point...
And then, the shots rang out. Three of them, each one hitting it's mark, sending the minotaur staggering back as high-calliber rounds hit it, one shot obliterating the faint sheild that radiated around it, the other two hitting it so hard, she could see exactly where they hit. One round hit it's hip, disconecting it's leg, and the other hit it so hard in the torso, Mara felt a shard of metal cut her cheek.
It was the sound of a hand cannon fireing. Uldren? Could it be... had her reckless brother somehow managed to follow them, follow her, even through the blow to his head and the damaged saftey doors? How had he activated the gate!?
She looked to where the shots must have come from, but her brother was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there wa a bright red fedora that she wasn't personally aquainted with, but had heard enough complaints about to know who the person whos head it graced was.
Silverhawk.
And sure enough, beside her was the sparrow she'd heard Uldren describing through the wall of her bedroom last night(he'd been up literally all night, keeping her awake with his blasted sound effects and rageing about how stupid Silverhawk and Martin were), and the same young man with glasses that she had met yesterday in her throne room, and several days before that.
She was... much shorter than what the Queen had envisioned. She wore an armour model she'd seen commonly on more expirianced Hunters, with a dark blue, ankle-length cloak. Her whole color sceme was dark blue and black, with hints of red here or there, her fedora a shiny, bright red, and a pair of aviator sunglasses graced her eyes, hideing them.
I must have been thrown in here with correspondance to their mission! I am either very lucky, or they are very unlucky.
"Oi! Bucket heads!" Silverhawk called in a british lilt, dark blue and black hand cannon in her left hand, voice very young. "My mentor thinks you to be very charming hat racks! I've always wanted one of my own!"
"What hats?" Martin inquired, looking at her with his brow furrowed. "You only have the one."
"Meh. Cloak racks then." Silverhawk shrugged, dropping the lilt for something more american. A slap rifle blast wizzed right past her arm, and she snapped back to attantion.
"Well, escuuuse me, princess! I'm trying to have a conversation with my bestie, here!" the Hunter fumed, fists on her hips. Through watching Silverhawk's antics, Mara Sov quickly crawled behind a ruined pillar for cover as the two Guardains engaged the crowd the Queen had brought with her. She risked a look in the direction she had come in, and saw that she had drawn up quite a number of vex, ranging from goblins to minotaurs to hobgoblins and even a few specialy-marked axis harpies.
I've given them quite the mess to clean up, haven't I? Though she couldn't say she was sorry; if they hadn't been there, she would have been flattened to a bloody pulp by now. She heard a sparrow power up, and an eccentric "yeha!" from Silverhawk, right before the huntress came charging through with intent to create vex roadkill.
Uldren really wasn't kidding about this one. He'd sworn on his honor that she was crazy, and as the evidence presented itself, vex bodies flying through the air into heaps of sprap, she couldn't help but agree that Silverhawk was, indeed, a madwoman who didn't seem to have the most logical of priorities.
Or maybe that was just a Hunter thing? She'd heard similar accusations from people who worked with them, Petra included. In one letter begging her to allow a return to the Reef, the emissary had mentioned a "lunatic Nightstalker", and the Hunter Vanguard blowing up a swimming pool.
And Silverhawk's endangerment of Uldren had driven the one-eyed ex-corsair around the bend.I hope that I don't end up falling from such heights... her brother's accrophobia aside, a mid-air rescue sounded less than pleasant.
She heard footsteps behind her, and twisted her head around to see Martin Anton come from around the broken pillar to join her side.
"Your grace!" he exclaimed upon seeing just who she was, jaw slack.
"We may discuss my identity later, Warlock." she told him tiredly. She felt a little groggy and dizzy, perhaps from blood loss. Martin crouched down by her side, and took out the knife at his belt. She tensed, but then relaxed when he merely cut away her pant leg up to her knee, before reaching around his waist to get at one of the pouches at his side.
"Hold still as best you can; this may hurt a bit." he informed her gently, one hand on her shoulder, the other holding a small spray bottle close to her wound as she crouched on her hands and knees.
She clentched her jaw with pain as he sprayed what had to be some form of disinfectant over her wound. Thrall spit and space urchins! As some Guardians, and even some Crows, would swear. Her nails dug into the moss, and she felt her voice grinding in her throat.Ignor it. Ignor it. I've seen and caused worse.
IGNOR IT.
She was benevolant, made of iron, ruthless when need be. But she was no solder. She fought with Reef magic and cunning, but very rarely had to personally take up arms. She knew how to fight, but Uldren was the fighter of the two of them. Perhaps I should have him train me. She thought in dizzy bemusement. If I ever see him again. She couldn't handle physical pain the way he could, just like the deaths of their parents had wrecked emotional havok on him that had barely made a dent in her. She handled pain like he handled grief:
Not well. Just another thing that made them polar opposites.
"There. That'll stop it getting infected until you receive proper medical treatment." Martin's soft, young voice told her. His City accent was slightly discernable from Silverhawk's more american one; he had a hint of something british in his voice that was slight enough to keep one guessing, but to the trained ear noticable. She took several deep breaths as the agonizing sting began to intensify before beginning to fade. She glanced at Martin from over her shoulder to see him unraveling a bandage.
Furious horn honking brought her attantion back to Silverhawk's road rage as he began to wrap it around her leg.
"THAT'S RIGHT! OFF YOU POP, YOU LITTLE... DALEKS!" The huntress screamed, swinging around towards them before drifting to a halt in front of the pillar as the vex retreated, many mechanical bodies littering the ground. Dalek? What's a dalek?
"Well, that's unusual. I've never heard of the vex retreating when there are so few enemies to exterminate." Martin mused as he finished binding Mara's wound. On her sparrow, Silverhawk put her fists to her sides, and lifted her chin in a proud sort of way.
"I'll tell you why! They realised their probabilities of winning against my awesomeness were zero, so they ran away scared! HA!" She declared smugly before doing a double take." HOLEY DOUGNUTS, IS THAT THE FREAKING QUEEN!?"
"Yes, and she would appreciate it if you stopped yelling." the Queen told her witheringly, putting one hand to her forehead. She had a horrible headache from trying to use her powers.
"Your grace, what are you doing here?" Martin asked, green eyes wide as Mara moved into a sitting position against the pillar. She closed her eyes tiredly. This is a conversation I don't feel like haveing at the moment.
All she wanted, really, at this point, was some sleep. Any amount of it would do, even if she never woke up.
"I would prefer to save this particular explanation for later. It would be... tiresome to me, to have to repeat it to whomever else comes to my aide, should any more help present itself." she sighed, still rubbing her head. Her headache was gradually worsening. How bad would it get, if her powers remained supressed? She felt like she had no control over them; was she still subconsously trying to break the brace around her neck without realizing it?
She remembered the most severe side effect of useing these powers she'd ever seen. Uldren, many years ago, in refusal to lose over fifty awoken Crow scouts, had thrown a mental 'temper tantrum' of sorts against a small cabal fleet.
He'd put himself into a week-long coma, and the only remaining bit of the fleet they'd found was a lump of melted metal the size of her hand. It had been nothing like a harbringer attack; her brother didn't have the same amount of control she had, he hadn't the ability to summon the harbringers.
He'd simply dissitigrated things with uncontrolled rage and left no room for survivors. Since then they'd both agreed that, until he practiced proper mental training, he should avoid any more usage of his powers unless the situation was unavoidable; twelve Crow ships had been damaged by his outburst, there was no telling how many he could hurt if he lost control again.
Martin and Silverhawk both opened their mouths, but a buzzing sound, like electricity, filled the air. Behind Silverhawk, a dark cloud began to form, a spark at it's center. Martin turned and noticed it as well.
"Um...Silverhawk... I... don't think they were running because of you." The Warlock said, paleing. Mara groaned internally, too dignified to leave her emotions unchecked now that other people were here. She settled for giving the cloud the most withering look she could muster. When, by Saturn's rings, when!? When will it end!?
"It's a time-space rupture! The vex are pulling something through!" Martin exclaimed, getting to his feet, eyes fixed on the cloud fearfully.
"Please be a dinosaur, please be a dinosaur, please be a dinosaur!" Silverhawk wished at the same time, closeing her eyes and crossing the fingers on both her hands, holding them up to her face.
"Please don't be a dinosaur!" Martin countered, looking horrified at the mere thought of faceing a prehistoric animal.
"I would be content with anything save more vex." the Queen shook her head. She would soon regret that statement.
The cloud dispersed, the vex finished their time manipulation, and it then stood before them.
"Not good." Martin said faintly.
"I just had to open my mouth..." Mara sighed, bracing herself for more running. Talk about "be careful what you wish for".
"YES!" Silverhawk screeched at the same time, giving a small jump and clicking her heels. "BEST. DAY. EVER!"
Because what stood before them now... was undoubtedly, by way of conveiniance for certain...
A T-Rex.
Am I you heros yet?
OH MY GOSH IT'S TOMARROW RISE OF IRON eurgbraibvgui;uerit5hw4g5yt43uyrbwevfrgeacfjgt!
Order and Chaos: I think I already addressed this in a PM.
MaybeALittleBroken: More incoming! ^^ All aboard the reference train! Whoo Whooo!
Guest(15th): I think maybe D2 will include both Cabal and Vex. After all, evidence suggests we'll be dealing heavily with Mars.
I'm still repairing the doors from when they were busted down by the full-blown review SWAT team Sovietshadow invaded my profile with. I'm not going to bother responding to all of them. So, I'll just type this;
0-0
Krissa: Binge away, dear reader! Binge, AWAY!
Okay, so I've realized that there have been some questions as to the timeline in this universe. SIVA was mentioned last chapter because, lets face it, the Iron Lords can't up and disappear without anyone noticing. Perhaps it's alittle-kown history, the cause of their deaths, thanks to Lord Saladin, but it's known history non the less. In this universe, that battle took place 20 years before Fever. And, at the same time, we had Dreagen Yor running around killing people. What's more, Martin was born around this same time. He came into a world of chaos, and the events surrounding his birth have always held deep interest to him, so that's why he dug deeper into the history and that is why he knows about SIVA.
The Dark Below, for the purposes of this fic, took place roughly a year before Fever and the original game plot. Therefore, here we are, in the Black Garden quest... with a certain Queen and Prince tagging along. hence, the fact that this is AU. We'll be dealing with House of Wolves next, and after that,. we'll finish up the Certech plot with 15 Seconds, and move on to the Twilight plot. if you've been keeping up with 15 Seconds, you'll have noticed a second, cheeky mention to the Iron Wolves, and if you were paying attention in an earlier chapter of this fic, you'll have seen my mention of Ashraven and the Wolves.
I'll admit to Twilight plot involving them, but I will discuss it no further.
So there, I hope that cleared a few things up!
Next Time: T-rex V.S. Silverhawk; Who. Will. Win. Place your bets, folks!
Cheers!^^