Wish You Were Here
To a hunter, the stars are everything.
Back when Guardians were just called Risen, and the Warlords were starting to pick up steam, those who would call themselves Hunters today could never get rid of that wanderlust of theirs. The worst of them would pillage for the sake of saying that they could do it, no matter who they hurt, and the best would steal from those who had too much and bring it back to those who need it.
Either selfish or selfless, all of them would look up at those stars, and Wolf knows that some of them had to ask what's out there to be discovered, for better or for worse. But back then, finding a way off of Earth was hard, with how scattered knowledge and resources were. There was no bridge to connect them from the dingy little rock they were stuck to, all the way to wherever their curious hearts desired to be.
The prize was always on the horizon, and this time, she had both the bridge and the right stars to be aiming for to get to her horizon.
Deep breaths, girl. You're only one of the first of Humanity to hit FTL and have a planned destination to reach. No pressure. Taking one of those deep breaths, she looks out of the cockpit for the Manus and searches for the Lupus constellation. "So, test jump was a success, I don't see or hear anything exploding or falling off, and we reached Saturn in record time. Marcus Ren, if you hear the black box for this, I officially went faster than you, and you can weep. If you don't, then you will when I head back to the city and shout it from the rooftops."
From somewhere in the stern of the jumpship, a voice speaks up. "I can see the headlines on one of those news articles on the 'Net now." He pulls one of those old, old accents that sound like some sort of reporter for an old, pre-Golden Age sport. "And now, we have our great savior, Crotabane, Kingslayer, screaming like a lunatic about how she's faster than a famous sparrow racer. More at 11."
"Come on, I won't actually do that." She says between laughs. "I'd sooner accidentally drive this thing into the ruddy sun than do that. Public speaking isn't my strong suit."
"Well, you're right there. And... there, system looks green, and nothing looks to have exploded, as you have said." He swirls into view, looking from her face to the view in front of them. "Spotted our target, yet?"
"Lupi's coords are already punched in, bud. Just... taking in this look one more time." She pulls her eyes from the stars to Ghost's green 'eye'. "It's all going to look different. Traveler above, that's going to look so weird, Ghost." The grin overtaking her face slowly falls. "Well, we only really get to stay for as long as we get to observe the planet. Full of water."
"It should be obvious for what we're looking for, seeing how it's an inhospitable planet full of hot, dense atmosphere. Any sort of construction would be a big giveaway for the ones from the Luvial Crux being there." Ghost looks out to the stars. "The only thing that might be a problem is the atmosphere. Might take a while to scan through the whole thing. Good thing the planet's surface area was reduced, otherwise it might actually take a whole month."
"Yeah," Wolf kicks back her boots, crossing her legs on top of the controls, right where it wouldn't touch anything. "Would feel pretty good to waste more time on it, but having more time to loot the place would be nice. Wonder what kind of tech they have?"
The possibilities of what could be held aboard the Luvial Crux is what really enticed the hunter, other than getting away from the main issue of dealing with... everything. There are few things that survived the collapse in pristine condition, and those that had survived the collapse not in said condition ranged from being still useful, to downright detrimental in discovering. The Iron Lords got the bad hand, in that sense.
SIVA was a nightmare she doesn't want to deal with again. Never before were three commands so damning.
Shaking her head of the memories, she hears Ghost pipe up. "Hopefully something more than water purification. It would be nice, but seems a bit much to travel almost fifty light-years for more-"
A noticeable metallic clang sounded throughout the cabin. Both Wolf and Ghost turned to look in it's direction.
"...ow..." A small voice called out from some of the few venting systems outtakes.
Another voice, this one different from the first, whispers in a blank voice. "Wow, way to screw up your own plan."
The first one harshly whispers back. "It's not my fault that the air blowing through this place decides to kick in now of all times! It's a tight enough fit with you in-" They stay quiet for a second, a blue light flickering through the gaps in the grate. "Wait, why are you- we were supposed to have separate spots to hide, why are you in my hiding spot?!"
"I was feeling lonely." The second voice deadpans.
Ghost mutters out an "Oh no." beside her. Before she could question that, the two mystery stowaways continue.
The first voice lets out a groan. "You were feeling- you know what, sure, we can share the same space, but if him-" Here, his voice almost sounded excited, before returning to sounding serious. "- and the Young Wolf find us, we'll be shipped back to the city faster than you can say 'shotgun ape'!"
By the time the first voice said the last two words, Wolf had walked over to the vent and peered into it. "What makes you say that?" She smiles.
Two different lights, one a bright, flickering blue and the other a soft magenta. If she squints her eyes, she can see the pale, orange-tiped look of the shells Ghosts always have. Ghost still has his; he says he keeps it around for the memories.
The blue 'eye' flickers again before hearing the first voice speak from it. "Oh shi- haha, hey! How's it going, you doing well for yourself? You know, you have very, very comfortable ducts here." It makes a very obvious look around inside, knocking the one with the magenta eye aside a bit, before looking back out the duct. "Oh, wait, we're not in the Tower, are we? Aw shucks, well that's my fault, I hope you don't mind-"
"We stowed away on purpose." The magenta-colored optic said dryly.
"Wha- argh, you idiot! Why can't you let me do the talking and get us out of this situation?"
"We could have asked her directly." There's a hint of exasperation now, Wolf hears.
"Ask her direct- no, we couldn't have, do you know what we're dealing with here? This his guardian, she's done so many crazy things that, honestly, she would probably-"
The hunter interrupts the... comedic? Sure, the comedic duo before her. "You two can stay."
"What?" The blue optic flickers at an almost epileptic speed for a moment.
"What?!" Ghost, who had been silent up until that moment, shouts.
"Told you." The magenta optic says.
Wolf turns back to Ghost at his outburst, tuning out the new argument going on with the two stowaways. "So..." She stands back up, walking back over to the console and past her Ghost. "Friends of yours?"
Ghost rotated away from the argument (which is slowly increasing in volume) to face her. "Why did you invite those two? Those two, specifically. Of all the things that went onto this ship, those two are going to be a pain to deal with."
"Still haven't answered my question." She halfheartedly sang, sitting in the sole seat to the cockpit. She begins another once-over of the ship's systems, making sure that it's good to go for another jump. The path they're going to take requires them to jump from this exact spot, and the opening is only going to be clear for about another fifteen minutes. If Wolf (and co.) are going to make it, she needs to make sure the drive is ready for another wind-up.
"But to answer yours..." She shrugs. "Dunno, really. I mean, what are they going to do? We're going to be doing a bit of looting at best, a bit of running at worst, and the worst they could do is decide to stay behind for whatever reason." Wolf shoots him a glance. "Unless you're not telling me something."
"Well, no- but uh," He turn back to the two, and now that she turns to see it herself, she can see the flickering blue-eyed (blue-opticed?) Ghost ramming into the other one, who doesn't even move from the assault as he does an impressive job of deadpanning the beating away. "They're the kind of friends I didn't want to show you."
"Friends?"
He turns back to her. "It's a long story. They, uh, are not huge fans of Guardians."
She opens her mouth, closes it, then lets her Ghost's words sink in.
"We have a lot of those, don't we? Long stories." She leans back in her captain's seat, turning back to the stars before her. "I can't tell if we keep asking for it, or if the universe wants to keep itself entertained. I mean really..." Wolf lets out a sigh, looking for just the right constellation-
There. Right between the points of epsilon and zeta, a bit off to the side. It's hard to keep on target, but she can definitely see it. All the way out there, there's a remnant of humanity – Golden Age Humanity – that left home for some reason or another. But it's going to be so, so much farther from Sol, farther than she has ever been, to get there. The farthest she's ever been to was Nessus, and even then it's technically still part of Sol. She's not even going to be in the same system, for Traveler's sake!
It's perfect.
"Can't wait for the next one." Wolf says, a grin slowly starting to take over her face.
The jump over there was... something.
A bit of an understatement, obviously, because she's currently riding between the fabric of reality and unreality to go faster than light itself. The flight itself was quieter than she expected: she told her passengers that she was preparing to make the jump, and Ghost phased into their link while the other two Ghosts went further into the ship, only able to occasionally hear them when the flickering one raises her voice. After she initiated the jump, she was able to tune out anything they would say fairly easily.
As for the jump itself, the gravity stabilizers the Manus has makes sure that she isn't going to experience any crazy amount of G's, so it's about as noticeable as using a NLS drive that she had previously. Well, except that instead of a mass vortex of color that she sees before her, it's instead a vast expanse of... nothing. It gives Wolf shivers when she stares at it for too long.
Color is also missing, which is weirdly cool. Sort of reminds her of one of those really, really old pictures that she remembers being recovered by Chrys, showing off a well preserved picture of what looks to have been a family. There were no other records of what the family could have been, but he found a broken device that might've been what made the picture. Strange, how a few centuries ago, that family probably would be indistinguishable from the few survivors living in the Dark Age.
Now that Wolf has to wait, she set herself to do the one thing that keeps her focused for extended periods of time: weapon maintenance. She asks Ghost to pull out her kit and, feeling a little thoughtful and knowing she has the time, asks for the Ace. He stays out, too, when she tells him that she'll get his shell polished, too. Being the great Guardian that she is, she starts on the shell first, taking steady hands and carefully, carefully cleaning every segment of his shell, even going so far as to do a test on it to make sure it can still take a stray shot and not harm Ghost's core, using a device from her general maintenance kit to scan for any discrepancies. After doing that, and checking to make sure the wires are cleaned and polished ("Yes, the wires need polish, too. And here I thought Hunters knew their fashion.") she held out the cleaned shell to him, who happily used transmat to slip it on.
For the next couple of hours, however, was pure weapon maintenance, and here Wolf lost herself into her own little world of caring for the best hardware she has on hand. After Ace, it was a blur of small parts, gun oil, and knife sharpening.
At some point she got curious as to what the other two Ghosts were up to, and a quick look into the back shows them playing cards. When they noticed Wolf, however, they glared at her. Knowing what her Ghost is capable of, she put her hands up in surrender and went back to her work.
("Your friends are scary, Ghost." She fakes a shiver.
"I know." Ghost shakes his head, before going back to reading something on a datapad. Wolf doesn't know why a datapad, but he doesn't budge on any solid answers.)
But, after a wait that lasted only a little over two hours – which made her proud of her estimation being relatively close – Ghost said that they will be exiting the jump in a few minutes. He went and packed away the things he pulled from their vault, then informed their stowaways of their imminent arrival. Holstering what weapons and knives she keeps on her person, she looks down herself to see if anything else is missing.
Her armor is in good condition, thanks to Ghost being able to patch over the set of armor gifted to her by the Techeuns of the Dreaming City after dealing with their... dragon problem. Glimmer is one hell of a useful resource, and she is ever thankful for Ghost keeping her in top shape physically. All of her knives are in place, and her Thin Line is at her side, all that's left is for Wolf to don her helmet - in case of emergencies - and to secure herself into the driver's seat.
A few minutes later, curteousy of a countdown from Ghost, and the universe comes back into view.
A few things are immediately noticeable. One is the local star: Nu2 Lupi. It looks really, really similar to the one she's used to. If she has her distance right, it's almost the same size as Sol's sun. Looks to be around the same age, too.
Wolf opens her mouth to comment about how she's almost disappointed in how everything looks the same, before Thing Number Two makes itself known. "Is... is our Light-"
Ghost interrupts from their link. "Thinner? No, quieter. I can barely feel the Traveller from here..." After another moment, "Yeah, I can barely feel much of anything out here. We're definitely far from home."
"Scary thought."
"Let's see here..." Ghost exits their link, shooting rays of light to interface with the jumpships terminal. "Wow. Yeah. There really is nothing out here. I'm not picking up anything Hive-like, or any Cabal Battlenet codes. Might be tougher to find Vex."
"Pretty sure Vex would've turned the star into a forge, if they already occupied this space." She looks back down at her gloved hands, feeling her Light. Some part of her feels cautious of how little Light there is out here. Without the proximity of the Traveler keeping them stocked up, she could easily burn herself out. If there is a threat here, running is her first option. When Wolf looks back up, she sees Ghost starring off at a spot away from the star. "Don't tell me I just jinxed it."
"I'm not saying it yet, but..." He quickly interacts with the console. "Just punched in some coords. We need to get a closer look for me to make any sense of it."
After yet another jump, and Wolf reorientating their ship, a large blue shape slides into view. Well, blue and a large splash of greens, whites, and browns, but mostly blue.
"Impossible." Ghost says.
"No shit. That..." She leans forward in her seat, squinting her eyes. "That looks like Earth, if someone never looked at a map in their lives."
"More than that, this is supposed to be an ocean world, like Titan. There was no land to begin with. Planet did more than shrink, more than half of it's mass is missing."
Which basically supports their theory of something coming here and reducing the size of the planet. Only... "It's alive. No way something Dark did this."
"What the hell are you two doing up there?" The outspoken Ghost says from the back.
"Why'd you ask?"
"My sensors are picking up a lot of relic radiation." The curt one cuts in. "You're not trying to make a star explode, are you?"
"Wha-" Ghost turns around and shouts "We're not on the Almighty, we're on a jumpship! How are we going to blow up Lupi?!"
While the argument between the Ghosts are going down, Wolf keeps an eye on the Manus' instruments, and not seeing anything out of the ordinary, she keeps looking at Lupi d.
Which is why she was the first to see the next anomaly in this star system. "Uh, Ghost?"
At her worried tone, he swivels back to her. "What?" Wolf wordlessly points at the anomaly, and Ghost flows her gaze. "Oh. That's... not supposed to be there."
Orbiting from across the horizon of the shrunken planet, with a pale cratered surface, is a moon. One that looks suspiciously a lot like Luna, but without the Hive's cracks scarring it's surface.
"...could have been recent." From right next to Wolf (she's starting to get tired of things sneaking up on her) the Ghost with the flickering optic mutters. "I think I read up somewhere that humanity of old theorized that the moon wasn't always orbiting Earth."
"Warsats." The other Ghost casually says.
"Warsats? Where?!" Wolf's Ghost shouts. Wolf herself immediately checks to see if her ship's combat radar is active, while revving up the thrusters for evasive maneuvers. Ghost, after interacting with the terminal, says. "The moon, they're surrounding the-"
A loud klaxon sounds as, before he could finish his sentence, a super-heated jet of light streaks towards the Manus. Wolf, hands already on the controls, spins the ship out of the way. As if knowing the first shot was going to miss, more beams of acausal Solar attempts to lance them. "Why are they firing, Ghost?!"
"Hold on, just keep dodging." His shell frantically flips around, probably attempting to interface with whatever is controlling the glorified space cannons. "Would have been nice to know a Bray project brought along superweapons."
"Why are you surprised?!" Wolf shouts, throwing the Manus from side to side-
Until another light starts gathering around the ship, the instruments and controls shuttering under the blue abnormality.
"Ah!" Ghost shouts. "Whatever is going on, it's locking me out!"
"If this is the Vex doing this, I swear to-"
From outside the viewport, Wolf can see the barrage still coming, and with the controls shot, a series of impacts shake the jumpship. Immediately, alarms start flashing at her, painting the cabin in red light. Not to mention that the blue light from outside is starting to bleed through the ship oh no there's a-
It smells like roses.
The world almost seems to come alive, the land boiling and folding and eating itself in a cacophony of noise. Green smoke belches from the cracks in the earth, screams mingling with the cries of distant people/animals/foodforslaughter.
It's all muted, however, because her own screams are rocking her body. Or is it someone else's, and their thunder is quaking her form?
Why does she smell roses?
She notices a cabin keeping her propped up to view the chaos unfolding. No, not a cabin, a home; wooden and warm and bleeding red. So, too, is the grass below; a fresh green slowly stained red, red, red. She distantly realizes that she's bleeding the red onto everything. Oops.
She looks up, and the sky sways and warps with the two moons dancing through the night sky, erasing all light from the stars. Red beams of light dance between them, making a dangerous web.
It's her blood. Her blood smells like roses.
The smoke swirls and swoops, throwing its talons of porcelain every which way. It's pain is very much felt, right in her abdomen. There's an arrow there, leaking all of the lifeblood her little body can hold. Then the smoke turns its attention to her, screeching it declaration of pain to the roiling world as it falls, falls, falls.
Wait, that's her falling. Ha, what a silly goose she is. Now all eyes are on her, all the blues and ambers, all the greens and browns, all the numbers both comforting and fearful.
Except the red. There's a red, and oh, how she doesn't like it. It's staring at her, shouting at her. What is it shouting? Gosh, she's just so, so tired, and she can't get that smell of rose/blood out-
Rose. They're all screaming rose. Ha. Now that is funny.
She has had enough of that flower and its thorns.
-bright flash, and as quickly as it came it left. In front of them is a vast desert, speckled here and there with a tiny spot of something other. It's given an almost ethereal look from the full moon looming over them.
Oh, and a huge ass mountain right in front of them.
"Ghost!" Wolf tries to throw the Manus to the side, trying to avoid the sudden landmark just appearing before they crash but something is broken-
With a loud snap, the right wing clips the mountain, and at the speed they're going they thankfully don't spinning out of control. There's warnings going off from the damage they received, and while they aren't being targeted anymore they are going way too fast to be in atmosphere.
"Well, at least you don't need to survive this." Ghost mutters, barely heard over the warnings.
"Cold comfort there, buddy." Her hands glide over the console, eyes scanning the various screens for... "Oh, right. No right wing. I can't steer this thing without flipping us over."
"Well," Ghost quickly flies to her and enters their link. "You're no warlock, but the Manus uses a solar fuel cell to power everything. Try acting floofy."
"Floofy?" Wolf lets go of the controls, because at this point they're useless, and part of her wants her helmet off so she can rub her temples. "Light's thin still, but I can try... no, wait, better idea."
The hunter reaches for her Solar, that burning pyre within her, and feeds it out to the wind grinding against them. If she applies enough Solar to make a makeshift updraft, she can just cut the thrusters and glide to the ground. It'll take a lot out of her, but at least there won't be nothing but pulverized plasteel left in the impending crash. Which is inevitable at this point, because something had to just transmat them right in the path of a mountain-
A thought crosses her mind. Drifter knew.
The Guardians vision grew redder than the flames that overtake her.
Times were lean, for the Magi Brothers.
It's not the first time that happened, nor will it be the last. And the fact that they haven't slept in a real bed in a couple months isn't much of a problem. What is, is the fact that-
"We're running low on money." The eldest brother says.
The youngest, who only just came back from checking - and trapping - the perimeter, walks over to him with a questioning tilt of his head. "How much do we have?"
"Well," He counts off on his fingers. "We have about fourty seven various types of copper." He rubs together two different kinds of said coin. "Thirteen silver, but they're all human make." The youngest pulls a face at that. "And seven gold, one of which smells weird."
"Smells weird? Weird how?" As he sorts through his own pack, fishing out his bedroll, his brother flicks the odd coin to him. Looking it over, he laughs. "Oh, wow, that's rare."
The eldest widens his eyes. "Rare, as in-"
"Useless, but neat." He looks over it in his hands, using the edge of his robes to clean it off a bit. "It's some sort of mixed gold, silver, and copper piece. Heard something about a scam going around the borders south, with dogs passing off these as actual gold, getting rich by 'making' coin."
"Oh. Neat." He leans over and takes the coin. "Think we can borrow their idea for this one piece?"
"Nah, they had some competition where the information got out. Anyone smart enough to sell you something knows about it. Unless you're in human lands; they can't smell as well over there."
"Damn. Here I was thinking we were a gold richer. Now we're just a gold poorer." The eldest lets the coin slip from his fingers, dropping into his bag. "We have some to last us a few weeks, but we need to pick up another job soon."
"What a time to be an assassin, I suppose. Talk about killing us with kindness." That got a laugh out of the eldest. The youngest smirks, and goes over to his own sack to pull out a bedroll.
The air is cool, with the first signs of frost already well into motion. Winter is on it's way, and the sky is devoid of clouds and a decent amount of foliage. Harder for them to hide, but lots of natural camouflage for traps. The other plus, and the youngest tries his best to hide it from his brother, is the view. The night sky is simply breathtaking, with the stars glittering like little gemstones.
He'd never say that out loud, though. Had to not say - and do - a lot of things since they were little. Oh, well. Stars won't judge him, at least. The moon, too, what with it being the biggest light in the sky, this late at night.
As soon as that thought crosses his mind, however, he notices small streaks of light in the sky. Almost like watching light catching dust in an abandoned storeroom, but a lot higher in the sky. "Oh, hey!"
"What?" At his gesture, his brother looks up at the moon. A small light of interest sparks in his eyes. "Alright, now that is something you don't see every night."
After the first time they saw one, and a bit of asking around, turns out the strange sparks in the sky at night are rocks. Not very often do they reach the ground, but when they do it's a prized material. A stone from the heavens itself, fetching for a lot of gold. "Imagine if one of those just... drops, right in front of us."
"Brother, they make holes in the ground. Heard that one hit a patch of trees and burned them all to the ground."
"No, not right next to us, but nearby." He waves his hand a bit to the side. "That could secretly be the answer to all of our problems, just getting lucky enough for a piece of the stars to just drop practically into our laps. Make our winter very cushy."
The eldest brother scoffs. "C'mon, what are the chances that a star is going to just shoot down right next to us?" After a moment from saying that, the light show stops. "None dropped anyways, not much we can do that, anyhow. You're dreaming a bit too hard, brother."
Almost without him wanting it to, a bit of him hurt from his words. Here they are, a couple of assassins, no people hiring and squatting in the woods. If they don't get their hands on any jobs, then what are they going to do to get by? The last thing they need to do is get desperate, seeing how the first time got them into being killers, and the second... he doesn't talk about the second.
He wishes that he has an answer.
An shrieking boom echoes across the clearing, making the youngest brother look around for it's source. A moment of frantic looking reveals a huge ball of fire slicing through the air, with a streak of reddish gold trailing behind it. The absolute absurdity of it has him staring at it as it shoots by, far, far into the distance. After sitting in silence for a while, nothing else happens.
"Hey, Zen?"
"Yeah, Nat?"
"About my idea..."
A whole month and a half later, another chapter appears. But hey, now we get to the good stuff.