Weiss stepped out into the cold, watching her breath puff out of her mouth as she did, "Where are we?
"Novosibirsk, in what was once Siberia," Mikeal said. Siberia… "Come on, once we get out of the city we can decrypt your sparrow and head for the cosmodrome to find a jumpship."
"I don't know what any of those things are," Weiss said, bemused.
"...What Age are you from? I could picture a Dark Ager not knowing what they are, but they would definitely know what the Fallen are."
"I don't… I don't know," Weiss said, "We didn't have a name for our age, it was just when we lived, Mikael."
"Ok, well a sparrow is like a motorbike. You had bikes in your age, right? It's like a bike that flies."
Weiss's mind immediately traveled to Bumblebee, Yang's bike, "We did, but I don't know how to drive one."
"You'll learn," Mikeal said, "all Guardians learn how to use sparrows to cross large distances. Meanwhile, a cosmodrome is a place to launch spacecraft while a jumpship is a relatively small, personalized spacecraft. The first one you find probably won't be capable of warp travel, unless we get really lucky, but we aren't looking to leave Earth orbit. We're heading to the Last City."
"There's only one left?" Weiss asked.
"That's why we call it the Last City," Mikeal said, "There are small settlements, but- oh, no…"
Weiss watched the six armed creature exit the building and stare at her. Then, it grabbed a speaf off its back and began to rush at her, chittering as it went. More of them came pouring out of the buildings as Mikeal flew under a broken car, "Fallen!"
These were the Fallen? They weren't Grimm, that was for sure. They were unlike any creature Weiss had ever seen. What had happened to Remnant while she was gone?
Weiss pushed aside the thought as the Fallen stabbed for her, the spear, which was spitting electricity, hit her Aura and stopped. Weiss snapped up her new gun and pulled the trigger, white, wispy energy rising from each gunshot wound before the Fallen dropped. Two more, these ones smaller and two armed, with stumps where the lower two arms should have been, lunged at her with electric knives. A single shot for each brought them down.
Whoever that Seraph had been, they had clearly valued stopping power. Unfortunately, killing the two had apparently enraged the other six two armed Fallen, who charged at her with chitters of rage. Before Weiss could bring the gun up, Mikeal called, "Use the Light!"
The Light? Weiss paused, just for a second, to focus on a part of her that felt strange and different from the rest of her. Reaching into it on instinct, Weiss was dimly reminded of using her Semblance. A purple glyph appeared on the palm of her hand, and she threw it out so a ball of purple light flew from her hand before exploding in a burst of energy that disintegrated the charging Fallen. The other six armed one spat some chittering at her, before going down on all sixes and running away.
"Mikeal," Weiss said.
"Yes?"
"We're gonna talk about what that was once we're on the road."
"We'll have plenty of time," Mikael said.
— X Pyrrha X—
Pyrrha watched Ruby sag in her office chair, the eternally fifteen year old Vanguard looking fractionally closer to her actual age. The exhausted sigh heaved from her lips, and the knife she had been playing with throughout the debriefing finally stopped moving.
"So to sum it up," Ruby said, "We have another war and a new enemy to fight."
"That's what it looks like," Penny said.
"Great," Ruby said, voice bitter, "I swear, we deal with one problem and another rises."
"We'll deal with it," Pyrrha said.
"That's the spirit," Pyrrha whipped around at the voice in the doorway. Leaning in it was a tall Exo with a horn on his head and blue-white eyes, as he spoke, yellow light came from his mouth. Behind him was another Exo with a yellow cloak and yellow markings and a human with dark hair and a small goatee. Three fifths of the Wolfpack, "So, who's this new problem and how're we handling it?"
"Cayde, Andal, Shiro" Ruby said, "how are you?"
"Do we really have time for this?" Shiro said.
"We always have time for this," Ruby said.
"...I'm doing fine, mom," Shiro sighed.
"We're all doing fine," Cayde agreed, and Andal nodded, "What's up?"
"We need the best pilot in the system that isn't Amanda," Ruby said, unloading Wolf's Howl, her wrist mounted, impulse controlled grenade launcher, "Eris… offered her ship for a stealth mission. Your job is to fly it into orbit around close proximity to Oryx's ship around Saturn, transmat onto it and set up a transmat zone so we can deploy more people to it. However, only you and Andal are going, Cayde. I need Shiro to go find Tevis."
"Two man sucide run, eh?" Cayde grinned.
"We can't risk more until we get the Transmat zone up and running. You'll have reinforcements the minute you do. The Firebreak Order has put forth four fireteams ready to go, while the Praxis Order put forth two."
"Ruby," Zavala's voice came out of Blossom.
"What's up, Zav?" Ruby asked.
"Send Pyrrha to my office once you're done with her."
"She'll be there in a minute," Ruby said, nodding to Pyrrha, who stood up, ducking out of the office and making her way down the hall. Knocking on the metal door, Pyrrha waited for the commander to open the door.
Once he did, she stepped in to his grim face, "Commander."
"Pyrrha," Zavala said, "Ruby's planning her secret mission to the Dreadnaught, I take it?"
Pyrrha blinked, opening her mouth and sharing a look with Victoria. Finally she said, "Yes, sir."
"Good. I can't officially endorse the mission, but we need boots on the ground there as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I need you to go to Venus."
"Venus?" Pyrrha said, "Why?"
"We have reports of the Sunbreakers deploying there. They're a Titan Order who left the City with Osiris, after I terminated the contract between them and the City due to finding it… unacceptable. Now, it's time to bring them home, so the Hammer of Sol can guard the City through the night to come. And if they can't, then we need the best of us to take up the Hammer and bring it back. That's you, Pyrrha Nikos, Crota's End. They respect strength, and there's no one stronger than the killer of the Hive God-Prince."
— X Weiss X—
Weiss stopped the sparrow on top of the hill, climbing off the bike and stretching her legs. It was surprisingly easy to use, push forwards on the handles to speed up, pull back to slow down, press a button with your thumb for emergency breaking.
Pushing that thought aside, she watched Mikael return it to the small white gem it had been held in, an "Engram" and scooped it up, storing it in one of her pouches before letting Mikeal settle into it and flipping it shut. Walking along the road lined with cars and bodies she asked, quietly, "What happened here?"
"People tried to get on Exodus ships during the Collapse," Mikeal said, "It didn't work, Last City records say nobody got further out than the Astroid Belt."
"But they got into space?" Weiss said, "We hadn't done that in my age, I don't think."
"So your pre-Golden Age?" Mikeal asked.
"Maybe?" ,Weiss said, "It'd help if I knew anything about what the Golden Age was."
"It was at the start of the twenty first century," Mikeal said causing Weiss to pause. Twenty first century? Twenty First Century after what? The Great War? The fall of Vale? Something else? If it was any of those, she had been dead for a long, long time.
"How long after the Great War was that?" Weiss asked.
"Great War? You mean World War One?" Weiss shot a startled look at Mikeal's pouch, "About a century. Anyways, the Traveler, the source of the Light, came to the Sol System and began terraforming it. Nobody knows why, but that's how the Golden Age started."
"I still can't believe we left Remnant," Weiss said.
"Remnant? What's that?"
Weiss stopped again, having barely made it into the shadow of the large wall, "Remnant, here?"
"This is Earth," Weiss couldn't help the incredulous snort that came out of her nose, "What!?"
"Earth," Weiss said, "Like the stuff under our feet?"
"That's what they call this world! I've never heard of a Remnant before."
"That doesn't make any sense," Weiss said, as they stepped into the broken down security checkpoint, "Why would they rename the planet-"
"It's always been Earth," Mikeal insisted, "We can ask the Exos when you get to the Last City, they'll tell you. Nobody's heard of Remnant, I'll bet you."
Weiss decided to take that bet, if only to stave off a panic attack over the idea that Mikeal might be telling the truth. If this wasn't Remnant, how had she gotten to "Earth"?
"Let's find this ship already," Weiss said.
—