Familiar Faces
A medium sized freighter ship drops out of a jump above the surface of Mars, then proceeds to burn towards the surface at a speed that would make even Amanda Holliday blush. Aboard the ship, the hull creaks and groans as Delve stands up from the pilot's seat and returns his hat to his head after engaging the autopilot. He prepares for the job ahead wordlessly, not like Rust was feeling particularly chatty, anyway. While he leaves his trusted revolver on his hip he slings a large sniper onto his back and grabs a shotgun, carrying it to the transmat pad in the belly of the ship. There he waits until his ghost notifies him that they're approaching the drop point. The guardian stands and steps onto the transmat pad.
"Hit it." He says to his ghost.
A moment later he materializes on the peak of a dusty orange dune in the middle of a vast expanse of desert. The sand shifts under him and he loses his footing, ending up sliding down the dune on his rear. At the bottom he stands up and dusts his dark leather jacket and pants off, silently cursing at the sand that had found its way into the cracks of the armor plates he wears on his shins and boots. With every step he could feel the sand grind itself smaller and smaller between the plates, only to be replaced with new grains of sand. After only a few more steps he asks his ghost to summon his sparrow and almost immediately after holstering the shotgun on it, he's speeding off between the dunes.
"Only a few miles between us and.. Her." Rust speaks into his helmet comms.
"Still don't like her, huh?" Delve muses.
"Not really." She replies. "Though I don't think I'll have to deal with her for much longer."
He didn't have a response, so he just focused on not hitting any of the large boulders that are in his way. The sun beats down on him and his sleek sparrow as they blast through the valleys of the dunes, creating a surprisingly calm experience while he weaves between the large rocks scattered around. Eventually the valley opens, and a large city partially buried in the sand is visible in the distance. He stops the sparrow and sits up on it. Utilizing an aftermarket mod for his helmet he bought from Tyran a long time ago, he zooms in to observe the city from afar rather than just waltzing in. A few minutes of careful observing and planning in his head later he leans down onto his sparrow and once again blasts towards the ruined buildings in the distance.
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Delve hops off his sparrow, landing solidly on the cracked pavement below him. He grabs the shotgun and a moment later his sparrow dematerializes. Slowly he makes his way through the abandoned streets, watching for any kind of movement.
"You know.. With just how much the Cabal like to try to kick us off this planet, this sure is quiet." His ghost says into his helmet comms.
"Yeah. If they don't show up, I'd be okay with that." Delve replies. "Not really looking to have to shoot at anyone other than our target today. Especially not if they're both shooting back."
Rust doesn't reply, so he just returns his focus to the streets he was walking through. After what feels like an eternity later, he reaches the coordinates that Tyran gave him. He looks up at the building in front of him that towers over every other building and sighs. He shakes his head and tries the control pad for the front door.
"Power's gone. Not a surprise, though. The city's arc supply has probably been cut off for a looong time." He remarks after lightly hitting the non-functioning terminal. "How thick you think this door is, Rust?" he asks, inspecting the metal closer.
"Well.. Golden age Mars city.." She starts thinking while scanning the door. "Probably about a foot. Most likely closer to eighteen inches. Why?"
Delve doesn't say anything, he just looks at her and slings his shotgun over his shoulder.
"No. No. Do not." His ghost says, materializing and watching as he walks a handful of strides away from the door. "Don't even think about it. It's a bad idea." Delve smirks under his helmet and only replies by sprinting straight at the door. When he's a few feet away he drops his shoulder and charges his light into a proper slam. The sound of him impacting the metal echoes throughout the empty streets. He steps back and looks at the door.
"Nothing. Damn." He rubs his shoulder a bit and starts walking to his starting position.
"D. Stop. Delve!" His ghost tries to stop him, but he goes for another charge. Then another. Then a fourth. After a dozen charges with no visible change, he was no longer feeling very patient. On his next try he tunes out his ghost's protests and gets a larger run up. About twice as far to run. He clears his head of everything except the thought of wanting to get through the door and the anger at not making any progress. As soon as he starts running, he can tell that this was the one. He felt perfectly in tune with the light, feeling almost like it was carrying him forward towards the door. Left foot down. Then Right. Then left again. It was the closest thing to peace he'd felt in a very long time. Before he knew it, it was time to try to bash the door in again. But he had a different plan. Instead of dropping his shoulder again, he reels his fist backwards in a wind up for a punch. Time seems to move in slow motion as he feels the searing heat of Solar Light energy light up his entire hand and most of his arm. He brings his fist forward and the moment it connects with the door was lost in time. One moment the door was stuck in place, unable to move. The next, the door was flying backwards into the building, taking part of the wall with it on all sides. The sound from the latest impact made the previous ones sound like someone had been opening and closing the door. The Delve had hit the door with so much force that loose sand shook loose from every building in a half mile radius around them. Delve easily stops his momentum, and his ghost could only stare in awe. They look at the door, which is now lying against the far wall. It's very clearly bowed towards them with a melted mark of a fist in the dead center.
"Did you know you could hit that hard?" She asks him quietly, feeling humbled from the shockwave that had threatened to knock her out of the air.
".. No." He replies, looking down at his hand. "I was hoping that I could though. Something felt.. Different that time." He starts to walk into the building through the dust cloud. He readies his shotgun and toggles on his infrared lens in his helmet.
"Different how?" Rust asks, dematerializing instead of floating along behind him.
"I don't know. Just.. Different. Like I was more connected with the Light for a few seconds." Delve replies, looking around the large entry room for any movement that wasn't his own. Before Rust can reply, a voice calls out from the floor above them.
"There's only one man in this solar system that would give away the element of surprise like that."
Delve looks up and sees a figure standing on the walkway of the second floor. He drops his shotgun to his side, being held in his off hand in case he needs to draw his revolver. The voice calls again.
".. And there's only one guy that wears a hat that.. Stupid." The woman's voice had a playful tone to it, but Delve knew better.
"Nix. Good to see ya. How've you been?" Delve replies, easily able to see her through the dust that hadn't settled down yet. Based on the way she was aiming her rifle at him, he guessed she had a similar mod setup to him.
"Shut up, D." She replies, her voice having lost all sense of tease. "I know why you're here.. And you're not gonna bring me in."
"See, that's the thing. I don't need to bring you in.. Just your ghost." He keeps his eyes locked on her. "Or whatever's left of him, anyways."
She just chuckles and shakes her head in response to him.
"You really think you're gonna be able to beat me in a fight, then actually be able to bring yourself to kill Glyde? You're delusional." Nix looks at him through her scope, trying to tell how serious he was about it. He had always been a bit of a joker, so maybe this was just another one of those right? The stare of the helmet beneath the brim of his hat that met her back told her everything. She didn't even need to see his eyes to tell. But in that moment, he knew she had lowered her guard. Delve draws his revolver and whips it up at the guardian aiming in at his head. He tilts his head out of her crosshairs and fires a shot, barely missing her. She snaps back and fires a shot in response, but the guardian hunting her had already moved. He was now behind a large decoration in the lobby below her.
"You're not going to be able to get me!" She calls out, sliding the bolt of her rifle back then forward again. She scans the lobby through her scope, though now zoomed out a bit further. She hadn't actually seen him move, but she knew him. She knew him almost as well as she knew herself. She fires a shot at the thin wall she bet he was hiding behind, and the force of the shot puts a large hole straight through the material.
Delve watches as a second- and third-hole punch through the material he was hiding behind. At this rate he was going to be able to easily be seen. Then she'd expertly put a hole or two in him. He weighs his options quickly in his head, hoping the next shot wouldn't be in him. After only a few seconds of thinking, he had a plan. He forms a grenade out of light in his palm and prepares to run. He starts sprinting out of cover, straight into the open. He catches Nix off guard yet again and she tries to follow him with her scope, but he is already too far ahead. He jumps, diving as he hurls the grenade up at the woman above him. Because of how far behind her scope was, all she could see was that he had been diving. She assumed he was just trying to get to new cover. That is, until she heard the 'TACK-KRRR' of the grenade landing and rolling behind her. She spins, trying to put her arms up and the grenade goes off, sending her flying off the walkway and down to the ground floor. She lands and is still trying to regain her bearings when she hears the familiar clicking of Delve's revolver cocking.
"It's over, Nix. It's not personal. It really isn't." He says, now standing over her. "It's just a job."
She looks up at him, a look of disgust staining her face behind the scarlet blood flowing out of a few open wounds. She can't reply since the grenade knocked the wind out of her, so Delve continues talking.
"I mean it. If I could walk away right now, I would. But I have a job I need to do." he says, looking down at her. He tries to ignore the pain she is very clearly in, both emotionally and physically. He forces himself to not feel sympathy for one of his oldest friends that was now lying on the floor at the other end of his barrel.
"How much are they paying you.?" She quietly gets out.
"That's not impor-" Delve is cut off.
"Bullshit! How. Much?" She asks again. "I want to know how much my life is worth to you."
Delve is silent for a few quiet moments before finally speaking.
"A hundred thousand." The guilt was evident in his voice. Even he could hear it. A chuckle escapes his target below him, bringing him back into the moment.
"Damn. A hundred k. That's.. That's a lot." She chuckles then looks up at her friend aiming a gun at her and smiles. "One more thing before you pull the trigger."
"What?" Delve asks. He just wants it to be over with.
"You've gotten too cocky." She whispers.
He sees her hands move and before he can react, she has a flaming golden gun pointing right at him. Only one thought can go through his head before she pulls the trigger: "Shit." When she fires her golden gun, it punches a hole straight through Delve's torso and throws him up and back in an arc before he slams into the wall and falls back down to the floor. In the time it takes Rust to resurrect him using the light, Nix has been patched up be her own ghost and is hopping on her sparrow. She looks back at him before she speeds off, quickly putting distance between them both. Delve is about to follow her, but Rust alerts him in his helmet comms.
"D! We have incoming Cabal! Probably something to do with how hard you hit the door earlier. Like a big beacon, you just told them where we are."
"Yeah. Yeah." Delve slings his shotgun onto his back again then walks into the street and turns around as he hears the echoing sound of cabal running. Down the street from him he sees an incredibly large group of Cabal all running at him, followed by a goliath tank. He sighs and takes a deep breath in. In the next second, he's sprinting at them at full tilt. The cabal in front start to fire at him, but the combination of their bad aim and his high shields means that they can't stop him. He jumps into the air and forces his whole body to ignite. He forges a hammer in each hand, both made of pure solar Light that can't help but burn bright. He continues through the air like a second sun before landing and beginning to rip through the foot soldiers mercilessly. He becomes a whirlwind of fire and fury, ending the Cabal with such ruthless efficiency that the tank starts to blindly fire into its own soldiers, hoping it would hit him. From the smoldering fires and clouds of smoke covering the street a hammer flies at the tank, hitting the barrel and turning the turret before deflecting off into a building. Delve jumps and lands on the tank, his right hand now empty. He kneels and grabs the hatch into the tank, ripping it off completely. He drops the other hammer in, right onto the tank's ammunition storage then he jumps off the tank. He hears the surprised roars of the soldiers inside the tank before it explodes. A few moments later his flames die out, and he takes a seat on a barricade on the side of the street to rest for a moment.
Unknown to him, Nix had stopped and watched as he had ripped through the Cabal. Her ghost, Glyde, had warned her of the incoming enemies and she stopped to watch in case D needed any help. The impression she got from watching him fight was that not only did he not seem to need help, but that he was angry. A lot angrier than he used to be. At the urging of her ghost, Nix continues to ride away on her sparrow.
"Are you going to chase her down?" Rust asks Delve in his helmet comms.
"No. I'll catch up to her later." He said, a hint of tiredness in his voice. He always felt tired after using his supercharge. "Right now, I just want to rest for a bit."
"We can rest on the ship, then." Rust says and before he can tell her not to, she materializes him on the transmat pad of his ship. Because he was sitting when he had been teleported, he was now sitting on the floor looking like an idiot.
"Thanks for that." He says as he gets up. He makes his way up into the cockpit and dematerializes his helmet before hanging his hat on the rack. He looks around at the other two empty seats in the spacious room he was in and remembers back to a long time ago. Before Tyran and his current job. When he had a fireteam. The memories play in his mind like a video.
He was sitting in the pilot's seat. Nix comes up next to him and asks, "Where are we off to?". He lifts up a small hologram that he'd been given as part of the job and replies.
"The Moon. I got word of some kind of treasure buried there."
She looks over his shoulder at the holographic map and information tablet.
"Interesting. Well, me and Estmond are ready to do whatever, whenever. We're itching to get going again." she says excitedly.
He can't help but smile and say, "Hold on." Before shoving the ship into a jump.
The memory video ends, and Delve realizes that Rust had been trying to get his attention.
"What? What's up?" He asks, looking over at his ghost.
"I was asking if you're doing okay." She replies softly.
"Yeah. Doing fine. Just thinking about.. Her.. And everything that used to be with the old fireteam." He speaks slowly, seeming to find his words as he speaks about his thoughts.
"She made her choice." Rust says. "When Estmond.." She trails off. After a pause and a somber look from Delve she continues. "We decided it was time to go legit. Stop being thieves and outlaws. She disagreed. This was inevitable."
Delve stays silent as he looks at the floor and his ghost floats into his line of sight.
"Hey." She chirps. "Whatcha thinkin?"
"Just doubting if this is the right thing." He replies, looking into his ghost's eye. "Like, I know that we're operating legally. But morally? Am I doing the right thing by hunting her?"
Rust is silent as she thinks about her words before she speaks.
"I don't know. That's up to you to decide. But I'll support you either way." She makes a sound that could be interpreted as a giggle. "It is my job, after all."
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The bar is filled with the sound of people talking and laughing. But Delve was sitting in a corner booth alone, just trying to ignore his problems for at least the night. He overhears the conversation of a couple of people walking by and immediately wishes he hadn't.
"What's that thing I heard about one of the Vanguard monitoring stations picking up a disturbance?" one of the people says.
"Apparently it was on Mars. Some sort of low-level tectonic quake in an area that's never had them before." The other replies.
They continue speaking about it but he just ignores them, returning to his drink. He inwardly laments that he can't get drunk due to his exo body, but then is glad that he can at least drink it and taste it somehow. Something to do with the Exo Tech.
"You're famous." His ghost jokes in his ear.
"Not like I want to be." He replies, watching as the condensation from the bottle drips onto the table next to where he placed his hat. "Not anymore."
"Alright, I know I said I'd support you, but this is ridiculous." His ghost says suddenly. "You need to stop feeling so down. Let's get your mind off of it."
"How are you gonna do that?" He asks, amused at the prospect.
"Well for starters, you want to talk about how hard you hit that door?" She says, materializing in front of him. "I mean, I've never seen anything like it. I analyzed it actually. You punched the door with more force than most supers."
Delve just stares at his ghost for a moment then asks
"Just what are you getting at?"
"Well," she continues, "If you could somehow get into that stat, like.. However you described it."
"Like I was more connected to the Light for those few seconds." He explains.
"Right. If you could somehow get into that.. Mode. Again, Well.." She chuckles. "I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of your super when you're like that."
He thinks about it for another few seconds, the two of them looking at each other in silence as he does. Finally, he breaks the silence by asking her a question.
"Who would know more about channeling the Light like that?" Even as he asks the question, he knows what she's going to say and dreads her answer.
"The Vanguard." Her answer is short and quiet, yet that doesn't make it any less disappointing.
"The last time I was there they tried every trick in the book to get me to join. Said I was 'Needed in the fight.' Turns out I wasn't. They killed Crota, Oryx, Skolas. Even stopped something called Siva from spreading. All without me."
"I remember. I was there." His ghost says, sounding a little annoyed.
"Well I'm just saying that maybe the Vanguard isn't the only one with answers." Delve responds, raising his shoulders in a small shrug.
"Maybe. But they are the only ones we know of that may have answers. And they're nearby." His ghost waits for a moment then dematerializes and says into his ear "Let's go! Get your sorry butt up!" Delve lets out a sigh and downs the rest of his drink.
"Alright. Let's get it over with." He slides from the booth and stands up before returning his hat to his head. He gives the bartender a nod as he walks out the front door, the smooth glass sliding closed behind him.