Ikio

    "What the hell..?"

      Ikio couldn't believe what he was seeing.

        He'd been tracking this band of Devils to every corner of the inner system, with seemingly no end to their journey. Two weeks on Luna studying the recent Vex incursion, six more on the burning Fields of Glass, watching the Infinite Forest. A month scouring asteroids of the Tangled Shore, and three more months wandering Meridian Bay and the tunnels of Old Freehold. He didn't plan on such a long hunt, but once he saw them studying- actually studying- Vex technology, he had to see what they were planning.

         So here he was six months later, sitting on a cliffside overlooking the entrance into the Vault of Glass. Honestly, he expected the Praetorians to kill the whole crew, but Eliksni are more clever than many give them credit for. They'd built some kind of field emitter, obviously reminiscent of stolen Wolf tech that Skolaskel had used not long before. Emitting a frequency that stopped all the Vex in their tracks, it gave the Fallen all the time they needed to open the gate and just walk right in.

   "Ikio, don't."

       Aeren's words broke the hunter's concentration and made him chuckle. That damn ghost always knew what he was thinking, didn't he? There was wisdom in his warning though, the two of them had spent enough time within the Vault to know it was dangerous, especially alone, but Ikio never was one for good decisions. He turned to Aeren and grinned, throwing on his helmet and jumping off the cliff, summoning his sparrow and riding it through the quickly closing gate.

       He smoothly glided in, the advancing column of Devils oblivious to his presence. He hopped off his sparrow and let it return to his ship, watching it fade away in a blue sheen. He looked up, his eyes adjusting to the dark light. His quarry had already made a wrong turn, away from the Templar's Gate. He made a conscious note to remember their path, his excitement overriding the fact he knew the path wouldn't be so easy to follow back. As the Guardian and his Ghost followed the band deeper into the Vault, Aeren spoke softly into Ikio's ear.

     "Guardian, we really should turn back. As the Vault closed I lost all communications with the outside. It's just us and the Fallen in here."

       The illumination of a dozen red lights ahead of them quickly proved that statement false. As the Devils ignited Arc Swords and readied Line Rifles, Ikio readied his Queenbreaker and turned toward his old friend with a chuckle.

       "You forget, we have more to worry about than Devils."

i had to go full eboy, just once

As the Knight fell, his body burning away into golden light, Aeren and Ikio were speechless. They stayed that way for.. Minutes? Hours? Ikio's watched ticked 13 times, until the Ghost spoke up.

"What.. Was that?"

Ikio couldn't answer, he could only stare at the cannon in his hands. He tried replaying the closing moments of the firefight his head over and over, hoping they'd make sense eventually.

They didn't.

He remembered running empty with a killing blow to an Acolyte, reloading, sighting in on the Knight, squeezing the trigger.. And then a howl. A howl that lingered in his ears long after it finished. A howl that sounded like the sighting call of a wolf on the hunt. A howl that brought with it the same feeling brought by Thorn, Necrochasm, and other Weapons of Sorrow Ikio had "borrowed" from the occasional Shadow he met in the Crucible. The Knight was dead, its body swiftly disintegrating like normal, with even his worm turning to ash. The shot had been off, hitting its chitin plated shoulder. Shots like that didn't kill Hive, it just made them angry. The pair had no explanation, and without a warlock nearby, they weren't about to get one.

There was something else though, something Ikio kept from his Ghost, he'd felt a pull towards something darker when it happened. He knew it wasn't Light, the Traveler had been sealed for weeks and he couldn't so much as conjure a spark. Perhaps the absence of Light allowed something to nestle within the hunter, who'd been fighting for his life in the wildlands of Old Austria.

It wasn't until after the defeat of Ghaul that he felt it again. The rest of his fireteam had gone down in a botched ambush on a Cabal supply ship. With his armor in tatters, his weapons empty, and his light run out, he was growing desperate. And in his desperation he reached for it, that dark pull that saved him before, and to his surprise it answered. Within seconds the remaining Legionaries were falling to the earth, his cannon howling with every shot. As the last howl faded Ikio resurrected his fireteam, who had no idea what had just transpired.

"Ikio.." Aeren said quietly, concern in his voice.

He shook his head at his Ghost, nearly as shocked as he was. A Cabal dropship broke his concentration and he sprinted for the treeline.

"You're awful"

The hunter shrugged off his ghost's remark, continuing to search through what remained of the Old Tower's vaults. Some hotshot Fallen was attacking the place, looking for something in the rubble. Ikio didn't really care, he knew other guardians would put a stop to it. All that it meant to him was that he could get into the usually restricted area with ease.

"Awful doesn't mean too much any more," He replied, holding up a damaged but hopefully functional reef sidearm he'd pulled from the heap of destroyed gear in front of him. "but gear does."

"Ikio, none of this was yours! The Vanguard locked this place down to prevent this exact situation; Guardians swooping in and taking loads of gear that isn't theirs, gear that could belong to guardians that died their final deaths in the Red War."

Those first two points really didn't bother him all that much. He knew loot was loot and he didn't much care about what the Vanguard ordered. But still he stopped at that last statement, his hands moving away from the scrap heap that covered the floor.

"...."

"Ikio?"

"... You're right Aeren. I'll leave this stuff be. It's all trash anyways." He had trouble admitting defeat, especially when it was to the little light that had followed him for so long, but he knew when he reached a line he shouldn't cross. Graverobbing was one such line.

The ghost was still for a second, caught in disbelief. He'd been with his Guardian for half a decade and only been right twice, so for him to roll over so easy must mean he was already having doubts.

One distracted by his thoughts, and the other by the gear before him, the two completely missed the lone Captain stalking towards them with murderous intent.

At the last moment, Aeren saw the shimmer of the Fallen's invisibility, his eye widening and glowing brightly, "Ikio! Watch out!"

The hunter turned and lifted the reef sidearm, blasting off three shots directly into the Captain's chest, breaking its shield with a cascade of sparks and blue light. The Fallen roared in frustration and charged.

Stupid, Ikio thought to himself. He'd done this a thousand times in the past, and it always ended the same. Three shots to break the shield, they charge out of anger, and you've got just one more shot to-

CLICK

Uh oh.

Ikio wasn't even given enough time to be disappointed before his assailant reached him and smashed him aside with a savage four armed strike, sending him crashing into a ruined vault. His eyes shot up as the Fallen charged again, this time with arc swords drawn. He desperately reached into the mass of ruined gear and felt a hand cannon's grip. Without a second thought he ripped it from the warped metal and placed a single shot between the Captain's eyes, its head bursting in to a screaming cloud of ether . He slowly got up as his ghost healed him, looking down at the weapon and smiling softly.