#destinytober25

Anywho, random day, I'm half-covered in a combination of oil and Ether, and Pancake calls me up front. At his desk are three Fallen, two Cabal and an Awoken man named Marik. Can tell, just by lookin' at 'em they're smugglers. Bad news. My kinda people. Pancake asks me if I ever been a ship's engineer. I say no. He's like, "Great news!" and I'm suddenly on Marik's crew. I wasn't really asked about it but the pay was decent and Pancake wasn't exactly someone you say no to. He worked very close with Spider and Spider pretty much ran the Tangled Shore so if Pancake said I was a ship's engineer now, I was a ship's engineer.

So I pack up my tools and show up where I'm told. Marik says we've got a shipment lined up, hot item, needs to be delivered to Ganymede and we're leaving in under an hour and also make sure I got some electromagnetic shielding because I'm gonna need it. I don't know what in the hell that's for but Pancake's got some and he sells it to Marik and then they got me in the belly of this freighter called the Dancing Loon. I'm there with all my junk and they bring in this shipping crate. It's a small thing, like the size of a dinner table.

Dunno what's in it but it is spiking all the resistance meters and has me scrambling to get it stabilized. How in the hell they managed to even get it there without it cracking open I don't know. But I do some tweaks real quick, hot-wire a few capacitors together and divert enough juice from the backup engines to run it and bam! One eleoctromagnetically shielded cursed cargo, as requested. It's unstable as fuck and I keep having to swap out components as they melt but it's good enough, and off we go.

Crate has no markings on it. Like none. And the way the insides keep shifting like something inside wants out, I don't wanna know what the fuck is going on. I just keep tweaking the electrical, swapping in bits when they blow to maintain that shit, and hope we get where we're goin' before I run out of spare parts.

Seems like we're doing ok until we get stopped by the Awoken blockade.

Now, we ain't supposed to be stopped by the Awoken blockade. That is not how this is supposed to go. These guys are professionals, or so I was told. They're supposed to have paid the right people off.

Marik calls me into his cabin, tells me to strip. I tell him that ain't the kinda engineer I was expectin' to be. He gives me his (admittedly pretty nice) clothes and puts on my greasy ether-stained shit and sends me over as the "Captain" to negotiate with the Awoken.

You can imagine I do not like this plan at all. Turns out Marik's home port, as it were, was the Prison of Elders, and him showing his face near any Awoken military would be suicide, same with the rest of his crew. I was the only one that didn't have my face in the register so I needed to go over and play legitimate businessman while Marik and his crew got inspected as my "staff."

Did I like this idea? No, I did not. Did I have a choice? Also no.

So I go on over, unarmed, in civilian clothes, with an armed escort and meet the Awoken Commander on a full-on Battleship, bringin' Marik's sloppy-ass paperwork with me. She's grillin' me over the coals on protocol and I'm tellin' her I don't know shit about shit, I pay people to do my taxes for me and I have a permit.

I play my part and they start makin' me fill out forms, talking about what fines will be levied on my ass for the crime of bein' a Human in Awoken space when all of a sudden the inspectors that got sent over stop responding and the Dancing Loon up and takes off at a dead run into deep space.

I do what any self-respectin' patsy would do at that point.

I point at the receding ship and go "Hey! They're stealin' my ship! Those fuckers! This is mutiny! You aren't just gonna let them do that are you?"

Ion cannons are firing warning shots. Fighters are scrambling. Commander's yelling orders. Battleships ain't exactly the most maneuverable of spacecraft, but soon enough we're in a high-speed police chase with Marik's crew gunnin' it for Ganymede and an entire Awoken squadron behind.

But the thing is, I know something the Awoken space cops don't know. That freighter is actually two ships, a little one inside of a big one and the little one can detach and bugger off super fast if it needs to, leaving everything else behind. And if they do that and take the cursed cargo then that capacitor field is not gonna hold so dollars to donuts they're gonna leave it behind. Which means the squadron's gonna find the highly illegal contents of the bigger ship, and this here 'legitimate businessman' is gonna be left holdin' the bag, which will probably get me a free one-way ticket to the Prison of Elders. Not my idea of a good time.

So I tell the Commander, "Hell. I got insurance. Light 'em up. This is piracy at this point. That's punishable by death, right? Blow 'em to smithereens!"

And this Awoken Commander? Someone must'a pissed in her breakfast that mornin' because she is all for it. Bloodthirsty and angry (and, thankfully, no longer directed at me). She tells her crew to quit with the warning shots and open fire on that freighter with full ion cannons, and tells her fighters to start takin' kill shots, no longer looking to run 'em down.

And you'd think that'd be it, right? Either they get away and I'm screwed or my new Awoken friends vaporize my old new friends into space dust, right?

But no, because they got close enough to Ganymede and what was waitin' just behind Ganymede where the gravitational pull would mess with sensors enough for them to be invisible until we were close, is a whole-ass Cabal Warship.

At this point my nope-o-meter is goin' haywire and all I can think of is I need to be somewhere that ain't here, so I start figuring out my exit strategy. See if I can run off in an unattended jump ship or somethin'.

Sure enough, Awoken coming in guns blazin' is not conducive to a peaceful encounter with the fucking Cabal. Warship starts immediately taking shots at the Squadron, includin' the Battleship I am on, while simultaneously bein' real interested in the Dancing Loon and ol'Drifter's sittin' here thinkin' that cargo bein' cursed was not a figurative expression.

Awoken Commander turns to me askin' what the fuck the Cabal want with my ship and I tell her with complete honesty that I have no idea, because I don't. But at this point she ain't buyin' it and gets two of her crew to arrest me and throw me in the brig.

And while in normal circumstances Drifter doesn't mind two sets of Awoken hands on him (most of 'em are not hard on the eyes, ya know?), these two were armed and dangerous and cuffed my hands behind my back and then marched me down a corridor to an elevator to toss my ass in a cell.

So there I am in an elevator, wonderin' how I managed to go from oil changes on the Reef to this in the space of less than 24 hours, when there's a big jolt, the lights go out, and all three of us hear the absolute last thing you ever wanna hear when you are in a spaceship.

Silence.

Engines are off. HVAC is off. No mechanical nothing. And we start to float because the artificial gravity is gone too.

I turn to my two newest friends and tell 'em "Look, I don't wanna die here and neither do you. Let me out of these cuffs so I can help and we can all survive together because if this ship's mechanical and electrical are hard down we really, really, do not want to be where we are bein' right now."

One of 'em agrees. The other one doesn't. They're arguing and the whole ship seems to shift sideways and starts making a low grinding groaning sound, the kind that metal makes when it's bein' made to do something metal doesn't wanna do.

Well, that does it and they let me go. We climb out of the vent at the top and start making our way up the elevator shaft. We get back out on one of the decks and find some emergency helmets. It's a standard issue Awoken ship so they're everywhere. Good thing too because not five minutes later the hull is breached and we three start grabbin' on to anything we can to keep from bein' sucked down the hallway into what is undoubtedly low orbit above Ganymede at this point.

One of my new friends doesn't pick something sturdy enough. He goes flyin' off out into deep space, leaving me and my one last Awoken military friend. She and I find a room with a door, climb inside and shut it so we can stop being sucked out into space for a little bit while the Battleship is careening around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

And where do we find ourselves? Some sort of officer's mess or fancy entertainin' spot. It's got a observation deck with big windows, some nice tables, a fish tank, and a full bar. Very fancy. And there, we see it through the big ass fancy windows: the Dancing Loon, that little freighter I was the 'engineer' for, held in one of them giant ship-sized pincers the Cabal use for planetary-level ore harvesting.

Freighter's cracked open sideways down the middle like a egg, an' poured out of it as though it was made from glowin' ink or somethin', shimmering against the backdrop of space, is the biggest freakiest thing I ever seen in all my lives. Knew what it was when I saw it even though I never seen one alive before that. I didn't know they could even get that big.

Head like a weird four lobed flower, opened up all teeth an' eyes. Body like some sorta fucked up giant cat. Long lizard tail. Big fucking claws. Massive Ahamkara wish dragon hangin' on to the front end of the Cabal Warship like it was perched on a log or somethin'.

I dunno what the Awoken Commander did, or if it was even her, but at this point, the Battleship we're on somehow manages to kick into axillary power, which means the floor suddenly works again, and the ion canons are back on. Some idiot, instead of getting us the fuck out of this nightmare, decides the smart thing to do at this point is to take a shot at the otherwise preoccupied-with-Cabal dragon.

Awoken fighter pilots in their little ships, the ones that are still left, start swarming at it, shooting it up.

Might as well be flingin' peas at a house cat.

Thing reaches out one hand, grabs one of them small Awoken ships like it was a little bird in its fist, crushes it and then turns and - I am not joking here, this is no exaggeration - it took a bite out of the Cabal Warship. Like a straight up bite and tore a huge chunk off.

Cabal bodies are flyin' into space. Awoken Battleship is firing at both the dragon and the Cabal. Cabal are firing at both the dragon and the Awoken. I'm quite sure at that point there aint' no more crew left alive on the Dancing Loon. Me and my newest Awoken friend turn to look at each other in complete confusion at what we are watching happen in space on the other side of these fancy windows and she goes: "Did that thing come from your ship?"

And I tell her I don't know nor do I know how it could even fit if it was.

And of course, this is when my newest friend decides I'm full of shit. I saved her life twice at this point but no, she points her gun in my face and starts yellin'.

I start backing up and tell her to calm down and I'm as much a victim of this situation as she is, but she don't buy it. Meanwhile, as she's yellin' at me she's got her back to the action. You know that fighter the giant-ass Ahamkara crushed? I guess it gets tired of being poked by the Battleship ion cannons and sees movement or something from my friend right at the window. I don't know. But the dragon throws that mashed up fighter ship right at us. Just as my newest Awoken friend is screaming on how she's gonna kill me, the fancy windows catch the dragon's new softball and the crumpled fighter comes crashing through that observation deck glass, sucking the lady with the gun out into space along with tables, chairs, champagne glasses and fancy Awoken fish. I seen it coming and held on to the nearest sturdiest thing, which just so happened to be the very well stocked and elaborate bar.

Old habits die hard, I guess. Drifter's still a bar tender even in the middle of a three-way space battle watching a dragon eating a Cabal Warship.

Whoever is piloting the Awoken Battleship at this point has clearly lost their sanity because they aim what's left of the vessel at the Ahamkara and try to get their barely functioning axillary power engines up to ramming speed.

This manages to get the dragon's attention. And what does the dragon do? Run away? Nope. Let the two ships smash and eat whatever falls out like pickin' up ants? Nope. It turns and I swear it grins with that four-lobed face it has, and it jumps.

It launches off the Cabal Warship straight for the Awoken Battleship, which is the ship that I am currently on at this point. And one that, as soon as I realize there is a giant-ass fucking wish dragon coming to party, I very much would prefer to no longer be a passenger of.

So there's a giant Ahamkara flying through space that I am watching through the broken windshield of this observation deck as I am trying not to get sucked out into space. I got no weapons. No armour. Synthweave and a helmet and some fancy clothes and that's it, and I look around me to see what the hell I can do for myself in this very not good situation.

It's a bar. I'm a bartender. I look where I'd normally look for the little canisters for CO2 for the bubbly water. There's two of 'em. I grab 'em both, one under each arm, and I stop trying to fight to avoid getting sucked out into space. I get blown out and let the momentum carry me, then I open one end of the seltzer bottles point it a little to the side of the Awoken ship, and scootch out of the way of the incoming Dragon. I then turn it and point it at a different angle, and putt putt putt my way along with no tether through the powers of alcoholic bubbly to the ripped up and mangled space ship that is not currently playing host to a giant Ahamkara wish dragon.

Dragon lands on the Awoken Battleship and starts tearing it up, biting chunks out like it did with the Cabal one, and I manage to aerate my own ass through the big hole that same dragon recently tore out of the Cabal Warship, which, as you know, is not the healthiest place to be in in most situations, never mind one where you're unarmed in the middle of a space battle between two big-ass military ships and a huge-ass dragon.

Thankfully, ol'Drifter's been on a few Cabal ships in his time, picked up enough of a smattering of Ulurant along with enough basic engineering that he could read a floor plan and find the spot they launch out the Cabal Balls that our Guardians have such a strong tendency to get squished by in the field. I sneak down, jump in and push the button, get jettisoned in the Drop Pod, away from one of the biggest shit shows of all my lives, down to the surface of Ganymede.

Spent six months finding a research outpost and then another three waiting for a supply ship to hop away on. Never saw any of the crew from the Dancing Loon again, or anyone else from that whole mess neither. I figure they all bit it when the dragon got out. My guess is the Ahamkara was probably what was inside the weird unmarked box with the electromagnetic stabilizer that I was powering from the engines of the smaller ship they probably tried to divert all power to in order to escape in. If only they'd had a ship's engineer on board to tell them not to do that.

Eventually went back to find Pancake on the Tangled Shore to ask him what the actual fuck. He wasn't there no more. Went to Spider myself. Spider told me he had no memory of what in the hell I was talkin' about, that nobody there knew anyone named Pancake, they never had, and that neither did I.

I looked him straight in all four of his eyes and told him he was right. Ether does strange things to Human anatomy and I clearly had a few too many in his bar the other night and was tripping balls.

She scowls at him. "You are attempting to distract me."

Grinning wickedly, he keeps his mouth shut—silently beckoning her to try again. 

Face scrunched in consternation, Eris returns her attention to the weighted green coin between her knuckles. Flicking her thumb, the cool metal disk lands on her forefinger. Then, with a downward stroke of her middle finger, it comes to rest upon her middle digit. The ring finger follows suit—which is when the coin falls to the floor with an echoing clang. 

She winces at the sound. Drifter frowns sympathetically, eyes going soft. 

"This is infuriating," she grits out, bending to retrieve the coin from the ground.

"Aw c'mon, Moondust, look—you almost had it that time!" he gesticulates emphatically, trying to keep her interested in this utterly ridiculous game. 

"Tsch—" she begins again. 

Clang.

This time it clatters to the floor from the third digit.

"Okay, okay, here—lemme show you one more time."

With a snap of his fingers, a fresh coin appears in his hand. He flicks the thing high into the air before palming it with a toothy smile. She scowls back at him, unimpressed. Enough foolin' around. The metal rings out lightly as he positions it firmly between thumb and forefinger. 

"Nice and slow, see?" he demonstrates for her, flicking it back and forth across his knuckles with a deliberate pace. "Gotta get the feel for it, build up the muscle memory." 

Continuing his display, he watches her eyeing him closely. Despite her irritation, she studies the movements intently, seemingly determined to prove herself just as capable as her chronically unserious rogue. She's got her jaw set hard in that way she gets when she can't let a thing go. This tasks her—and she won't be denied her vengeance upon it. His smile melts into something more real at the sight. 

Wordlessly, she reaches her hand out, silently requesting. Ceasing his motions, he flips the coin between his fingers—palming it—so that it slips deep into his sleeve. He reaches his hand out and, instead of depositing the coin as she is expecting, begins to caress her open palm with his thumb, gently gripping her cool fingers in his own. Just as she begins to glower at him once more, he leans forward and reaches behind her, the coin materializing into his free hand at her cheek. With a teasing expression, he gently flicks the metal, creating a softly resonant "ding" in her ear.

Yanking her hand free from his grip, she's quick to snatch the coin out from between his fingers, staring daggers at him—but fails to hide the flush that creeps up her neck. 

"Childish fool," she mutters hotly, centering herself once more. 

He is, indeed, grinning like a childish fool now, but he keeps his mouth shut. As she readies herself for another attempt, her eyes flick up to his for just a fraction of a second before fixing to the coin. She wants him to watch. And he does—everything in him stills as she begins to slowly roll the coin between her digits. 

Thumb.

Forefinger.

Middle.

Ring.

Pinkie!

She stops, looks up, unsure how to proceed. 

"What does one do at this stage?"

"Start again, lover." He produces yet another coin from his robes and begins tumbling it idly back and forth. "You pull it underneath, like this—" he illustrates, slowly sweeping the coin across the underside of his fingers, "and drag the sucker right back to the start, you see?"

"This is a pointless endeavor," she remarks, carefully transferring the jade medallion from her pinkie back to her thumb as Drifter had before beginning anew at her index finger. 

"Heh—yeah, maybe. But it's relaxing as all hell once you get the hang of it," his coin ricochets off the floor with a snap of his wrist, catching it in his other hand with ease. "It's the kinda thing they'd call Sisyphusian back in the day."

He says it offhandedly, but gives her a covert peek to see if she's impressed by his vocabulary. She is decidedly not. 

"The word is Sisyphean."

Now it's his turn to scowl. 

"All these years—you would be the first to correct me," he pouts. On the rebound, he rocks on his heels, pocketing his coin before inching closer to Eris. "But ya know where it comes from?" he challenges, eyebrows waggling brazenly. 

"It describes a fruitless endeavor, much like the one we are currently partaking in," her tone is dry, but her eyes sparkle with mirth. 

"Sure does, but that ain't what I asked," he retorts with a smirk, crossing the rest of the short distance between them. "Can we try somethin'?" the grin is still there, but his voice is warmer now. 

Nearly pressed against her now, he holds his hand out between them—an offering. Her eyes narrow but she accepts it, placing her hand in his, coin captured in their palms. He grips it with his thumb, deftly flipping his hand over and lacing their fingers together without letting go. Positioning the coin so that it's balanced between his thumb and forefinger, he looks up to meet her gaze. 

Green eyes blazing, her expression is set in a clear warning that he best choose his next actions carefully. He licks his lips, savoring the nervous feeling burgeoning in his gut. Gently, he flicks his thumb—brushing against her own—and sets the coin in motion. It tumbles across their fingers, hers in tandem with his as he manipulates their movements. Back and forth across their knuckles in a controlled somersault, he keeps the medallion going. 

"Just gotta get the feel for it," he murmurs softly, ushering the coin back to its origin point before starting anew.

"For what purpose?" she keeps her voice just as low. 

"Well," he drawls, "think about ol' Sisyphus." The blank stare she gives him spurns him on. "Okay. So this guy was a king, right? Had everything he could'a wanted in life but that wasn't enough for him—course not," smiling wryly at that he continues. "This was a man afraid to die, and I mean scared shitless. He would'a done anything to keep himself outta the afterlife."

"Sounds familiar," her eyes sparkle as they carry the coin along. 

Biting his lip, he clears his throat to cover the laugh threatening to bubble forth. 

"Ouch," he grins. "You wanna hear how it ends or not?"

"Continue."

"Alright, so he asks his wife to toss his body out onto the city square when he dies, right? And, being a loyal wife, she agrees. Of course, then he kicks it. Stone cold in the streets when they drag his ass to hell. But, see, he had a plan," with a flick of his pinkie the coin reverses direction. "He convinces the god of the the underworld to send him back, so's he can complain to his wife about not burying him proper like. Can you believe that?"

"Hardly. Is there a point?"

"Well this little scheme of his works out. He waltzes on out of there and doesn't look back. Goes right back to bein' a king. The gods, being pissed that they just got played big time, cook up a plan of their own. So by the time he dies again, they're waitin' for him."

"I see," the coin continues its dance between them.

"They force the guy to push this massive boulder up a hill. 'Cept, when he gets to the top, it just rolls right back down and the poor bastard's gotta start all over again."

"A cruel punishment indeed."

Ceasing his motions, the coin stills. Balanced between her first two digits, he slowly disentangles their latticed fingers.

"Try it now," he says gently, backing away fractionally.

She blinks, wearing an expression that makes him think, just maybe, she misses the contact. But then she's doing it—the patterned metal flitting dexterously across her hand. A smile blooms across her face, and gods if it isn't the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Grinning sympathetically, he claps his hands together triumphantly. 

"Muscle memory," she murmurs as the coin starts its path again.

"All it is," he's positively beaming. 

"Where did you learn such an archaic story?" she looks up from her flickering fingers.

"Pawned a dusty-ass book off an Awoken pirate," his grin turns devilish. "Some old guy really thought that Sisyphus fella was a down-on-his-luck hero. Wrote a whole essay praisin' the sucker." 

"For his trickery?" 

"Nah—for his stickin' it to the man. See, they tried to punish him but what if he likes it? What if pushin' that boulder is givin' him purpose?"

"Purpose," she echoes doubtfully.

"Yeah, sounded like a crock of shit to me too."

They exchange a look, stifling a shared laugh at the absurdity of it all before resuming their practice—and the boulder rolls back to the start.