#echo-17

What a glow up!

Send “🌀” for my muse to spin the Destiny Swap Wheel and see what they get! || Accepting!

Echo burst from the pool, coughing as water poured down her face. Her mouth felt wet and her chest clenched painfully as continued coughing. She tried to blink away the water running down her face until she finally swiped at it with her hand. Her forehead stung from where she'd bumped it against the rocky bottom she'd hit when she'd fallen into the pool, but it wasn't the pain that made her stop.

On the fingertips of her gloves were light spots of thinning red mixing with the water on her gloves. She coughed again, but this time it felt automatic as felt her face again. Soft, squishy, not the hard plating of an exo. Once again she drew her hand away, once again finding small streaks of blood on her fingertips.

"Whisper?" Echo called, clambering farther out of the pool as she turned around to look into it as the water settled. Gradually, the ripples in the water settled and the reflection of a stranger stared back at her from the pool. Short, white hair stuck to pale, teal-blue skin, while threads of light rippled gently across her face as if refracted from the pool beneath her. Shock and barely suppressed terror filled the pale face of the woman before her, while her eyes shone with a brilliant blue that matched the color of her optics.

She jumped and looked up as Whisper materialized next to her and jittered her shell in shock. "What the--Who the hell are you!?"

Echo stared at her in disbelief. "I'm your guardian!" she said, noticing the distinct lack of digital buzz in her voice.

"No, you're not! You're..." The ghost clicked her shell as she gave Echo a quick scan and stared at her. "You're..." She scanned her again and looked at the wide-eyed hunter. "Echo???"

"Yeah!" Echo said, throwing her hands out incredulously.

Whisper looked up and down and then back at her. "How???"

Echo shook her head. "I don't know but I'm really ready to be away from this pool."

Whisper looked at Echo and then at the pool, its waters rippling innocuously from a breeze. "Yeah... Yeah, let's get to the jumpship. Maybe someone at the tower knows something about this."

Echo scrunched up her face, something she forgot was much easier now she was squishy. "Let's... not. I really don't want to be in one of Rahool's petri dishes."

Whisper rolled her optic. "Echo, Rahool doesn't give a flip about anything not engram-related, so if you were going to be in anyone's petri dish, it'd be Ana's."

Echo frowned and rubbed her chin, jerking her hand back at the vivid sensation. "Fair..." she said and would have said more had a branch not snapped behind her. In a snap, Whisper vanished and the hunter pulled Trust from its holster and leveled it at the bush behind her.

//and then Season of the Witch and Season of the Wish happen

According to Whisper, it's Dawning! And even if she's in another galaxy, she's going to keep up with her home traditions! Lanterns of paper,(or Filmsy as it's apparently called here) are hung up in her room, all gold, blue, and white, along with white glow sticks strung together like icicles in her room.

She'd managed to commandeer the kitchen for a bit, baking up a small host of things to commemorate the ending of the old year and celebrate the dawning and new birth of the new year. What did she have in mind?

Several items, none of which she knows the precise names of but managed to learn and remember how to make, even in a far-off galaxy. But each one is specially made to bring a smile to the pilots she come to befriend!

//some probably boiling down to the real “WHYs” of why she’s doing it; how she feels like killing ghosts is sacrilege, that Light shouldn’t be fighting Light, but that if she doesn’t fight, if Savathun does win and take the Traveler, what happens then? Will she and the other guardians lose their light like in the Red War? If only the Lucent Brood has the Light, will they take up the mantle of the Guardians they so envy, or will they simply continue the Hive genocide of everyone on earth?

//It’s a risk she can’t bear to take. But it’s definitely a question she poses to her captive hive ghosts. “If I let you go and you win, what will you do with the rest of us? What will become of us if you become the only lightbearers? Will you kill us like the hive have on countless worlds? Will you eat our light like they do? Or Will you spare us and fight the darkness instead? I doubt it. I doubt you guys will do anything but use this power to genocide every living thing on earth… because that’s what sword logic demands, isn’t it? That anything weaker than you deserves to die… even when you were chosen by the light to be a shield and spear… a protector of a gentle kingdom, someone strong enough to carve a place for those who can’t fight and protect them from those who can? because that’s what a guardian is: a warrior who makes room for everyone with their strength and defends their right to show mercy and let life exist.”

She hates how those words feel as they ping around in her head. It struck a chord, ache ringing with each syllable. It hurt even worse that it was true. She did have so much to offer. So much to give, so much help she wanted give—and all the hurt she’d caused trying to give it.

Echo put a hand to her face. “… I have so much to give… but how can I when each time I do, I hurt my fellow guardians? What can I do when everything I do ends up wrong? How do I help when anything I do only seems to hurt?”

Whisper glanced down through the teeth of her shell before gently nudging against her risen’s cheek. Echo hummed softly and pressed her head against Whisper.

“We’ll get through this, Echo,” Whisper said softly. “We’ll find a way to help without hurting folks. We will.”

The Exo stopped, those words ringing with familiarity. He’d said those words to her before… She was on her way back from helping clear out enemies aiming to for submind data. She’d managed to ignore the ai up to that point but something he said on her way back rackled her. Without meaning to, she fell for Clovis’s bait and snapped at him, revealing her current well-hidden fragility.

“You have so much to offer.”

A twinge of pain shot through Echo’s head, drawing a hand to her face.

She was in a bed, her body aching and distant. There was… something on her lap. A book? A pamphlet? Someone was talking to her. ‘You have so much to offer…”

The memory faded and Echo stood alone, her back to the AI.

Echo took a breath and rubbed her face. “Tch… you would say that wouldn’t you? Try to butter me up into helping you…” She shook her head and sighed into her hand.