Excerpt 009: Unsettled (Open to All)

[rekindledtitan]

TYPE: Patrol log

LOCATION: The Nexus

PARTIES: Unconfirmed total [??]. One [1] Ghost-type, [1] Guardian-type, designate Blaze-37, Class Titan [[personal profile] rekindledtitan]

ASSOCIATIONS: Multiversal Nexus; Rogers, Steve; Blaze-37; Pelsor; House of Winter


By the time she returns, spring is rolling into summer. There’s a great deal she needs to catch up on – and serious work to be done. Ghost sends out a short message announcing their restoration to the friends they haven’t met with – Tina, Natasha, Adia, Katsuya, the handful of others whose PINpoint numbers they have. Then they report into the Tower, at their commander’s insistence. A very long debrief later, Blaze feels the need to go blow off some steam. When she does get back to the Nexus, it’s with a few new dents

Blaze has no time for standing around the Plaza asking questions, though given the circumstances she’s kind of obliged to show her face. So when she gets back, the first thing the armored Titan does is stride into the centre of the Plaza. She brings her hands together in a thunderclap and a flash of Arc Light, and announces as heads turn to her:

“The Fallen kept their word. The truce is sealed.”

It brings her little joy to do so, but it needs to be done. She doesn’t stand around, though. She needs to get to work. The Fallen presence and its consequences are her responsibility, and she has ground to make up. Anyone who wants to ask her questions will have to keep up as the Guardian heads out of the Nexus settlement.

From there on she can be encountered once more patrolling the Nexus streets and the Wilds, on the watch for any sign of trouble. There’s no more sitting around chatting or tweaking her weapons in plain view. Now she’s on duty at all times. She has patrol beacons to install and monitor, borders to watch over. Darkness to scout for. And the Exo never seems to sleep. Though she returns periodically to the informal Guardian outpost that Steve’s house has turned into, she doesn’t rest there. During noonday sun or gloomy night, her boots ring on the pavement or crunch through leaf litter, and those who want to find her have a good chance of succeeding.

And if not her, then it’s always possible to encounter one of the other Guardians either keeping watch at Steve’s house or roaming about the Nexus. Unlike Blaze, they’ll occasionally stop at a café or bar to sample the local fare, sometimes at peculiar hours. If there’s a ramen bar that stays open until dawn, they’re there.


(( This post is open to any characters from the Nexus who might run into her after her post-Winter resurrection. If you want your character to encounter a different Guardian in particular or set the thread in one of the settings above, just let me know where in narration and/or the header. :) ))

Comments

[readvondaniken]

"Oh! There you guys are!" Palmer comes to Blaze, a grin on his face. "I was real worried about you two when I heard what happened." He hangs his head slightly. "Sorry nobody was there to stop them from taking you, Ghost. It was nuts out there. You two did an excellent job. It was an honor. To tell you the truth, I almost left the Nexus after everything went down, but you two know what's waiting for me back home. The House of Winter are bad, yeah, but if I face the Thing I'll die."

Palmer considers letting Blaze know that her spot on his team is still open, but he decides against it. She's got bigger problems now. He mutters a four-letter word under his breath, directed at the Baroness. Pelsor might have screwed up his one chance at getting back to Outpost 31 safely, and he's not happy about that.

"I'm guessing Pelsor still hates us, even after we accepted her truce and gave her the home she wanted so badly. We were pretty generous, all things considered, after everything her House did to us. A 'thank you' would've been nice." The mechanic snorts in contempt. "That's gratitude for you. At least they're keeping their word." While they got what they wanted, the Fallen, if inadvertently, had kept Palmer away from his goal. The irony isn't lost on him. "As someone who was chased outta my home, I almost feel kinda bad for the Fallen after what Loki said about 'em. If they hadn't killed people and made a mess outta the Nexus." Palmer has the sense Pelsor would bite off any hand offered to her, however friendly. "Get the feeling they wouldn't return the favor, though." He cracks a bitter smile.

After a moment, Palmer turns thoughtful. "Loki seemed to think you could tell us why the Fallen hate everybody, Blaze. They think you took something from them. Light. You don't strike me as a thief. Maybe there's some kinda misunderstanding. They don't really give off a vibe of being great listeners."

[rekindledtitan]

“Thanks, Palmer. Nothing you could have done, though, we weren’t with the convoy. Glad to see you made it back in one piece.” She’ll give him a heavy clap on the shoulder to buck him up. But after that he's going to have to move to keep up with her patrol. Her promise to him is on her mind, and she’s about to ask him about it when he brings up the Fallen and she snorts.

“Gave her a home? Put on some brakes there, Palmer. I don’t think Pelsor’s here just looking for shelter. And last I checked, the Fallen won what they wanted and then told everyone else they were keeping it.” Warlord tactics don’t impress Blaze much. On the other hand, she doesn’t think Pelsor would be impressed by a demand for thanks, either. She’s seen Ghost’s recordings. “Pretty sure they’d say they were generous to us. I don’t know if Pelsor hates the rest of you. I think she just wants to ignore you.”

The Guardians are another matter. It’s safe to assume any given Fallen hates them, and Blaze can understand why even if her response is utter indifference. Comes with being a soldier, doesn’t it? It’s not like they haven’t inflicted plenty of grief on her. She does, however, give Palmer a confused look at his other question.

“Me? I don’t know anything the other Guardians couldn’t tell you.” She shakes her head and lifts her hand. As she closes it into a fist power surges around her armored fingers, crackling out in snapping sparks of Arc energy.

“That’s what you’re talking about. The Light of the Traveller. The power we were chosen to wield on its behalf. That? The Traveller left them long ago, Palmer. Centuries before humans even had spaceflight. Of course we didn’t literally go steal it from them.” As if you could steal it, hah. “The Fallen know that, they’re not dumb. If they’re calling us names they’re just mad that it came to us.”

[readvondaniken]

"So, what do you think they want, then?" Palmer raises an eyebrow as he walks. "If they're planning to stay, there's gotta be something here they want. They won't find any recruits for their war here, and they won't find any Light, either. Weapons, maybe, or resources. Other worlds to raid. We can't do anything to keep an eye on whatever they're up to without breaking the truce." There's something else he meant to ask. "What do they live off of if they don't need food, anyway?"

Judging by Palmer's frown, he's worried. He didn't expect much from Pelsor, granted, but there are too many open ends to this ceasefire to really make him comfortable. "It's a loss I'm willing to take. I mean, if the land's what they were after the whole time, we weren't using it anyway. I guess the question is what she's gonna use her shiny new base for. She doesn't seem the type to just settle down and play nice."

"I'm guessing that by 'generous', they'd mean 'didn't slaughter all of us after robbing us blind and take over the Nexus'. That's generous by their standards, I guess." Palmer shrugs. "Can't say I'm optimistic that this is the end of it, but hopefully the truce'll give us time to rebuild."

Palmer's suspicions about the nature of the Light are correct. He was a bit of a thief himself in his teenage years, though he's more-or-less reformed since he left his gang. He knows a thief when he sees one, and Blaze isn't the type.

"But that's not the only thing I wanted to talk with you about." Palmer shrugs off the subject of the Fallen. They're not his enemies to fight, at least not now, and he's got a bigger problem on his hands. "We had a deal before the winter interrupted it. My offer's still open." If Blaze accepts, Palmer will discreetly make sure Bob leaves the team. He knows the Thing isn't comfortable around the Guardians and the distrust is likely mutual. "You can still join my team, if you like."

[rekindledtitan]

"They gave you back a weapon capable of killing armies," Ghost says quietly. "Fallen don't spare Guardians. They definitely don't give weapons back to defeated enemies. That's a huge concession for a Fallen noble."

“We can’t go onto their turf, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t keeping watch on them. That’s what our patrols and surveillance are for.” That doesn’t bother Blaze. It’s not like the Fallen ever let their enemies in to inspect what they were doing before.

“They feed on ether. It’s a synthetic substance produced by their servitor robots. Kind of a white glowing vapor, the same stuff that comes out of their suits when you shoot ‘em. The others make it sound like some kind of substitute for Light. It sure isn’t naturally occurring, anyway."

Fallen biology isn’t really important right now though. She’s more interested in the mission Palmer brings up. “Good. I gave my word and I’m going to keep it. We’re in. Just tell me where and when. You got a full team now?”

[readvondaniken]

"That's true," Palmer says to Ghost. He wonders why Pelsor had allowed them to have Blaze back, especially if her actions were unusual by her people's standard - a concession to their need to defend themselves, a way of evening the playing field, or some sense of honor. He doubted the last one. The Fallen hadn't seemed overly concerned with fair play in the winter, when they had the advantage. "That is weird. I'd wonder why she did that, she could've finished us off outright, but I guess we'll never know."

Palmer nods in reply - the surveillance is a good idea, even if by necessity they can't spy directly on Fallen territory. "That's true - but there's still a lot we don't know. Whether they're planning to use the Nexus as a launch site for their raids, for example, or whether they'll try and expand their territory, or even if Pelsor still has contact with the rest of her House."

He guesses that the Fallen must have a way of manufacturing this "ether" in the Nexus, and probably took a handful of these servitors with them. Otherwise there would've been no point in setting up a permanent settlement, one which would slowly starve and presumably die.

"We have Prometheus, Cricket, Gina, Horvath, and Kinner's still on board, too. It's a solid team. Thank you for offering to help us. The Thing is more dangerous than the Fallen in some ways, I think. Don't want a creature like that wandering the multiverses."

[rekindledtitan]

“Nothing to stop her making contact with the others, if she wants it. I don’t know what their internal politics are like these days. Either way, we’ll find out what they have in mind sooner or later. Sooner if we manage to intercept any of their communications.”

Blaze nods when he’s finished listing the team out. “I don’t recognize any of the names on your list besides Kinner’s. Unless Cricket’s one of the volunteers who was helping out back in Winter.” Maybe Horvath rings a bell too? Nothing that was her concern at the time.

“We’ll need to hold a meeting, find out what everyone can do. Put together a plan before we show up out of the blue in the middle of Antarctica.” In the middle of an alien attack, no less.

[readvondaniken]

"So we can intercept their communications at some point? That's good. Will your team be letting us know anything you find out?" Palmer likes that idea, especially if they can do it in such a way that Pelsor won't catch on. But he's no spy, so he can't offer his help. "Speaking for myself, I'll leave it to your team to handle them, now they're not an immediate threat to the rest of us.

"But the Thing is a very different kind of enemy than the Fallen. It doesn't have their numbers, yet, but it's not interested in land or plunder." Palmer knows most of the people involved to varying degrees, especially Cricket and Kinner, though he's met all of them.

He considers Blaze's suggestion, then nods. "You're right. I'll send out a message soon for a proper meeting in a while. We'll need a good plan and a cover story, maybe especially since everyone in my team will be jumpy and on edge."

[rekindledtitan]

“If we pick up anything, we’ll see. Intel like that isn’t free to share and Nexus chatter’s a few parsecs short of ‘secure’.” The Fallen haven’t been seen outside their territory, but with their stealth tech that doesn’t mean much. “If there’s something you and the others need to know about, though, you’ll hear it. I won’t let them take people by surprise again.”

The Thing may not be exactly like the enemies she was resurrected to fight, but it has the shape of a threat she knows very well. “It’s a contagion. Means our first priority has to be containment. Makes it twice as important that we’re all working off the same playbook. Don’t want to spook your people and we don’t want to tip the creature off, either.”

[readvondaniken]

"They might stop by here in the Nexus, we were told, since their terms allow them to and the torches aren't there keeping them away. I sell machine parts, which we know they're interested in, so I might have to brace myself for a visit one of these days. Assuming they're willing to buy from us rather than steal." Palmer isn't thrilled about a visit from the Fallen, but he'll grit his teeth. Business is business.

"It spreads. You're right, we need to be discreet. We're gonna have to tell who's who, too. There's a way, but we'll need the cooperation of my team, and we gotta act fast." Palmer knows about the blood test from talking to Kinner, and trusts the cook that it'll work.

[rekindledtitan]

“Could happen. I don’t think they’re after anything that burns fossil fuels though, so you can probably relax.” Then again, the Fallen have quite a knack for repurposing anything they can find. And there’s no guarantee Palmer won’t run into them out and about.

“So you have a detection method. Good! That’ll make this a lot easier. Just let me know when you’re gathering the team together. We’ll come up with a plan then.”

[readvondaniken]

"If one of 'em shows up, I'll just grit my teeth and be polite. If they're willing to pay rather than straight-up rob me, money's money." Palmer used to be a small-time crook, so he doesn't necessarily have a problem with stealing, and some of his friends back home are criminals. The Fallen did more objectionable things than steal, as far as he's concerned. "I don't forgive them, but if they're willing to behave I won't start anything."

Palmer nods. "I'll contact you with my PINpoint when the time's right. I'm assuming you have a similar plan as before? How will you hide Ghost?"

[rekindledtitan]

"Yeah, well, if they start giving you trouble just stay calm, get some distance and call us. Orders are not to start a fight, but any smart Eliksni oughta think twice if a Guardian shows up."

"Heh. Same way he always hides when I'm working." Blaze glances up at Ghost, and he vanishes in a wink of light. "He's still with me, even when he's not out in plain sight. And I've got my disguise all ready. I'll look and sound as organic as you are. Just need to borrow some winter clothes to finish off the look."

[readvondaniken]

"I've got your PINpoint, right? I can let both of you know if one of the Fallen starts causing me trouble." While he doesn't know the other Guardians, Palmer's relieved that he's got someone to look to for help. "If I'm lucky I'll never have to deal with them, but you gotta prepare for the worst. My business is supposed to be a neutral space for everyone with cash, and I won't be bullied, even by Pelsor's crew."

"That's good. I reckon a different kind of enemy will be an experience. I'll share the intelligence I have on the Thing." Palmer grins when he sees the little robot. "Howdy, Ghost. I wanna thank you, too."