The Treacherous Three

Darkness. Floating in the abyss. Existing while not existing. How vague can you get? The metallic figure felt nothing but regret. Filled to the edge of his fingertips with it. He was doomed to float helplessly with the lingering emotion of guilt.  
A small flicker appeared, illuminating the space around him, showing others just like him. Wallowing in their own self-pity. Whatever it was, it continued to flash, like a lamp slowly turning on in the dark. It finally kept its light and seemed to search for something, no, someone. It examined other people but jumped away from dark, cold, clustering of their hands groping for it greedily, until it came to the metal man.  
The machine of a man jumped away from the light, feeling ashamed of its enthusiasm and hope. It still pushed towards him, getting closer until the man stopped and gave in. The light touched his chest and single thought went through his mind like an explosion of realization.  
You’re coming home, Guardian. 
.  .  . 
“Welcome back, Warlock!” A voice said happily to the waking machine. His conscience was finally clear. His memories were blurry, in fact impossible to grab, but he was happy. Happy to be alive. Happy and confused.  
He stared at what looked like talking floating blue ball, the ball appearing to be its eye and speaker. It had a case that looked like four miniature spires on each edge of the ball pointing forward. Its back half was the same thing expect it was inverted and seemed to rotate around the ball counterclockwise, and then clockwise, without a specific pattern or rhythm.  
The machine then looked at his metallic skeletal hands with clay brown looking cuffs on the upper part of his hand. Then his surroundings were next. He was sitting down in what appeared to be a soft red grass mound, and behind him was a nicely chiseled, white, stone wall. In fact, all the stone he could see looked perfectly geometrical. Everything looked like some sort of rectangular prism or cube.  
The same red grass seemed to grow like moss on spots of the walls. He was in some sort of canyon, the walls behind him and in front of him skyrocketed to above the cloudy patches in the sky.  
“Who am I?” he asked, sounding robotic with a bit of surprise and wonder. The floating ball said to him in it’s tone of excitement, “Your name, or designation, is Prophet-4. You’re a Warlock! Which means you’re a Warrior-Sorcerer!” 
Prophet-4? The name wrings bells with no title…He thought to himself. He nodded in agreement and stood up and looked down the narrow pathway he was in and looked for a way out, he felt like something was watching him.  
“We are on Nessus. Pretty strange place, crawling with Vex, so we’ll have to be careful.” The floating machine said answering Prophet’s next question. “Oh, and I’m you’re Ghost! Though you can call me whatever you like.” It said again. “But wait, what’s a ‘Vex’?” The Exo asked looking into its blue orb. “They’re machines like you, except they want to make everything in they’re image, they also are basically time lords but having a Ghost, having the Light, makes them no match for you!” The Ghost cheered.  
Prophet leaned his back against the perfectly smoothed stone and thought for a moment. “You are surprisingly taking this very well, by the way.” It pointed out. I’m like the Vex. So, are they…Exos? How do I know that? These were all things he wondered about. He always knew he was an Exo. As soon as he was awakened, he knew. Which was a bit weird considering he didn’t know or understand any of this, but he had feeling in his heart. A feeling like fire that he needed to do whatever this being told him to do. It was better than trying to understand everything all at once.  
So, the Exo stopped thinking and nodded to the Ghost again.  
“What’s next?” he asked earnestly. “Just follow me down the pathway to your right and I can explain to you why you were brought back.” It said calmly as it flew to his left and then corrected itself and flew to his right. 
The slight mistake made him feel better about how terrifying the new situation was. The Ghost’s optimism made everything, somehow, better.  
The Exo followed his ghost, who he now realized had a bit more of a feminine sounding voice, through the even cervices in the white labyrinth until they came to a cave with nothing but darkness inside, as far as Prophet could see. 
His ghost dipped her shell while remaining her eye contact, like it was nodding and disappeared. Prophet took a stepped back and looked around for where it went, and then he felt something grow from him. Not physically. But mentally. It was as if his mind had an extra conscience but this one made him more aware of things, like he could feel things that he couldn’t feel before. Like a sixth sense, He mused.  
You’re going to have to go in the cave, your eyes should give you enough light to see in the darkness and I can watch your back. This is where the Vex have been waiting as soon as I resurrected you, The Ghost explained.  
Prophet felt braver and began his lonely pursuit into the cave. He could see the red light his eyes gave off, and when he spoke to his ghost, white light came from his mouth. The cave had the same geometrical shape as everything else and appeared to be white pink under the light of his eyes, and the grass looked like a darker blood red. He looked to his left and thought his eyes reflected off something but there was only one eye staring back. A much larger eye. 
His Ghost didn’t need to explain anything to him. He knew what it was, soon more singular red eyes were staring him down, almost as if they were analyzing him. Prophet was ready to fight his way through with his fists but the Vex seemed to hold their ground, not even one of the silver and copper looking bodies seemed to be on the defensive. They, in fact, let him walk by them without a care.  
So, my prediction was right! That was lucky, his Ghost cheered in his head. “What are you talking about? You mean I could’ve gotten killed?” He muttered bitterly to himself. His ghost made a noise like a sigh and replied. You wouldn’t have died! I was very prepared with the situation at hand and you have the power of the void inside you!  You look like a Vex! This gives us a huge advantage. 
Prophet sighed in disdain and shook his head. “We’re going to have a discussion about this, Lil’ Light.” Prophet retorted. Okay, don’t call me that ever again. His ghost grumbled but Prophet would’ve smiled if his robotic face would allow such a simple thing. I think Hope would fit you better anyway… 
.  .  . 
//: RC-15://00//:REBOOT_OPPERATION_COMPLETE://00//:WELCOME BACK:// 
The Exo opened his eyes to a familiar ceiling. He looked to his left at a picture of him and…Shaax. Realization hit him and everything was back to normal. Sort of. He couldn’t quite remember why he was in his house, or why he needed to be rebooted, and if his other traumatic experiences were just nightmares because he didn’t want to fight Dominus Ghual, or Crota, or The Eight Barons ever again.  
He sat up on his bed and looked around his room. He had the dresser next to him, and on the other side of that was an office desk and an empty chair with the window in front of it. RC didn’t know why he had it there until he walked over to it and saw the view of The Last City below him. He was in The Tower, the spire and beacon that all Guardians call home.  
“They weren’t nightmares. Well sort of, but you got rid of them once and for all.” A familiar voice said from behind him. “Comrade, it’s been a long time.” RC finally spoke, having a strong Russian accent sounding from his vocal speakers. “Not actually, you’ve been out for like 5 minutes.” The non-Russian sounding male voice joked. RC let out a loud bark of laughter and put his hands on his hips, heroically, and straightened his back. He turned to see his Ghost, Comrade, floating by the entrance to his dorm. 
His Ghost’s case was black, and his one eye glowed a dark shade of orange. RC felt relieved to be back in his living qourters with his oldest friend and continued to stare out the window at The Last City. Comrade came to his shoulder and enjoyed the wondrous site with him. 
    
.  .  . 
Twitch-23 raced his sparrow over a group of about seven Cabal. The group began shooting at the single rider but missed embarrassingly. Twitch wasn’t running away from them. There were smaller Cabal after him on much larger sparrows that could shoot balls of solar energy that explode on contact. 
There were two of these sparrows after him and now there were even more Cabal after him. He veered to the the right on the greenish terrain of IO, into a cave that looked like it would have a short exit. “Um, Twitch! This is a dead end!” Yelled his Ghost from the inside of his head. “Erl, Im pretty sure it’s an exit, there’s no walls stopping me-“ He was cut off because now he was airborne. 
The fact that it was a dead end as Erl put it, was that there just wasn’t anything left to hover over. There was only a gorge and Twitch was falling, with three Cabal fighter ships behind attempting to shoot him down before he reached the bottom with a legion of Cabal on both sides of the gorge doing the same.  
So, naturally, Twitch-23 took out his journal and began writing, heeding not unto his enemies.  
And he rote, 
“Driving my Sparrow at breakneck speeds reminds me I’m human.” 
That’s a very Hunter sort of thing to say. Not to disparage Hunters, but I don’t get it (and I try really hard to “get” things, let me tell you). I don’t need to be reminded that I’m still alive. I’m reminded of that every time I die. 
I drive my Sparrow at breakneck speed because it reminds me of my place in the universe. It reminds me of every force that acts on me, every “law” I can or can’t break. I’m most interested on the ones I can’t break, honestly. Considering I myself an aberration of the laws of physics, I rather like finding the edges of things. Not that I’m content to leave those edges as they are. I just get a sort of…thrill out of finding them. 
And if I have to drive my Sparrow over a waterfall of Vex milk to do that, then dang it, I will! 
As soon as he looked up from his journal, he saw a large rock spire and then everything went white as he listened to the explosion that echoed through the gorge.  
Finally, everything was clear, and he was standing upright at the bottom of the gorge looking up at the bewildered Cabal. He gave a short salute and ran off into another cave system. Erl had been re-downloading the blueprints for his Sparrow which he named, Approaching Infinity, after the explosion. “That would’ve been way cooler if you didn’t crash.” Erl reminded Twitch.  
Twitch pulled off his hood and took his helmet off and held it by his hip. He wasn’t exhausted. He was an Exo, and a Guardian at that. He didn’t get exhausted.  
Now maybe you should get to know how an Exo works and maybe what they are, sense all of these historical characters are (and will always be) Exos. An Exo is a machine with a downloaded human conscience. These were created by a scientist known as Bray, who created Rasputin and Warmind on Mars. Most of these machines suffered from a mental disorder known as DER or Deteriorating Exomind Rejection. This is where the human mind inside the Exo tries to escape its body, causing terrible migraines and even death to the apparent immortal beings. So, Bray created the Reboot, erasing the memories of the Exo’s past life with some exceptions. Though this wasn’t a cure but a remedy for the fatal mind attacks. The amount of Reboots an Exo has received appears at the end of their name, for example Saint-14. He has been Rebooted fourteen times, twenty being the max. If an Exo goes beyond twenty, they begin to have functionality problems whether it be obsessions, or they seem to be a bit extreme when they make decision and the like. Exos do not need sleep or rest and are ciphers to even their Ghosts, if they are fortunate to have one. They also do not need to eat but can taste like normal humans can. Their cores destroy the products they eat and can be used to regenerate portions of a broken Exos’ body.  
In the end, these strange beings remain mysteries from the Golden Age and will continue to be forever more.            
But Twitch didn’t care. He liked not remembering why he became an Exo, he only understood one thing; He had to be a light for others and protect those who followed him from the bitter Darkness.  
It was one of the only things that kept him going, knowing that somewhere out there, people needed him to be a hero, a savior, a symbol of peace and hope. That’s why he was chosen to be a guardian, not for who he was before, but where his morals were planted. 
.  .  . 
Category:Literature
Category:Original Stories