surestargument

[surestargument]

120218 122522.

Sreya and Radko-3, trapped in a cave with a bunch of Hive and about to do something stupid.

**

“I don’t know about this,” Ghost fussed for a third time. It zipped around Sreya nevertheless, dutifully finishing up her biometrics scan while she doublechecked her gear. Updates to data she already knew flickered across her helmet’s HUD — low ammo reserves, depleted Light, structural damage to her armor, a list of all her wounds Ghost couldn’t heal fast enough this deep into a Darkness zone  — but right now, she was only focused on one number still ticking up slowly: the alignment rate of her Light with her fellow Guardian.

“Join the club,” she said out loud. “I’m the one who’s gonna have to actually sync up with her, you know.” 

She looked beside her at Radko, Radko’s Ghost a silent mirror of Sreya’s as it completed its own scan. Radko just shrugged at Sreya, impassive and resigned all at once. They both knew they only had two options right now: do nothing and die to the Hive horde hunting them down in these caves, or at least give themselves a chance of making it back up to the surface. Of course Sreya’s Ghost understood that too. 

“Light frequency alignment at 57%,” Ghost reported. Radko’s Ghost remained quiet, preferring to subvocalize directly to Radko. “Estimated time to a full sync, about 3 minutes.” In the distance, they heard the triumphant shriek of a Hive wizard, and the replies of its many Thrall — they had found Sreya and Radko. Ghost’s eye flickered in frustration. “Or whenever they show up. Sreya, we — I mean, Ghost and myself, neither of us have tried this before. And you two are… well, you��re an Awoken, and she’s an Exo. We don’t know how long we can match your frequencies with each other —”

“As long as it boosts Sreya’s Light enough at the start,” Radko said. “We’ll handle the rest if that goes to plan.”

“You heard the fireteam leader,” Sreya said cheerfully. “If we die, we die. Now go stow yourself away.” 

“That wasn’t exactly what she said,” Ghost muttered, but it blinked out and settled into Sreya’s HUD to complete the alignment. 67%, 75%, 88% … Sreya felt something change at the edges of her Light as the number ticked up and her internal equilibrium was forced out of balance too quickly. It was like a deep itch prickling just out of reach, the sensation that there was something not quite right with her body. Her limbs jerked in an involuntary spasm. She shook it out and jumped a few times on the balls of her feet, annoyed that any of this might come off as nerves from the outside. 

Radko ran a gentle finger across the top of her Ghost before it disappeared as well. If she felt any of the same twinges as Sreya did, she didn’t let her body show it. They could both smell the horde’s approach even with the filtered air in their helmets; the Hive were getting closer and closer. Any second now. 

“Ready?” Radko said.

“With you? ‘Course I am,” Sreya said. “But take me somewhere more romantic next time.”

“Don’t lie.” The first traces of amusement entered Radko’s voice. “I know you think some desperate last shootout like this is the height of romance.” 

The Hive burst through the holes of the cavern. Ghost reported that the alignment had just hit 100%. Sreya laughed, in anticipation, in acknowledgement of the truth, turned, and ran headfirst towards the screaming horde.

Radko’s Light hit her like a tank mid-run and then just kept going, pushing her legs forward despite the initial shock of impact. Whatever she’d been expecting from sharing two different Light frequencies, she realized, it was nothing like the real thing. She’d held arc energy in her body before, but only as hunters used it: fluid, precise, tightly controlled; all that lethality compressed down to the sharp edge of a blade. Strikers didn’t have any use for that. They only needed to hit hard and move fast, as far and as long as their Light could carry them. From a distance, all Light looked similar enough when Bladedancers and Strikers were on the battlefield together. She was very quickly understanding now, even through the thrill of feeling her depleted reserves refilled to burst again, that it wasn’t the same thing at all.   

Gritting her teeth, she pushed that aside and forced herself to reach out for the emptiness of the Void. But there was nothing to touch but the storm all around her instead. Blue-white light blinded her, and for a split second, she felt her body stutter through an unfamiliar spike of panic. They’d only planned far enough to figure out how to get enough Light to let her draw her bow, hadn’t had the luxury to consider that a sync might affect her ability to touch the Void in the first place.

If a successful sync meant she still couldn’t use her Light the way she needed to, then what was the point of it? They were still fucked. 

Sreya sucked in a sharp breath, and then two things happened at once. 

She heard Radko say her name through her helmet. And at the same time, somehow more distinctly, she felt what could only have been described as essentially Radko (a rare laugh — Mars sand in her boots — the telltale glow of her red eyes out of the darkness and a solid hand at Sreya’s back) reach out to Sreya (the glint of her knife as she flipped it — an easy but not particularly friendly smile — slow breaths as she stared down her rifle scope — the small ways her expression shifted only when she looked at Radko), a touch between the two of them that was more a series of associations exchanged than actual words, but more deeply understood than anything they could have verbalized.  

In that moment, Sreya was intimately aware of Radko in a way she never had been before — her presence behind her on Sreya’s radar, yes, but also with Sreya now, in her skin and muscles and nerves. In her Light. 

Radko pressed the feeling of certainty across Sreya’s mind as a responding of course to her realization. She hadn’t just dumped her Light reserves on Sreya and then cut herself off; their synchronization went much deeper than that. For however long their Ghosts could balance their frequencies, she was a part of Sreya now. If she had complete control over her storm — and she always had — then Sreya did too.

All this passed in a matter of seconds. Sreya leapt and drew her bow, and this time the Void answered as easily as it ever did. In three quick shots, she pinned the Hive down. Before she’d even landed, her pulse rifle was already out and turned on the tethered Hive. She was low on ammo; she had to make every bullet count.  

Light spilled out of her opponents in great orbs as they fell to her. A flicker of Radko’s anticipation ran through her, told her Radko was making her move before Sreya even registered the heavy steps behind her. Radko raced past Sreya and into the mass of screaming Hive, and the Light from the dead came eagerly to her until she was once again pulsing, crackling with blue-white lightning, a singular loose cannon that tore now through the tethered horde. This was the Radko that Sreya loved seeing the most, so different from her usual tightly controlled self, and to Sreya’s quickly dawning delight, she realized she could do far more than simply watch this time. 

Radko chided her with a brush of discipline against her mind — pay attention — that made her grin, and I am, I am! she affirmed in bright bursts as she gathered up the Light Radko was creating for her now. It’s just — 

(Comprehension, before she even completed the full thought.) I know. (A reflection, a mirror between them.) Me too, remember?

It was just that she could feel it this time. Down to the click and whirr of Radko’s complex machinery, the burst of paper thin Hive skin against her lightning-charged fists, the grit and grime on her armor burning away in a flash as her body carried her to the next target, and the next, and the next.

And somehow even more unexpected (more terrifying, she thought) than that — she could see what Radko was thinking, the way she reassessed and recalibrated effortlessly to both Sreya and the Hive, and she knew she was equally on full display to Radko. It was nothing but flicker-quick impressions between them, natural in the way one’s personal thoughts were, a jumble of mental images and half-formed words and sensory inputs that nevertheless made perfect sense. They’d always enjoyed being opaque to each other; now there was nothing not understood between them. They were moving together as two effortless extensions of one form, Sreya’s bow and Radko’s fists replenishing each other’s Light as they fought their way up through the cave tunnels. It was a perfect sync. It was heady stuff.   

Because she could never resist getting the last word in, Sreya teased Radko with a flash of exaggerated indignation: If you really think I can’t enjoy you killing a bunch of Hive and also kill a bunch of Hive myself at the same time, then I’d almost say you don’t know me at all, except… you know. 

Radko didn’t bother responding, just shoulderchecked a group of Thrall and ran through the opening she’d made, but the brush of her presence in Sreya’s head, dark and warm, felt something like low laughter. Sreya grinned and raced after her. It was clear how the sync would become dangerous soon enough, but in this moment, buoyed by the high of their assured victory, she thought she could follow Radko like this for a long, long time. 

**

Their Light began regenerating as soon as they burst out of the caves and onto the planet’s surface, but they still ran until they were well away before Radko stopped them to catch their breaths and let their Ghosts materialize. Sreya immediately fell back on the ground in an exaggerated sprawl. Now that they were out of immediate fire, all her injuries were finally taking a toll on her.

“We need to get out of here,” Radko said to the two Ghosts. “Call up whichever of our ships is closest. And as soon as you get the chance, send a message to the Vanguard about the Hive infestation. They need to increase patrol activity here, make it a high priority for fireteams.” 

“We need to desync you as well,” Ghost pointed out. “It’s probably not good to leave it so long, and I don’t want to cut the line in one go either. And we need to heal your wounds before both of you actually collapse.�� 

“One thing at a time,” Sreya said from her position on the ground. She flapped a lazy hand at Radko, but her voice was firm. “Desync us first before it gets too weird. Neither of us are bleeding out right now, and when we get back to the Tower, we can always debrief the Vanguard ourselves.” She felt Radko’s protest, and added, “This planet might as well be bumfuck nowhere, Radko; even when the Vanguard does put out the call, it’s not like anyone’s just gonna immediately show up here tomorrrow.” 

Radko shrugged in acquiescence and sat down next to her, her boot bumping Sreya’s outstretched hand. She let the silence hang between them for all of five seconds before she said quietly, “Think we’re past ‘too weird’ already, anyway.”

Sreya grunted and turned her head away, but she didn’t move her hand. No point in bothering with a reply because she knew Radko already knew, and wasn’t that just great, now that the high was fading while they were still synced. It was almost funny how fast her mood soured. In the caves it had been so simple, so new, to fight with Radko like that, practically as Radko. There was no greater thrill quite like facing life or death with her fireteam leader. But out here on the stillness of the surface, the need for all that focus was gone and now her mind was starting to inevitably flit through trains of thought she absolutely didn’t want to go down while Radko was still a part of her. She didn’t feel connected, she felt exposed.   

“Don’t think about it if you don’t want me to know,” Radko said blandly. That made Sreya snap her head back to glare at her.

“Are you fucking doing that on purpose?” Yes. 

“Yes,” Radko said. “You know I am.” Of course she did. Talking out loud helped pull them out of their own heads, gave them at least the illusion of privacy. “Anyway, it’s nothing I didn’t already know.” And then it was broken all over again. 

“I don’t —” Sreya started, but that was obviously, annoyingly false. Normally it was fun to lie a little and let Radko humor her, even as they were well aware of what was going on between them, but the sync was making it all too transparent, brutal honesty at its worst. “You know it’s different.” 

“It’s not that bad,” Radko said. Sreya gritted her teeth. The worst part was that she could feel that Radko really meant that — she didn’t like it either, but she’d simply accepted the discomfort of knowing that Sreya knew, the way she always did. Sreya usually admired how easily Radko rolled with things — rolled with her —  but now it just infuriated her that Radko wasn’t anywhere near as on edge as she was about something they both weren’t happy with.  

“Sreya, we’re almost done desyncing you two, so please don’t have a heart attack over it,” Ghost cut in. 

“I wish I was having a heart attack, if it meant I didn’t have to deal with this,” Sreya muttered, and meant it. She would have shot herself right now, except Radko was already pressing a warning in her mind to cut that shit out. She threw her head back hard against the ground instead. Radko let her do it, and they both winced from the impact. “Can’t you at least go sit somewhere else? Like anywhere not five inches away from me?”

“You need the exposure therapy,” Radko said. Bastard. Sreya stared up at the sky, breathed through her nose, and thought about shooting Hive in painstaking detail until their Ghosts finally, mercifully unaligned them.

It left a great emptiness left behind in her, flattened her to the ground as her body tried to adjust to being alone again. Gradually, like everything else, it passed. Sreya sat up gingerly and looked over at Radko. She hadn’t moved from her spot, arms resting on her knees, and she very deliberately didn’t look back at Sreya. Sreya knew that was for her own sake, the smallest of mercies offered to her now that they didn’t have to be innately aware of each other’s attention anymore. The eternal contrarian in her balked at being handled gently in any way by Radko. The rest of her, strung out and a single light breeze away from tipping over, was just glad all that was over.  

She cleared her throat and said, “Alright. Let’s never do that again if we can help it.” Good, she sounded reasonably casual.

At the verbal acknowledgement, Radko finally did move; it was just the smallest turn of her head towards Sreya before they both paused, uncertain. Then Radko said, deadpan as usual, “I’m sorry. As your fireteam leader, I’ll make sure to never again put you in a situation where anyone has to know what’s going on inside your brain.”

Sreya huffed a laugh at that, and that was that. 

Radko stood up to go check on her Ghost’s progress and cupped a brief hand to Sreya’s shoulder as she passed. Sreya leaned back against a rock to wait for their ship. Safe in her own head, she let herself replay the feeling of sharing Radko’s mind, the solid intensity of Radko’s affirmation to her, and, shielded by her helmet, she couldn’t help but smile. 

[surestargument]

101218.

Pre-relationship, Kheviss coming to realize a few, maybe awkward things.

Context: Kheviss is a House of Dusk Captain, Yuan is a too-relaxed human Gunslinger. They have a random encounter and inadvertently save each other’s lives in a Hive pit. Kheviss takes advantage of the opportunity to negotiate a deal of cooperation with the Vanguard, because he’s frustrated with the lack of progress his House is making in actually saving the Eliksni.

Kheviss knows it’s his own fault for dropping his guard around Yuan.

He’s always on edge the first few weeks of their new partnership, grimly ready to acquiesce to anything Yuan demanded and hyper aware that one wrong move could immediately set him back to where he’d began. But then Yuan turns out to be so … unassuming, for a Light-touched ghoul. 

When his commanders tell him to cooperate with Kheviss’s crew for now, Yuan listens. He holds no real hostility towards Kheviss, just an understandably ingrained tendency to go for his gun at sudden movements. He doesn’t seem to mind hearing Kheviss’s opinion when the situation calls for it, is agreeable enough the few times Kheviss cautiously suggests they change tactics. And he’s so small, like one of Kheviss’s vandals. Kheviss finds himself gradually dropping the respectful honorifics when he speaks, standing a little taller around Yuan, and Yuan barely seems to notice the change.

So when they end up disagreeing on the logistics of a scouting patrol, it becomes too easy for Kheviss to be lulled into a familiar, false sense of command. Too easy for him to snarl in impatience and shove Yuan aside like he would to one of his vandals, to walk away from Yuan, confident that the guardian will eventually follow him.

He gets about two steps out before Yuan yanks him back by his cloak.

No time for Kheviss to react in his surprise. Yuan is already switching his grip from Kheviss’s cloak to one of his arms. He gets close enough to dig his shoulder into Kheviss’s chestplate; then he’s pushing up, and over, and dropping Kheviss to the ground. 

Kheviss grunts as his back hits the dirt. Before he can even try to get up, Yuan’s already on him, trapping his arms between Yuan’s knees as he straddles Kheviss. For a split second, they struggle, Kheviss almost managing to buck him off. Then Yuan reinforces his muscles with Light and presses down his thighs like a vice. 

He pulls out his hand cannon, slams the butt of it down on one of Kheviss’s ether canisters, just enough that it dents and breaks away slightly from his mask. And then he’s suddenly blazing gold all over, as if he called light down from the sun itself, and then his gun is pointed directly at Kheviss’s head, because guardians never seem to know when they’ve made enough of a point already. Kheviss’s breath catches - from the sight, or from Yuan pushing down hard against him, he can’t tell. His world narrows to the steady line down Yuan’s hand cannon, the burn of Yuan’s thighs against his arms, Yuan’s form flickering too bright over him. 

It’s over in a matter of seconds. Ether trickles out of Kheviss’s disabled canister in a slow hiss of blue against the gold. He might as well have tried to walk away from the Whirlwind.

“Come on,” Yuan says, tone mildly exasperated but otherwise level. “Thought you were smarter than that. I’m under orders to take you down as soon as you try anything funny, you know.” 

“...I yield,” Kheviss growls. In Eliksni, the meaning is something closer to him offering his arms up for mercy. He’s relieved the nuances of it are lost to Yuan’s translation patch. “Put that gun away. I won’t fight back.” Easier to spit the words out than expected, with his life on the line here, but it still stings that they’re out in the open at all. He can’t fight back.

“Oh, good,” Yuan says in relief. His flames immediately fade away. He holsters his gun and rolls off Kheviss to give him a little distance. Still blinking away bright spots, Kheviss pushes himself up and cautiously tugs at his ether canister to check it. 

“I can ask Xingxing to fix that for you,” Yuan offers. As if he wasn’t the one who broke it mere seconds ago. “Hopefully you didn’t lose a lot. I tried to keep the break small.”

Kheviss didn’t expect Yuan, with his seemingly infinite reserves of Light to draw upon, to even consider the possibility of waste. Somehow the casualness of it all makes it worse. But natural practicality takes over before his resentment can make him act foolishly again: “I accept,” he says stiffly, and allows Yuan’s Ghost to work around his canisters. At least the repairs give him time to catch his breath, recover from almost being killed by a guardian like it was nothing. 

They settle the matter and leave to resume their patrol. Yuan acts like the whole thing never even happened, although Kheviss has no doubt he’s quietly filed the details away to report back to his commanders later. 

He decides to put it out of mind as well as he walks. It was an outlier; humiliating, but nothing more. An unintended but perhaps necessary test of his boundaries. There’s a distance between the two of them, and the important thing now is to remember to not give Yuan any cause to change that distance again. He’ll simply have to keep a tighter grip on his control in the future, remember the risks he’s willing to take working with this small guardian. At the end of the day, it’s all a means to an end. 

Kheviss accepts this because he has no other choice, and follows behind Yuan.

But when he closes his eyes, he can still see Yuan kneeling over him, blazing bright, and he finds his breath catching again.