#they were cutting to someone with a new rocket launcher like every 2 minutes

[miami2k17]

still cant believe how bad death island was that shit was insane. why was it like that

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Corrupt [2]

Come, oh bearer mine, and show them that even a rose can be deadly.

SERIES: Destiny WORD COUNT: 6,806 SHIP: N/A CHARACTERS: kel, luke, cayde-6, lord shaxx, eris morn, ikora, zavala, quinn

Almost two weeks later, Cayde’s call comes at an inopportune moment.

Middle of a firefight with a group of Fallen that he’s sorely underestimated, and he makes the mistake of opening the line at the exact time he sees the Captain bearing down in him. Before Cayde can start to speak Kel grunts and calmly says, “one second,” before diving out of the way of a pair of shock blades that descend on him.

Reaching for his belt and one of the sticky grenades resting there Kel rushes forward, ducking underneath the Fallen’s four arms and two blades, not stopping to look behind him as the Captain roars in offense.

An explosion causes the rocks under his feet to shudder. A blink of red disappears from his HUD radar.

The comm line, surprisingly, remains patiently silent.

He takes stock of the enemies left: a dozen Fallen, all of them conveniently grouped up.

Propelling himself forward he leaps from the ground and pushes off the surface of a broken pillar, light roiling around him and shrouding his body in rippling flames—flames that he pulls handfuls of etheric, fiery knives from that fly from his hands too fast for the Fallen to dodge.

Kel lands as those knives erupt around him, and when the dust settles there are no Fallen bodies to be seen. Just ash and smoldering, blackened shrubs.

His fingers flex over the grip of the hand cannon held in them, eyes scan for any more enemies in waiting.

Cayde can’t seem to keep silent any longer. “Was that the trick I taught you? Tell me that was the trick I taught you. It was the trick I taught you, wasn’t it.”

Kel ignores him, glancing at Echo as she materializes to survey the area. “Did you have news?”

“We know how to find her.” Cayde answers without missing a beat or acknowledging the snub.

He holsters Thorn and turns away from the battlefield he’d just cleared, and Echo calls in his ship without prompting. He doesn’t need to hear more explanation than that, but Cayde gives it anyway, voice briefly drowned out by the roar of engines.

Kel wonders if he does it just to reassure himself that Quinn was still alive and they would get her back now that they had a lead.

Luke’s assumption that the Taken had pulled her through a rift into the Ascendant Plane had been correct—and her ghost, after having found a way out of that alternate dimension, had gone on for several minutes about how terrifying it was until Ikora had gently urged it to focus.

Apparently she had managed to turn the Taken’s own paracausal powers against them, tearing a hole in that reality herself. A rip only big enough for Glyph to slip through, allowing it to return to the Tower, frantic and exhausted by the long and rushed journey between Saturn and Earth.

It knew where to enter the Ascendant realm to find her—the tricky part would be hoping they got there quickly enough to keep whatever lurked there from either corrupting or killing her.

Kel’s fingers twitch near his holster and he wonders: were they one and the same?

He wonders: what would Dredgen Yor have said?

He doesn’t dwell on it, spending the entire flight from Venus back to Earth silent and aware of the rising hum in the back of his head the closer he got after days of peace. Like when he had found it, Thorn was eager.

The little girl still appears in the corner of his eyes and tugs on the hem of his tattered cloak, begging for his attention. Sometimes he feels her fingers curl around his own, finding upon looking down that they’ve been replaced by the grip of a handgun that purrs at him to lift the barrel to his chin and pull the trigger.

It’s getting easier for him to recognize the signs and brush them aside, but the visions and whispers had intensified and Kel knows he’s on a short timer. Part of him wants to just toss the damn thing, but the rest of him doesn’t enjoy the thought of what might happen should someone that hadn’t spent hundreds of years practicing intense self-control got their hands on it.

It had already proven itself to be a ticking time bomb for even him—how deep and easy would it sink its claws into someone else?

So, no, he wouldn’t toss the gun and hope for the best, and he had done everything from emptying every round of his rocket launcher’s ammo on it to dropping it in the lava flows of Venus in the hopes of destroying it without success.

The lava flow attempt had left him blacked out and he had woken later with the gun vibrating with furious energy.

That had been the first time Kel had felt true, all-consuming fear since his rebirth, and it was also the moment he realized that Thorn was more than just an accursed weapon in the City’s and in humanity’s history—it was a curse in and of itself.

One that he now held the responsibility of containing.

Eris had said there was a way to silence it, to make it easier to control, but in two weeks he’d had no luck finding how. He was running out of time, and quickly, but he had enough time for this detour. He wouldn’t abandon Quinn. Not when there was a chance she was still alive, not when Gil had given his life to make that chance possible, and not when her bright presence had burned away the shadows of his memories.

When he arrives on Earth he’s met with more greetings that he only briefly acknowledges before moving on. The less time he spent here, the better.

Eris is absent from her place in the Vanguard hall again, but Kel’s steps slow and then stop when he catches Shaxx’s gaze.

From behind their helmets they stare each other down. Shaxx’s fists are clenched tightly at his sides, and Kel sees arc energy sparking around them. He could apologize for what had happened—he had violated the sanctity of the man’s training grounds, unknowingly or not—but it would be hollow and they both knew it.

There was nothing forgivable about murdering one of their own.

“Shaxx.”

The bold greeting sends a fresh ripple of furious static sparking over the titan’s form. “Dredgen.”

Kel can’t put a finger on whether it’s the icy treatment of a stranger he receives or the cold accusation behind the simple moniker, but the painful sting nearly cripples him. The former he had expected, but the latter?

He swallows it down and continues forward as though it didn’t affect him. Though Shaxx looked as though he was ready to intercept him and wanted to do nothing more, the titan remains in place and stares him down as he passes.

Like the last time he had approached the war room an argument is underway, only this time the doors are wide open and the subject, thankfully, isn’t him. Ikora is silent, her hands clasped behind her back, while Zavala and Cayde butt their heads together.

“—I’m going, Zavala. You can run my hunters through Shiro or Marcus while I’m gone, but I’m going.” Cayde says, heated. Not quite as rare attitude for him, but still out of the norm.

“We need you here, Cayde,” Zavala jabs a finger down onto the table in front of him to emphasize the statement, firm and unyielding in everything from his voice to his body language, “let her fireteam run the rescue op and we’ll send a temporary third with them.”

Cayde refuses to concede. “And I need to be there.”

He’s the first to notice Kel’s entrance. His expression shifts to something neutral, but Kel doesn’t miss the quick glance to where Thorn is strapped to his thigh. Cayde’s gaze lingers—and then he gives Kel a nod in greeting. “I gotta be there for more than one reason.”

Kel returns his nod and understands.

Zavala doesn’t look happy about Kel’s presence, but whatever protests he has to it are held in check; he makes no effort, however, to hide his distrust. Ikora just gives him a once over and a long, considering look before lifting her chin ever so slightly in acknowledgement.

Two out of three wasn’t bad.

He says nothing, quietly continuing down the steps and veering off to the side once he’d reached the lowered landing and finding a spot apart from them where he can stand silent and still as a statue. Maybe they could pretend he wasn’t even there.

Distraction put aside Cayde continues his argument. “Only way you’re keepin’ me off this op, Zavala, is by puttin’ a lock on my ship.”

“Which you would find a way to break or circumvent.” Zavala sighs explosively, pushing away from the table and folding his arms over his chest. “This isn’t like Venus, or Mars, or any of our other warzones, Cayde. You’ll be heading into Oryx’s turf, not one we control.”

“I know the risk. It’s worth it.” Cayde replies.

Silence falls, stretching out until Ikora speaks up. “Think of it this way, Zavala: there would be something especially inspiring for our guardians and City to see one of their leaders heading a direct strike into the heart of the enemy. Morale is something we’ve...been seeing a decline in recently.”

She must’ve been taking a backseat to mediate their argument.

Still, Zavala says nothing, leaning forward on the table again and showing his distaste openly. “And if you die, Cayde? If this fails?”

“It’s a risk all of them take every single day. ‘Side from the fact we’re the ones givin’ orders, what makes us so special?”

Kel had already had more than enough respect for Cayde but that simple rhetorical question tips it even higher.

Hunter Vanguards historically had the shortest details—in the years since the City’s beginning, both warlocks and titans had seen less than five leadership changes combined, and hunters alone had seen at least five—that were typically cut short thanks to a stereotypically flighty nature that usually got them killed.

Cayde was the ‘youngest’ of the current Vanguard iteration, and he still knew what it felt like to be one of the rank and file. Zavala and Ikora had forgotten, and both look sobered by the statement.

In the end Zavala relents, and Kel wordlessly follows Cayde from the war room.

Luke is rushing across the plaza when they run into him, apparently trying to get to the war room himself. Cayde intercepts him before he bypasses them entirely, and Kel has to spend a handful of heartbeats carefully controlling his breathing and beating down the rage that threatens to resurge. It wasn’t his fault, he reminds himself.

Cayde and Luke are staring at him when he returns to the present. Luke looks nervous, and Cayde was once again unreadable. He says nothing to it. “Are we going or not?”

He wants Quinn back within the City walls, safe. He wants to strike a blow against the Taken King, retaliation for his lost brother. The sooner he does both, the sooner he can retreat from the remnants of humanity and seek a way to control Thorn’s influence, keeping them safe from the threat it poses to all of them.

He keeps his distance on the flight from Earth to the rings of Saturn, remaining in the middeck of Cayde’s ship and listening while the Hunter Vanguard and Luke discuss their plan with Glyph giving input based on its knowledge of the chunk of the Ascendant Plane they’d be infiltrating.

Luke glances over at him every so often and Kel returns the looks from behind his helmet impassively, saying nothing; like with Shaxx, he knows that there aren’t words to make up for what he had almost done, and he doesn’t expect Luke to forgive him for it.

They journey deep into Oryx’s floating fortress once they arrive, directed by Glyph who had opted to share a ‘backpack’ with Cayde’s ghost, Sundance. Neither of his allies comment on him using Thorn, but Cayde does conspicuously order Luke to fall back and bring up the rear and Kel to take point, keeping himself between the two members of Fireteam Ward.

It was just as well; the proximity to so much Hive power and magic made the black static at the back of his mind roil, so Kel doesn’t mind pulling ahead so his back was to them rather than the other way around.

Pulling an Ascendant Soul from one of Oryx’s many ‘children’ on the Dreadnaught is no simple task but they accomplish it through equal amounts skill and raw determination—there would be no other way to force open the tear that Quinn had created.

Glyph’s directions lead them into a passage small enough all three of them have to duck down to file through. Luke’s vocal disgust about the chitinous growths and writhing hive worms surrounding them allows a brief moment of amusement to push back Thorn’s greedy grasping at his mind.

The passage darkens the further in they move, all the colors reaching his eyes suddenly washing out in shades of dark blues and grays and blacks as though a painter had stripped all of the vibrance from their universe.

The change from the plane of existence they call home and the Ascendant one is immediate and disorienting, as though they’d stepped through a pressurized barrier, the weight of the air around them suddenly oppressive and stifling. His light feels small and choked and he knows that he can’t remain here long.

Already, Thorn is drawing strength from the darkness.

The passage opens up after a ways and all three of them are struck dumb by the void that greets them, littered with cracked stone pathways and floating islands of sand and Hive growths consuming nearly every visible surface.

All around them a howling gale roars, dark clouds twisting and and swirling, obscuring every broken, floating pathway until a blinding flash of lightning within the unnatural storm around them sets the endless horizon alight and reveals them.

Along with the shadows of massive, writhing tendrils somewhere in the far distance within the smoke-like clouds of the storm.

The reports of Crota’s throne world, infiltrated by that six-man fireteam decades ago, hadn’t done this chaotic realm justice. It was terrifying in its seemingly endless, haunting expanse with the storm around them both deafening and silent at once.

He couldn’t see any of Oryx’s mindless army, but he can still feel countless eyes watching them, greedy and hungry, something ancient and eldritch and powerful waiting for them to fall into the yawning abyss below.

Thorn feels abnormally warm in his palm. It speaks to him for the first time in nearly a week, voice almost incomprehensible within the deafening cacophony of echoes that accompany it.

Do you hear it, oh bearer mine? The song. Listen to the song. Hear its truth.

Light-wielders shouldn’t be here. No one should be here. He knows this instinctively, and with a glance at the other two Kel knows that both of them have come to the same conclusion.

And Quinn had spent over a month trapped in this hell. Alone.

A massive, distant roar rising over the silent gale snaps them all of them out of their horrified awe, reminding them of what they had come here for.

Cayde readies his Ace. “C’mon, let’s move.” To the point and devoid of his usual good humor. It’s a testament to the wrong-ness of this place, to the danger of it. This wasn’t a place to underestimate and he knew there was no place for his usual levity and devil-may-care attitude here.

This time he leads the way, Glyph’s nervous voice over team comms telling them that Oryx’s throne world was massive, and it had no idea how much further in Quinn may have traveled in its absence—they hadn’t been able to find somewhere safe to just bunker down, and it wasn’t likely she had found a way to since.

Monsters unlike anything they had ever seen wandered these teetering paths and inexplicable ruins, apparently, and it makes near-frantic emphasis that even if they couldn’t see any now they were still everywhere.

So they moved forward carefully, following Glyph’s direction further into the throne world, all on high alert. Cayde quickly grew visibly frustrated with their slow pace, but with the roaring winds and fog around them they could scarcely see twenty feet ahead, and knowing that one wrong step sent them into a dark abyss that Kel doubted they could survive, ghost or not, they couldn’t afford to rush any more than they could afford to dawdle.

Several times Glyph had to call out for them to abruptly change direction or for them to stop before they walked right over the edge of one of the floating structures they traversed.

Kel had to reach out and grab Luke’s robes one of these times, just barely catching the warlock before he completely lost his footing. By the way he had gone completely still, staring at Kel as he held him over the edge, he’s sure Luke had wondered in that moment if he was going to just let him fall.

Thorn tells him that he should and then howls its rage into his mind when he instead pulls Luke back onto solid ground.

“Thanks.” Luke says, voice shaky.

Kel’s head hurts. “Don’t mention it.”

Twenty minutes pass. Then thirty. Only twice did they have to stop to fend off a wave of Taken-warped thrall, vicious and screeching at them as they scale and traverse the twisting and broken landscape of their King’s territory.

Cayde works flawlessly with both of them as though he’d been part of their team for years, and all the thrall and acolytes and knights unlucky enough to be in their path fall.

They take a moment to breathe after a wave of thrall clear, all acutely aware that they didn’t have many of them to spare. Tick tock, tick tock.

Luke breaks the silence first. “Anyone else a little worried we haven’t seen any of those monsters Glyph mentioned?”

“Think it’s somethin’ we should be grateful for, kid.” Cayde replies easily, flicking his wrist and dropping the empty magazine from his Ace so he can reload it.

“No,” both Cayde and Luke’s attention snap over to him at the single deathly certain word, “it’s not.”

“What’re you thinkin’, Kel?” Cayde’s hand flicks the new magazine into place within the barrel of his gun.

He struggles to find the words he wants to say through the deafening static between his ears. Thorn doesn’t want him to speak at all. “Oryx wants us to keep going. He wants us as deep into his world as he can get us.” He pauses, one of his gloved hands settling on his helmet over the crown of his head; he’s not sure why he knows this. Or how.

His fingers tighten around Thorn’s grip.

“I mean, we know Oryx wants us dead, Kel. Why not just try to kill us here?” Luke asks. He doesn’t have to mention that thrall and knights were hardly a challenge for veteran guardians that had faced them before.

He can’t make the words form, though they’re on the tip of his tongue. He doesn’t know. He does, but he doesn’t.

“‘Cause we’ll be farther from a way to escape,” Cayde supplies, and though there’s something crucial missing from the answer Kel knows that he’s dead to rights, “we find Quinn, he kills all of us at once. If he’s lucky, which he ain’t. This handsome mug ain’t dyin’ today.”

Kel needs to figure out what that crucial missing piece is. He needs to. What was it?

“Question is: why?” Cayde continues, and Kel sees him shift impatiently in the edge of his vision. He knows the answer to this question is important, just as Kel does, but he’s gotten far enough that his biggest concern is finding the woman he still hasn’t admitted he loves.

Listen to the song. You know the words. Let me sing to them, oh bearer mine. Join me, let us sing together.

“I don’t know.” Kel finally says, his tongue feeling leaden within his mouth. And it’s true that he doesn’t, but the melody between his ears is beginning to make horrific sense.

Cayde’s watching him with sharp eyes, likely trying to assess whether or not Thorn was getting its hooks into his head again—but he apparently comes to the conclusion that Kel had it under control, because he turns his back to him and then starts forward, calling for them to keep moving.

Fool.

‘Shut. Up.’ Kel thinks forcefully, his jaw grinding until it’s painful. Miraculously, Thorn retreats to an incessant buzz in the back of his head in response.

It gives him no comfort.

They move forward, minutes ticking by, until the silent thunder cracks and the roaring winds around them are broken by a single, piercing scream that causes gooseflesh to erupt all over his skin. All three of them stop dead in alarm that’s quickly replaced by urgency.

Cayde breaks into a run first, followed without prompting by him and Luke, and Kel can hear Luke muttering a staccato repetition of shit, shit, shit from beside him.

It’s as they round a colossal stone column that Glyph speaks up, having remained silent long enough Kel had nearly forgotten it was there, its voice a shrill, tinny yell of warning over the comms: “Abyssal Knight!”

Barely a second after it yells in warning a massive behemoth materializes right in front of them in an unnatural, crackling storm of something like dust or gravel. It looked like a Hive Knight in shape, but was so huge that their heads just barely reached the height of the bottom of its knees, and its chitin was soot-black and nearly invisible in the inky darkness of the Ascendant Plane.

They notice the massive blade raised above the creature’s head nearly too late.

The shockwave of the blade striking the already cracked and crumbling ground sends all three of them along with shattered debris flying; Kel feels his back slam into the jagged stone surrounding the path, the blow knocking wind from his lungs and stunning him.

On the other side of the path a blast of arc energy sends more debris scattering and Luke stumbles out of it on his knees. A few feet to Kel’s side Cayde crouches almost on his knees as well, feet dangerously close to the edge of the floating path and one of his hands curled tightly around the exposed root of a dead tree.

Shaking the daze from his eyes, Kel lifts Thorn as the Knight raises its blade again.

“Just run, you can’t damage these things!” Glyph yells at them, panicked.

The issue, Kel thinks, wasn’t that they couldn’t damage it—but that they didn’t have the time to figure out how. Was that hubris? He doesn’t care.

Reaching for his belt quickly Kel lobs a tripmine up onto the stone that towers above him, the explosive beeping only once before its sensor picks up the Knight and explodes. The Knight stumbles, and a furious roar that sounds less like a creature and more like a force of nature follows them as they push forward.

“Glyph, where is she?” Cayde slows slightly to raise his gun and fire off a few shots at the thrall that had picked an awful time to come swarming from the shadows.

“Dead ahead, but there’s more knights!”

Poor word choice.

The exo swears, word nearly lost to the horde of screaming thrall blocking their way forward and the heavy, lumbering steps of the Knight giving chase behind. “Luke, we need a path!” Cayde calls out.

Kel expects Luke to let out a whoop and a jubilant ‘let’s rock n’ roll!’, but the warlock is instead silent as electricity flares up around him, flying from his open palms and ripping through the horde of thrall before them.

It’s unnerving to see Luke without the gusto everyone knew him for, but Kel doesn’t have time to wallow in self-loathing at the fact he’d been the one to dampen it.

He and Cayde follow after Luke, single shots from their pair of hand cannons picking off whatever Hive escaped from the warlock’s raging storm. Kel turns around once to fire a shot at the Abyssal Knight still pursuing them, hoping to find some weakness, but the bullet doesn’t so much as cause it to stumble.

Echo beeps at him to get his attention just as he turns away and he pauses, watching as though in slow motion as something incandescent wavers around the Knight’s gargantuan form; an image flashes in his mind of a dead titan in a Crucible arena.

The Knight’s body shifts as it moves to strike down and Kel dives out of the way, rolling back into gear and taking off after the other two.

They can see more of the Abyssal Knights ahead, clear of the screaming thrall that Luke had successfully reduced to smoking ash. Something glows brightly in the darkness of the Ascendant Plane right in the middle of the three monsters, and both Kel and Luke immediately recognize the opaque white shield unique to their teammate.

One of the knights rears back with its weapon and slams it down on the shield, scattering the sound of cracking glass on the wind around them. Quinn lets out a scream of helpless fear from within the shield’s dome.

“Cayde, we can kill these things, do you have a barrage ready?”

“Hold on, what?” Luke demands.

There’s no hesitation in Cayde’s answer. “I do.”

The easy, unflinching trust for him to give an affirmative without even knowing what his plan was, after everything he’d done and nearly done, punches Kel in the chest. He sequesters that feeling for later, a weapon to use against Thorn when it tries to press into the depths of his mind for an advantage.

Nine bullets in Thorn’s magazine. Three Abyssal Knights.

He takes aim—three shots each, a full magazine of hungry, caustic bullets that do exactly as he had hoped they would. The three knights stumble when the rounds chew through whatever paracausal shields they had and shatter them, massive weapons slamming to the ground and making it rumble under their feet.

Cayde takes to the air with his light burning wild and unleashes a barrage of fiery knives that erupt violently over the carapace of the now defenseless goliaths, leaving them to howl as the fire of Cayde’s light rips them to shreds and turns them to ash that’s swept away by the wind.

Immediate threat to the one they came here to save out of the way, the three of them turn for the last Knight still lumbering heavily towards them. Kel reloads quickly and empties the full clip into it, his teammates hailing it with even more the moment its shields are destroyed.

Nothing but the roaring silence of the storm around them follows. It’s a reprieve and nothing more, Kel knows this even without the hissing laughter he hears cut through his thoughts.

Cayde doesn’t hesitate, immediately turning and bolting back for the center of the massive open platform they find themselves on. The opaque shield they’d seen, so similar and yet so different from a titan’s at the same time, dissipates and reveals Quinn lying prone on the crumbling stone within a small divot.

The knights had been hammering at her shield for longer than they’d been witness to, it seems.

He and Luke join Cayde.

“Hey, sunshine,” he’s saying as they approach, Ace gently set on the ground next to him as he reaches for her, “you’re alright. You’re alright.”

It seems more like he’s trying to convince himself rather than her, but Kel doesn’t mention it.

She’s pale as a sheet and there are dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes, that much more pronounced with how white she looks, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat visible over her skin even in the desaturated colors of the Plane.

Her chest heaves with exertion and she shakes with something he can’t tell between weariness or unfiltered relief that they’d found her; morbidly, Kel wonders whether Oryx would’ve become unstoppable if they’d gotten here too late, for he knew now that that is why he wanted all of them here, deep in his realm.

Power feeds power. Blade versus flesh. Blade versus Eternity. There can be no survival without teeth.

Thorn’s laughter grows louder and Kel goes stiff as he fights with himself, suddenly struggling not to lift the barrel of the gun and fire off three very specific shots.

Weight hits him and nearly throws him off balance, and Kel only realizes that someone’s embraced him when the contact somehow pushes the dark static from his mind and leaves his thoughts clear again. He blinks, looking down and seeing Quinn with her arms tight around his back and face pressed against his chestplate.

His throat feels tight; he wasn’t deserving of the silent thank you she was projecting to him, not at all, but he hesitantly wraps an arm around her back in return.

“Can you move?” He asks her, following Cayde’s line of sight when he lifts Ace at the ready. Already the Taken were swarming again. They couldn’t stay here.

She looks like she might pass out at any moment, but when she steps back he spends a moment wondering at the sheer force of will the woman had to be able to keep upright after being trapped here for so long, after an ordeal that must have drained her to the brink.

She nods, pausing when Glyph materializes briefly to shift from Cayde to her.

“Good, that’s good, because there are a lot of bad guys heading our way,” Luke says, already hop-stepping back in the direction they’d come.

“Kel, take point again. Quinn, stick close. Luke, you ‘n me bring up the rear. Move!” Cayde barks out quickly, and all of them—all four of them—take off, hoping that their path would remain clear as they’d made it.

He didn’t hold out hope, knowing that now Oryx had them where he wanted them they weren’t going to leave easy. Part of him wants to argue Cayde’s order for Quinn to stick close to him with Thorn’s possessive, dark whispering growing disorientingly loud and demanding, but he doesn’t.

It was a double-edged sword, grasping at his mind greedily and testing every ounce of his carefully honed restraint, but the only weapon among them that could damage the powerful creatures that he hoped could only exist within this realm.

Instead, Kel took solace in knowing that Cayde still trusted him to maintain his control over something that could be both their and and salvation here.

Taken swarm at them from all sides as they run, the King of this world throwing oceans of screaming and howling thrall and knights and acolytes at them to slow them down and tire them out. To stop them from leaving.

Kel understands now why the disastrous mission that Gil died on went the way it had.

It’s nothing but sheer luck that sees the four of them back to the beginning, back to the passage they’d come through and out of the choking void.

They weren’t safe, far from it—if Gil’s death had told them anything, things were about to get even more difficult.

The moment they’re out of the tight passage and into the cavernous halls and suspended platforms filled with rock and chitinous growths and writhing worms that made up the Dreadnaught, they stop for nothing, slowing only to push back against the waves and waves of enemies Oryx furiously throws at them.

By the time they make it back to the transmat zone and are pulled into the confines of Cayde’s ship all of them are exhausted—though, he imagines, nowhere near to the state Quinn likely is—and Sundance immediately sends the ship into flight away from Oryx and his throne and the Taken.

The ship makes it into hyperspace and it’s only then that all of them allow themselves to catch their breath and relax.

“How long was I gone?” Quinn asks quietly from where she’d collapsed against the hull of the ship, hands hanging limply on the ground on either side of her and legs bent unevenly where they stretch out in front of her.

“Almost two months.” Sundance answers her from within the ship’s systems, her voice soothing and gentle.

There are tears in her eyes. “It felt like so much longer.” She whispers, and then the first sob wracks her body.

Cayde is at her side instantly, pulling her against him and settling his chin on top of her head, jaw lights flashing erratically while they’re caught somewhere between his choking relief and concern. “You’re alright now, sunshine.” He says, rocking her gently while she clutches at him and cries. “You’re alright. We’re taking you home.”

Kel looks away, unable to stop the feeling that he was an intruder to the scene and wordlessly moving for the rear of the ship. He doesn’t belong here with either of them, not while the corrupting grasp of the Darkness claws at him and tells him to just end her suffering.

Somewhere between there and Earth she falls asleep, too exhausted from her ordeal to remain awake, and she stays that way even when they arrive at the Tower and are transmatted down into the hangar. Cayde carries her all the way to the medical ward, Luke and Kel both following and remaining outside while they wait to hear how she is.

The silence between them is stifling.

It’s comfortable enough for Kel, but it leaves Luke twitching and fidgeting restlessly until he speaks up.

“I don’t think even Gil could’ve held up a ward against those things after a month of...all that.” He says, the statement seemingly more to himself than to anyone else, but Kel’s helmet tilts up to him just slightly and the warlock freezes as though only just remembering he was even there.

Kel stares at him for a length, Thorn clawing at his thoughts after hours of silence and telling him to get up, to reach out and strangle Luke for daring to speak Gil’s name. Instead, he nods and evenly replies: “No, he couldn’t have.”

The look of shock on Luke’s face is absolutely worth the pain of acknowledging a still raw wound.

He won’t stay in the City. He can’t. Gil had been the only reason Kel had ever agreed to work as part of a team, the only reason he’d grown to enjoy someone always having his back while he was out in the wild.

He’d miss Quinn. He has to hope she wouldn’t lose the bright personality that had wiggled its way under his skin, and she was one of the few that acutely understood why he found solace in silence and solitude.

Deep down, he’ll miss Luke and his obnoxious, optimistic energy, too; he knows he can’t keep blaming the warlock forever, and it’s only the sharp sting of loss and Thorn’s desperate, hungry whispering that has him pointing the finger of blame in his direction.

Cayde, Ikora, Zavala, Banshee, he’d miss all of them. Shaxx, too, though he’s sure the feeling wasn’t going to be returned.

At least with Quinn back in the Vanguard’s hands, Kel could be satisfied in knowing Gil’s death wasn’t in vain.

Maybe once the wound has healed he’ll come back.

Maybe.

His thumb drags along the grip of Thorn, still hissing at the back of his skull, still urging him to rip open Luke and drink in the light he’ll bleed. It was furious at his careful restraint, frantic that it was being ignored by him ever since the debacle in the war room.

That had been the first time Kel had lost control of himself and snapped in hundreds of years since the phantoms from his first life had begun to plague him, and Kel swears to himself that it was going to be the last.

He speaks with Quinn once she��s awake again, quietly and evenly, just as she remembers.

Cayde stands nearby, unwilling to leave her side and relaying his messages and report to the other Vanguard members through Sundance. He doesn’t mention how close Kel had come to putting down the only other remaining member of their fireteam, nor does he watch Kel like a hawk as though expecting that buried rage to reappear, and Kel appreciates it more than he’ll ever be able to put into words.

She’ll find out, eventually. Luke has too big of a mouth for her not to, and once he vanishes from the Tower he knows she’ll wonder why.

When he leaves the ward and heads back through the Tower he figures it’s well enough that her last impression of him before he left for who knew how long is just the same as before the loss of his best friend ripped open old wounds and nearly changed him for the worse.

She needs the stability right now, and while that implies him needing to stay he knows he can’t. Cayde and Luke were fixed enough points on their own, and they could fill in where he’d never be able to so long as Thorn was at his side.

Eris Morn is out in the sunlight of the plaza for once and Kel stops in his path to stare at her.

She’s watching him expectantly.

“There’s no coming back.” It’s more of a statement than a question. He already knows the answer.

“Not fully.” She says, her head tilting slightly. The answer as well as her covered, glowing gaze are surprisingly lucid. “The corruption digs in, burrows into the fiber of your bones as tenaciously as we cling to this dead rock of a planet. You yet hold the weapon. It is still trying. It will continue. It will get worse.”

Worse, implying that killing another guardian and gunning for his own teammate after only a few weeks with the weapon wasn’t that bad. He supposes, compared to the pain and torment she’d suffered at the hands of the Hive, it wasn’t.

They had stolen her eyes and poured corruption into her veins.

She had stolen theirs in return, and used that corruption to exact retribution in spite of the Light now shirking her.

He nods in response; he can still feel it at the back of his mind, insistent and angry. Whatever evil the Hive had planted in the weapon, it didn’t like being ignored.

Kel glances into the distance, his eyes settling on the gargantuan form of the Traveler hovering over the Last City on Earth. “You said there was a way to sever its connection to the Hive magic controlling it. I haven’t found it yet.”

“Xyor. The moon. Slay her.” She offers him, and he looks over at her, both of them sharing a quiet moment of understanding. As he turns away what she says next causes him to stop in his tracks again. “Perhaps you will get to keep your eyes when she is gone.”

Had she just made a joke?

He blinks at her, and her head simply tilts the other way. “You will also be free of the worm wearing a dead girl’s face.”

Anyone else might have jerked back in surprise, but Kel simply curls his hands into fists at his sides. “How—?”

It’s a stupid question; all three of her stolen eyes blink slowly at him.

“I’ll silence it.” He says after a pause, wondering for a moment at just how wrong he may have been about Eris. “And I’ll make sure it doesn’t dig its claws into anyone else.” He’s not sure yet if it’ll even be possible for him to maintain control of it. But he will.

Her lips twitch into a smile so slight and so brief that Kel might have missed it. “Conviction. Eriana would have liked you.” She says, and as she returns to the Vanguard hall she leaves him with one more piece of advice: “Do not let it consume your light, and you may become something even the Hive fear.”

He watches her leave, then looks up at the silent Traveler in the distance, taking in the sight of it for just one more time.

Echo chirps at him cheerfully, confidently, and Kel leaves the Tower and the City behind.

[jbuffyangel]

Mid Life Crisis: Arrow 6x20 Review (Shifting Allegiances)

“Shifting Allegiances” is a step up from “The Dragon.” A small step, but a step none the less. I’m coping with back to back bad episodes by viewing them as the filler stepping stones to 6x21-6x23 that they are. Who’s with me?

We’ll make this short & hopefully painless. Let’s dig in…

Diggle and The Noobs

I will stop calling the Noobs the Noobs when they stop acting link dinkleheads. This is not that episode.  

Rene is back and it makes me sad because I did not miss him at all. Curtis and Dinah can say what they want, but it’s not a “hero’s welcome” when the hero tried to kill another hero with an axe.  

Annnd… then a bunch of stuff happens. Listen, I tried to pay attention. Really I did. I just couldn’t because I was so bored. 

The Noobs go up against The Quadrant, but all that matters is a Quadrant flunkie has a rocket launcher and it’s nifty. I have all the Buffy feels.

Rene has some form of PTSD and is now afraid to go into the field because he might die. I guess? Is this PTSD from Oliver kicking him in the chest? Listen up Hoss, you went all Jack Torrance on Oliver. 

Actually, I think Jack may have been more reasonable. There’s a very linear cause and effect line to draw. So, here’s some tips:

1.    Don’t swing an axe at Oliver.

2.    Then Oliver won’t kick you in the chest.

3.    Thus avoiding accidental near death experiences.

 Follow this simple three step process and you’ll be fine Rene. 

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to Rene before this that he could die in the field, but I can assure him it won’t be at Oliver’s hand – as long as Rene PUTS DOWN THE FUCKING AXE. I am a little bitter. I doubt that will be fading.

Diggle spends the majority of the episode saving the Noobs’ ass, so really nothing has changed by switching from Team Arrow to A.R.G.U.S. Can we please talk about that uniform? I’ve seen flight attendants with better uniforms than that. How is this “suit” any better than SPARTAN? For god sake Diggle, you switched from Kevlar leather to polyester. The fashion alone points to what a colossal error this is.

Diggle also apologizes to the Noobs. Just insert all my screaming about Felicity apologizing to Curtis in my 6x19 review here. 

Of course, the Noobs say absolutely NOTHING in return because they are the most petulant toddlers to ever exist. Where is Super Nanny when you need her?!!!

I don’t mind that Diggle and Felicity apologize. They are the bigger people. They always have been. This is not a shock or out of character. They were the bigger and better people weeks ago when they apologized with Oliver and tried to squash this beef.  OTA has always been on the high road.

However, I do mind that the Noobs haven’t apologized in return yet.  No one apologizes to John for messing with his chip and putting his life in danger. So, the Noobs can suck it. SO. MUCH. SUCK. IT.

There’s a significantly pregnant pause from Rene after John’s apology. It’s the perfect time to apologize and he just… doesn’t. Yet, this pause highlights how necessary it is for Rene to apologize even more and how awful it is he hasn’t. It feels intentional because the same thing happened with Curtis when Felicity apologized.

So, my only conclusion is the Noobs haven’t apologized yet because their spiral into toddlerdom is a 23-episode arc and they will remove head from ass by the finale. Or at least that’s my hope. 

The other possibility is the Arrow writers have forgotten how apologies work and someone will need to reintroduce them to the rules we all learned in kindergarten. The massive pregnant pause does offer a glimmer this is not the case though.

Diggle decides he’s going to trust the Noobs (the same people who messed with his chip and put his life in danger) more than Oliver Queen, his best friend and brother of six years. 

You know what? Imma gonna cut Diggle some slack because Diggle is not Diggle right now. This version of John Diggle is having a midlife crisis. 

His boy is all done and grow’d up.  This has sent John into a tailspin. He is asking the questions we all ask when we inevitably hit the midpoint of life. What is the meaning of all of this? What is my purpose? WHO AM I?

Has Oliver gone to Diggle for advice this season? I honestly can’t think of one time. In fact, Oliver has been giving Diggle advice. We’ve all had the major case of the wiggins from Oliver’s whole and healed routine. We’re more annoyed with John than Oliver right now. This season is just really unnerving.

Sure, Oliver finally married Felicity – something Diggle told him to do three years ago. So, John can chalk that up to Oliver finally doing what he’s told. But I bet John was banking on some colossal fuck ups parenting William, but Oliver went to FELICITY for that.

Diggle, as first wife, graciously steps aside for the second wife. Then, Oliver gives him the Green Arrow mantle and suddenly John has a new lease on life. The nagging question of “How am I needed?” is answered with a new purpose. Rather than raising the Green Arrow, Diggle will be the Green Arrow. But then Oliver asks for the hood back and Diggle is back to square one. Those questions come rushing back.

So I’m equating this break up with Team Arrow and his alliance with the Noobs to Diggle buying a sports car. At least he didn’t lose his mind completely and cheat on Lyla. Although, technically speaking Oliver is his second wife (Lyla is one and three), so we could make the argument that’s exactly what Diggle did in “Shifting Allegiances.”

Never mind Diggle still has a son to raise. Never mind he’s a crucial and integral member of Team Arrow as Spartan. Never mind Oliver Queen will always need John (even if he needs him in a different way now.) These are all details Diggle can’t see right now because he’s taking a big swig from the Crazy Jar. It happens to the best of us. My dad bought a really big boat. My mother bought a new house. I’m almost 37.  When I round 40 I’ll probably buy some obscenely expensive jewelry because sparkly things make me happy. We all cope with our inevitable and looming demise, and the meaning of life questions that come with it, differently. For Diggle, it’s breaking up with his bromance partner and wearing really bad polyester.

Oliver Queen

Oliver is still on his “I work alone” mantra. He tries to get Anatoly’s position back in the Bratva… I think? I am mostly annoyed Oliver went to Russia without Felicity and we were cheated yet again from a Russian rendezvous love scene.

Anatoly doesn’t want the Bratva anymore, which then begs the question then why is he still mad at Oliver? Nobody is really here for logic though right? Right.

When Anatoly asks about Oliver’s friends he responds

Source: @olivergifs​

See, this is what I love about Oliver Queen. John Diggle dumps him and life ceases to have meaning – friendship wise. What about Felicity or Lance? Hell, I’ll even toss in William! Nope. Oliver has no friends. Not without John.

Anatoly kidnaps Oliver and brings him to Diaz, except Oliver wants to get kidnapped so it’s not really kidnapping. Dragon agrees to leave Star City if Oliver can kick his ass. I am happy to report Arrow has not completely lost their damn mind. Oliver promptly kicks Dragon’s ass. However, Oliver is still a bowl full of rainbows and gives Ricardo the chance to yield before snapping his neck. Season 1 Oliver did have his good points.  Ricardo pulls a knife out and stabs Oliver. 

I can accept the only way Ricardo Diaz can win a fight with Oliver Queen is by cheating. What I cannot accept is Oliver “I was trained by Slade, Shado, Maseo, The Bratva and Ra's Al Ghul" Queen didn't see it coming.

Source: @olivergifs​

He did THANK GOD. The point was to show Anatoly which man has honor.  It’s Oliver.

Whatever. Oliver could prove the same point by drinking Diaz under the table with Russian vodka. It’d be a whole lot more fun and less messy. Well… more fun at least.

Source: @olivergifs​

Anyways, enough of the filler. Diaz decides to speed up Oliver’s court date and we’re off to the races. Literally, the only thing keeping me holding on during this episode is we will see THIS FACE next week.

Source:  the-scarlet-archer

Bl*ck S*ren

Arrow continually telling me Diaz is the biggest bad we've ever faced and is all the evil that evil can be every five minutes doesn't equate to the character actually BEING those things.

Bl*ck S*ren’s behavior towards Diaz shines a glaring light on this issue. BS is a meta human. She can scream until a person’s blood vessels pop. We’ve seen her do it several times. So all of this “Diaz is so cruel. He burned a man,” is a bunch of bullshit and really insulting to Bl*ck S*ren.

LL fans were ready to tear the writers apart when Felicity knocked BS on her ass with one punch. *excuse to use this gif again*

But DIAZ they are okay with? I have yet to see Diaz do anything that would put him in the same league as Merlyn, Slade, Ra’s Al Ghul, Damien Darhk and Prometheus. Honestly, what does it say about BS that she’s afraid of him? Nothing good my friends! If Diaz is Arrow’s lamest Big Bad then this fear shtick automatically makes BS even lamer than Diaz. That’s just maths.

Sadly, BS is the ball in the ping pong game between Diaz and Lance. Either Diaz is teaching her how to villain or Lance is teaching BS how to be low level human.  She can pretend she’s the toughest baddie in town, but BS basically sits around waiting for a man to tell her what to do. No thanks. I’d like to order a strong female character with a side of agency, please.

This is also the reason why her “redemption” is feeling unearned. BS flip flops back and forth so many times it’s hard to believe she’s truly invested in good or evil.  She’s just hitching her ride to the man who fits her mood.

I’ve probably said this before, but I would have preferred that the writers go balls to the wall with BS and make her the season’s Big Bad versus the season’s Big Bad’s girlfriend. It just feels like a lot of untapped potential. It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting for Team Arrow to fight with the woman wearing their friend’s face, but is intent on destroying the city. Rather than watch this substandard goon clunking around and BS kowtowing to him. THY NAME IS AGENCY.

At least Lance grew a pair for half a second this episode. More evidence he’s going to die. I guess we’re supposed to infer Bl*ck S*ren’s fear while Diaz pawed her like a kitty in front of Lance, but the whole scene is just off putting. The idea of these two people snogging gives me no joy, but I was never under the impression BS was banging this bag of dicks because she was scared of him. When did we get to sex under duress? I feel like we missed a step. Ugh. I’m trying to logic my way through this and there’s just no point. 

The one thing I can always count on in any version of L*urel L*nce’s character are the inconsistencies. I wear them like a warm blanket.

Stray Thoughts

Amell was really wearing that black coat.

The blood really brings out his eyes. Pretty. Source: @olivergifs

“Where in the ever loving fuck is Felicity?” – Me 15 minutes into the episode.

Disclaimer: Any gifs on the blog are not mine. If you would like a gif removed from my reviews, please message me. 6x20 gifs credited.

[zombierunfiction]

Season 2 Mission 23: Galvanize

The next day found every runner in Abel ready to run with headsets and spray canisters on their backs.  Charlotte felt jittery knowing what was coming.  Next to her was Sara and Jody both of whom were equally worried.

“I hate this...”  Sam said softly into the head sets.

“We all hate this, Mr. Yao.”  Janine said .

“It's the... it's the bloody waiting.”  He clairified.

“We have no option.”  Janine concluded.  “We can't evacuate because we can't let him take Abel.”

“I know!”  Sam stressed.

“We can't go out to meet his forces, we don't know where they're coming from.”  Janine continued.

“I know, I do know.”  Sam said a little louder before sighing heavily. “It just reminds me of last time.”

“Last time, when Van Ark sent his army of mind-controlled zombies, and Abel Township was blown to smithereens?”  Janine suggested.

“Yeah, well, don't you remind me!”  Sam said quickly.

“It's different this time.  We know him, we know how he operates.  We know what he's here for.  New Canton have set up their soldiers to defend themselves, and we have a plan.”  Janine explained.

“And we're ready!”  Jody said trying to sound enthusiastic.

“Ready, willing, and able.”  Simon said laughing.  “Abel.  Did you uh, did you see what I did there?”  He said grinning.

Charlotte rolled her eyes as Evan stepped over to them.  “We're armed with knowledge.  Most valuable weapon there is.”

“Knowledge, experience, teamwork.  And the biological countermeasures.  Sam, we've got this.  Haven't we, Char?”  Sara said looking at her.

Charlotte nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  Yeah we got this.”

The sound of someone walking through the comms shack is heard.  “Message has come in over Rofflenet, you have to see this!”  Jack said.

“Thanks, mate. Yeah.”  Sam said as papers rustled.  “Guys, this is it.  A messages has come in from Dogville, that outlying settlement to the west.  They're coming.  Van Ark's sending his zombies in.  Guys, they're coming.”

“Then we're going out to meet them.  Run with me, Char.  Try to keep up.” Sara said as the gate lifted letting the runners out into the field. They didn't get far from Abel when Jody grabbed Charlotte's arm.

“Guys, you realize we're running directly towards a bunch of fast zombies?” She asked pointing towards the horde of zombies that were heading right for them.

Simon chuckled running up to them.  “Well, that is what we love to do, Four.”

“It might be what you-”  Jody said quickly before Evan jumpped in.

“It's all in the game plan.”

“We need to see what we're up against before we- oh...”  Sara said as she reached the others seeing the horde for herself.

“Yeah. I see what we're up against.”  Charlotte said seeing the zombies seemed to keep growing in numbers.  “Do you see it too Sam?”

“Got it on your headcams.  Looks like a phalanx of, what?  Five hundred? Yeah, about that.  About five hundred.”  Sam said surprisingly calm.

“Fan out, as we practiced.  Keep going.  We need to surround them.” Evan said as they all seperated heading around the horde.

“Looks like that block of thirty at the front is the fastest.  Moving at about an eight-minute mile pace.”  Sam said before taking a deep breath.  “If I sound calm, it's because the training in sounding calm is paying off.  Not because I actually am, you know, calm.”

“Is it because you can see what we see, Sam?”  Jody asked.  “That they're speeding up, and headed straight for Abel.”

“Run faster, guys.”  Sam said as everyone sped up.  “Faster than that.”

After several minutes of running to surround the horde the Major came over the coms.  “Runners in position, Seven?”

“Aye aye, ma'am.  Fifteen runners positioned to keep pace with the swarm.” Evan replied.

“Fifteen of us, against Five hundred zoms?”  Jody cried softly.  “Feels like a suicide mission!”

“It's not.”  The Major said.  “We have the one thing zombies lack.”

“Fear? A sense of smell?”  Jody asked still sounding paniced.

“Brains. You're all armed with a weed killer spraying device filled with the doctor's latest batch.  You have our entire supply out there.  Enough to slow all those fast zombies down.  Make them less susceptible to instruction, too, from our research.”  The Major said.

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, is that going to be such an improvement?  I mean, five hundred new shamblers heading for Abel?”  Simon questioned.

“At least that crowd in the back will stop knowing how to use those guns they're carrying.”  Janine supplied.

“There is that.”  Charlotte said as they continued to keep up with the swarm and the other runners.

“Runners Eleven and Seventeen, take positions at ten and two o'clock.  Runners Three and Seven, six o'clock position.”  The Major ordered as the four runners in question responded with agreements.  “We're reaching the perfect place for it.  The valley where the land dips down.  The spray will linger in that sheltered area even after you've gone past.  Now, runners, as one, on my mark, run through the lines of zombies, spraying as you go.”  Every runner go their sprayer wands ready as the Major called out the order.  “Mark!”

Charlotte and the runners began running around the perimeter of the horde spraying the mist over the swarm.  The mist was pungent and smelled of rotten fish guts and mold which made Charlotte and all the other runners cough and gag.

“Holy-” Sara coughed hard.  “This batch is stronger than the last, isn't it.”

Charlotte coughed hard.  “I think I'm going to have an asthma attack!”  She said pulling her sweater up over her nose.

“Potent stuff, alright.  Taking no chances.  That'll stop those zoms dead in their - “  The Major said as the zombies started to run faster.

“Major I think we have a problem.”  Charlotte said as she ran away from the group.

“I see that.”  The Major said as Jody cried out.

“They're speeding up!  They're getting faster when we spray them!  And those ones at the back – oh God, do you see?”  Jody said as Charlotte looked back feeling her body go cold.

“They've got a rocket launcher.”  She breathed.

“Get me the doctor, now!”  The Major shouted as the runners did their best to keep away from the now super fast zombies.  

Jody cried out as one was gaining speed on her right near Charlotte. Charlotte  ran over and kicked the zoms knee knocking him down allowing both of them to escape.  “We're gonna die!”  Jody whimpered.

“Just keep running Jody.  You can do it.”  Charlotte said putting her hand on Jody's pack.

“What's going on?”  Maxine asked quickly.

“You're zombie slowing spray and made the zombies twice as fast now.” Charlotte said before the Major could.

“What happened doctor?”  The Major said right after.

“I don't know.  I don't know!  It's the same basic molecular structure. I just increased the concentrations, and-”  Maxine explained quickly.

“You didn't test this batch?”  The Major stressed.

“I -”  Maxine breathed.  “We needed it so quickly.  There wasn't time to run full tests!  It worked on cell cultures in the lab.”

Suddenly a scream is heard near by making Jody and Charlotte look over.  “They got Seventeen!”  Jody cried out gripping Charlotte's arm to keep up with her.

“This isn't a bloody lab, Doctor!”  The Major shouted.

“Yes, I see that.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry!  I-” Maxine said before Sam jumpped in.

“Runners, listen to me.  They're fast, but you can do this.  Make for the treeline.  Zoms can't climb trees, and even if these can, you'll have the advantage of being above them.  Just go, now.”  He said quickly.

“Leave Abel undefended?”  Charlotte asked quickly.  “We can't do that.”

“Yao's right.  No sense wasting lives on an unwinnable battle.  Runners, live to fight another day.”  The Major said softly.

“We've lost.  We've lost, Five.  Abel can't stand up to this kind of assault.  Save your own lives.  New Canton will take you in when we're -”  Sam pauses for a moment.  “Listen.  I just wanted to say it's been an honor being your operator.  All of you.  Always, uh, chipper Runner Three, Runner 'back from the dead' Eight.  And Runner Five...”  He paused again as Charlotte gritted her teeth.

“No... Sam...”  Charlotte felt tears welling up in her eyes.  “Not again...”  She breathed as Jody held onto her arm tighter.

“I know I might not get to say this again-”  Sam was suddenly cut off by static and Nadia's voice broke into the channel.

“Hate to interrupt a good death speech, Sam, but we've got a little present for you.”  She said cheerfully.

“What?” Sam asked.

“We had a few free runners ourselves.”  Esteban said as well.

“Fifty runners, in fact, as a loose end,”  Nadia said happily.

Charlotte let out a happy laugh.  “Nadia... you have excellent timing woman.”

“Look at it this way Charlotte.  We're square now.”  Nadia said.

“Absolutely.” Charlotte said wiping her eyes quickly.

“I can see them!”  Sara said.  “Coming over the hill, with noisemakers!”

“And pistols, and sonic blasters to block the reprogramming signals.  We think we can help you out with this little logistical problem.” Esteban said happily.

Sam sighed happily.  “Oh my God, you guys!  Are you really the elves from Helm's Deep?”

“Not being a geek, I wouldn't know, but as a famous Australian once said, 'Did you think

we would leave you crying when there's room on our horse for two?'” Nadia asked with a grin.

“How is that better than a Lord of the Rings reference?”  Sam questioned.

“Runners Eight through Twenty-two, modulated dog whistles.”  Nadia said as the whistles began to blow.  “Runners Thirty-Seven through Fifty-Three, set up the shooting gallery on the east.  We can't take them all, Sam, but we can surely make a dent.”  

“Modulated dog whistles?  Genius!  I mean - “  Sam laughs happily.  “Gus, fall in with New Canton runners.  See if you can get in behind the zoms and take a few out as they go.  We might be dealing with speeded-up, mutant, mind-controlled zombies, but if we pull together-”

“-in ten feet.  Runners, run!”  Nadia said fast as the runners changed directions heading towards the New Canton runners.

Several zombies took swipes at the runners coming very close due to their increase in speed.  The New Canton runners took our several with their guns but they just kept coming.

“What the hell did you guys give these zombies?  I've never seen anything like it!  They're so fast!”  Nadia said as Charlotte ran around a tree to avoid a zombie who jerked himself off course falling over.

“And jerky too!”  Charlotte said rejoining up with Jody.

“That jerky movement's new.  Since we gave them the spray.”  Sara said.

“Second team, prepare to fire!”  Esteban said.  “Fire!”  He shouted as round after round of gunfire took out several zombies.  “Not so jerky now, huh?”  He said confidently.  “Hm... Abel Township, do you have a firing squad in the northwest quadrant?”

“Us? We've just got a bunch of useless weed killer tanks.”  Sam said.

“Look at the northwest quadrant.  Six zombies just fell to the ground.” Esteban said.

Charlotte and Jody jumpped back as four zombies crossed their path getting incredibly before falling down.  “Four just stumbled and fell over here.”  Charlotte said as they ran the other direction.

“It's like they get so jerky, so twitchy-”  Jody said slowly.

Simon coughed for a moment before speaking.  “Here, two just went down. Looks like they're trying to do the horizontal Macarena.  Twitch twitch, jerk jerk.”

“They're all going down.”  Sam said as Charlotte and Jody stopped for a moment seeing zom after zom start to fall down onto the ground.  “All over the field...”  She breathed.

“It looks like they're dying.”  The Major said softly.

“I'll say.  This one just twitched it's own head clean off.”  Sara said.

“Third team, hold your fire.  No sense wasting bullets.”  Esteban said.

“They're jerking more and more.  And then they just stop!”  Nadia cried out in surprise.  “What the hell did you give them?”  

“Maxine, you did it!”  Sam cried out.  “You bloody well did it!  They're all dead, Maxine! You and your clever scientist brain, you little beauty!”  He kisses her loudly.  “You've killed them!”

“Are they - “  Maxine breathes.  “definitely?”

Sara groans.  “There's brain matter coming from their ears.  I'd say they are definitely.”

“That means that-”  Janine said slowly.

“It means that this is it.  We can defeat the zombies!”  Sam said exceitably.  

“All runners in the field, come to Abel.  This must be shared with everyone.”  The Major said as all of the runners began heading back towards Abel.  

Over an hour later the Major was kitted up with a headset and stood by the gates where she could look at everyone gathered in the township.  Sam and Charlotte stood in the com shack making sure that the outlying settlements and New Canton were getting the Major's broadcast.

“People of New Canton, people of Abel.  Friends, colleagues, runners.  This war has been long, and our losses have been great, and it is not over yet.  There will be hard days ahead of us.  We have lost good friends, whose memories we will never forget.  We will suffer further losses.  Some may be harder than we feel we can bear.”  The Major spoke loudly as Charlotte felt Sam wrap his arm around her from behind pulling her closer.  “But know this – today was the day the tide turned.  Today, humanity began to fight back.  When civilization is re-established, and they come to write the histories of this darkest time in the life of our species, they will write about the Battle of Abel, and they will say, that was the day on which the worst was over.  We will take back Britain from coast to coast, from shore to shore.  Battle by battle we will reclaim her.” The Major said confidently.  “And let these words ring – that this day, this battle, has not been the end of the beginning.  It is the beginning of the end!”  

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

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Season 1 Beginning

Season 2 Beginning

[lostsolsdestinyblog]

What's Happening, Priorities of Community Concerns and Where are we going from here?

January 10, 2018

I had a conversation about the game and community with Man at Arms the other day on twitter and he said he'd like to see someone clearly define 1) What's happening? 2) The priorities of community concerns and 3) Where are we going from here? With Bungie employees returning to the studio today, I would like to address those 3 topics.

What's happening? This one is an easy question on the surface, but gets much more complex the deeper you dig. What's happening is a huge backlash against both the game and the developers for many reasons, but all rooted in the fundamental changes Bungie made from D1 to D2. It began with the beta and lack luster abilities, once every ten minute supers and the decision to change the weapon system and it's devolved from there. Static weapons, lack of endgame grind, tokens/economy, bland PvP and yes, Eververse and MTX. They are all valid complaints and head-scratchers when looking at what D1 was at its best, but many of these topics have been addressed and we've seen some changes already and others we know are being looked at. Unfortunately we've reached a critical mass for many different reasons and neither the game nor the community can keep going forward successfully unless things change fairly radically. I will start with Bungie because a huge amount of its wounds so far are self-inflicted, but there's a false narrative going around these forums that Bungie have changed and that they're evil now and bring back the old Bungie. As someone who's been here from the beginning, Bungie has not changed, but I think that those that make the decisions there understand that it's time to evolve. To the recent misconstrued videos, subsequently disseminated all over the forums that the new Bungie rebooted the game to implement MTX and they only care about money... Halo 2 released half finished. Halo 3 was the rest of what Halo 2 was intended to be. This has always been how Bungie operate. They dream the sun and stars and moon and then hit a looming hard deadline and things get cut, changed or sent out not to the level they wanted. In the Halo days this was seen as Msoft being overbearing and demanding a new game every 2 years, but then the original Destiny was essentially cancelled gutted and put back together on the fly over the next 4 years. Now there is the drama that D2 was rebooted as well. The timing is odd since we knew back then that Smith, Newsk, et al were moving to head the project. I think it's obvious that the triad of 4v4, static weapon and the new weapon system were changed and implemented at that point based off of the issues of balancing D1. The question that I have and would actually categorize it as a reboot is if D1 was still meant to progress at that point and they then made the decision to make D2 a new standalone entity. Regardless of how it all transpired, what is clear is that Bungie has historically not been able to prioritize and build games within the time frame of what they are trying to achieve. Maybe it was Msoft before, but they chose to take their brief independence and get back in the same boat with Activision only this time with a game that constantly needs to grow and evolve and have content flow down the pike, which is an issue when just getting releases out the door has always led to sacrificing things. I think Bungie now understand that it's not just being beholden to a publisher now and that they need to change from within and I think that they have been doing that and I think there will be growing pains and we are seeing them, but I think ultimately for this franchise to continue, Bungie needs to be better at forward thinking and having a vision and sticking to it. The last thing I'll say is in regards to communication. Things shouldn't have gotten this bad and we've tried to get you to be more transparent for a long time now. That said, I've heard from Hamrick, Bakken, Barrett, DeeJ and A_dmg04 that things are going to be different and that they plan to not just communicate more going forward, but that the game will get better and they will address our issues. So now we need to give them that opportunity. To the community, while I understand the frustration of what everyone thinks this franchise can/should be but misses the mark, I get it. I get the frustration, the anger, the mistrust. It does not justify what we have become as a community. These forums and this community are no longer a place to talk about the game, to share experiences, ideas or critiques. This is now a place solely to attack the company and the devs and to be as derogatory, demeaning and vicious as possible. I saw a reply to A_dmg04 today that it's just because players care and that's a stock answer to defend the behavior on here, as I replied there, it's like someone beating their spouse while telling them how much they care. At some point the words are meaningless. It's no different here. Players can say they act this way because they love the game, but when the end result of that "love" is posting how much you hate Bungie, how much D2 sucks, call the developers assholes, shills, tell them to -blam!- themselves, tell everyone who likes the game they're shills, casuals, they suck Bungie's dick, like getting -blam!-ed in the ass by Bungie, etc, etc, etc... That's not healthy, it's abuse and if that's the end product of your "love'', it's probably time to reevaluate things and move on. Bungie have been on vacation the last 3 weeks. In that time these forums have been taken over and spammed and all other opinions except #REV shut out. In that time they have posted here and on social media multiple times that they hear the feedback and will respond when they're back at the studio this week and yet all the posts continue that they aren't listening. If we as a community are going to be upset and angry and ask them to respond, it's also on us to not keep shitting on them and blow it off when they do. Communication goes both ways and we have failed just as hard at it and particularly Luminaries in the community that have the followings and the connections within the studio to try to engage and initiate discussion from our end when they feel Bungie isn’t being forthcoming enough, but choose to pile on and fan the flames instead because anti-Bungie content does well. I've reached out to no less than 10 prominent content creators and asked them why they don't reach out to Bungie and use their standing in the community to drive positive change. Not one responded. From mega streamer to first time forum poster, we need to be better. This is a community that's supposed to be here to not just post complaints, but to talk about the game, have real discussions and make connections both with each other and the developers as well. Right now these forums only exist as a vehicle to wage some fantasy war against the AAA gaming industry with Bungie held up as the master of all evil.

The priorities of community concerns

Obviously this conversation has been dominated by EV and MTX and that system has been handled poorly for 2+ years now. I understand the need for a game that has to constantly pump out content to appease the player base to need to supplement that with a constant revenue flow. It’s simple business economics. Unfortunately Bungie have a really bad track record with handling economies. We’ve seen it with the how many economy overhauls since September 2014 in-game and EV has been no different. Bungie have responded that they understand that their system doesn’t respect their player base. Moving so many items from game drops to strictly EV, be they cosmetic or not was a bad move and the RNG has always been setup to prey on whales rather than provide a system that allows everyone to use it when they want to acquire specific items.

The issue with all the #REV spam is that there is still a lot more that needs to improve with the game in general and those conversations are not happening and that feedback is no longer going to the devs.

As far as prioritizing, that’s difficult to say because 1) everyone has a different vision of what the game should be and some people are legitimately happy with D2 as is and 2) there’s no real way to gauge what players are feeling about anything else because 25 pages of

#removeeververse f u c k u Bungie Title

For myself I think the single biggest mistake D2 made is with 4v4. It’s not the only issue in the Crucible, but it’s been the biggest game changer. In D1 the Crucible was the extended endgame. It was what we did when before and after raids and during content droughts to keep our group together. We don’t PvP anymore outside of limited things like Mayhem or IB because it just causes problems to have to tell 2 people ‘’ oh, sorry’’. It’s also led to it being really difficult to keep raid teams together because there isn’t the content to keep everyone involved on a weekly basis even if they can’t make a raid. Beyond that, 4v4 just isn’t as fun. It destroyed Control and honestly none of the game modes really fit it well (Supremacy did, but then they changed it to Clash 2.0). The best PvP map in D2 is Distant Shore, a D1 remake built for 6v6.

The weapon system needs to be addressed. While the philosophy behind moving all OHK weapons together makes sense, the implementation is bad. There is really no reason to use anything outside of a Cluster Rocket Launcher or the raid Sword in PvE atm. All other rockets can’t compete on damage and no other swords can compete with the ammo gain on the raid sword. There are zero benefits to using shotguns, fusions or snipers in PvE and Grenade launchers were not ready for primetime at all.

Classes need to feel unique and more powerful overall. I know how we got here through all the calls to nerf every ability our class didn’t have that we died to, but it’s made the game dull and a one trick pony in too many ways, particularly in the crucible.

• In D1 Titans had Lightning grenades +shoulder charge/jug shield + FoH that could either shut down a single enemy super or when timed well, wreck clustered groups (RIP old Control) or melee shields+suppression grenades+bubbles+ shotguns or a roaming super with HoS+an awesome DoT with incendiary grenades

• Warlocks had blink+shotgun+NB which was basically a ranged FoH or Arc melee range+ roaming super+landfall or melee shield+Firebolt DoT/Fusion tracking+self rez

• Hunters had Invis+the best roaming super in the game, Arcblade+blink+shotty or Golden Gun+Tripmines (when they were awesome and stuck people) or shadestep+wombo combo+ tether suppression

• It didn’t matter if guns were better or even op because we had so much good shit to counter with and make plays. It all got nerfed and combined with all weapons killing the same, it’s led to just team-shooting and streamers hating it.

The masterworks system needs to grow and improve. It’s a nice start but outside of orb production the actual perks are pretty meaningless. I know everyone hates static weapons and how it’s robbed the game of ‘’grind’’ but I’m sorry, random rolls sucked. It got slightly better with vendors having rotating stock perks in year 3, but never getting a gun you wanted with the perks you wanted wasn’t enjoyable either. The best era imo was HoW when we could re-reroll our weapons, but it was not easy to do and Etheric light was like gold. Masterworks for weapons is a step in that direction, but not far enough and it’s good to hear that armor will be included.

CoO wasn’t a bad expansion. The raid lair might be the single best piece of content since King’s Fall, but Mercury and the Infinite Forest missed the marks. The infinite forest should be a patrol zone with hidden bosses/treasures/dungeons tied into the randomness of the zone. It looks cool, but outside of a couple red gates, there’s zero reason to fire a weapon and the only way to experience a beautiful zone like Past Mercury is playing adventures. Mercury’s patrol zone should also have been accessible to teams of 6, which would have been awesome with the addition of the verses and forge which were probably the second best addition in CoO after the Lair.

The worlds of D2 are beautiful but the reasons to go are lacking. Tokens are boring. Lost Sectors/Cayde’s chests/’hidden’ gold chests all could have been so much better with a little more planning and time taken to really put unique fun loot in them. That’s one area EV really robbed the game of items that really could have made grinding those activities much more fun.

And there’s much more I’m sure but VAULT SPACE. I know there are fixes in the works, but having even less that D1 is pretty inexcusable as is a system with no way to dismantle our stacks of hundreds of useless shaders, which btw is a complete failure of a system and again robbed D2 of one of the most fun little time wasters in the tower in D1 which was trying out all our shaders on each new gear set. It’s like this system was implemented just to give us something to burn glimmer and make us have to grind hard to get shaders and it’s awful. I miss sitting watching my best friend try out and model all her shaders on her gear sets. Now she doesn’t even have shaders on half the time because she doesn’t have the glimmer. That is just poor design.

Where are we going from here?

This is the 64 million dollar question. We’ll start to find out where Bungie stand on Thursday. It needs to be thorough, detailed and a clear road map for the community. It needs to not only address EV and MTX, but the state of the Crucible. Not just how unsatisfying it is for pretty much everyone, but how we arrived here.

It’s time for the game to stop being built to please one segment of the community. Trials was imo the single worst thing that happened to D1 and we ended up with 2 years of an entire game being balanced around whatever a fireteam of 3 all decided to use in an elimination format game mode, which then directly led to the same trinity of design changes that have undermined D2... 4v4, Static weapons and the new weapon system, but then add garbage grenades, melee and abilities to that.

Destiny PvP was great because it wasn’t every other shooter with generic white weapons. The fact that we could take any weapon we found in the world and use it in PvP was incredible and yeah, it meant we could be outgunned, but it gave a huge incentive to go play the game, do the raids, grind your ass off to get your own great loadouts. And the classes all felt uniquely powerful and badass.

I never even bother trying to shoulder charge in D2 because I know I’m not going to get a kill. I’ve gotten one accidentally, not because the hit killed them, but it knocked them off the map. I’ve still never died to one. Now everyone has the same crappy melee, the same roaming super, the same static guns and the same trash grenades. It’s not Destiny anymore, it’s just another generic shooter.

The good thing about D2 is that in spite of all the claims otherwise; it still can be an incredibly fun game. Outside of the NB glitch,

• Mayhem was a blast. Sucked not all getting to go in there from the raids because of 4v4, but showed that with the ability to use more than a primary how much it changes the dynamic.

• The raids are still a blast but need to be proper endgame and rewarded as such.

• The campaign was really fun. It can’t be replayed whenever we want. Open it back up like D1’s and give us reasons to go back to our favorites whenever we want to grind bounties or mats or whatever.

• The worlds are beautiful and the public events are really fun with friends or even groups of randoms, but they were also neutered by putting LS locations on our maps and not letting us have to explore and discover them. Same for the gold chests. I also hate all the fast travel locations. I think there are too many and it’s made the worlds too small because we just fast travel to the next zone and don’t really traverse the worlds anymore.

• The strikes are still fun. I enjoy them more than some of the later D1 strikes, but they need better loot and the timers have killed the Nightfall. Timers are not fun. Everyone hated them in D1 and they get made standard in D2. How and why? I miss year one NFs and spending hours soloing them on all my characters for a shot at Gjally

• The game is still incredibly fun with friends and DeeJ was spot on with his friendship comment, but the game works against it at every turn. The 3,4,6 team sizes mean there’s never the right amount of friends to do anything. Someone’s always getting left out or we’re looking for more and people just quit playing and quit clans because of it.

• Guided games works, but the system itself is really lackluster. It locks out any team member that gets zoo errored (which we know never happens in Destiny) and there’s no built in system to encourage players to add each other and if you forget to send a friend request, they don’t show up on your list of recent players.

As for us in the community, we need to stop all the talk of if the devs want respect yadda, yadda. It’s a two way street and if we want respect we need to engage with real feedback and concerns and if it’s angry that’s fine, but have a point and a goal and something they can respond to.

-blam!- you, you suck

Isn’t doing anything.

One of the greatest and least talked about or appreciated facets of D1 was its ability to connect people both in game, but also here on the forums. This was a real community that were here as much because players loved the game and this was the best place to meet other players without any real social features built into the game. It’s a cesspool now and there is literally nothing so bad it can’t and isn’t posted.

We’ve asked Bungie to respond for weeks. A_dmg did in the Destiny forum while on vacation. Chris Barrett responded on twitter. Then today A_dmg got back to the studio and responded in a post and is immediately flamed, called a shill, etc. The default response to anything trying to offer up positive communication from either side is for the forums to attack.

To that end Bungie need to reevaluate how the forums function. Who can post (right now having played D2 is not required), how easily players can make alt accounts, spam posting, and overall moderation need to be addressed.

We all deserve a voice and to be heard and we felt for a long time that we didn’t have equal footing here on bnet and the game changes were dictated by select voices with large followings. Now the forums have become an echo chamber for players that have turned to making anti-bungie content for revenue because it ‘’does really well’’.

So the last thing I will ask is to the luminaries in this community to consider that there is a world on the other side of the cameras and mics and the views you put forth have a real world impact on lives on the other side. Yes you have a right to speak your mind, but you have tremendous influence and with that a responsibility to not abuse that for personal growth and gain. So once more I will ask those players with the community footprints and dev connections to do so, to be better representing the community as a whole, because whether you realize it or not, you do and when you put out negative view after negative view and never try to actually reach out to the devs on the community’s behalf, you’re as much a part of the problem as anything else.

I think the last thing I’ll say is that Bungie is a corporation and its job is to sustain profits and growth, and Bungie the corporation need to be MUCH better at respecting their player base and not use systems like EV to prey on them while keeping the game profitable. Players want to support companies they love and who treat them with respect and fairness.

That said, the company itself is made up of a lot of really good and awesome people that truly care about this game and this community and are fans just like we are and want Destiny to be as great as we do. So I hope going forward that we can find that common ground and we can share our thoughts and ideas and this game can be the space magic escape adventure from this world that it’s been and it continues to connect friends, family and loved ones from all around the world. Thank you.