Chapter Text
“Hey, heroes,” Drifter leaned against the Annex railing, a self-satisfied smirk on his face as the Guardian and his fireteam stood at attention, waiting for him to complete the thought, “Got somethin’ for ya to test out.”
Behind him, Aunor idled with her arms crossed. She looked almost bemused as she shook her head. “And it’s Praxic-approved. Somehow.”
The glow of Eris’s eyes shifted as her gaze turned to the other woman. “Aunor has graciously volunteered to be the Vanguard supervisor of this training exercise to save herself from the tedious boredom of writing reports for all the other Hidden as punishment for involving herself in the Nightfall incident.”
The Warlock squinted in suspicion. “How did you avoid any repercussions?”
Eris scoffed in disdain. “Ikora and Chalco know better than to expect me to abide by any nonsensical Vanguard regulations. Considering your Order’s predilection for hunting down ‘suspected Darkness users’ and doling out your own personal form of justice, a rogue Praxic is far more of a concern.”
Chastised, Aunor chewed on her lip. “Aw, Moondust, go easy on her. It’s hard work acceptin’ your entire worldview was wrong.” She shot a glare Drifter’s way for his ‘defense’ as his girlfriend muffled her haughty snicker.
“So this is a training simulation you put together in the Haul?” Ghost twisted his shell to the side and rotated it back as he hovered over his Guardian’s shoulder.
“‘Put together?’ Hah! Don’t sell it short.” Blue floated towards him, prancing through the air. “My baby’s sculpted a masterpiece.”
The fireteams’ brows raised. They glanced between themselves, wondering if they heard her correctly. Drifter, for his part, kept his face perfectly presented as the Gambit host showman persona, even as his eyes flicked to his Ghost.
“I want to see you five run through this before we open it to all Guardians. The hope is, it helps prepare other fireteams for the challenges you face.” Aunor stepped forward and moved towards the boys. She glanced up as Bahaghari compiled herself and gave the Ghost a small nod. She sent the Derelict-Haul transfer room coordinates to the other Ghosts, forgetting they’d all been there before. They knew the way.
As the transmats fired, Drifter trained his focus on Blue. “You really think it’s good?”
“Good?!” She beeped loudly, almost scoldingly. “They’re gonna love it. It’s perfect.” She flitted closer to him, jabbing the top flap of her shell into his cheek and wiggling it back and forth. “I am so proud of you.”
He cringed fondly at the metal ramming his face and pulled away with a loud harrumph.
Eris waited, watching with a quiet smile, for Blue to transmat them to the supervising room. She, too, was proud of him - she’d demonstrate just how much later, when they were alone.
The boys transmatted into the Haul, and they found it looked very different to how it did before. No longer did they see the endlessly-sprawling white sands of Unknown Space. Now, they saw a sight that was all too familiar, from a different time. A different place.
The maw of the Leviathan had attempted to swallow a meal a bit too big even for it - an impressive feat. There within its protective shielding, grumpy about being dislodged from its work in converting Nessus to yet another machine world, they saw it.
Nestled between the cradle of tan rocks, the stars and the belly of the Leviathan above and below them, past the three waiting braziers, faintly glowing a blue so pale it almost looked white, there was Argos. Planetary Core. The biggest Hydra they’d ever seen, up to that point. Maybe it still was. They’d seen a lot of Hydras and a lot of gargantuan Vex Minds over the past decade.
Their eyes went wide. Their lower jaws hung slack. They simply marveled at the gigantic Vex before them, holed up in its engine-clogging barrier, just waiting to be set free.
“Is that…” The Guardian began, trying to get the words out, but he just couldn’t.
“Argos?” Starmine finished his thought, her head cocking to the side affectionately. The five of them just stared, until finally, Legitim-8 took a step forward.
“It is just as I remember it,” remarked the Exo, the usual bravado completely absent from his voice. It was replaced by an understated fondness, the kind that didn’t need to be spoken of brashly to mean something.
The Guardian fell to his knees, caught somewhere between smiling and crying.
Borkchop and Chickenwinger meandered as if they were in a shared trance, stopping at the braziers where they’d deposited craniums once before - and now, it seemed, they would again. They studied the triangle of Arc-charging firepits and found it matched their memories.
Finally, the Guardian’s face tilted, as he looked up to the sky - vaguely in the direction he felt the simulation’s supervisors should be in.
“You really rebuilt Argos for us?” His voice quivered. It’d been so long since Calus tasked them with clearing the Leviathan’s engine of the oversized metal meal the massive vessel consumed. He’d lived more of his life post-Argos than pre-Argos. Hell, Cayde was still alive and Crow was still Uldren and Glint was still nicknamed Pulled Pork, hunting for his Guardian under every rock, just in case his Guardian was very small.
Yet he could remember every moment of this.
Each wave of reading what elements they needed to charge. First breaking Argos from its barrier and then dropping its immunity shield. The feeling of the freshly-charged craniums in his hands, the warm metal transferring heat through his gloves. Never uncomfortably hot, never burning. Just enough to make him feel like he was holding a mug of hot chocolate on a rainy day.
Every bullet fired with his fireteam, his dearest friends, his brothers-and-sister-in-arms who would die for him and he’d die for.
“Sure did!” Drifter’s voice floated, disembodied, over the intercom. “Watched the footage of you beatin’ this, mixed with your stories. Tried to get all the cutesy little details right.”
The Guardian wanted to say more but he found his throat and tongue and lips would not work together to form any words. He wanted to say, I love you old man, but he had a feeling their uncle already knew.
“And, uh, Argos ain’t the only one.”
“The others?!” Starmine gasped, her hands clutched to her chest.
“Habibi you mean everything to me.” Ledge dropped his head reverently. Before him, the Hunter boys were crying and trying to pretend like they weren’t.
Blue’s confident laugh carried across the line. “See? Told ya my son did a damn good job.”