Hello o reader mine, just something silly I wrote as an exercise. This is light (heh) on adherence to canon, but I do hope you will find it enjoyable. [b]1. Prelude[/b] The Paracausals, they’d said, the interesting thing about them is that they move. And they are friendly. everything else is static right, one of them had said, a fixed unit of information in fixed time and space BUT THE PARACAUSALS, they’d said, THEY MOVE. THEY ARE INTERESTING. AND THEY ARE FRIENDLY. Yes, very friendly. Another had said. They dance like fools at every opportunity. They pointed and waved at Crota, the Monster of Luna, in the heart of his fortress. Clearly very friendly. M A N I A C S, one muttered. you can play hide and seek with them, they’d said, and the paracausals will always come and find you that is true friendship YOU WANT FRIENDS DON’T YOU? One of them tried whispering. AFTER ALL, THE ONLY THING THAT CAN PROTECT US IN THE FACE OF THE COMING DARKNESS IS THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. Xur’s heart felt warm, just like the way his face had felt that one time he had stared at the Sun from the surface of Mercury. He liked the feeling. He liked the idea of having friends. [b]2. The Passion: Xur sells Merciless [/b] The feed showed a fire team around Xur. An Exo Warlock in black, a Human Titan in white and red, and an Awoken Hunter in white and peach. The audio, while interspersed with static and the sounds of Vex and Taken deaths, was functional. The video was better, although it too sometimes flickered and popped. The Warlock stood in front of Xur, arms crossed, eyes narrowed and eyebrow raised. Her ghost, level with her head, too stared at Xur, and had it had arms and eyebrows, they would have had been crossed and raised. The Titan stood behind her with a worried look on his face. His ghost hid behind a pillar. The Hunter sat cross legged some distance away from them and played with her ghost, which excitedly bobbed up and down around her. ‘Merciless! Again!” The Warlock snapped. Xur’s eyes flitted between her and the Ahamkara bone she wore on her arm. ‘I swear you had the same thing that time you were on Titan! I am drowning in shards, do you hear? Drowning!’ Her servos whirred as she shook her metal fist under Xur’s nose, causing him to raise his hands and recoil. ‘Please calm yourself Anshe-13,’ The Titan tried to get between the Warlock and Xur. ‘Perhaps Xur has his reasons…’ ‘Mortificanus!’ the Warlock was not to be calmed. ‘Tell this dealer of exotics…’ here she used her fingers to mimic the ears of the fluffy little mammals with big ears that Xur always saw in his dreams. ‘how many shards do I have?’ ‘Up to your ears,’ Mortificanus, the Warlock’s little ball of light hissed. ‘Up to my ears!’ The Warlock pointed at her ears, which were really glowing antennae on top of her head. ‘The Spider wouldn’t deal with me anymore. Chewed me out last time…’ ‘Proper chewing out,’ the little ball of light hissed again. This ball of light was not fluffy. Xur did not desire to pet or befriend it. ‘Chewed me out!’ the Warlock tried to grab Xur’s hood with her metal fingers but the Titan pulled her back. ‘Said I was single handedly wrecking the shard economy on the Forgotten Shore.’ ‘Perhaps we can try our luck with Rahool again,’ the Titan said as he tried to muffle the struggling Exo’s mouth. ‘Maybe with the Traveler’s blessing we will find a core in one of his stock?’ ‘We are still banned Shivu,’ the Hunter called out. Her little ball of light was fluffy. The Titan froze. The Warlock stopped struggling and buried her face in her hands. Her ghost disappeared. Xur felt like he was falling in the singularity again. ‘What?’ The Titan asked quietly. ‘We are still banned,’ the Hunter said, and her little ball of light bobbed up and down in agreement. ‘Anshe made him cry again.’ Xur could sense the flux in ambient temperature. He tried to draw their attention towards his wares again, but they’d forgotten he was even there. The Titan’s little ball of light rushed in and started dancing around him, humming a mantra to help him calm down. ‘He wasn’t crying per se,’ the Warlock attempted a smile and a shrug, ‘He is just emotional. Besides, hard ass Rahool shedding a tear? Please! The man didn’t cry when his pen pal Ives got knocked off. Besides, with that blue skin, who can even tell with the Awoken? What’s her name shed no tears when the other one, her brother, the one with too much hair gel, died.’ “We didn’t intend it,’ her Ghost added from her backpack, ‘it all just Blue up. Out of the Blue, really. Blue.’ Clearly hurt, the Hunter pirouetted stylishly and turned her back to the Warlock. Her little ball of light settled above her shoulder and nuzzled her cheek. That, Xur felt in his heart heavy as a black hole, was true friendship. ‘He was crying! And Awoken do cry!’ The Hunter’s voice quivered, ‘And you made him cry by threatening to strap him under your sparrow and taking him on a ride in the EDZ.’ ‘I told you Anshe-13,’ the Titan said with the calm of a mountainside preparing to turn into an avalanche, ‘to go and apologize to Rahool. On the off chance the Traveler’s Light shown on us and a golden engram dropped, it would be nice to actually take the exotic out instead of huddling around it and hitting it with a broom. Which is why when you, Anshe-13,’ he jabbed his finger at her and the Warlock grimaced, ‘got us banned by threatening to tie him to a Servitor and throw him in the Infinite Forest, I asked you to go and make amends.’ He released his grip on the Warlock and stood between her and Xur. The Warlock cowered and her words dripped with machine oil. ‘Listen. Shivu. Buddy. O kind and forgiving leader mine. Maybe we don’t need Rahool anymore. The Farm is still open for business…’ Xur nodded along with Mortificanus in an attempt to defuse the situation. He hated it when friends argued. ‘Didn’t you get us permanently banned last week when you threatened to drop the Almighty on them?’ The Hunter asked with a smidgen of satisfaction. The Titan’s jaw dropped open. His ghost froze mid circle, turned and stared at the Warlock’s ghost. The Warlock’s ghost, her little bob of light looked confused. ‘What?’ Mortificanus, the Warlock’s little ball of light said, ‘that bird was giving me the stink eye!’ ‘Crota’s armpit.’ The Warlock groaned and buried her face into her palms again. Xur did as she did. He wanted them to know he understood them. Then, as the Titan roared, the Warlock blinked to the entrance of the cave and hightailed it on her sparrow. Waving his fist at her, the Titan ran after her to the mouth of the cave, summoned his own sparrow and sped off after her, and Xur was left alone in the cave. Xur sighed in disappointment. He hoped the Nine were watching. He hoped the Nine understood his plight, that he only wanted to help his interesting friends, but the Nine kept giving him the same toys. Now, three of the Paracausals had come and had been disappointed and one of them had ran off screaming and the other one had run off screaming after her and Xur was all alone in the cave again. Xur had been sure there had been three of them. That scary Exo warlock. The kind yet disappointed Human Titan. And the shy Awoken Hunter. The Titan had chased the Warlock. That was two. Yet Xur was alone. ‘DoyouhaveamomenttotalkabouttheLightoftheTraveller?’ The Hunter and her little ball of light popped up behind him and Xur screamed and jumped and the feed cut off. --- Well? A N D W H A T I S T H E I S S U E, E X A C T L Y? WE CLEARLY NEED TO RESTOCK. THE PARACAUSALS ARE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL. N O. I T I S C L E A R L Y M O R E F U N T H I S W A Y. yes and it is better for building character too BUILDING CHARACTER? that is how we will beat the coming darkness by building character Have you been mixing in the fumes on Neptune again? [b]3. Coda[/b] The feed was better this time. ‘Wings again!’ The Warlock shouted as the Titan struggled to hold her back. ‘What’s the weapon? Answer me! What’s the weapon, and if you show me Merciless again, I will jump off the Tower…’ ‘Wall, technically,” Mortificanus said, buzzing angrily around Xur. ‘I will jump off the Wall right here in front of you, fall to my death, and have Mortificanus resurrect me, and then I will jump off the wall in front of you again and again and again till you leave the Hangar and then when you appear on Io I will…’ The Hunter covered the eyes of both hers and the Titan’s ghosts as Xur held up a golden engram etched with Merciless. The Warlock screamed and blinked out of the Titan’s grasp and fell to the ground below. Xur tried to grab her but couldn’t. He stood by the railing and watched sadly as her curses ended in a loud clang. ‘I wish I had a mouth so I could spit on you,’ Mortificanus told Xur as he resurrected the Warlock. ‘Why don’t you just drop Edge Transit while you are at it?’ --- Well? THAT WILL NEED THERAPY F I N E! W E W I L L R E S T O C K! N E W E X O T I C S F O R E V E R Y O N E! one condition WHAT? there’s merit in the idea of dropping edge transit I T D O E S B U I L D C H A R A C T E R. UGH, FINE! ADD IT TO THE POOL!