[url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/90336484/0/0/1]Catch up on part two here![/url] [b]"Guardian down."[/b] [i]"I'll be the first to say that it looked like a defeat. It looked like death for them all. Us all. Some call the decisions of my Titan, Ricochet, daring. Brilliant. I know the truth; his success is a credit to being relentlessly lucky. Lucky with his pick of team members, lucky with happenstance otherwise, lucky with quick and blind decisions. Luck, luck, luck. At what point does luck become a skill? I think I've seen that point. I can show you better than I can tell you." ~Narrative Dissonance (Shared Ghost of Bishop, Eagle, Fault and Ricochet)[/i] ********************************************************************************************** Dust and chaos. Falling stone, bending metal. A shrieking, gnawing, gnashing, vicious swarm in their wake. No, parted [b]by[/b] their wake. A horrible sea split down its center by their passage. They waded through it. Determined, focused, lethal. Ricochet was at the fore. I could count his pulse. Drum beats, hammer blows in his chest. Invigorated, excited---the muscle pumped in cadence to his falling blows. A Thrall sprinted for him, leaping up to a rusted out vehicle's roof on all fours, springing at him immediately after. Hissing, claws extended, already screaming its victory. Ricochet stowed his rifle at his back. His entire posture changed, when the battle came to a direct physical fray. He shifted from strafing, covering, shuffling along in the necessary quick and steady gate of a trained rifleman to being upright, standing tall, fists balled at his sides. [i]"Come get some."[/i] He whispered. This was not to his team. This was not to the enemy. This was not to me. This was to the universe as a whole. That brave Thrall? Caught mid air by its rounded head. His right hand only. He heaved downward, collapsing to a knee and driving its head into the ground. He didn't marvel at the spray of ichor which sprayed his armor and blossomed through the dusty air. He moved to the next target. Each moment in time a blur leading to the next fatality he could inflict. He was up, he was striding forward---and then his left arm blurred to block a slash from that direction, and his right hand came about, and the Thrall he struck was hurled backward by a single solid blow into the face of a nearby building. A Knight swung from to his right, nearly behind him. I don't know how he knew it was coming. I hadn't warned him. I hadn't caught it in time. But he stepped back, placing himself inside of its swing. Beneath it. With both arms over and around him, almost embracing him, the Knight couldn't slow its momentum in time to recover. Ricochet reached up and back, grabbed it by one of the thick protrusions from its skull, pulled it down and forward further while with his other hand he reached back and unslung his rifle. He discharged half of his magazine directly into its chest. It was almost rended in half by the time he exploded back to a standing position, sending chunks of it every which way, shouldered his rifle and continued to advance. "Doss! Respond!" He barked. "Got his beacon. Ghost. Still active." Fault reported. Each stop in his sentence was a shot fired from one of his hand cannons, or a blink.[i] Got his beacon,[/i] dead Thrall. [i]Ghost,[/i] dead Acolyte. [i]Still active,[/i] dead Acolyte. "Wally, GO!" Blink, to his left. Out of existence, back in, in a flash. "I'll follow." Both hand cannon barrels to the back of a Knight. He fired twice with each before it fell. "Awwww yeah. 'bout to give 'em the D. Hush..." Silvered Hushwind-D. A weapon so thoroughly mediocre that I lament its creation---simply because its through mediocrity is what allows Wally's antics in battle. The young Striker launched himself forward on cue as the entire group advanced. Gunfire, Solar Light, massively powerful melee strikes, Void explosions, knives, flying about every which way. They transform into some ludicrous, writhing death machine when pushed to a certain extent. The surge of Arc flowing across the battlefield briefly brought stillness to the chaos. They all as one dropped behind cover, hid, stopped fighting. Wally went airborne, high and taken fire. And then he came down, and that sea attempting to fall upon them all recoiled. Correction: was [i]repelled[/i]. Anything unwise enough to remain close faded into flickering Arc disruptions. Gone. Wally stood up from his impact crater, cheering into his own helmet. Rifle already shouldered. Discount, average equipment discharged as a follow up to a godlike assault. "WOOO! That was like, a quadra-tripple-decakill! Get hushed!" He spun. He fired. "We're close," Ricochet shouted as they broke into yet another rush to advance along Wally's warpath. "Bishop. Go!" The Hunter blinked out of sight instantly. Even I could not track his progress through the chaos. "Fox!" The next shouted command. Demand. Hard to tell, with Ricochet. They all seem to just know what to do. A single cry of their name, and they perform whatever it is they do best. It is as though they compete with one another constantly for maximum effect. Maybe that's it. "Yes [i]sir[/i]." She quipped in return. And then there were flames. There was a bright orange comet streaking about the battle, a blinding Athena with a pair of suns as fists. She didn't wait for one Acolyte to burst into Solar Light after she'd palmed its chest and surged energy through its body to move on. She didn't wait for a pair of Fusion Grenades to go off before throwing another. Some say the bursts of energy from the bodies of Sunsingers appear as wings---hers certainly do not. Her devilish, mischievous excitement at being unleashed expresses itself as long, twisting streamers in her wake. Explosions tend to twist and loop together, winding back to her. Her wild attacks recycle energy. So little is wasted, where more destruction is to be had. [i]Tails.[/i] It looks as though she sprouts tails of sun like prominence. Tails. The chaotic, enticing, deadly many-tailed fox of ancient lore. Here. Giggling as she explodes enemies and vitrifies soil with sheer heat. Her blazing assault cleared the final two dozen yards. Bishop snapped back into visibility, activating Doss' ghost. The rest of the group followed in, forming a loose circle. The sea could not collapse upon them. They erected a wall of sheer force, a wall of which they and their wills and their Light were both the stones and the mortar. They would not be touched. Tomb ships were rounding on them, finally. Slow, lumbering craft. Charging Void turrets. But then Doss' form had already collapsed back to its full, restored form. He was already holding his Rocket Launcher. He'd already emptied his tube of three rounds before the glow of Glimmer faded around him. "Thanks," the Exo noted almost flippantly. "That sucked. Also, I know our way out." "Out's good." Fault remarked. "By all means." Ricochet grumbled. He was smiling behind his visor, though. I'll tell on him. I saw him smile. "Where are we going, can opener?" "Down." Doss replied, in an almost careful, bashful tone. "Down? DOWN?! Against HIVE?! Mother fuc----" Wally lamented loudly. "Shut up Wally." Fox cut him off. "We needed to get underground, where we were headed anyway. Isn't that right, Ricochet?" Again, she seemed to be chastising him for something. The two had been nearly at one another's throats since arrival. Both knew something the others didn't. "What?" Fault spoke up. "No time. Lets [b]MOVE[/b], Lance. Doss, lead the way." "...no time to explain." Bishop mumbled. "Gettin' real sick of that shit." [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/91614517/0/0]Part four![/url]