I check my gear again for the hundredth time, my knives are still strapped to my shoulder, the boot knife still hiding in my boot and my favorite curved dagger...the long one that fits my hand like a glove, the one that has opened too many Dreg throats to count. It rests against my hip, sleeping now but eager to be sunk into flesh once again. The heavy duty Amina sniper rifle is in my hands, the heavy weight of it a reassuring presence like knowing that I have something watching my back. Shaxx's words still ring in my head. 'The Crucible is like nothing you've ever faced'. What does that mean? I wonder to myself, I've killed thousands, Vex, Fallen, Cabal and Hive. I even ventured into the black garden and ended the black heart with the other guardians, what possibly could be worse? I don't have time to answer as I feel my whole body get transmatted into somewhere else completely. It only takes a split second but still it hurts like a bastard, your whole body being disasembled at an atomic level, shifted through the void and reasembled all in the space it takes to blink. I find myself standing in the ruins of a town on what looks like Venus. 'We're in the Ishtar region, this used to be a small town supported by the Academy four miles down south east'. My ghost's voice chimes through my tactical helmet. Her soft Australian accent leaving a faint echo. I remember the day I asked my ghost why she spoke as she did and was she truly female, she gave me some far fetched explanation about how every ghost was tailored individually to every Guardian so even her voice would be a perfect match for me. Putting all thoughts aside I started to look for a good vantage point, if what Shaxx told me was true I would be against other Guardians and would need every advantage possible. I find myself a small rocky outcrop just to the side of what looked like an old bar. After a quick light infused leap I'm on top of the rocks already getting to work blending in, my camoflaged cloak draped across me, the nanofibers already changing colour to match the rocky outcrop perfectly. To the untrained eye I would be just another rock. The minutes tick by and still I'm alone, watching over a ghost town through a high powered scope, I can feel my thoughts starting to stray so I take a few deep breaths to steel myself, to stay sharp. The second breath barely leaves my mouth before I hear the distinct sound of plated boots across a metal flooring. In the top left of my vision a small red dot appears. Sure enough something is moving...and it's heading my way. My finger tightens on the smoothed down hair pin trigger, my breathing goes shallow, and I wait. I don't have to wait long before a giant collosus of a man decked out from head to toe in full plate mail comes tearing through the exit of the bar at speed. I lower the cross hairs an inch to the right of his head, the range, gravitational pull and windspeed should pull the bullet straight through his neck, the weakest point in the near impenetrable armour. For several breif seconds the world seems to stop, only my finger slowly being pulled backwards matters. Once more Shaxx's hollow tones replay through my mind. 'Show no mercy'. And I pull the trigger...