Hey folks, its D3athAndR3birth again. The past twenty-four hours have been amazingly inspiring with how much support I've received from my first piece of Destiny fan fiction. There have also been numerous requests for me to write more. Well, I was inspired to write a piece with a less highfalutin character to focus on, so this one may bomb entirely. This is only part one and part two will be posted when I finish it. Thanks again for your time and support! There was a time in which the majority of Earth was covered with cities. Small subsections were nature preserves, but why leave vast open areas? Agriculture? Mercury was a garden planet; there were warp drives; the Traveler protected everything in the solar system. There was no possible downside. That is, if driving a vehicle wasn’t of interest. The Golden Age was a time of air and space, the ground too crowded to provide any freedom. The Exo couldn’t help but wonder if that was the one blessing the Darkness had brought. Even still, the topography had to be just right. It seemed like every Guardian in the system was hunting Devils in Old Russia, but you could only get half a kilometer before having to bank around cliffs or run through a building. No, to truly feel the world fly by he had to land out in the great plains of America. Centuries of tornados, droughts, floods, and off-worlder attacks had reduced the plains back to their natural state: Fields of high grass with sporadic trees and pieces of a destroyed civilization. He couldn’t help but be struck with how beautiful an area subject to such decimation could be; then again, Cayde-6 wasn’t known for tame or normal thought processes. “200 kilometers per hour, almost top speed!” Cayde-6 laughed near maniacally as his black Sparrow jetted mere inches above the highest blades of grass. The void contrail flared behind him, singeing a line through the vegetation and lighting up the lower night sky. The Exo’s cloak had blown away from his face and the whole length pulled dramatically at his neck while flapping in the wind. Had he been a human or an Awoken, he probably would have already blacked out. As the driver leaned down more, trying to become even more aerodynamic, another voice cried out as loud as possible, “You do realize that they’ve almost certainly already seen us, right?” Cayde’s Ghost was tucked into one of the hunter’s chest pockets. “And why in the Traveler’s light am I still out here?!” Cayde kept yelling over the roar of his Sparrow, “I told you! There’s nothing better than the feeling of wind through your servos!” “There’s something to be said for not being blasted to nothingness as well!” “Huh?” Cayde-6 looked down at the Ghost for a moment and then up above them. Rather than a view of Luna, the sky was filled with the bulbous form of a Fallen dropship only four stories above them. For a second, he had forgotten why he was here. The ship had all its deployment shoots closed and was cruising at high speed. That didn’t prevent it from charging its cannons and firing a volley of arc energy at the hunter. “Da bien!” He barely got the curse out as he yanked the vehicle to the left and activated the strafe thrusters to bank heavily. He felt the Sparrow shake with the explosion only meters away, sending a flash of blue and then a rain of dust and embers. Once he regained balance, Cayde pushed the throttle as hard as he dared without blowing the engine, leaving grass scorched to the Earth behind him. “Alright little buddy, I think it’s time for your disappearing act.” The Ghost whirred in agitation and replied as its body disappeared in light, “You don’t have to tell me twice!” Cayde-6 began weaving back and forth, making as random of a serpentine pattern he could while not losing speed. More arc blasts crashed around him, keeping him in a near constant cloud of dust and burning grass. “Cao ni! Certainly eager tonight…” He grunted as another explosion went off a bit too close. “Alright Sweetheart, it’s your turn.” While still steering with one hand, he brought his other hand down to unholster a silver hand cannon. He added to the gun, “Remember: It’s always polite to knock.” With that, he lifted “Sweetheart” into the air. He held it there for a moment, waiting for a lull in explosions. Once he had his opening, he glanced up at the massive ship and focused on the rear most deployment shoot. No time to spare, he fired all six rounds at the closed portal. Two went wide, but the four remaining heavy slugs blasted open the door, letting a Dreg fall out of the new hole. The creature screamed all the way down, breaking its neck on impact and releasing ether into the air. “Great job, girl.” As the hunter put the gun away, his Ghost said in his head, “Sometimes I wonder why I picked you to resurrect.” Cayde let out a laugh, even as more blasts rocked the ground around them. “Because you’d be bored without me.” He could just imagine the annoyed look the Ghost would try to make at that comment. “I’m guessing then that you don’t care that we have a message from the Speaker calling us to his observatory?” “Tell me in about… five minutes after I get you in that ship’s control room.” “Ah, uh… Cayde… That ship is still airborne; how are you going to-” Cayde-6 hit the throttle on the Sparrow before the Ghost could finish, still dodging arc blasts. Getting to 220 KPH, the vehicle began to shake violently. He could hear the engine start to tear itself apart, so he moved under the dropship and leaned back. The speed was enough for the Sparrow to take momentary flight, sending it straight up ten meters before gravity kicked back in. At the apex of the climb, Cayde jumped off and disappeared only to reappear milliseconds later just beneath the deployment shoot that he had “knocked on.” Both hands reached for the bottom lip of the entrance, but only his left caught a sure grip. The pull of the ship on his body angled him enough so he could see his Sparrow crash back into the ground nose first with a large void explosion. He complained, “Ah, Ikora’s going to kill me.” He lifted up, grabbed on with his right hand, and pulled himself into the dropship. Cayde-6 grumbled to himself as he slowly got to his feet and patted off his cloak, which had somehow stayed on him. “Cayde? I think we have a problem.” He ignored his Ghost as he looked up to stare at three Dregs and five Vandals crowding the deployment hall, blocking his way anywhere in the ship. Their guns were drawn and aimed, ready to blast the impertinent hunter right back out of the ship. His face remained calm though and he said to the aliens, “So, a very dead Captain tells me you all might know where to find a Ketch.” Alright, scroll down for part two folks!