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Winter rolled through the Cosmodrome, as it had everywhere else. A layer of snow blanketed the patrol zone. The forests, barren of leaves, slumber for spring. And the damn bitter cold, further exacerbated by the morning hours. The sun barely peeked through the horizon as the two Hunters parked their Sparrows at the cliff near the beach, waves gently rolling in. Scout rifles in hand, they reclined in some old camping chairs, plucking away at House Dusk Dregs from afar. They could just barely hear the hiss of Ether escaping their bodies.
Shaw Han tugged his mask briefly to sip from his flask. He sighed, his coffee-laden breath visible in the cold. “You don’t understand how much I missed this. Night patrols are about to be a whole lot less dreadful,” he said. “Thanks, Alfredo.”
“No problem,” Alfredo hummed. “But, you know you could always order them yourself. They do make them in bulk.”
“Yeah, but with the Glimmer I make here? It’d take me months to order another one of these unless I can find something more lucrative,” Shaw said, tapping the flask.
“Then we’ll rally the Guardians in the Tower to start pooling Glimmer,” Alfredo offered. “All the New Lights I’ve met appreciate everything you do, you know. Being there for them. Teaching them everything it is to know about being a Guardian. Wish I had that when I was newly risen. You know how terrible it was learning how to not set off a Tripmine grenade in your hand all by yourself?”
“All too well,” he chuckled. “But no, you don’t need to.”
“C’mon, I doubt they’d pass up on returning the favor. Consider it an... early Dawning gift from your friends at the Tower!”
Shaw softly smiled, pulling his mask up. A half dozen Dregs poured from the destroyed ship sitting a few kilometers away. “No, it’s fine, trust me, good coffee’s a luxury out here,” he insisted, plucking life from a couple Dregs with his rifle.
“By the way, I heard about what happened with your Titan,” Shaw added, his voice lowered. “I’m sorry. You and your Warlock holding up?”
“We’re holding, alright,” Alfredo shrugged nonchalantly. “It was inevitable the moment we got our hands on Stasis. She’s a member of the Praxic Order, smothering Dark with the Light is their thing. I don’t feel right about using Stasis myself, but it was a means to an end. She didn’t see it that way. I just wish our split wasn’t so… violent.”
“Don’t forget that you’re not alone,” Shaw assured. “Believe me, I know how much losing your fireteam member, especially your leader, hurts.”
They sat silent for a moment, guns still. Alfredo shot a Shank laden with explosives. It exploded spectacularly. They both giggled to themselves.
Shaw lowered his rifle. “If you don’t mind having another Hunter on the team, I’d be more than willing to fill that role.”
A mixture of excitement and hesitance pooled in his mind. He would be incredibly useful to have around. The sheer amount of action Shaw’s seen in his time... but, Alfredo knew all too well that his fellow Hunter sought a permanent fireteam - not another temporary name-on-a-list until he’d be replaced yet again. A Guardian with Shaw’s skills deserved a fireteam that would stick with him, and the last thing he wanted to do was lead him on to disappointment once again. “I’m gonna have to pass. Ley and I need another Titan above all else. Thanks, though, Shaw.”
Silence lingered longer, to a more unsettling degree. Alfredo couldn’t help but feel terrible for letting him down. “Hey, you wanna see something cool?” Shaw broke the tension. “How much you want to bet I could hit that Wretch on the other side of the beach with a Golden Gun?”
Alfredo sprung forward in his chair, squinting. Out on the very far end of the beach was a Wretch, standing guard of... something. Standing lookout? Regardless - Golden Gun snipes weren’t all that impressive on a technical level, but they were always a certified “Hunters will be Hunters” moment that he could never say no to, like using Solar blades for barbecues or jumping from really high heights and doing tricks before dying violently below. “Alright, let’s see it.”
In the palm of his hand Shaw summoned his Golden Gun. Light bursted from the barrel - in the distance, the Wretch the size of a spec burst into giant ball of flames and fizzled away brilliantly, leaving nothing but a trail of Light. They cackled and hollered and high-five’d.
“Never gets old!” Shaw cried.
Their merriment swiftly stopped as a Skiff flew overhead, with a giant hulking Walker in tow. They holstered their weapons, hopped on their Sparrows, and followed in pursuit. The Skiff brought them towards the other end of the beach, dropping the Walker near a supply cache. House Dusk Dregs and Wretches scattered about, hauling around Scorch Cannons.
In no time they focused their fire on the Walker’s legs, hammering them until its armor broke and the Walker stumbled forward, spitting Arc charges across the sand. The two split, running back and forth between grabbing Arc charges and throwing them in their deposits, taking out the stray Eliksni that got in their way.
Once all the weapon caches were opened, reinforcements were called - as was a Skiff with another Walker. They made short work of the initial Walker, and blew the other to smithereens with their newly-obtained Scorch Cannons.
Then, it went quiet. Shaw flicked his sidearm out and dispatched the remaining Dregs nearby.
They looked over the ravaged beach for loot. A whole bunch of blues, some glimmer, some Spinfoil, a middling grenade launcher with terrible rolls... a bit too warm for comfort, Alfredo clicked his helmet off, unfurling a long, slightly messy brown braid behind him. He breathed out deeply, taking in the ice-cold breeze, then started to tease parts of the braid back to shape. His skin glowed faintly under the dim morning sun. “Not escaping the whole ‘space elf’ thing people say about the Awoken, are you?” Shaw teased. He followed suit, taking his own mask off and wiping the sweat from his forehead. “That’s one head of hair.”
That sure was a compliment. Though, people have said much, much worse... “Never said I was trying to. I like it.”
”I can see that. You should give me some cloak tips sometime. I’ve been staring at yours all morning.”
Now that was a compliment in Alfredo’s book. He literally spent at least an hour the other night figuring out what to go with - he settled on a royal blue cloak with a thick fur trimmed hood, coordinating well with the fetching black and tan armor set he had transmog’d together. “Pick a time and we’ll meet up at my office in the Peregrine District. I’m seeing a…” Alfredo paused, imagining Shaw in a variety of different cloaks, “…Darkhollow Mantle in your future, going off by what you have on now.”
The other Hunter raised his brow. “How am I gonna get that cloak? King’s Fall hasn’t been available in years.”
“Vogue-1 has some old armor from her fireteam stashed away. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” Alfredo assumed - she probably would mind, actually, but she owed him for the overwhelming success of their latest fashion line and some old cloak from years ago wouldn’t be missed. Though, the look is coming back in style... “They used to be quite the raiders back in the day.”
They stayed on the beach for a while, watching the waves wax and wane. If he hadn’t been hopped up on caffeine himself, this would’ve made for an easy way to fall asleep. And an easy way to get ambushed by more House Dusk, of course.
“Hey, where does ‘Alfredo’ come from, anyway?” Shaw added. “No offense, but it’s a pretty strange name for an Awoken.”
“None taken,” he answered. “Someone important to me gave me that name when I was a New Light.”
Shaw took another drink from his flask. “Well, now you’ve got me curious.”
Alfredo leaned back against his Sparrow. “After Othello - my brother in the Light - and I escaped the Eliksni after being first risen, we traveled by foot for what felt like weeks towards the Last City. We did the best we could with the armor on our backs and the Light in our hands. It wasn’t until winter fell that we actually made it to civilization,” he recalled. “This tiny little village tucked away at the base of some mountain. ’Sunrise’, they called it.”
“It was there we met...” Alfredo stopped for a moment. What was her name? “...Johanna, I think her name was Johanna. She was this elderly woman who sort of ‘ran’ things in the village. She was suspicious of us from the get-go: they feared us Lightbearers, seeing us like Warlords of times past ready to kill and maim for loot and power. She told us we were allowed to stay for one night only, take only what we needed, then we had to leave the immediate morning after.”
“Then, in the middle of the night, Red Legion razed the village. The village had a small supply of weapons, and we supplied the Light. But...” he trailed off, “...it was too much. We saved all we could, cut our losses, and got the hell out as fast as we could.”
“Next thing we knew, Othello and I were guiding refugees to the Last City. We felt obligated to do so after all that happened. We blamed ourselves for letting so many die, that we must’ve led the Red Legion to them somehow.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Shaw comforted. There’s a tinge of remorse in his own voice, as if he wasn’t the only one that needed to hear it. “Loss is… part of being a Guardian.”
“I know now. But, past me didn’t understand that,” Alfredo lowered his eyes. He still blamed himself for it, to a degree. “We felt obligated to stick with them to the end. We did our best to keep them safe, and over time, we became a part of them. Johanna survived, but neither of her sons did. And the closer we got to the City, the worse her memory became. We checked up on her day and night, took care of her. At some point, she... started to call us by their names. And Alfredo just kind of stuck. I get weird looks, but what can I say, it’s my name.”
“… but, if it bothers you enough, you can call me Vadraal,” he added. “That’s my ‘real’ name. From before I died. I found out about it when I started hanging out a little too much in the Dreaming City.”
Shaw shook his head. “I think I’ll stick with calling you Alfredo, if that’s alright with you.”
“Fine by me. I guess it’s my turn to ask. Where’s yours from?”
The other Hunter laughed nervously. “It’s… a little embarrassing. Don’t laugh. When I was a New Light, I became attached to a series of Golden Age comics. There was one that I read so much that the files began to deteriorate. ‘Starside Renegades’.”
Alfredo recognized that comic. More specifically, he recognized Ley going at length roasting it for being ‘basic normie drivel’. Inspired by the racing movies of Old Earth, a cybernetics enhanced vigilante and his gang speeds their way through the galaxies in thrill-chasing space races... “You named yourself after the main character.”
Shaw frowned, guilt painted all over his face. “I named myself after the main character.”
He patted his fellow Hunter’s back. “That’s not embarrassing in the slightest! I’ve met so many Guardians that have done the same thing. If it means something to you, no matter how dumb it may seem like, then it’s not dumb. It’s important!”
Shaw nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. That comic got me through some of the worst this system’s thrown at me. I still reread it, sometimes.”
Alfredo smiled. “Exactly.”