#atsuko-5

[deathsdeserters]

”I miss my Strength of the Pack.”

[deathsdeserters]

Feeling Lonely

from here

Now usually, when Cayde found that he was lonely, which was fairly often when he went about ten or so minutes without anyone to talk to, he would get out there and find someone to talk to. But this time was different. This late-night loneliness was something that changed the definition of lonely for Cayde.

This was something that spending some time with friends might not be able to fix. Tonight, Cayde decided he might not want to reach out. He never really does when he gets like this.

It’s his own problem that he doesn’t want to deal with.

So he sits there in the dark, a little, empty glass in his fist, leaning heavily on the table he sits at with his other hand against his forehead to prop his head up. His eyes are dark, “closed” for an exo, and he’s very, very quiet.

The door’s been left open just an unfortunate crack, enough for an unexpected passerby to peer into the dimly lit room. The only real light comes from the Traveler through the window, washes over the Hunter Vanguard sitting alone in the dark. One might think he’d fallen asleep there doing something else.

Atsuko-5 doesn't operate on superstition.

She’s not a religious person. She was before she was remade into machine parts and electronics. She hasn’t been that person in a very, very long time.

She does have a gut feeling that she listens to, even if she doesn’t have a gut per se. Exominds have been created to emulate humans in many ways, but this is something that has been developed independently of Clovis Bray and their exoscience division.

Something tells her to make a detour on her way back to her quarters. Something very strongly tells her to stop by to see the Hunter Vanguard. She knows that he’s off duty and he’s not in any of his usual haunts, so she stop by his place.

The door is open. She undoes the buckle on her thigh holster and takes a look inside, her optics easily adjusting for the low light levels.

When she spies Cayde sitting with an empty glass in one hand, his head in the other, Atsuko swears she can feel a tightening in her chest. Psychosomatic, the brain jockeys in white coats would say at Clovis Bray. Operant conditioning surfacing as near autonomic reflex due to subconscious memories from the original subject’s imprint.

Bullshit. She knows what she feels. She knows, in the very least she thinks she knows what he feels. Or that he is feeling. He’s feeling too much, so much that he can scarcely move.

Atsuko carefully enters, quietly closing the door behind her. “Cayde.” She speaks softly, but clearly. “It’s Atsuko. I’m coming in, okay?” It’s not so much a question but an advanced warning. She doesn’t want to surprise him.

She takes even steps over to him and stops next to Cayde. She rubs his back with her right hand, slipping it beneath his cloak to make gentle circles against the soft leather armor, while her left hand rests on his bicep. She lays her cheek upon his shoulder and closes her eyes, the metal plating of her faux eyelids blocking out the white light from her optics. “I’m right here, Cayde. You’re not alone. Not any more.”

@gunslingiing

[deathsdeserters]

nightfall for the prompts? Any muse

He had, of course, heard the term nightfall before, but had not known the true sense of the term until he had actually been on one.

His first nightfall was...par for the course, his commanding officer would later report.

“FUCK!”

“Yep,” said the aforementioned commanding officer, a Captain Yue Qiangshuang.

He turned to glare at her, the effect severely lessened due to his wearing a helmet.

“Hurts, don’t it.” That statement of the obvious came from Yue’s second in command, an Exo Hunter named Atsuko-5.

“Yes, a little bit,” he snapped back at her, shaking his hand vigorously in an attempt to return feeling to it. His Ghost, renamed Aier from his ridiculous former nickname of Pulled Pork, was already healing him.

“You don’t have to keep shaking it,” the purple Ghost told him in a cheery voice. “I’ll have it feeling better soon, I promise!”

Uldren Sov managed a smile despite his annoyance and discomfort at being hit with an arc bolt. “I know, Aier. I’ll stop, then.” The Ghost had its moments of insanely perky behavior, but he had won Uldren over with his good nature, disposition, and overall sweetness.

The little ball of Light genuinely cared for him in a way that made him want to shelter Aier from all of the bad in the world, just so that he could retain that sweet innocence for a moment longer.

He blinked and shook his head, turning to face his fellow Awoken teammate, the medic, Jonathan Martin Severin. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if it felt better.” Though it was unnecessary for him to do, Severin took Uldren’s hand into his and made a cursory inspection. In doing so, the younger man slowly stroked his thumb along the inside of Uldren’s wrist.

Oh, you little shit. Though it was through glove and gauntlet, Uldren could still feel the touch. You’re seriously doing that while we’re on my first nightfall. Right then. I’m going to team kill you.

“I’m fine,” he said, pulling his hand away. He swore he could hear Severin grinning behind his helmet.

Yue sighed and motioned for them to get into formation. “Once more, with feeling.”

Uldren got back into position and readied himself for another try at completing his first nightfall mission...and team kill of one frisky Severin.

[deathsdeserters]

Yes. I did it. I took a selfie with Cayde. Mostly because no one thought I would.

[deathsdeserters]

🖊 for any of your OCs?

The Titan

Captain Yuè Qīngshuǎng. Fireteam Leader, Titan, Sunbreaker. She was found by Warren, her Ghost, in the Old Cosmodrome on the Amur Oblast. Her remains were situated in such a way that her hands appeared to be holding a pair of Pinming cups.

She is old enough to have fought with distinction at the Battle of Six Fronts and the Battle of Twilight Gap. She still wears the Mark of Six Fronts, as well as her Iron Banner gear. She is a proud Young Wolf, long an admirer of her Titan mentors Saladin, Shaxx, and Zavala, and personal heroes such as the Lady Jolder, Liu Feng, Wei Nin. She is a capable commander and quick-witted strategist who will often take up support roles at odds with the stereotypical Titan combat model.

Since learning that, in this version of the City, she and her fireteam died in the Great Disaster, she has been beset by nightmares of the Hellmouth. She will stare at the fractured surface of Luna and think of how she failed her best friends, her fireteam, and how their remains are in the sky above while they’re still alive in the room next door. She’ll think of how the Light-starved Thrall in the deepest recesses of the damned pit are sucking every last molecule from their bones, and how she could have prevented it. How she should have listened to Shaxx. How she should have known the Consensus had no idea how to run a military op, especially one against the Hive.

Yuè spends a steadily increasing number of hours in the field, on patrols, running bounties, collecting supplies wherever she can to support her fireteam and their newest…Kinderguardian. It’s not completely altruistic; while the team needs glimmer and raw materials, Yuè avoids interpersonal confrontation. She will defend a friend or a stranger without hesitation. When it comes to her own defense, unless the threat is a danger, she doesn’t know how to proceed. Her emotional and mental well being are two states she is ill-prepared to address. Instead, she hides in her work, running away starside to avoid seeing a relationship develop, opting instead to push herself to the edge of her limits and get shot.

The Hunter

Atsuko-5 is the second-in-command of the fireteam and the balance between the team leader and the team medic. She is older than her Captain, but younger than her junior in terms of years.

The Exo was resurrected by her Ghost in the Forgotten Shores of the Cosmodrome. She had no artifacts with her, little in the way of nothing to point to her life prior to being Chosen by the Traveler other than the fact that at some point she had been human and she had gotten a trip to Encecladus courtesy of Clovis Bray.

The remains of a long disbanded military’s battalion dress uniform were natural considering she was an Exo. There was hardly anything left of the material despite it being a high-grade impact-resistant fabric. Akio, her Ghost, theorized that while he had discovered her in a cave, the surrounding rocks evidenced activity over the centuries, so she likely started off on the plateau several hundred meters above and lost her pants that way.

Like most Exos, she has remnants of her original memories, and flashes of shared memory from another Exo. Atsuko-5 has no idea of who those fragments are from, and has no frame of reference for her own scant recollections.

Unlike her Fireteam Leader, the Exo Hunter is old enough to have been a part of the City Age and she helped protect pilgrims en route to the Last City, providing watch along the Takanome Trail as a sniper. She fought at the Battle of Six Fronts and the Battle of Twilight Gap. 

She is one of the few Bladedancers remaining and, as a Hunter, she is skilled at scouting and reconnaissance and has proven herself to be an accomplished hacker and thief. In the field, she is naturally on point and providing over-watch as a sniper. This behavior carries over in some small fashion to the way in which she takes care of her fireteam. She is the calming influence on Yuè those rare times she loses her composure and the voice of maturity for Severin on the multiple occasions he acts impulsively.

Atsuko-5 is a woman of few words, opting for a less is more approach, with Akio being of a similar mien.

The Warlock

Simultaneously the oldest and the youngest of the fireteam in terms of age and behavior respectively, Jonathan Martin Severin is a Warlock of the Praxic Order and a Reef Awoken. He is the team’s medic and is a Sunsinger, a sub-class that is for all intents and purposes extinct.

His Ghost located him in wreckage of a Galliot that had crashed on the outskirts of the European Dead Zone. Severin and his ship had been there for some time. There was no evidence of Fallen scavenging, however. Outside of the catastrophic damage it had sustained on atmospheric entry and landing, little else had occurred over the ages aside from nature taking its course.

Severin believes he remembers some elements of his life prior to being Chosen. After being granted entry to the Reef, he felt he gained more access to those parts of his memory. When the Dreaming City was opened to the fireteam, he had expected a better sense of who he had been. It’s something that Severin is still working through.

Generally, his personality is that of a flirtatious, somewhat foolish man who seems naive one moment and cunning the next. He will go to sometimes outlandish extremes to make others laugh and uses his charm as a cover for his ruthless side. The usual targets for his flirtations are his fireteam leader, who returns them in kind, and the Exo, who takes great delight in blowing him off.

Severin’s responsibilities as the team’s medic have given him years of training and experience that would make him a doctor several dozen times over, a fact he enjoys sharing. His Ghost, named Cheshire, enjoys pointing out that Severin is not licensed to practice anywhere on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System.

[deathsdeserters]

💐 - Favorite type of flower (for everyoonnee)

💐 —Favorite Type Of Flower: Another of Yue’s favorite flowers is the 富贵花 or the peony. She is particularly fond of the Da Fu Gui variant as it resembles the English rose with its double flowering.

💐 — Favorite Type Of Flower: Atsuko’s favorite type of flower is the 雛芥子 or the red poppy. The flower is meant to symbolize being fun-loving, but Atsuko simply enjoys the bright red coloring with the black center as well as the paper-like quality of the petals.

💐 — Favorite Type Of Flower: Severin’s favorite flower is the Eustoma. While the flower blooms in multiple colors including pink, white, and blue, the brilliant purple and indigo shades of the flower remind him of the amethyst crystals of the Dreaming City.

[deathsdeserters]

Welcome to Death’s Deserters

“What do you do think you’ll get this Dawning?”

“Hmm?”

“Wait...we’re being watched.”

“What?”

“I said, we’re being watched.”

“From where?”

“There,” the Exo hisses, pointing at you.

The Titan glances upwards from her reading and nearly spills her cup of coffee in the rush to set it down. “H-how...?”

“I don’t know,” comes the reply, through what sounds like grit teeth, if the Exo were to have teeth per se.

They are interrupted by a new companion. “Hey, Cap, so about thes—holy shit!” A Warlock enters the room and curses. He’s engrossed in an electronic pad until he sees you. “Who? What? Huh?!”

“Don’t know,” comes the response, said in unison.

After a long pause, the Titan speaks. “Guess I should do something.”

The Warlock, who now stands to the right of her, gives her a look, dipping his head down so as to narrow his eyes at her above his eyeglasses. “Really, Qianshuang? Just...something. That’s it. Something.”

“I didn’t finish my coffee,” she growls at him, before she rises from her seat. She gives you what seems to be an ill-fitting smile and offers a weak sounding laugh. “Um. Hi!” She waves. “So...this is odd. But here you are. Right. Well. We’re just having some breakfast...haven’t finished our coffee...not sure how you got up here, but you look like a citizen, so, uh, welcome?” She coughs and adjust her posture. She offers her hand to you and nods to her comrades. “Sorry for the jumpiness. Coffee. You know how it is. My name’s Yuè Qiangshuang and I’m the fireteam leader of our group. That’s Atsuko-5,” she nods to the Exo Hunter, who leans back in her chair and offers a casual salute.

The Titan then turns and stretches an arm toward the Warlock. “This is Jonathan Martin Severin,” she continues, “and we’re collectively called Death’s Deserters. We’re...I mean, we were part of the Wolf XIII clan...I guess we can restart that...” Her voice trails off and her smile fades.

Atsuko-5 walks over to her fireteam leader and gives her a nudge in her armored mid-section. She proffers a fresh cup of coffee to the Titan and looks over to you with what passes for a wide grin. “You’re gonna need some of this too, I reckon.” Atsuko-5 slides a mug to you and fills it with hot coffee. She wordlessly nods to Severin, the Warlock.

He steps forward, grabs a simple straight-backed chair from the folding table they’re using for their meal, and offers it to you. “Obviously, there’s a long story behind all of this,” he says with a gentle tone. “Why don’t you take a seat? You might be here a while.”

[deathsdeserters]

F

F: Fever

Guardians weren’t ones to get sick. It wasn’t something that usually occurred. That was why when something unusual cropped up, like the Dawn Calamity or the Transmission Incident, the Owl Sector became involved.

This…was different.

This was not being discussed with anyone. This was not being shown to any member of this Guardian’s fireteam, or to a member of the Vanguard, or to a Cryptarch, a member of the City’s Medical Response Team, no one.

This was being kept a secret.

Suffice to say that their Ghost was less than pleased with the situation.

“Let someone take a look at you.”

“No.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t.”

“It’s because I’m fine, that’s why. I’m okay.”

“For the millionth time, you’re not. You’ve been running a near constant temperature of one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That is not normal for a human.”

“I’m a Sunbreaker.”

“That excuse got old a week ago.”

“A fever of a hundred is nothing. It’s barely a fever.”

“It’s fever enough to see someone.”

“Still not happening.”

“What about the headaches?”

“Everyone gets headaches, come on.”

“And the pain in your eye? Your left eye?”

“Still not seeing the big deal. Get it? Seeing the big deal?”

“Yeah, no. Those scars were there when I first resurrected you. Why would they start hurting now, hundreds of years later?”

“Delayed psychosomatic sympathy pains? I don’t know. You keep telling me I put myself under too much stress. Maybe this is all stress induced and all I need to do is sleep more.”

“…I don’t think a nap is going to help this.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll bite. You seem to have formulated an idea as to what ‘this’ is. So?”

“Your eye…sometimes it doesn’t look right.”

“What does that mean?”

“When you’re sleeping, or when you’re focused on something, and the fever peaks, your eye almost looks like it has a…glow. It looks like it has a dark glow.”

“A dark glow.”

“Yes.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“I know, but I am telling you what I’ve seen.”

 “Constant fever, headaches, pain in my eye, dark glowyness in eye, is there anything else I should know? Have I grown horns? A tail?”

“Don’t mock me, I’m only trying to get you to get some help.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“I know. I’m sorry too.”

“Listen. I’ll…I’ll suck it up and have Sevvy give me a work-up tomorrow. I promise, Warren.”

“Thank you, Qiangshuang.”

The Ghost floated over to her and nuzzled into the crux of her neck. Yue cupped a hand around him and cuddled him there. “I’m sorry to have worried you, little Light,” she murmured to him.

Warren hummed in return and gently maneuvered away. “Get some rest, Qiangshuang,” he said softly, turning the interior lights of the Glass Minuet’s cockpit down to evening mode.

“Good night, Warren,” she said to him, easing herself back into the seat. She tilted the seat back, angling her view of the Earth down and away, and settled in to sleep in orbit high above the Traveler and the City.

While her Ghost rested in transmat space, Yue entered into a fitful slumber. It was one filled with dreams of the Hive, the Taken, the Dreaming City, the Dreadnaught, the Ascendant Plane, the Worm Gods, the Sister Queens, and an undying Ahamkara.

As her fever increased, the three scars on Yue’s left eye darkened, and a familiar ichor began to ooze down her cheek. A faint bluish-black glow illuminated the skin, and as her eyelid fluttered, the tails of an evil flame licked out briefly before being drawn back in.

@ghostwithoutguidance