Summary: Before they were Owl Sector, they were . . . kind of stupid.
Pairings: Shun/Ikora (ish).
Notes: Also available on AO3.
@jencforcarolina was having a bad day so I offered her fic. She wanted Young Owl Sector. I LIVE TO PLEASE.
"We're going to die," says Quist. There's a dead calm to his voice as he crouches next to his friends in the narrow subway tunnel, glancing forward and back.
"No, we're not," Shun contradicts cheerfully.
"Not before I pass my exams," says Beriole, still busily transcribing symbols from the wall.
Quist huffs out a breath. His hands remain steady on his rifle—he's the only one of them who actually knows how to shoot a gun—as he says, "You won't get good grades for stealing a ship from Tower and breaking who knows how many regulations to visit a Crucible arena on Venus."
"And yet," says Beriole, "you're here with us."
"I'm just trying to keep you two Shank-chasing idiots alive," Quist grumbles.
"C'mon, look on the bright side," says Shun, daring to stick his head out for a peek over the nearby ledge.
"What bright side?"
"Ikora might be here?"
"That's only a bright side for you, you cleft of the Tra—"
"Language," Beriole mutters, and then gasps, "Quist! Look!"
"I'll look when I'm— Oh." Quist's rifle lowers as he stares. "That's—"
"—Golden Age cryptography," Beriole gloats.
The two of them huddle together over her notes and the symbols she's scraped clean of moss on the wall. Shun, standing beside them, says, "I guess I'll keep watch, then."
They both ignore him.
Shun is used to that (from his friends, and also his family). Right now, he doesn't care. He's too entranced by Venus: the strange, salt-sweet smell of the air. The very slight, dream-like difference in the gravity. The strange way the sunset light feels like a rainbow.
Ikora has fought here. He has watched her in a hundred matches, and now he wonders if she loved the foreign taste of the air the way he does, or if it was nothing to her, she who has lived centuries and feels the Light of the Traveler in her veins.
He has a friend who has a cousin whose brother-in-law's friend had a sister. The sister died, and was raised as a Guardian.
She visited them a few times, Shun has heard from his friend's cousin's brother-in-law's friend. But she did not like to come back, and soon she stopped. She did not want to be reminded of what she once was—because no Guardian can ever remember the life she had before she died—
It has occurred to Shun, before now, that it's possible he might become a Guardian. But now, when he finally stands in a place where Guardians battle and kill each other, he glances back over his shoulder at his mortal friends.
He doesn't want to forget them.
He doesn't want to forget Ikora.
As he thinks that, he hears a gun cock behind his ear. He turns, and sees—
Ikora. Leveling Invective at his neck.
For the following decade, Shun will regret the words he says next:
"Hey, Korrie."
"It could have been worse," says Berriole, clutching her notebook to her chest.
"You're right," says Quist. "We could have been cut into pieces and fed to the Hive."
"Probably easier to feed us to the Fallen," says Shun, looking out at the gleam of the City beneath them. They're standing in the courtyard of the Tower, after an extremely painful talk with the Vanguard.
Tomorrow they have to report for their orientation as new members of Owl Sector. Apparently the penalty for stealing one of the Vanguard's ships and trespassing on the Vanguard's Crucible is . . . to join the organization that protects the Vanguard.
It's what Shun has wanted for a long time: to serve and to protect the Guardians. But he can't think about them right now. He can't think about the pale, gleaming hulk of the Traveler overhead, either.
All he can think of is Ikora Rey, dragging him and his friends away from Venus. There was a moment when she looked over her shoulder and said, Trespassing in the Crucible? You could have died.
We could have come back as Guardians, Shun had said.
And there was a curious to solemnity to Ikora as she replied, That is not always a blessing.
It will be ten years before Shun—or anyone in the Last City or the Crucible—sees Ikora Rey again.
I'd actually LOVE more Owl Sector shenanigans from you, maybe unexpected leader, apologies, and/or glass breaking?
25 prompts meme
21. Glass breaking
(a direct sequel to this ficlet)
“Well,” said Quist, with a sort of dazed calm, “I suppose that was a valuable lesson.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” said Berriole, eyes squeezed shut. She took a few deep breaths. “Maybe not.”
The bar was in the kind of shambles that could be expected when two Guardians had a violent disagreement. The blood, at least, was gone—transmatted by the unfortunate’s Guardian’s Ghost when it raised him, right before Ikora Rey took his weapons and dragged him out with her. But there were still broken glasses, overturned furniture, and shocked patrons everywhere.
The three students were crouched behind their overturned table. Quist had managed to stack the fallen books, and he was trying to gather up his loose-leaf notes, but his hands kept shaking and slipping. Berriole was hunched in on herself, while Shun held a broken shot-glass, running his thumb over the jagged edges.
“What kind of lesson?” asked Shun.
“Guardians,” Quist said flatly, “are bad news. And why are you playing with broken glass?”
“She broke it with her head,” said Shun.
“Yes! Right before she painted his brains across the wall with her shotgun!”
Berriole made an unhappy noise and took some more slow breaths.
“C'mon, that was Ikora Rey,” said Shun. “Am I the only one excited about this?”
“Yes,” said Quist. He slapped the last of his notes into a stack. “We should go.”
“Already?” asked Shun.
“Well, they clearly aren’t going to bring our fried plantains now,” Quist snapped.
“You never know,” said Shun. His smile was a little off-center. “It’s a very, um …” He trailed off, losing whatever joke he’d been about to make.
“Do we need to tell the authorities what happened?” asked Berriole, determinedly focused on the practicalities.
“The bartender can do that,” said Quist. “We should go.”
Shun did not say anything.
Shun was staring again at the broken shot-glass, still running his thumb over the edge. There had been a smudge of blood on it once, now absorbed by his skin. Ikora Rey’s blood, the blood of a Guardian raised by the Traveler, who fought like a whirlwind in the Crucible but who also protected the Last City from the Darkness. Who had helped raise its walls.
When the other Guardian threw her back, when her head slammed into their table, her eyes had stared up a moment into his. Dark, beautiful eyes—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the dazed pain in her face. And it was lost a moment later as she pulled herself up and leapt back into the fight, but it had been real.
Shun Li had watched a hundred Crucible matches, had seen Guardians stabbed and shot and vaporized and burnt. But now, as he grasped the glass that Ikora Rey had broken with her head, he thought: they can bleed.
And that was the first time that he wanted to protect them.
Report of Bypass Authority Berriole, OS-I6 1, for Owl Sector records, assigned to incident TRANSMISSION.
Hi, Berriole! I love you.
(She is confirmed as female in Brilliance 3.2, BTW).
...what the heck is a Bypass Authority?
So it seems most likely that Berriole’s normal position involves regulating travel between the Tower and the City. However, I find the “alternative channel” definition interesting given that she’s the one they send to Mars. Perhaps the “Bypass Authority” is the one who visits locations from which others are barred? (Though explicitly, it’s the City and not off-world destinations that are quarantined.)
I have been tasked with returning to the Dust Palace on Mars, which as far as we know is the only link between the Guardians first affected by these overrides. Appropriate contamination equipment has been requisitioned, although specs are for the Dawn Calamity and have not been adjusted.
(1) What the heck is the Dawn Calamity?
(2) Since Berriole says “returning,” that means that she or at least other members of Owl Sector have been to Mars. So non-Guardians do engage in interplanetary travel, though it’s probably not normal, given the number of Cabal/Hive/Fallen everywhere.
The Owl Sector has determined that our acutest need is information. Which is where I come in. The area of interest includes former Clovis Bray buildings, so I expect my skills in cryptography, biosignature falsification, and historical architecture to be thoroughly exercised.
More evidence for the “all Owl Sector members are interdisciplinary” conclusion.
Nothing unusual to report during approach and landing. Standard Cabal and Vex presence, still in conflict, and easily evaded.
Berriole is cooler than you.
I love these vintage rigs. So graceful. So elegant. Mementos of a brighter time.
Berriole takes an aesthetic pleasure in old computers.
The hashed password is twice the average length. I will submit my next report when I have cracked it.
She’s also pretty confident in her mad cryptography skillz.
At any rate, Dr. Shirazi's password was a combination of musical tones and a Persian phrase that loosely translates as "Remember who watches you."
Holy crap Berriole is a multidisciplinary genius to know all that.
Also the phrase is probably a vague reference to the famous Latin quote “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” which literally means “Who will guard the guards themselves?"
(Stop fueling my wild headcanon about Owl Sector being partly created as a safeguard against the Guardians, Bungie.)
Shun, Quist, you've gone silent and I don't know why. I am alarmed, but in the absence of updated orders, I am remaining on site to finish extracting the Shirazi logs. I hope that you and the City remain in good health.
I am really reaching for implied characterization here, but: Berriole is reasonably independent and confident in her own judgement, or else she’d be panicking more over the lack of orders. She also sounds fairly optimistic--probably somebody who doesn’t borrow trouble.
"Acting Liaison Ramos," she said. I didn’t need to hear more. Almost took off my respirator, it was so wet. But that would put two principals of the Owl Sector in the hospital wing. And I need to be out here. Looking.
Berriole is really close to Shun. And she cries. But she is also somebody who consciously prioritizes the mission.
I set everything in order and sealed the room. Left the computer in there, lovely as it is, after clearing sand from the crevices. A monument.
Once again: Berriole loves old computers. Also, proclaiming the old computer a “monument” suggests she has some sense of the dramatic.
On my way out, I looked again at the tracks I followed into that room. Clawed. Fallen, I'd say, but there are no Fallen on Mars. Odd.
Berriole has studied the Fallen enough to know what their tracks look like.
