One Guardian & Ghost in Not-Temba

[cannot_flinch]

WHO: Ikora Rey & OTA
WHERE: Not-Temba
WHAT: Exploring the City
WHEN: During the event
WARNINGS: None yet. Will update if necessary.



I. The Library

It was very disappointing to walk among the empty shelves and empty buildings of the library. Ophiuchus floated a few feet ahead of her, scanning things here and there but it didn't even seem like there were electronic records hidden away to resurrect with power.

But that left a mystery and Ikora did enjoy a mystery. Why have a library and what appeared to be a university with no written material? There appeared to be nothing to study which did lead to some interesting questions.

What did they teach? How did they teach it? She had suggested the idea of psychic communication to Jon on the train but the more she and Ophiuchus wander the more it seemed possible. Of course, there was no evidence of that either.

There was emptiness and ruin.

Ikora stopped in a well preserved lecture hall, hands folded behind her back as she studied the room. If only walls could talk perhaps then she could get some answers to how they taught.

II. The Quarry

Ikora stood on the edge of the quarry and considered the long, winding path down to the bottom. It would take hours to walk down there.

"Ikora..." Ophiuchus said with a note of warning. "Don't."

"It'll be quicker," she said with a little smile and a glance over to her ghost floating by her shoulder. "And I will go down in stages. Not at once."

She liked adventure and exploring but was well past her days of dying on purpose to see what was beyond the veil of death. There might be answers to how and why everything here was carved stone at the bottom as Earth quarries kept machines and tools where they were mining out. It might also have some sort of deadly threat at the bottom but she felt stronger with the Light after practicing and meditating regularly.

"Well, at least you've thought this through," he said dryly. Then he sighed, resigned to his Guardian's choice of getting down.

Ikora walked a few steps back, took a deep breath, and then ran forward for a flying leap off the edge. And she started to fall, faster and faster until she started to near the first winding path down. She called on the light and slowed. She kept slowing and slowing, gliding through the air until her foot touched down and she landed with just a slight puff of dust.

III. Wildcard

Want something else? Simply jump in!

Comments

ii

[deal_me_in]

Something would come up Ophiuchus's radar not long after Ikora began her descent.

In like suit of the Warlock a hooded figure practically went flying off the edge of the quarry's mouth. His flight wasn't as long as Ikora's, boots hitting the strangely smooth rock that sloped down and continued skidding, the tattered cloak behind him flapping wildly like an abandoned banner. He launched himself into another leap about mid-way, trying to kill his momentum before it could build any further, but it still sent him well past Ikora. The impact of his boots once he hit the ground was a solid one, and one he shook out with each foot as he made sure he hadn't knocked anything out of alignment with that landing.

Cayde flashed a grin at Ikora. "Heh, didn't realize it was this deep," he admitted.

[cannot_flinch]

"It's very deep." She looked Cayde over with a hint of a smile and started walking towards him. It seemed like his ankles had survived the fall even though he had the ability to land silently and softly. "They needed a lot of stone for all the buildings around here. I wondered why they would use stone instead of steel and concrete."

Which was why she was here to investigate the quarry. Was there something special about the stone? She imagined there was to be used almost everywhere in this area.

"Ready?" she asked when she drew even to him.

[deal_me_in]

"Maybe because that's what they know?" Cayde already had his suspicions about what was going on here, even though it made less sense than... well okay, not much made sense around here.

He gave Ikora a nod. Wasn't expecting too much from a hole in the ground but he supposed they couldn't be too careful. This place still had more critter activity than Temba.

[cannot_flinch]

"The library was empty," she said as she set off towards the bottom of the quarry. "If they had any books or electronic books they're all gone. Or they never used them in the first place."

She glided smoothly down the next drop just like she had the first. When Cayde caught up she started talking again.

"We lost a lot of pre-Golden Age and Gold Age information but nothing like this. There's barely anything to give us a hint of what came before. Like someone deliberately erased it all." Ikora looked over at Cayde to see if he was listening at all or just humoring her. He could choose to do either.

[deal_me_in]

Cayde leapt down to join her with a much more lighter landing. He nodded at her observations, stooping towards the rocks to see if there was anything really special about them or if was just a convenient place filled with them.

"I mean, seems like that in Temba, don't it? Everything that would transmit data limited to only key things that'd give information needed to work things around there? Otherwise things have been broken." Would the Atroma go that far? And why?

[cannot_flinch]

"It feels very deliberate." Ikora nodded a little. "This loss of history and information. It's almost... precise. We've explored ruins cities back home and we've found more than what's here."

She dragged her fingers along the stone, feeling the shift from rough cut to smooth burn. Melting stone was certainly an interesting way to get rid of it. She would have to ask the Jedi if their swords were capable of this.

"And we've explored our world for centuries. How long must it take to destroy that much information? Jon doesn't think they wrote anything down but I find that hard to believe given the existence of the data points."

[deal_me_in]

That was a point Cayde agreed with. He didn't necessarily like assuming it was all the Atroma's doing but they didn't exactly have a healthy track record with everyone who'd ever run into them.

"Who, the Agrii? Maybe they didn't write things down. I mean, have you seen them try? You've seen the labels on the tablet buttons and the map- their spelling is awful." He tapped a finger against the edge of the scooped out rock. "Here though? I'm pretty sure we're not dealing with Agrii territory- which is super weird because of the train connection and yet the Agrii didn't even seem to know about this place until they fixed that."

[cannot_flinch]

"They're spelling our words in our language phonetically. That's a translation problem, not necessarily a written language problem." Ikora had figured that out after a few days. They didn't spell like children because they were necessarily bad at language. They were simply bad at English.

"We believe the Atroma are behind all this, correct?" She asked, mostly to herself than to Cayde. "And we've all been collected from various times and places and universes. Maybe they did the same to the Agrii and other races only they kept them apart. Enclosures at a zoo."

It was a wild theory, utter speculation but Ikora enjoyed the occasional wild idea. She could refine her thoughts with more evidence but right now she was simply brainstorming, saying the first thing that came to mind.

[deal_me_in]

Cayde shrugged, not all that consumed by the language issue himself. He straightened in consideration of Ikora's musings about the Atroma's part in things however.

"That's a good angle. But if this has been the Agrii home then wouldn't they have spread out a little bit? Or notice a train station sitting at the edge of town? The when is the part that's getting me. I was talking with that Kyle kid? We got to wondering about time warps and things. Maybe the reason the Agrii information they provide seems off is because the Agrii we have been interacting with aren't the same that supposedly jumped ship once home started getting all screwy with killer storms."

He gestured at the dug out quarry. "This place? It's screaming Graq to me. We ran into them back when the Agrii called us out to save them from being invaded on their ship. The Atroma staged the whole thing and transmatted a bunch of Graq to their ship, handed them weapons, kidnapped all the Agrii but Gary and left 'em in stasis aboard these other ships they parked outside, and left everything to reaction when we came."

The Quarry

[silenziobruno]

A few seconds after nailing the landing, Ikora is greeted with a rhythmic sound that can't be anything but clapping. Looks like she had an unexpected witness to her acrobatics.

"That was AWESOME!" If Ikora looks to her left she would see a boy on a yellow tank top and brown shorts held by a piece of rope. He's sitting on top of a huge stone that has a half-melted side. How the kid god up there is anyone's wonder. Alberto enjoys high places.

"It took me a lot to get down here but you did it in seconds."

[cannot_flinch]

More children had come to this place, apparently. Ikora was mildly surprised and actually rather bothered. Not by the child, no, but that their alien kidnappers took children. Children shouldn't be taken.

"I've had a lot of practice," she said calmly as she turned and walked towards him and his rocky perch. "Who are you?"

She was rather curious. He seemed like any other child one might find on Earth. Ophiuchus was curious too. He floated around the child, studying him for a moment before drifting back to Ikora.

[silenziobruno]

The Agrii made questionable decisions at best, clearly. He looked down, smiling and looking both a bit to relaxed around a stranger and excited about meeting someone new.

"It shows. My name is Alberto Scorfano, e un piacere signorina...oh. Hi." He waved a hand at Ophiuchus, not really knowing what it was. Maybe a weird bird? Everything was weird here, even the animals.

Now that Ikora was closer, Alberto took a good look at her, tilting his head...and then he perked up. One could practically see the light bulb going off in his head.

"Oh! I know you! Well not know you, know you. You're Exo's friend? He said that his friend Ikora had shorter hair than me and that she was a wizard." Wizard, Warlock...something like that. "Is that you? He could also jump on air, he took me to the cliffs."

[cannot_flinch]

"Hm. Italian?" Ophiuchus was the one that recognized the language. "He said it's a pleasure."

Ikora nodded. Another one from another Earth as well. "Yes, Cayde is my friend. I am that Ikora."

She had to wonder what else Cayde had said. Hopefully not the ridiculous rumor about her turning people into frogs. She really hated that rumor.

"It's a special ability we're given when we become Guardians."

[silenziobruno]

"You know it?" The question was directed at the Ghost and Alberto looks positively delighted that someone else here seems to know the language. He's still learning it, specially now that he's so far away from Portorrosso and everything he cares about.

"Cayde said you all protect humanity, and that you're a very good fighter." He left a good impression on Alberto, judging by the impressed tone of voice. The kid seems to realize that talking to her from up high is not polite and starts to move down the rock.

He pretty much just jumps to the ground once he's just a few meters away from it, not caring that it's a tad too high, yet somehow managing not to break a leg when he lands. He's used to jumping from cliffs and into the ocean back home.

"And everyone can become a Guardian?" Standing there, he looks curiously at Ikora and then at Ophiuchus, pointing a finger at the sapient machine. "Cayde didn't mention...him." That is Alberto's attempt to more or less politely ask what Ophiuchus is.

[cannot_flinch]

"I know multiple Earth languages," Ophiuchus explained, "For translation purposes including Italian."

There was a debate over if everyone could become a guardian or not. Ikora had listened to it for centuries. "Ophiuchus is a Ghost. He is what gives me my powers to be a Guardian. Cayde has one too but she is shy."

Ophiuchus snorted at the idea of Sundance being shy. Ikora smiled a little. Sundance wasn't out as much as Ophiuchus though. "Once someone has a Ghost, they are a Guardian."

They also had to die first but Ikora didn't feel it necessary to tell Alberto that.

[silenziobruno]

"You must be really smart." Alberto smiled and then added without a beat. "Do you speak dolphin?"

That is a language, all right. At least close to it, just ask Luca's mom and her neighbor. After Ikora's explanation, Alberto stares at Ophiuchus first with a raised, eyebrows, then frowning, and then just looking plain confusing. "He doesn't look like a ghost. Where's his sheet?"

He had no idea that supernatural entities could give you amazing jumping powers. No one ever told him that, it's a shame. But the more you know...

"Ah I see. I've never seen Cayde's, no. But if they're more comfortable that way..." He gave a small, casual shrug. Alberto doesn't fully understand what ghosts are used for, but he can tell they're special to the people they are connected to. He had only talked to Cayde once, so it made sense that the Exo wouldn't go around showing Sundance to strangers.

"Do you like being a guardian?"

[cannot_flinch]

Ophiuchus looked over at Ikora before looking back at Alberto. "No. I don't speak dolphin."

There wasn't a reason for him to speak dolphin since Guardians rarely went underwater for any reason. It was strange that the child had asked him, though. Who asked about dolphin language?

"He's not that sort of ghost," she said with a smile. It was a common joke back home but Alberto was clearly being entirely sincere in his question. "It's more a title than what he is as a being."

Ophiuchus had rarely hidden away since arriving. He was just as curious as his Guardian and wanted to experience and study this place as much as Ikora. If they ever encountered a real threat he would make himself scarce.

"I do." Ikora nodded. "I've done it a very long time. It's important."

The Library

[in_extremis]

So far, this building had proved to hold more beetles than records, and the lizard creature that ate those beetles was not easily coaxed into following Tony through the halls to clear the worst of them out before Tony had to encounter them. It would occasionally crawl, cautiously and in its excruciatingly slow way, along the stone, but largely it seemed to prefer remaining inert and watchful even as Tony yelped and came running back through the school to the security of the familiar, de-bugged classroom where he could shake off the skin-crawling sensation. At least the animal had quickly become unbothered by sudden, human noises.

Expecting those hideous insects, Tony cautiously slid the door open at the back of the lecture hall, and was surprised to find a familiar room that he had peeked into from the floor below, and a whole other person. It was with relief that he quickly dropped his explorer's tension to come sauntering down the steps through the seating as a clearly delinquent student instead, finding a spot among the chairs to slide into where he could prop his feet up on the row ahead of him and slide his sunglasses down from his hair onto his nose with a lingering smirk down at Ikora looking very in control at the front of the room. "Don't mind me, teach, I'll catch up," he announced, as though this entrance wouldn't have been disruptive enough to her lecture and she could use more goading into at least a good glare.

[cannot_flinch]

Ikora still didn't know quite what to make of Tony Stark. He was clearly brilliant and yet deeply troubled. He would make a good Warlock with those qualifications.

"Can you?" she asked as she turned to face him. "I was contemplating the lack of any writing in this place. No books. No data pads. No grafitti as students are prone to leave. Nothing. But this place isn't Agrii. We expect a lack of writing on their part."

She looked around the lecture hall. "Two races on the same planet with no writing left behind feels improbable. So I wonder... did the Atroma take away the writing? Is it hidden in a form we have yet to find?"

Ikora shrugged. "Simple musings, really."

[in_extremis]

While Ikora didn't seem keen on his game, this did not stop Tony from glancing around the hall like he expected someone else to offer an answer to the professor's prompting. When he did raise his hand, he didn't actually make her play by waiting to be called on, offering with his hand still lazily in the air where it could gesture easily, "Here's my thinking, while we're working through it out loud. Both this place and the one back in Temba, pretty weird, really similar, empty shelves, yes, whatever, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, who was doing the 'teaching'?" He framed that concept in air quotes, then pointed to where Ikora stood, where he felt it pretty safe to assume none of the Graq like he knew them would be leading some discussion on theory. "Two races being molded by a third. That much control over the space, easy to wipe it clean when they're done."

[cannot_flinch]

"I was talking with Cayde," she said as she descended the steps and approached where Tony sat. "About what might be going on here and how the Agrii could not be aware of a whole city."

Ikora took a seat in the row below Tony's and shifted to look at him, one arm across the back. "We've all been taken and we're given these challenges and these Atroma watch us. This feels very much like a zoo. Control over the space, enrichment, and studying behavior. Wiped clean when no one's here. Though that theory doesn't explain the storms."

Still, it's an interesting theory.

[in_extremis]

Both Ikora and Jon had independently offered zoo as their allegory to Tony now, making it sound that much more convincing, so for a moment he pouted back at Ikora with his chin propped in one hand as he considered what that made this facility. If the populations were here to be studied and prompted into extreme reactions, the kind of training Tony thought this place might have been for felt out of place.

For the time being, he muttered, less pointedly disruptive now that Ikora was closer and in a tone that suggested he was about to say something relevantly cerebral, "I was talking with Cayde, too. He said you kicked his ass regularly." He started to smirk then, tilting his head in his hand flirtatiously. Only after he had that out of his system, Tony continued abruptly, his expression dropping just as quickly, "That would make us a disruption of the pattern, though. They didn't build a city for us, we're not one population with the same culture or whatever, so what changed?"

[cannot_flinch]

"For a time I was champion of the Crucible. Guardians test their strength and skill against each other," Ikora explained with a small smile. "It was a long time ago."

Hundreds of years at this point. Shaxx kept trying to coax her back to Crucible but Ikora had nothing to prove now. She was considered one of the best and always would be.

"When I was talking to Cayde I also found out Kaz has a bit of information I don't believe he's shared with others." And Ikora felt no guilt over sharing it now. No one should keep information to themselves in this situation. They all needed to know the variables, all of them, to understand this place. "According to Cayde he has a recording from a woman Jedi explaining that the Atroma were committing a genocide against the Agrii. And that she and others had been taken to Agra-10 but had to evacuate."

[in_extremis]

Ikora's answer didn't directly address how much of Cayde's ass in particular she might have kicked, and Tony thought that spoke enough for itself to make him start to grin and almost drew him up out of his drape across the seats, clearly eager to find out what it would actually take to best the Exo, never mind what other marvels were among the ranks of the Guardians. The glimmer of delight faded and Tony tensed, though, as Ikora continued, leaving him tucking his chin back into his hand as he considered this account, giving a shake of his head.

"He found it when we went to Coruscant," he elaborated for her. "I thought it might have been--I didn't trust it. The last time we went off world, it was a big prank to try to get us to blow up the Graq--the people who might have lived here before, we'll cycle back," he hurried through, twirling a finger in the air to keep that plate spinning, "or blow up the Agrii, or each other. It was a production to get us to react, is my point, so this thing Kaz found, it seemed like it was there to get us to react. We never found out where it came from so--so, it could go either way." That said, Tony weighed his hand side to side, because he had seen the recording himself and he wasn't sure if 'genocide' was the proper way to put what he had heard. "The Jedi gal, it sounded like she was part of that show some of the others were, from before, who knew the Atroma. She was being ferried around and abused for entertainment. The show ended up on Agra-10, where--she seemed really broken up about it, but she made it sound like the Atroma were just treating this whole population as an offshoot of their show, you know, 'Emotional Torture Porn Live: Temba'. And the Jedi was sent back." Tony snapped his fingers, just like that. "Back to exactly where she was taken from, just like everyone who leaves here and comes back says happens, only she remembered the whole thing."

[cannot_flinch]

There was another time and place to talk about how many times Cayde and Ikora had gone head to head. Perhaps in Cayde's bar when he could defend himself.

"Nothing says we're not entertainment now. We're trying to help the Agrii, yes, but we know the Atroma are still manipulating us. The incident with the Graq you've mention and others I've spoke with it sounds very much like a show to watch." Ikora brought out her communicator and tapped a finger against the screen.

"Devices like these can easily track people and listen in. An empty school. An empty city. A zoo or a movie set, either is entertainment, I imagine we're being watched and have been since the beginning." She was not going to pretend that they had privacy in this world. There wasn't a chance of that.

"I am... skeptical about the holocron being a fake. The storms are the key, as we all know. The Agrii cannot be on this planet because of them. And who doesn't love heroes struggling against impossible odds?" She shrugged. "But as I said to Cayde, we have a puzzle with many pieces missing and no box to know the whole picture. I can make a million theories sitting here with you."