Destiny 2: Putting "Horse" Into "Horsepower"

Chapter 27: A Warmind

The trio of guardians quickly found themselves heading towards a Red Legion mining operation, and it was already teaming with activity.

"We found a big drill, and we found an equally big gathering of Vex here." Taiki says.

"It looks like that drill pierced the entrance to the warmind vault. If you can get that out of the way you should have an easy ticket inside." Ikora replies. "Feel free to deal with the Vex if you need to."

"And we probably will, because the Vex just spotted us." Taiki says as a goblin begins shooting at him, followed by the rest of the entire group.

"Welp, let's take them out!" Spe-7 says as she begins firing her machine gun. She begins laughing manically as bullets spew out, mowing down the weaker goblins while Suzuka starts firing her cabal gun. The gun in question fires the same slugs as the real deal, but as she starts looking down the sights to snipe, the slugs travel in a straight line through like a sniper bullet. The shots that come out of Taiki's hand cannon on the other hand are proving to be extremely powerful- blasting apart goblin and hobgoblin chassis like they were nothing and putting down the minotaurs with only two shots.

"Whoa!" Taiki shouts as he blasts a goblin to kingdom come. "I think I'm gonna like this gun!"

"I'll take control of the drill!" Spe-7 calls out as she zooms by the Vex and begins mowing down some of the cabal that are managing the whole place. They're shocked at how fast she's moving and can't react quick enough, causing many of them to eat a boot. When she does get to the controls though she finds that there's no power to the drill. "Nuts!"

"What happened?" Taiki asks as he puts a hole in the last minotaur.

"There's no way to move this thing!" Spe-7 replies. "I only see a function to turn on the power TO the drill!"

"Well go ahead and do that, we'll see if there's a manual override of some sort." Taiki says, and with that Spe-7 flips the switch to turn on the power. "The override is probably somewhere inside the base."

"Well, looks like we'll have to jump inside to find out." Suzuka replies as they decide to head inside the base. Just like before though it appears to be devoid of life- as if the majority of the cabal had been taken.

"I don't know if they realized that they were drilling into the warmind vault but it looks like they tried to run while they could." Taiki mumbles as he sees remains of legionary helmets and slug rifles. His suspicions are confirmed when Asher comes online.

"Sterile neutrinos just quintupled where you currently are." Asher says. "Get your weapons ready, a spike of paracasual energy was just detected!"

"What?" Spe-7 asks.

"That's short for taken inbound!" Taiki shouts as taken portals emerge and the cabal that once inhabited the drilling operation emerge as black, lifeless husks. The phalanxes that emerge still carry their shields, but they are warped to suit a more offensive purpose, and the centurions that once led the platoons now sport a strange projection on their armor- one that's quickly recognized as they spew out homing darts. "Incoming!"

"Yikes!" Spe-7 shouts as she throws a fiery grenade that incinerates the taken phalanxes while Suzuka lobs a splitter grenade that explodes into multiple little bombs, disrupting the centurions. Finally Taiki lobs a flashbang that stuns everyone in the blast radius, allowing for the quicker of the trio to rush in and simply bash everyone into oblivion. With those being taken care of the last thing that needs to be done is to actually operate the drill, and the controls are found just beyond the now defeated taken army. "Now... Let's see how this works..." She pushes a button that starts the drill- but then it starts going down.

"Whoa whoa whoa pull it up! Or it's going to destroy the vault!" Taiki quickly says as he throws a lever, pulling the drill upwards. "So... Is this Rasputin?"

"Not exactly." Ikora replies. "There is only one warmind, but Rasputin has been on Earth since his network went crazy."

"It looks like the vault is not exactly connected. I can go in and connect it, but there may be more taken here." Ghost says as the trio manages to enter the vault. Unfortunately for ghost a pair of taken appear- one minotaur and one goblin. the minotaur manages to vanish out of sight- save for it's one glowing eye, and the goblin proceeds to create a shield around said minotaur, rendering it invincible. Another swarm of taken vex emerge, and Taiki charges up his arc energy.

"Let's clear these guys out." Taiki says as the trio unleashes their energy and obliterates the taken. Once the last of the taken is cleared out, Ghost emerges and begins his work as Twinkle and Fang also emerge.

"Alright, it's reconnected." Ghost says. "Ikora, you should be ready to go."

"Scanning..." Asher replies. The scan takes about a few minutes but when he returns he has grim results. "This is most terrible indeed."

"What's going on?" Taiki asks.

"The Almighty is inextricably bound to the harmonic resonance of the sun's magnetic flux tubes." Asher replies. Spe-7 looks absolutely dumbfounded.

"...What?" Spe-7 asks flatly.

"That means if Zavala blows up the Almighty, our sun goes with it. We have to let him know as soon as possible." Ikora replies.

"Right, let's all meet up at the farm." Taiki says. "I'll see you there Ikora."