Only On Paper

3 - A Recalcitrant Gun

It's still there.

I can't help myself but check my robes every few minutes to ensure that machine gun's receiver is still tied in tightly. I can feel - it's weight, or it's presence?

It'd been the better part of the day since I'd started winding my way back to my makeshift campsite. That patrol I had evaded earlier are holding me up the worst. The Cabal are huge, slow, lumbering beasts,but their tech is supreme at spotting anything that wasn't putting one-hundred percent of itself towards stealth movement.

Finally I come across the familiar pathway that leads through a ravine in the hulking red rocks. A few slow, deliberate checks confirm that I am no longer in the vicinity of the Cabal patrol. I'm now free to move quickly back to my hideout. A few years ago, traversing terrain like this would have been near impossible. When my Ghost raised me from the rubble outside of the First Wall, I had zero recollection of who I once was.

A tool of the Light - at least for now. As much as I resent the Vanguard, Ikora Rey was the first one to recognize my hunger to study the Traveler and her Light. My new "life" has been a weird mess of experiences and sparse information. Ikora merely pointed me to the Chambers of the Light, where it's fabled the first Warlocks convened. There, I was able to study everything that they had once only theorized. Within time I was able to forge my inner Light into a weapon, and turn it into a force beneath my feet.

So,after years and years of study, years still of practice and application, I move about this ravine as agile and nimble as a Bladedancer. It takes me only a few moments before I find myself back at the area I currently call "home".

So here I sit, in my lean-to wedged between two huge Relic monoliths...and I can't seem to make this gun fit together correctly. I've been swabbing red dust from the fittings and casings for hours now. Every time I try to snap the pieces together that feeling of heavy, hard static returns. It's starting to look helpless and I'm losing my cool. After the thirtieth attempt to fit the receiver of this LMG into the stock, I'm startled by another loud pop, and the feeling of static vanishes. I can see sparks shooting from some kind of module in the firing mechanism.

I curse loudly inside my helmet and stand up. My temper has reached it's boiling point and I cock my arm back ready to toss the LMG receiver back out into the red sea of Mars.

"STOP!"

The voice booms so loudly through my helmet's internal audio that I am actually disoriented. Before I can regain myself it comes again,slamming through my helmet speakers:

"I WILL NOT BE DISCARDED LIKE SOME COMMON CANNON!"

With my ears throbbing still, I bring my arm back down and scrutinize the piece of the gun I'm still holding. That static feeling is back, and just as strong again. I should note that I can now see wireframe pulses beaming around my makeshift shack, which tells me that my Ghost is out from it's compartmentalized digital storage, and now frantically scanning the area.

It hasn't sent any direct warnings through my audio feed or to my helmet's "warning text" scrawl. Clearly whatever it feels is so scary, isn't scary enough to throw me into the loop.

I now have an odd predicament: I'm out in the middle of the Cabal exclusion zone, with little to no hope for backup, holding an old piece of Golden Age technology, that - by all means - appears to be talking to me.

So I do the only rational thing I can think of now - I set the gun piece on a jutted Relic shard, and I sit down across from it.

Am I really about to start talking to a gun?

And then it occurs to me: this is why everyone figures Warlocks to be complete nutjobs.

"How long have you been in that cave back there?" I ask it.

There's a total silence around me, now. It's eerie. Even my Ghost is watching the cannon piece with stricken reticence. I wait out the quiet just long enough to be sure that this thing isn't playing some kind of mind game with me. I ask the only other question I can even remotely come up with:

"Why were you crying?"

I say it gently, because if I'm correct in thinking that it was indeed this gun that was making those sobs in that cave, there must be a reason for it. The bout of silence that follows my last question is... the only way I can describe it,is as though you're watching someone who is actively choking back tears. You can almost hear the tears, but its more of a sense.There's no actual response from the gun, but the energy in the room is thick with emotion.

Finally a much quieter, deflated voice is piped through my speakers. It answers me:

"I...I need the hands of an honest laborer, Guardian. If you really have questions, take me to the one who forges and fixes your kit. Only then can we discuss terms."

Immediately,my Ghost shoots an alarm to my helmet's feed

>://

SUSPECTED TRAP. NOT ADVISED.

\\:<

I squelch the alarm, irked by the tiny machine made from Light. The alarm comes right back:

>://

MOTIVES UNKNOWN. TRUST IS NOT RECOMMENDED.

\\:<

Again I dismiss the alarm, this time turning to face my Ghost. It's internal "eye" was glowing an angry shade of mauve. I've never seen it so worked up before, not that I was ever privy to it'sinner monologue.

"Stow it," I spit at the small machine.

The Ghost's gaze oscillates between me and the gun for a brief second before it cools into a lighter blue-green color. It phases back into digi-storage.

"You want to see the Guardian outfitter?" I say, turning back to the gun. "Okay. Looks like we have some planning to do."