06 – Drills

Nix sat cross-legged in a patch of grass on Venus. Various guns were arranged in a circle around her, with Ghost floating over her shoulder. The Cryptarchs had come through, after all the gear she had brought them. For the first time in years, Nix had some new toys to play with.

It had been two days since she gathered the guardians she had chosen. None of them chose to back out. She spent the first day testing their minds, asking them pointed questions about their own Hive experiences, their fears, their strengths, their opinions. She examined their knowledge of the files she had asked them to read on Crota and the impending raid. They had done passably well, but it could have been better. It made Nix anxious. She hoped that after today, they would take things a little more seriously.

They had all faced the Hive before. They had all taken down knights and ogres and wizards. A few of them had been on strikes against Hive leaders, and succeeded. And yet, for all of that, they had little to say in the way of suggestions. Nix wanted them to start thinking about battle strategies now, get backup plans in their heads early so that when the time came and everything went to shit, they wouldn't be left flat-footed and dead. They seemed reluctant. She got the feeling that they had read up on her. She couldn't tell if their reluctance was due to a respect for her, or a lack of it.

Today was going to be a new type of exercise. Teamwork in the field, in a way that had nothing to do with the Hive at all. She got Shaxx to make up a rumble match for them, on Shores of Time. She wanted to see how they could fight when faced with the enemy in all directions. She wanted to see how they handled fighting the unknown – namely, herself.

While many guardians were limited to wielding only one style of light at a time, Nix had perfected the art of switching on the fly. It wasn't uncommon to see her using Blink Strike right after placing a tripmine, or throwing solar-charged knives after coming out of a bout of invisibility. It was mainly because of this that she had done so well in the crucible in the past, and partially why she had been appointed the lead of Fireteam Ra. She could improvise for any given situation, and it made her dangerous. For the darkness, and for the enemy team.

Nix brushed her fingers over the hilt of a scout rifle Cayde had had the Cryptarchs give her. The MIDA Multi-Tool. It was smaller than her Jade Rabbit, but she liked that. The Rabbit could get unwieldy in the field, especially during close combat. That had always forced her to carry a shotgun as a back-up, but with this she felt she could afford the luxury of a sniper or a sidearm, maybe even a fusion rifle if she was feeling brave.

Nix picked up the MIDA, deliberated between a shotgun and a sidearm the Awoken had given her, before picking up the sidearm and putting it in her hip holster. With that she strapped on a new machine gun, a Ruin Wake with stability buffs, and told her Ghost to put the rest of the guns away. The others would be here soon. Nix stretched, rolling her shoulders and ankles, bending her knees, cracking her knuckles. She held the MIDA up experimentally, learning the weight of it, examining the sights, bringing it down and then up and then down again, letting her muscles become familiar with the shorter gun. She had used the Rabbit for so long that this new weapon felt alien in her hands. She readied and lowered it a few more times before jogging up the hill to the arena, letting her muscles warm up a little.

Nix's anxiety spiked when she reached the stone silo that marked the center of the arena. The others were already there, waiting. She slowed to a walk and clipped the scout rifle to her back. She had stopped playing crucible after the Ra incident, because of how unstable she had become when it happened. She had enough guardian's blood on her hands without gunning more down in the crucible for sport. Ghost spun around her head, looking at the other guardians, all staring at her.

"A fine day to die, isn't it?" Ghost quipped, his shell spinning. Nix gave him a side-eyed glare. He spun away from her.

"What are we doing out here? Shouldn't we be training on the Moon? Or Earth? There are no Hive on Venus." The male human titan, Jack, had his arms crossed as he spoke. The others seemed to be wondering the same thing.

"I want to see how you-all fight when you're outnumbered. I want to see you think on your feet. The Hive, while formidable in numbers, are not as intelligent as I hope you guys are. I'll learn more about your fighting style by watching you fight people of your own caliber. It's just a good ol' fashioned Rumble match, sanctioned by Shaxx." Jack snorted, looking at Nix derisively.

"And let me guess, you're just going to be sitting on the sidelines, having a cold drink and catching up with Shaxx while we run around down here?" Nix's eyes narrowed.

"On the contrary, I'll be down here fighting as well. It's only fair that you guys get to see me fight too, so you know how to work with me as a team later. We all have a role to fill. This is a chance to learn what those roles are." Nix forced her arms to stay loose at her sides. Keeping her mouth in an impassive line.

"But won't it be embarrassing, having the people you're supposed to be leading kick your ass? You've been gone a while after all, pretty out of touch with reality." Jack was trying to antagonize her. He clearly had his own opinions about her little "vacation". The female titan at his side elbowed him, giving him a sharp look. Nix laughed, sneering at the group around her.

"Oh, you poor, poor, delusional children. I'll make you a bet. Whichever one of you kills me first, gets to lead all the exercises until we leave for the raid…" Nix's helmet materialized in her right hand, "however…if none of you manage to kill me, I'll work you like the pitiful excuses for guardians you truly are. Sound good?" Nix's grin stretched across her face as she saw her insults take light in the eyes of the others, their faces turning to scowls and glares. She slipped her helmet on, making sure it fit tightly, and felt Ghost materialize into her armor. She could sense his disapproval for what she said, but she wasn't too concerned. If they weren't going to give her respect the easy way, she was going to have to wrench it from their cold, dead fingers.

Shaxx's voice came over the comms, instructing Ghosts to scatter their guardians so that the match could begin. Soon Nix felt her body go numb as her Ghost moved her to a far corner of the map. Shaxx sounded a little more animated as he announced the game type and the objective. As soon as Nix's body re-materialized she crouched and snuck forward, waiting until her invisibility kicked in to really get moving.

The match started; Nix vanished from sight, and all of the guardians began sprinting forward to the middle. Nix jogged forward, keeping her back to the rock walls, rifle at the ready. It wasn't long before she heard gunshots and a grenade go off. From the tunnels she could see three guardians taking shots at each other. Jack and both warlocks were trading shots and ducking behind cover. Nix crouched, knowing her invisibility was about to run out, and put her back against the wall. She wouldn't get sniped from behind in this position. She readied the MIDA, and decided Jack would be the first to go.

Three rapid shots later, his body dropped and his ghost appeared. Nix could feel her own Ghost get smug as she took aim at the closest warlock and dropped him too. The two had weakened each other; it made taking them down too easy. The third warlock, the female, had already slipped away. A blip on Nix's radar, to her back right, had her up and sprinting away to the stone structure at the back of the map. She blinked the last few feet, landing inside just in time to hear a shot ricochet off the wall behind her. A heavy round, probably a sniper. Too close for comfort, she decided. She knew she wouldn't be going back that way without getting her head blown off.

Nix pulled out her sidearm, crouched behind a stone pillar in the middle of the room, and waited. It was less than a minute before the blip reappeared on her radar, coming up from the right where the sniper had shot from. He was coming in after her, lured in by the idea of leading the team himself. Nix had crouched long enough to bring her invisibility back up. Good timing. When the blip lit up a bigger chunk of her radar, she counted to five before sliding out from behind cover and slamming the trigger of her gun. 6 rapid shots later, and the hunter dropped before her, his hand cannon clattering on the ground before his ghost appeared. Nix smirked, pulled the MIDA back out, and headed outside to the left.

She jogged up the left side of the map, rifle half-raised. She used triple jump to get over the gap from grass to the raised stone platform, back where she had initially spawned, she circuited the wall, jumping on the rocky outcropping hanging alone in the air, before jumping back onto the stone platform from behind. A blip on her radar told her there were others nearby, probably in the short stone tunnel system in front of her.

"You think they'll hate you after this?" Her Ghost asked inside of her head.

"I think they'll know their place, after this." Nix's mind was calm, eerily so, the way it always got when she set herself to fighting.

A warlock used blink to jump out of the tunnel. Nix had just enough time to see a shotgun shining in her hands before the warlock blinked again.

Nix blinked forward, causing the warlock's second blink to send her too far behind Nix to be in range, even for her Conspiracy Theory-D, and now she had to wait for her blink to recharge. Nix whirled and threw a knife, which hit squarely in the warlock's chest, causing her armor to glow gold as the solar damage set in. The warlock lunged forward to try and melee, but Nix blinked back a second time and finished her off with the sidearm.

When Nix landed, she scanned the map for a special ammo crate. She would be out of it soon. But no time to figure it out, as a blip appeared suddenly on her radar. 12 rounds left in the gun, enough to finish off one person assuming nothing went wrong. But Nix decided not to take the chance. She turned to run off to the side, get some distance, but as she did a series of bullets embedded themselves in her right shoulder. The female titan had jumped on to the overhanging stone platform, pulse rifle raised. Nix threw a tripmine in the doorway and blinked backwards. It would keep the titan from following her long enough to get some health back.

Nix landed in the grass off the side of the platform and bolted towards the stone silo. She got out her scout rifle and prepared to do some long distance shots. She heard the gunfight behind her as the female titan met whoever had been in the tunnel. Nix crouched, watched out the silo's exit that faced the stone structure in the back of the map, and kept an eye on her radar. She waited a few moments until the male warlock sprinted out of the tunnels to her right. Nix took aim, got off two shots, but the Warlock tossed a grenade and Nix was forced back to avoid getting burned to death. But moving backwards put her back on the radar to face whoever had won the fight behind her. The male titan, Jack, sprinted towards her. Nix knew what was coming.

Nix blinked upward just as Jack moved to shoulder charge her. Her timing was good, she had avoided the deadly melee, but now she was forced into close combat with a titan and a shotgun. She knew what her odds were here.

The male warlock ended up being her saving grace, however, as he took potshots at Jack from outside the silo, just trying to get a kill. He did enough damage with his scout rifle that Nix was able to blink strike Jack from behind, giving her invisibility again, enough for her to turn and take a few shots at the warlock to discourage him from following immediately as she turned and ducked out the side of the silo.

Nix's shields hummed as they restored themselves. Nix ran out of the mouth of the tunnel to grab the special ammo crate that had spawned there, before ducking back in and taking the opportunity to refill the clip of her sidearm. When that was done, she headed back towards the stone platform where she heard more gunfire. It was time to teach a lesson in teamwork.

Sure enough, the female warlock and the female titan were dancing around each other outside the stone tunnels, while the hunter readied his sniper from a pillar in the back. Nix pulled out the MIDA and shot at the sniper from the hanging platform, surprising him and making him jump down, but not fast enough. He was dead before he hit the ground. She pulled out her sidearm then, used triple jump to bridge the gap from stone to grass, and then blinked into the center of the fight. The warlock was nearly dead, her health deep in the red on Nix's helmet display. Nix threw her knife before the warlock could melee her, then turned to shove another knife deep in the titans neck. Blood gurgled out before her body fell.

Nix flicked her fingers, getting some of the blood off, before waving at the two guardians' ghosts and jumping back on the platform.

"Ghost? Get out my shotgun, transfer the ammo from my sidearm to it. Things are about to get nasty, and I can't afford to play around anymore."

"I can only make enough ammo for 6 rounds, will that be enough?"

"Good enough. Do it." Nix felt her sidearm disintegrate off of her hip, replaced by the weight of her shotgun in the middle of her back. She pulled it out and checked to make sure it was loaded. With a slight nod, she replaced it and moved to the back of the map, standing on top of a crashed fallen ship that had long since been absorbed in to Venus's aggressive landscape. She crouched and waited. Her super, a golden gun, was ready. After a few moments her invisibility kicked in.

Right on cue, she saw a titan run out from the stone tunnels onto the platform as Shaxx announced heavy ammo. The male hunter sniped him down from the rock tunnels across the map, though. He sprinted forward then, Nix watched, and saw one of the warlock's appear on the scene. Nix aimed her scout rifle and started shooting. From this distance, their pulse and auto rifles could not compete. She took the hunter down first, having more fear for his sniper than for the warlock's shotgun. The warlock heard her gunshots and ducked around a wall. Nix decided to take the risk and started triple jumping forward. She landed where the heavy ammo would spawn, checked her radar, then grabbed her shotgun and blinked forward and then again to the side. She practically landed on top of the crouched warlock. She pulled the trigger of her shotgun on his head.

The heavy ammo spawned and she sprinted and slid into it, hearing the sound of a bullet whiz past. The goddamn sniper was back. She grabbed the ammo and blinked to the rocky outcropping between herself and the hanging platform. The sniper hit her in the leg though, bringing down her shields and sending her health into the red. She frantically loaded her machine gun, crouched, waiting for her health and shields to come back.

She winced a little as she landed on her wounded leg when she hit the platform, but she started healing then so she quickly forgot the pain. She didn't have any blips on her radar. It seemed the sniper had learned his lesson the first time, and didn't have any desire to face her in close combat. From the back of her map she heard a loud explosion. A rocket launcher, it seemed. Nix sighed, knowing if the launcher had tracking she would be hard-pressed to beat it with her machine gun. If she saw him, she would have to use her super.

Nix jumped back to the grass across the gap and moved carefully. She knew she would have to see the rocket launcher first if she had any hope of beating him. She saw someone run out of the stone structure, the male warlock, the victim of the rocket launcher. She pitied him slightly as she riddled him with holes. Bad luck for him, running into heavy twice. Nix ran into the stone structure, peaked out the other exit, and saw nothing. She checked the entrance of the stone tunnels and the rocky tunnels. She heard another explosion and saw another name pop up on her kill feed. Rocket launcher would be out of shots soon, she figured. He had run back to the fallen ship. Nix looked around once more before sprinting for the tunnels.

She crouched when she got inside, letting her invisibility kick in. When she vanished she stepped out. There, waiting on the hanging stone platform, stood Jack with the rocket launcher. He was jumping up and down, appearing to try and get a good shot at someone else. Nix saw another person spawn back by the fallen ship. It was the female warlock. She blinked forward, towards the stone platform. Now or never, Nix decided.

With her invisibility running out, she sprinted forward, closing the distance quickly. 10 feet from the stone slabs she became visible again. As she did, she pulled her golden gun. Jack heard it go off and turned, just in time to eat a solar bullet. The female warlock desperately tried to blink shotgun Nix, but she jumped up and gunned her down too. With only one bullet left, Nix ran to the hanging platform and jumped the gap. There, across the map, the female titan was running out of the stone structure. She pulled the trigger and watched her explode in a solar flare. With her super gone, Nix pulled her machine gun back out. She was the only one with heavy now, and she still had a clip and a half left. They would all fear her before this match was over.

Nix leaned against a stone wall, sunlight bouncing off of her scuffed armor and the rifle in her hands. Not a bad gun, after all. Ghost floated idly around her, examining cracks in the wall, shooting his one-eyed glances back at her on occasion. Her first crucible match in years, and she didn't suffer a psychotic break. That was an improvement.

"We have a lot of work to do." Ghost floated back to his guardian, coming up to eye-level.

"You've got that right." Nix looked at the sky, at the light slowly fading as the Sun sank below the horizon. "But they have guts, and they figured out the secret in the end. That's promising."

She pushed off the wall and stood straight as Shaxx approached. The guardians, Nix's charges, straggled behind, talking to each other, gesturing wildly. At the end of the match, they had gotten smart and made a peace treaty with each other, to try and team up to take Nix out. But she had expected it when things got a little too quiet. When you're in a Rumble match and suddenly hear nothing but silence, you know you're in trouble. But after all the heavy kills she had gotten, her super had almost recharged. This time, she used arc blade. She had crouched and waited behind the fallen ship, her shotgun loaded and ready, letting her super finish filling up.

As expected, they rushed her. With so many shotguns and melees, they figured she wouldn't have a way out. Nix waited until they were almost on top of her, pulled her arc blade, and went to town. The hunter sniper had stayed away, as a back-up, but Nix was moving too fast for him to get the shot without accidentally hitting one of the others. They got a melee and a shotgun off, but every kill Nix got just regenerated her health. They couldn't kill her before she took all four of them down. Sniper shots had ricocheted around her but only nicked her. Nix turned with the MIDA, dodged and rolled and blinked around, taking shots between every movement, until even the sniper fell.

With that, Shaxx had called the match. And now they all came up the hill towards her, their ghosts, floating listlessly behind as they argued amongst themselves about who had screwed who over. Nix sighed. They still left a lot to be desired in the teamwork department, but the fact that they had made the effort at all made Nix feel a little better.

Shaxx mounted the hill and clapped Nix on the shoulder, making her wobble. She couldn't decide if he just wasn't aware of his own strength, or if he was and he just liked making people shake a little.

"Welcome back to the crucible, Necryptonix!" His voice boomed, drowning out the petty arguments behind him. Nix shook her head.

"Don't get your hopes up, Shaxx. This is for their sake, not mine." Nix rolled the shoulder he had hit, noting it was a little sore. She had rolled wrong at the end of the match, avoiding those sniper shots.

Nix leaned over a little, peering behind Shaxx at the guardians. Jack was arguing with the female titan, Alice. He apparently thought she had bumped him and made him miss his shot. The male warlock, Faust-19, blamed the hunter for not taking his shots sooner. The male hunter, Talis, blamed Faust-19 for blocking his shot. The female warlock, Caslin, argued with no one, standing off to the side, looking awkward and uneasy. She had scored the lowest of them all with only three kills. Nix met her eyes, Caslin's quickly bouncing away again. Nix sighed, smiling exhaustedly. The whole situation made her so tired.

"I'm starting to understand why you said it was a stupid idea, when you chose this group." Ghost seemed to be cringing a little as he watched the bickering escalate. Shaxx had turned to watch the spectacle as well, and Nix could almost feel him grimacing at the group.

"I think I'll leave you to work them over, Nix. Let me know if you need anything. I look forward to your return to the arena." Shaxx clapped her shoulder again, lighter this time, and walked away a few steps before his Ghost transmat'd them both to his ship. Nix watched the group bicker for a few more moments, before taking a step forward. Ghost hung back, watching, analyzing.

"Guardians!" Nothing. Barely a glance in her direction. Nix glared.

"Guardians, ENOUGH." Nix's voice bounced of the rock walls in the back of the map. It was enough to get the others to shut up, finally.

"Now listen up. Since none of you managed to put me down, I'm going to be working you a lot harder than I had initially planned. Frankly, you all disappointed me. What's the Vanguard teaching guardians these days, anyway? To just run straight at the enemy and hope you're faster? Ridiculous." Nix sneered, her eyes narrowed to slits. "Faust-19, you couldn't have done any better than Talis did with that sniper. The sad fact is that he just couldn't get a good shot without me blinking away or getting crowded in by the rest of you. Talis, it's Rumble, you should have taken the shot whether or not they were in your way. If nothing else, it would have bettered your score anyway. Jack," he crossed his arms at her, "Alice didn't get in your way, you were just too slow to make your shot before I got you. And Alice, you shouldn't have rushed ahead of everyone else. This was a group effort, it shouldn't have become a suicide mission." Finally Nix, looked at Caslin, who stared at the ground.

"The only person who didn't disappoint me today is Caslin. She made her own mistakes, and hasn't tried blaming them on anyone else. She knows exactly what she did wrong, don't you?" Nix cocked her head at Caslin.

Caslin nodded, still refusing to meet Nix's eyes.

"Instead of convincing yourselves that you're all perfect and everyone else just ruins it for you, realize you all made mistakes today, and you have a lot of work to do before you're even half as good as you think you are." Nix gestured for Ghost to move forward, which he did a little reluctantly.

"Ghost, please transfer the recording of the match to their ghosts. I want you all to watch them today. This evening, we'll meet up again and I want you to tell me exactly what each of you did wrong. I only want to hear you speaking about yourselves. If anyone else's name comes out of your mouth, I'll have you running drills till you become a cryptarchy curio." With that, Nix put her helmet back on and gestured upwards, the signal for her Ghost to transmat them to the ship.

A few seconds later, Nix was strapping herself in.

"Well that went horribly." Ghost set the ship into auto-pilot, heading for the tower.

"Are you really surprised though? Put a bunch of guardians in a rumble match, each of them thinking they're the shit, and something like this is bound to happen." Nix rolled her shoulder again, making sure it had finished healing.

"I had just hoped you would choose guardians with less…volatile personalities." He hovered around to face her. Nix snorted and leaned her head on her fist.

"Would anything less be able to handle the raid?"

"Or you?" Ghost spun away as Nix reached out to smack him.

"I should like to think that the urgency of our purpose is bigger than our egotistical bickering. We're saving lives here, after all. They'll pull it together, when the time comes." Nix leaned back into her seat, crossing her arms and staring out the windows.

Ghost stayed silent, thinking. His guardian had always been hard to read, but after a few years he liked to think he was better at it than most. But now, he couldn't tell if Nix actually believed in the others or if she was just hoping to go out in a blaze of glory…when the time came.

Nix watched the blur of the stars whizzing past, but she could see they were approaching Earth. She thought about what Cayde said, about her just using the stars as an excuse to give up, and she wondered.