"Why are we here again?" A voice, feminine, mechanical, and heard only by one other being, said.

"Because someone said they noticed some weird Vex activity." Another voice, masculine, and also synthetic sounding, said.

The first sighed. "Fair," she said, "but why are we here alone, then?"

"Because every other Guardian is on the other side of Mercury right now," he said. "Besides, I feel like I can take a few Vex on my own. So long as I keep the 'Taurs out of smack distance."

Guardians. Wielders of light, defenders of humanity, and protectors of the Last Safe City of Earth. Amongst them were the steadfast Titans, the wise Warlocks, and the roguish Hunters, each of which held their duty in their own ways. But right now, where wisdom and sternness might have been most useful, there was none to be found. For this Guardian was a Hunter, and Hunters were known, somewhat stereotypically, to be very gung-ho with how they went about things.

And this Hunter was entirely fine with perpetuating stereotypes.

So onwards he marched through the cave, his Huckleberry out, and Subtle Calamity and Hammerhead ready to come out if he needed them. But the first thing he noted was the lack of Vex present. The signs were there, of course; the repeated cuboid rock structures, the metal rings, the Vex Milk, all told him the Vex were here at one point. And his Ghost had been clear about sensing Vex activity around, and she wasn't often wrong. But he didn't see any Vex units, themselves. Neither Goblins, hob or otherwise, nor Harpies, Minotaurs, Hydras, or any other Vex type.

The Hunter was reasonably confused. "Uh, Ghost, I thought you said-"

"I know what I said!" Ghost said, cutting him off, and coming out into the world. She was a mechanical being, with a shell made from gray and gold triangular figures encompassing an eye-like sphere. "You know how weird the Vex can be with Guardians. They might not be here now, but they'll show up eventually. For now, let's try and find what they were doing here."

Nodding, the Hunter began to search around, while Ghost scanned every construct that looked suspicious to her. Considering this was Vex territory, that meant everything that wasn't made from rock, and some things that were, but the point still stood. For ten minutes, this went on, with not one interruption from the Vex occurring, until they found something.

A pillar of hardlight and physical data came from the ground, next to one of the largest warp gates they had ever seen. Bigger, even, than the ones near where Vance was holed up at. Why no Vex were near this was absurd, yet obviously they were at one point. "Ghost, scan that Conflux, see what's up with this. This seems big, and not just in the literal sense. And, uh, call for backup."

"Already tried to," she responded. "Something's blocking my signal, so I can't get any transmissions out. We could leave this cave, and try again outside it, but we're far from any transmat locations, so it could be a few hours of waiting. But you obviously don't want to wait, do you?"

"No, I don't," he said. "If we leave, the Vex might time warp this thing into the far future, and we'll lose this thing for years."

"I'm not sure if they can do that."

"There's nothing that says they can't." Ghost, admittedly, couldn't argue against that. "We're already in the belly of the beast, so let's kick this hornets' nest." With as close to a nod as a floating mass of geometry can give, Ghost went to the Conflux, and began 'hacking' it, trying to figure out where this gate might lead to.

As if on cue, clouds of smoke and electricity suddenly surrounded them, and dozens of Vex units began to drop from them. Equally as suddenly, the warp gate crackled to life, glowing a purple light at its center. At the first shot, the Hunter rolled out of the way, grabbing his Ghost as he did, breaking her hacking attempt.

"Ghost!" he yelled, pulling out Hammerhead and raining void laced firepower down into the Vex. "Did you figure out anything about this gate?"

"Before you grabbed me?" she said from within him. "Not much, but I do no that it will send us to some random planet in unknown space and time."

The Hunter let out a very (un)manly yelp as several Minotaur came within smack distance. He dodged one, only to be hit by another, reminding himself why he hated specifically these types of Vex. He retaliated as he knew how to best: with a punch of his own, fueled by Arc energy. The 'Taur disintegrated as the lightning ate away at it, something the Hunter couldn't appreciate as he continued running, firing at the Vex as they appeared. And they never stopped appearing, as it seemed for every one he killed, ten more took its place.

"What are the chances of wherever we go being worse than right here?" he said once he was behind cover, now having to reload his machine gun.

"It's pretty likely, actually," Ghost said. "It could drop us into the middle of a Hive Ritual, another Fallen nightclub, or anywhere else, really."

"Those are better odds than I had imagined, then." With that, the Hunter let Arc energy course throughout himself, covering him in a glowing blue light, before he summoned a staff of pure lightning. Then, he ran towards the gate, cutting a swathe through the Vex as he did. He knew that for every strike he performed, was another few seconds he could keep this up, but that mattered little compared to him. He just needed this to get him close to the gate. And once he had, he unhesitantly leapt through, and hoped for the best.

This was not the first time the Hunter had gone through a warp gate. They were littered just about any place that the Vex had ever come to, in both active and inactive states. Usually, going through one was very much like transmatting to and from his ship. Just a sudden shift of where he was to where he will be, with a brief moment of minor blindness and deafness to compensate. Nothing too stressful to think of. This was no different, really.

He was just unused to them taking this long.

Once more, he waited. This, too, he wasn't entirely used to, waiting constantly. He realized it was his impatience that had gotten him into this mess, and alone, no less, but who could blame him? That was all a part of his Hunter charm. Besides, he had asked some of his clanmates to come on this patrol with him, but they all refused, so it wasn't completely his fault. That's what he told himself, at least.

Suddenly, sight and hearing returned to him, and he fell, landing on a patch of green grass. He looked up, both to see what was around him at the moment, and to see if anyone noticed his un-Hunterly pratfall. He saw a clear, grassy field, and no one who could have noticed this. Good on all parts: both he and his ego were safe from attack.

Standing, he dusted himself off, and made sure that his cloak was still intact; intact as it could be, at least. The black and white cloak was old, but it had been there when he had first risen, and though it was tattered, he felt it important to him. "Ghost, where are we?"

A moment of verbal silence followed, as he heard the mechanical sounds of his Ghost at work. "I… don't know. This looks like an Earth forest, but I can't find anything that would say we're actually on Earth. I can't even find other signals to transmit to. Nothing Fallen, Cabal, Vex, not even Hive."

"So Earth, but not Earth," he said. "Alright, this isn't the weirdest thing to happen to us. Is there anything you can find?"

Another brief pause. "Nothing notable, sorry. So, if you want to find something, you'll need to get to exploring. But, you'll have to do it on foot; I can't connect to our ship, which means I can't transmat your Sparrow here."

The Hunter groaned, but didn't say anything in complaint. Instead, he pulled out The Huckleberry, happy that what weapons he had equipped were still with him, and began to head to wherever this place was.

It was an hour of uneventful jogging before he found something. Not a town, sadly, but a person, about to enter a cave. He… She… They (the armor the person was wearing didn't give much idea to gender) looked to be human, something that surprised the Hunter, but wearing what looked like old, medieval armor, and carrying a sword, further evidence that this wasn't his Earth. The Hunter ran up to the person, catching their attention and causing them to turn his way.

"Hey, I got a question for you," he began. "Do you know where the nearest town is from here? I'm kinda lost, here, you see."

The person pointed out, directly away from the cave. "4 miles west." He was curt, and his voice deep even ignoring the reverb from his helmet.

"Thank you… what's your name?"

"Goblin Slayer."

"...Then I'm Hunter, I suppose." Though the other man couldn't see it, Hunter and his Ghost was taken aback by this. Firstly, that was a weird name; seriously, who names their kid something like that? Secondly, this normal looking human could kill Vex? Well enough, at that, to get a title like that? Sure, the goblins weren't the toughest the Vex had to offer, but that was still impressive. "And I'm gonna guess that you're going in there to slay some gobbos, right?"

"Yes," Goblin Slayer said, succinctly.

"Then count me in," Hunter said. "I've got a bit of a bone to pick with them. And don't even try to say no, because I can guarantee I've killed more of them than you have."

Goblin Slayer looked at Hunter silently, then just went to walk into the cave, the Guardian gleefully following him. "So how do you think he does it, Guardian?" Ghost said. "Maybe his sword is special, like Bolt-Caster or Raze-Lighter!"

"If he has one of those swords," he said out loud, not caring that Goblin Slayer could hear him, "I'd be amazed. And a little annoyed, because those took way too long to make. I spend a week forging it, and he just finds one lying around? I call foul." As they went further into the cave, the darker it became, forcing Ghost to come out, lighting the area up. Goblin Slayer, a man they could tell was quite serious with everything he did, wordlessly stared for a second when he looked back and saw her, before looking back ahead.

As they walked, Hunter noted that his radar was tracking quite a few entities, the red blips getting closer by the second, until one was directly behind him. He turned around to fire, but instead of the tall, metal being he was used to, a little green thrall was raising a dagger to stab him. That moment of confusion was all it took for the thing to bring the blade forward. However, though it didn't hit the armor, it couldn't go through the Light barrier that surrounded him. Instead it glanced off of him, and more annoyed him than anything else.

He shot it in the head, killing the creature instantly. He was happy for Huckleberry's somewhat silent firing, and its special perk at seeing the bullet he had just fired be reimbursed. That was gonna be useful until he got enough glimmer to make more ammo, especially considering how little glimmer that kill was able to convert to. When he turned back around, Goblin Slayer was looking back at him. "I'll be fine," he said, walking forwards, Ghost closely behind him. Then he heard a multitude of warbly cries. Apparently The Huckleberry wasn't as silent as he thought. "I alerted more, didn't I? Alright, I got this direction, you get the other."

He had all of two seconds to wait before more Mini-Thralls came running. Then, he pulled the trigger, and began his slaughter, every other kill spawning a small orb of light that coalesced within itself. It was a little like the last firefight he was in, but these were a degree simpler to kill than the Vex. "How're you holding up back there?" he asked, tossing a skip grenade down his side before looking back to see a far larger version of the green things he was shooting coming from that direction. Still firing down his path, knowing he was killing something from his ammo counter refilling, he waited until it got closer. Once it got to where he liked it, he jumped up and punched it in the face, letting Arc energy course through the hit and vaporizing the Cabal wannabe. Then, he went back to shooting, throwing grenades and switching sides whenever he needed to.

The battle, however, didn't last as long as Hunter was secretly hoping it would, as less than two minutes later, no more of the green things were left. He wasn't counting how many kills he got, so he just left it at a lot. "Well then," he said. "Now that that's over, let's go find those Goblins you were looking for!"

"These are goblins." He was soaking a cloth in their blood, now, and began wiping his armor with it.

"No they're not," both Guardian and Ghost said at the same time, ignoring how weird whatever their companion was doing was. Ghost then continued alone. "Goblins are human sized, metal death machines. These are small, green Thralls. I thought your name was Goblin Slayer; how can you not know what a Goblin looks like? These aren't even a type of Vex!"

'Goblin' Slayer silently stared once more at the pair, then continued down through the cave. Hunter still followed him, in hopes of finding some real Goblins to shoot. He had some stress to work out.

The trio did not find any real Goblins, or any more of the 'goblins' within the rest of the cave. They did find somewhat fresh human corpses, which gave credence to the idea that there were no Vex around. The Vex hardly ever cared about humans that weren't Guardians, or otherwise Light-touched. Even then, what they saw was far too messy for how the Vex usually worked. Even further, now that they had left the cave, Hunter realized there were no signs of Vex activity anywhere. Of course, he wasn't going to voice his concerns.

He just waited for Ghost to do that.

"So, what were those things, really?" Ghost asked, right on schedule.

"Goblins."

"Sure," she said. "And what about the big one?"

"A hobgoblin." Goblin Slayer was proving to be a great conversation partner to the both of them.

Before she could get any more annoyed, Hunter stopped her. "Ghost, I think he's being serious."

Her shell twisted in defeat. "I'm starting to realize that. It's just strange to think that there are other things that have the same names as what we know. Though, I feel like the Vex would be insulted to share anything with those things." Hunter nodded at that. Calling those green things 'Goblins' and 'Hobgoblins' felt wrong, but if that's what they were called, he'll just have to get over it. If nothing else, it meant an easier life for him.

"Hey GS," he said. "Where are we going anyway?"

"Frontier Town."

Hunter almost said something about that name. Then he remembered what city he was a defender of, and suddenly felt that he couldn't say much about it. "Lead the way, then." Of course, he had no idea what was ahead of him. All he knew was that he was going to work with whatever was thrown at him, and he was going to come out on top because, or in spite of it. Because he was a Guardian, and to them, there was no such thing as destiny.

Because to be a Guardian, meant to forge your own fate.