orendalogs | IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

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IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

Who: Anyone, everyone? Aoba and Declan to start.
What: Destiny
When: After the House of Wolves, before The Taken King.
Where: Earth, The Last City, The Tower and beyond.
Warnings: Could be sorta zombie stuff (Hive), could be xenophilia? I dunno. Gen warnings, yo.

Earth. 700 years into the future, humanity is all but gone, huddled in a massive city in the mountains, surrounded by gargantuan walls and living in the shadow of the slumbering, perhaps dead, body of The Traveler. The massive being of benevolence and light that came to Earth bearing gifts of knowledge that would bring about the longest Golden Age in Terran history, hovering in geostationary orbit over The Last City of men, protecting what is left from The Darkness beyond with the remains of it's Light.

For those on Earth it is a well-known story. With The Traveler's dying breath it created Ghosts, fragments of living Light that in turn resurrected men and women across the galaxy, bringing to bear the Guardians, warriors to fight the Darkness. Earth and all the nearby planets are populated by humans, the Awoken, Exos and a variety of species of ever more distant origins, some less generous than others. The Guardians make their headquarters in a colossal spire at the edge of The Last City. There, in the Tower, the Vanguard and other factions of humanity work together to hold the line and fight the Darkness and every other threat to the known universe. The little understood Guardians rarely venture beyond the Tower, preferring the company of their brothers and sisters in arms, but all look to the Tower as a beacon of hope.

There is danger and adventure to be had; the likelihood of death and the possibility of rebirth. The future is uncertain, but all who walk in the Light know the Darkness is coming, and the wise life to the fullest.

[ Destiny Wiki ]

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“A majestic cockatoo,” Desire agreed in good humor, having honestly enjoyed the bit of a show he’d been given. It was a telling thing, however, that despite the aesthetic enjoyment, he didn’t really want to do anything with it. Instead he thought of Declan, pale and bare-chested and statuesque, and remained very well aware of what he really wanted.

It wasn’t as if he’d thrown Aoba at every opportunity that had come their way, back in their Sly Blue days when Reason had listened to him so much more, so the disinterest in itself wasn’t out of character. The difference was how someone else immediately came to mind as a comparison. Now that was something that had never happened before.

“And he,” he added with a brief point towards Ren and an ill-concealed smirk, “is a real Allmate. On the outside, anyway. On the inside he’s a mashup of tech from both our eras and some other things. Basically our own fluffy little ghost, right, pup?”

Ren looked over with the driest look a dog could give before turning his attention up to Mac. “My name is Ren,” he intoned with a brief wag of his tail. “On behalf of all of us, thank you for your hospitality, Macklemore.”

"I think I remember reading something about Allmates once..." Mac murmured to himself, crouching down and holding his fist out in fist-bump fashion, waiting for Ren to (hopefully) accept and paw pap him in return.

"You're totally welcome lil dude. Both of you are, any time. My home is yours, just don't break anything. And feel free to go to town on any snacks I have around. I know there's dried fruit and jerky in my bedroom," he thumbed over his shoulder as he stood, arching a wry brow at Aoba.

"I prefer majestic swan, but you're a guest for now so I'll let you be bratty free of charge. Ugh, so rude. No respect," the Warlock muttered, padding across the floor and peering down at the console nearest his Ghost.

"We are arriving now. I am in communications with the station and we'll dock in ten minutes," his grumbling companion offered, mollifying the eager Guardian.

"Hey Aoba, you wanna watch from the ship or from the stands? I know my Ghost can get all the camera points up here and you can look down on the whole track, but they have pretty good food down there and you can watch the carnage up close. Your call. If I win you can even come kiss me. I won't tell."

Ren studied that fist for a couple moments, but Mac was rewarded. A little paw came up and papped his fist, indeed, complete with a longer-lasting tail wag.

‘Swan’ was surprising, and not the bird one might have expected to be demanded instead—peacock, maybe—but although Desire had to laugh to himself, he somehow (probably through Reason) refrained from counter-suggesting ‘turkey’, as Declan’s original comparison had been.

As for kiss and tell….

“Maybe you won’t, but maybe I will,” he countered with a grin, wondering if he might finally see some of Declan’s apparently-notorious-but-as-of-yet-unwitnessed anger if he did. But it only took a moment of thought to rule out that scenario. Declan thought he was out of the running, and so would probably take anything that looked like Aoba showing interest in Mac as Aoba showing actual interest in Mac and back off all the harder.

Desire did have to wonder if Mac had some level of less-platonic interest in his cousin, though, to be both so invested in his potential romance in all apparent aspects.

“I’ll come down to watch,” he answered the actual question, before jumping without preamble to a curious and only half-accusing, “You looking for a part-time threesome or something?”

(Reason almost wrenched back control for that one.)

"Threesome? With wh--oh. HA! Haha, yeah, no. Declan is a huge weenie, to me. 100% not my taste, personality wise. I mean I love the guy, don't get me wrong, but it's all familial. Not to say physically he's not great. I mean, you'd have to be an idiot not to gawk at a guy built like him. He makes me look like a noodle, and I'm nothing to scoff at," Mac thumbed at himself, shaking his head.

"Nah, I'm just fooling around. Don't take half of what I say too seriously. I mean yeah if you were totally on the shelf I'd probably chill with you as friends; get drunk and fool around kinda stuff. But I'm pretty on the level, mostly. I don't actually wanna get in the way of you and Big D. If I was gonna have a threesome, it'd be with the Sovs. Also the only scenario in which I could see myself hooking up with a woman. I bet she's some crazy ass dominatrix shit. I can get behind that," Mac nodded slowly, lips pursed in consideration.

Desire didn’t delve, but he believed him. Call that why his reaction to that answer was to laugh again, briefly but without mocking, nodding several times in place of ‘okay, okay, I get it’. Something about the way the Warlock presented himself didn’t all add up, not with all the bodice-rippers he had lying around, but he seemed fairly benign all things considered.

Also, he was a Guardian. And that seemed to be the universe’s—or at least the Traveler’s—way of casting a vote for you as ‘not the biggest asshole ever’.

“When I met the Sovs earlier, the Queen asked me back for some kind of one-on-one. I’ll put in a good word for you while I’m there,” he teased.

He considered for a moment, a finger tapping on his racing helmet as he stared at and through Aoba, doubtless visualizing the man talking to the queen, his name coming up in conversation. Being dismissed or unrecognized. He sighed and smiled, shrugging with a shake of his head.

"Nah, you're supposed to talk about yourself and your adventures and all with her, I'm sure. Plus, a real man speaks for himself! I need no introduction!" the Warlock laughed loudly, striking a pose. In reality, he didn't want Aoba going in and finding out the Sovs didn't know him from any other Guardian. Unless they had restraining orders.

"You want to see her while Declan is out or wait til he's back?"

Desire shrugged, closing Blackest Knight and reaching over to put it back in the spot where he’d found it. Not that he had any issues with girls, given that he’d actually done a few before in contrast to no dudes, but it was Declan on his mind. His curiosity in the book’s raunchy scenes flitted away as indifferently as it had popped up in the first place.

It was the whole of Aoba that considered the question, even if Desire was still the one shrugging lightly a few moments later.

“She only asked for alone, and before I left the Reef. Let’s hope that only meant left ‘permanently’, since you just kidnapped me off for this race and all. But I imagine my ‘overall morale’ will be better once the big guy comes home and we do some air-clearing, though, so I’ll probably wait ‘til after.”

"Ah, haha. I uh, wasn't aware of the stipulation, but noted. I'll be sure to get you back under the radar just in case. I'm sure we would have been contacted by now if it were an issue. Anyways, you're a guest, not a prisoner, so I'm sure it's fine." Not really sure at all, but it was fine. Totally fine.

"Arriving. Are you loading out the Ravensteel?" Mac's Ghost asked, turning to look at the small group as the Warlock pulled his helmet on.

"You know it. Might not be as fancy as Declan's shiny bullshit, but the Ravensteel is fast as hell with a powerful rocket boost."

"Prone to exploding if boosted for too long, let's not forget." The Ghost made some small sound of irritation, Mac's mirrored helmet turning in his direction, a bird flipped shortly after.

"Man, shut up. It's the best for racing if you're not an idiot."

"Precisely."

"You hear this guy? He's got jokes," Mac grumbled, pacing towards the doorway leading to the cargo bay. "Come on guys, let's find you a good vantage point on the cliffs."

Mac walked off his ship and into crowds of people gathered all around, dozens of Guardians tuning Sparrows all around a big cleared fields. There were banners and bleachers, announcer booths in short towers, the smells of various foods, and the roar of engines. Distantly, energy weapons went off, and the occasional pop and boom of an exploding Sparrow could be heard.

They moved through the people until Mac pointed out a good spot and excused himself to head over to the lineups. He was talked to and inspected, then gestured along. Eventually it was his turn to race, and he waved up at Aoba before puttering into the pit.

The races were indeed extraordinarily dangerous, the track filled with various perils including hostile forces there simply to attack the Guardians while they were 'distracted'. Mac was in the top three time and again, winning number 1 more than once, proving himself not to be all talk. He boasted a lot, but it seemed he had good reason to. He was reckless, absolutely, but his wild stunts and complete lack of concern put him ahead of the game. He was a showman, too, and people cheered wildly when he came up on the big screen near the announcer tower, usually as a review of a particularly dangerous stunt.

It was a couple hours, but Mac eventually walked away the champion, and without any deaths. There were a lot of extremely close calls, particularly in regards to him setting his Sparrow on fire from taking hits, crashing on sharp turns, and overdoing it on the boosts, but he didn't die, and when he walked his Sparrow back over to Aoba, he was sweaty, scuffed, a little bloody, and smiling ear to ear.

"DID YOU SEE ME?!" the Warlock shouted excitedly, breath still heaving from hours of exertion. "WAS I NOT AWESOME!? I WAS AWESOME!"

Rhyme it was not, but Desire was thrilled by the energy of the crowd around him almost as much as he was the racing itself. High excitement, high tension, and noise. He wasn’t anywhere near on that level as far as volume went, more often just quiet and grinning with an occasional pleased laugh whenever Mac or another of the riders pulled off a stunt. Just watching wasn’t nearly as much fun as he imagined zooming around on one of those crotchrockets had to be, but to him, it was the most exciting thing he’d witnessed the whole time they’d been in this ‘verse.

Reason, predictably, found the whole thing to be needlessly reckless and even frightening to watch. The one small relief he had was when the races were over and Mac hadn’t come to harm. Seeing as he didn’t share in the exhilaration that his other half and their host felt, he remained in the background yet again, giving Desire yet another extended time at the front of their consciousness, enjoying the world around them in full.

Mac sounded like a goddamn kid when he returned, but Desire’s laughter at his crowing was still pretty pleased with him. The Warlock had enjoyed himself and come out on top. Nothing to critique him for there.

“Yeah, yeah, I saw you,” Desire agreed, a little too much teeth in his grin. He felt antsy, like on the edge of being worked up and wanting to do something with it, but all he had available to him was to thump a fist on Mac’s shoulder. “That looks like a hell of a time out there. I’m actually jealous!”

"Oh man, yeah, you should be! Haha! It's literally the best feeling. I can't wait until it's open on Io or Saturn or somewhere else. I've gotten so used to the current tracks it's only a challenge because of the other racers and the enemies. But man, what a rush. Phew. Not a lot that makes me appreciate being alive, but racing definitely gets me there at least a little," he laughed, pausing a moment, then laughing again a little less animatedly. He had his problems too. Unfortunately, there was evidently no therapy resource in place for Guardians.

Aside from endangering themselves as a release.

"Phew. I'm beat, though. I'm gonna catch a shower and get changed, then we can head back to the Reef. Oh, you know, you should call Declan before he calls you. I bet his big ass would be tickled."

“Oh come on, he’s only been gone a few hours. He’s probably barely even started whatever it is he agreed to do and I’m not that needy,” Desire snorted, but by the way he rolled his gaze off to the side, he was at least considering doing it anyway. He was maybe a little better than Mac at being subtle, but even if he was, it wasn’t by much.

Helped that Reason had a few thoughts on the matter too, of course.

“Oi, pup,” he eventually addressed Ren, who had remained in the satchel all the while for safety’s sake, given the chaos of the crowd. When pointed little ears flicked his way, he asked, “You’ve been taking pictures and vids the way you do, right?”

“I have.”

“Pick out some with me in them and send them off to the big guy, update style.”

“Understood.”

There. And if Declan called him in response after he received them, well then, it wasn’t like Aoba was going to ignore the call, now, was he?

Mac snorted a soft laugh and rolled his Sparrow into cargo, letting his Ghost handle the rest, disappearing into the ship to tuck himself in for a quick rinse in the shower.

Declan didn't call, but he received the files and sent some quick ones of his own, himself crouched down behind a big marble block, rifle in hand, a glowing shield up around him, and one hand holding a thumb's up. Very busy, very much in a dangerous spot, but just fine and very pleased. Ghost returned a message of 'Everything is alright, Declan says he'll call you this evening before he heads back' and left it at that. By the time the correspondence was complete, Mac was wandering back out in fresh Warlock robes and combing his hair up into it's signature puff.

"What's he doin' do you know? He said he needs to go to Venus. We could fly around and see about joining him. I don't mind helping on his bounty mission or whatever if you're alright staying on the ship. He didn't specifically say we couldn't..."

Aoba found his selves consistent in the fact that neither one of him much liked those return images, though the reasons between them were similar and different alike. When Mac returned it was to a faint but nevertheless still golden-eyed scowl, frowning at Ren’s holographic displays of images that most definitely showed the Titan in the middle of combat.

What had happened to going places with him and carrying extra weapons? He’d never even given them firing or handling lessons. Aoba had apparently succeeded in balking so much that Declan had managed to bypass them entirely after all, and now he was putting his neck on the line all on his own again.

Desire thought of the old instincts, the old urges, that watching the races had gotten all riled up. He wasn’t helpless. Aoba wasn’t even aware of how very not helpless he was. Not immortal, not trained in wielding arms, but not helpless. And planets didn’t seem so big anymore. They were here watching races while Declan was off on a deadly scavenger hunt? What the hell was fair about that?

He eyed Mac briefly. Stay on the ship, was it? Well, he could say that and all, but there was another thing Desire had already tested and was confident of. Being a Guardian hadn’t protected Declan from Aoba’s powers, minor though the use of them had been. Presumably, Mac would be no different.

“He’s off having fun without us,” Desire answered, giving the holograms little taps to turn them Mac’s direction. “So. Just a little while ago you told me to tell him when I want to do more for myself. You got suggestions on just how I’m supposed to do that when nobody lets me near the fighting?”

"I mean...if it were up to me, I'd let you do what you want. I'd worry, of course, but you're your own person and you've got the right to choose, even if the choice is stupid," the Warlock remarked, not at all afraid to cock-up.

"Declan isn't like me. He actually tries to stay alive. Has some sort of weird private math in his head. One of his deaths might mean dozens of other deaths, or something. Me, I see it like...I die dozens of times, it means absolutely nothing one way or the other. I just come back, get up, dust myself off, try again. then again, I'm a Warlock, not a Titan. I'm no giant wall protecting people, I'm just a damage dealer. I can blow things up like you wouldn't believe, but at the end of the day, unless I kill the bad guy before he kills you, I'm not doing much in the way of saving people in the immediate vicinity, you get me?" A shrug, Mac tossing himself into the pilot's chair and spinning around slowly, eyeing Aoba on his rotations.

"He probably thinks you're squishy and killable and that he'll mess up and not protect you, or that you'll distract him and he'll end up in a pinch or something. I don't know, I'm not psychic. I do know I don't wanna be responsible if something happens to you. You may never have seen Declan go off, but when he does, it's pretty scary. I don't want to be on the wrong end of his fist. I have seen him literally punch a person's head off. Just BOOF, pink mist. It. Was. Horrifying. And he wasn't even mad at the time. Just out of ammunition!" He shuddered and grimaced, shaking his head and holding up both hands.

"We can both go looking for him, but I mean...Are you even trained with a gun?"

“Guns, no,” Desire admitted. Aoba was either a terrible liar, or he just wasn’t one, so he stuck with the truth. “Street fights, yes. Killed some people, yes.”

Predictably, Reason lost it. What are you talking about, that’s a lie! and other things on those lines, though he could tell as much as Desire already knew: it wasn’t a lie. He didn’t know what the actual truth was, but it was there, simmering, the same as the agitation that had risen up in Desire with the watching of the violent Sparrow-racing. Something that wanted to chase that adrenaline edge of near-death, and had, somewhere where Aoba couldn’t fully remember.

Desire shoved him back anyway, for the first time actively maintaining his grip on the forefront of their consciousness. He put a hand down on Ren too, silencing another protest from the Allmate’s end by forcing him into sleep mode. To his other self, he said, I’m not explaining it to you right now. But that fancy little trick you do on the phone taking orders for the junk shop? You can do a lot more than that.

“I want to go looking,” he said aloud to Mac. “Feel free to say ‘no’. It’ll let me test out the other thing I can do.”

"I'm not gonna say no. Like I said, your life, man. I want you and Declan happy together, but that doesn't mean forcing you into a bubble," Mac shrugged, turning around and tapping a few controls.

"Triangulate on Declan's Ghost," the Warlock ordered his own Ghost, who bobbed in a small nod. Before long they were scooting along in the clouds, out of reach of any weapons but low enough to get the gist of the landscape.

"Does Big D know? He seems to think you're generally a pacifist."

“He doesn’t know this side of me as well as he does the rest,” Desire answered, leaning against the back of Mac’s seat as he watched the planet whip by below. To think it hadn’t been all that long since they’d been touring Venus on foot. Taken off to the Reef just to be brought back to it, except he’d been watching races while Declan was searching for mysteries.

“So, no,” he said more plainly. “He doesn’t know. Showed him my roundhouse once and he said I’d make a good Hunter-” he tapped the chest of his white-and-blue-shaded gear, which he had to assume was Hunter-style because of that comparison, “-but he’s never seen me in trouble, and the Aoba he’s more familiar with doesn’t remember a lot of the things I’m more responsible for.”

"You sure it's a good idea for you to go out there half-cocked? I mean, with only part of you on board," he hummed, glancing up at Aoba and tapping a few places on the ship display, zooming in and enhancing the overhead planet view.

"High kicks aren't gonna do a lot of good if a Hobgoblin tries to snipe you, or if a Vandal creeps up and stabs you in the back, or a Hydra materializes on top of you. I'm not Declan...I can get your back and shoot first, but I can't shield you, and neither of us are medics by any stretch."

“I’m not saying drop me right into the middle of things.” Desire closed his eyes for a moment, attentions turned inwards.

Reason was unsettled, confused, even afraid. He didn’t know what his other half was talking about, was shocked by the very idea that somewhere in his past people had died because of him. His teenage years had been rough, he knew that. He’d caused Granny a lot of grief and heartache, he knew that too. But to hear what this forgotten side of himself was saying was just….

But Aoba agreed with himself on one thing. He was tired of being carried along, of not supporting his own metaphorical weight. Maybe getting dropped into a battlefield wasn’t a logical first stepping stone to being Declan’s equal partner, but what else was there?

“These things you all fight,” he addressed Mac again, opening his eyes. “They have working ears and brains?”

"Some of them, definitely, others, not so much. It's hard to explain simply because we don't know about them ourselves," Mac replied with a long sigh, pointing to the screens. His Ghost bobbed a little nod, and the Warlock got up, walking around the cockpit towards a back area near the mess, clearly a place of research. Strange artifacts littered a workbench, old books tucked into cubbyholes. Reaching out for a stack of papers and leafing through them, he laid out several showing excellent sketches of Vex, Fallen, Cabal, and other lesser creatures.

"Cabal and Fallen definitely do, they're humanoid carbon-based, not much different from any of us. Vex though," he tapped on a few breakdown images of the constructs.

"They're nothing like anything we've encountered before. We thought they were just artificial life forms, metal constructs, but it turns out they're far, far more complex. Biological artificial metal constructs. Metal and organic, but not like cyborgs. Down to the last cell, it's a little of both. They don't have brains...their thinking parts are fluid. And they don't communicate the way you and I do. they're a hive mind. While physically they're not the strongest, mentally they're impossible to fully comprehend."

It was a weird question for a person to normally ask, but Mac didn’t ask a ‘why?’ and just answered it straight up, which Desire appreciated on one quiet level or another. He followed the Warlock when he moved and observed what he was shown. He had some passing familiarity with the various ‘races’ of the Guardians’ enemies, given the many long explanations Declan had done his best to give whenever showing Aoba around one locale or another, but he’d never questioned their exact biology before.

“Sounds like a challenge,” he said of the Vex, but quietly, intense rather than uncontrolled. Maybe having Reason pressing on him at the back of his thoughts wasn’t all bad. It kept him focused.

“So avoid the mechs, but the bugs and ogres are fair game,” Desire said to himself as well, shifting the sketches about with one hand, studying the distinct shapes and silhouettes.

"It's not as easy as all that," Mac warned, looking up with perfectly tended brows knitting together in concern for his possibly crazy friend.

"Venus is mostly dominated by the Vex. There's plenty of Fallen, but no Hive, thank goodness. That's a whole other mess, but mostly confined to Earth and the Moon. Mostly. The Vex are everywhere here, though, and that's what Declan is fighting. Hm...my best guess is that if he's fighting Vex and it's about getting you home, he's trying to take down another Vex Gatelord. They're the ones that have universal key codes for the gates that teleport them through time and space. Educated guess says he's trying to get you a direct line home. He didn't mention it, though, which is unusual...I figure Xur just thought it was easier to have him gather the parts and not ask questions. The Nine are like that..."

Edited 2018-11-22 17:08 (UTC)

“All the more reason for me to get involved,” Desire mused, pulling over the Vex sketches. If they were biological, even on some level, then something would have to be vulnerable. “That’s my ride home he’s fighting for.”

Taking his hand back, Desire touched a covered sheath attached to one leg and experimentally undid it. Easy enough. The dagger he pulled out was the same crystalline one Declan had gifted Aoba what seemed like half an age ago, and which he had in turn been instructed to bring along. Reason had done his very best not to think about the weapon he was carrying, but Desire remembered.

“The weapons he picked out for me to carry are with the rest of my gear. Auto-targeting. I can carry them as backups for you, or you can give me a quick rundown on how to point and shoot.”

"Point and shoot is pretty easy if it's auto-targeting. I can show you the parts to use and you can go from there. Since we're going into a place that's just hostiles and Guardians, you don't have to worry about what you hit. Just point and shoot. If you've got it, go gear up. We'll go over the basics when you're done."

Just like that, Aoba was conscripted, Mac not the sort to argue about what others wanted to do, particularly when he felt they weren't wrong.

When Aoba came back, Mac went over the weapons with him, showed him how to hold them, where to put his hands, how to lift, what the different settings were. Unlike Declan, who would have respected Aoba's unease, Mac was of the mind that if you aren't properly armed and prepared to fight, you aren't going. End of story. So quite being a crybaby bitch and start listening.

By the time they found the stone plateaus where Declan was hidden somewhere, Aoba at least knew what the guns were capable of and how to utilize them. He'd have to learn to aim and hit targets on the go.

"There's too much interference from the gates for me to get us any nearer to his location. It's on foot from here," Mac's Ghost intoned, the Warlock nodding and affixing the rest of his armored robes, looking for all the world like a science-fiction version of a Templar Knight.

"Keep an eye on your shield gauge readouts," Mac warned, tapping his helmet, indicating Aoba should pay attention to the headsup display in his own. "If you get anywhere near 30%, duck and roll for cover, hide behind anything you can, hunker down and wait for the shields to come back up. That's the only thing guaranteed to keep you alive right now. Most Hobgoblin snipers can take your shields down to thirty with on shot. Sometimes more. You will die. Understand? So if you're near it, play smart. I can't watch everything for you."

Trespasser, Vision of Confluence, Dragon’s Breath. Aoba recalled the names of the weapons as he unpacked them and attached them to his gear as he’d been shown. And though his eyes stayed gold as he paid attention to Mac’s lessons, it most assuredly counted as Aoba who paid attention.

He didn’t have to want to fight, he didn’t even have to enjoy fighting, but if he was going to fight for something he believed in—for someone he wanted to stand beside with any sense of pride or self-worth—then he had to go all in. Desire kept the reins still, but Reason quieted his questions for another time. For Declan’s sake, they were attuned.

He put his helmet on and detached the bag that Ren had ridden in, instructing the Allmate to stay on the ship. Ren was obviously less than pleased, but did not protest. A little dog, after all, was even less suited for a battlefield than an untrained civilian.

Considering the gauges, which had of course been there every other time he’d worn the gear but had been of no relevance before, Aoba nodded. “Just like in Rhyme,” he murmured, with a sound of amusement to go with the wry smirk under his helmet. It wasn’t Rhyme. Rhyme was as close to real as you could get without it actually being real—but people died in Drive-Bys just the same.

With the scout rifle in his hands, Aoba then gave a dry laugh and a shrug. “Hey, maybe some stray Ghost will take a liking to me if I fuck it all up, huh? Then you can all lighten up.”

Of course, he wouldn't remember anyone either, if the whole resurrected-with-amnesia thing held true even with recently-risen Guardians, but hey. Dark humor was dark humor.

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