The story of the Guardian called Noble. In the mountains of Old America, a child is clinging to life as he treads through the thick, icy snow. He is the last of a group of humans who came together long ago after the Golden Age. Their whereabouts are a mystery, to him, but he was trained to survive on his own. From a time long before the Golden Age, there was a book that survived. No one knows how many there are, but the child knows the one. Inside, the Law of the Jungle is his guideline as a young warrior. He knows not much of the world, but he knows of the Traveler, a floating sphere from the Golden Age that he has heard from legends. It always lumbered in the distance, and now it is his North Star, his guide, his destination. In months time, the child will survive and endure through his travels. He will see many cities, towns, forests, and deserts. He will find many ruins from the past and discover hidden treasures from them. He will battle the animals that populate the planet, including some of his own kind. He will do all these things, just for the hope that he sees in that sphere in the distance. Once he arrives, he will be a changed and humbled young man. The Wall of the City will tower over him, the last challenge between him and the Traveler. He will enter the City and become part of his kind, and eventually a Guardian. His humble and loyal nature are traits that not every Guardian possesses. He will fight against beings that threaten his home, help those who seek help, and take part in one of the biggest events in the history of mankind. For now, though, he is a child looking towards that future. Not because he knows what it holds, but because he believes in it.

Once there was an ugly Warlock. He was so ugly that everyone died.

Here is a rather lengthy (and graphic) story of my character's background. (I'm of course assuming that Exo are robots with human minds): I was the son of a farmer who tried his luck outside the city walls (seeing has the soil inside had become exhausted). We were fairly well off. and I was put in charge of hunting to bring back dinner most nights. After a few years of practice with my rifle, I could hit a deer dead in the heart from 250 yards, and our fields were doing rather well. As these stories usually go, I was out hunting when they came. The Fallen. The sound of quad-canons from the pikes snapped my attention from the crosshairs. I had never heard the Fallen coming out here, in fact they almost always were focused on the city just 30 miles North of here. Concerned, I looked back over my shoulder toward the homestead. Surely they wouldn't have come here just to attack us. Surely the whole thing had been my imagination. Slowly, smoke began to rise over the tree line from the direction of our fields. I crashed back through the woods, the brush tearing at my skin. I had to get back. They had to be ok. I had to get there in time to drive the xeno out. I ran and ran, smashing into the limbs of trees that seemed to try and hold me back. I broke through the tree line at last and rushed into the smoke billowing from our fields set alight, the fields I had planted with my mother and had chased my little brother through after his mischief. I came to a clearing between the fields and house where the smoke was just thin enough to make out four pikes speeding away toward the horizon. "Please dear Traveler, let at least one person have survived," I looked back to the house I'd grown up in for close to ten years of my life, only to find it in shambles. I stepped through the doorway whose door was but splinters now searching for any signs of life. I was met only with puddles of crimson fluid and the stench of death. I ran through each room, wildly hoping to find someone, anyone, amongst the rubble. But there was no one. Not in the rooms anyway. I made it to the last room on the second floor. There was a window that looked out the back of our house toward the Last City, and there were two ropes that lead out of it, tied to furniture. I walked slowly and tearfully toward the window, knowing full well what I would find on the other side of the ropes. I reached the window sill after what seemed an eternity, and what laid below made it feel as if my stomach had been turned inside out. It was my father and mother hanging there, or what was left of them. Their limbs had been torn from their torsos, with only their head left attached. Something inside of me snapped back then. I couldn't tell you what, but it was something that made me what I am. What they say I am. I hunted down the bastards that did it. The Fallen, their called. I thought they had captured my brother, and I was not about to let them get away. I ran back to the tree line, uncovering the the bike I had made from the ground up with scavenged parts. It was supposed to be a gift to my brother during his seventeenth harvest. Unfortunately for the those bastards, it was the fastest thing in the Forbidden Zone. It didn't take long to catch up to the pikes, xeno trash. My brother was not among the three Fallen, but that just made what came next all the easier. I was a good eighty yards behind them and had gone unnoticed thanks to the collective noise of three pikes. I pulled my rifle out and cradled it between the handle bars of the custom bike. An easy shot, I thought to myself, if I didn't have to drive this -blam!- thing as well. I leaned down, leveling my rifle and lining my crosshairs up with the back of the left-most alien. I slowed my breath, becoming aquatinted with the rhythm of the bike beneath me and shifted my aim just slightly before squeezing the trigger. The impact of the recoil shook the bike a minute as the bullet travelled through the air, ripping strait through the lower right arm of the Fallen bastard. The explosion of green liquid was almost beautiful and I found myself cackling wildly as the injured Fallen veered directly into the pikes next to him. The chaos and blood was the greatest sight I'd ever beheld. Metal and flesh tore like paper as all three of them tumbled end over end. I closed my eyes, raising my arms, to embrace death as the wreckage flew strait toward me. The faces of my family drifted there on the inside of my eyelids for a moment, and I allowed a tear to form as a gesture of apology for my inability to save them. And then the weight of a half a world slammed on my chest and I ceased to think. I woke up sometime later inside the walls of the Med, a hospital in the city. They told me a scout happened upon the scene and was able to get me here in time to save my life. What they couldn't do though, was save my body. I now reside within a machine. And I have used that machine to become one of the most lethal sharpshooters the guardians have at their disposal. I don't do this in order to exact revenge for my parents or in hopes of finding my brother. I do it, because I have found immense entertainment in the simple act of unloading a single round into some warm body. I can't help but laugh as I view the explosion of color and listen to the cries of pain. I don't even care if it's an alien body in all honesty. I only refrain from killing humans so that I can continue pursuing the ultimate art. Have I ever killed a man before? That'd be telling now wouldn't it? I am Marco, and this is the story of the loose hunter.