Here's a scary story I wrote for Halloween, sorry it's late. And it's long so it'll be in multiple parts. Enjoy! ________________________________________ It seemed like a normal day at first. The Tower’s Bounty Tracker Frame went through his usual routine as we asked for any standing bounties. We were going through our normal routines, too, but not the programmed routine Frames like the Bounty Tracker have. The six of us had gotten together, as usual, to plan our day and had decided to do some bounties while waiting for a real mission to be given to us by the Vanguard. But that was the choice we made almost every day. The first unusual occurrence of the day was the bounty we picked. It was on the Moon. Now since that one Guardian had secured a transmat zone on the Moon a week or so back, other Guardians had been flocking to that infested space rock in search of challenges, treasures, and glory. No one on my team had gone yet. The bounty itself was nothing out of the ordinary; find and kill a target that was stirring up some trouble. This one was a Hive Wizard, something we knew how to handle because we had fought a decent amount of Hive since their presence was discovered on Earth a short while back. Wizards were creatures that I find disturbing, however. They glide around several feet above the ground with their tattered cloths, their large crested horns, their fangs, their claws, and their blood-curdling shrieks. They screamed their horrible songs in a language unknown to me and created clouds of suffocating smog. One of the only other things we really knew about them was that they experimented with torture and found ways to painfully strip the Light out of a being. A horrible way to die. "What's running through that big head of yours?" A voice asked, dragging my attention away from my thoughts and back to the task at hand. Our ship was about to enter atmosphere just above the Moon and preparations were being made for landing. Since we were nearly always together, my team had collectively gathered up a bunch of Glimmer and gotten ourselves a small transport, capable of holding the six of us so we could actually hang out on the flight. We were gathered up right behind the pilot's seat so they could be part of the conversation. I was looking into Claire's eyes. She was the one who had asked what I was thinking and now waited patiently for an answer. Her red hair fell down just below her shoulders, draping over the large plating of her neon green Titan armor, and a few strands had drifted down over her emerald green eyes. I got lost in her stare a moment before remembering she had talked to me. "Just thinking about our target," I answered. "Yeah, me too. We're gonna pound that witch into the ground!" Claire shouted happily, punching at the air. I found her to be adorably childish, but she clearly thought of this mission in a different way that I did. I seemed to be the only one who felt that something was...off...today. "Nah I bet he's thinking about what he's gonna have for breakfast tomorrow; all he ever thinks of is food," a male voice entered the conversation. I looked over to see Jason standing next to me, the hood of his cloak down to reveal his mid-length light brown hair and chocolaty brown eyes, a knife twirling around his fingers as he spoke. "You got it all wrong, Jason," the pilot laughed before I could respond, "I'm the one who always thinks about food. I'm having a sandwich with Swiss cheese, some ham, and a light slathering of mayo for lunch tomorrow. Delicious." The pilot was Derick, a Hunter like Jason who had short black hair and vibrant blue eyes. He had a personality and sense of humor that easily outshone those bright eyes, though. The four of us laughed at Derick's remark and Jason gave him a pat on the back, saying, "Alright, no one here ONLY thinks about food aside from you, Derick." "And you all better remember that!" Derick demanded, chuckling now as everyone's laughter began to cease. "I do not see the humor in the thought of food. And shouldn't your thoughts be on the task at hand, Derick?" A robotic female voice cut in. I looked to Cassie-17, an Exo in a long white Warlock robe. She was apparently one of the earlier Exo models, her processors not built to understand many jokes, expressions, or figurative meanings of phrases. She also had some form of error in her systems where she was near unable to express her emotions, even though she did feel them to some extent. "Nope, I'm not thinking at all about flying this ship or killing murderous aliens," Derick said in a serious tone. Cassie opened her mouth to speak, probably about to call Derick an idiot, but she closed it after a moment and you could see her mind working behind her glowing yellow eyes. A small grin spread across her metal face as she realized he was making jokes. The third Titan in our group, Maxwell, wrapped an arm contained in his bulky light brown armor around Cassie's shoulders. A smile split his face from the hilarity of our conversation and his hazel eyes twinkled happily. Cassie looked to him and ran a hand through his short brown hair. "Get a room!" Jason yelled, acting disgusted. That was one joke Cassie had heard from us enough to understand, and she chuckled in response. Maxwell and Cassie were an odd couple; a Warlock and a Titan, one an Exo who was calculating and showed little emotion and the other a human who acted on emotion often. But it was obvious they really liked each other and we left them be, aside from the occasional calls to get a room. Just a normal trip with the team; at least until the ship's alarms started blaring. "What's going on?!" I asked Derick, "We just got in atmosphere!" Derick frantically checked the scanners and started hitting buttons on the controls. "A rift just opened directly in front of us and a Tomb Ship is coming out! I'm slowing the ship down as much as I can and I'm gonna try to get around it," he told me, then immediately proceeded to yank the steering wheel to the side, making everyone inside have to grab something if they didn't want to fall over. But the Tomb Ship had come too suddenly and was moving in the direction we swerved to. The front of our ship smashed into the lower portion of the Tomb Ship's front side. Glass from the -blam!- flew backwards into the passenger area, some shards getting stuck in our armor, and the nose of our ship caved in, slamming into the pilot's seat. I had been holding on to Derick's seat for stability and was launched backwards by the impact, flying backwards into the passenger bay and slamming into the floor. The ship's hull breach alarm joined in with the sound of the previous alarm as I pulled myself off of the ground and stumbled to the passenger seats lining the hull's sides. Everyone else was already buckling in and I sat down right before we started spiraling through the air in its rapid descent. We all willed our helmets to appear on our heads and gripped our seats tightly, fighting not to be yanked around by the force of us tumbling through the air and trying not to hurl. We crashed. ______________________________________ Link to part 2: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/217378674/0/0 Link to my master post: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/217384398/0/0