-- Finally managed to join this group after sorting out some account problems, just had to sign in with my new PSN ID rather than my old Xbox account. Anyway, here's a story I wrote a couple of months ago that I thought would be cool to share with you guys. It's called 'In Unity', and is only my second attempt at any sort of Destiny fiction after my initial effort, 'Jericho'. Some of you may even recognize it. It was the final story featured in the Destiny Dispatch eBook 'Become Legend' under the tenet of strength, whilst it's also up on /r/DestinyJournals, my own blog and in the DestinyNews.net forum. So, let me know what you guys think of it, and maybe I'll write another in the not too distant future. Looking forward to being a part of this community irregardless, too hyped for release. Thanks all! -- Our great excursion began not with the fanfare that would usually be attributed to such a mass exodus from The City, but with mooted nods and despairing glances from its occupants as we exited the sanctity of its walls. For now was a time preferential than never at all, as following years of inaction and hesitancy, we would finally be allowed to roam. No longer would we sit idly by and await the assault at the gate, as for the first time in a decade, more than a single fire-team was allowed outside of The City walls at once. This was an opportunity. A scouting mission. A chance to survey the area and prove our worth as guardians of The City. This was a chance to favour the aggressive offense rather than the suicidal, foolhardy defence. It was time to mobilise. Acquiesce and Glacier. Dawnbreak and Eden. Libera and Skylight. All fire teams consisting of a trio of well trained, well versed Guardian’s setting out on the road of discovery. For some, this was a long time coming, but for all of us came the relief of being cast out into the open and being allowed to sidestep politicians and senators in favour of enacting our own brand of justice with fist and gun and boot. This was the unshackled freedom of a Guardian. This was the role of the protector. My fire team, designated Sundance, like all others out there, was one which consisted of a trio of Guardians each carrying the weight of an entire race on their shoulders. There was ‘Saxon’, a sturdy, steadfast EXO with a tireless will and an endless yearning for the kill. What he lacked in flexibility he more than made up for in tactical foresight. A statistician of the battlefield and with the visionary capabilities afforded to him only via mechanically engineered implants, Saxon was as good a shot as you’d ever need. Less so was ‘Tythe’, an Awoken fuelled solely by her hatred for the plethora of enemies that surrounded us. Once a part of a colony on Jupiter, Tythe, was pushed further and further away from the place she had called home as the ever encroaching haze of war buffeted her all the way back to the walls of The City. Unaware as to the fate of her family, and resting uneasily as a result, Tythe is a competent fighter with the unnerving tendency to let her emotional fragility cloud her judgement when cool heads would sooner prevail. And that leaves just me, ‘Laetner’, the human of this posse. My story revolves less around a love for the hunt, or my scornful disdain for the enemy, and more around being the man in the middle, for if I’m not cursing my luck for being sandwiched unceremoniously into the post Golden Age era, I’m serving as the peace maker between a committed yet reckless alien and a robot with a rifle. But if my place in this team is only to be the glue that holds it together, then so be it. “The Traveller carries the future of humankind on its back. What do you carry, Guardian?” My sequence of thought, like an enclosed tunnel of fading judgments and gradually clearer realization was halted only by the sound of the air itself being torn asunder. Drop-ship. A quick glance was exchanged between our trio before we all set off in different directions and prepared for the oncoming assault, but as the quartet of hulking, armour-clad creatures dropped from the jet black cloud lingering above us, we stopped, and instead faced our aggressors head on. A final, fifth bestial figure then dropped to the ground before the tectonic mass of metal above us shifted West, leaving eight gunmen standing with contemptuous trigger fingers on a barren plane of rock and ruin. We fired. With the deft movement completely to the contrary of their size, the first two figures who presented themselves with the appearance of a Cabal fluidly sought upon Saxon and swatted his rifle to this side in tandem. Unarmed, he instinctively lurched underneath the reach of the first with a concealed blade, gutting him at the neck with the urgency of a man fighting for his life, not less a robot. The second Cabal though didn’t miss, and soon Saxon found himself twenty feet away from where he had previously been standing, prone. Tythe and I picked up where he left off by dually sieging the second Cabal warrior with well-placed rifle and pistol shots to the abdomen. He fell, a deceased and smouldering husk at our feet. But it was then, with a swift nod, that the Cabal leader dispatched his two remaining troops in our direction. Clad in sturdier armour and wielding larger, more menacing automatic weaponry than his other two accomplices, the king played his rooks and the second wave of this hastening personal test of strength and resolve began. More content with swinging their weapons like bludgeoning tools, the Cabal warriors dove into attack with the lumbering gait that this time befitted their heavier, thicker battle-clad ensemble. Tythe ducked underneath the first blow before pushing herself up towards the Cabal’s neck and going for the quick kill. But she was thrown aside, and but for rifle impact from the distance that erupted the Cabal’s cranium in a crimson tide, she may have bit the proverbial bullet. Saxon, reequipped in the distance slumped back behind a rock, injured, but if this was his only part to play in the battle then it was a telling one, for the odds were now in our favour. The fourth and final Cabal trooper bounced angrily on the spot before charging into a rock occupied only by my shadow. Seeing my opportunity, I lurched, curled, and unleashed a torrential strike of pearl and gold and blue that tore his very being apart from the inside out, before turning to face the final Cabal, the Centurion. Already in his grasp by the neck, was Tythe. She struggled and kicked, but motioned subtly for me to remain where I was, and as my grasp of time became wrought with lethargy and weariness, I did. Being at the mercy of the Cabal was odd. Here we were, animals that had just been released from their cage, now having completely failed at reintegrating back into the world at large. We were foreign bodies. Infiltrators and trespassers. This wasn’t our world anymore. “The Traveller carries the future of humankind on its back. What do you carry, Guardian?” The same burden. Clarity. With a light in the periphery of my vision, I moved, deploying my Ghost and shining a halogen beam into the eyes of the beast. Firing a revolver round through the Cabal’s hand and freeing Tythe, she flinched after noticing her grenade belt dislodged on the body of the dazed Cabal Centurion who was now fully aware of his surroundings. But from the hill to our rear limped Saxon, slowly into place. Raising his rifle with military like precision and aiming down the scope, he targeted the rogue belt of explosives just as Tythe forcibly thrust me into cover. He fired, the eruption glazing the sky with the darkened fissure of the defeated. Still limping, Saxon offered a limp-wrist to me and helped both myself and Tythe to our feet. We were bloody, battered and bruised, and yet victorious. An entire troop of Cabal lay at our feet as we exchanged appreciative glances and wry smiles, but we had to move as the drop-ship that instigated this entire ordeal would surely be back for more. An arm on each of Saxon’s scuffed bronze shoulders, we limped away. The night’s rest stop offered the chance for reflection. Here we were, the atypical group of rag-tag fighters melded together with nothing but the hope of The City willing us to go any further. One a robot, broken, leaking. The other an Awoken, broken, bruised. And myself, a human, barely able to stand. But here we were, the victors of the days conflicts, for tomorrow there would be a new enemy to face and a new challenge to overcome, but if before today I ever doubted my own strength, then that would no longer be the case come daybreak. If we could find success even in the darkest recesses of this unfamiliar land, then others could too, and maybe, just maybe, this could be the start of our redemption. No, today was not a day for the individual, today was a day for the group, the conglomerate and the family. Today was a microcosm of the conflict at large, a fight wrapped in a battle doused in a war. Today was a day for the will of the scorned. Today was a day of strength, in unity.