Jamming it Up
A/N: Enjoy Chapter!!! Throw some GODDAMN REVIEWS!!! LET'S REACH 200
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[Cosmodrome]
Waffles shifted on her feet, pulse rifle humming faintly in her arms as she surveyed the overgrown yard outside the Forgotten Shore entrance. Beside her, IEatPaint clumsily landed a Sparrow wheelie and dismounted with a flourish. TheOneWhoKnocks silently checked his sniper, peering downrange before nodding once.
They'd been clearing these routes, patrolling for hours, testing perks, stacking bounties and grinding for that perfect roll. Following the natural routine of a healthy destiny player.
Just as they'd wrapped up the bounties, their Director lit up, a new mission was available.
IEatPaint muttered, his Ghost projecting a flickering blue window in front of them. "Looks like we're finally getting somewhere."
A low hum cut through the air, and then came the Commander's voice—calm, decisive, direct.
"Guardians. We've secured partial comms across Old Russia. Your next objective is to restore your Jumpships' warp drives. Without them, you're grounded—trapped in system. We can't risk that. Scans suggest that the House of Devils has scavenged a Golden Age drive, likely kept by their Archon: Riksis. Take it back."
There was a beat of silence. Then TheOneWhoKnocks cracked his knuckles.
"About time."
Their radar blinked, showing a new waypoint in the Cosmodrome. A small summary of the mission played, without another word, the three mounted up. Sparrows roared across cracked asphalt and sand slicked ruins, weaving between rusted hulls and towering dunes,
The Cosmodrome blurred past, but their ghosts guided them—navigating the cluttered radar fields, tapping into what remained of the old military uplinks.
"The warp drive's location is confirmed," Waffles' Ghost chirped. "An old SkyWatch bunker. Riksis is holed up inside an old launch facility. Expect resistance."
TheOneWhoKnocks equipped his sniper, using the scope to scout ahead. His radar blinked a dark red, "Son of a bitc*. They're stacked in there."
IEatPaint chimed in, "What's the health bars looking like?"
"Just a normal red, doesn't look like the mobs are elite." TheOneWhoKnocks breathed a sigh of relief.
"If the first mission is anything to go off of, this might take a while." Waffles shuddered, and equipped her best gear, boosting her light level up to 30.
The three snuck around the front of the facility, ensuring no enemies had spotted them. Looking around, they got a clearer view.
The facility was crawling with House of Devil squads. Fallen Skiffs idled above the field, and Vandal snipers stood guard from rotting towers.
But the no damn Fallen would stop their advance. They had trained for this. Grinding hours of their time into the game. With an upgraded arsenal, they weren't going back without a fight.
Waffles mustered up the courage, leading the engage, "F*ck it, we ball."
She jumped into the sky, over the wall, chucking two grenades into the building. Immediately, all the Fallen aggrod.
Then, TheOneWhoKnocks carefully placed trip mines, using his shotgun to zone off the dregs.
IEatPaint surged forward, his Arc melee crackling, chaining lightning through clustered enemies. Waffles slid into cover and suppressed a charging Captain with well-placed suppressor rounds, while TheOneWhoKnocks held back, precision shots decapitating targets mid-run.
They breached the interior with a bang—using rockets to clear out the room, and flooding the chamber with gunfire.
As the players fought waves after waves, the Fallen finally seemed to thin out. That was until a tremor ran through the ground. Their HUD flashed, they'd cleared the initial stage.
But as the guardians stepped into the core of the bunker, their HUD darkened.
[Respawn Not Allowed!]
An alert flashed ahead.
"Good shi*t, we gotta clutch the boss now." TheOneWhoKnocks slid ahead, triggered a cinematic.
Riksis emerged from a hole blasted into the wall, his armor adorned with trophies and a strange, humming tech woven across his chest like ritual plating. He growled with fury, towering over the players. Two Vandals served as guards at his side.
In his hand, a shrapnel launcher that hurled shock bolts but with his towering stature, each stomp was devastating.
The boss health bar appeared on their screen. A deep yellow.
Waffles immediately blinked to the side, throwing a supressing grenade at Riksis's feet. Before the Fallen Archon could react, TheOneWhoKnocks chucked in a firebolt grenade.
He quick scoped the boss, landing a critical, and just then the arena rumbled.
IEatPaint leapt onto a catwalk and unleashed a Thundercrash super, electricity arced in radiant waves as he shot towards Riksis.
"EAT SHIT", he roared launching himself into the boss, lightning cloaked him as he imploded, dealing massive amounts of damage, immediately triggering the second phase of the fight.
Riksis fell, but then he slammed IEatPaint back. His armor had cracked, but the Fallen Archon wasn't backing down. He valiantly rose to his feet, ready to massacre what he only considered flies.
But unbeknownst to him, there was no honour in Destiny.
Waffles waited out the bosses invulnerable transition, leaping into the air, a Nova Bomb condensed above her and blasted into the floor. Just then, TheOneWhoKnocks unleashed his Gold Gun, planting bullets into Riksis's chest.
When the dust settled....Riksis was no more.
The Players hollered, completing a mission with this ease was a first.
"Told you the farming paid off." TheOneWhoKnocks chuckled, rushing to grab the engrams off the boss.
IEatPaint double jumped to the boss, picking up a well deserved legendary engram, one he could decrypt at the city. Waffles did the same, even getting a few good armor drops from the encounter.
Ghosts hummed with satisfaction as Zavala's voice returned:
"Excellent work. Find the drive, its essential for future operations. Get it installed—we'll need you ready to deploy beyond Earth, soon."
Waffles look around, finding a crate with the drive. As she picked it up the screen flashed.
[Mission complete!]
"Nice. So? Let's get back to the City. Gotta cash in these bounties." She smiled.
But as IEatPaint and Waffles opened their director, they noticed TheOneWhoKnocks standing still, and fall complete silent.
"Uh.." IEatPaint approached circling him, but then he heard a deep sigh.
"Let's go." TheOneWhoKnocks queued the teleport to the Tower.
"What happened?" Waffles asked.
"Two greens and a blue engram" He silently replied.
IEatPaint held his breath, and prayed for his friends RNG. Not even he would wish bad RNG on a fellow Destiny player.
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[Tower, Last City]
The City's sun hung low in the sky, casting long golden rays across the Tower as three Jumpships hissed into port.
IEatPaint, TheOneWhoKnocks, and Waffles entered the courtyard , stepping out into the heart of the Tower—light gleaming off their upgraded armour, their eyes darting to Master Rahul, the Cryptarch.
The nest instant, the three dashed towards him, holding out their engrams for rapid decryption.
"Alright," Waffles stretched, cracking her neck, "we've got our warp drive. That's interstellar travel unlocked."
IEatPaint nodded, but his eyes drifted beyond the skyline, toward the distant edges of the Last City. "Yeah, but it feels... unfinished."
TheOneWhoKnocks had already pulled up his interface. "We didn't even explore half the Cosmodrome. There's more out there."
They walked toward across the Tower, their boots tapping against stone and steel. As they submitted their completed Restoration mission to the Vanguard terminal, their Ghosts chirped—new bounties unlocked from the Gunsmith and Vanguard.
"More bounties?" Waffles groaned. "Fine. One more vendor run."
"Better rewards, better perks. You know the drill," said TheOneWhoKnocks.
But just as they grabbed the bounties and turned to leave, they stopped dead.
"Whoa." IEatPaint heaved a breath.
Dozens of new Guardians were descending from Jumpships. Some still wore the crude armor pieces from the Cosmodrome.
More than fifty, maybe more, were transmatting into the courtyard. Chat messages pinged open as proximity voice links began to activate. A Guardian approached them—his name tag glowing green: [Undecided].
"You guys just come back from the Cosmodrome?" he asked, voice crackling with static.
"Yeah," replied IEatPaint. "Wrapped up the second mission. Got that warp drive too. There's way more locations now."
TheOneWhoKnocks chuckled. "Took out an Archon, no big deal."
Undecided nodded slowly, but his tone shifted. "Wait... you finished it? What loadouts you guys running? We got swarmed during the intro mission. Barely made it to the Jumpship."
"Let me guess," Waffles asked, folding her arms. "Fallen ambush?"
"Yeah," he said. "They had skiffs dropping troops right on our position. We only escaped because reinforcements showed up—like... City dropship levels of firepower. I thought we were screwed."
IEatPaint and TheOneWhoKnocks exchanged a look.
"Funny," Waffles said slowly. "We didn't get any reinforcements."
Undecided blinked. "Then.... how'd you make it?"
IEatPaint replied, "NPC. Guy in all-black armor. Popped outta nowhere. Wiped the entire ridge. Dropped every Fallen in seconds."
Now he looked confused. Undecided couldn't tell whether the three people were trolling him, or he'd simply missed out. But Waffles had immediately showed him the screenshots.
"That... didn't happen for us."
More players had gathered. General chat flickered, conversations lighting up about mission glitches, unique enemy encounters, or inexplicable saves. Someone posted a screenshot of a Fallen Captain, screaming for help. Most players were still complaining about the first mission.
"Okay," Undecided said, raising his hands. "So what was that? Is it a cutscene trigger? Some kind of secret?"
"Felt like a special event," said Waffles, "You know the NPC in the trailer right? The one at the end. He's the one that showed up."
Undecided paused, contemplating, "Did you guys do something special? Anything you recall?"
"I mean, we held out for quite long." IEatPaint murmured.
"Makes sense," TheOneWhoKnocks added. "Maybe that NPC was part of a limited story flag. Not everyone triggered it."
Undecided called over the rest of his fireteam, BearSpray and Gandalf, a hunter and a warlock.
Then, the rest of the local players also walked in, beginning to compare experiences, screenshots, mission timings. An unspoken consensus was forming: The first mission had an Easter egg, or perhaps a unique event.
"Either way," said Undecided, pulling up his map, "We can't do the second mission yet. Gotta farm up. You guys doing anything?"
TheOneWhoKnocks grinned. "Why not try find another event?. Maybe even trigger another one of those 'mystery' appearances."
"Let's fan out," IEatPaint said, looking at his Director. "We've got a lot of people. If we go to all the spots in the Cosmodrome, we're bound to get it to trigger."
BearSpray nodded, immediately writing out their plan into the general player chat. As more and more players saw the plan, a collective had formed.
Unbeknownst to anyone present, the first player coalition had formed all to trigger one public event.
With their plan in place, the Guardians broke off into squads. In a blink of Light, dozens of Jumpships screamed skyward—fire trailing from their hulls as they surged toward Old Russia.
A storm was gathering in the Cosmodrome. One hungry for loot, and more content.
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