Prison of Elders

Two guardians walk towards the entrance of the Prison of Elders, both of the Hunter class. One was a young human female named Alyx, whose dark blue hair reached the bottom of her neck. She also had dark blue lipstick and eyeshadow. The other...

Well, the other was none other than the Hunter Vanguard himself, Cayde-6.

As the two walked up to the prison entrance, they met up with an old friend.

"Petra Venj. Thanks for the invite. What ya' packin' for this party?" Cayde asks.

"Meh. The usual." Petra says.

She then takes out a knife, which causes Cayde to get excited.

"Ooh! Do the thing!" Cayde exclaims.

He then leans towards Alyx.

"Seriously, watch this." Cayde says.

Petra then makes the knife float in the air, spin around, then grabs it.

"That'll never not freak me out... do it again!" Cayde says.

"Later. Maybe. Right now, gen-pop is running wild. Fortunately, the main arena and lower levels remain on lockdown. But off the core security systems fail, containment is going to be... a problem." Petra explains.

"Just another day at the office." Cayde says.

Petra then walks into the prison. Cayde and Alyx stayed behind for a moment to check their weapons. Cayde took out his handcannon.

"All right, partner, this is a Cayde riff in 6, watch me for the changes, and, uh... try to keep up." Cayde says as he loads his gun.

He then walks over to the edge of the walkway.

"Now let's go to prison!" Cayde exclaims excitedly.

He then jumps off of the edge. Alyx then hears gunshots, followed by multiple 'got you's. Alyx rolled her eyes and smiled.

She then made her way to the entrance of the prison. When inside, she takes out her handcannon.

"Oho, these guys REALLY wanna dance." Cayde says over the comms.

"This riot HAS to end here. If these killers get out, the Reef will be overrun." Petra explains.

"So we split up and take them out." Alyx says.

"Took the words out of my mouth! Alright, let's do this! And a one, two, three!" Cayde says.

Alyx continues running through the walkway into the prison. When she finally reached the door, an explosion erupts from the other end, knocking Alyx back.

"Ow." Alyx says as she gets back up.

She then runs through the door, and is greeted by the sight of a large battle between the Fallen and Cabal inmates. The Fallen inmates consisted mostly of Dregs and Vandals. The Cabal inmates were mostly Legionaries and Psions.

Though, there was one large Cabal inmate, who Alyx's Ghost identified as Baurg, Blood Infernal.

Alyx equipped her sniper rifle and picked off some of the Fallen inmates. After killing a few, she equipped her handcannon and dispatched the rest swiftly. She then turned her attention to the Cabal inmates.

Three Legionaries charged at her, two of which she shot. The third got close enough for her to use her knife to stab it. A Psion then shot at her, and she immediately countered by shooting it in the head.

Baurg then began directing his fire at Alyx, causing her to take cover.

"WOO! Oh, P.V., you throw the best parties." Cayde says as Alyx reloads her handcannon.

Alyx then hops out from behind her cover and shoots Baurg in the head a few times, which makes him retreat to a nearby wall. As he retreated, Alyx aimed her handcannon at Baurg to finally kill him. However, an explosion from the other side of the wall behind Baurg saved her the bullets.

"Whoah! Who's blowing stuff up without me?" Cayde asks.

"I'm gonna get eyes on that explosion. You two join me when you can!" Petra says.

"On our way, Petra." Alyx's Ghost says.

"The faster the better. That blast knocked a few more cell blocks open." Petra says.

Alyx runs through the hole the explosion left in the wall, leaving her in a very large corridor lined with cells. She runs through the corridor and to a door on the other side. When the door opens, Alyx sees Petra yanking her knife from the corpse of a Fallen inmate.

"I love fieldwork." Petra says.

"Amen to that, sister." Alyx says.

"That explosion took out security on the lower decks. I'll check the high-value prisoners down there. You and Cayde get to the security hub. Get security back online." Petra says.

She then walks through a door, which closes behind her.

"Okay, Alyx, this crowd isn't gonna just let us stroll into the security hub. I'll go high, you go low." Cayde says.

"You got it." Alyx replies.

Alyx then walks through a door, taking her into another large corridor lined with cells. Just like the room with Baurg, the corridor contained a fight between Fallen and Cabal inmates.

Alyx quickly dispatched of the Fallen inmates, then threw a grenade at the Cabal, killing most of them, save for a lone Gladiator, who Alyx killed with a single shot to the head.

"Razzle-dazzle 'em, Alyx!" Cayde chuckled.

Alyx continued to fight through the corridor, fighting Fallen and Cabal inmates. Once she was in the clear, she continued on. As she ran, she saw a familiar Exo running around above her.

"Cayde!" She exclaims.

A Hive knight suddenly appears on the other side of the catwalk and charges at Cayde, and Cayde charges at it. The Knight jumps up to swingit's sword down at Cayde, but Cayde slides under it and shoots it with his Golden Gun, causing the Knight to disintegrate. Then he turns to Alyx.

"Can I just say, I'm having the time of my life right now." He says as he tosses a grenade behind him, which explodes and kills three Cabal inmates.

"Nobody likes a show off." Alyx says with a smirk.

Cayde then jumps away to continue to the security hub. Alyx does the same and continues fighting through the corridor.

As she gets further down the hall, the Hive decide to say hi. She dispatches them with ease. She looks up and sees Cayde running from three Knights screaming 'not the face!". Alyx rolls her eyes and continues down the hall. She eventually comes across either a Witch or Wizard, she can never tell which is which. Her Ghost identifies it as Ir Yun from the Cult of Megor. Ir Yun looks at Alyx and screams menacingly at her. Alyx is unimpressed, and simply activates her Golden Gun, killing the Witch/Wizard in three shots.

Alyx finally reaches the end of the corridor. She enters a door which takes her into a maintenance hall, which she uses as a shortcut to get to the security hub.

"We're approaching the security hub now, Petra." Alyx says.

"Copy that. Everything's gone dark down here, so I'm stuck taking the long way to supermax." Petra says.

Alyx reaches the other end of the maintenance hall. When the door opens, she sees a lone Legionary standing on the edge of the chasm. She took aim at it, but didn't pull the trigger because of a certain horned robot.

"LOOK OUT BELOW!!!" Cayde exclaims.

He then jumped down onto the Legionary and stabbed it with his knife. Unfortunately, the Legionary fell backwards into the chasm with Cayde still on it.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah, THIS WAS NOT PART OF THE PLAAAN!" Cayde exclaimed as he fell down the pit.

"CAYDE!!!" Alyx exclaimed in worry.

Then, as if on cue, Cayde emerges from the chasm holding onto a Shank.

"Scratch that. It's definitely the plan. Meet ya' at the security hub." Cayde says.

The Shank turns around and flies towards the security hub.

"Go left." Cayde says.

The Shank faces the right.

"Left!" Cayde shouts.

The Shank flies right.

"Your other left!" Cayde shouts.

The Shank turns around and flies left.

Alyx chuckles, then continues towards the security hub.

When she reached the security hub entrance, she noticed a giant Ogre fighting more Cabal inmates.

The Cabal inmates seemed to have worn it down some, so Alyx equipped her sniper rifle and aimed at it's head. With only three shots, she managed to kill it. She then equipped a Scout Rifle that she didn't use very often to mop up the Cabal inmates.

Now that the area was clear, Alyx walked up to the security hub and let her Ghost scan the entrance console.

"This says we need warden-level clearance to open the door. Cayde?" Ghost asks.

"I gotcha. Stand by for promotion." Cayde says.

The door to the security hub opens, and Alyx walks in. She then notices Cayde in a cubicle enclosed by bulletproof glass.

"Impeccable timing, as usual. All that's left is to turn it on." Cayde says.

Cayde then walks over to a lever and pulls it, only for an alarm to sound and chilling screams to be heard.

"That doesn't sound good." Alyx says.

"Uh, what's happening to the floor?" Cayde asks.

Alyx turns around and sees two machines rise from the floor, only to be stopped by Hive debris.

"Ahh! These Hive are gunking up the works!" Cayde exclaims.

"On it!" Alyx says.

She quickly clears the debris from the machinery, then clears out any Hive that crawled out from the floor.

She then turns back to Cayde.

"Hive gunk scrubbed. Now it should turn on." Cayde says.

"Remember to purge the buffers." Alyx says.

"Sure, got it. One question: how do I do that?" Cayde asks.

"Press the red button." Alyx says.

Cayde turns around.

"They're all red!" Cayde exclaims.

"Then press all of them!!!" Alyx replies.

Cayde then mashes as many red buttons as he can, then the lights all turn green.

"I can't believe that worked! I am amazing at this." Cayde says.

He then pulls the lever, only for everything to go back to red.

"Scratch that. It did not work." Cayde says.

And then Alyx repeats the process from before: Clear gunk, clear hive, talk to Cayde.

This time, Cayde just shot the console, and that somehow worked.

"Well, everything's where it's supposed to be, but now it's asking me some kinda secondary activation?" Cayde explains.

"There should be a terminal we can use out on the catwalks." Alyx says.

"Right. You do that. I'd go with you, but I hear this place has turrets, and I really wanna fire them. By the way, you and me... good team." Cayde says while giving Alyx a thumbs up.

Alyx then makes her way to another door, leading her out to the catwalk. In the distance, she can see more fighting going on between the inmates.

"Ooh, the turrets have a manual mode. Interesting." Cayde says, clearly getting ideas in his head.

Alyx walks down the catwalk. Cayde uses the turrets to clear a path for her, so she didn't have to fire a bullet. Alyx eventually makes her way to the terminal and lets her Ghost activate it.

With Cayde...

Now that everything is finally back online, Cayde exits the security hub.

"You in the green now, P.V.?" Cayde asks.

"Yes. Accessing the lower levels now. Just gotta check on a couple things, then we can call it a day." Petra says.

"Then it looks like we're all done and dusted here, kiddos. Ramen's on me." Cayde says.

He then looks around the prison to make sure that everything is fine.

"Looking pretty good down here. Just gotta check one last thing..." Petra says.

Cayde continues looking around. So far so good. Everything seemed quiet...

...

...

...

"No! No, no, no! Cayde- he's gone! This isn't a prison riot! It's a prison break! The airlock on Deck Zero! It's the only way out this far down! They're going to escape!" Petra exclaims.

Cayde turns around and looks up at the damaged cables holding the security hub in the air.

He then gets an idea.

"Not if I get there first." Cayde says.

He then climbs on top of the security hub. Then he takes out his handcannon, aims it at the damaged cable, and fires six times.

The cable snaps, and the security hub proceeds to fall to the bottom of the chasm with Cayde still on top of it on the way down, he sees Petra and decides to give her a wave.

The security hub then lands at the bottom of the chasm and explodes, which kills Cayde. His Ghost, Sundance, revived him.

And... well, those who are familiar with Cayde's legacy know what happened next...

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

After Cayde was knocked back into the other room, he struggled to get back up. He had to resort to crawling away.

Then he was approached by a man in a hood.

"Well, this- this is awkward. I- Y-you got a gun I can borrow?" Cayde asks.

"No. But I do have a bullet. With your name on it." Uldren Sov replies.

"Any second now, my partner is gonna roll in here and kill... Every. Last. One of you." Cayde laughs.

"Shh, shh, shh... this is going to hurt. A lot." Uldren says as he points Cayde's gun at him.

"Any last words?" Uldren asks.

Cayde then sits up and looks Uldren in the eyes.

"How's your sister?" Cayde asks.

Uldren then takes a deep breath in, and...

...

...

...

*BANG*

Cayde falls to the ground, a giant bullet wound in his chest. Then the Fallen barons that weakened Cayde and killed Sundance walked in. Then they followed Uldren out the airlock.

Just before the airlock closed, Alyx walked in the room. She saw Cayde dying on the ground, and Uldren Sov with his gun.

"He didn't feel a thing." Uldren says with a sadistic smirk.

Then the airlock closed.

Alyx rushed over to Cayde.

"Cayde, no!" She exclaims.

Cayde looked up at Alyx.

"How's... how's my hair?" Cayde asks with a chuckle.

Alyx can't wrap her head around what's happening.

"Speechless. Typical." Cayde says.

Alyx's Ghost moves closer to Cayde to see if there is anything he can do.

"Oh no... There's nothing I can-... I'm... sorry." He says.

Cayde looks back to Alyx.

"Listen, Alyx. This... this ain't on you. This... is what I get for... for playing nice." Cayde chuckles.

His chuckling becomes coughing.

He then looks Alyx in the eyes with a soft look.

"You tell Zavala and Ikora... the Vanguard... is... the best bet... I ever... lost..." Cayde says.

Then, his eyes fade to black, signaling that his life has slipped away into the greatest unknown.

Alyx puts down her hood and takes off her helmet, revealing the tears rolling down her face.

Petra rushes in only to find that she was too late.

Alyx takes Cayde's body and hugs it tightly.

"Goodbye, Cayde." She says.

She then puts her hood back up, but leaves her helmet off. She picks up Cayde's body, and carries out to the Reef.