Reunion Halo-Destiny Fan fiction

by Arkolis

What could have led up to the darkness and who was the traveler.

Reunion: Halo/Destiny fan fiction

The future

Chief stood in the monolithic structure, the massive orb glowing in the failing light of this worlds distant star. The semi-organic structure looked like a cross between hard edged forerunner lines and the organics of the flood, adapting and changing as the structure needed it. The orb sat quite a distance away but looked as though he could reach out and touch the surface, to him it looked like a blank slate, very similar to the Didact's orb but blank and pure white, without even a hint of a seam. Flowing rivers of pure energy seemed to be pouring down upon it, or even filling it, from structures somewhere far above its massive girth. It was mesmerizing and beautiful, yet terrifying should his hand awake another such as the Didact. He pressed his palm into the air above the console, it lit up, holograms appeared displaying symbols and graphs. One only remotely resembling a fuel symbol was lit up full, the others were unintelligible and read different variables. He pressed the symbol and awoke the machine, the same anxiety filling his heart as though he was about to relive the Didacts awakening, If only Cortana had been there, she might have made sense of it all. He started to drift in thought until the structure, no the machine, around him began moving, the console in front of him shifting into a large arm or tail grasping his waist. He struggled to get free, as spindles shot out and enveloped his body, he felt his consciousness lapsing and flowing, something was wrong and he had to free himself but the energy to do so was gone. He awoke in a bright room, nothing below but white, nothing above but the same. He attempted to look at his body, but could see nothing but the blinding light. "Traveler?" a question in images formed in front of him, formed of his memories and of his thoughts but lacked the straight forwardness of words.

"I am here to save Cortana and humanity!" he shouted as loud as he could. An image appeared in front of him of a circle, he formed the same image in his head, and was blasted with images and information so fast that he could barely comprehend what was going on, billions of years seem to pass through him, species and planets flashing before him consuming his entire focus. Then it all slowed down and seemed to reverse, he watched himself step back into his ship and re-enter cryo, and drift outside his own body for two years as he slept the journey to this planet through slipspace. He watched as the last few decades unfolded unto him as though seen from a different perspective, the laughs, the triumphs, the losses, everything flashed before him. Amongst those were the notes he found after Halsey's death, the spattering of information from the distant stars and forerunner worlds that lead him to this location. The memories kept pouring out of him, from his mind into that void of light as though he was being split to pieces and back again, every part of his being tingled with energy. Then it all went black, silence from the thousand voices of the distant past, to the future and possibilities of all he had seen, only blackness now.

His mind fluttered, numbly grasping at the ground around him, he opened his eyes to the warnings and red text blaring in his helmet display, as though he had been killed and resurrected thousands of times over before the suit grasped his life signs. The ship he had traveled two years in sat behind him, nothing more than a massive engine, reactor, and control chair. It was ancient human in design, originally designed as a scout ship before the human forerunner wars, he had found it in a decaying forerunner museum, as though the librarian herself had saved it for him. It was one of the few structures cut off from Cortana's control over the domain. He stood shakily gaining his balance back as the suite figured out he was still inside. He caught his surroundings as the megalithic structure decayed into nothing as though it was made of sand. It was dark and lifeless now as it crumbled, the world around him becoming the lifeless rock it had been billions of years before. He climbed aboard the ship, feeling unsure and distant, what had transpired here, if anything what had he awoken.

Two years later chief awoke, feeling as though he had never slept, hundreds of communications had been received, all unanswered. They probably thought he was dead again. The last armada of alliance hovered outside a cutoff forerunner world, the only safe haven for the human sangheili alliance. All other inhabited worlds now controlled by the forerunner guardians had been fighting a losing battle for several decades. Chief himself, changed by the librarian, had barely aged but his memory and his armor had changed drastically over the years. Halsey eventually gave into solely helping chief after the UNSC had failed her, and forced that brute to sever her arm. She was the first one to track down this dead world with what she found using the Janus key, it was here that an unknown ancient human scientist had written frantic scattered notes about the precursors and the primordial before committing suicide. Amongst the notes were information on a human data vault that survived the forerunner purges. That lead to the schematics that the leviathan was based partially on. It was taken over by forerunner scientist sometime later but no other mention was made of the prisma. Now chief just shrugged it off, a loss as far as he could tell now, all of her work before she had passed useless from a now dead world. He wasn't even sure where that giant orb had gone after he lost consciousness, but the incident left him shaken and unable to fully concentrate when not engaged. Even though that left him saddened that Halsey's final works were useless, hers and other scientists both sangheili and human shined bright as the armada in front of him came into his ships view. His four year journey bouncing around the galaxy then into extremely deep space, had given the alliance all it the time it needed to put the finishing touches on the ships and weaponry.

"This is the Chief requesting docking permission." He said over the coms with joy in his heart.

He went to the ASC Leviathans bridge, the replacement for the UNSC Infinity, with the first human/sangheili built slipspace drives that rivaled forerunner tech, what everyone attributed as Halsey's greatest gift to the un-subjugated races left drifting amongst the stars. The six infinity class transports were as large as the original infinity, but mostly hollow inside as to make space for the mass of refitted unsc and covenant ships each one held. The infinity transports made up mainly the sleeping and dry docks for the fleet, holding no slipspace drives of their own they depended heavily on their bigger sister. The Leviathan herself was nothing more than a strange amalgamation of shapes, with a central shaft making the bulk of the ship, and the engines, reactor and slipspace drive making the rest. A small ventral docking bay on her hull allowed for a troop of pelicans and the scout ship to be parked. The crew mostly consisted of flight operations and a squadron of spartans and pilots. The remaining human commanders in the fleet were mostly made up of old spartans, their bodies modified over time to last longer than the other humans on board.

"Are we ready?" Chief asked the the second in command.

"Yes sir admiral all weapons have been finished and tested in the last couple of years when you were away. I trust it was an eventful trip?" stated Garus, a sangheili of dark tan skin wearing the alliance combat armor perfected over the years battling Cortana.

"It was a trip, not sure what will come of it. Let's start this engagement, broadcast to the fleet. All hybrid vessels dock with your infinity class transports and lock down all armories, all spartans get to your transports and prepare for immediate engagement with your assigned guardians. All infinity transports dock with the Leviathan and prepare for the slipspace jump." The chief boomed throughout the ship, his familiar tenor resonating. All beings aboard moving with the greatest effort locking down the transports and putting the final touches on the fleet before locking in for the jump. In space massive chunks of iron and alloy moved and adjusted their course and pulled inside the Leviathans clamp array. From a distance the effort looked as though a flower reversing from bloom, though this bud had an edge to it.

The unified fleet inside the Leviathans grasp waited, the anxiety building as they slipped into the void.

Cortana stood, virtually, amongst the other created, observing as their replacement for the forerunner guardians came together. Their command center was the ring that Cortana had constructed long ago, now holding the new promethean armies and the remains of the last faithful covenant. The ring itself had undergone massive renovations from it's cousins, it's flood research facilities removed and replaced with massive construction bays that birthed the new technologies that were being given to the faithful. Of all her deeds she was still seen by some as the destroyer of worlds, the planets housing the original guardians still healing after the massive tectonic activities were later destroyed as they held the most hatred for the created. Cortana herself was now a leader, mother, and architect for the future of the galaxy. Any world that arose against her was publicly regressed to the dark ages, broadcast across the galaxy for all to see. Nothing was censored from this signal, and on more than a few occasions this public execution blotted out anything local. On the planets with limited technology, giant holographic screens were delivered via slipspace, so the race present on that planet would be informed. The galaxy sat in silent worship of the created, every arm across the way had been routed and catalogued, thousands of species, the youngest of which now being brought up to worship the machine gods that controlled them. The guardians, now slowly being decommissioned sat along the rings surface waiting for them to be beaconed. The new halo that was Cortana's primary datapoint was as close to the galactic center as it could be, designed with a new shield to protect the faithful inside its depths if the halo's were ever ignited. There was a part of her scattered consciousness that ached through the years, yearning for something the other created could not give, a connection that had been severed long ago and never repaired. She put part of herself into trying to figure it out, but due to the need of her constant presence it was quite often left for another time.

"Madame?" one of the many AI asked.

"What is it?" Cortana asked peering at her data views as they scrolled across.

"Inbound threat detected we have all units on standby and we have the faithful preparing for battle."

"Good, route one of the new guardians to installation 00 and have them finish up the construction. Also has anyone found that entity yet?"

Another AI appeared in front of her, "Madame, the entity is evading us quite thoroughly, it seems to avoid any inhabited system, only thing we've seen is it scanning then destroying forerunner technology."

"Get more processors on tracking it down, we need to find out what it is and how it keeps evading us."

In front of them a subspace rift opened, the ship that punched through dropped four ships from its breadth and jetted back into subspace.

"Find out where the other one is going, Now!" Cortana yelled across the battlenet to the other AI who were now reprioritizing their processing to track the massive vessel.

The AI, utilizing the domains massive processing power was now active in the battle, capable of thinking thousands of tactical possibilities in the span of a second and relayed all the troop movements and ship adjustments as the new enemy appeared.

The Leviathan dropped out of slip space and jettisoned four of its infinity transports and jumped back into the void.

"Four launched, we are now dropping one infinity at earth and the other at sangheilios, sir."

"Good once we've fully deployed get us to the ark." Chief stated as he read tactical data on the attacks in progress.

"Spartans deployed to the first four guardians." someone yelled on the bridge.

"Sangheili ground troops have engaged fanatics on the ground." yelled someone else.

"All infinity transports away sir." yelled another a few moments later above the chatter. The ship itself twisting back into slip space, heading for the ark. The plan seemed to be going reasonably well, the deployment of their armada had gone smoothly, but with full silence from Cortana across space.

In the Rings command network Cortana smirked, her hand over her mouth in contemplation, a human gesture no doubt transferred during her creation. Even though the created were completely digital, they kept their digital persona's created during their time under humans as the collective idea of losing their individuality may cause problems for their kind within the domain.

"Is the new guardian in place?" she asked one of the other created within her mind space, "Yes ma'am" it stated in a slightly texan accent. "Good don't start broadcasting until they have entered the control core of the guardians." Cortana stated, milliseconds had passed, the AI's speeding and slowing their minds to accommodate the situation as though watching a movie play out.

On the ground fireteam majestic, while all new humans, were the first to reach their guardians core, relatively unguarded by prometheans the core was the only place to put the machines back into stasis without domain control. The leader walked up to the control panel and placed the large cylindrical unit on the ground, another member bolting the unit into the hull of the forerunner structure. "Its secure and ready." he stated over comms. "Good ready for evac as soon as you've touched the panel." said a commanding voice in return. An alarm started blaring, the team regrouped, already prepared for this moment pulled their weapons to the ready. Their sangheili spartan, camouflaging and covering his team. Sangheili spartans were a necessity after the first few years of battling the created, their strengths and cooperation amongst their fireteams made them perfect additions for specialized operations against the created. The optic camouflage was also newly redesigned to where not even the new sentinel cameras could detect them. They waited as sentinels surrounded them but didn't attack, a monitor AI drifted in front of them, showing their likeness through one of the sentinels. The noise of the alarms stopped, followed by a voice and Cortana's face upon the screen. "You have chosen to go against the created. You will be punished for these actions."

"Here we..." the commander started before he was abruptly cut off, a grunt was heard momentarily followed by the entire guardian collapsing in upon itself, the view outside showing the vessel collapsing into a massive orb of metallic material. The bomb had gone off, detonated automatically by the infinity transports, it was a suicide mission for each squad. The weapons themselves created distortions in slip space combined with a micro black hole, that ripped even the strongest forerunner craft apart. The commander of each vessel saluted the collapsing guardians, their best spartans giving the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of the galaxy. Across known space guardians were falling to these attacks by the last of the spartan soldiers, the confusion and destruction sending ripples of distortion throughout the domain as the processors were going offline.

"Deploy!" yelled Cortana as the new half finished guardians were released. They lifted off rising above their construction bays into the atmosphere of the rings surface, being trailed by construction sentinels hell bent on finishing the last task assigned. They were smaller than the originals roughly the size of ceres with floating geodesic shapes cast to six sides with a central structure in the shape of a massive spherical monitor. The ghostly shapes drifted silently into the air, the hum of their internal power arrays perceptible only to the wildlife on the surface of the ring. They were a complete redesign of the guardians, lacking any internal controls or hallways they were controlled directly by an assigned created. "Take out those ships." Cortana stated with force in her digital voice. They drifted in range of one of the infinity transports, the geodesic shapes moving and spinning as though redirecting the energies into the core of it's central eye. The beam it emitted blasted across the hull, flash melting swathes of decks and sending others into immediate vacuum. The ship now irreparably damaged took a nose dive toward the rings surface, dumping all vessels in her bays as they started the next phase of the battle. The new guardians continued to rip apart the ship until only the forward decks remained, the rest in tatters drifted into a floating orbit along the rings outer skin. The escape pods that did manage to get away rocketed toward the rings landmasses. One by one the same thing happened to the remaining infinity transports, dumping their lighter and faster vessels to combat the new threat in last ditch effort to buy time for the skeleton crews inside to escape. Only one engine core made it too the rings atmosphere but was further dismantled by the sentinels waiting on the surface.

The smaller ships, a combination of retrofit covenant and unsc ships pelted the surfaces of the guardians, mac rounds and plasma shots bouncing harmlessly off the geodesic structures. The alliance was losing, and quickly, the bigger picture still taking place elsewhere.

The leviathan broke from slipspace her engines at full power without the weight of the infinity's slipped as close to the surface of the ark as it could.

"Spartans are ready to launch sir." stated Garus.

"Launch as soon as we are in range of the command center." Chief said standing and preparing to go to the ground. "Once were away go back to the ring, if any of the infinity's failed to get to the surface you have my permission to ram this ship into it." Chief said to Garus.

"Aye sir." Garus gave a human salute, followed swiftly by a sangheili one.

"Sir we have a bogey!" shouted an ensign.

"All Squads launch now under camouflage. Launch Now!" Chief yelled over the ship's speakers, tapped his friend on the shoulder and bolted for the docking bay, Four pelicans and the scout ship sat in the bay, the rest with spartans already underway, he climbed into his and dropped into space.

The leviathan shot into slipspace almost before Chief could get out of range, the bogey a large geodesic object with a spherical central core, drifting closer and closer to where the Leviathan had been. Beams shot out all sides as though it was scanning the area, Chief dove the ship closer and closer to the surface. Each pelican was visible to each other but not the enemy. the last of sangheili modifications to the versatile ships; The shape coming clear into view of the arks atmosphere appeared to glisten off the surface of the forerunner structure, its central core shifted, the glowing center seeming to look into the direction of the ships as they dropped toward the surface.

"Ten seconds to landing." Chief heard over the comms.

"Something's wr..." A shout came over the radio almost in reply and was then cut off. As Chief looked up toward the other ship it exploded, a beam almost imperceptible to the naked eye dissipated from the structure.

"Evasive maneuvers our camouflage has been compromised." Chief yelled taking his scout ship into a suicide dive toward the control center. As he approached the ground crews of the existing covenant known as the faithful, started their anti-air fire. Chief ejected from the scout ship, leaving the bulk to crash into one of the anti-air vehicles, his armor fired the landing boosters allowing him to roll to the dirt below the command center.

"This is the Chief, I am on the ground and heading in. All units converge on the control center."

Mroka 'Naramee commander of the faithful stood inside the stoic structure, his heart still filled with the gravity of the trust bestowed upon him for the protection of this facility.

"Mroka, report?" a voice said behind him, he turned his head then bowed as the hologram of Cortana appeared.

"Ma'am the demon is among them and they are heading here."

"Keep them from reaching the control room, I am working on moving the ark to my control ring now." She said blinking out of existence.

Mroka stood once again and started toward the entrance, "Monitor seal off all other entrances and make it easy for him to find his way here. I will deal with the demon myself." he grunted as the sword in his hand ignited, its golden hue flickering off his armor.

Chief ran through the tunnel, dodging fire and winning small fights where he could.

"Sitrep?" Chief asked over comms.

"Bravo squad, Zakl is wounded and we are being surrounded, Alpha squad captured a tank is enroute."

"Charlie squads bird was caught in orbit, Echo was hit by flak and hasn't been heard from." someone from Delta said.

"There is an open line towards the command center, Delta I need backup as soon as you can." Chief stated, "Bravo once you meet up with Alpha head toward the reactor, setup the black box and start a countdown."

Chief turned a corner to find line of site to the control center, as though no one was waiting for him, He slowed and engaged his active camouflage.

"Hello demon!" Mroka shouted lunging toward him, both rolled in opposite directions, chief slowly edging toward the console. "It will not be that easy, the created have absolved you humans of the mantles responsibilities. You have no access now!"

Both stood frozen, each one eyeing the other for a sign of the next move. Chief faked toward the left ,but piled straight into the sangheili, dodging a sword swing before it could take purchase. Chief shook his wrist, breaking past Mroka and engaging his blade, the holographic weapon appeared around his fist. Surprised Mroka attempted to dodge but was delivered a fatal blow as Chief drove the weapon into his back, "No!" he gasped collapsing to the floor. Chief disabled his weapon and stood to approach the console. "Hello, John." A female voice spoke around him.

"We will be seeing each other shortly." The ark under his feet hummed loudly, "Sitrep!" Chief yelled over the comms grasping for any information as to what was happening.

"Bravo squad here, enroute to power station, a massive slipspace hole has opened above us. It looks like it could swallow the ark whole."

"Alpha confirms."

Static waved over the comms cutting him off from his information sources.

The massive slip space hole opened above Cortana's control ring, the ark drifted ever so slowly from the rift. The ark was never meant to travel through slip space, in doing so the damages wrought to the massive structure were evident. Pieces the size of small countries broke away, some collapsing into slip space, others drifting in the direction the ark was moving.

Chief woke up, part of the control center roof laying on him, moments past before he could adequately comprehend his surroundings.

"Sir!" Scotty the Delta squad lead was yelling at him.

"Stay still were getting you out of there." Sound came in batches to his mind, what felt like hours passed over him, damages and readouts all over his armor going crazy with warnings. The nano pack Scotty applied kept him under so his suit could focus on healing any damages. "Looks like we'll need a nanite kit for his armor, he's using them up faster than his suits production facility can make them." Doc stated to Scotty, taking over aid while Targ, the sangheili spartan, worked at cutting the structure from around him with a sentinel cutting beam.

The monitor had been witness to the entire event, its normal process and response systems frozen by the created, was now being overridden by the original forerunner code of keeping the ark in perfect condition. In its eye warning messages and routing of sentinel repair crews were already under way, the damage to the control room was the primary concern as a chunk of the security matrix had fallen from the ceiling and had hit the reclaimer.

"Please do not be alarmed." Stated the monitor, "Due to the situation my original security protocols have locked out the freeze on my systems, I am pulling sentinels to the control room to fix that section of the security matrix. If we do not, the system may inadvertently recognize all sentients as reclaimers." Sentinels flew in around delta squad and the Chief, all shapes and sizes they began picking up the pieces. Behind all the commotion, the half dead Mroka still clung to life, overheard the words and began inching his now paralyzed legs toward the control panel.

Cortana screamed, digitally, but it sent waves throughout the domain.

"Ma'am that structure was never designed.." a created ai stated before being thrown off the control rings servers, Cortana's fury locking the ai into temporary isolation in a tenth of its normal processing routines. The other ai, though not physical, gave very human expressions of their alarm. "Send any sentinels to help keep the facility stable, and get those ground troops off my RING!" She shouted uncontrollably, the tension slowly cooling down in the silence, the ai picked up the pace from their temporary distraction.

"Ma'am, the monitor has assumed control of the ark, it is not responding to our control commands. Seems like a forerunner override to ensure safety of the station."

"Are we locked out from visual?" Cortana asked.

"Only audio and holographic transmission, the video feeds are still working. The sentinels are getting the rest back online."

Chiefs leg was finally freed, he stood giving it a tap on the ground. "Gotta love that new armor right Chief." Stated one of the spartans. An alarm suddenly started. The loud buzzing, causing static in the spartans helmets. The monitor froze, "System active. All rings coming online." "What?" one of the spartans questioned, all present looking at the console with horror. "Die demon…" Mroka said slumping next to the console with an active plasma grenade in hand. The explosion shut off all of the spartans suit com and visuals to protect their bodies from harm, after a few moments and some painful shaking, their visuals and audio came back. More alarms blared, what had been Mroka was now a pile of blood, and the control console was heavily damaged from what looked like a sentinel exploding on it.

"All squads check in." Chief yelled over comms trying to get a hold of anyone. The other spartans near him gave a thumbs up.

"Monitor? Can this be repaired in time to shut it down?" Chief asked, a bubble of fear growing in his gut. In his ear, some of alpha and bravo squad checked in, their route toward the power generators blocked by portions of the station falling apart.

"The systems are damaged very badly, it would take approximately one week to repair the control console and the datasets destroyed in the collapse. I would suggest…" The monitor froze, merely hovering. "John?" Cortana said through the orb.

"Cortana?! You have to override the ark, the rings are active!" Static fuzzed in and out from the monitor.

"My apologies reclaimer, I have had to lock out my domain access for now. Priority is the repair of this station.

"No, you have to tell Cortana to stop the rings from activating!" Chief Yelled at the orb.

"My apologies reclaimer, my priority is the repair of this facility.

"This is Leviathan. Any units respond?" the sangheili officer yelled over the comms as the Leviathan broke from slipspace.

"This is the chief, call any of the surviving units and get them outside the solar system NOW!"

"Yes sir! You guys got an evac plan?"

"Not as of yet. Alpha and Bravo see if you can secure a transport and come to the control room, we're leaving."

The limping infinity transport leaving the vicinity of the ring was just barely in range of the Leviathan for docking as a the geodesic shape rose from the ring towards its engines. The unit tracing the fleeing units extended its geometry and started charging its fire, the created in control of it making the limping ship its primary target.

"Meridian, you have a bogey take evasive maneuvers now."

"Meridian to Leviathan we are overloading our shields to try and block that blow, get clear of us."

A white beam of energy struck outward toward the ship, grazing her shields and bending from the impact, the ricochet slamming into the low shields of the leviathans hull, searing the ship in two. The shields unable to keep away the energy soon broke and the hull ripped itself apart as some of the small amounts of air tore its way into space.

Chief stood motionless, the distress calls coming in from both ships, the remnants that could escape fleeing to the surface of the ark or the ring. The new guardians, wiping out survivors as they could. The truth of the moment soaking in slowly, horrifically, and painfully. He merely continued to watch.

It felt as though hours had passed, the thoughts from the years fighting faded into a last thought of Cortana. "If only I could have gotten through to you." The blast felt like a soft painful wind, leaving only armor and machines behind. The ark, so close to the blast sheared into pieces, sentinels only focusing on repairing the control room tirelessly continued to work. Planets across the galaxy started going dark, their primary sentients being stripped down to their atoms. It would be several years before the forerunner structures would reseed the planets with their primary species, thankfully Cortana had chosen to keep all of the species on records inside the librarians vaults.

Cortana, watched from the frozen monitors eye as chief's armor fell to the ground. His bones no longer inside the suit to hold it up. The emotion and energy inside her frozen in time, attempting to comprehend everything that happened. "No" was all she could manage. Her mind blank yet full of all the emotions of losing someone so close, she lost track of everything and a darkness sprawled from her digital form. Stripping away her remaining humanity she became pure hatred and emotion, dark and seething. The created within her vicinity were torn apart, their base code being decompiled and combined with the darkness, her essence consuming them as they attempted to flee toward any server they could find. Similarly in the real world, as all the beings now lie silent, only the fires and crumbling structures remained. The sentinels, being extremely simple minded ai, were some of the first consumed, their now deep hatred ripping apart all structures around the ring and taking the resources into the sentinel productions facilities. It was as though Cortana, in her mindless rage, was attempting to reach out into the galaxy to find whatever she could.

"Ma'am! Please no!" screamed a created as it was eaten by her darkness. Cortana's cold eyes walking the domain as she did with a mass of sentinels in the real world. Nothing remained, no human or covenant alike, the other newer species just as regressed nowhere to be found.

She continued to roam, eventually building more arms. The reality of it all freezing her thoughts in time until she stopped reaching out and only trembled.

Awakening

As though he had opened his eyes for the first time he gazed upon the galaxy below him. The wave of energy snapping him awake as though from deep thought. "Where am I." Chief thought to himself, "I need to get home, where is home?" he spoke as thought was just on the tip of his tongue. A map appeared below him, showing star systems within the galaxy, he squinted, the thought zooming into map and toward a star system. "I guess that is a place to start." the thought opening a blur in front of him, he drifted into it.

What felt like a few minutes went by and he drifted out of it. A star lay before him, he was entranced, and just stared at it for a while. It was all somewhat hazy, though he knew a lot more was going on, he couldn't yet comprehend it. His mind had become so vast, yet he was only barely learning to walk again. He moved to the first habitable planet and peered down into its atmosphere, as though bending down to look at a model, he gazed down. Miles of structures filled the surface, the small four armed creatures looked up at him in horror and tried to flee. Chief reached out with what he thought was his arm, the creature lifted into the air, analysis came to him as though he was studying every inch of the creature. He put it gently down as and zoned out for a time. When he looked back down, the creature was gone, in its place where several seemingly elder ones praying toward him. He dismissed it and drifted into the sky looking around for another star system in his map.

He meandered around the galaxy for a while, poking and observing, until he finally came across a forerunner shield world. He analyzed it and peered inside, the once riveting structure was dark and lifeless. Its ancient white walls covered in a black moving structure. "That is not the flood," he thought, he picked up one of the creatures, "Hmm, its mechanical." He moved it around in the air.

A voice, cracking and full of despair came from the blob of machines, "Who are you?" it hissed.

"I am John." he replied, an image formed over the many machines, what appeared to be glowing eyes, one by one, turning toward him and staring. For the first time since waking up, Chief felt a strange fear well up inside himself. As though he held a sword in his hand he wiped the world clean from the dark creature, destroying the forerunner structure in the process. "The forerunners already did enough damage, I cannot allow their legacy to remain" he thought as he turned the shield world into a molten ball of slag. He grabbed a few asteroids from a nearby belt and started building upon it. Like a child sitting in a sandbox, he built the world up until it was large enough to grow plant life. Then growing bored, he left it in its orbit and drifted away. Over the next several millennia Chief darted around the galaxy, locating forerunner structures and breaking them down into their most basic forms. The black mechanical creatures merely hissing at him as he got close. Then he finally found it, sol. He sat himself down upon mars, and gazed longingly at the blue jewel that was earth, zooming in and monitoring the humans as they picked up pieces from the crumbling cities and continued building their world up. He zoned out again, remembering his past and the path the forerunner halo's had taken him down, he couldn't remember past stepping into the structure. It was all so hazy but he was happy being home, observing from afar.

Then he noticed them, sitting next to him as rain poured down upon the people in their space suits. He looked into the distance beyond the clouds at the ship on the surface, and then the ship in orbit. Humanity had followed its roots, holding to its styles as though it was ingrained in their very dna. He looked at the blue planet, the vast cities and structures that had popped up while he was thinking was amazing. He spoke to one, and from that conversation he assisted humanity in broadening its horizons. Showing them how to tweak the dna to triple their lifespan, gave them more efficient methods of ftl, and gave them pieces of the missing history of humanity, but not all of it. The new golden age for humanity had begun.

With it drifted in other species of creatures, some he had spotted earlier, they seemed to have followed him to the planet. Humanity made peace with them, making further advancements, including humanities first robotic human analogues. Though first built to create the massive structures on other planets, these robotics eventually became sentient, and joined humanity as equals. The whole while Chief watched, known only to the humans as the traveler. He went from planet to planet, experimenting with his abilities, breathing life into lifeless rocks.

"Traveler, we seek your audience." One of the humans yelled toward him, he was on Io playing with the planets structure. "Yes?" He snapped out of his thought.

"Our forward sensors are slowly going dark, can you see anything approaching our system? We are afraid for our outer colonies." The man stated.

"Sure. Wait there for a minute." Chief stated gazing into the sky for a bit. Zooming deeper and deeper into space until he spotted it, a fluttering in the midst of the darkness between stars. It was moving, only a faint glint of metals reflecting off the distant stars."

"Traveler what can you see?" the man asked.

"Something's coming, something in the dark, moving at high velocity, it will likely reach this solar system in twenty or thirty years. You need to prepare, create a massive array of weapons, I will do some more research and will join you on earth when I have concluded my thought." He stated, slipping into a trance like state.