A/N: In collaboration with a dear friend of mine, who is currently in Afghanistan, we've decided to post and share the prologue to our story based around a team of ODSTs. This story was written because of our love for the Halo franchise and our love for the TV mini-series, "Band of Brothers" in which greatly inspired the idea of it.

So please, read and review, and if this -prologue- turns out great, we'll continue the story.

Thank you.

"I go to the basement and open up my ruck..."

Those lines came from an old novel that was made by a Marine 500 years back. I'm sitting in my basement as I flipped through the pages of the old war book that I had bought way back when I thought about joining the UNSC. Back when the only war was between humans. It's been fifteen years since the Human-Covenant War. The war that damn near eradicated the human population. I'm just an old war veteran that everyone sees as a "Hero". I'm not a hero… I was just a kid who thought he knew everything. I thought I would be that the War Hero everyone will cheer for once he steps off the Pelican. I wanted to be man who ended the Human-Covenant War with a rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other.

I reach out for the old boxes I have stacked on each other in the corner of the basement. I grabbed the top one and wiped the dust off of it. Hells Angels in black marker was written on the top. I opened it up and pulled out a photo album.

I smiled, 'Hell Angels,' I thought. 'The baddest soldiers there were.' The photo album had the ODST emblem in the center with the motto, Feet First into Hell! written on the top. I opened it up to the first picture. The ODST graduation photo. We felt like we were on top of the world when we earned our patch.

I looked back into the box and pulled out everything. Digital trousers, Black, worn down boots, my old ODST shirt, I even still have my tattered old war journal in here. I even kept my M7 Caseless Sub-Machine Gun that had kept me alive throughout the war. All of a sudden, memories washed over me. Friends made and later lost throughout the war. The moment when you think you everything will be ok, only to have an Elite kill your friend right in front of you. The feeling of guilt was overwhelming.

I stumbled upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the sink to splash water on my face. I looked at the mirror to see myself a sickly white. Grey hair replacing the jet black color it once was. I try not to think of the war, but something always reminds me of it. The nightmares keep coming, jolting me awake every night. I wasn't the only one this happened to. The other Hell Angels had the same problems. Soto and Kowalski said there were some nights they couldn't even fall asleep. We may have won the war, but it still rages on in the minds of those who experienced it.

I've seen my fair share of the war, and I wasn't the same after it. A part of me died on the battlefield. I'm not the same person who wanted to be a war hero and boarded the bus that took me to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California that day. The day where I met my dear friends Delgado, Wallace, and Gastgeb…