Sup. I'm WeAreTheMeta. And welcome to the first story of my re-purposed account.
My updates will be erratic, so don't expect this to be a commonly updated story. New chapters could range from days to months apart, just to warn you. Anyway, I want to start this of by saying thanks for clicking on this story option, and have a fantastic whatever-point-in-time-you-read-this. Please follow, fave and most of all, review. Reviews are the fuel to my muse, so if you want updates more frequently, drop a review telling me what you liked, what you want me to fix, etc.
Anyway, enough of this. On with the story
Five Centuries From Now, In This Exact Galaxy...
The War Is Over!
As Arbiter Thel 'Vadam kills the Phrophet of Truth, the remaining Forces of the Covenant begin to splinter. With their leader gone and their forces scattered, the Covenant fall easily to the assaults of the humans, and their newly allied species, the Sangheili.
However, one malicious force remained at large: the terrible parasite known as the Flood, and it's sinister leader, the Gravemind. Master Chief and the Arbiter, accompanied by the newly re-acquired Cortana, meet up with UNSC Sargent Major A.J. Johnson and 343 Guilty spark at one of the remaining Halo arrays.
Bent on defeating the Flood forever, our heroes decide to fire the ring prematurely, thus destroying both it and the parasite. However, Gulity Spark, the guardian of the array, does not take this well.
In an insuring battle, 343 Guilty Spark claims Johson's life moments before he himself is destroyed by the Master Chief. Honoring the Sargent's final request, the remaining heroes fire the superweapon, tearing the flood to pieces.
With their objective complete, Master Chief and his allies make a hasty retreat to the Forward Unto Dawn, barely making it in time to escape a fired end in the Halo array.
However, the day was not won fully. While fleeing, the Dawn's Slipspace Drive was damaged, resulting in the loss of half the ship, and with it, Master a Chief and Cortana. Our brave Spartan and his partner are now lost in space, with no means of rescue in sight...
"Chief? Chief? John, and you hear me? John?! Wake up!"
The voice echoed in Master Chief's head a few times, before his eyes snapped open.
It was the voice of Cortana. His A.I. and closest companion. He was dizzy for a moment, wondering where he was, before it all came back to him in one big rush. The Halo Array, Spark's betrayal, the death of Johnson. All of it. The last thing he remembered wa being consumed by the explosion.
To let Cortana know he was still alive, he activated the flashlight in his helmet. If Cortana had had a face at that moment, it would have been flushed with relief. "I thought I'd lost you too," she sighed, happiness evident in her voice. He looked around. They Dawn was a complete wreck. Gravity was offline, so he drifted aimlessly
He spotted what remained of a window. The glass had shattered, so now there was nothing separating him from the empty void of space outside. He held onto the edge, just in case. The now occupied the back half of the ship as it floated through space.
"What happened?" He asked.
"I don't know," Cortana admitted. "When Halo fired, it shook itself to pieces. Did a number on the Ark," she chuckled bitterly. "The portal couldn't sustain itself. We made it through just as it collapsed."
She paused for a moment. "Well, some of us made it," she said in a resigned tone. Chief took a look around at the outside. They were utterly surrounded by stars. However, for some reason, they seemed... Wrong to him. Shaking the notion out of his mind, he turned and pushed himself down the corridor.
He knew what he needed to do now. Find the Cryo-Pod chamber, seal himself away, and wait for rescue.
However, there was one problem with that. A.I.'s couldn't Cryo-Sleep, and her chip would be irreparably damaged if she were to go inside the chamber with him.
He would need to leave her outside to wait it out, while he took the quick road. The thought sickened him to his stomach, leaving the entity that had become, for all intents and purposes, his adopted little sister to him outside, alone in the dark.
But there was nothing else to be done. They had no food, no rations, no water, no communications. Really, it was a small miracle that they had the Cryo-Pod chamber. Without it, Chief wouldn't last nearly long enough to see any form of rescue. Leaving Cortana to watch his back was much more preferable to leaving her to make sure he had a good funeral.
"But you did it," Cortana continued as he floated along. "Truth and the Covenant." he had finally reached the room he was looking for. Spotting the A.I. Terminal, he set himself down in front of it and took Cortana out of her place on the back of his helmet. Her avatar, blowing brilliant blue, appeared, and was looking at him with a somber expression.
She knew what was about to happen. And she excepted it. There was simply no other way. "The Flood. It's all finished."
"We did it," he nodded in agreement.
She was right. And Chief knew it. Victory had come at a heavy cost for so, so many. But the twenty-seven year war was, at long last, over. The war he had been fighting since his early years was finally done. No more dodging plasma cannons from a Phantom. No more stealing Ghosts on the battlefield to give himslef an edge. No more watching soldiers and ODST's get blasted out of the sky or from their seats in a Warthog, or watching Scarabs and Hunters crush good men to sacks of bone and flesh.
No more watching friends and family get slaughtered on the battlefield. Maybe when he was rescued, he could take some time to learn how to be human again.
It was all over at long last. He shelved his rifle, as well as the Covenant Energy Sword he had recovered from a Flood Combat form in the middle of battle, and the pair of M6's at his hip. With his weapons properly deposited, he made his way over to the nearest Cryo-Pod, climbing inside.
Cortana watched him sadly as the door began to close. "I'll miss you," she said quietly, bowing her head in sorrow. If A.I.'s could cry, it looked like she would be doing it at that moment.
As the door sealed itself, Chief looked at her with he same regret. "Wake me," he said. "When you need me."
She looked up at him, a bit startled. He hadn't said 'when we get rescued' or 'when something happens'. He told her to wake him when she needed him. That made her smile a bit as her Spartan laid back, the effects of cryogenic sleep taking hold.
As he started to fade from concuousness, he could see Cortana look around hopelessly, as if loss for what to do next, before holding herself as all other light started to fade, leaving her own body as the sole source.
She looked at his still, cold form and bit her lip, hugging herself tighter to try and stave off the loneliness that was quickly taking effect. "Goodnight, John." With that, her avatar began to morph from the image of a young woman to a small, condensed sphere of light as she went into an 'inactive mode'.
And thus, the Forward Unto Dawn was quiet.
"Gravity-inducing mass detected..."
He could hear it faintly, the voice of his companion. He heard bangs and crashes.
He could hear her screaming at him to wake up.
He could see flashes of red and orange, he could feel the rumbling akin to an earthquake
"Cheif! Get out of there! Open up you damn pod!"
The blaring of alarms.
The heat from the fire
"Not good, not good, not good!"
The franticness of her voice.
The sudden need to leave.
"John, get up!" She was yelling. "I need you! We need to go, now!"
But she couldn't open the pod, she couldn't-
BAM!
The pod was blasted open, and he was thrown rather violently from his sleep. He looked around frantically, trying to determine the scource of what was happening.
Everybting was either a wreck or on fire. The whole place was shaking, be Chief had to struggle just to get up. "Chief," he heard Cortana yell. "Chief!?" She sounded panicked. At her tone, his protective instinct took over. Nothing else mattered at the moment but getting them both out alive.
He tried to rise, but stumbled, coughing heavily. It wasn't from the smoke, but the feeling that his lungs, and the rest of him for that matter, were half frozen still. However, an explosion nearly going off in his face was about enough to make him feel nice and toasty again. His legs were still a little weak, though.
"Over here," he called, stumbling his way over to her. He had to get her out of that terminal, or she could be destroyed right along with it.
What had happened?! It felt like mere seconds ago that he was going under. Now ne was surrounded by fire and chaos. He stumbled, trying to get up as smoke began to clog his visor. He could see the faint outline of Cortana's body as she looked around frantically for him. She looked... Really different than she had when he went to sleep. More definition, longer, darker hair, different code lines.
All in all, a lot more human looking,
He noticed that the tray containing his weapons was on the ground next to her terminal, sealed shut with a transparent lid. She must have somehow secured them so they wouldn't be defenseless once they managed to escape. He grabbed it, and hauled himself up to face her. When she saw her Spartan ok, she broke out in a relived smile.
"Oh, thank God," she said with immense joy. "I thought you were incinerated!"
Instead of responding, he grabbed her A.I. chip. He briefly noticed that his armor looked significantly different, but he decided to wait till later to figure that one out. For now, he was content to just reach back and put her in the slot in the back of his helmet.
Despite the heat all around him he could feel the welcome chill going down his neck and head as his companion re-integrated with his neural implants. He smiled in spite of the situation. It was like welcoming a good friend back home.
"What's the situation?" He asked as he put the weapons case securely onto the holster on his back, and started to run, eavong the Cryo-Pod room in the dust.
"Eh, you know, fire, near-death, lots of explosions and manly stuff. The usual." While Chief was glad that she hadn't lost her Snark while he was out, now was not the time.
"Cortana," he said warningly, before skidding to a halt right before a flaming bannister came down, nearly taking his head off. Suddenly the entire gravity of the vessel began to shift, and Cheif fell sideways onto what was once the wall with an audible 'oomph'.
"The Dawn found a planet by accident. I couldn't see it coming because the other half had the scanners," she blurted as he kept trying to find a way through the havoc. "Obviously a half-destroyed ship with no shields and badly damaged armor isn't going to do so well in re-entry. Just be thankful I upgraded your armor while you were out of it, or else you'd be a pile of guts in that suit."
He grimmaced, not wanting to think about it as he continued on his hazardous way. "Why didn't we just go into orbit?!" He questioned.
"Hell if I know," Cortana yelled back. "Maybe you're just unlucky for once."
He shrugged to himself. Made about as much sense as anything in his life.
"Is there any way off the ship?"
"Besides jumping out at ten miles up?" Cortana said sarcastically, stressed to the extreme because of the situation. The only other time Chief had seen her this freaked out was during their mad dash off the Ark. "Well, the hanger is still intact... Maybe there's still a Longsword operable in there."
"What about the escape pods?" Chief asked as he leapt over one of the hallways. Everything was on its side now, and he could see the ground coming through the holes in the roof. As far as he could tell, it was a desert. A really, really big desert. Maybe the sand would help cushion his fall?
"All crushed," Cortana reported on the pods. "Just pray there's a working Longsword. If there's not... Well, you survived falling form orbit once, right? Think you could pull it off again?" He was silent as he followed the waypoint she had marked on his HUD for the hanger.
There was no time for small talk as he made his way through the burning ship. It was absoloute chaos and destruction as he raced through the place, making his way towards the hangar, determined to get both himself and his little friend off the doomed vessel as fast as he could. She still sounded pretty freaked out, enough to where his HUD was starting to glitch slightly.
"Can you seeing if you can access local data, figure out where we're about to land?" He asked Cortana. If he gave her something to do, it might help her calm down so that he could worry about the legwork.
"I'll see what I can do," she said. She began scanning for local networks, trying to find a local network. She did, though it was a bit strange, it would take her a few minuets to translate it.
He finally made to the hanger a few minuets later. There were several vehicles still inside, but only one that was capable of flight. A Hornet, hanging from the ceiling, secured by metal clamps. It was no Longsword, but it would have to do. Suddenly the ship broke the sound barrier, and went completely vertical.
He grunted as his back hit the wall, and had to rush away as the same tank that nearly killed the Arbiter tried a repeat report on him.
The massive, heavy combat vehicle slammed into, and ripped right through, the wall, impaling itself there. He grimaced a bit, glancing at it as he climbed over the trends. Ground floor was coming up fast, and he needed that Hornet of he was gonna make it out of this in one piece. There was orbital drop equipment around, and he didnt want to test his luck by playing ODST without the proper equipment.
He jumped, trying to vault his way to the VOTL craft, only succeeded in grabbing the end he of it. Suddenly the door to the hanger was ripped off, and Chief was quickly assaulted by heat and wind as they simultaneously rushed inside.
The alarms got louder and louder, the conditions got worse and worse. His grip was beginning to slip, and he couldn't pull himself towards the cockpit fast enough. The part he was hanging off of was ripped off, and he slammed into the turret of the tank behind him.
"Chief!" Cortana cried out as he began to black out. As his view of the sand below got closer and closer, he began to fade out of consciousness, still weakened by the abrupt awakening from the Cryo-Sleep. The last thing Master Chief heard as he began to go unconsciousness was the sound of metal screaming as it hit ground, and the sound of fire rushing up through the ship.
The Master Chief had been through his fair share of crashes.
More than that, even. But no matter how many times he chucked himself out of something high up, it was never any less painful when he hit the ground.
Johnson had been right, way back on his first mission with the Arbiter as an ally. Someday he was going to land on something that refused to break even more than he did.
At least, that was Cortana's thoughts as she waited for her caretaker to wake up. (And for any wondering how she knew that, Chief had told her some stories on the ride out from High Charity).
After the crash, the Spartan had landed in the fiery remains of the Dawn, half buried in the sand.
He was perfectly fine, as far as she could tell. While he hadn't had the proper equipment, and he had been wounded, her armor upgrades had allowed him to come out of this crash mostly unscathed.
He still had some scrapes and bruises, but nothing that would impare him. Even his weapons case was miraculously still intact, the Energy Sword glowing a little from within.
But, like a concerned mother, or sister, she was planning on having a talk with him when he woke up. About what, she didn't exactly know, but she felt the need to talk sense into him again. He wouldn't listen, and she would continue to worry about him.
If she had a face, she wouldn't have known wether to laugh or to scowl at how much of a bonehead her Spartan was being. Most likely, she would smile. It was part of what made him Master Chief to her, and she wouldn't change a thing about him...
But for the moment, she was mostly content with being back where she belonged. At her Spartan's side, back in action. Though, considering that he was currently unconscious, the 'action' as a little lacking.
But she was fine with that, for the moment at least. The lonely years were over, and she had her best friend was back with her. No more spending the long hours half aware in 'inactive' mode, no more waking up in the darkness and having next to nothing to do, because everything she could do was already done.
For now, there was no rush to go to the next adventure as she hummed contentedly in the A.I. chip slot. She could wait. Besides what she wanted to talk to him about when he woke up, there was the matter of the fact that she found out what planet they were on.
Though she couldn't see it, on the horizon, two twin suns were rising over the desert planet, the heat of the day shimmering in the distance. The planet they had landed on, the one they were now stranded on, had a very odd name in her opinion.
After all, who in their right mind would name a planet 'Tatooine?' All thought, she could have sworn she heard it somewhere before.