Author's Note: Just a little giftfic for an acquaintance of mine, inspired by an anon prompt - er - an embarrassingly long time ago. Halo 4? That's the game where the Arbiter takes two weeks' vacation, suddenly gets a hunch that Master Chief and Cortana are still out there, then borrows a ship, finds them, and they all go on a galactic road trip together, right? (Ssh, let me dream. It's so much fun my way.)
Spartan's Luck
"It's gaining on us!" Thel 'Vadam shouted from the warthog's gun, and John-117 crushed the gas pedal down harder. The warthog's engine groaned as it leaped ahead, but when he risked a glance back, the giant eight-legged beast chasing them had galloped even closer, its mouth gaping wide to show off an incredibly large ring of pointy teeth. Just great. He yanked the wheel left to avoid a huge pillar of rock and the tires shrieked against the gravelly ground.
Cortana materialized above the dashboard and said, "Watch out ahead. I couldn't get a good scan of this terrain and there might be - wait! Stop! I think there's a -"
The warthog burst out of the stony maze and soared out over an unseen cliff's edge into empty air.
"Hang on!" John yelled, and Thel 'Vadam roared something indistinct back as Cortana's avatar vanished and the warthog plunged downwards. The wind screamed past John's helmet, his hands crumpled dents into the useless steering wheel, and his guts had frozen into a bowling ball because this time, this time at last, his luck had run out...
They landed on solid ground with a bone-cracking rattle a second later. The warthog bounced once before its tires dug into the ground and it charged forward into a flat sea of waving purple grass. John looked back again to see Thel 'Vadam still holding on to the gun, and the beast skidding to a halt at the shallow cliff's edge; it bellowed after them, then turned and skulked back into the rocks.
He breathed in deeply and let his cramping foot relax off the pedal, and the engine's rumble softened as they drove on. The plain stretched out ahead of them, empty and peaceful as far as he could tell. "That could've gone worse," he said, not that he wanted to dwell on all the ways driving straight off a cliff could go wrong.
"It seems your luck has saved us once again, brother," Thel 'Vadam rumbled as he climbed back into the passenger seat and settled in.
Cortana reappeared with her arms crossed, but instead of glaring at John for the bumpy ride, she looked up at the sky. "Luck. Sure," she said. "Sometimes I wonder if that's the right word for it..."
"Good enough for me," John said. "You want to drive next?"
"Don't tempt me."
And the intelligence that stretched across a hundred billion light-years of space and matter, dwelling in the vibration of atoms and the death of stars, reborn a god in the moment of closure and expansion with all the infinite paths of chance at its command, recalled another soldier of another place and time; and it laughed.
This one, it thought, has been worth keeping around, too.