Sorry I can't think of anything witty to say. Here's Book 28.

THE FOLLOWING THINGS ARE THE PROPERTIES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS; I DO NOT OWN THEM AND MAKE NO MONEY OFF OF THIS STORY

Mahō Shōjo Lyrical Nanoha (Teana, various other characters) – 7Arcs

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (Shion and friends/family) – 07th Expansion and Studio Deen

Shuffle! (Kaede Fuyō and associated characters) – Navel and Asread

Erika's New Perfume (Marie, Sarah, Erika, Timmy, Veronica) – DeviantArtist 'Lance the Young'

Mai-chan's Daily Life (Mai, Kizuna) – Waita Uziga

Star Wars (Ahsoka, Cody, Rex, Force Unleashed cast) – George Lucas, Lucasfilm

Halo(Forerunners, UNSC, Sangheili Alliance) – Bungie, 343 Industries

StarCraft (multiple characters, events, and devices) – Blizzard Entertainment

Naruto (characters, techniques, abilities) – Masashi Kishimoto

Mahō Sensei Negima (characters, spells, abilities) – Ken Akamatsu

Kingdom Hearts (characters, weapons, enemies, concepts) – Square-Enix

Neon Genesis Evangelion (characters, concepts, tech) – Studio Gainax

Elfen Lied (Kaede K., others) – Lynn Okamoto, Arms

Red vs. Blue (The Blood-Gulch Crew, the ex-Freelancers) – Rooster Teeth

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic – Hasbro, Lauren Faust

Transformers Film Series – Hasbro, Michael Bay

Transformers: Beast Wars – Hasbro, Mainframe Entertainment

Yu-Gi-Oh! – Kazuki Takahashi, Viz Media

Sonic the Hedgehog – SEGA

Gears of War – Epic Games

Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles – Columbia Tristar (I think)

Mass Effect – Bioware

Metroid – Nintendo

Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Gen Urobuchi, SHAFT

The Legend of Zelda – Nintendo

Tōhō – ZUN

RWBY – Rooster Teeth

Pretty Cure / PreCure – Toei Animation

PLEASE READ & REVIEW, AND TEND TO THE TROPE PAGES

-BOOK 28 START-

Realm H4-L0 – Mass-effect-based FTL, heading toward Epoloch system

The stealth-enabled UT-47A Kodiak zipped through the stars, using its short-range FTL drive in conjunction with its stealth systems to quietly drop into the potentially hostile-bearing system in a way that the big, interdimensional-slipspace capable capital ship that carried it to this Realm could not. There was nobody in the pilot's seat; Cortana was plugged in and doing all the flying. In the troop bay were three people, fresh from the Reaper War and already heading into another potential battle. Commander Jason Shepard, hero of the recent massive conflict, had his personal N7 armor and war-gear ready, while First Lieutenant Teana Uchiha-Lanstar, head of the UNSC-jurisdiction special op squad Gamma Team (among several other lofty positions and titles), sat in her red with orange highlights Mjolnir Mark-VII armor, her Device 'Cross Mirage' in pistol form magnetically attached to her hip. Lastly, the tall, quiet, green-armored figure of MCPO John-117 sat on a reinforced seat, made to withstand the weight of his own Mk.-7 Mjolnir armor, carrying an M6H pistol, BR85 burst-fire rifle, and MA5D assault rifle.

They were coming all the way out here, to an uncharted system, to follow a lead: the potential coordinates of a 'meeting ground' for Jul Mdama's terrorist group. Mdama was a Sangheili Kaidon, the head of a city-state who could best be compared to an Imperial-Japanese feudal lord. He was also virulently anti-human, unlike the technical majority of the surviving Kaidons and military commanders, who had since sworn fealty to Arbiter Vadam. Thought perished when the Flood took High Charity, he had escaped to an outlying Covenant colony world called Hesduros, and convinced/twisted the people there into following him in a 'second crusade' against humanity and the Arbiter-aligned Sangheili. There were a few different anti-human Sangheili-led terrorist/extremist groups still in the galaxy causing trouble, but most of them were small, stubbornly adhering to – and blinded by – their twisted religious dogma and sense of honor; already some had been quickly converted or annihilated by the Arbiter of the UNSC.

But Jul was very different. He was a reasonably adept tactical and strategic commander, flexible in his tactics, and willing to 'bend' the codes of religion and martial honor that so many of his people lived by; he had once attempted to destroy a Forerunner installation in order to kill a large group of humans trapped inside it, only barely thwarted by a team of Spartans. And he was a skilled orator, skilled enough that where most of the dissenting factions' leaders commanded fairly small forces, Mdama's organization was composed of two and a half colony worlds' worth of soldiers and material, including a sizable fleet led by his personal Councilor-class flagship, Song of Retribution. All this meant that while most of the few dissident anti-human Sangheili factions were little more than annoyances to the UNSC and the Arbiter-loyal Sangheili, Jul's group was a significant threat – one worth investigating.

"Lady and gentlemen," Cortana said, "this is your captain speaking. We're almost to the location identified by our intelligence operatives; ETA 50 seconds."

The Chief, Shepard, and Teana moved up into the cockpit, Cortana's avatar appearing to greet them. Soon, the Kodiak – its stealth drives enabled – dropped out of FTL, the forward holo-viewscreen coming online. The quartet found themselves looking at a fleet of nearly two dozen Sangheili-designed ships – Purity-, Yermo, and Sanghelios-class vessels with a Councilor-class assault carrier at the rear center of the fleet formation. They were all congregated around a nearby planet, which looked dark except for a few faint electric-blue glowing lines here and there.

"What are they doing here?" Teana murmured.

"Cortana," 117 said, "can you confirm the stealth drive is working?"

"Affirmative, Chief" the AI replied. "Our emissions are being completely suppressed. You want me to take her in for a closer look?"

The Spartan nodded, and the Kodiak silently accelerated, flying in amongst the enemy ships.

"I can't see anything of note here" Shepard said. "Maybe this is just a staging ground – a meeting place for discussing things with the other shipmasters, or a rally point for preparing to move somewhere else."

"I'm not so sure" Cortana replied. "These ships' holding pattern is different. It's almost as if they're searching or waiting for something, but I can't… Uh-oh."

"What 'uh-oh'?" Teana asked. "'Uh-oh' is not something you wanna hear in our position."

"Every Covenant ship in the system just started powering up light weapons. A few of the more distant ones are starting to come closer, and the ones closest to this shuttle are starting to point their anti-fighter weapons in our direction."

"But how? Our emission-capture tech is working perfectly, right?"

"Yes, it is. I don't see how they might know we're here…"

"Oh no…" Shepard spoke up. "The stealth systems that the Normandy and its shuttles use… they hide our emissions, but they don't hide the ship completely; we still show up in the visible-light spectrum! One of their ships' external cameras must've caught us!"

"Even so," the Master Chief said, "we're a tiny ship. The odds of them getting and keeping a visual lock on us out here are-"

Cortana abruptly lurched the Kodiak to the side, narrowly dodging a pulse-laser shot.

"…very, very high, apparently" the Spartan sighed. "Cortana, go hot! Take whatever evasive maneuvers are necessary, and get us out of here!"

"It's gonna be a bit before we can escape, Chief" the AI responded. "They're blocking our exit route; we'd need to get around the ships that are behind us now, and they won't make that easy! And, one of their battlecruisers just deployed a wing of Seraphs! Hang on, everyone!"

The Kodiak's engines roared to life, propelling the little shuttle through the space around the mysterious planet. Four Seraphs soon made visual confirmation on the blue-hued craft, moving in attack formation towards it. Soon, plasma bolts were fired, and Cortana juked the little ship around, the shields successfully withstanding the few bolts that hit but she didn't know for how long. The chase led the Kodiak closer and closer towards the mysterious planet, and once or twice they had to dodge a pulse-laser shot from a capital ship.

"This isn't gonna work much longer!" Teana said. "We have to find some way to get out of this before-"

Suddenly, something quite unexpected happened. A pane of yellowish-orange light came out from a point on the nearby planet, sweeping over the Kodiak. A couple seconds later, a circular portal opened on the dark planet's 'face', near-blinding white light shining out. The Kodiak and its pursuers shuddered and began to be pulled toward the light, along with some of the nearby Covenant ships; a couple of them, older ships with their shields offline, couldn't survive the strain and began to break apart as they were drawn in.

"We're caught in a gravity well!" Cortana announced. "This planet… it's a Forerunner structure – a Shield World!"

"I don't think the Kodiak can take much more of this!" Shepard said, feeling the increasingly strong unnatural shuddering of the shuttle. "There's only one thing I can think of to stop us from being shaken apart, and it might also give us some respite from the Covenant."

"We need to go into the Shield World" the Master Chief agreed.

"Wait, we have no idea what's in there!" Teana said.

"You got a better idea?" Shepard asked.

"…No, I don't."

"Cortana?"

The Kodiak abruptly turned toward the open portal into the Shield World, flying fast; some of the pursuing Seraphs lost control in the gravity well, while the rest broke off as the human craft 'dove'.

"If I still had fingers," the AI remarked as the shuttle neared the opening, the viewscreen going white, "they'd be crossed…"

-CHAPTER END-

And there we have it – the start of another new little adventure. I was going to merge this with the next chapter, but I figured you guys have waited long enough. Next time: Team Chief sets foot on – or rather, in – the Forerunner Shield World.