Good evening, potential readers. Welcome to the first fanfic of my new account after years of absence.
This is a very old Halo fanfic that I worked on as a teenager, and it's getting a complete remake because… well… it was terrible! It used to be called Compatible; Protégée. I'm overhauling my main character and other parts, but following some of the same plot points, hopefully leading to improvements, as obviously I'm not a teen anymore.
No flames, no lore obsessing please. I literally haven't played Halo for years and I don't have time to replay the old ones or play/watch the new games or content or movies. I am occasionally looking up simple stuff, to make sure it makes sense as much as possible, but it's a fan-fic, and by extension, I hope you'll just let me get on with doing what I want with it. I just want the characters to play with really, not all the rest.
Set maybe somewhere after Halo 2, because that's what I remember the most. I am mainly reposting this for a beloved reader who after seven years, was still looking for it after I took it down, so, how could I not at least try and make something of it for her?
She knows who she is. Thank you so much for your support, I can't even tell you how much it means to me!
Without further ado:
None of the characters taken from Halo are mine and I disclaim any rights to the characters in my writing. Except Mischa. She's pretty much mine.
To Scorn Supremacy
"What in the world is so important that I can't have my breakfast?" Master Chief snapped at his subordinate as he's rushed groggily towards his new commander's office.
"I think we've had a last-minute addition to the team, sir. Although I'm not quite sure in what sense." Private Carson pants uncomfortably as his goatee twitches, setting what he must assume is a fast pace, but Chief is barely strolling. Chief sighed heavily. He was getting mighty fed up of these filler reconnaissance missions. It was a little anticlimactic after the whole drama with Gravemind.
In fact, as soon as he walked through the door and saw the commander with a girl in a dress, he had to repress the urge to groan, what is this? Because it surely was bullshit.
A beat of silence later made Chief glad for his visor and the fact that nobody generally questioned him about why he kept it on almost all the time. It was easy to stare and gawk without getting into trouble when one wore a permanent opaque helmet.
She had the strangest green eyes he'd ever seen, and a smattering of freckles over her nose and face that almost gave the impression that she was made up of multi-coloured skin tones. Her hair was shoulder length and more on the curly than wavy side, and she looked like she'd seen some sun or other recently, if the light-red swarthiness over her cheeks was anything to go by. He didn't often see nicely sun-kissed people.
He assumed immediately that she must be an aristocrat.
"This is Doctor Reef…" the commander was looking at Chief expectantly, and Chief realised he'd completely missed what had preceded the introduction.
"Uh - right," he held his hand out awkwardly to shake Doctor Reefs own.
"Please, call me Storm," she said this in a quiet voice, but Chief knew she wasn't shy. She was observing carefully. Tricky to do through a helmet, but Chief found himself muting a cough and tilting his head inquiringly at the commander, who wandered back around his desk with a haughty, smug expression, before gesturing towards her.
"Storm will be accompanying you on your next touch down in four weeks," he started, and Chief narrowed his eyes invisibly, "she's a highly trained doctor in many fields, she knows how to hack into the rebel covenants mainframe, and… I'm sending her in under covert ops." The flicker of his eyelid meant that these were 'covert ops' that Chief would most probably not have prior knowledge of before their mission started. Something he hated with a passion, because it made situations unpredictable, and dangerous.
He eyed her again.
She was tiny. It was like Cortana had shat out a baby in human form and dressed it up as something that didn't look remotely capable of defending itself.
"Uh, Commander, I know this is probably important, but don't you think the girl should receive some training before being sent into a red zone?" he knew protesting was stupid, but perhaps if he put the fear of death in her, she might change her mind.
He was shocked when she came right up to him, breaking his sight of the commander, and smiled at him sweetly. A bit too sweetly. Like… sarcastic kind of sweet.
"Ah, Commander, I see you've put me under the protection of more misogynists!" her voice came out much stronger than before, and she glared at him sideways before suddenly scaling him like a tree, flipping over behind him and dragging him backwards via headlock onto the floor before he had time to close his gaping mouth. He stifled an inaudible groan as his back twinged a little. He wasn't as young as he used to be. And since when did little ballerinas throw him about in his superior's office?
Chief quickly sat up but found himself spinning before getting to his feet as she grabbed his left arm, propelled his body weight against him, and flung him back down onto his stomach.
"You know," he huffed, annoyance seeping through, "it's all well and good attacking me in a calm environment when you have the element of surprise in your silly dress but defending yourself long enough to…" she interrupted him.
"Stop complaining please. I've been on several of these missions and I'd rather get on with it, without you complaining."
Chief buttoned his trap, scowling.
"Now, now," the commander looked only a little perturbed, as though he expected something like this. He gave Chief a hand up and then sidled over to the woman to placate her fiery glare. He understood why people called her Storm, he supposed. "Mischa here has been trained well enough to hold her own if she gets into trouble for a while, Chief, but you will be acting as bodyguards for her. As I said, she is covert. We do need intelligence agents in the field occasionally. And it doesn't hurt to study the psychology and science of other species and their motivations either…"
"Study?!" Chief spat it harder than he intended, "Oh great, you're a spook and a shrink for aliens?"
"Why you…!" the commander steered Mischa round in a circle when she tried to march up to him again with her fists clenched. Chief thought that was stupid. She obviously wasn't well trained enough to know that hitting him with fists would just break her fingers.
The commander raised his voice is exasperation. "Storm is the only one capable of bringing down that facilities mainframe now, and we also have some important data to collect, as well as biohazardous samples and deploying a tactical mole virus to hack into their mainframe! So, can it, Chief!"
"Well, where's Igmund, why can't he come?" Chief spewed, not seeing the flashes of rage or upset on Mischa's face. Igmund was usually their go-to for anything like this, and he was trained almost as well as Chief himself.
"My father is… he died." Mischa angrily frowns at the floor, not able to stop her chin wobbling as the memory is so fresh. "He died this morning, and I'm the only one who knows everything he knew. I own his lab, I own his equipment, I own… his memories." She didn't make eye contact when she started stalking towards the door. The commander dropped his hand awkwardly and then eyed Chief with contempt as Mischa muttered something about seeing them tomorrow and slinked off, leaving Chief feeling wretched.
"Oh well. Nicely done Chief. Maybe you should let me do the talking the next time you see a girl with a pretty face…!" Cortana piped up and Chief groaned heavily, sitting in one of the commander's chairs and nodding, prepared to hear the rest of the briefing.
