The Legend of Roland- Updated and Matured
It's been five years since I wrote this story, and it is still near and dear to my heart. Instead of finishing Ashes to Ashes, I'm working on updating this. After five years in the Marine Corps, I feel my writing didn't age well and I can do a lot to spruce it up. I decided it needed an update to mature the content/language and fix some errors. It will have the same general plot as my first work, but may vary as it matures. Please feel free to read over the Legend of Korra Chapters concurrently to see the changes. This will be a slow updating story...
None of these characters are my own.
Prologue
Pain. It wraps my mind in screaming agony.
Pain. Worse than any blamite fragmentation I've ever had.
Pain. Like a million ants, all with tiny flamethrowers crawling and burning through my back and chest. With sobs of agony I manage to look down at the two plasma sword blades protruding from my chest. They are both blood red, which my mind grabs and won't let go of like a toddler playing with a new toy. Elites have always been seen with blue blades, and this can't be my blood changing the color.
No, my blood is burnt and my insides are cooking. I can't feel right my arm or hand and every breath feels like there is a brute standing on my chest squeezing the air out of my lungs and not allowing them to refill.
"This place is dead anyway." That is the last thing I remember hearing. My own words were resounding in my ears as the smell of burning flesh fills my nostrils and blood splashed from my mouth onto the inside of my visor. It doesn't belong there. That is my blood. Blood is supposed to go on the outside from my slain foes not inside my visor. I see the red blip on my motion tracker that is my foe, it's fully blocking own my own blue IFF transponder. My eyes shut to try to block out the pain even if it's for just a moment.
Alarms from my helmet are blaring. Did I freeze again? Did Jonah survive? I have to open my eyes….
Roland fought his eyes opened. His throat felt like it was on fire with the rest of his body. He saw Jonah crouched slightly aiming at him. Well, more appropriately he was aiming at the Elite behind him that had him impaled and lifted two feet off the ground. More blood spilled out of Roland's mouth and down his chin as he willed his lips to utter one last word.
"Clear…" It was cracked and strained to the point that Roland didn't even recognize his own voice, but the message was understood. The explosives Roland had laid in the compound were primed and ready for detonation.
He saw Jonah roll his shoulders as if preparing to fight and heard something over the shared comms. "Let's start this party. I'm late for a hot date, and I don't want to keep your sister waiting." Roland tried to grin. He tried to say anything else to Jonah, even if it was just his final parting shout to his only friend and brother in arms. Jonah was lethal. As much as Roland hated to admit it, he was far more dangerous to the Covenant than Roland could ever be. If anyone could walk away from this fight, it was Jonah.
The elite laughed. The sound sent chills down Roland's screaming spine. Elites didn't laugh normally, and the sound was very foreign coming from them. It wasn't joyful or continuous, more like a terrifying guttural chuckle. One of an individual who is entering a fight, already knowing how it is going to end. With a vicious swing, the Elite freed his sword from Roland's body by driving it up and to the right, completely severing his shoulder and arm. With a gurgling gasp and Roland fell to his knees and then onto his side. In his peripheral vision, he saw five more red blips appear on his motion tracker.
I'm not saying you're a bad guy Jay, I just wouldn't trust you with my kids.
Roland regretted each of those words. Oh how he wished he could take them back. He wished this was all just a retarded exercise and the armor lockup was slowly wearing off while the instructors plotted how to make them pay for failing, but it wasn't. He was dying now and he knew it.
Roland saw the massive two toed foot of the Elite who had been his death step in front of him. Mud oozed around his foot, and then flung back up at Roland's visor as the Elite slowly stepped to close the gap with Jonah. Meanwhile two others stalked forward, ready to support their leader and kill this human filth that was Roland's teammate. Jonah stood up straighter and laughed. He was the only man Roland could ever imagine would laugh in the face of six special operations Elites ready to murder him and fully mean it. "Ya bastards set this up, for us! I'm flattered."
"You can sense you end human…" The Elites guttural voice echoed across the open plain from his helmet. They had all disabled their active camouflage, boldly stalking Jonah now, like lions surrounding a single zebra on the African plains.
"Meh, maybe. Maybe not… This here ends in one of two ways, chief." Jonah held up his index and middle fingers before the squad in front of him. "I walk out of here with your teeth, hanging around my neck, or…" Jonah dropped the index finger, flipping off the squad in front of him "I die with my fist down someone's throat."
The two Elites who went wide were nearly on line with Joanh now. "Surrender yourself for inquisition and your death will be as painless as we can make it." The Elite on the left spat. He was lying through his twisted mandibles. Those Elites would do everything they could to get secrets out of Jonah before murdering him in the most gruesome way possible.
Roland watched his blood pressure and heart rate falling on his HUD as Jonah look directly at his crumpled form, and then back at the Elites. "Twenty credits say's yer all dead in the next… thirty seconds….Take that bet?" As the words resounded in Roland's ears a detonator flew through the air, landing next to the four stationary Elites and Roland. In a flash, Roland watched as his HUD disappeared just like the Elite's energy shields while a near simultaneous barrage of .50 cal bullets riddled the lead Elite as Jonah rolled back to dodged the two Elites who had closed on him.
"Take him!" The Elite roared in anger. Another flash as Jonah discharged a plasma pistol into the left one and smashed his now empty M6C into the one on the right. Causing his shields to flair and then fail from the Spartans impact. By now however, the one who'd taken the brunt of the plasma impact had grabbed him by the wrist and lifted him into the air. Roland heard Jonah scream in pain as his right shoulder was dislocated. The Elite's chest plate flashed into and out of view, the active camouflage unit was trying to reactive but the burns into the chest plate made if flicker on and off almost comically as the Elite with no visible torso lifted the Spartan III into the air.
A sword flashed red across Jonah's visor. Another scream. Roland looked, willing his body to move. He had to help in some way, but his body wouldn't, couldn't move. The second sword wielding Elite stepped up and took Jonah by the neck, about to run him through with the sword.
Rolle, light 'em up.
Apes or Gators?
You softened him up.
Yeah, well, this disease ain't goin nowhere.
It was a rhetorical question, asshole.
As Roland lay, crumpled next to the Covenant facility, he could hear Jonah over the comm once more. "When in doubt, blow shit up." The Elites looked at him quizzically. They had removed his M6C, not realizing it was useless when unloaded, but had left the explosive detonator in his left hand that he grabbed after firing the plasma pistol. Every headhunter team carried two detonators, just in case one of the team went down, the mission could still be completed. "Clear." one last time as the world around them began to explode. He saw the fire over take Jonah and the two Elites and roll over the other four. He felt the heat through the breaches in his armor and felt another explosion behind him. A flash, pain that felt as if his guts were being ripped apart and placed outside his body, and then nothing but a small greenish light and cobblestones under his visor before Roland blacked out from loss of blood.
Please review! I'll change whatever I can if there are errors.