Halo: Worm Choose Others' Adventure
I know that CYOAs have been popular (I have two), but I thought, "Why not do a Worm CYOA with someone else? Like say an awesome space marine and his AI sidekick?"
This might end up just being a series of sporadically updated shorts, I'm not sure but I thought this would be amusing to write.
Definitely play Halo music while you're reading.
Chapter 1: Spartans Never Die
The Forward Unto Dawn headed at a full burn towards the portal, they didn't have much time.
"We're not gonna make," Cortana said.
"We'll make it," John reassured her as he tried to shift the scorpion out of the way of the door.
The ship began to cross through the portal, the Arbiter and Captain Keys were in the front and crossed back to Earth first. However, before the rest of the Forward Unto Dawn could cross back to Humanity's home world, the detonation of the Halo destabilized the portal and severed the rear from the front instantly.
But unlike in some continuities, the rear half did not continue drifting lost in deep space. Instead, it was pulled through the destabilized portal.
Both John and Cortana felt an invasive presence, sifting through their bodies and minds, an both experienced a vivid, searing eye larger than a hundred galaxies and made of a multitude of shifting, impossible colors as it LOOKED at them, and what it saw, it changed.
+H:WCOA+
John-117
Type: "Self"-Insert
Difficulty: Hard (+3)
Power: Alexandria (-2)
Companions: Renegades (-1), The Bodyguards (-1), The Freaks (-1), The Highwayman and the Butterfly (-1) , The Steel Demons (-1)
Perks: Blank (-1), Shattered Limiter (-1), Invictus (-1), Inspiring (-1), First Impressions (Just kidding, he's the MC, he doesn't need this, or any of the others besides Blank and Shattered limiter really).
Complications: Quarantined (+8)
Cortana
Type: "Self"-Insert
Difficulty: Hard (+3)
Powers: Inspired Inventor
Companions: Renegades (-1), The Bodyguards (-1), The Freaks (-1), The Highwayman and the Butterfly (-1), The Steel Demons (-1)
Perks: Blank (-1), Shattered Limiter (-1), Invictus (-1), Cloak and Dagger (-1)
Complications: Quarantined (+8)
+H:WCOA+
Suddenly it was over and they were back on their ship, which suddenly began shuddering.
Cortana spoke first. "Woah… okay…Chief, we're in an atmosphere and falling fast!"
John nodded and began moving to brace for impact feeling strange, stronger, faster even. He wasn't sure what this meant but he knew that he would do his duty and protect Cortana. Therefore, he asked the most important question first, "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, but I think whatever just happened…whatever we saw…it changed something…added more to my database and something else."
This put John on alert even more than before. He knew that the thing he saw changed him too, potentially compromising UNSC security and himself. If it had altered her as well, then it was very serious indeed given her value to the UNSC. This was much more important than a fall from orbit. "What happened?"
"I'm checking..." Cortana said and was silent for a moment. "I think that whatever or whoever brought us here added some software…I'm not exactly sure what it does but as far as I can tell it's the only change. I'm going to make sure it's turned off until we've finished crashing, I don't want to take any chances with this though I don't imagine anything capable of…whatever just happened…inserting malware…or maybe they did, I don't know."
John wasn't certain what to do about the additions either, but decided that it could wait. "Where are we?"
"Let me check the sensors…" Cortana said before uttering a shocked "what?"
"What is it?"
"We're over Australia, but there's no UNSC presence or any spaceships at all. If fact, it looks like…its…in the past…"
John frowned slightly behind his helmet as the shuddering intensified. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, now that I look at it more closely, we are in the past, just not ours. It looks like we're in some alternate timeline's past because there are some differences in the internet protocols from what they should be. It's not a problem, but this might be…"
John silently raised an eyebrow as he walked over to a weapons locker and took out a rocket launcher, using his magnetized boots to stabilize himself while walking next to the wall of the falling ship.
"We're heading into what looks like a warzone, ten seconds. Brace for impact!"
+H:WCOA+
Legend flew above the city, only a short distance from the telekinetic maelstrom that was centered on the Simurgh. The monster's siren song cut through his mind like a knife. People fought and died around her as she continued to lay waste to the city. And yet this was not what caught his and so many others' attention.
The massive fireball descending upon the damned city was. A deafening roar filled the air, almost drowning out the SImurgh's song as the meteor fell. In seconds it would hit the ground, and according to Dragon it was aimed at the Simurgh, who seemed not to notice.
"I repeat, everyone fall back immediately and brace for impact!" Dragon called out on the handsets all of the capes wore.
Only seconds left, but Legend didn't leave. A part of him knew that the Simurgh would dodge at the last moment, or just ignore it, but another part want to see her get hit.
The Simurgh continued her attack, but seemed to slow down, the song seeming to lose intensity. It was as though she were confused.
She would not stay so for long. She shifted and turned towards the meteor and tried to move, but it was moving at thousands of miles an hour after having appeared from nowhere, and the massive hunk of space-borne metal hit her dead center. It was only because of his breaker state that Legend was able to see the flash of what might have been shock as the object collided with the Simurgh and carried her away as it plowed a path along the ground and outside the city limits, past the walls being hastily assembled around Canberra.
Legend did not miss what was on the side of the object, which he now identified as a space ship of some kind.
When he returned to normal, he shook his head and laughed at the sheer incredulity of the scene.
+H:WCOA+
Forward Unto Dawn's Rear Half
Type: "Self"-Insert
Difficulty: Hard (+3)
Power: N/A
Companions: N/A
Perks: Blank (-1), Inspiring (-1), First Impressions (-1)
Complications: N/A
+H:WCOA+
When the ship finally came to a stop, John and Cortana made their way to the front of the remaining half of the ship.
"Alright, the winged humanoid that these people were fighting should be out there somewhere, be ready for anything because according to what I'm able to find on their Internet, this thing is a nigh-invincible monster with telekinesis and telepathy of some kind."
John nodded and paused to switch his assault rifle for a Spartan Laser.
"Honestly, I'm not sure what we can do to these things. One of them, Leviathan, apparently sunk Kyushu and Newfoundland."
"We'll be fine."
"I trust you. I'm just saying this will be harder than normal."
"Nothing we can't handle."
"I know."
Eventually they reached the part of the ship which the portal severed. Up in the air about 500 meters from where John stood was a humanoid figure with alabaster skin and numerous, nonsymmetrical wings. It was facing on the ship with a storm of rocks and debris surrounding it and occasionally colliding with the ship itself. There were already a handful of this world's humans present and trying to fight the Simurgh. Even though they apparently had superpowers, which John still found hard to grasp, they were doing little to the so-called Endbringer.
Taking in the scene in seconds, John aimed the Spartan Laser and charged it, careful to aim where there would be a gap in the debris. When the weapon finished charging, a beam of red light arced forward past the nearby debris which twitched in response. John was rewarded by a slight scorch mark on the Simurgh's skin, though that seemed to gradually fade as it regenerated.
"Huh, that didn't seem to do much," Cortana remarked, "though at least it didn't block the shot like I expected." At John's silent in question, she continued, "Apparently she's infamous for being a precog and using her telekinesis and telepathy to ruin lives and generally make the world a worse place."
John looked over the battlefield and saw one silver and black human with a black cape fly through the telekinetic storm, smashing obstacles aside and slamming into the Simurgh, punching her. He then looked around at the rest of the battlefield and saw a tree beginning to float between him and the Simurgh.
"You're gonna jump aren't you?"
John quickly moved back and then ran to the edge as fast as he could to build up speed.
"Wha–"
Then he crouched and sprang forward, aiming for the tree. It was just on the edge of what he could reasonably hope to reach. It turned out his hopes were woefully low compared to his current ability.
He flew through the air in a much higher arc than he had expected as he soared through the air. The whole battle seemed to be moving in slow motion now, much slower than he had ever experienced anything before. Then he realized that his current arc would actually only just undershoot the Simurgh.
He was moving faster than ever before, time as he experienced it was so slow that Cortana had barely begun to say her next word, and this was a world with superpowers.
He remembered, vaguely, childhood stories of superheroes. Sometimes he and fellow Spartans would share comic books with each other in whatever spare time they had. One of those heroes was Superman, who had super strength, super speed… and flight.
He willed himself to resist gravity's pull, to keep going so that he would hit the Simurgh, and slowly he felt the pull of gravity ebbing as he raced forward. He willed himself faster than before and faster yet until even some of the energy blasts this world's superheroes produced seemed to move at a snail's pace.
When he hit the Simurgh it was a several times Forward Unto Dawn's terminal velocity upon reentry, and it was the third time that she was caught by surprise that day.
+H:WCOA+
Alexandria managed to weave and plow through the Simurgh's obstacles and hit the monster's head with as much force as she could muster. While finding out as much about the crashed space ship as possible was important, especially given its apparent ability to catch the Simurgh by surprise, someone had to make sure that the Simurgh was occupied. This was even more important when someone reported a survivor onboard the ship engaging the Simurgh with some kind of laser weapon.
Whoever that was had answers to important questions for the World, and Cauldron.
She was caught by surprise and knocked away by a red hot boulder, but before she could get back to punching the abomination in the face, she saw movement from the ship and its passenger, an armored humanoid figure, who was moving back into the ship as Eidolon began to approach his location.
She suspected that he was going to retrieve another weapon after the ineffectiveness of the one he had already used, but instead the figure crouched and ran forward at speeds expected of a mid-leveled mover before jumping into the air with enough force to visibly dent the ship which had survived reentry with minimal damage to its structure. As he flew through the air he rapidly gained speed, becoming an almost a blur even to her as he collided with the Simurgh and carried her away, leaving a sonic boom behind as debris started to fall to the ground without the Simurgh's control.
+H:WCOA+
John held onto the super-dense inside of the creature as he tore it apart with his other, both hands sinking deep into the create as he ripped it to shreds at lightning speed. After the first second Cortana stopped talking and when the HUD showed two seconds had passed he heard her begin to speak again, this time at his current speed and not painfully slow like before.
"Take it apart and find its weak spot, Chief."
"Affirmative." John tore another swath of the Endbringer's outer body off before gripping the inside with both hands and then squeezing and twisting. It resisted his newfound super-strength so he pressed harder. He tore with everything he could, focusing everything on that one task. End then its alien spine came apart and it's body was torn in half in the middle of the torso. In the moment where the Simurgh was split in half its upper body managed to slip from his grasp. Before he could pursue it up into the atmosphere it disappeared, gone in a moment.
"It's gone, teleported somehow. Possibly to another dimension, given the weird nature of its body."
"'Weird'?" John asked.
Cortana scoffed lightly. "It is much denser than should be physically possible. The only way I can think of for that to happen is maybe if the body somehow existed in multiple dimensions at once or something."
John didn't say anything.
Cortana huffed. "I don't know, this whole world is weird. Superpowers, John. Superpowers."
"We could use this," John said, hefting the Simurgh's lower body in his right hand.
"If we take this thing's legs back to the ship I could probably jury rig something to scan it," Cortana mused.
John rotated to face the ship which was several kilometers away. "We're about to have company."
"Well, super speed, super strength, flight, and thankfully the required invulnerability for yourself and your equipment. I guess you really are a man of steel, huh?" Cortana asked with amusement in her voice. "Just tell them you're a superman from the future. It's not wrong."
John started floating to the ground, smiling slightly behind his helmet. "Maybe."
They flew to meet the superheroes of this world.
+H:WCOA+
A/N: I don't know if I'll be continuing this any time soon but the idea came to me and I had to write it, it was too awesome not too.
+H:WCOA+