Fanfiction Disclaimer (Distant Tide):
The following story is a fan-based novel created by the user: Distant Tide. The Halo property and franchise belongs to 343 Industries and Microsoft Studios. The franchise was first developed by Bungie, Inc. Distant Tide created The Invisibles for entertainment purposes and does not claim permissibility or ownership of the franchise and its assets in any form.
Welcome to Distant Tide's The Invisibles, a Halo-inspired anthological short fanfiction series based around characters created by Distant Tide within the Halo Mythos with the purpose of maintaining a decent schedule for storytelling when the personal life becomes too complicated to sustain larger-form fanfiction novels.
I hope that through these stories, I can keep entertaining my readers and share my world with my audience even while my University work clutters up my schedule. I would love to hear feedback from anyone who is wishing to share, and when it comes down to it I just want to improve my writing.
Please read and review if you can.
["Face in the Crowd"]
[LATE MORNING / / 24 AUGUST 2558]
[Location: PILLAR III SPACE ELEVATOR, Low Orbit, Reach]
. . .
It'd been five years since Roxanne had bothered calling that dusty rock below "Home." Back then, it had been lush, green and covered in water. Vibrant but rugged, Reach was where she was born. However, that was a different life entirely. The last time Reach had been her home, aliens set her village ablaze, her parents' bodies lay gunned down on the patio, and alien Jackals were scouring her house for her older brothers. Roxanne hid in the storm cellar hoping they would not smell her.
She waited, two days, for a sign that it was safe to come out. It never arrived; there was gunfire and then silence for hours on end. Sometime later, an Army squad came through her house. They burst down the cellar door and found Roxanne, hungry, freezing, and very scared.
One moment a combat medic was hugging Roxanne as she wrapped her in a warm blanket, then seemingly the next, Roxanne was heading to SPARTAN-III training along with several hundred other children. Now, here she was back again; not on Reach, but floating, living aboard an off-world habitat installed where one of Reach's space elevators once proudly stood. She glanced out the window behind her looking at "home." She caught a glimpse of a lightning bolt dancing through turbulent storm clouds just as a massive hangar door zipped open and the crowd behind Roxanne sparked into wild cheering as the "Saviors of Humanity" marched through those doors into the living habitat's main lobby. Roxanne's eyes snapped back to the crowd all the same and clapped ferociously as if she was concentrated on them the entire time.
Spartans.
In their blue, green, and grey MJOLNIR power armor, they stood over the crowd like superheroes, born from a different crop. Easily seven feet tall or more. Roxanne knew every single one of them, not personally, but by reputation. In addition, more than just the propaganda fed to the tired working souls that called Reach and this orbiting habitat home, but on a career level. Roxanne was just like those superheroes in their titanium exoskeletons and decked out in dozens of weapons and top-of-the-line tech gadgets. These were no ordinary Spartans though; this was the Blue Team. The Master Chief and his childhood companions, legends on the battlefield, Saviors of Humanity, Demons to the Covenant.
Roxanne could distinguish the individual SPARTAN-II operators by his or her armor, their weapons, their quirks, and gimmicks. She went through Spartan training just like them; she studied them specifically as part of her induction to become just like them.
John-117, the Master Chief, marched briskly forward at the head of his four-Spartan fireteam. His armor was iconic, the legendary, original drab-green Mark VI, recognizable anywhere. He didn't pay a single glance to the crowd around them, marching forward without pause.
Kelly-087, John's best friend in training. She was the fastest Spartan alive and her golden fishbowl helmet was a staple of her equipment. A rabbit emblem appeared faint on her breastplate in a place only Roxanne's sharp Spartan eyes could pick out. She seemed to brisk close to the crowd but showed no sign of recognizing them.
Linda-058, the team's sharpshooter. The lens array on her helmet was purpose-built specifically for her, allowing her to see into any visual spectrum with unparalleled battlespace awareness. Roxanne remembered the Office of Naval Intelligence called the helmet ARGUS or something along those lines.
In addition, there was Fredric-104, the highest-ranking member on the team as a Lieutenant in the Navy. He had a reputation among Spartans as a nasty close combat fighter with a deadly pension for blades. He was also the most charitable of the group, and outgoing. He waved at the crowd in a seemingly friendly motion even if you could see nothing past his golden helmet visor.
Roxanne knew more about these SPARTAN-IIs than anyone in the crowd around her did, well, with maybe exception to the ONI officers that flanked the legendary Spartan team on either side, keeping the crowd between themselves and the super soldiers. Roxanne knew how the Office of Naval Intelligence abducted the SPARTAN-IIs at the age of six and conscripted them into a dangerous government project called the SPARTAN-II Program. Many of their friends died in the augmentation process, a process Roxanne also experienced as a SPARTAN-III, though without the dead comrades. No one but Roxanne was privy to that secret because no one in this crowd but Roxanne was a Spartan.
Or rather, she used to be a Spartan. According to the Office of Naval Intelligence anyway. According to her former friends too. Probably.
She decided to leave that life behind when her team leader presented a rogue Smart AI and a cryptic warning that Earth was to become the center of a great tragedy that would shake the galaxy to its core. Now, Roxanne was a skeptic but the original owner of the AI and the signs put forward by the AI painted a dark and terrible picture. Unseen forces were maneuvering in the background of Human space and politics. Therefore, Roxanne ran "home." To the one place, she could feel comfortable while hiding out in preparation for what was likely to be the end times. She was scared she would admit it. At least to herself. She ran because she was scared.
However, this wasn't her home only. Roxanne stared down the Master Chief in particular. Those SPARTAN-IIs, they were never born on Reach, but they grew up there, trained there for most of their childhoods. There wasn't much of a difference when it came down to it. She felt a strange sense of comradery with them, these solemn fighting machines grafted onto the fragile template of toddlers. She'd been through that too, she knew what it was like. However, she also wasn't like them at all. She gave it all up.
The Master Chief's helmet twitched and turned toward the crowd, giving them a glance over. The crowd's cheers and shouts grew more frantic and joyous as they assumed their savior was giving them recognition like rabid fans to a Waypoint celebrity. Roxanne doubted it but she wondered what was passing through the man's head as he skimmed the crowd's with his ghostly-golden visor. She froze when her eyes met that golden visor and it felt like time seemed to slow to a standstill.
She couldn't see his eyes but she imagined seeing her own reflection in that menacing golden glare. Her own fearful-wide eyes staring back at her from across the hangar.
Roxanne's first instinct was to run. The second instinct was to charge the Master Chief and to fight him and his team. The third instinct was to shrink down and hide. She was a fugitive, a rogue Spartan. Classification: STOLEN GAUNTLET. If they knew Roxanne was a Spartan, they would certainly gun her down on the spot, or, they'd seize and detain her. She thought back to her armor and weapons buried on Reach's inhospitable surface beneath a bombed-out building. She had no means to fight off such a possibility. She also had no means of escape in this crowded atrium.
All Roxanne could do was stare unblinkingly into the Master Chief's golden visor, hoping he would not recognize her wide-blue eyes. Her golden-blond hair. Her five-foot-nine stature. All the identifiable features present in her Career Service Vitae file, her CSV. The same one every military personnel received. Her mind raced back to thoughts of shrinking herself into nothing. She thought about how he'd recognize her face instantly, how she already looked suspicious, and how her strong like-an-ox build would give her away with how badly it mixed with the youthful, unblemished face of a Spartan who never knew the real cost of war.
Roxanne gave off a quiet, involuntary whimper in fear as the legendary Master Chief made eye contact with her and then turned away, all the same, not paying any mind to the rogue Spartan staring back at him in the crowd. Maybe he saw something else, maybe the glassed surface of Reach behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief but also one of nostalgia and sadness.
Roxanne gave up that life. In many ways, she still missed it. Being a legendary supersoldier and a hero to Humanity even though her name was not to be in the history books like that of Blue Team. She missed her team and all their good times and bad times. She missed that sense of comradery that the Spartans had. What she saw in Blue Team now, total, cool confidence and trust in one another as they marched along in silence. They were a family, and Roxanne had thrown hers away. Roxanne missed her family, not her biological one.
Her Spartan family from SPARTAN-III Delta Company, the one she fought tooth and nail through training with. The one that dragged themselves through the slums of Rio de Janeiro to stop a Sangheili extremist from detonating a portable nuke, the family that wandered through the junkyards of New Phoenix examining what remained of a city wiped clean by a Forerunner superweapon.
She was now just a bystander, another face in the crowd. No one special, no one with a destiny or purpose any longer. She was like smoke in the wind. Unseen, unnoticed, without presence. She was no Master Chief, and certainly not a Spartan to them. It was best she just remained that bystander then. Another face in the crowd.