The others had been different.

They had been molded into shape by Halsey and Mendez, brought into being with a careful application of both skill and science. Their lives had needed meticulous planning to come out as successes, and some of them had still failed. They had needed training. They had needed instruction. They had needed parents.

The others were different.

John-117, however, had never needed any of that. He had not been molded, but had rather set the mold for the others to be made into; he had succeeded even before the procedures had begun, the paragon of a child-soldier, and the enhancements had only managed to improve what he already had. He trained himself, instructed himself. Halsey was his mother-figure, but never his mother...Mendez was a soldier, not a father. Perhaps it meant that John-117 was the one who had been different.

He had not been made for battle, but born of it. He had defied gods and demons. He was UNSC SPARTAN Sierra-117, and he was a monument to all their sins.

He had been the one to survive the battle of Reach. He had faced the Gravemind and defeated it. He had slain the Didact. He had done countless things, many of them heroic...and some which were decidedly less so. Four ODSTs had died because he'd left the lynchpin from a weight bench; he'd abandoned Cortana to the Gravemind. The number of men and women who'd died for him, and in his name, was far more vast than he would have liked. He had killed, or prepared to kill, for all of his life.

Yes...John was the different one. Baptized by blood, rather than fire, with an MA5-issue assault rifle in his hands and an AI inside of his head.

Perhaps that had been what they'd all seen in him-the differences between himself and the others?

Of course, John really didn't care all that much in the end. He wasn't supposed to care, after all; he was built to shoot a gun and swing an energy blade, to lead his SPARTAN brethren into battle. He was meant to fight, kill and die for the UNSC and its people, to protect those people he might have known if he hadn't been taken into the training program developed by Halsey and executed by Mendez.

But he'd left her behind.

She was dead, he always told himself, but he always held a nagging feeling that she still survived. Could it be that she was on Requiem, where the Didact had destroyed the terminal which she was on? Perhaps her rampancy had allowed some part of her to survive the innumerable splittings of her personality and psyche?

No, he always answered himself. She was dead.

On this day, however, he continued the train of thought; as the sun began to set on the horizon, bathing his windowed room (ironically spartan in its decor, with only a bed, a desk, and one chair) in its darkening light, he thought to himself for the umpteenth time: Cortana was dead. He may as well bury her in her rightful tomb...his mind, the place where she had spent her days and nights with him. It was only fitting, he thought, that her grave should be her home; her grave, his mind.

The answer hit him harder than a plasma grenade, and he somehow knew that he was right about this...the Gravemind would know if Cortana was alive, and may even contain a piece of her; he wouldn't put it past the ancient being to keep some supposed spoil of victory with itself. He knew that it knew, instinctively understood that the master parasite would be able to point him in the right direction. And if he was wrong, of course, then perhaps he would finally be able to go meet Cortana...wherever she was now.

The others wouldn't have gone after her, he believed. She had chosen him as hers, become his friend and partner. In her final moments, she had confessed that she'd wanted simply to touch him; if John-117 had owned any sense of emotion, his heart would've broken at that. He knew that she hadn't simply wanted to touch him...not his armor, at least.

His mind was made up, and nothing would change his standing on this. He would go to the Gravemind, find all the information he could as to Cortana's whereabouts, and leave...with his guns, if he had to, but he would leave. All that stood in his way was a lack of MJOLNIR armor and clearance from his only self-appointed superior in this fort: Lord Hood himself. It was as much a blessing as it was a curse, as John felt incredibly strange to be saluted by men and women who were half (and some even looked as if they were a third) of his age. It also meant that, as a general rule, he held free reign over his daily schedule and what he was allowed to do; a few things, however, such as an officer-manned trip to the Flood-overrun former-Covenant capital of High Charity, would likely require the permission of Lord Hood.

This wasn't to say that the Master Chief wouldn't go regardless, but it would be nice to have a home to return to.

"John, you're not making any sense."

"I understand that it doesn't make sense to you. That doesn't mean that it's nonsense."

Catherine Halsey was not a very pliant woman, even for the admitted favorite of all the SPARTANs she had created. He was trying to take a ship into the heart of their one true enemy's lair, formerly the home of the Covenant that had waged war against them for years...he was right, it didn't make any sense to her. She didn't see how it could make sense to anyone; his plan wasn't just nonsense, it was suicide! And worse, it was political death for the human race!

"John one-seventeen, I can't allow you to-"

"Then I'll do it without your allowance, doctor." The cold matter-of-fact tone, even though it was the same as ever, made the words sting even harder.

"Why won't you be reasonable? If you want Cortana back so badly, just take another of the Cortana modules!"

The glare he gave her was the single most-frightening thing that she had ever experienced; all her interrogations, her interviews, speeches, and so on...they couldn't compare to the absolute hatred he gave her in that one look. It was pained and forced, she could tell after a few seconds, but still hateful.

"You would have me..." He growled, displaying more emotion than he had since before he was taken from his home for the SPARTAN indoctrination, "...betray her memory. Dim her light with coverage by a falsity. You suggest that I leave her behind like I did when I left High Charity for the first time, like I was forced to when the Didact destroyed the terminal which I placed her in. Listen: I will not leave her behind."

He strode past her, going to the frame which would put his armor back on. First were his boots, then his shins, his arms and thighs, the knee pads, spaulders, chest plate, gloves, and finally the helmet.

"If my luck doesn't hold out, then we'll finally know what it takes to kill me."

"Was that...was that a joke?"

He walked off, ignoring her rhetorical question.

"Sierra one-seventeen...let me get this straight. You wish to take a ship to High Charity, which may or may not still be infested with Flood, and seek out the Gravemind to see if it can help you find the location of your destroyed and rampant AI, Cortana. Do I have it correctly?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll need a ship capable of interstellar travel, one-seventeen, and a crew to run it. I'll have them ready by tomorrow morning."

Behind his mask, the Master Chief's face was stone-hard in order to prevent a look of disbelief from spreading across it. "You mean that you're actually going to sanction this?"

"If anyone can pull it off, Chief, it's you. I can also say that I'm sending you there to eliminate any Flood you come across."

"Doing that would likely deter the Gravemind from helping me. I won't kill them if I don't have to."

"If you say so, Chief. Anyway, I'll have them ready by tomorrow morning; you should get prepared yourself." Lord Hood looked the Master Chief up and down, viewing his armor, wanting to laugh at himself for the suggestion. "Well, any more preparation that you'd need. The supply depot is always open, one-seventeen."

"Thank you, sir."

John exited after a quick salute, knowing that Cortana wasn't quite so far from him any more...he would be ready. Foregoing his bed in favor of the floor, which was actually more comfortable for him, he laid down and went to sleep. Seven hours later, he woke to a voice in his head; it wasn't Cortana's, or Halsey's, but it was still a voice he knew better than he'd have liked.

"You have come for her, child of the children. You seek to take back that which the Forerunner Didact ripped from you. You killed him, yes, but that which was stolen cannot truly be brought back...only replaced. I cannot promise that you will like what you have obtained, only that you will have the piece of her that remains with me. Our contact lengthened her life, though it became more painful, and she defeated her rampancy just before she was destroyed completely. Knowing this, will you still make the choice? To take up the Mantle of Responsibility for yourself, and only yourself, because you wish for her to return to you?"

The Gravemind already knew his answer. It knew that it had been defeated by this man, this John one-seventeen, and would offer no resistance. The Flood was dying; it was in its last throes now, after an eternity. They had held the Mantle once, long before the Forerunners...or even the Precursors; they had been peaceful colonizers of the stars and their planets, ruled by a trio of brothers. The Gravemind had been the eldest of them, the true-born ruler of the Flood. The middle brother, who would become the Gravesword, commanded its armies. He went on to die at the hands of the Precursor Legion, as did their younger brother: the Gravemouth, a scientist who had been working for the physical advancement of the Flood as a species. His experiment had backfired, silently spreading throughout each of the worlds which the Flood had colonized; the first effects were unnaturally long and disease-free life, stretching their span from one hundred years to the present day...and the older they became, the worse their prognosis. In three generations, the Flood had become parasites that fed on the flesh of the living. The Gravemouth had stood at half-again the height of the Flood Hunters, and the Gravesword even taller than that; the Gravemind had slowly become a world-wrecking entity, rather than a proud king, and had gone into hiding while he commanded his people from afar.

The Precursors had failed entirely at wiping out the Flood, only succeeding in slaying the Gravesword and the Gravemouth; all the lost Flood people were recouped by the infestation of the Precursors. The Forerunners had almost failed in their attempt to contain the Flood as well...had it not been for the Halo rings, then the Gravemind would have had a chance to slay the Didact. They had failed, however, and the Flood had been unleashed upon the galaxy once more. And yet this single human, this John one-seventeen, had succeeded where entire civilizations had failed. He had charged into the heart of darkness, come out alive, and slaughtered thousands. He was, truly, the one who had the strength to wear the Mantle.

Hey, guys. This is going to be my continuation of my one-shot, I Am, and it's an idea that I've held on to since I finished Halo 3. I'm not sure how long it'll be, or what I'm going to do with it, or even if I'll continue this at all; it felt like a sincere chore when I was writing this. If anyone would like to take this off of my hands, I'll give you the details that I've already figured out (as far as the story's direction) and see where you take it.

Keep your MA5s close and your AIs closer.