Well, I have just freshly gone through and edited this story after re-reading it and finding as the story went on the grammar and spelling got worse.

So, I shined this story all up like a brand new penny. I hope everyone enjoys this story and please review!
Especially if you want a Part 2 to this storyline. ;p

~ Rose


Well, to start the story off with a bit of who I am, I have no family to speak of, my earliest recollection is waking up in an alley where I had fallen asleep in a cardboard box with a ragged blanket to keep warm as a young child, possibly 4 or 5 years old. I spent the next few years living and learning the ways of the street, never having trusted others too much after an adult had lured me close with some food and tried to grab me while cursing angrily. I am 15 now as far as I know and have been studying all I could find on the Covenant species since the war began many years ago, which an old man I knew had taught me more about. When I met him as a 6 and half-year-old in the library, he was impressed with my insatiable curiosity, which he spent may following years feeding while also training my body just as much as my mind, before he left a year ago and I returned once more to the streets – better prepared to survive then I had been when he and I had first met.

I have spent the past year running the street and learning every nook and cranny of the city that I could so I could survive and make quick exits after stealing food or things to survive while on my own out here.

But when the shit met fan a few weeks ago when the Covenant had found our colony world I waited till the main combat had settled before venturing out of my underground camps – which I regularly moved to avoid being found and now I run the semi-deserted streets surveying and watching the aliens, picking up bits of the Sangheili language as I watch them over time.

I've done fairly good avoiding getting into conflicts with the far more skilled aliens, using my equally advanced skills of going undetected and ghost-like agility as I move about picking up supplies, food and better versions of the two weapons I specialize with – an old style hunting rifle with a decently powered scope and a bladed staff I think is called a Naginata in Japanese culture. I'm not sure the name exactly, but what I do know is I've been able to hit those who I do fight, hard, fast, and silently enough to leave them either disoriented so I can escape safely or dead like the one Unggoy I did have to kill.

Still bugs me I had to kill it, but I reason it was my only option being so cornered without any options of escape without injury had I not slipped the bladed staff off my back and impaled the creature while it was still stunned at what it had stumbled across – me hiding in a dark alcove with a bundle of freshly pilfered foodstuffs from my latest food run.

That was two days ago and the sounds of fresh battle have prompted me to see about finding a way off the planet before the Sangheili find whatever artifact they seem to be talking about looking for. But thus far my observations have kept them to one location of the city as I move about as secretly as possible. I skirt from the shadows of rubble piles to those in doorways and allies, barely stirring up the dust as I move silently along the street, heading back from the gunshop where I get my ammunition for the rifle I've used a couple times to make the aliens scatter for cover, to allow some other survivors they had cornered to escape somewhat safely before I too hurried out of the area before anyone knew what entirely was happening.

"Those Sangheili are getting wise to me I think. I better step up my search for finding a way off this planet alive before they glass it, with me stuck here." I think to myself grimly as I check the coast is clear both up and down the once bustling main street, having learned by observation to also check for sniper sign before I break cover when I watched another one person get sniped by one of the alien's glowing projectiles. I hesitate for a moment when I get a bad feeling and checks behind myself cautiously before I slink a bit deeper into my small hidden alcove of rubble, thanking my lucky stars I had listened to my bad feeling when a group of Covenant soldiers round the corner a street up, being rather silent and cautious.

"Hum... Looks like they're on edge... Can't be from little ole me. Must be something else. Maybe soldiers? Just great, if so, from what I've heard from others, soldiers can be just as nasty, but maybe the only way outta this mess in one piece." I think concerned as I twitch my ears, listening for anything else out of the ordinary before I turn and move down the dark alley when I'm satisfied it's clear. I move away from the patrol, sticking to my shadow hopping routine.

Some might call me over cautious, but I've seen first hand what the Covenant soldiers do to humans they find, and a group of 10, like that mixed batch of Sangheili, Kig-yar, and Unggoy would be easily a losing fight for me.

I may be a fairly good fighter for a youth my age, but even I know I am no match for a grown Kig-Yar, let alone a Sangheili with the weapons I have, in a head-on fight.

I head down another four blocks, ducking into an alcove just as I hear a frightened girl's scream.

"Crap.." I think to myself irritated before quickly adjusting my face cover, double-checking my equipment and ready's both my weapons as I quickly head to the location.

"P-Please... D-don't kill us!" I hear a woman's voice beg terrified and I exhale a calming breath to soothe my tense body that's readying for combat as I slip into a dark alcove nearby the courtyard where the voice is coming from.

I load my rifle as I steal a quick glimpse of the scene as I peer over the broken storefront window's frame. A red-haired woman and her two auburn-haired daughters have been cornered by two blue armored junior Sangheili, one of which is slowly advancing on the trio of terrified humans.

I half pause when I get the vague feeling of being watched and glances carefully around the street and buildings warily.

But the children's sudden cries of terror snap my focus back to the situation at hand and I shake it off as paranoia when I don't see anything out of the ordinary. So I slip my rifle barrel up and through a crack in the wall where I can stay fairly hidden and my back is protected by the rubble behind me.

I sight in the Sangheili closest the trio and calms my breathing before I fire, reload and fire again on the Sangheili's head, dropping the creature dead with the two shots before I turn my gun on the confused second alien and delivers the same before I load another two rounds into my gun and deadcheck's the two before I slip my rifle away and secrets myself silently over to a spot I can signal to the three while undercover.

"Psst... Psst." I utter curtly, but loud enough they hear and look in my direction, shocked and numb from what they just went through with the aliens and my saving them.

I flick a letter to the trio before I disappear back off into the shadows, going back to my own way, knowing far better than to try and get involved in the three since I'm not prepared or able to defend them without the lot of us getting killed.

It still sickens me that the most I can do is give them the letter's I pre-drew up for these situations which have instructions only people who've lived here would know, lead to a hiding place for survivors that I myself stumbled across and spent some nights at, but left when it was made clear my 'lone wolf' ways were not looked kindly on by the adults. Nor my arguing that their methods would get the place found and attacked by the Covenant. Especially since I did it loud and publicly.

For the next while during my supply run, I can't seem to shake the feeling of being watched and/or followed as I make my way silently through the streets and as a precaution I take some long winding routes through some fairly tight spaces and hidden pathways that only someone as thin and flexible as me could ferret themselves through.

But on my way to finally return to my camp, I hear an all too familiar scream come from down the street near the food mart I used to camp near in an underground parking lot not far away.

"That's Saje! What's that girl doing out here without her parents...!" I skid to a stop in some cover, abruptly stopping my forward advance before I turn and bolt off down the street, pin-balling from shadow to shadow as I prep my naginata, which I favor mainly over my gun which is too noisy in this auditorium like atrium.

I take a back door to an old bakery after surveilling a single red armored Sangheili having cornered little, auburn-haired Saje, amongst some rubble, her hazel eyes locked in terror on the immensely larger Sangheili as he takes something off his belt which I know as some kind of weapon. But little 5-year-old Saje hasn't a clue as she stares up at the alien in pure terror.

I waste no time and comes around the back then without hesitation leaps high and out through the windowless storefront, flipping my staff about then brings my blade down through the thin gap of their helmet, leaving a long trailing cut on their face. Which forces them back up a few steps surprised as my boots come down with a deliberately heavy thud when I land in front of Saje protectively.

I begin backing the alien up a few further steps with my continued attacks while they're confused and stunned.

"Ghost!" Saje cries the nickname I had been given during my stay with the refugees as she watches me back the Sangheili up with relief.

The alien says something in his own tongue, something along the lines of calling me an irritating pest. But I snort and gives him a good lash of my blade across his exposed abdomen.

"I've heard better from (in Sangheili:) idiots." I snort, watching his posture perk both confused and surprised as I stand in front of Saje protectively.

"Ghost! I came looking for you! Something's happened!" Saje jumps to my side and grabs my belt, emotionally, seeming to forget all about the mess she's gotten into with the Sangheili.

I half look at her and opens my mouth to order her to run, but my lapse in focus gives the Sangheili the opening he needed to rush in and without hesitation, backhand's me flying into a rubble pile, hard enough to knock the wind out of me and undoubtedly bruise some of my ribs or crack them as I impact then drop to the ground gasping for air helplessly cussing myself in my head for my rookie mistake.

I know I've just sunk the two of us by taking my focus off my opponent but it's too late now, I can kick myself later if we survive.

But as I slowly roll onto my side, catching sight of the Sangheili raising his pistol to line up a shot with me, I know that later may not come and this is going to be it if I don't somehow pull a miracle out of thin air and somehow get my body moving through the spasms to cover and somehow snap Saje out of her shock to get her moving to cover or out of the immediate area where I can meet up with her.

"Move damnit!" I cuss to myself as I begin to rise obviously in pain.

But just as I think the two of us are totally screwed three massive shadows pass over me, turning the once semi-peaceful atrium into an echoing hall of gunfire as the three massive olive-green armored people land in front of me as I smack my chest, trying to reset my breathing as I sorely rise to my feet, picking my staff up as I see a shadow come up near Saje from the store giving his cohorts help.

"RUN!" I suddenly bark to Saje who's totally unaware of the danger and transfixed on these newcomers. I cuss something rather foul in another human language that I have learned in the time I spend in the library as I suddenly rush over to her, stowing my staff across my back, scoops her up and uses the much larger person as a moving gymnastic vault to leap up and over them as I head past them and through the back of the building, unknowingly leaving a trail of blood behind myself from a semi-new wound having been re-opened by the Sangheili when they smacked me.