Carlsbad, California November 21st 2012, 6:50 AM

"Beep! Beep! Beep!" The alarm clock blared, quickly waking Cameron from his sleep.

"Five more minutes…." he mumbled as he covered his head with his pillow and tried to once again return to his dreams. The ringing, however, persisted and the teenager soon gave up and slowly rose from his bed.

He was about 6 feet tall, with light brown hair that at the moment was flayed in every direction from constantly rolling in bed while he was asleep. His dark brown eyes were bloodshot as he looked himself over in the bedroom mirror.

The teenager that looked back at him had an about average build for his age, which was 17, and his skin had a tan complexion that hinted that he had some Italian blood in his family. All in all: everything was the same, though with a bit of a disheveled look.

"Man, I have got to remember to set my alarm later in the day next time!" he reminded himself with a yawn.

Cameron walked down the hallway to his little brother's room, opened the door and found that his brother was still asleep in his bed, completely unaffected by the alarm going off just a few feet from his head.

"Not again…"

He then tip-toed up to his brother's sleeping form, gently put his mouth up to his brother's ear and screamed "Austin! WAKE UP!"

The shout had the desired effect, and the 16-year-old jumped at the words. "Whaa…?" he mumbled, and then with much more force, "Cameron, what the hell was that for!?"

Cameron smirked and said "Hey, it's not my fault you can't wake your dumb ass up by yourself." To which Austin just grumbled and started changing into his day clothes.

Cameron then left and headed downstairs to the kitchen to make a quick breakfast. After he was done eating he quickly headed back upstairs.

His mom, he saw, was still asleep and his dad was probably off running an errand or something. He passed his brother's and his own room and entered the family room.

"I wonder what's on today?" he thought as he jumped on the couch and turned on the television.

But as he was flipping through the channels, he spotted his Xbox360 out of the corner of his eye. It had been broken for about two months now, but neither he nor his brother had enough money to buy a new one.

Nothing interesting was on at the moment, so he decided to test out the Xbox again. It had already broken down twice before, once to the red ring of death and another to a hardware malfunction. Each time this had happened, however, the console had returned to working order after it had been left to sit for a while.

They had tested it a month ago and it still hadn't worked "But hey" Cameron told himself "maybe it just needed a bit more time?" He plugged the Xbox into the T.V, put in the Halo: Reach disk and turned it on.

Then his life changed forever.

"What the…?" Cameron whispered as the Xbox flashed an UNKNOWN ERROR message. "Damn it! The screen doesn't go aura anymore but now something completely different is wrong with it!"

As if to emphasize how wrong something was with it, the Xbox immediately started to shower sparks and flame all over the room.

"Oh Shit! I better get out of here before the whole room catches on fire!" Suddenly a large beam of electricity shot out of the Xbox and enveloped him, but to Cameron's surprise he felt no pain.

"Wait, why am I not being electrocuted?" Cameron's question was soon answered as a vortex erupted from his Xbox and slowly started sucking him in. Too shocked to speak, all he could was repeat "This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real…." in his head before the last of his body was sucked into the machine.

January 7th, 2552. Unknown Location

"Ahhhhh!" Cameron screamed as he shot up from his bed in a cold sweat. Quickly realizing that he no longer felt the sensation of the strange electricity flowing through him, he assumed it had just been a dream and tried to calm himself down.

"Whoa, what a weird dream…." he thought "Sure, I've had you-wake-up-in-the-morning-but-you-really-haven't dreams before, but they've never ended like THAT! Must have been the shrimp I had last night…"

He raised his hand to wipe the sweat off of his forehead and found that the movement felt weird to him for some reason. He lifted his hand in front of his face to get a better look and immediately realized something was horribly wrong: Instead of the five fleshy digits he was used to seeing, the hand that stared back at him had 2 long fingers in the middle with thumbs on opposing sides, all covered in tiny dark gray scales.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Cameron started to inspect his altered appendage, curiosity temporarily overcoming the panic that was slowly growing inside of him.

"What the hell? It looks kind of like the hand of a….Oh shit!"

Apprehension dawned on Cameron as he threw off the covers in panic, hoping that his suspicions were false. The alien body that lay before him, however, said otherwise.

"I'm an Elite….."

Looking over his new body, he immediately saw that he had grown taller, going from his previous 6'1 to a seemingly giant 7'3. Cameron also noticed that his body had significantly bulked up in muscle, getting to about twice its original size. He continued to inspect his body inch by inch until he eventually reached the cloven hooves that had replaced his feet.

"How the hell is this possible?" he breathed, the unreality of his situation beginning to dawn on him.

As he shifted his eyes away from his new body in an effort to calm himself down, Cameron realized that he'd been so preoccupied with his new form that he hadn't noticed that his surroundings had also been altered.

Purple walls, carpet, and furniture surrounded him; the whole room being illuminated from strange light-blue lights in the ceiling that gave it an even more alien appearance. "I need to find out where the hell I am…" he thought as he slowly made his way over to the window, having to hobble most of the way due to his inexperience with his new legs.

Cameron pulled away the window covers and was dumbstruck by the landscape that greeted him.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore…" he whispered, giving an involuntary shutter at the still-alien sensation of his new mandibles clicking as they formed the words.

He was most certainly not in Kansas, nor was he for that matter in his home of Southern California; instead the sight before him looked more like something out of a science-fiction movie.

Cameron found himself looking down onto a sprawling Sangheili city. Tall alien-looking buildings studded its orange skyline, the small Covenant spacecraft patrolling casually overhead only adding to its other-worldly aura. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Cameron's analytical mind instantly kicked into overdrive, rapidly inspecting the giant structures before him and cross-referencing them with everything he had seen in the Halo games. The familiar sound of a bell being rung down below, however, soon knocked him from his thoughts and quickly shifted his attention to the surface.

The massive city was alive with movement, he soon saw, with Elites of all kinds bustling through the busy streets. From his vantage point Cameron could see merchants selling goods at the market, soldiers patrolling the back-alleys for thieves, and if he strained his eyes a little bit he could even make out a few couples relaxing on the banks of the lagoon that bordered the city's southern end.

Everywhere Cameron looked he saw Elites; friends laughing, children playing, adults arguing. They all acted so similar to the people from his own world but at the same time he knew that they couldn't be more different from each other.

The culture-shock was too much for Cameron to process, and with his head in his hands, he slowly made his way back to the bed and sat down, his head throbbing in pain as he tried to come to grips with his new reality.

As he stared down at the floor, he noticed that the carpet had a large symbol stitched into it: 2 crossed energy swords with a strange glyph in the center. Looking around, he saw that the alien symbol was also stitched onto the bed sheets and pieced together in stained glass at the top of the bedroom window.

"The 'Macuree family crest." he immediately thought.

"Wait, how the hell would I know—Argh!"

The symbol seemed to trigger something deep within Cameron, and his thoughts were immediately interrupted as his head was racked with intense pain, causing him to fall to the floor with his head clenched tight in his hands.

He grasped his head even tighter as the pain continued to increase, getting to a level so excruciating that Cameron sincerely wondered if he was dying.

Death did not come for him, however. Instead, new memories began pouring into his brain like a stream, flashing before his eyes one by one.

It was a sunny winter day in Koros, the persistent din of water dropping consuming the city as the sun slowly melted away the layer of snow and ice that had blanketed the streets from the previous night's storm. In the market square merchants quietly muttered curses under their breath as they shivered in the cold, the sight causing a group of northern tourists walking by to snicker to themselves about how soft these southerners were, sitting there shivering in temperatures that in their home states would be considered summer weather. The merchants growled and then looked to each other silently, sharing a conspirator's smile that promised that this group of smart-asses was going to find out that the price of goods had just suddenly doubled for them the next time they came to shop.

The market, usually a tremendously noisy place filled with the shouts of vendors haggling over goods and of fisherman auctioning off their latest catch, was suddenly reduced to series of low whispers as a group of three Sangheili slowly walked toward them from the road leading to the city keep. One of the three wore bright gold military armor while another was wearing a modest purple dress, the large 'Macuree crests on their clothes instantly identifying them as the kaidon and his wife. This however was not what the crowd was interested in, as the pair regularly visited the market and were a common presence in the city, instead their eyes were completely focused on the small child that stood between them, the boy holding his parents' hands as they walked down the street.

Cameron was excited; his parents had finally agreed to take him with them into the city! Everything around him was a completely new experience to him, with the smell of the sea breeze, the wide variety of items being sold in the market and the massiveness of the market square filling his young brain with both curiosity and wonder. The 5-year-old had so many questions for his parents about the city and its people and was about to ask his first when he noticed the inquisitive stares he was receiving.

"Is that their son?" he heard them whisper in hushed tones.

"I know he was born about five years ago but nobody outside the family has actually seen him." one murmured.

"It looks like he got a lot from his father's side of the family" another commented.

"Daddy, why are they all looking at me?" Cameron nervously asked his father.

"They've just never seen you before son, don't worry they mean you no harm." he replied with a smile.

Despite his father's assurances the stares made him extremely uncomfortable and he quickly ducked behind his mother to hide himself from their prying eyes. After seeing that all of their gawking had scared the child the members of the crowd quickly remembered their manners and went back to what they had been previously doing, whether that be buying fruit from the vendors or trying to outbid their competitors on that rare Akula fish that had just gotten on the auction block.

Cameron heard his mother whisper to his father above him "Dear, don't you think we should stop by Zhan's shop while we're here? After all we haven't seen him since…since…"

"Since his wife was killed, I know." his father sighed "But seeing him would only make things worse. The merchants still hate me for lowering the tariff rate with Zelso and if they see me together with him they'll completely isolate him from the rest of the guild. By the gods that family has already had enough hardship this year without me adding to it."

"Too true…" his mother whispered, and then quickly changing topics asked "Well should we at least get something for our son while we're at the market? I hear a bunch of new shipments just came in from the northern states…"

Cameron's father agreed and asked him if there was anything he wanted. The boy immediately pointed at an Arum with an aqua blue center sitting in the display case of a nearby toy stall. His father walked up to the owner and asked how much it cost, the merchant responded "28 units".

"Usro, I know for a fact that you only pay 10 units for everyone of those you get shipped in from the north! After all I'm the one who signs off on your import registry every year."

"Fine then….24 units."

"You call that a price drop!? 15 units!"

"21!"

"17!"

The haggling continued back and forth until his father and the merchant finally settled on the price of 19.5 units. While the two seemed to be happy on the price, as Cameron walked away with his family, his new toy wrapped in his hands, he heard the merchant mutter "I used to only have to pay 6 units per puzzle before you lowered the tariff…"

Cameron had little time to analyze this little snapshot of his new childhood before he was once again overwhelmed by the masses of memories flowing into his brain.

It had been 2 years since that first day in the market, and Cameron now found himself in a 7-year-old Sangheili's body, watching silently as a casket was solemnly laid in front of him and his father. Inside lay his mother, her arms laid together in eternal pose, a Walaki flower clasped between them. Cameron's father wore a stoic face, trying desperately to put up an appearance of strength for the masses of people who attended the funeral, but at this he failed, and it was abundantly clear to those around him that behind his serious face the kaidon was in complete emotional agony.

Her death had been so sudden; there had been no warning, no "long illness" to prepare the mind for the possibility of death, not even the fact of age to reduce the surprise factor. His mother had been—what? 48? All Cameron knew was that he had walked into his parents bedroom to ask them if him and his friends could practice their sword fighting on the training grounds and found his mother laying on the ground, her head clasped in her hands, and his father screaming at the top of his lungs for a doctor. Sudden Cerebral Hemorrhage was what they had said; there was nothing they could have done. Cameron stilled cried rivers of tears all the same, and as he looked up to his father, he was shocked to see that he too had tears welled up in his eyes.

After the funeral was over and the kaidon had said his final goodbyes to his wife and Cameron to his mother, the two silently walked back to the keep, his father embracing him in his arms vowing to protect with his life the one thing he had left of her.

Suddenly a knock at the door awoke Cameron from the memories.

"Son? Is everything all right? I heard screaming earlier."the voice behind the door asked.

"I'm….fine….father…." Cameron managed to stutter out as the memories began to once again flow into him.

"Wait, father? Yes…..father. Sveto 'Macuree: age 56, Fieldmaster in the Covenant army, current kaidon of Koros keep and head of the 'Macuree family." The information flowed into Cameron's head as if read from a factsheet, followed by several more personal memories of his father.

"Come on son, I know you can do better than that!" his father laughed as he effortlessly dodged his son's sword lunge and threw him to the ground with ease, quickly jumping on top of Cameron and placing his practice sword on the 12-year-old's neck.

"And I win yet again. That makes it—what? 22-0?" he lightly mocked as he picked up his son from the dirt of the keep practice grounds. "Seriously son I don't know why you keeping trying to knock me off balance with that back-handed flourish, it didn't work the first time and it won't now, you're completely outmatched."

Cameron just rolled his eyes as he got back up into fighting position, completely ignoring his father's speech as he instead tried to formulate his strategy for the next bought. His father's last sentence had given him an idea however, and he broke into a wide grin as he and his father once again squared off.

"What's with the smile son? Excited for your next beating?"

Cameron ignored his father's attempts to rile him up, as he remembered what he had told him when he had first started learning to sword fight "When you get angry son you lose your focus, when you lose your focus you make mistakes, and when you make mistakes you die."

Instead Cameron crouched back as if he were about to lunge again and told his father "No father, it's just about you had just said. You told me I was outmatched, and as you had always taught me: If you find yourself outmatched, cheat."

Then before his father could react, Cameron kicked dust into his eyes. Taking advantage of his father's sudden disorientation, he tackled him to the ground with all of his strength, pinning his arms down as his father started to swing his sword wildly. His father soon broke Cameron's hold on his left hand and began to thrust his sword up towards his son's neck, but was interrupted when he felt the soft hum of Cameron's energy sword resting on his throat, while his was still in the air mid-swing. The kaidon growled in disbelief when he realized what had just happened: the match was now over, and his son had beaten him.

"Enjoy your victory while you can son!" he exclaimed, pushing his son off of him "Because it's still 22-1 and you've still got a long way until you can beat your old man on anything more than dumb luck!"

"You sure are chatty for a dead man…" Cameron smiled back as he held his sword in the air like he'd just slain a great beast.

"Why you…." his father started, on the outside appearing completely furious but on the inside feeling nothing but pride in his son for being able to best him.

However he couldn't let his son know that so he said "Okay then mister high-and- mighty, I was going to stop practice after this but since you feel so sure about yourself we're going to practice for the rest of the day—no breaks! How do like that mister Swordmaster?"

Cameron groaned as he once again got into his fighting posture, wondering why he just had to open his big mouth.

Two years later…..

Cameron was having trouble keeping up with his father as the two were escorted into Tano Hall by two 'Macuree honor guards, their massive size and the deadly sheen of their plasma spears leading Cameron to wonder who in their right mind would dare try to attack them and think they could survive. As they entered the chambers of the Grand Korosian Council, the teenage Sangheili was amazed by the sheer size of the room and the massive amounts of people crammed inside of it. At the center of the room was very long gray alloy panel with five large seats placed along its length, two on either side of the largest seat in the middle that was slightly higher than the others. Cameron's father walked to take his place on the center seat, as it was meant for the kaidon of Koros, motioning for Cameron to follow him. After his father had taken his seat he whispered in Cameron's ear "Son, I know this meeting will seem to you as one of the most boring things you've ever had to sit through but I just want to remind you that I brought you here for a reason, as you will one day have to lead this council when you become kaidon and the decisions you and the council make will affect the lives of everyone in Koros. So please try to pay attention to what I say and do, as it may become invaluable to you later…"

"Ah, is this your son Sveto? I must say that he is in your spitting image…" the Sangheili occupying the seat to his father's left interrupted. He was about a year older than his father and had a large ragged scar running down his cheek that Cameron couldn't help but stare at.

"Yes he is Dyad, I finally decided to show him how things work in the council." he replied

"Or don't work…But where are my manners? Dyad 'Docolee at your service, I'm the representative for the province of Oscan." the elite smiled, giving a short little bow. Cameron was about to introduce himself when bells rang out throughout the building, signaling the beginning of the meeting.

"Looks like it's time to start" his father said "We'll talk more once the meeting is over. Don't forget what I told you!"

Cameron nodded and made his way to the VIP observer box, steeling himself for a boring meeting. "Boring" it turned out didn't even begin to cover how dull it was and Cameron fell asleep after the first half-hour.

He woke up a few hours later to see his father and Dyad staring down at him, his father had a look of disapproval on his face while Dyad appeared to be trying to keep himself from laughing. "Didn't you listen to a word I told you…" his father began, anger rising in his voice.

"Oh don't be so hard on the kid Sveto," Dyad interrupted "If I recall correctly, when our fathers took us to out very first council meeting we were both out in 15 minutes, and your son managed to stay awake for twice that! Maybe there is hope for the next generation after all…" he chuckled.

As Cameron and his father walked out of the council chambers, his father began lecturing him about paying attention "While it's true that Dyad and I also had trouble sitting through meetings when we were your age, it still doesn't mean that you should. Especially when we discussing such important things such as the insurgency in—"

Cameron's father never finished his sentence, as at that moment a Sangheili dressed in black lunged at his father from the crowd with an energy sword. One of his father's honor guards immediately put his own body between his father and the assailant, taking the energy sword straight to the chest and falling to the ground, dead. The assassin then turned his attention to Cameron's now-exposed father, leaping at him with his sword screaming "Long live Asinm!" Then in a move so fast Cameron could barely see it, his father activated his own sword and skewered the assassin in the chest mid-swing. The assailant managed to whisper "Fast…" before his eyes glazed over and he went limp on the blade.

With a roar of triumph Cameron's father flung the assassin's dead body off his sword and into the wall, the corpse's purple blood staining the white metal the hall was constructed of. "Is that the best you can do 'Inkulee's? You're too cowardly to fight me face-to-face so you send an assassin to do your dirty work for you? You are the most gutless, honor -less family I have ever had the displeasure of fighting!" he screamed to the ceiling, adrenaline pumping through his veins from the failed attempt on his life. The remaining honor guards immediately sprung into action, bundling Cameron and his father out of the building and back up to the keep as fast as they could before an another assassination attempt was made.

As Cameron watched Tano Hall shrink in the distance though the back window of the revenant, he nervously asked his father "What was that all about?"

His father, having noticeably calmed down in the past few minutes, smiled and replied "Politics my son, politics."

Cameron's head was racked with dizziness as the memories of his father ceased, at least for the moment.

"You don't sound fine." his father responded from behind the door.

Despite his best efforts, Cameron couldn't help letting out a loud groan as another wave of memories invaded his mind, his brain now being painfully infused with Sangheili culture, writing, and history.

Hearing his son's sighs of pain, the kaidon warned, "That's it son, I'm coming in!"

Before Cameron could protest, the bedroom door flew open and his father rushed in. Finding his son lying on the floor clutching his head in pain, he immediately called out to his two bodyguards who stood outside the doorway and ordered "Komu! C'tas! Find the keep doctor immediately and tell him to get down here as fast as he can! Tell him it's happening again!"

"But sir, our duty is to stay with you at all—."

"Forget the protocol! If the damn 'Inkulee's want to try and kill me while you're away then they're damned welcome to come and try but I will not just sit here and watch my son die like his mother did! Get your damned asses in gear! NOW!"

The guards could hardly move their feet fast enough as they shot down the hallway in search of the doctor, yelling at the regular soldiers they passed to join in the search.

Kneeling down and holding his writhing son in his arms, Sveto pleaded to him "Stay with me, Onca, whatever you do don't let go!"

"Onca…. Yes, that's what my Sangheili name is, Onca 'Macuree." Cameron/Onca thought as the memories of the last 2 years of his Sangheili life slowly fell into place, finally ending with the image of him returning home from the Sangheili War Academy on summer holiday the day before and quickly falling asleep in his bed, exhausted from the long trip.

As the memories stopped and the pain subsided, fear rapidly began to take its place in Cameron's thoughts. "What's going to happen now?" he wondered with panic, "Am I now going to start to forget my human memories? My friends? My family? Lose them all and live the rest of my life with completely no recollection of who I once was?"

Luckily, it seemed whatever it was that done this to him had decided to let him keep his former memories, as he would always be able to remember everything from his old life.

Cameron had no time to celebrate this fact, however, as he could slowly feel himself drifting to sleep, his mind needing rest to recover from the massive amount of stress it had endured.

As he slowly lost consciousness, Cameron could still faintly hear his father gently praying above him, "Please, by the gods, you've already taken Kala away from me, don't take Onca away from me as well!"

"Onca, huh?" Cameron thought right before everything finally faded to black, "Hmmm…..I think I like the sound of that…"