The Pillar of Autumn sailed through the blackness of space, thereby asserting its control over the currently unknown region. "All I want to know," its leader, Captain Jacob Keyes, said, "is did we lose them?"

"I think we both know the answer to that…"

"…Yes then?"

"No."

Keyes nearly bit off the end of his pipe. "I literally slapped the keyboard and sent us into slipspace to a random place in a random direction. How the hell did they -"

"Get here first? Covenant ships have always been faster. As for tracking us all the way from Reach… well, you did just slap the keyboard."

He sighed. "We were running dark, right?"

"Until we decelerated. Nobody could have missed the hole we tore in subspace." Keyes looked over one of the flight engineers' shoulders at a diagram (that frankly could have been drawn by a kindergartener) depicting Covenant ships, the Pillar of Autumn, and Reach. "They were waiting for us on the far side of the planet."

"So…" He walked back to his position behind the pilots on a raised platform. "What now?"

"Well, thirty bucks says that they attack us, we have to evacuate, the ship crashes on that big ring over there, and we have a big game devoted to a recently-unfrozen Spartan fighting aliens, zombies, and robots while he tries to destroy the ring."

"…Make it fifty and it's a deal."

"Done."

"And Kalmiya?" The small crimson avatar of the ship's onboard AI appeared. "Have our friends in cryo wake the baby."

"Already in progress," she grinned.

/-/

"Attention, all combat personnel. Please report to your action-station. 5th platoon, secure airlocks on deck 11; 14th platoon, rendezvous with 22nd tactical at bulkhead Charlie 14. This is not a drill. I repeat: this is not a drill."

"Rise and motherfuckin' shine, maggots!" Sergeant A. Johnson shouted once he was within earshot of the marines in the vehicle depot. "Line up for orders!"

The couple dozen soldiers under Johnson's command scrambled to their positions, standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with one another on either side of the sergeant. "We are being attacked by the enemy on our own ship. I don't know about you shitstains, but I was getting ready for some shuteye! Now I'm tired, cranky, and I have to fight aliens off with a sling and a couple of rocks!"

"Um," one particularly ballsy marine said, "you get a laser in the next game. I'm pretty sure we all die."

Johnson headbutted the corporal, likely breaking his nose in the process. "Don't interrupt your superior when he is speaking to you! We covered that on day zero!"

"Sir, yes sir!" the rest of the soldiers shouted in chorus.

"Now take your sticks and rocks and beat those bastards off our ship!"

The corporal spoke again, still weak from his new injury. "What happened to the sling…?"

Another headbutt. "I repurposed it as a jockstrap! What the fuck does it matter?" He turned to the rest of the marines. "Move out! Double-time!"

"Sir, yes sir!"

As his squad filed out, Johnson stood in the door of the alcove with his rifle over his shoulder. "All you greenhorns who wanted to see Covenant up close," he screwed a cigar into his mouth with a grin, "Today's gonna be your lucky day."

/-/

Sam and Johannes sat in their booth overlooking the cryobay. "Flush!" Sam almost yelled, slapping his cards on the table.

Johannes was unimpressed. "Four aces." He revealed his hand as he scraped the pot towards himself.

"Every goddamn time," Sam muttered.

A small beep could be heard on the console to his right. [Get your asses up,] it read, [and open the damn coffin.]

"Shit. Back to work, Jones."

They began to type code into the keyboards. "Let's see… unlatching casket."

"Rise and shine, Chief: it's show time."

/-/

"…Ugh… where the hell…?"

"Morning, Chief," said a voice.

Chief? What the…? Spartan-1337 peered through his headache, finding a man by an access panel to his right. I'm not Chief…

"Sorry for waking you so early," the man said again, "But we kinda need you. Just, ah, one moment." He pulled out a clipboard - not a holopad, an actual clipboard from the twenty-first century or so - and began rifling through some pages. "Go ahead and look around the room; gotta make sure you're still in working order."

1337 complied, getting an eyeful of the cryobay interior's plain metal walls and floor. Around the room were several other pods that had long since been emptied. Obviously he was going to be the last horse across the finish line. Again. "Bridge to cryo, this is Captain Keyes," spoke a voice over the intercom. "Send the Master Chief up immediately."

"S-So soon? Sir, there are a number of other tests that we really -"

"Did I fucking stutter?"

"…Aye-aye, sir." The man turned back to 1337. "We'd better get going. I guess now's as good as any time to see if your legs still work."

The Spartan nearly leapt out of the freezer, stretching his limbs as he did. "It is goddamn cramped in that box!" he groaned, rolling his shoulders. "Everything seems to work fine, nothing out of the ordinary…" He looked at his chestplate and frowned. "Ahem," 1337 pointed to the callsign - or lack thereof - on his upper-left chest, "Where the hell are my numbers?"

"Huh? Oh, they must have rubbed off or something."

"'Or something?' You're not even gonna try at an excuse?"

"It's not like you're missing a testicle! It's three little numbers we can paint right back on."

"Uh, guys," another man said from above them. His arms were over his head, and an alien was pointing its gun at him. "I think you should go."

A series of honks and worts came from the aggressor, who then fired on the engineer. "Oh shit!" The remaining crewman grabbed 1337 by the arm and bolted. Less than six seconds out the door, he tried to drag the Spartan through a door, which immediately exploded.

/-/

"Stupid son of a bitch…" 1337 muttered. He now was wandering haphazardly through the ship, making his way to the bridge. Passing through the armory was no help, seeing as the available guns had no ammo or were simply broken, and an alien had spooked him in one of the access tunnels. Eventually he found a blue arrow that read 'Bridge' on the ground. "Well that's some help, I guess."

"Sir!" A marine waved by another door with a similar arrow. "Captain's waiting through here!"

"Thanks. I wouldn't've fuckin' guessed." He entered the bridge, where multiple technicians scrambled about while others sat contrarily calm at their stations. Once on the main platform, 1337 cleared his throat. "Captain."

"Jesus!" Keyes turned around. "Gotta get a bell on you or something; you move too quietly for someone your size."

"Um…?"

The captain sighed. "Anyway, good to see you, because we're in deep shit right now. Kalmiya's done as good as she can, but we're pretty fucked."

"'As well as I can.'" A small red hologram appeared on the pedestal to the right, depicting a young woman with long hair made up of oblong, curved panels of code. "Two thousand years English has existed and still no-one can speak it worth a damn." The hologram turned to face the Spartan. "Sleep well?"

"…Who the hell are you," 1337 responded flatly, "where the hell am I, and what the hell is going -?"

A loud explosion rocked the Pillar of Autumn, throwing nearly everyone off their feet. Keyes was the first to speak after. "Report!"

"Covenant boarding parties flanking us!" Kalmiya answered urgently. "There's a breach in the lower hull… They've got antimatter charges!"

"That's it! We're leaving!"

"Sir?"

"Kalmiya, this ship isn't gonna hold against so much punishment. So, I'm invoking Cole Protocol Article 2, paragraph 17: have all hands evacuate the Autumn. Including you."

"And you're gonna do what exactly?"

Keyes pointed out through the glass cockpit to a massive ring-world. "See that?" Kalmiya and 1337 nodded in unison. "I'm gonna land on it."

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Permission granted, Master Chief."

"First, that takes massive cajones, sir, and second -"

Another explosion. "No time! Kalmiya, prep for extraction; Chief, you're taking her with you."

"What?"

"I'm gonna hand you her data card and a gun, and you're gonna get the hell off my ship." He paused. "That's an order, though. Don't take it the wrong way."

1337 groaned. "Fine, I'll take her with me. Don't expect a miracle, though."

Keyes nodded before typing a series of digits into the pedestal. He took the card out of its slot and handed it to the Spartan with his personal pistol. "Be warned, I haven't had ammo for it since we left Reach."

"Thanks a fuckin' load, Captain. Really."

He slid the card into the back of his helmet and Kalmiya verbally recoiled. "That's a lot of porn!"

"That depends on your definition of 'a lot'."

"You have almost a terabyte of explicit videos, pictures, and literotica saved to your helmet's closed network!"

Keyes shuddered. "That is a lot. Now go!"

/-a number of minutes later-/

"…So…" Kalmiya said as 1337 crawled through the second of maybe three maintenance shafts, "Were you gonna ever mention that you're not Master Chief? Or were you just gonna lead these marines astray?"

1337 stopped. "Wait, how did you know?"

"I know because my baby sister went with him. I've been rolling with the punches since I got here, but it's nice to see someone else where they shouldn't be."

"So, do you have any idea what's going on?"

"No idea. I do know, though, that the Pillar of Autumn crashed onto Halo Instillation-04 in 2552, almost five years ago. We must have both encountered temporal rifts somewhere along our day-to-day."

"Well, I don't know what half of that meant, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the simple version is 'we time-warped'."

"Basically. At least that's my theory."

"So I guess we roll with it until we can get back?"

"Guess so. Besides," 1337 could hear her smirk, "didn't you ever wonder what it would be like to be the big guy?"

"Eh," he shrugged, "not frequently, or recently. Look, I think we're near the end here."

He exited, arriving in a dark room. Ahead and to the left was a busted door sitting crooked off its track. "Break that door in."

"What? Why?"

"The ship's going down anyway, right?"

"Oh yeah."

The stand-in Master Chief rammed the door, bending it in surprisingly easily. "Freeze!" He complied, heeding Kalmiya's order. She whispered, "Watch your motion tracker; there's a Grunt right around this corner."

"Gotcha." 1337 tiptoed to the corner and, sure enough, a Grunt stood with its back to him, scratching its ass. "Ugly fucker, isn't he?"

"Take him down quietly; I'm getting a read on some more guys in the next room." One exaggerated step after another, the Spartan stalked his way to the intruder.

/-/

Grunty the Grunt, meanwhile, couldn't help but notice a large shadow extend in front of him. For a moment he thought it might have been his, but upon further inspection it was far too large. He almost had it identified when two large, human hands gripped the sides of his skull, immediately before twisting it on its vertebrae 180 degrees with a sharp, quiet crack. The last thing poor Grunty saw before the light left his eyes was a giant robot willing him to pass out. So he did.

/-/

"Jesus Christ, man!" Kalmiya half-yelled.

"You said take him down quietly."

"I meant, like, punch him in the back or something! I wasn't expecting that; you gave me a heart attack!"

"Waitaminute." He pointed at her in confusion, thus pointing at himself. "You can get those?"

She groaned. "Never mind. Just do something about this Elite that's coming up."

"What Elite?"

/-/

Smitty Wortburten, an Elite warrior, stood at his post, ensuring no humans made their way past him into the corridor. It was a simple job, though not exactly entertaining; he'd nearly passed out twice from his lack of interest, and was working on number three when something attempted to grab him from behind. A metallic forearm pressed itself across his throat, probably attempting to close it, as someone growled quiet insults and swears in human language, very likely a human. "What's going on right now?" Smitty asked.

"…A sleeper hold?" the man behind him answered.

"A sleeper hold? Hm, well you're doing it wrong."

"Enlighten me."

"Well you need better leverage than that, for starters. Bringing me to my knees should do it." He felt a kick to the back of one of his knees, causing the joint to buckle. "Yeah, like that. Then, you need to press my windpipe into the crook of your elbow; that's how you block off my oxygen intake." A firm hand pushed his head to the left as the man's grip with his elbow tightened. "Now you're getting it," he choked out.

"So why aren't you unconscious yet, then?"

"It takes a minute for… the oxygen to my… brain to…"

/-/

"That was… awkward."

"Drag him out of sight. We don't want his friends to notice him like this."

"'Drag him?' What, do you think we're starring in Metal Gear V? Splinter Cell? There's no 'pick up body' function in this game, Kelly."

"Shh!"

"Don't you 'shh' me -!"

"Quiet!" She paused while he complied. "You hear that?"

"…Lifeboats popping out into the black abyss of space?"

"Exactly. Come on, we're not far."

/-an indeterminate amount of time later-/

Private Jenkins dove into the airlock as something small, blue, and burning exploded behind him. He swore, covering his head to protect himself from another blast. A large hand grabbed him by the collar, chucking him the rest of the way into the lifeboat. "Get a move on, dumbass!" the hand's owner, the rumored Spartan they had aboard, said. "Or do you feel like dying in a fireball of molten steel and rocket fuel?" The marine shook his head, strapping himself in. "Good man. Pilot, get us the hell outta here!"

"Smartest idea I've heard all day, sir!" The pilot lowered her visor as the pod rocketed away from the frigate Pillar of Autumn. "We're away, headed for minimum safe distance."

"Minimum?" The Spartan asked, approaching the driver's seat. "Why not maximum? Why would we want to be so close?"

"Dramatic effect, sir. Dramatic effect."

"…You. Me. Fuck. If we live."

"You promise?"

Jenkins spoke up finally once he was calm. "Who are you, sir?"

The Spartan turned around, addressing not only Jenkins, but the entire lifeboat of marines. "I'll tell you who I'm not: I am not the Master Chief, Spartan-One-One-Seven." Many soldiers scratched their heads, as they had been informed that he was, in fact, the Master Chief. The Spartan continued, "I am what makes Hunters cry in their every waking nightmare; the man that sends giant evil Covenant monkey soldiers into slipspace with no exit. I grasp the burning sun in my hand and endure the heat, which I then use to bake a hell of a blueberry pie. When you hear of Spartan-Thirteen-Thirty-Seven in the mess hall, you hear of me: the single most hyped-up Spartan in the project, who will stop at nothing to ensure that every trace of the Covenant is fucked firmly in the ass and sent to hell!"

A roar of applause rebounded through the lifeboat at the motivating and informative speech. "Wow, sir!" Jenkins said after almost a minute. "That was outstanding! I'll be sure to remember all that you said and remind everyone that mistakes you for the Chief of who you are."

1337 grinned under his helmet. "That's what I like to hear! Finally, some recognition!"

"Enjoy it while it lasts," Kalmiya said. "If you recall, only the Master Chief survived the crash landing Lifeboat 03 made on the ring."

"…Er, Kelly… Which lifeboat are we in right now…?"

/-/

"…1337, can you hear me?"

"Ugh…"

"Oh good. If you'd died, I'd be a sitting duck for the Covenant. Can you move?"

"Yeah, I can -" he winced. "I can move." He looked around the remains of the lifeboat, strewn with corpses from the marines that once occupied it. Jenkins's head rested comfortably in 1337's lap, having made its way there clear from the other end of the pod. "…Motherfucker…"