Red vs Blue Remnant
Cooee! Can Ya Come!
The military gave like an older brother. The Warthog promised arrived two weeks late, a condition optimistically described as terminally ill and probably cost less than the packaging. It was held together by faith and tetanus but someone was giving it a good ol spit shine.
Actually he was napping in the shade beneath the carriage and while it had taken many years to perfect a snore that sounded like a faint metallic buffing the owner felt they werent spent in vain. Unfortunately in recent weeks his superior had picked up on his unsung talent and the radio beating out the Top of the Pops rather than the military chatter it was supposed to meant he never heard him coming.
"Grif!"
Metal boomed on metal as heavy armoured boots crashed down on the bonnet of the Warthog. He was rewarded with the sound of bone on metal as Grif squawked and jerked upright. He lay dazed, wondering if he could fake unconsciousness but the metal greaves kicked at his belly and kept kicking until he rolled out from under the chassis.
The face that appeared, aside from being greasy and embossed with Property of UNSC, was chubby, covered in licks of messy black hair with dark Islander features. He had been conscripted to the Red Army more than five years prior and fought like a lion to get out ever since... Well not quite lion, like a housecat certainly. You may have originally bought it for company and to keep the mice down but it had done as little as possible in the worst possible way for so long you no longer expected anything except to turn up at meal times and take up the best place on the couch.
However what Grif thought of as an easy road to a dishonourable discharge hit a roadblock when Freelancer Command discovered an unexpected niche- efficiency officer, aka the Red Army's booby prize. CO's not pulling their weight soon discovered what hard work really meant after an unexpected transferral doubled the time, effort, sanitation and provisions for even the smallest of tasks and picked up their act in a hurry.
Grif lived the easy life for almost a year, and then he met Sarge.
Sarge.
They said his name was lost in the bureaucratic paper wastelands of Command so long ago even he'd forgotten it and the concussions of an Orbital Drop Soldier hadn't helped. Sarge was far too stubborn to let mere laziness, incompetence and body odour that caused lichen migrate to less hostile environments stand in the way of a flawless training record.
"Nancypants!" Sarge bawled. "When I order you to wash the jeep I expect the sweet serenade of rubbing and polishing, not some karaoke idol!
"I think I'm going to need something stronger," Grif whined, brushing off a paunch that while fuller than most was nowhere near the lumbering obesity he had been training for his entire pre-military career. Sarge would've been unhappy to know that his relentless drilling was saving the orange soldier from a eulogy at thirty two.
He groped behind his head and pulled out a toothbrush. He also broke loose a chunk of mud bigger than his head. "Like maybe a scrubbing brush. Or a shovel. Or a tin of nitro-glycerine. And I want to requisition a new toothbrush. When you asked me to present it on parade this morning I hadn't realised you had this kind of chore in mind, but I'm not surprised."
"What!" Grif stood up as a jaw hard and square as an anvil stuck out. It and the bristling white scalp barely came to his chest but since Sarge's sense of personal space was on par with his sense of volume control it was still a reason to recoil and wipe his face. Where was his helmet when he needed it? "You know we're on a strict supply rationing scumbag! That toothbrush will last you another three months!"
The soldier looked at his toothbrush and shrugged. Hygiene wasnt his top priority but he could always wash it in the toilet and swap it with Simmons. Thatd teach him to pawn off menial duties. He slipped the toothbrush into the back of his pants for good measure.
"Why hasnt Donut come back yet, and why isn't Simmons here? Why can't he do this? Or Lopez. Why do we even have a robot!"
Sarge pumped his shotgun in answer. "They are on assignments vital to managing the Blue menace-"
"What, Caboose? He's practically doing the job for us! I heard him scream like, half an hour ago!"
"And I still wouldn't send you on assignment! I wouldn't trust a turdbucket like you to catch a fart in a bag! What makes you think I'd delegate to you missions so essential to our victory!"
"Hmmm! Hmm-hmm!" A cheery humming drifted through one of the Hive's many forums. The Hive was a massive military facility located three kilometres beneath the surface of the Sydney and in the aftermath of the Covenant War no one expected a city more famous for it's drag queens and budgie smugglers to turn into the UNSC's military hub.
Several figures crowded around the table on the central dais but the crooning came from the upper gallery.
A young man sat cross legged, looking longingly at the screen imbedded in the panel. More commonly used to display terrain or military manoeuvres, it flickered with infomercials peddling jewel encrusted Faberge eggs. His pale blonde hair which had taken him two intensive hours in front of a mirror to look au naturale flipped as he bobbed along to the tune inside his head.
"You can't hurry love! Noooo, youll just have to wait! Love dont come easy, its just a matter of give and ta- Oh man! Dropped a stitch! He sighed and held up the darned heels of a pair of socks. He called down to the lower levels, Sir! Admiral Mauldin, I can have these back to you after lunch!
He touched his ear, the apparent source of the distraction. He nodded and pushed the knitting basket under the seat out of sight and left, still whistling as he worked.
In the startling green of Valhalla a patch of brown crouching in some bushes stood out. Although it was an imperative function for the Red's maintenance droid to fix and mend, Lopez lurked outside the wrecked Pelican with the reluctance of an ex-boyfriend contemplating the fifty meters his restraining order required.
The last he had seen Sheila was as she had launched into the clear blue skies of Blood Gulch. To find they had been transferred here was miraculous and intimidating, and although that was three months ago he still hadn't reintroduced himself.
He hesitated because there was something else too. Humans called it a crush, probably because she could crush his metaphorical heart like a tincan. Of course she could literally crush his heart too, and the rest of him. Not to mention the chin mounted rotary cannon and Anvil-II payload. Hell hath no fury like a thirtyfive ton woman scorned.
Since flowers and chocolates were in limited supply he decided to sweeten his chances the only way he knew how.
All Sheila's external sensors had been damaged in the crash so while Caboose was out scavenging Blue Base Lopez smuggled what he could from Sarge's careful catalogue of spare parts to restore her to her full and handsome glory. Then he could reveal himself, sweep her off her propulsion thrusters and... and...
From the bushes as Lopez cautiously raised his head to hear her muffled status reports, strange light splashed the cockpit window.
Several screens flickered as the internal circuit viewed Valhalla. Its viewer took pride in all assignments being performed with perfection and enthusiasm but after two months he slouched in his chair with nothing better to do than stare at the Blue Base. Sometimes he sighed wistfully as he remembered Blood Gulch, or the very specific part centred on the Blue Base medical bay.
Private First Class Dick Simmons spun in his chair and ran his hands through his loose cropped auburn brown hair.
They had been commended!
They had gotten medals!
They had been interviewed by that delicious little fox from PCS news!
They had been dumped back into the same rut they faced in Blood Gulch, seeing the same blunt faces, the same disturbingly animate food, the same stupid war that had ended for everyone except Sarge, and if the media was right never existed in the first place...
He slapped his cheek to massage feeling back into it and was relieved when his right foot didn't spasm. He would never ever question Sarge's mechanical expertise but having a liscenced professional who's idea of surgical precision wasn't, "I said on three, not after three. Stop such a whinerbaby, it was a rubber mallet!" had its appeal.
The staff of Saint Brittany Hospital had done their best.
Like most home handymen, Sarge had constructed Simmons 2.0 out of any ol' stuff lying around. Vacuum nozzles, toaster coils and something that went sploooort! when an intern poked it. Sarge had done such a good job of keeping his second in command running that if anything was removed he went into cardiac arrest, and this included the dancing cola can that didn't appear to have any function except bouncing in time if someone clapped their hands.
Seeing as there was nothing they could do on the inside they settled for Pimp My Cyborg. The metal skull cap was replaced so his auburn brown hair could grow out and hid ears like lettuce leaves. They swapped the optic lens once swiped from Donut's camera for an artificial eye, the iris slightly redder than his natural brown, adapted to various lights and speeds. The slow motion replays were especially welcome when the women's tennis was on television.
Most importantly to him was the synthetic skin overlaying the strange hydraulics, wires and pistons that was his right arm. So what if the subcutaneous wires lit him up like spiderwebs on acid...
It was a shame that when he was finally human enough to get a date they had been sentenced to another limbo.
He could still hear Sarge's rambling the day they were discharged from hospital, before the open ears of the press and upper command.
"Line up men! It is our duty- nay, our privilege to join into the UNSC in our never ending battle against our eternal enemy! We regret that Grif only has one life to lie down in the name of the Red Army, but we give it gladly! Even if his teeth were shattered by a hail of bullets, or eyes boiled in his skull by super heated plasma, or torn limb from limb by raging Mongeeses, or eaten alive by carnivorous amazonian ants, or squashed by falling plumbing, or drowned in his own urine, or-"
The speech carried on for several minutes but Simmons saw the horror sink into their stoic faces. As Sarge warbled the Star Spangled Banner with brimming tears, one CO scrawled furiously over the official dispatch papers using another's back as a table. "Hurry, hurry! He's almost finished the second verse!"
"These orders are a decoy to distract the enemy, your official directive is on the back. We are keeping you in reserve as our trump card to, er, um, er, unleash! Yes, unleash a strategic time. We're counting on you!"
The maroon soldier sighed again.
Then there was that other radio signal, out there bouncing between decaying satellites like a fly on a windowpane. He'd been tracking it for weeks as a hobby but it was like chasing stink. Since he worked in close quarters with Grif he was well qualified.
The terminal blipped and he looked up from his fantasies of Blood Gulch Blue Base, yellow armour and a bottle of baby oil in surprise. It was a channel that he absently programmed into the computer but completely forgotten about and in the current political turmoil was better off forgotten. It was probably some desperate journalist grasping at straws. It wasnt like they were going to get a reply.
He regarded it curiously, his finger hovering over the button before idly accessing audio.
The blast of static and ricocheting bullets toppled him from his chair. "Yaah!"
"Cooee! This is Foxtrot Five-Four, sending out a distress signa- Bugger! Bugger! Damn! Bloody hell! Bugger!- What? D'ya reckon? This ain't no bloody bludge so shut y'gob!-" Another explosion tore from the speakers filling the room with crumbling mortar and the splintering of wood.
"He's tracking me!" The voice panted in a stage whisper. "Like a fucking animal!"
The shrill chorus of civilian screams joined the interference, almost drowning out the unmistakable report of a sniper rifle and the ragged gasp of pain.
On the other side of Valhalla a silhouette crouched in the dark. At his feet was the sprawled figure of the empty Spartan Mk 6 armour, and at his fingers was a box with a cycloptic light winking on and off. Normally the eerie blue light of the damaged Pelican discouraged Caboose but today he was moved by a higher power.
"There," he breathed, voice husky with excitement. "Now we can all be together again."
He looked to his audience for instruction. His audience consisted of the digital features of a Billy Idol fan who'd settled down to become a housewife, the box, the empty black suit of armour and an effigy made out the mop, slop bucket and dozens of toilet paper rolls scrawled in cyan textas.
"Are you ready Church?" Caboose asked the blinking box, grinning like an overmedicated mental patient. It worried Sheila and she wondered if it spoke back to him. It went with him everywhere like a little pet rock, cooing and petting it. It was sad watching him press Twinkies into the grill. One day they had both arrived covered in soapsuds.
And he still wouldnt accept it was empty.
"Almost ready Church! I have all your favourite things ready for your Welcome Back party! I even sent invitations to the Reds and I bet they'll bring presents! I told them you wanted Chocolate Nutter Butter Icecream, and those little cakes with the cream in the middle and the Green Power Ranger with the screaming jet blaster so you can play with me!" He paused in his excited shuffling between consoles sulkily, "If Tucker wants to play he has to be the Pink Power Ranger cos Im the Blue one! How much more, Sheila?"
He went over to a keyboard. He'd balanced a plate with cookies and orange juice, arranging them into a smiley face while singing It's a Small World After All in croaky dah's and dee's. Because it was Caboose he only got as far as the first seven notes before repeating it.
"Solar absorption has reached ninety seven percent capacity with a zero point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero four five percent chance of success. Caboose, you have a better chance of attending Harvard than you do reviving an AI you think is in this storage unit. It's..." she started but then trailed off as he turned baby blue eyes and a thousand watt smile towards her.
If brain power were heat, the blue couldn't compete with a birthday candle, but if it were hope he burned with the brilliance of suns. As an AI that dealt with facts and certainties it wasnt something she understood but what was the light of a human heart without hope?
He arrived back in Valhalla by Pelican, several attempts and several seizures later he restored her backup systems. In the dim interior of her cockpit with the ghostly pink light her avatar floating over his upturned face, he clutched the storage unit preciously to his chest."I want you to bring Church back!"
Puzzled but recognising an AI storage unit immediately, she replied, "An electric potential greater than seventy five megavolts is required to restore an AI to full function. My backup generators are at insufficient levels but if alternative energy means are available I do have the capacity for single surge output."
It was enough. His anxious face smoothed out and spent a month setting up the solar panels and batteries, an exercise in how much shock therapy a test subject could withstand. A further month was spent jiggling impatiently while her systems charged and idle hands were nothing compared to an idle Caboose.
As she returned to the present she watched Caboose dig into a knapsack for the alligator clips he had traded Grif for some Doritos. The rats had gnawed and frayed several sections through the middle and Sheila had seen boomerangs that bent less than the prongs of the socket.
He whistled, happily oblivious as he pulled aside a panel in Sheilas consol. His head cocked at the tangle of wires but standing out amongst them were the red, blue, green, yellow and brown.
"Caboose, are you alright? Remember, it's the red wire, and the brown wire to earth it."
"Of course I remember Sheila! You told me lots of times! Side effects of electrocution include cardiac arrest, short term memory loss, hair loss, loss of consciousness, Restless Leg Syndrome, spontaneous combustion, amnesia, tingling, uncontrollable screaming, vomiting, short term memory loss, headaches, erectile dysfunction, seizures, Tony Danzaphobia, suicidal tendencies, short term memory loss, irritability, anal leakage, sleepwalking, nymphomania, egomania, kleptomania, morbid fear of facial hair, short term memory loss-" He sucked in a noisy breath, "And short term memory loss. Yay! Blue wire!"
"Caboose!" Sheila snapped, her avatar blowing spiny bangs out of her face in exasperation. "Red. Wire."
"Re-ed?" he whined but pushed aside the other wires and snapped the clip where he had exposed some of the copper.
Just as she breathed a sigh of relief, he touched it to his tongue.
The world exploded! An electric blue arc propelled Caboose across the room trailing smoke and sparks before hitting the far wall. Alarms shrieked! Sheilas monitors died hissing and spitting! Pop! Pop! Pop! Fluorescent tubes shattered showering glass and hot white embers! On the far side of the room, after a brief moment hanging in the indentation, Caboose sagged to the floor.
Finally the alarms shutdown and Sheila faded into view, dazed even for a computer program.
"Caboose!" She darted to a monitor closer to his prone form, her binary flashing erratically. Although Sheila had never personally owned hands there were the phantom memories of her imprinted mind, the mind she had been cloned from. She wanted very much to crouch at his side and pat his hand. "Why would you do a thing like that!" she scolded in the way of all mothers when their slightly retarded child has had a near miss.
"Tucker taught me that was the way to check batteries," he groaned, shooting cross eyed glares at the several toilet paper Tuckers orbiting his vision. He stood up, took two wobbly steps and fell forward again.
Sheila sighed and divided her memory between running CPU diagnostics and an EEG. The surge protectors had saved her from the worst of the damage but they had lost most of the stored electricity. Cabooses brainwaves were normal, or at least normal for Caboose which was somewhere between a cucumber and a hamster with shaken brain syndrome.
On the third attempt, as he pulled himself onto the consol up another spark earthed itself. Dials, counters and buttons sprang alive and the scream of radio feedback filled the cabin.
Its that bluh-bloody pom Whuh-Wyoming! Luh-hower than a snakes arsehole! Caboose squealed and dove for the table just as bullet fire erupted over the speakers. Several times the owner tried to speak but couldnt get past their own harsh panting. The live wires snaking and rustling over the floor splashed the walls with ominous blue light.
Bottles burst in the background just as Caboose knocked aside his juice, ducking out of sight and hiding his eyes.
Whuh-why didn't I juh-oin the office aerobics club? Why-eeeee! the voice wailed, again engulfed by hissing and crackling.
Several systems away in a dingy hotel room, a television flickered over a man sitting in a creaking, lopsided swivel chair with his feet up. His discipline honed body, scarred and scorched, shook as he stared past the television with ferocious intensity. His lip curled and teeth bared like a mistreated dog watching someone take a bone that was gnawed and yellowing but nevertheless his.
As cameras flashed and journalists yowled like cats on heat, Agent Washington closed his eyes and rested his head in his hand.
Life had started out so promising. Well off parents, boarding school education, three time school boxing champion... How had he ended up like this? Sitting in a room worth less than his belt buckle, reading graffiti a nine year old could correct and a mind like a jigsaw puzzle in a nursing home. So many pieces were missing and of those that werent, at least half belonged to a different box.
His fingers brushed the mementos of his own personal war, a starburst of pale burn tissue splashed his temple, three claw like scars raking his cheek and his hair... Though only in his early thirties, his once dark brown hair, shorn along the sides with loose crown turned the colour of cocoa powder and was fading fast. It was one of the oddities of the Freelancer program. Wyoming was white as an orthodontists teeth before his first year and even Tex's ginger red was ribboned with grey.
But in a world two years after the end of the Covenant War where whole squads had returned with fewer innards than a Greek butcher, Wash's dead eyes and hateful expression did not stand out.
Director! Doctor Leonard Church! What do you have to say to the Chairmans allegations?
The pencil in bunched white knuckles snapped.
Without opening his eyes he could see the farce imprinted against his lids. He would carry himself down the steps of Melbournes old courthouse, past hallowed stone facades and pigeon stained statues, the thin lipped smile of a man who had pissed in the fountain of truth for years while watching everyone else sniff and gargle happily. You were fine before you knew what I was doing; do you really want to keep digging now that you have the results you wanted?
And the media loved him.
They didnt see the man who had given command after reprehensible command at an arms length. A man who ordered death or whisky in the same mellow southern tones and when you dared to question the morality, hed puff in bellow of staged fury, I sold my soul for the greater good, how dare you judge me!
He wilted or glittered in their lamplight as needed, just another corroding cog in the war machine that had worn out its purpose. His only use was as a UNSC scapegoat. Australians were morons and a misplaced support that saw their public rallying around him. Oh the poor lil battler! Its just like em! Them big basdurds always sellin out the lil bloke like spongecake! Thats defamation that is! The basdurds! No proof! No proof at awl!
NO PROOF! Washingtons inner voice roared. His hand hovered over his abdomen which burned in sympathy. Hed had so many near death experiences he needed a coupon. Perhaps when his hole was punched for the tenth time he got club merchandise. I Got Infected By an Aggressively Insane AI and All I Got Was This Combat Stress Disorder (And a Lousy T-Shirt).
Washingtons blood pressure bounced off the stratosphere as the mob surrounding the courthouse fell into an expectant silence.
He appeared from behind the Roman columns of Sydneys High Court, fenced from the crowds by lawyers and bodyguards but he towered over them. In his youth he would have been tall and lanky but middle age had filled him out and the twenty years after that had overflowed into a solid paunch.
Wash remembered him as tense and volatile, flying down hallways, slamming doors and hurling bottles but the events of the last few months had aged him terribly. The wrinkles puckered around his eyes, his buzzcut hair and neatly trimmed beard was salted more peppered but most noticeable of all was shoulders, hunched and defensive. The man who spent his life on the offensive felt betrayed when the world had him cornered.
But as a camera zoomed unkindly across in on his face Wash thought he was more dangerous than ever. Blue eyes as hard as diamond chip swept across his audience, gauged it- and sagged. His face took on a glassy cast, pinched with stress and smiled weakly for his audience.
Doctor Church! Doctor Church! What do you have to say about the new charges of evidence tampering, shouted one of the international reporters, thrusting a padded microphone as close as he dared.
Sah, I have been under house arrest since charged with my original, he paused for an amused coughed, Charges were laid. I have done nothing of the sort. I suspect you are referring to the hearsay of supposed evidence provided by an uncertain source. When Standoff Command of planet Xeno IV was overrun, without provocation and entirely unnecessary I might add, a soldier spotted another in the heat of battle.
This soldier stood out because he wore obsolete Mk 5 armour and was supposedly carrying an AI storage unit. As our reliable witness trailed this peculiar soldier and drew close enough to hear his curious mumblings of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Our reliable witness escorted the soldier to a tent owned by Christian Lurves, Chairman of the Oversight Committee. A man who has long wanted to sweep me under his greasy, bureaucratic wing and to whom the reliable witness answers. Is it true? We dont know because the AI storage unit was not admitted into evidence.
It is conjecture that there was an AI storage unit, and that there was an AI in that storage unit. It is conjecture that it was one Project Freelancers Artificial Intelligence or that anything it had to say would have any bearing on these charges. I think they have no proof and deah Mister Chairman is grasping at straws. Lastly, I prefer chicken with Dijon mustard to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but who can account for the tastes of figments of the imagination?
He smiled benevolently at his crowd, taking strength from pencils scribbling and mumbling into personal recorders. He nodded good day and climbed the rest of the steps to the entrance of Melbournes High Court. Several tried to break the police barriers but were thrown back by burly policemen.
No proof! Doctor Leonard Church called almost cheerfully over his shoulders.
Wash snarled, snatched an end of snapped pencil and stabbed it violently into the cheap plywood. The bastard was lying through his teeth! Here he sat in a run down dump, a fugitive while that fucking bastard was hailed by a nation of convicts as world weary hero.
In the television's glow he bowed his head in memory of a memory. The poor, desperate and broken caricature, Epsilon who had been human enough to feel pain.
It was then karma decided to throw him a bone.
The shrill beeping of a distress signal took Wash by such surprise that he dived, rolled across the floor and came up armed before his forebrain intervened. As the pistol cocked loudly against the white noise he came to his senses and snorted sheepishly, and nudged the bathroom door open where his Spartan armour was stacked inside the shower stall.
As he retrieved the helmet a tiny red bulb blinked at him and he frowned slightly. It was a distress signal. It was broadcasted across the Freelancer band but it was not from Command. Of course it wasnt but- The bulb stuttered for a second, and his heart leapt anxiously after it flickered again and he snapped it on before he could lose the signal.
Electrical feedback rasped eerily off the cheap tiles before a voice croaked desperately into it. It had run and run until their own breathing had raked their throat raw and knew that to stop was to die.
He-hes after me! And he wont stop! He wants suh-omething. Bigger than Freelancer! Bigger than Alpha! Here they broke into a deranged giggle. Fuck yeah!- He wants a Covenant Army! Epsilon was lost on purpose to get the Direc- The snow hissed and something sizzled the electronics.
Washs eyes bulged and yanked the helmet over his head, punching tines as long as his thumb into the neural implant at the nape of his neck.
This is Agent Foxtrot Four! Repeat last message!
The silence punched through the static when finally the person on the other end began its shaky breathing again. Washington?
Indiana?
They disappeared as snow sleeted across the COM. Someone was trying to block the transmission...
The skies swarmed with abandoned military satellites. Xeno III was the closest out of system colony to Reach before the final days of the Covenant War but even the marshalling stations that scattered the planet had been evacuated once Freelancer had been shutdown. It had been scoured head to tail and all that was left was Outpost 17-B, the proverbial cockroaches that survived the mushroom cloud.
Amongst the satellites a radio signal ceased its hunting and froze. It heard the message, repeated it, cleaned it and filtered it. It replayed the final words over again.
Damn! I know hes got us cornered! I aint dying like a bloody rat in a trap... You know what, fuck you! Do you have a better plan? Oh. Perfect. Simple yet suicidal, how do you come up with these ideas, Tex? Fu-argh! The voice severed violently. The message rewound-wheedle, wheedle, wheedle!- and replayed. Perfect. Simple yet suicidal, how do you come up with these ideas Tex? Wheedle, wheedle, wheedle! These ideas, Tex! Wheedle, wheedle! Tex! Wheedle, wheedle! Tex! TexTexTexTexTex..."
The signal, if thats what it was, paused and like an arrow aimed for Valhalla.
Oh wow! After a million years I've finally gotten around to posting this and I'm suddenly a stunned mullet!
I suppose I should say this is the first serious thing I've written in years, but Red vs Blue does that to you. Remnant is my second attempt at Red vs Blue fanfiction, the first one hit bedrock and accelerating. This one didn't actually do any better in the beginning, characters didn't hash, my style which is a phailing attempt at Terry Pratchett's hilarious style didn't click and no plot, and then just before Recreation started I had my Eureka moment and things took off. In the meantime at least 3000 more words were written and discarded for pacing reasons.
Let this be two contradicting lessons, first don't be afraid to abandon an unworkable project even if you've put work into it. Second, keep plugging away at something until you have a plot you can see through to the end.
And then I had the idea to start a fanfiction archive, and that derailed me even more. But we're here, you're here, RvB Society is here so no worries!
Infinite thanks now go to a couple of blokes. The first is Concealed Eminence, an legendary beta who eggs me on with his constant enthusiasm and Empty Gold Eyes who went to amazing lengths and detail for the Remnant Poster you can look at in my profile. If you're ever looking for Spartan Armour commission artist, she's the one to go to!
Please, please join me at RvBfics(dot)com, a Red vs Blue fanfiction archive just for you! Another nifty place to go to is right here, the Red vs Blue Review Crew Forums. A legend little community that supports RvB writers. Drop in, you wont regret it.
I close by saying the usual, Constructive Crit, opinion, bias, bitching- all appreciated. Are they In Character? How's the flow? Do the scenes changes make sense? Ta mates! Catchysup!
This chapter has been updated 10/6/2010 since FFnet was a bastard and took away my decorative scene breaks. This AN has been slightly updated but mostly original! Thankyou everyone for your support!