Oh god, I feel so pressured now. This is the first story anyone's ever told me was REALLY good. I don't wanna mess up! D: I always have the same problem; I make a pretty good starting chapter, then every chapter afterward kinda sucks or isn't as great! DX Don't hurt me if it isn't what you were expecting! Also, please keep in mind, this is in Chief's POV, if the POV changes I do apologize. It is purely accidental. This being the case, I try to avoid scenes where he is not there (i.e. on the train with Zero on the roof with the two Hyperion soldiers)because he didn't see them.

The other Vault Hunters followed me in behind the robot. The little hut was completely frozen on the inside. It looked to be made of ice blocks, stacked up to make walls. There were a few doors, Maya opened the one to our right and a few Clap Trap units fell out. When they didn't start chattering non-stop like the current active one, we confirmed them to be offline. They were actually missing parts, as if they had been scavenged. Possibly by the unit leading us about to this 'Sanctuary'.

"Sorry about the mess, Jack's been real busy. Everything and everyone he kills or destroys, he dumps here! If I sound pleased about this, it's only because this is my default tone of voice. I'm actually quite depressed!" the yellow bot dragged a body to a dumpster before trying to toss it in but being unsuccessful.

"How are you the only Clap trap unit left?" Gaige asked while helping him.

"I'm only still active because the AI lady, Angel, keeps me active." he replied while wiping his claws off on a dead guys shirt.

"Is there anything we should be on our guard for around here? You have a security lock on your door, so there must be something you're on your toes, er, wheel about?" Maya observed the rest of the building, eying a hole in the ceiling.

"Well, we should be safe in here while you all get prepared. Gotta keep extensive security, because those Bullymongs are ferocious! None more so than the Bullymong named KnuckleDragger! He's been known to terrorize new comers. Be careful around him, he could tear your eye right from your skull! Oh, I mean eyes, I keep forgetting you humans have two eyes!" the little bot tossed a Psychos mask into the fire to try and keep it warm in the area.

A loud growling roar was heard as a giant, four armed ape came dropping in. Using the pipe from the fire pit, it swung around before jumping down to the floor and grabbing Clap Trap.

"MONKEY! DIEDIEDIE!" Krieg yelled while tackling the beast.

The Psycho began wailing at the beast after it threw him, punching it with as much strength as he could. Assisting the bandit, I jumped on the Bullymongs back and pinned it down with all my weight. It struggled to get up as Krieg pulled out his Buzz Axe and dug the spinning saw into the creatures skull. It screamed as pieces of it's skull and brain matter flew from the wound. The saw spinning caused it to be tore from its crevice. Blood splattered across my visor as it finally stopped struggling and let go of the little robot.

"Wow! That was great! You guys are such badasses! Now that KnucleDragger is dead, this place is 3% safer!" the bot cheered as he jumped up and down.

"How safe was it before we killed him?" I wiped the blood off my visor and climbed off the beast.

"Hmm, lets see, carry the two, divide the decimal. About 367% unsafe, now 364% safe!" he admitted while opening the door for us to exit.

"That seems rather impossible, however, I won't judge your calculations until I observe the planets inhabitants myself." I checked my guns as we trudged through the snow.

"Well, you said you were meant to bring this universe to peace and happiness. Best place to start is on Pandora." Maya muttered while sliding down a snow bank.

There were few enemies between Clap Traps little cove and this small town called Liar's Berg. Once there, we encountered a few Marauders who seemed to have scared off the townsfolk. "STRIP THE FLESH! SALT THE WOUNDS!" Krieg threw his Buzz Axe at one Marauder who was sitting on a block of ice.

Landing on the now dead bandit, he ripped the Axe from the corpse and charged another. I unholstered my sniper and Zero stared at it, an exclamation mark on his visor as he examined the weapon. Lining the sight up, I pulled the trigger. The bandit fell to the ground, a clean shot. He examined his own sniper and repeated my action. Though, his targets head exploded, leaving gray matter and skull chunks everywhere. He made a frowny emoticon. "Your weapon is good. A clean and effective murder. Better than my gun." his shoulders slumped.

"Perhaps, if I should need to call my ship for anything, I will request a second sniper." my focus went unbroken during the conversation.

Maya lift one bandit in the air with her Siren power, but it did nothing else. Aiming down the sight, I pulled the trigger, and the last of the enemies were dead.

"HEY! Hammerlock! You can come on out! It's just me and my minions! Me! Clap Trap! You're old buddy!" Clap Trap ran to the gate and jumped up and down.

"Oh dear god, I must have been terribly cruel to puppies in another life. Yes Clap Trap, I hear you. Though I wish I couldn't." a man with a prosthetic right arm and leg came jogging out to the gate.

"We need your help Hammerlock! We need to find my boat so we may sail to Sanctuary!" his voice was beginning to annoy the others.

"Your boat hm? Well I regretfully inform you that your boat has been taken by Captain Flynts group of ruffians." the Hunter began typing something into a key pad next to the gate.

"Aw lug nuts! Captain Flynt?! I hate that guy! He tortures me even though we made a gentlemens agreement! I give him whatever I salvage from the dead bodies, and he agrees not to set me on fire or beat the crap out of me! He does it anyway!" I was ignoring the little, metal contraption as I examined what the man opposite us was doing.

"Ah fecal matter! The gate is frozen shut!" he grumbled while slamming his fist on the box.

"Here! Let me help!" Clap Trap grabbed the wires of the gate and was instantly electrocuted, the gate then swung open.

"Probably should have warned you about that. Ah well, at least he stopped talking." Hammerlock shrugged.

"HAHA! I AM ALIIIIIIIVVVVVVVEEEEE! That was amazing! Can I do it again?!" it instantly jumped up.

"Or not." the hunter sighed while walking over to to some board with a box on it.

"We should get the power running so I may get the mission board up and...what the? Oh drat it all! The Crimson Raiders must have disabled the bounty board before they left for Sanctuary! Ah well, just talk to me if you have any questions or would like to turn in/receive a mission." he nodded before taking his seat on a block of compact snow.

I noticed we were two Hunters short, Gaige and Salvador. Looking around, I found them across the bridge to our right. They were at some machine. Traversing over to them, I found that they looked, different. "What happened to you two?" I examined their new looks.

Gaige was wearing clothes that looked the same but were different colors, red, white, purple, and blue. Her head had green eyes and a hood over it. Salvador was wearing a red shirt and black jeans. His head had some thick dreadlocks tied behind his head.

"This is the customization station, it's like plastic surgery without the pain and surgery!" she giggled while gesturing for me to try it out.

"I don't know if I'm in the system. I still have to enter my DNA into the New-U station." I really hadn't wanted to change my look.

"Oh, then we should probably do that like, soon. I mean, you don't have to be in the system to change your look, but if you don't want to then you don't have to." she remembered she hadn't uploaded her DNA either.

Krieg and the others came up to the station as well, they all tried it out and changed their look while I sat back and waited.

Maya didn't change her head, she changed her colors. She was pink and purple, she also had a unicorn on her chest. She thought I was staring at her chest and growled, "hey! What are you doing?!" she was prepared to Phase Lock me, or whatever she called her power.

"Why a unicorn?" I asked simply.

Her frown and anger turned to confusion, "what?" she was definitely confused.

"Why did you put a unicorn on your outfit?" I restated my question.

She shrugged, "I dunno, I just liked the color. I didn't know it came with the color."

"Ah." I looked at Axton as he finished his changes.

He now had a hat on his head, as well as a scar over his mouth. His suit was red and orange, his hair was bright blonde. Krieg had changed his head, it was no longer bald, he now had hair sticking up in different directions. His hair was white while his mask, bandaged arm, and pants were orange. Zero was the last to change his appearance. He was wearing some giant bug head where his helmet used to be, the colors of his suit were black and orange (A Cleansing Flame), satisfied his new look was what he wanted, he made a smiley emoticon.

"Alright, are you all ready to continue on?" I crossed my arms, becoming a bit impatient due to the unnerving silence.

"Yeah yeah! Calm down big guy! Don't you ever chill and relax?" Gaige rolled her eyes, which I barely made out as her eyes were glowing.

"No." was all I replied while pulling my BR out.

"What are you? A machine? Even DT relaxes a bit, and he is a robot!" she chuckled and wandered back towards the bridge.

I couldn't help the flinch at the word 'machine' in reference to myself. "No, I promised her I'd find out who was the machine. I promised myself that I was no longer such."

"Hey, Chief, you ok?" Axton cautiously walked over to me.

"Who's she?" Maya wondered out loud, though she wished she hadn't when my head snapped around to look at her, "I was just curious!" she muttered while raising her hands in defeat.

"Cortana. She was my AI companion. Without her, I would have never made it to where I am today. She was my friend. She was the only one I let get close to me." I gripped my gun, feeling it creak under the tension.

"Oh, so why didn't you bring her along? I mean, you came here alone, so why don't you call your friends to have her brought to you?" Maya shrugged.

"I can't." my feet carried me towards the bridge.

"Why not?" she asked while following with the others.

I stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned to them, "she's dead."

"Dead? AI's don't die!" Axton looked at me as if I killed her, ironically.

"She went rampant. Her cognitive processes began breaking down. She literally thought herself to death. She was in service for 8 years, that's longer than any AI was meant to be in service." I explained while turning back around and continuing along the bridge to the other end.

"Oh shit. Look man, I'm sorry for your loss." Axton apologized.

"Si, I give my condolences amigo." Salvador walked past me.

"Thanks, she went down fighting though. Using her rampancy against the Didact to pin him to the bridge so I could live."

"Didact?" Axton asked.

"He was one of the Forerunners. He lead their army, called the Prometheans." was all I explained.

"Wait, I thought the Forerunners recreated us?" Maya pondered this.

"Yes, but the Didact went into a rage when he believed humans were trying to take over the place the Forerunners held. The care takers of the Universe. He began reversing our evolutionary chain, making us as basic as primal beasts. Similar to the first intelligent colonies. When the Flood threatened all life in existence, he began converting the humans into Promethean Knights." my explanation silenced them for a minute.

"Wait, you said that the Prometheans were Forerunners." Axton realized.

"Yes, but when the Flood attacked, he used the Composer to convert them into a horrid, metal beast species. This species is broken into three classes: the Watcher, the Knight, and the Crawler. The Knights were the leaders, made of the Forerunner soldiers. However, they didn't have to be Forerunner to become a Promethean Knight. The Composer made all who were caught in its beam into Knights." I explained further, though I felt I would be explaining much more.

"How exactly does it turn sentient flesh into metal?" Gaige wondered.

"It decomposes your organic matter, breaking it down, while burning you to ashes. It takes the energy stored in the material of your body and combines it with hardlight energy. The hardlight energy heats itself, creating a strong, durable metal. The two energies combine and make the body, storing the bone structure encased in the metal body." I was putting the pieces together myself, based upon what I had experienced.

"How the fuck is it possible that I managed to miss that kind of action?!" Axton groaned in disappointment.

"What?" I looked at him.

"Man, I would have done anything to get a piece of that! Where can I sign up for your army? You guys have all the fun!" he smiled big while waiting.

"I agree, it sounds like a wonderful challenge." Zero pulled his blade out and ran his three fingers across the sharp, energized metal.

"Hey, do you guys have any bots? Anything mechanical?!" Gaige had her face about two inches from my visor, she had clung herself to me.

Their enthusiasm to throw themselves into danger surprised me. Why would they want to get into the action? Most wanted to get out. Then again, they've been through so much, they must have it pinned as second nature to be on the edge of life.

"You want to join the UNSC? I doubt they're looking for mercenaries. They'll have to set you up in the Spartan program, if they accept you." I announced while checking to make sure I hadn't broken my gun.

"Be big and strong like you? Alright, I can deal with that. We don't have to wear the same armor as you right?" Axton asked.

"No, you'll be a Spartan IV, not a Spartan II." my gun wasn't broken, that was a relief, if it was I'd have to contact Infinity.

"What's the difference?" Salvador questioned.

"Spartan IV's can customize their armor, unlike Spartan II's. Also, Spartan IV's have a higher success rate."

"For what?" Maya looked at me suspiciously.

"Surviving." I put simply.

"We survive on a daily basis! We'll be awesome Spartans!" Gaige stood proudly.

"I meant, surviving the procedure."

"What procedure?" they all asked simultaneously.

"The one you go through to become a Spartan. Out of the few hundred that were chosen, I believe only 1/3 of the candidates survived. The Spartan II project that is. There is a much higher success rate on survival for Spartan IV's. I believe only 1 out of every 300 dies? I think that was the outcome." I shrugged.

This chapter was mainly to get in touch with the humane side of our characters. Except for Krieg. Krieg: "LOOOOOVVVEEE YYYOOOUUUU!" (has an insane grin under his mask). Me: O.O yup, definitely not Krieg. He is definitely not humane. I think?