3: DON'T GIVE UP ON ME

February 14, 2526

Private Frank James O'Neil frequently wished he'd stayed home, and just had the patience to wait for Flint to come back on his own. In as much as he knew that that attitude really wouldn't earn him much – perhaps more than a very shaken life while he tried to follow his twin's occupation at the same time – Frank still wished he'd stayed home more often than not.

Returning from one mission usually just meant he got to go back out on yet another, and nine times out of ten, it was drop, pursue and complete the mission, hit pickup, hit the decks of the ship, grab sack time and maybe a meal, refit for the next drop, and drop. Remarkably enough, Brandon wasn't dragging. Or if he was, he wasn't showing it. Frank felt like he was showing it as baldly and blatantly as they came, and he also felt he got given torture sessions like running point just because the team commander thought it was funny. Frank did not think it was funny.

Flint was almost as unmerciful; the missing twin was always up to something, but the more missions they both attended, the more Frank wanted to go back to "normal" and get a job and live in an apartment and maybe have a girlfriend, and the more Flint seemed to disappear down into the little soldier he was pretending to be. Frank rarely got emotional responses out of his twin anymore, unless it was something pretty severe.

Frustration seemed to be the all-time favorite. Flint would do something strenuous, get annoyed at it, then go back and do something else equally as punishing. Since Frank wasn't actually doing what Flint was doing, he only felt the aftermath, and didn't actually get saddled with the results of so much exertion. Though why Flint hadn't dissolved into a heap of twitching protein chains by now from the constant influx of lactic acid in his muscles was a mystery.

He just kept right on going, like the most badass, grouchy energizer bunny from hell. Usually, Flint would spend roughly five to ten minutes feeling tired, sitting still, then he'd shrug it off and go back to running or hitting people or shooting at them. The days when Frank didn't feel like he was going to bounce off the walls, he felt like he'd been drooled out into a long string of cooked spaghetti, as he just couldn't seem to keep up with his overly energetic other half.

His superiors didn't understand… and neither did Brandon.

So it really came as no surprise that everyone thought he was faking it… all of it. Even the energetic bits. What really hurt was that somehow, Flint usually managed to make him want to run in mad little circles when his own company wanted him to sit still, and Flint would be dead beat whenever Frank needed to be on his toes the most.

Somehow, getting past the "first kill" never hit home for him, though he did have to sit with Brandon until the bigger kid got over the shakes. That, at least, had been something honed down into nonchalance by his missing twin for him.

People died. It was normal. Sometimes, people died because he made them do it. And that was normal, too. Due to all of this, everyone always thought of him and referred to him as "that weird, fucked-up piece of work", because trying to psych-eval someone like him without asking any direct questions would leave anyone scratching their heads.

And there were days when Frank didn't blame them a bit… sometimes, he scratched his own head, too!

At 0500, he was up and scrubbed and tugging into his gear and wishing for just four more minutes of rack time, but everyone else was doing the same thing. He wasn't going to get any sympathy.

"Washington!" The voice of the platoon Sergeant was unmistakable; he was the kind of nails-tough guy that didn't appear to have a life beyond the one the UNSC had given him, and some of the guys speculated that he slept with his gun whenever he wanted company. Built like a tree stump, short but thick, and covered in rolling muscles that knew no failed effort, Stacy Adam Vargas was more the type of man nobody dared to tease about his name.

Frank looked up, momentarily distracted, but all it did was earn him a pointed look from the Sergeant. "You're not Washington, son, keep your eye on the ball." He was also the only officer-type to ever call Frank 'son' that he wished wouldn't. He had a way of saying the word as if he resented the addressed.

"Yes, sir." Frank mumbled, quickly ducking his head and quickly finishing with the boot he was lacing up. To the best that he could tell, Flint had already gotten up and long since been finished readying for whatever he was about to do, and had that kind of sense of waiting that usually forebode some kind of action sequence. Hopefully there was less of the hand-to-hand this time around… it made it hard as hell to aim his rifle when his twin was throwing his arms around all over the place. Getting neural signals from two different bodies was confusing, sometimes. He had to figure out which set were his own, and then figure out how to maintain that knowledge as he went through whatever series of motions, while following those of his twin.

Flint grabbed a rifle, slung it sideways, yanked on the action bar and pinched the crap out of the side of his thumb. Frank had just dropped his freshly booted foot to the floor when he emitted a choked squeak of protest, clamping down on the sound as soon as he realized he'd made it. Frank stuck his own thumb down into that fist, and clenched it as tightly as possible, going over a mental checklist of every cuss word he knew. It was the only way he could deal with not being able to complain to the actual guilty party. What was really irksome was that more often than not, unless he was shot full of holes outright, Flint generally tended to wince, grimace, or flinch, and then forget he'd hurt himself. The rifle went somewhere, but Frank was too busy shrugging into his web gear to truly discern which of the uncomfortable digs were real and which were imagined.

"Hey, O'Neil." Someone said, suddenly, distracting him.

Frank looked up, his eyebrows met. "Huh? Who was that?" Fully five of the available people were looking at him.

Second from the right raised a hand, and waved. A chunky man named Earl Grissom, the speaker had olive skin, brown-black eyes and a twisted grin that dimpled from shrapnel scarring when he really meant it. Being as he was a Corporal, he was one of billions of other troops Frank was expected to defer to… and salute.

But he'd been in the barracks with this particular platoon for long enough that one did not necessarily salute unless one was under greeting, departing, or parade circumstances. One did not need to elbow someone else in the eye saluting inside the weapon lockers, and one was absolutely forbidden from saluting in the field. So Frank just raised his eyebrows, and offered, "Sir?"

The other four grinned. He was, to them, still one of the "FNG's", so they often found him amusing. This was usually when they did not find him psychopathically haunting, and were giving him a wide berth. "Bite yourself, kid?" Grissom asked.

"What? Oh, no, sir." Frank grimaced. Damn… someone had heard that. He ran down the list one more time, wishing Flint was somewhere in earshot to really hear it. Double whammy! First he had to go and pinch the crap out of his thumb, and then he had to do it where Frank's troop could hear him squeak for it.

"Someone goose ya, then?" The Corporal pressed. "You're a damn strange kid, O'Neil, always out of sorts, most times not even paying any damn attention to the real world or what's happening around you. Gonna say I told you so when the Covenant paste your ass."

Frank's expression rumpled, but he couldn't argue unless he wanted to really get all the way down that shit-pipe…that usually involved military disciplinary action. "Yes, sir, I guess you will."

For some reason, this answer also made them laugh. "So, got everything squared up?"

"What? No, sir, I only just got it on me." Frank protested. "It's not even buckled." Quickly he amended that, though, aware where that might go. He didn't want to get roughed up for fun, but he also didn't want to get taunted for being 'sloppy' when he was merely not finished. Still, he was not entirely without ammunition; safe ammunition, shots he would not be called out on. And even if the Corporal tried it, he'd get called down, and Frank would get away with it. "What about you, sir, need any help with anything?"

He earned a slightly puzzled look for roughly half a second, but the grin returned. "Naw, kid, I'm good. How many drops you been on, so far?"

"You have to ask, sir?" Frank issued, beginning to get worried. Grissom didn't usually talk to Frank… he'd always assumed it was better that way. "You were there for all of them."

"Wanted to know if you were keeping count, that's all."

"Way I figure, sir, if I survived it, it doesn't count." Frank answered, tugging the harness down so it fit a little better. "I'm either scarred or dead, but not both, sir."

"Hey, little Private thinks he's got it all figured out!" Grissom decided. "Listen, kid, you – " He was interrupted when the Platoon Sergeant came back through, with things of his own to say.

"Alright, boys, the ODST's are aboard and locked in tight. Corporal, can it. We got five minutes to meet the pilots in the hangar and get strapped in or we get left behind. I don't want to see a single empty seat, you hear me? We drop in eight. Move out!"

Frank shuffled out of the room with his battle rifle hugged to his equipment-laden chest like a four-year-old might have hugged a beloved stuffed toy, but it was the only way to keep ahold of the thing without getting his elbows knocked into mercilessly by the other men. Out the door and up the hall, he finally spotted Brandon, already dressed and set to go, but the other Private didn't move a single step until Frank made his position. Falling in beside his friend, the pair made for the hangar deck at a shuffling trot, the whole platoon moving at roughly the same speed.

Frank rarely knew what the op was about until he made the Pelican… briefings were for the officers, after all. He'd be told what was happening and what was expected of him a few spare seconds before it would matter. Maybe the lack of a time lag had a purpose, but Frank mainly found it annoying.

And almost as soon as his bottom hit the seat in the Pelican's rear bay, he wished once more for some extra rack time. He was tired, even if Flint was not, and even if Flint was pretending he was not. While Frank took the Pelican ride down, he could feel Flint tuck down into one of the ODST's treasured drop pods, and belt in. Men died in those things – from little more than raw impact. Flint tended to use them to make up for lost time, though, and he had yet to be bothered much by impact at all.

In fact, it was a little necessary… and Frank got the impression that anything less would not jar his twin from the naps the idiot took while riding them down.

Staring at the grilled floor plating between himself and the Marine across from him, Frank wished he had that same luxury. But if he nodded off, he'd miss his own debriefing, and he'd be next to useless once their boots hit the dirt.

Quietly in his head, Frank ran down that age-worn list of cuss words one more time.

.

February 21, 2526

Daylight stabbed through the swirling dust under the racing phantom, the knives of light winking in and out through the dark, airborne dirt. In the thing's wake, and barely behind it at all, was a pursuing Shortsword, the booming nose gun a thunderous whine dropping brass all over the Marine's heads.

Frank ducked under the awning to his left, the decorative siding on the administrative building serving well for deflecting the sprinkle of fast-moving brass casings. Several of the others got sprinkled, but the brass was moving fast enough and was hot enough off the gun that the things struck their armored backs and helmeted heads with harsh, loud, ringing pling!'s, and bounced back high into the air. One Marine got one tucked down next to his neck where his armor stopped and the collar of his field jacket began, and it burned right through the ripstop into his skin.

His squall of protest turned many a reptilian head up the street.

There wasn't much to aim at, but then the plasma-gun wielders never seemed to really aim anyway. Digging the brass out of his neck and throwing it away, the Marine ducked away, into cover, avoiding being struck even once by the random splattering of plasma shots taken in his general direction.

The overhead traffic cleared for the moment, the dust surged up the street, carried by the horrific storm-front winds until it was past the enemy forces and behind them. Frank had realized what it was doing right away, and had taken off running as hard as he could towards the enemy, ducking last-minute into an alcove in the front of a bank to hide behind a handy, freestanding news kiosk.

With buildings stretching high into the sky on all sides, it was difficult to fan out and get comprehensive teamwork. But the pinch worked both ways… the Covenant forces they encountered merely had twice as much clout to throw around. They had shielding devices and superheated gas throwers and self-depreciating high-powered rounds and explosive ion charges in a high-tech mock-up of a rocket launcher. That the ion charges had a minor ballistic arc didn't seem to matter much… those what carried them, always knew the math.

Looking back, Frank knew he was all alone where he was. Why was it, whenever he saw a significant but temporary tactical advantage, he was the only one that did? Now instead of pressing an advantage, he was only going to get himself killed. Nice.

He closed his eyes, and listened, trying to determine what kind of creature was positioned in what place without ever exposing his head for a peek. If he did that, he'd get it singed right off his shoulders, and he wasn't about to let himself die. He still hadn't found Flint yet, after all, and that had been the whole plan all along.

He hoped Brandon was there to see it when it happened… that way nobody could call him crazy when he returned home, triumphant in his own personal quest. Brandon, at least, had a fairly level, sane, normal psych-eval record! He wasn't going to spout utter nonsense for no damn good reason.

Two Elites on the right, one on the far left, standing behind a pair of Jackals. Six Grunts up front of the duo, four in front of the loner. Another Jackal in front of the duo, mingled with the Grunts. The task wasn't difficult when he knew what kind of guns the lot held – and what with all the Elites holding standard plasma rifles, the Grunts with a set of explosive-round-shooting needlers and the Jackals armed with a scaled-down version of the Elite's rifles called a pistol. Each had a distinctive sound when fired, and hearing the rounds whistling past him down the street helped immensely with distinguishing.

Opening his eyes again, Frank could hear one of the Elites snapping off orders, and without a sound in reply, there came the patter of feet on the paved street. The Covenant thought their position was good, and were therefore advancing now.

The working odds of Frank not getting seen for that stunt were abysmally small. He tried to wipe the sweat off his eyebrows before it dripped into his eyes and made his vision bleary, but he had to work his gloved fingers around the equipment built into his helmet to do so… and his gloves weren't exactly absorbent material, so all they did was smear the sweat across his slick forehead and make the problem worse.

Breathing out, Frank focused inward; the Covenant were almost on him, and there was one Grunt hooking around the backside of his kiosk. The thing would never protect him from an actual barrage of plasma fire, nor would the materials stop a Carbine round, but it was dandy visual cover, and he didn't want that to be stripped away before he was ready for it.

Flint had made groundfall. Impact was enough to shake a mountain out of its slumber, and perhaps it might have. If the resounding rumble returned after evacuating the drop pod was not mortar fire, that was. Flint hooked around behind his open pod, and crammed an armored shoulder up against it just in time to take a direct hit in the seat of the pod.

That impact jarred every bone in his body, and sent pain coursing through the braced shoulder; he circled back around the back of the pod, and stepped directly into a run. Ahead was his target; he hooked a jig to the side once, jigged back again, and jumped.

With a nimble leap, he curled his leading arm around the first target's head, and spun his whole body around behind his catch, bringing them both down and rolling over them. When he was on top, he cupped their chin in his hand and yanked, shattering their neck. Sprinting to the side, he caught a hasty, defensive swipe with a leading plasma rifle and yanked it out of the target's hand. The butt end of the weapon was jabbed into the former wielder's face, a grenade on his belt was primed, and Flint moved on.

On the left, he jerked out a frag and sent it downrange. On the right, he drew out his own weapon and emptied half the magazine in a concentrated, reflexively-aimed burst into another target. Reaching something tall, hard, and solid, he caught its edge and slung around it, in time to feel the earth shudder under his boots, and a cascade of falling debris off the barrier raining across his shoulders.

He caught a Grunt by the air-mask on its face, yanked it off, and cracked the butt of his gun into the Man-sized alien's face, shattering bones and brains. The next alien behind it died in a facial hail of bullets, and then Flint reloaded his weapon. He slipped into cover from a return barrage of bullets, plasma and mortar fire, and waited.

Frank exhaled. Looking around, he noted the trail of bodies he'd left in his quickened wake. He knew his brother's prey had been by far more spread out than his own, else the synchrony would not have worked quite as well. But it was surprising the amount of damage he could do when he borrowed his missing twin's mission perimeters for a moment or two.

He'd dropped two of the Elites, a Jackal that had been one of Flint's Grunts, and three of the Grunts. It had rattled the Covenant forces enough that they were in disarray, and now his own team was running up to reinforce him, using the chaos to close ranks and press the attack. Confused and disorderly, the Covenant turned and fled, though only one alien made it alive to the far corner of the block and around it, into more cover.

It was the last Elite.

"O'Neil!" The Sergeant's voice was distinctive; and he darted across the street into the adjacent alcove Frank had found, and stepped up to it, not quite in it but having no immediate need for the cover anyway. "O'Neil, what the hell was that?" He sounded astonished – something Frank had never known the man to be.

Flint was moving again, moving aggressively. Frank just looked up at the Sergeant like he'd seen a ghost, breathing hard from his imitation run. "Sir."

"Hold it together, kid." Vargas patted his shoulder with as much force as a hydraulic jack might use to yank dents out of ship-grade metal, but it was what it was. "One of these days you're gonna tell me how the fuck you do that shit you do, though. Let's move, one got away and I don't like that." He ducked away, and was back across the street and against the side of the same building the Elite had cornered, pacing with Grissom up the sidewalk towards said corner, guns first.

Frank whispered a silent thanks to his twin, reloaded his rifle, and stepped out of the alcove after them, careful to check all the available angles as he went.

Flint was chasing something down… something moving fast. He was also dodging harassing fire doing it, too.

So Frank felt his legs moving a little faster, more responding the presence of heavier stimulus than because Frank had told them to do so. He caught up to the Sergeant and forced himself to still, aware he was not on point and he really didn't want to be, either. Not chasing one of those seven-foot-tall monster types the Covenant used as field commanders… Elites were seriously bad news whenever he didn't have Flint to back him up on maneuvering.

To his chagrin, when Vargas pulled up short, planting a palm in Grissom's chest to make the other man stop, too, he looked back over his assembled troops and picked Frank out of them to wave up.

The following hand-signal told him to go a little farther "up" than merely the Sergeant's own position. He wanted a man on the other side of this street, on the next building up. Frank wasn't sure why, but he knew if he asked he'd only get in trouble. So, taking a deep breath, he gripped his rifle extra-tight to be sure he could keep the thing, and let himself begin to respond more to Flint's influential stimulus.

Run.

Frank was a hand's-breadth from the cover of the corner of the building he was approaching when he felt it hit. With the force of a freight train spun down into the surface area of a sewing pin, he was picked up and thrown to the side, sent tumbling over and over and over himself before he sprawled out and lay still, in the middle of the street and far shy of any available cover.

He could vaguely hear voices, but they sounded so distant he couldn't make out any of the words – he only knew they were screaming loudly at him. For a thousand years all he heard was the drowning thunderous hammering of his own heart in his head, but he only got his next breath in once the next century was finally through. By then he felt lightheaded as hell…

Gasping, breathing again at last, Frank raised a hand, and groped at his chest for a moment before he found the radio stuck to his combat harness. Crushing it in his grip, he managed, "C… can't… hear you… sir."

When that was said, he let go of the radio and tried to relax, too dazed and too out of it to know if the hit had left behind any residual pain… or even if it had wounded him. All he knew was the sky looked a long way away from where he was, stuck on his back against a concrete pathway tucked down between the reaching square spires of corporate office buildings.

It took a moment more for him to realize he couldn't feel Flint anymore. Either he wasn't moving at all now, or he'd somehow run far enough fast enough to get out of range of their twin's bond. Frank rather doubted the latter… but he smiled blearily to himself when he felt his twin clench and groan.

Jerking off your feet at your fastest dead run was never pleasant, no matter how prepared for it you are, it seemed. In hindsight, Frank supposed that lying there laughing his fool head off in the middle of the street while he bled a frightfully huge pool of hot blood all over the pavement did nothing to help dissuade his teammates of his theoretically psychotic disposition, but right then, he didn't care.

For once, Flint had felt Frank.

And Frank was happy.

.

May 3, 2526

Rehab had been cruel. Flint had been more so. Bruised by the fall he'd taken mid-run, the stubborn twin had gotten up, dusted himself off, and went right back at it. It seemed unless it was truly brutal, Flint didn't give a shit what Frank was up to.

Enduring nine hours of invasive correctional surgery to recoup from taking a sniper round through the chest and the following three months healing from that and getting back on his feet had done nothing to the missing brother. But he now had a Team Name… and not a frightfully polite one, at that.

Frank knew he'd never really live it down. They called him Animal now. Even Grissom. It was, they had told him, a shortened version of the actual – Rabid Fucking Animal.

He had his own thoughts, though, surrounding the reason for that nickname… Flint was an unmerciful driving influence, and even down with a bandage as big as his chest wrapped around him, Frank wanted to get up, wanted to run for it, wanted to beat the living daylights out of a boxing bag. Wanted to throw grenades, wanted to fire a few hundred types of gun. At the end of the day, climb into the back of a Pelican, go back to bed, and in the morning, he'd be back and at it again.

The rehabilitation orderlies had had hell enough keeping after him, but he healed well enough even though his inability to assimilate their medicine made every motion he made hurt like a secondary impact might. He still didn't remember if he'd even felt the damn thing hit the first time, and he certainly didn't recall if it had hurt much after the fact. The medic had theorized shock staving off much of the initial sniper round's impact on his system, but nobody before or since ever to be shot down in a blaze of glory had ever laid there in a puddle of their own blood and laughed.

That part Frank had all to himself.

In retrospect, it was actually kind of embarrassing…

.

June 12, 2526

"Animal! Get your rotten ass up here right now!" Vargas had not sounded that pressed in a while. But it was easy enough to meet his command – there was ample cover traversable between where he was crouched down and where Frank was hunkered.

"Yes, sir!" He was already on his way by the time the words came out of him, but that was okay. Frank kept himself low as he scampered the space between himself and his Platoon Sergeant, aware the enemy could just see him but not enough of him to peg him once or twice, and none but said Sergeant on his own side could see him coming.

That was also good. Frank had been hit by a sniper before, and he hadn't liked it much. And the fact that Vargas could see him coming meant he wouldn't sit there and bitch until Frank made his position at last.

Arriving, he hunkered down next to the Sergeant, reaching up to catch his helmet when he bonked it against the water-shorn rock and disturbed how it was sitting on his head. "Sarge?"

"I want you to get Vanilla and Washington and get into this building here on my left, get to the fortieth floor, and get across that connector and down to the tenth floor of that building and take out that god-damned sniper." Vargas said. "You're in charge of the fire team – bring my men back intact, Private. You got twenty minutes."

"Yes, sir!" Frank wasn't honestly sure he could do that – but he was mildly comforted in that he was allowed to take his right arm with him. Brandon was very good at imitating the limb, even if they shared nothing at all akin to what Frank shared with his long-missing twin.

The first mission following his misfortune with the last sniper, he was admittedly glad that he wasn't going to have to walk the choke point in front of the barrel of that gun. But walking a tight-rope on wire cabling on a connector bridge between the fortieth floors of a pair of corporate giants? Gah! Frank didn't know if he was afraid of heights or not, but he knew that before this mission was done with, he'd know for sure. Waving the other Privates up, Frank led the way sideways across the firefight into the narrow alley and up to the razor-wire blocking fence panel stood between neighboring buildings to prevent the alleyway from becoming a frequented path. Brandon was chunky enough and spry enough that he just lifted Frank by his waist, stood him on a lifted knee for a second, then grabbed him by his belt and the bottom of a boot and threw him upwards over the barrier. He did the same to the other kid, then swarmed up the razor fence like it was a ladder.

That was Brandon's gift… Frank suspected it was his background in gymnastics, but he'd long ago learned to flex with the flow, and he hadn't even struck a knee on the other side… the other private had dropped right off his boots and went splat on his belly for a moment before gathering himself again.

Frank shook his head at the kid – Vanilla – as if he were a long standing vet watching a raw recruit stumbling over himself. Truth be known, Vanilla really was as green as bright spring grass, but he wasn't sharp enough to keep that from holding him back all of the time. He was lucky so far in that his clutziness had spared him a fatal mistake.

Dropping into a partial crouch behind Frank and then straightening, Brandon lifted his SMGs from his sides and at the jerk of Frank's chin, took point. Vanilla fell in behind Frank, but at a reasonably spaced distance. He was attentive enough, his rifle in both hands and held properly for once. Maybe he'd finally figured the thing out, and he'd quit being so clumsy with it after today.

Frank pulled up short at the other corner, behind Brandon, who risked a peek out both directions before glancing back and giving a single, silent nod. He darted out of the alley, ran hell for leather up the building for nine running steps, then dove into the alcove surrounding the main entrance. This he smashed with the hard polymer shoulder caps he wore, bullying his way through the plexi-glass front paneling.

Frank would have bounced. Impressed, he followed his friend up and in, aware the noise was a giveaway but perhaps not so much as it might have been, given that there was a noisy firefight going on just behind this very building. Brandon moved quickly across the dark, empty lobby and shoulder-slammed into the stairwell.

He raised his aim, circled around onto the first, bottommost step, looking up through the grills the steps were made from, then looked down at Frank and nodded again. So far so good… all clear. As one the three Privates ran up the steps, circling endlessly upwards on silent rubber treads, making about as much clamor as a single pair of high heels on a marble floor, and nowhere near as clearly punctuated.

By the time they had reached the fifteenth floor, all of their knees were sore as hell, but it had only been four minutes. They still had sixteen left before their assigned mission-clock went over. Frank reached out and patted the backside of Brandon's helmet twice, then stopped stepping high for a moment, wanting to catch his breath. Running on hills, on flat ground, or even over uneven, lumpy ground was nothing compared to the dreaded stairs of doom. Nobody liked stairs… especially if one had to climb them to the fortieth fucking floor of a high-riser!

The three of them stood there and panted in the echoing silence of the stairwell, staring at each other primarily, each wondering what the firefight was like and if anything had changed. If someone had died, or if the Covenant was being pushed back. With the sniper in place, though, there really wasn't going to be much advancing on the part of the UNSC ground forces, though… and it wasn't the only sniper in place.

Frank just hoped the building this one was bridged to was the one that Vargas had said it was bridged to… if it wasn't, they were in bigger trouble than being merely late for a mission perimeter. Finally, feeling his knees had recovered enough to do some more unmerciful pouncing, he gestured past Brandon and got them moving again.

Even Brandon hadn't been able to take forty floors of stair-stepping all in one go, gymnastic overlord or not. There was a limit to the number of times a body could repeat a process before it simply broke down the body and the action had to stop. When the fortieth floor finally did arrive, none of the three really believed it… they were so worn out from going endlessly up and up that it just had to be a mirage. But Frank kicked in the door, swept the room for hostiles and led the way through the corporate corridors past offices innumerable until they finally came to the supply store room with the back-exit over the bridge.

The "back-exit" turned out to be nothing more than a window showing them just that… and at this height, no shoulder was going to press through that window. Vanilla put a shaped charge on the transparent steel sheathing, lit the fuse, and then all three of them hightailed it back out the door and up the hall somewhat. The thunderous bang the charge made going off was drowned utterly in the horrid, howling wind of a fortieth-story window breach, and the trio felt the whole building shudder with the pressure change.

But the hole was big enough to pass a man unhindered, so their mission proceeded as planned; the clock read twelve minutes, fifteen seconds.

On the bridge, Frank could see down at the firefight, and could even see several of the Covenant cowering behind their cover. It was mostly ruined cars and haulers, neither of which truly worthy cover for a high-intensity firefight but good enough for comfort if one was used to that sort of thing. Focusing forward, Frank decided that yeah, probably this was the right building… inside of a minute the trio had trotted the wire and bracing beam structure bridge, and another charge on the adjacent window and they were in.

Now to go down… Vanilla clipped his rappel line to the railing and leapt for it, bouncing fast and haggard between the stair rails as he made massive headway down to the end of his line. When he reached the end of his line, he let it go, and started to run. Neither of the other two wasted the ingenious plan, willing as any to cut time and joint-wear off their mission. Frank went down next, and Brandon followed.

At the exit onto the tenth story, the trio paused, and Frank took an additional minute and a half to carefully pick the lock, and admitted the fire team quietly. In this building, there was Covenant presence, and especially so on this floor of this building. Confirmed Covenant presence… and who knew if the sniper had a spotter, or if the spotter was more than one guy, or if he even had a guard at all since he was "behind" his own forces' lines.

Foolhardy if he was that trusting, though, especially given to how people usually concentrated on picking off things like snipers, cos they were such a royal pain to have to bypass. Frank panned immediately right, Brandon panned immediately left, and Vanilla emerged between them, each one noting the details of the room.

Vanilla took point that time, trotting cautiously and quietly on his toes up the corridor towards the sound of rifle fire. Closer, they began to open office doors, looking for which one it was, until finally, Frank reached for a knob and found that whole chunk of the door was just utterly gone. Though rarely locked, this office door had been kicked in without checking. It had swung itself closed again, though, that or had been pushed to, but the hinges were silent as Frank pressed it open with an elbow, leading his tracing across the office space until he'd seen the whole room, and not found his target.

Brandon appeared in his rearmost peripheral, so he took a single, cautious step into the room, glancing down to be sure he didn't crunch a splinter of noisy wood under his boot. Assured that he could stay quiet, the Marine took another step forward, beginning to be able to see the hole cut in the high-riser's window. The slice in the transparent metal sheathing was perfect… it was either done meticulously with a laser torch, or…

With barely the front half of the helmet and one arm visible from around the desk, Frank froze in place. That was an Elite, lying on the floor, taking shots out the hole cut with the energy sword on his belt. He quickly stuck a fist in the air over his shoulder, hoping to all gods that the other two took it and stuck to it… none of them had come equipped to handle an Elite in close-quarters, and especially not one armed with one of those nasty energy swords.

But Frank had an idea – a totally nut-job whacked-out crazy idea – but it was an idea. And if it worked, they could complete the mission with some four or five minutes to spare and get out. If it didn't… Frank would be dead and in bits and pieces and Brandon and Vanilla would have to handle an angry Elite all by themselves.

Frank hoped it worked… cos he was about to try it.

Slowly, carefully, wincing when the Elite took another shot, he crouched down to the floor, and laid his rifle on it. Shouldering or slinging the thing would make too much noise, and he wouldn't need it for this plan anyway. The carpet allowed him to let go of the rifle without needing to settle it meticulously, and he stood back up again, slowly, taking another step forward.

Sensing Brandon start to follow him, he shot a disapproving look over his shoulder, and waved him back. Stay out of this, it only takes one.

Miffed, worried, uncertain, Brandon stopped where he was, his eyes boring into Frank with all the knowledge of what he was about to do… and all the odds it had of failing.

Straightening, Frank turned back towards the Elite, and stepped carefully, quietly, stealthily forward. He trembled the whole way, taking very small breaths through his mouth down a very widely open throat in the hopes that it was as quiet to the Elite as it was to himself. Mentally, he concentrated very hard on convincing the world around him that he did not, in fact, exist, and that the animal instinct of the creature he was sneaking up on would not get a sixth-sense alert and turn its head to look up at him.

Somehow, Frank reached the Elite's knees. There, very, very slowly, as if afraid to trip off a motion sensor, he lowered to his own, nesting first one and then the other kneepad in the carpet, and then rotating his weight forward.

Carefully extending his left arm, he reached for that sword… the instant his fingers made contact with the cool metal, the Elite braced, took a shot, and before the seven-foot-tall creature had finished bearing the recoil of his sniping tool, his sword was gone from his belt. Something told him to raise his head, something supposed he ought to glance behind him, just in case, and his beady black eyes lit on the web-gear-encrusted chest of a kneeling Human just a hearts' beat before the dual blades of his own energy sword plunged through his back and down through the floor.

Frank watched the Elite's expression jerk into absolute shock and surprise, his mandibles snapping open in soundless awe before he relaxed against his rifle, dead. He let go of a resoundingly noisy breath, and felt the pain of holding back for so long stitch through him. "Oh, man."

"Damn, you really did it." Brandon was saying. "You really pulled that off."

"Guys, we gotta go… I've got footsteps down the hall." Vanilla put in, from outside the door. "Grab that rifle, and hope to god they don't have another one on them when they get in here, and let's get the hell out of here."

"Good idea," Frank began, snatching the rifle out from under the Elite's chin and jerking back to his feet. Brandon grabbed his rifle off the office floor and tossed it to him. "I really, really like that idea."

As quietly as they had come, the three Privates slipped away again, circumventing the arriving duo of Jackals, heading up behind them once the party had been identified, and mowed both down before departing. Nobody would miss two Jackals, and surely they were two that the three Marines wouldn't need to deal with later on.

Mission timer read one minute, ten seconds.