Red vs. Blue - Reunion

By BenRG


Disclaimer

Red vs. Blue is a fan-show created by Rooster Teeth Inc based on the Halo series of computer games and licensed novels. All the characters and situations of the RvB universe is the property of the crazy guys at RT.

Halo is the copyright and trademark property of Microsoft and Bungie Software. Anything recognisable belongs to one of them.

This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the World Wide Web.

Author's Notes

I think that the guys over on the Rooster Teeth forum are right. There is no point complaining about not liking the direction the team is taking the show. It is their show, after all. No one asked me for my approval of their plot. It's still funny and brilliant sci-fi and that is all that I really can honestly say that I want from it.

So, rather than bitch, I have decided to write my own continuation for Red vs. Blue. This story starts at the end of Reconstruction and will continue to the end of the saga, starting with a modified version of Recreation but going further and further AU as time goes by.

Okay! This chapter will introduce two Original Characters (OCs) that visitors from the RT forums might recognise from my journal.

Censor: M – This is war, ladies and gentlemen; In war there is blood and cussing galore

Chapter 3 – Reassignment

"Shit, I'm never gonna get this green stain off of my armour!" Private Kaikainia Grif, known to everyone as 'Sister', was scrubbing glumly at two red paint blotches on the chest-plate of her yellow Moljinir Mk6 armour in the echoing quiet of Blue Base.

Dexter had always warned her that talking to yourself was a sign of madness. Well, if you were the only human for miles around, weren't you allowed to go crazy? Ever since that asshole Lopez had shot her with that paint-ball gun, announced that she was 'dead' and left, things had got very, very boring at Blood Gulch. She had checked Red Base and those weird caverns and confirmed that she was the only person left in the area. Maybe she should radio headquarters to request extraction? Nah, that would just start a very unwelcome conversation about what a first-year recruit was doing away from the training camp in a decommissioned base!

"Alert – Intruder. Alert – Intruder."

Sister looked up in some surprise at the alarm. The last time that this alarm went off was when that cop turned up about a month ago looking for her former comrades-in-arms. That conversation had felt like trouble at the time and she wondered now if trouble had finally arrived. With a sigh, the eighteen-year-old girl picked up her magnum-357 automatic (wishing that she had more than the vaguest inkling of how to use it) and walked towards the ramp. She punched the control to cancel the alarm as she did so. Violence as stress relief did work, or so it seemed.


"Okay folks!" she yelled, levelling her pistol at the jeep parked at the bottom of the ramp. "Stand tall and state your name! For the record or for the tombstone, I don't give a shit… either… way!" Sister swallowed. Her bravado didn't even last to the end of her challenge. She was looking down the muzzle of a MA-5B assault rifle being aimed at her by some guy in dark armour with darker shoulder flashes (she didn't always get colours right). Nearby, by the jeep, another armoured figure was pointing a MAC-23 machine pistol her way. "Er… hey guys!"

"Who the hell are you?" the figure with the rifle barked in a strange accent like those of those actors in old PBS vid-dramas. "This base is supposed to be decommissioned!"

"Um… Yeah… Well, to tell the truth, I'm not actually supposed to be here." Her two visitors exchanged a look before turning their glares back in her direction. Sister felt the need to elaborate before someone decided to start shooting. "Yeah, I kinda sneaked off to see my bro? I sort of… borrowed a Pelican to fly out here… and… er… I may… um… not have… asked permission?"

There was a feminine chuckle from the direction of the jeep. Sister shot a sour look at the figure standing beside it. "Look, bitch, just because I screwed up and ended up getting stranded out here, doesn't make me comic relief!"

"Blue Army?" the guy with the rifle (and a shotgun slung over his back) snapped out. Sister nodded. The man lowered his rifle. "Thank god for that! I was starting to think we were the last ones left!"

Sister blinked and lowered her pistol. "Say what?"


Sister leant back against the wardroom wall and took another chug of her isotonic juice. "So, you say that command went off-line a month or so back and you haven't heard anything since?"

The guy, Hawke, nodded before putting down the spoon with which he had been ravenously devouring the MRE she had offered him. "The Reds all got pulled out shortly after that. No one did anything about the Blues though. Me and Hiroshi thought that maybe we'd been missed in an earlier evacuation or something."

Hiroshi, the Asiatic woman who had been driving the jeep, looked up from her fiddling with the guts of the long-range radio set (she was a technician, according to her). "The rest of our garrison had been wiped out, so there was no one there to turn to. So, we… uh… 'salvaged' a Warthog from Red Base..."

"That means Hiroshi hot-wired it," Hawke added with a grin (a nice grin, Sister thought – it had been over eighteen months since that night with Tucker, after all).

"Hush, it worked didn't it?" Hiroshi shot back with an annoyed glare. Hawke raised his hands in surrender. "Anyway, we've been working our way back in the direction of Command, looking for other Blue survivors. So far, nada."

Hawke nodded. "The most we've found are abandoned bases with logs left saying that the garrisons had left after supplies reached critical levels and they had received no response to requests for resupply runs. As far as I can tell, we're at the tail end of a kind of Blue exodus heading towards Command."

"That's why you stopped here at the gulch?" Sister asked. She'd noticed the way her two visitors had torn into what she could offer them from what she acknowledged were her own increasingly short rations. "Trying to find some supplies?"

Hiroshi nodded. "We've been on half-rations for a week," she said.

"We've probably only lasted as long as we have because the Reds pulled out in such a damn hurry that they left lots of food behind!" Hawke remarked with a snort.

Hiroshi put the cover back onto the radio and powered it up. "Blood Gulch Base Alpha to Blue Command, come in Blue Command," she said into the microphone. "Blood Gulch Base Alpha to Blue Command. Blue Command, do you read?" There was a long silence as Hiroshi glared at the information displayed on small LCD screen on the front of the radio set. "Shit! Not even a carrier!"

"Fuck." Hawke sagged back and let his head bang against the wall behind the bench.

"Mind telling the poor li'l recruit what the fuck that means?" Sister asked.

"It means that not only isn't anyone replying to our message, there isn't even anyone listening," Hiroshi explained.

Sister considered that. "That's bad, isn't it?" There were two mute nods. "Um… I know this sounds bad to say it but… could the Reds have won?"

Hawke considered that. "Maybe," he admitted at last. "But why just run off and not pick up us prisoners? Why no announcement of victory on Blue com frequencies to get us to surrender? It just doesn't make any sense! It's like someone suddenly decided that the war just wasn't happening anymore but had forgotten that us Blues even existed!"

"So… what do we do?" Hiroshi asked. Both female Blues looked at Hawke expectantly.

"Shit, why do I have to make the decisions?" Hawke replied in an agitated tone, running a hand through his sandy-brown hair.

Hiroshi cocked her head and grinned mischievously. "'Cause you're the most senior combat trooper in the base and that makes you de facto commander."

"Well… if you want my opinion?" Hawke and Hiroshi looked at Sister. "While he was still here, my brother told me that the gulch runs down to the coast where there's some old power station known as 'Last Resort'. You can go up and down the coast from there and there is sure to be some other bases to check. At the very least, I know that there was some powerful tech stuff there; maybe Hiroshi can knock together some kind of long-range radio so we can call Earth!"

Hawke looked at Hiroshi who raised her eyebrows. "Good an idea as any," he said at last. "I think you should come with us Sister."

Sister shrugged and reached for her helmet. "Not much reason to stay around here, anyway," she remarked. "The only things here are two abandoned bases and a dead computer in the caves under the cliffs; I've already got all the supplies together here."

Hiroshi raised a finger. "I've got just one question," she said. "What the fuck is that thing that you're wearing?"

Sister looked down at her armour. "It's regulation Blue Army armour. What the fuck do you think it is?"

Hawke looked at her levelly. "Sister, that armour is yellow."

Sister looked at her gauntlets. "Yellow? Fuckberries! Are you sure?" Hawke nodded mutely. Sister glared at Hiroshi, who had started laughing. "This isn't funny you stupid ho! No wonder the Reds thought I was on their side when I first got here! Why the fuck didn't anyone tell me?"

"Isn't it… Isn't it obvious you stupid little idiot?" Hiroshi choked out between giggles.

"I'm colour-blind you dumb bitch!" Sister screeched, jumping to her feet.

That shut up Hiroshi. Hawke stared at Sister in a weird way. The young woman fretted that maybe he had decided she was excess to requirements and was going to shoot her.

"Colour blind?" Hawke repeated. Sister nodded. "Um… I'm no medic but I think that isn't physically possible."

Sister glared at the taller Blue coldly and drew herself up with as much dignity as she could. "That's what they said about getting myself off with my tongue whilst bending over backwards!"

Hawke frowned. "Yes, I'm sure that they… Wait, what?"

Hiroshi was looking at Sister strangely. "Um… Could you teach me how to do that? The same stuff gets boring after a while." Hawke made a strange squeaking noise in response to that. Hiroshi grinned and winked at him saucily. "Bow-chicka-wow-wow!"

"Y'know, you remind me of my last boyfriend," Sister informed the Asiatic technician.


The warthog pulled out of Blood Gulch about two hours later, towing a flatbed trailer carrying as much supplies as the three Blues could fit onto it. Frankly, Sister wouldn't miss the place at all. There had been some fun times, but mostly it had involved being on her own, being sworn at by that senile old fucktard Sarge and being very, very bored. She had no idea what lay ahead now, but it had to be better than being stuck in that dive.

Sister, sitting in the warthog's shotgun seat, looked at her armour again feeling a bit weird. Hawke had found some paint in the storeroom and had painted her armour's hard plates with it except her shoulder guards and a stripe down the centre of her helmet. To Sister's eyes, it looked orange-red but he insisted it was regulation blue and, given that it was the same as the primary colour of his and Hiroshi's armour, she took his word for it. She also took his word for it that his armour had purple shoulder guards and helmet stripe and that the shoulder guards and helmet stripe on Hiroshi's armour were green.

Sister also was now holding a MAC-23 submachine-gun that Hawke had stashed in the Warthog. Frankly, the girl didn't feel particularly happy with the new weapon, even though Hawke assured her that it wasn't really all that different from her pistol to operate. After all, she barely even knew how to operate the pistol!

"So… you were kidding about that trick with the tongue, right?"

Sister looked at Hiroshi. "No," she said defiantly, feeling a bit defensive.

There was a long pause. "Damn…! Girl, you and me have got to go clubbing together next time we get leave!"

Sister raised an eyebrow behind the anonymity of her helmet. She suddenly felt uncomfortable about sitting where she was sitting. Only the fact that she sure as hell didn't know how to use that big gattling gun on the pintle mount at the back stopped her from asking Hawke to swap places with her. "Lesbian?" she asked at last.

"Bi, but I prefer men." Hoshi sounded like she was grinning fit to tear her face behind her visor. "What about you, kiddo?"

Sister sighed. "Just because a girl gets a reputation as a slut, doesn't mean she is. That bitch Jenny Preston ruined my life. The only reason I mean to learn how to work this gun is to stick it down her throat one day!"

"Can you two please stop talking about your sex lives," Hawke requested from the turret. "It reminds too many of us that we don't have one!"

Sister couldn't help but giggle and looked over at Hiroshi. The two women's eyes met through their helmets' reflective visors. "We can fix that for you, lover-boy!" Hiroshi called out.

"Bow-chicka-wow-wow!" Hiroshi and Sister chorused and started laughing, all awkwardness and mistrust forgotten.

Hawke just groaned in response. God, why do I have to deal with two of them? he asked himself silently.


"Fuck! What happened here?" Sister leapt out of the warthog and stared about Last Resort in a kind of panic. Someone had been tossing the garrison's vehicles and supply containers about as if they were toy trucks; they were all piled up against some trees and rocks near the entrance arch. She and her two fellow Blues began to check the area, keeping nervous eyes out for the trouble that seemed to have recently come to this site.

"If you liked that, you'll love this!" Hiroshi called out from beyond the entrance arch into the power station. Sister and Hawke jogged over (Hawke nervously keeping the unacceptably high number of potential sniper's vantage points covered as best as he could).

Sister stopped dead at the sight of what was inside the compound. "Shit! Someone had a massacre!" There were a half-dozen bodies neatly laid out in a row by the wall, all covered by Red Army regulation thermal blankets.

Hiroshi was just re-covering one. "I checked. They're all Reds."

Hawke took a few steps back and noticed his boots crunching on something. He looked down. "Fifty-calibre cases," he remarked. "Someone fired a turret gun here and no one's done any tidying up."

"Guys…?" Hiroshi and Hawke looked at Sister. "Like, if there was a massacre… Who the fuck moved the bodies over here, laid them out all nice and neat and covered them up?" Suddenly, everyone was looking around them with a lot more tension and fear.

"And if the Blues won here… where did they all go?" Hawke added.

"Ah! It's about time the Gravediggers' Registry sent a work crew…!" Sister spun around towards the voice the moment that it started speaking and, with a squeal of fear, squeezed her machine pistol's trigger. A dozen 10mm armour-piercing rounds flew over the head of an armoured figure who had just walked out from the turbine hall (a couple striking glancing blows to the top of his helmet), who dived for the ground. "OH SHIT! CEASE FIRE! I'M A NON-COMBATANT!"

"Don't move you wannabe-groper stalker freak!" Sister shrieked, re-centring her gun on the cowering, prone figure in what looked to her to be orange armour. "Try to touch me and you've got a new asshole to wipe in the middle of your face!"

"Don't move, you Red shit-stain!" Hawke snapped, as he stepped to Sister's side, levelling his MA-5B at the figure. "Name, rank and serial number!"

"I'm not a Red!" the figure protested.

"Funny, you look that way to me!" Hawke hissed.

"Actually… he's kind of purple," Hiroshi remarked. The woman gently touched the top of Sister's gun and pushed it down. "You did good, kid," she murmured to the trembling teenager. "Ease down now. We can shoot him after he talks." Sister swallowed and nodded, all-too-aware that the urine collection system in her armour had just got a work-out.

"I'm not a Red! I'm a neutral medic! My name is Corpsman Frank duFresne!"

Sister looked up in shock. "Doc?" she asked, her voice rising in surprise. "Doc, is that you? What the fuck are you doing here?"

Doc looked at the figure in blue-and-yellow and blinked in surprise. "Sister?"

Hiroshi shot Hawke a cynical look. "Small world, isn't it?" she deadpanned.

To be continued…