A/N: I really got nothin' this go-round, except for another warning (for anybody other than Tikigod who reads this and just lurks instead of giving feedback) that more and more of the crossover will be made in this chapter. From this point forward, any attempts at reading this to find a Halo-only experience are futile. But judging from the amount of Halo/whatever crossovers I see in this section, this will just happen to be a new breed. Also; Halo 3 Recon: it'll be like Unsung War in game form (Okay, so not, but still, ODST-centric games are the win). So, standard disclaimers apply: Halo 3 and all associated names, events, and organizations are the property of Bungie and Microsoft Studios, Mahou Sensei Negima and all affiliated characters, events, and organizations are the property of Ken Akamatsu and Del Ray, and all original characters, organizations, and plot developments are the property of Project: Arashi.

That Old, Familiar Feeling

November 4, 2552
UNSC Sector Command Base "Tama's Nest," Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
0814 hours, local time

Bravo-Six had been given about three hours of sleep after completing their mission, and then called to the briefing room for 'retraining.' After the sleep period, the previous damage that had been done to the base had been rectified, almost as if nothing had ever been wrong at all. When Alysia entered the briefing room, Cynthia was already present, seated in her traditional place in the first row into the room, the farthest seat from the door in that row. Down at the front of the room were the marionette Chachazero, Chao still wearing her battle suit, and Evangeline, still in the appearance of a ten year old girl. Chachazero sat on the front of the podium, kicking her wooden legs as she idly shaved small slices of wood from the podium with her blades. Behind the podium, Evangeline and Chao were quietly speaking.

Tugging gently on the fresh uniform she'd just put on, Alysia took a seat in the center of the room after getting a glance from Evangeline. The young girl sounded remarkably similar to their commander and even looked like her, but the sergeant was having a hard time wrapping her head around the concept that the two were one and the same.

At the front of the room, Chao followed Evangeline's gaze to see Alysia enter, then turned her attention back to the vampire standing cross-armed before her. "How many of the descendants have you been tracking?" she asked.

"As many as I could find," Evangeline answered. "Some of the family lines died out between the past and now, but many are still going. Rivale is the only one in Bravo-Six who doesn't have direct ancestry to either Kuro Arashi or Ala Alba, but her skillset was required to fill out the squad."

"Mana and Lorenzo have no descendant?"

Evangeline smiled ruefully. "They do. Corporal Adrian Perez, assigned to Alpha Company of the 405th Marine Battalion. The Tatsumiya-Ruiz bloodline has apparently diluted heavily over the generations. He's not the marksman his ancestors were."

"He's still alive?"

The vampire nodded. "He's not completely unskilled. He survived action on Delta Halo. I've requisitioned him; once he arrives back on Earth, he'll be reassigned to us."

Chao gave a small nod and looked off to the side. She had been briefed by Evangeline concerning all that's happened since the first Covenant invasion of Earth, and was finally fully up-to-date on recent events. She glanced toward the door of the briefing room in time as the rest of the squad trickled in, taking scattered seats across the room.

Turning away from the Chinese genius, Evangeline stepped out from behind the podium; it was taller than she was, and looked over the squad, giving the group a toothy grin as she crossed her arms. "Once again, congratulations on a mission well completed. Before we get into the matters that I'm sure you're dying to know about-" She saw Chao roll her eyes at the emphasis she placed on the word dying. "-I understand that you brought back some new intel and observations from the enemy lance you engaged."

"Yes, ma'am," Alysia said, standing up and pulling a datachip out of her breast pocket. With a nod from Evangeline, she stepped up to the holoprojector and plugged the datachip in. The image that came up displayed on the far wall of the briefing room was the new type of Phantom. "The enemy deployed from a new variant of the Phantom. This version featured completely open sides, no underside gravity lift, and door gunners."

Evangeline looked over the image for a moment, then glanced to her side. "Chachamaru, compile a 3D model of this new Phantom type and display it."

Attached to the holoprojector was a blue holoplate similar to the one in Evangeline's office. Above this plate appeared the image of the base's AI, a young-looking Japanese woman with long, straight hair and odd metallic coverings over her ears. "Model construction is complete," she reported, then her image disappeared, replaced with a wireframe 3D image of the Phantom.

Evangeline stepped up to the holoprojector and reached her fingers into the floating image, turning it this way and that, flipping it over, staring into the troop bay, all the while staring at it with an intent expression. "This model allows for extremely rapid deployment, and removes the one strategy we employed for dealing with the known Phantom model."

Chao nodded, adding her expert mechanical eye to the observation. "With troops jumping out either side at the same time, we no longer have the advantage of being able to pick them off as they came out of the grav lift one at a time."

"This new design leaves the troops horribly exposed, though, even with door turrets for protection," Cheryl offered. "A crack sniper like Cynthia can still pick off troops before they deploy."

"It's a risk they're willing to gamble," Evangeline said with a sneer, as though she considered the new design a personal offense. "Risky insertion like this, it's obvious this redesign is an example of Jiralhanae 'ingenuity.'"

"We also noticed that the lance we encountered was nothing but brutes, and they were wearing new armor," Akio said.

Before Evangeline could call for it, Chachamaru automatically changed the image to the helmet camera images of the two blue-armored brutes and the gold-armored leader. "Reviewing the combat mission logs indicates that this new armor is powered," the holographic AI said. "Energy shields in place on the armor is comparable to the equivalent Sangheili ranks in terms of defensibility. However, it can be assumed by the fact that sustained damage causes armor pieces to fall away indicates that the Jiralhanae shields will not recharge the way that a Sangheili unit would."

"Well, at least there's a bright spot," the technician muttered sarcastically.

"They also are fielding at least one new weapon," Chao said, gesturing to the spike rifle laid beside the holoprojector on the table.

"The ammunition is some sort of superheated, sharpened metal projectiles as long as my forearm," Cynthia offered. "They cool incredibly fast after leaving the barrel, but I imagine they're no less deadly for it."

Chachazero hopped down from the podium and walked to the spike rifle, picking it up as though it were as light as a feather and flipping it over to inspect the blades attached to its underside. After a moment, the doll looked up at Evangeline, and though its expression was no different, its tone indicated an evil grin. "Master, may I keep this weapon? I think it suits me perfectly."

"Go ahead and keep it if you want," Evangeline said offhand, waving her right hand dismissively. "There's no ammunition in it. Now, the information I'm about to give you is unconfirmed, unofficial, and off the books. Word is filtering through the ONI ranks that there's been some kind of civil war in the ranks of the Covenant, turning the Sangheili against the Jiralhanae. The fact that this lance you encountered had no Sangheili anywhere in it seems to lend credence to the intelligence."

Murmurs ran through the squad at this. Jonathan leaned over and smacked Akio's shoulder with the back of his hand. "Hey, dude, wouldn't it be some shit if the Elites joined up with us against the Brutes? Enemy of your enemy, and all."

"The chances of that happening are very small," Alysia answered. "The bad blood between humans and Elites isn't just going to go away that fast."

Chao nodded her head in agreement. It'd be a very cold day before I trusted my life to one of those aliens, she thought bitterly.

"Sergeant Fei is correct," Evangeline said. "Until we're proven otherwise, do not treat any Covenant race as nonhostile." She turned and walked to a supply crate sitting in a corner of the room. "Now, we've received a shipment of new reusable combat equipment, all lightweight, easy to carry, and very useful." Reaching into the crate, she produced a metal device the length of her arm, with four stubby legs to support itself and a domed top with a golden grid pattern.

Turning the device over, she inspected it for a moment, then placed it on the table with a heavy thump. "This is called a bubble shield. It projects an energy shield in a three meter sphere that stops explosions and all forms of fire. However, vehicles and personnel can still pass through it. Twist the dome to activate it, then drop it. Pick it up and twist the dome again to deactivate it. It also comes in a grenade form, though those are single-use only, and are best used for defending against plasma mortars and other large, sudden explosives."

The next piece of equipment she pulled out was similar to the bubble shield in appearance, except that it featured a green diamond instead of a gold-grid dome. "This is a regenerator. It projects a field of energy similar to the bubble shield and does exactly what it sounds like it should."

Chao suppressed a smirk. "That's...these equipments use magic, don't they?"

"So?"

"The mundane units don't get them?"

The holographic image of Chachamaru reappeared. "Bubble shield and regenerator equipment is supplied primarily to mage support special forces units," she explained to Chao. "However, we do not stand in the way of mundane units acquiring them. The equipment is simply explained away as being Covenant in design."

"Clever."

Evangeline dropped the regenerator on the table, drawing another heavy thud. "Like the bubble shield, the regenerator is reusable, and deploys in the exact same manner. Unfortunately, these tools are not light. They weigh forty-five and forty-four pounds, respectively. The grenade variant of the bubble shield weighs only fifteen pounds. We have more than enough of all of them to go around."

The diminutive blonde and the Martian native exchanged glances, then Evangeline nodded and looked back out at the ODSTs. "Ladies, gentlemen, you are about to become privy to humanity's secret weapon. Properly utilized, this weapon cannot be stopped by the Covenant, and will guarantee not only our survival, but absolute victory as well."

She noticed that the squad was sitting forward now, their attention raptly focused on their child-sized commander. They wanted to know what was going on, the explanation for her change in appearance. They hungered for the knowledge. She gave a toothy grin; this was where she would separate the fools from those truly worthy of the Ala Alba legacy.

"There is a secret world that exists parallel to the one you are familiar with," she began. "A world that you might at first consider to be weird and unnatural. But you will soon come to realize that this world is very familiar to you." She raised her left hand, perfectly-manicured fingernails pointing to each Marine in turn. "Each one of you bears a connection to this world, written into your genes, a part of your very blood. This world is a world of fantastical creatures, of legendary figures thought only to be myth, of places and things that normally are only seen in the realm of one's dreams.

"This world, is a world of magic."

The briefing room fell to dead silence following that remark. Evangeline ticked the seconds off in her head, counting out a full minute and seven seconds before the silence was broken as Cheryl sheepishly raised her hand and asked, "Umm... Are you serious?"

Evangeline gave the young woman a blank stare; it was all she could do not to leap across the room and slap the red out of her hair. The ancestry to Makie Sasaki was obvious with this one. "Staff Sergeant Sasaki, can you come up with any other reason why I appear to be a child?" she asked in a voice normally used by a professor instructing especially slow students.

"Well, um... no..." the squad's pilot murmured.

"And for the record, this is actually my true form," Evangeline said, gesturing to her childlike body. "I normally maintain an illusion spell to appear in the form that you're used to seeing." She didn't underscore her point by activating her illusion, the way some of the squad was expecting her to.

"What are you, Colonel?" Cynthia asked.

"I am a creature of legend, once considered a scourge on humanity," she intoned, noting with satisfaction the chill that crept through Cheryl, Akio, and Johnathan at her words. "I have gone by many names and many titles, among them Dark Evangel, Doll Master, Maga Nosferatu, The Undying Magi and, most recently, Hero." Just as swiftly as she adopted the menacing tone and appearance, she dropped it in favor of her standard casual attitude. "In short, I'm a daywalker."

For the second time in as many minutes, absolute silence filled the room. Crossing her arms, Evangeline watched the squad's reaction. Cheryl shifted nervously in her seat, Jonathan and Akio exchanged glances, Cynthia raised an eyebrow, and Alysia was visibly trying not to fidget. Finally, Akio hesitantly asked, "Ma'am, that's one of those vampires without weaknesses, right?"

"Gold star for the boy," Evangeline answered dryly. If at all possible, the squad's nervousness grew even more. Letting out an angry sigh, she slammed her hands down on the table before her. "Almost none of the major vampire weaknesses apply to me, and due to my age, I've gotten to the point where I only need one pint of blood every four or five months. So you've nothing to concern yourself with. If you've been stationed at this base for so long as you have without me draining any of you dry, then I'm not going to do so in the immediate future. The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that you are still under oath of the United Nations Space Command, and I am still an officer of the Office of Naval Intelligence."

"Ma'am, I believe I speak for the rest of the squad when I say that we're just trying to take everything in," Alysia said. "It's come as a sudden shock to us to learn that our commanding officer is a child vampire and that there's apparently a hidden world of magic that we all have some connection to."

Evangeline nodded, regaining her composure and crossing her arms over her chest again. "Fair enough," she responded. "After all, in this day and age, magic is even less than a fairy tale. It doesn't help matters any that magic in bloodlines has become so diluted over the centuries."

"Don't do it, Ryuu," Johnathan said suddenly, casting a glare at his squadmate as he crossed his arms.

"Dammit," the technician muttered.

"He was about to ask your age, ma'am," the big man explained to Evangeline.

"Wise move on your part, Sergeant Kasuga," Evangeline said, smirking. "Sergeant Sakurazaki should know better than to ask a woman her age."

Just then, a Marine technician poked his head into the briefing room and said to Evangeline, "Ma'am, Lord Hood is on the line for you."

"Thank you, Corporal," Evangeline answered, nodding to the man, then turned toward the holopanel on the wall. She murmured a few words, then her form shifted into that of her older illusion, her uniform changing to match. She then nodded to the holographic form of Chachamaru, who connected the call to Fleet Admiral Sir Terrance Hood.

"Colonel McDowell, how are things in the Far East?" the aging admiral asked.

"Much the same as they always are," Evangeline answered. "Good news all around, though. The long-awaited prodigal child has returned." She gestured to Chao, standing nearby.

Lord Hood turned toward the Chinese genius, spending only a moment to take in the sight of her battle armor, and the M6D holstered in a standard-issue holster on her right hip, then nodded. "Glad to hear it. We thought we'd lost you when the Athens went up. How are you feeling?"

"Well enough, sir," Chao said. "Colonel McDowell..." She paused for a moment after saying that; addressing Evangeline with any sense of formal rank seemed odd to her. "Colonel McDowell has brought me up to speed on recent events, and I'm back and prepared to finish the fight."

A smile momentarily graced the old man's face. "Good. We need all the able-bodied fighters we can get. Your... special skill set... will most undoubtedly prove to be quite the asset."

Chao's glance snapped toward Evangeline, but the vampire nodded placatingly.

"Colonel, what other news of our secret weapon?"

Evangeline showed the admiral a fanged grin. "The timing is coming along about as I had anticipated," she said, then gestured toward the squad sitting in the room. "This unit is the last that needs to go through the training. How's the paperwork?"

Lord Hood nodded in return. "All finished and in the books. You're now the commanding officer of the special operations brigade. Assign and redistribute the Marines under your command at your own discretion."

Evangeline nodded and crossed her arms. "So, with all said and done, that'll give us roughly two thousand mage-equivalent soldiers. I've done my best to research and track all the soldiers we have under arms that have notable magical bloodlines, and requisitioned all of them that I could. Has HIGHCOM made up their mind yet whether or not they're going to republicize magic?"

"No word's come down on that yet," Lord Hood answered, shaking his head slowly. "I, personally, don't see the sense in keeping secret our one weapon that the Covenant can't equal or counter. As much as I hate to admit it, the Elites are roughly on par physically with our Spartans, but we know for a fact that they don't have anything equal to magic."

A sour look appeared on Evangeline's face. "Please don't tell me that we're under standing orders to use magic discreetly," she all but snarled. "Against the new power armor that the Jiralhanae are starting to field, no simple or easily-explained-away spells are going to be effective."

"Well, the good news there is that it won't be necessary to keep your big spells under wraps," Lord Hood said, then held up a small, pen-shaped device. "The think-tanks down in Australia came up with a new toy just for your mage units. Portable memory-erasing device. It works well enough without causing permanent brain damage."

"Ah, how convenient," Evangeline said, a sinister smile on her face. "A technological equivalent to the memory erasure spell." She looked over at Chao. "Didn't I tell you five hundred years ago that there'd be some benefit to coming back?"

"Large-scale devices are still in the works, so right now the portable ones are all you have," Lord Hood continued. "We've got the working prototypes ready for field testing, so we'll get a shipment delivered to you as soon as possible."

Evangeline smiled humorlessly. "So, once again, we become the guinea pigs for the new gadgets." She shrugged. "That suits us just fine. We'll be ready for them by the time you get them here."

"Music to my ears, Colonel. Then we'll be ready to move into the next phase of this war. Hood out." The communications window with the admiral blinked out.

Once the communication had ended, Evangeline turned to face the ODST squad and smiled a most menacing smile, one perfected over nearly a thousand years. "Well, it's time to complete your advanced training, Bravo-Six," she said. "Fall out to gather your arms and armor, then report back here in five minutes. Dismissed."

As the Marines filed out of the room, Chao moved up to sit in the second row of seats, draping her booted feet on the seat back ahead of her. "So you've trained nearly two thousand Marines to be mages as well as soldiers?"

The magicked vampire nodded, idly inspecting the fingernails of her left hand. "None of them match up to comparable levels of power as the Thousand Master, the boya, or even the two of us, but they're a force to be reckoned with, regardless. They'll certainly surprise quite a few Brute packs."

Chao raised her arms and clenched her fingers, watching with satisfaction as tiny sparks of fire energy flickered between her digits. She grinned. "It'll feel good to finally get some payback for everything the Covenant's done to us."

Evangeline nodded for a moment, then fixed her former classmate with a serious gaze. "You do know that it's true, of course," she said.

"The Covenant Civil War and the eventual Human-Sangheili alliance," the Chinese mage answered bitterly. "Yes, I know. As much as I don't care for it, there won't be any 'accidental burninations' coming from me." She clenched her teeth, resisting the urge to spit at her displeasure, but only just so.

The blonde vampire calmly and silently strode up to the row of seats Chao occupied, laying a hand on the synthetic armor covering her shoulder. "Even with the new mage units, we can't win the war without the Sangheili," she said softly. "Our allies from so many hundreds of years ago, they knew that we would live to see this age. This is the world, the future that they have entrusted us to. We've nothing but their memories left now, and we can't let them down by not using every means at our disposal to save the world."

Chao reached up her right hand, brushing her fingertips against the small, pentagon-shaped design sewn into her armor just beneath her left shoulder. She smiled faintly. "Yeah, you're right. Technically, we're still bound by the commitment we made as long as we draw breath, even though we fulfilled our allotted world-saving five hundred years ago."

"We bear the torch," Evangeline said with a nod. "A very wise woman once told me, no man can escape his destiny. Every era needs its heroes."

"But the Spartans are the hero of this age."

She scoffed. "The public heroes, maybe. But even in our days, when we were so famous, there were the heroes in the background, those who did as much to achieve victory as we did. This time, it's our turn. We'll be the background heroes, this time. We'll fight the unsung war."