I blinked my eyes open. It was blurry but things came into focus. I was lying in the dirt, and I could see a destroyed Spectre and mutilated Brute bodies.
'You okay?' said Rinyo as I sat up.
'Yeah, I think so,' I said, wiping dust off my armour. 'Where's the Ghost?'
He pointed at a mangled chunk of purple metal with smoke pouring out of where the engine might have been. I followed Rinyo down a path. Up ahead, the canyon sloped down and turned right. We caught up to the rest of the group but kept behind them because they were firing at a Brute encampment. Most of them were taken out by explosive containers, and stragglers were easily dealt with by beam rifle shots. At the end of the stream was a small waterfall with two Jackal snipers waiting for us. We killed them and jumped down the waterfall into a small lake, about waist height (For Grunts, by the way). The Elites killed the first wave of Brutes and I stopped to look at one of their weapons. It was human, and it was long and black. The humans call it a shotgun I think, and I'd seen them do a lot of damage with it. So I picked it up. It was heavy, but not as heavy as the fuel rod cannon. Then I caught up with the group and ran ahead of them. As a door opened, two Brutes came through. I screamed and ran away, and the Arbiter killed one, but his weapon overheated and the other Brute punched him in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. That's when my quick thinking kicked in. I charged at the Brute, jumped on his head and pulled his eyes out. Then I fired the shotgun into his mouth and his brains splattered all over the ground. I stood on the headless Brute's chest and said, 'You call that a challenge?'
Everyone cheered and chanted, 'Grunty, Grunty, Grunty!'
'Grunty! Grunty, wake up! Grunty!' It was Torbei.
I looked around. The Brute was lying on the ground, but he still had his head, and the Arbiter didn't have a black eye.
'Wha--? What happened?' I said. Then I realised I had imagined everything again. 'Oh, wait…Aw no, it happened again!'
'Heh, just like with the rocket launcher that time,' said Torbei.
'Shut up,' I said.
I stood up and we followed the Arbiter through a Brute weapons depot. Inside were Covenant and human weapons, I assume kept by the Brutes as trophies. There were beam rifles, Brute shots, Brute plasma rifles, carbines and two human guns. The first one I recognised immediately. It was a rocket gun like the one that almost killed me on the first Halo. The second one I think is called a shotgun. I decided to take a Brute plasma rifle. The Arbiter took the rocket gun and some ammo and we continued through a door that led outside. We killed all the Brutes and Jackals, and the Arbiter easily destroyed a waiting Wraith with the rocket gun. Some enemies came through a tunnel nearby, including a Brute on a Ghost. Rinyo obliterated the Ghost with his fuel rod cannon, also killing the surrounding Jackals and most of the Brutes. The Arbiter slashed the remaining Brutes with his sword and ran into the tunnel. As he disappeared around a corner, I said to myself, 'I wish I was back at High Charity.'
I looked up at the sky. High Charity was orbiting Halo! But I could faintly see fire around it. I also saw something else. I saw a green haze surrounding the city, which could only mean one thing. Flood.
After a short while, a Phantom picked us up, leaving the Arbiter on his own.
Inside there were worried-looking Elites.
'Quiet, everyone,' said one. 'High Charity has been overrun by the Flood.' The squad gasped. 'We are low on reinforcements, and we are asking you to fight the parasite with us.'
'How 'bout no!' said an Elite, and threw himself out of the Phantom.
There was a long pause.
'Uh…you…you see that, young Grunts?' said the first Elite to us. 'That guy was just showing you…what not to do.'
He turned away, muttering something like, 'Sacrilegious coward,' then continued speaking to the squad. 'To make a bad thing worse, the Demon is also—'
'Who?' I said.
'The Demon. The Demon is—'
'It's Greeny. Not Demon.'
'No, it's Demon.'
'Greeny.'
'Demon!'
'Greeny!'
'Hey, hey!' yelled the Zealot. 'Stop arguing! Anyway, he's called the Master Chief.'
The Elite and I stared at him blankly.
'What the hell is a Master Chief?' I said.
'JUST SHUT UP EVERYBODY!' screamed Rinyo.
No one spoke for the rest of the trip.
