Duty and Obligation; Memories and Regret
There was a saying that existed within the military, a familiar parlance created to label the fickle and vindictive nature of reality. It was, regrettably, a phrase perfectly used to describe the utter irrationality of his current circumstances.
No plan has ever or will ever survive first contact with the enemy.
It could be said that at the moment he had no precise enemy, no true opposition in the way he was used to, but the spartan was not so certain that was as true as it had been the day before.
While asset denial had been performed successfully, that did not mean all went as he had predicted. In point of fact, it had gone perfectly pear shaped, or FUBAR as the more western soldiers in the UNSC dubbed such a disastrous situation.
Six ruminated in the warehouse office, pacing irritably within the closed confines as he struggled to devise his next course of action. He was more than tense; his nerves had been tied together and were currently being pulled apart by wild horses. The strain on his composure was immense, and it was only under the sheer power of his will that he did not do something he might regret.
And he could blame no one but himself.
The spartan paused midway through his seven-hundred-and-thirty-sixth consecutive circuit of the miniscule office space, noticed that his gauntlets were shaking, and suppressed his trembling with a heavy sigh. Impotent anger would get him nowhere, nor would wallowing in his mistake make it disappear. What's done is done. And it was time he dealt with his decisions.
Noble Six moved to the desk, lowering his considerable stature to peer through the boarded office window, and frowned when he noticed that his current irritant had not disappeared.
So… he was not delusional then.
Unfortunate.
To compound an already stressful predicament, both of his nuisances were now conscious, examining their barren surroundings with panicked eyes and muttering quietly amongst each other… conspiring and planning their alien machinations.
Noble Six's lips spilt into an unpleasant grimace.
He should have killed them. It would have been the most sensible decision given the events that transpired. Had he done as he would have been instructed if he was still in contact with his handler, he would not currently be facing such a catastrophe. The man was honestly confused. He had no such crisis of morality for the saurian creatures, and in a way he was at least justified in his choice in switching to lethal methodology. Unlike the kats, he had not heard mention of these creatures from online media, and unlike the felinoid species on this planet they spoke a language he could not comprehend. Factoring the knowledge that they had assaulted what he knew was a government compound, with the vague intent to secure the wreckage of his sabre, he was unwilling to take the risk that UNSC technology might transfer control to an even more enigmatic organization.
He had already killed to maintain his secret.
So why had he paused? What was it that stayed his hand from doing the same to the original procurers of the retrieved technology?
Flakes of plaster exploded through the air, sharp and deadly like shrapnel. Light, harsh and blinding, flashed inside the room. Voices raised in shock, their surprised utterings silenced by a deadly staccato of gunfire. A child screamed.
A woman wept, the sound loud and primal.
Unforgettable.
Noble Six banished the resurging memory with a shake of his head. Recollections of the past were no good to him here, were better off forgotten.
He composed himself, reining his focus back onto the present, where he was needed.
Right now he was facing a very real and very immediate problem.
One moment of mercurial irrationality, a second of indistinct hesitation; that was all it took to throw his already bare boned plan into absolute chaos. His sabre was destroyed, its advanced machinery now beyond study and reverse engineering, but now he had two hostages.
One step forward, a hundred steps back.
The spartan resumed pacing.
An indeterminate amount of time passed, most of it spent in fierce internal debate. The black operations operative could not, for the first time in many years, decide on his next action. The logical conclusion was to continue as planned, attempt to contact the UNSC or otherwise find a means off this planet.
But he was beginning to doubt the veracity of such a proposal.
"HEY!"
The spartan stopped pacing as a voice cut deep into his concentration, loud, effeminate, and noticeably displeased. Returning to the barred window, he looked past the wooden planks and down to the warehouse floor below. The female, her hands tied and her legs trussed, had managed to sit up, and was leveraging a thoroughly annoyed glare upwards.
"Whoever you think you are, you can't keep us here. I'm a police officer!" She yowled in warning. But her efforts had no effect. If she had thought to sound authoritative and intimidating, then she was more so the fool. From his position her declaration came out as pompous and dangerously ignorant.
What basis did she have to act so conceitedly? He was fairly confident that at the moment he was the one holding all the cards.
The male, a scientist from what the spartan inferred from his seemingly universal clothing, seemed far more aware of their standing, and made no such assertions or waived threats. He instead remained lax upon the floor, silent and anxious. And while at least one of them seemed aware of the gravity of their predicament, he could not deny that the loud mouthed feline was not entirely incorrect.
The spartan's grimace darkened.
He could not keep them here. The building was not only incapable of permanently housing captives, but he could not afford the risk nor had he any desire to play warden for an extended period. His position on this world was tenuous enough already that to exasperate it any further was simply foolish.
Something would have to be done.
Noble Six glanced down, to his hand resting upon the rifle laid across the desk. The sensors in his glove relayed information to his HUD indicator, displaying a graphic in the upper right corner informing him that he had 22 rounds remaining, the same magazine from the night before.
The spartan heavily considered reducing that count to 20.
He sighed, retrieved the MA37 from the desk, took a glance about the empty office, and departed the room silently.
"Hey asshole! I know you can hear me!" Felina called out once again, her voice trained during her time at the academy to reach a noise she knew could be heard from all the way up in the office loft.
"Lieutenant!" Dr. Maine hissed under his breath, the kat's muzzle twisted with healthy trepidation that his companion did not seem to possess. "I do not think it a wise course of action to antagonize our captor."
His plea, logical as it may have been, was ultimately disregarded.
Perhaps it was because of the countless wild situations she had been forced to deal with, maybe she was just growing used to these kinds of things. Felina didn't know for sure, but whatever it was, she sometimes did not react in a way that met expectation, did not have the same regard to the inherent dangers as most officers in her current predicament might.
Like right now, despite having been so close to death the night previous, she was, as of that moment, quite livid. Considering the effort taken, their katnapper should at least have the decency to not leave them sitting here for hours on end.
Godsdamnit.
She had to go to the bathroom!
"Stop hiding you bast-"
Her next fiery taunt, armed and ready to fire with extreme prejudice, died in her throat when she heard the warehouse office door unlock. She did not know what to expect, certainly someone quite large, she knew that much from experience. After all if they were tall enough to carry her around by the scruff of her neck like a kitten, you couldn't really call someone like that small. They also had to have been a he, a male whose voice sounded more like churning construction equipment than anything else. And while she tried to rationalize why a suspected alien might speak their language, she figured that wasn't really conducive to getting them out of their current situation. There were quite a few other things that were more important.
Other than those few identifying factors, that was all she really knew about their captor. Despite her best efforts and violent wiggling, she had not been able to catch a look at the person that had grabbed both her and the doctor, especially after he had grown tired with her struggling and clamped his cold metal hand around her neck in a vice-like grip. And since his gauntlet was large enough to fully encapsulate her throat she decided it was best not to press her luck.
That was warning enough for her. Just because the big bastard hadn't put something hot and deadly into the back of her head, didn't mean he didn't plan to. And while her first idea had been to play along until she could find a way to get herself and Dr. Maine away, several strength tests on the crazy zip-tie around her paws and ankles told her that no amount of effort would have her escape from her bonds.
Godsdamned alien technology.
Her next idea was probably more effective, but undeniably far more foolish. She wasn't sure if she should be grateful that yelling insults at their oh so generous host had finally born fruit. But when the door opened to the office upstairs, revealing the thing that had kidnapped them, Felina began to actually question the cleverness of her plan.
She remembered a few conversations she had with some of her friends in the force, usually after watching the typical sci-fi flick that popped up around the summer season. And she had a few friends outside of her work that enjoyed those unusual eastern mecha animations, the ones with the giant robots that either scrapped each other or fought off equally massive and dangerous aliens or various other mutant monsters that sold their quarterly margins.
None of that had prepared her for actually coming muzzle-to-muzzle with the real thing.
Sure, the metal golem thundering down the flight of iron stairs wasn't the same size of those colossal machines her friends excitedly raved about. But when that hulking metal figure was a full head and a half taller than the tallest kat you knew, and was armored in overlapping plates of impenetrable, fire blackened metal that bulked out their already enormous figure considerably, those kinds of doubts didn't really come to the surface of her thoughts.
It was becoming blatantly apparent as to how this individual had been able to walk away from that crash.
At that moment she was rather busy embarrassing herself. Even though conscious of the way the hinge in her jaw seemed to have popped out of place, she could not reel it back in because gods how did they make someone that freaking big?
The giant metal creature passed the last stair rung and crossed the short distance between himself and his captives, standing, no towering above them, enclosed in a hulking mech suit that bristled with previously unseen weapons that were as equally huge and intimidating as their owner, undoubtedly a great feat in itself considering the soaring dimensions and instinctive intimidation of the one who wielded them.
Felina had seen a lot of unusual things in her career as an enforcer, giant slime monsters and saurian beasts ripped from time to rampage aimlessly down Megakat Plaza, and as of last night those ugly lizard things could safely add themselves to the list of prejudicial bullshit forced upon the brave defenders of this besieged city, but this… this took the icing off the cake, grabbed the cake, and cast it violently upon the ground.
Anything she might have said in that moment was lost somewhere along the junction between her brain and her mouth. And instead of impressive snark in the face of impossible odds, it kinda fizzled off into a high pitched mewl, like a kitten, which was what she felt like when kneeling prostrate before this titan.
Why did aliens have to be so damned big?
Trussed up like a seasonal ham and disarmed thoroughly, she had already been feeling pretty vulnerable. But right then, as that huge alien loomed above her, its eyes concealed behind an impenetrable black visor, but undoubtedly locked onto her defenseless position, she realized just how irrevocably screwed they were.
"Uh… hello?" She mumbled dumbly after matching the alien's stare for several minutes, unsettled by the tapered, non-reflective faceplate of his helm and the fact that he made literally no movement as he mutely scrutinized her. It was… disturbing that someone that big could remain so utterly still. That should not be possible, nor was it fair that a creature already so inherently dangerous possessed yet another tactical advantage.
As if spurred by the sound of her voice, the alien switched from still as stone to driven action.
Felina watched in quiet bafflement, and then verbal panic, as he stepped passed her, roughly seized Dr. Maine by the collar, and started to drag the now violently distressed kat to the other side of the warehouse. It was blatant to both that whatever the alien's intent, it would not end well.
"HEY, LET HIM GO!" She screamed at the giant armored creature, straining ineffectively at her restraints, as if new motivation could ever prove enough to snap the shackles comprised of extraterrestrial alloy beyond conception.
"P-please don't hurt me. I'm just a researcher." The doctor babbled near incoherently as he was thrust cruelly against the wall. Maine's previous prattle exploded into a disjointed mess as the alien unholstered Felina's sidearm and jammed it into the back of his head.
Hissing in frustration, she frantically renewed her struggle to break free from the steel filament manacles, muscles flexing as she thrashed wildly, fighting harder than she had ever before to escape her bonds. "STOP… PLEASE!" She begged, supplicated, whatever she could, uncaring that she sounded so utterly pitiful as long as she didn't have to watch another kat die in front of her eyes, at the hands of her own weapon.
Neither of their pleas seemed to phase the armored creature as it dropped its hold from the Doctor's collar and grasped his neck, lifting the feline until he dangled several feet from the ground, the barrel of her handgun still pressed tightly against his skull.
"The aircraft…" The alien barked loudly, his voice nearly deafening inside the confines of the empty warehouse, shocking in the fact that he finally dained to speak, in so with a growling reverberation that struck primal fear into the two kats. It was a voice that did not promise death, but guaranteed it. "What is the extent of your knowledge regarding its operation?"
"I… what?" Dr. Maine wondered, driven to near delirium at the rapid degeneration of coherent thought in the face of mind numbing terror. His confused reply proved unsatisfactory, and their captor pulled back the gauntlet holding up the doctor, and slammed it into the wall with enough force to rattle the feline's brain.
"What have you learned?" He barked gruffly, his deathly tone an unspoken warning that to provide substandard information would not be without repercussion.
The Doctor, nose bleeding a profuse trickle of crimson fluid onto his clothing, was quick to formulate a more intelligible response. "Almost nothing!" He mewled nasally, wishing that his arms were free so he could tenderly rub his bruised muzzle. "What little we did understand and even what we didn't, was downloaded onto a portable storage drive inside the hanger where the wreckage was located. By now it has either been destroyed or recovered by the enforcers or whatever attacked the compound. I swear!" He winced, clearly expecting his face to be reacquainted with the wall.
A full minute transpired with no activity from their abductor, sixty seconds where Felina watched in uncertain fear and Dr. Maine trembled in wait for the death he all but expected.
The scientist instead uttered a short gasp as he was released, dropping painfully onto the concrete below him. But he dared not get his hopes up, watching the sidearm still clutched in the alien's left gauntlet with reasonable apprehension.
An indeterminable amount of time passed, where the alien remained motionless. Neither feline made any attempt to move, warry of the weapon the giant armored creature still carried, and the fact they were in no position to make an escape. To even think of overpowering their captor was laughable.
Really, what would they do even if they were not tied up?
Break their arms on his armor?
Then without warning the alien shifted into motion. Swiftly holstering the appropriated handgun, the metallic pistol adhering easily to the armor plate on his left thigh, he turned, leaving the doctor where he laid, and moved towards her. Felina eyed the hulking creature warily, her unease increasing dramatically as he unsheathed a small blade she recognized as her boot knife.
A thousand and one terrible images flashed rapidly across her eyes as she stared up into that unreadable visor of impermeable obsidian, and she could almost feel the sharpened steel digging into her throat, sawing through her larynx with an oxymoronic fusion of pitiless savagery and clinical efficiency.
She took a sharp intake of breath as he stopped and crouched beside her, expecting to be dealt the demise she could so easily envision. So it was then the high pitched clatter of metal on concrete hit her sensitive hearing and she watched in curious confusion as her dagger tumbled from his opened palm into reach of her paws.
Expecting some sort of explanation, some method to this new madness, she earned nothing as the giant metal golem stood up from his haunches and walked away. Everything about this screamed unusual, even more so than the already established fact that the thing in that armor was alien. His actions seemed disjointed, meticulously enacted yet thoughtlessly contrived. He was… paradoxical, a walking contradiction that baffled her with its terrifying unpredictability.
There was an unfathomable logic and confusion to his actions, their captor possessing terrifyingly precipitous decision making ability and no desire to linger on perceived formalities, even in this bizarre situation. More than that there had been a dangerous aura lingering in the air, as if they were sharing an enclosed space with a predator insecurely chained, liable to snap at the slightest provocation and break past its fragile restraints.
Her eyes followed him suspiciously, in partial disbelief that he would threaten their lives, then just up and leave them be with such surreptitious abruptness. But that seemed exactly what he intended to do, and within moments he was gone, disappearing through the warehouse door without a sound, and she noticed only in that moment that despite his encumbrance and stature, that he had not produced any noise outside of his deep baritone.
A shiver raced down Felina's spine as she wiggled closer to the blade that would secure their freedom. And while an endless expanse of questions raced across her mind, her biggest concern was wondering just how she was going to explain all of this to her Uncle.
"Don't worry Doc." She looked to the sniffling feline with an encouraging grin that she struggled to find amidst her shattered composure, as she placed her knife against her binding and started on the lengthy process of escaping her binds.
"I'll get us out of here."
As a matter of principal Callie didn't let anything surprise her anymore. In a world where near on a weekly basis she was forced to dodge abduction from a plethora of terrorists masquerading as supervillains and personally involve herself in complex, life threatening plots to save Megakat City, she could not afford to.
At least she had thought there was nothing left that could really startle her. But that morning, as she sat at her kitchen counter and flicked on the small television she had hooked up to the wall, Callie realized that there were still things that could completely one up her expectations.
"….attack on Megakat R&D by unknown assailants. While information is still coming in, we have confirmed reports that Dr. Elias Maine, lead researcher for the regional aeronautics program, and Feline Feral, an Enforcer Lieutenant and niece of our very own Commander Ulysses Feral, were not found in the aftermath and are now considered missing. Updates on the situation will be made following any new developments. This is Ann Gora Kat's Eye News."
Cereal sitting forgotten on her counter, Callie was already at the door to her apartment in the time it took for the channel to go to commercial. There were so many things she needed to do. She had to get in contact with the commander, ask Manx for permission to visit Megakat R&D, and maybe even give the Swat Kats a call. If there was anyone that could help her find Felina, odds were they could get it done, and do it faster than Feral could. As much as the kat hated them, there was no denying they were good at their jobs.
Bursting from the revolving doors at the entrance to her apartment building, she was already flagging down a taxi when her purse began to ring. Suspecting that it was probably the mayor calling her in for an early start to her shift, which would not have surprised her considering someone had to start running damage control and he was definitely not the kat for the job, she reached into her bag and answered the device as her taxi pulled up to the side of the street.
Glancing at the screen, she was somewhat off put to see that it was an unknown number, but answered anyway after a moment of hesitation.
"Callie Briggs, Mayor's aide… who is this?"
The knife spun in the air, the non-reflective metal a muted black as gravity dragged it down into the waiting grasp of the spartan-III. The blade rested there for only a moment before it once again lifted skywards in a rotation of movement that had been circulating consistently for the past serval hours, and was the only inclination of life from the otherwise motionless soldier.
The nervous tick was uncommon, and usually a sign that his patience had frayed and was on the precipice of violent action. Considering his monumental temperance in situations where most men would degenerate into incomprehensible sacks of jabbering flesh, it was an incredibly unusual impulse.
A near inaudible noise came from beyond him, and in a single moment he snatched his blade from the air and launched it from his gantlet with the velocity of a high caliber round.
Eleven and a half inches of diamond coated metal punctured through concrete in an explosion of blood and feathers. The tension in his body loosened as he recognized the corpse of his observer.
Noble Six eyed the length of his blade lodged into the speared carcass of a pigeon with a self-deprecatory sigh, allowing himself a single shake of his head as he realized the depth of his tension, sharper even then the knife that had tasted its first kill, not on a deadly adversary, but an overly curious bird.
He might have questioned the existence of familiar fauna on this world, if not for the fact he had long ago stopped searching for reason amidst the absurdities of this planet. He was no erudite scholar. He did not care about superfluous information. His only interest lay in anything pertinent to his immediate task.
So it was that the spartan retrieved his blade, wiped the blood from the span of black metal, and sheathed it into its holster as he returned to his perch at the edge of the highest building overlooking the harbor district.
The action appeared to be prudently timed, as his audio receiver detected the wailing of sirens and he watched as a cadre of police cars screamed into the warehouse sector with the screech of tires on asphalt. He studied the convoy of vehicles as they pulled to a stop beside the structure housing the pair of individuals that had once been his captives. As his thoughts returned to previous actions, he grimaced in irritation.
The risk he took was not as calculated as he would have liked, and was the first time in his career that he was not entirely confident in his decision. Allowing prisoners to walk away, especially those that were the only creatures on this planet fully aware of his existence, went not just against instinct, but simple common sense. The only argument he had in favor, was that the lack of general logic in this place necessitated nothing and insofar had only disproved his usual method of operation.
He had been trained to operate against threats that could always be resolved through elimination. If all else failed he could always fallback on the tried and true practice of killing anything that stood against his aims.
That was not true on this world.
The war against the Covenant was less than conventional. There was no diplomacy involved, no adherence to the standards of the redrafted Geneva Convention in 2163. It was with this consideration in mind that limited his actions so heavily, and he was forced to remind himself that he was not currently engaged in a conflict where anything and everything that was not human, was inherently an undeniable threat.
The zoom on his HUD was superimposed by a crosshairs graphic as he drew his rifle and it automatically synced with his display. And as the cat-like aliens of the municipal law enforcement agency emerged from their vehicles, he sighted in.
Noble Six scanned the squad of officers, searching for identifying markers or insignias that would ascertain the importance of the individuals he had released. On the fourth target he cocked a brow in subdued interest. In all his projections he had not predicted they would draw in the police commissioner himself.
While most things did not make sense here, he was at least able to recognize some form of ranking category, and knew that the large feline had to be the one in charge, if only as a correlation to his decorative dress uniform and chevron ornamented lapels.
At the sight of a commanding officer, Six was forced to suppress the desire to billet a round into his skull. The assassination of a command rank was high priority in the war, and he had undergone several covert operations to eliminate key personnel in the Covenant army.
But this wasn't the war.
The spartan reluctantly removed his finger from the trigger and readied to sit in for a long recon. From such a gaping distance his receiver would not be able to pick up any audio, but that was largely inconsequential. Now was a good time as any to learn how to lip read the local parlance through alien jaws.
"Are you certain that this is… accurate?"
"I've never fudged a statement before. And I think right now would be a pretty poor time to start." Felina replied somewhat sardonically, her tone indicating exactly what her opinion was on that assertion. When it came to questioning her character, the kat didn't take crap from anyone, not even family.
"I see…" Her uncle nodded hesitantly, and while hesitation was anathema to the Feral name, considering the current situation, at the moment such a lapse in composure could be waived off. "With both yours and Dr. Maine's testimonials acting collaboratively despite separate inquires, and no reason to question either of your mental faculties, I have no choice but to accept your reports at face value for the moment."
The commander looked away briefly, his eyes focused on the doctor as his broken snout was attended to by an EMT. Flashing strobes of blue and red light splashed against the grey walls of the warehouse buildings around them and tinted the environment in an alternating colorscape of police hues, and he could hear the thunder of boots on concrete as squads of Enforcers combed through the docks in search of something he was not sure he wanted to find.
Ulysses Sighed, a weighty defeatism in his tone that was just as alien to Felina as the creature that had captured and suddenly released her.
"I fear that the situation has evolved beyond our ability to properly contain."
"Uncle?" Felina gasped in surprise. No matter what insanity befell Megakat City, not the Pastmaster's primeval abominations, nor Dark Kats enigmatic machinations or the most violent of the metalikats crime waves, she had never heard him admit that there was anything he and the force could not handle.
Her uncle shook his head, and in that moment she could see the uncertainty in his eyes that still baffled her. "Felina what you have described to me, of the way this creature has conducted itself and what manner of equipment and weaponry it possess, is nothing like we have faced before. Whatever this thing may be, alien or otherwise, it is not a criminal. It is a soldier, a soldier with an unknown mentality that has an adherence to rules and directives that we cannot hope to understand. Dr. Maine says it crashed on our planet. That means it is stranded here on an unfamiliar world with no means of contacting its superiors and no way of returning to its people."
The enforcer commander turned his head to look at the city in the backdrop behind him, a forest of dense concrete trees and a bustling population that would appear as nothing but a threat to a creature from the stars. "It is alone. It has nothing to take comfort in other than its training and its will to survive. And you say it was not only able to infiltrate a heavily guarded research facility, but combat several other unknown creatures, destroy any and all evidence of its starship, capture yourself and the doctor, and was capable of making its egress through the chaos without being noticed. The fact it interrogated Dr. Maine to discover the depth of their research into its ship, and seemed willing enough to kill to maintain its technology out of our paws means it is terrifyingly capable, even in its current environment."
His gaze turned back to his niece, deathly serious. "It has only been four days since it crashed on this world and look at what it has already been able to accomplish. We are not equipped to handle a situation of this magnitude. Our job is not to keep the city safe from existential threats."
"Who else can do it, Uncle?" She demanded. He was right about a lot of things, but that didn't mean that was good. In fact that was very, very bad. "If you are right about this alien and the military gets involved, that would only be an explosive escalation. So far he hasn't killed a single kat. Despite everything he let me and Maine go. Uncle, he can speak our language! That means he can be reasonedwith. This is a crucial opportunity we can't miss. We have to deal with this before the military arrives, while we still have a chance to stop things from spiraling further out of control."
If the military were to become involved there was no telling how badly all of this would end. And after everything she had seen from this alien, she knew there would be no way to avoid significant bloodshed.
A lot of kats would die, which meant she had to do everything she could to prevent that from happening.
"Uncle…" She spoke carefully. "Let me handle this."
Considering what she asked him, it was no surprise that he lost his composure.
"Felina, are you out of your mind? After everything we talked about you want me to send you after this thing? It almost killed you!"
"But it didn't, Uncle." She cornered the argument. "I don't think it wants to hurt anybody. I think we need to give it a reason to not want to start killing. You don't hunt someone who thinks they're being hunted. If the military mobilizes against him he'll respond as any soldier would when pursed by foreign nationals. I'm a police officer, and he's smart enough to know that. More than that we've already met, admittedly not on the best of terms but I think I have the best chance at a peaceful resolution. I just need the green light, Uncle. Please."
Ulysses Feral was conflicted. There was no doubt that he trusted Felina more than other kat under his command. Family sentiment aside, she was smart, courageous, dedicated and highly capable. Regardless of what tabloids might print, she had earned her position, and not based on any suspected nepotism. Any kat with a decent head on their shoulders would be able to tell that through her accomplishments. But this… he feared this was a task beyond even a feline of her ability.
And yet as he looked into the unrelenting determination in her eyes, he knew that it would be of little use to deny her this. She would find a way to do it herself regardless, she always did.
He sighed in reluctant resignation.
"Very well, if you really think you can do this. I will allow you to head the investigation. On my part I will see what I can do to forestall any military action. Gods willing we might be able to salvage something positive from this damned mess."
"Thanks, Uncle. I swear I won't let you down!" Felina declared happily, enveloping the older kat in a brisk embrace before quickly pulling away.
Ulysses subdued the desire to smile at his niece, though she undoubtedly noticed the slightest curl at the corners of his lips. It was not his fault that she could so readily remind him of the young little furball that had loved to spend hours talking his ears off about the latest and greatest in enforcer technology. She had been an unusual child, but with their shared interest he had not minded that at all.
Now he just wished that his decision would not cost him someone that he cared dearly for.
"Yes, yes of course, I have no doubt you will prove yourself as capable as ever." He assured her, clearing his throat with a fastidious bluster and stepping back to reaffirm his composure before any of the other officers could remark on it.
There was also, one last thing to address. "However, putting in mind past events it is best if you spend a day or two off duty. After what you have endured I imagine you might need a break. When you come back I will have a document outlining what resources will be allocated for your operation."
"Of course, Sir." She saluted sharply. "I have no complaints about that." And truly she didn't. After dealing with that alien, a few days to herself sounded absolutely fantastic.
Nodding to her, her Uncle finally dismissed her with a wave and a departing farewell as he transferred his attention to the current deployment. Felina watched as he crossed the thin road to a pair of sergeants consulting a map spread out over the roof of a squad car.
She knew, deep down in her heart, that no matter what plan they produced, they would not find their target. He… well thinking on what she and her Uncle discussed and what she had seen, she was not sure anyone could find someone like that unless he allowed them to.
But that wasn't her problem. Not yet anyways. It was time for her to take a step away from all this and after a glorious kat nap at her apartment, and maybe a movie to take her mind off what happened, she might try and get a head start on her objective.
With thoughts in mind of returning home, she turned her back on the hive of clustered activity consuming the warehouse district and made to rendezvous with her friend, who she was confident had more than a few questions she wanted answered.
Feline found her friend, and a rather impatient taxi driver, parked outside the police cordon sectioning off the entrance to the docks. The tawny fur and dark pink uniform of her companion was visible in the blinking emergency lights atop the pair of cruisers, and Felina smirked when she saw the deputy mayor, deep in discussion with the officers stationed there.
And while it was clear they had little information to give, and even less they wanted to divulge, the tone of the conversation was nothing if not cordial. Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs was a well-known figure to the enforcers, and was usually closely involved in most operations in a roll similar as to that of their commander. It was often a topic of bemused amusement to some of the older kats on payroll, and was usually preceded with amused japes that there really was only one mayor in town, and they certainly didn't spend their days idling in Megakat City's varied golf courses.
Felina flagged Callie down with a happy wave of her paw as she trotted up to the wooden barricades, calling out excitedly as she approached.
"Hey Callie, long time no see."
The other feline, bright green eyes widening behind goggle-like glasses and muzzle splitting into a winning smile that could be found plastered on more than a few magazines about affluent citizens, seemed both glad and relieved to see her.
"Felina, I was just about to begin worrying about you." She scolded her friend playfully as she watched the police kat smoothly slide over the blockade and make her way over. "Your call was nothing if not bewildering."
"Sorry about that, it wasn't really something I could say over the phone." Felina offered in excuse as she gestured towards the taxi, the driver perking up slightly at the idea that he could finally get a move on.
After all, as important as his current faire may have been, business was still business.
"I'll explain it when we're a little more comfortable, maybe over dinner? After all I've been through I've worked up quite the appetite."
"As long as you pay..." Callie retorted humorously, drawing up a wider grin as she gestured to the yellow cab behind her. "Maybe then we'll be even for the cost of driving all the way out here."
Felina shrugged, willing to concede the stipulation with little fuss. "Fair's fair I suppose." Entering the back of the taxi, she smiled knowingly as Callie joined her. "After all, I think I finally have a story that will trump your little misadventure in Megakat Tower."
"Really?"
"Oh I think so. One could say my story is out of this world."
Ignoring the quizzical look Callie shot her way, Felina settled into her seat and sighed in relief, the stiff seat cushion in the car far outstripping the cold and hard concrete that had been her bed last night. Rubbing at the cramp in her neck, she supposed there was one thing to look forward to out of this mess.
Yeah… she was really excited about that time off.
Watching the yellow vehicle until it disappeared around a hill juncture at a bend in the road, Noble Six stowed his rifle and typed a brief note into his TACPAD in preparation for the index he intended to file of suspected key individuals in the local power structure. Considering his current instability, any pertaining information he could compile was vital to his survival. Knowledge was power, and at the moment it was the only power he had.
His training and equipment would only be able to carry him so far on this world. As loathe as he was to accept the realization, guns would not secure him the victory he was so accustomed to. Disappointing as that may be, he was not yet overly concerned. Of all the spartans in his peerage he may have not been the fastest or the strongest, or even the most psychologically stable, but where the others had died, he was revealed to possess the most important quirk. Above everything he was a survivor, and it was his increased capability for adaptation that had interested ONI.
If neither strength nor speed would secure him a tenable footing, he would just have to find some other way to stay alive.
What methodology that was however, yet remained to be seen.
As he did with his armaments, the spartan-III put away his deductive reasoning and scaled down the side of the building overlooking the docks, quickly navigating the fire escape latter before it buckled underneath his weight. Having surrendered his safe house, he would have to discern another location to make his own. That in itself would undoubtedly prove to be a difficult task. With a city as densely populated as this one, he could not rely on any possibilities in the interior. The dockyard had served well in that regard, but now that it was swarming with the local police force it was quite literally the last place he wanted to be.
The heavy weight of his boots striking the dirtied concrete of the alley under the metal stairs of the fire escape, Noble Six consulted the nav system in his TACPAD as he digitally scouted for his next temporary residence.
On the bottom left corner of his HUD, as his motion tracker conducted its next sweep, several contacts lit up in bright white eight or so meters to his left.
Quickly shifting his mass low, he ducked behind a trio of silvery, cylindrical trash bins near the mouth of the side street. In a moment the blade sheathed on his shoulderplate flashed in the air, the armored digits of his hand curling around the hilt as he peered from the shadows. The spartan was grateful in that moment that the more vivid silver polish of his armor had been charred into a charcoaled black that blended well into the dim night and shadowed alley.
It occurred to him in that moment that he might have been being dramatic, but he disregarded the notion. He had been seen by a local official, and no doubt an APB had been issued bearing his description, and it was not one easily overlooked.
He had let the officer and the scientist live, and it was time to pay the price. His actions would only seek to hamper his already hindered mobility.
With his augmented vison, and the minor light pollution coming from the pallid yellow street lights outside the backstreet, the spartan was able to discern the make and measure of the citizens of this city that decided to roam about at this late hour.
So it was that he felt his disdain roil and bubble inside him as his audio input filtered in low masculine muttering and feminine high pitched whimpering.
"Don't try anything funny, girl." The order was growled from the throat of a large, scarred kat, the sleeveless shirt on his torso and the tattered jeans wrapped around his legs, even the leather boots tucked into his pants, all of it was just so horribly… cliché.
The gang of various street toughs around him invariably followed the same timeworn, over-utilized formula, dressed in mismatched leathers and brandishing a varied arsenal of street weapons; lengths of rusted pipe, small switchblades, overly large knives, whatever it was bargain-bin criminals could scrounge up on demand.
The victim, as it always was in these situations, fit the scenario to the T, some poor girl that wandered out late at night at the wrong place and the wrong time. It was a tale as old as time, yet no less grim for it. Aliens, it seemed, had all the same problems as the human race.
She looked young, as far as Six could tell considering the unfamiliar physiology. Her eyes, a bold dark blue and visibly terrified, tried to keep all of her assailants within sight at the same time as her paws clutched tightly to the little black purse hanging from her shoulder.
"Please… don't." The female pleaded, her voice hardly above a whisper as she tried to argue for her freedom. The effort was pointless, she knew that, the would be rapists knew that. Six, crouched behind the trash bins, knew that as well.
He also knew that this was not his problem.
The blade in his gauntlet returned silently to its home and he turned about slowly. It was unfortunate for her, but it was not his prerogative to involve himself in every crime on this city's streets. If it were, he wouldn't be able to cross a kilometer before he was bogged down. To compound that fact, he was in alien, possibly hostile territory, to do anything that would attract any more attention to himself was not just stupid, it was suicidal.
As a man who just recently contemplated his survivalist nature, he was not so foolish as to make a decision that would disprove the notion.
At the mouth of the alley, Six consulted both directions down the street, seeing not a soul in sight down either road. If he was lucky, he might be able to make a break for the forest again, maybe set up a little camp he could use until he came up with a better plan to get of this rock.
A piercing scream of mortal terror stabbed into his musing, and the rip of fabric was audible even from the distance he had put between himself and that which he left behind him.
Don't do it. He thought to himself, the teeth in his jaws grinding as they clacked together tightly.
Don't look back. The spartan's lips split apart, his mouth twisting in disgust.
It was not his problem.
He shouldn't get involved.
What mattered the life of some alien he didn't even know?
What good would it do for him to stop one crime when there were a thousand others being perpetrated in the night?
It was not his problem.
It would never be his problem.
"GODS, SOMEONE HELP ME!" The girl shrieked, her deafening scream overshadowing the leering remarks of her attackers.
It was a familiar sound, a human sound.
The dust settled, the bodies still cooling after the heated exchange of weapons fire. Several ONI operatives cleared the site, combing through the corpses and scanning for IDs. The spartan stepped over the broken wrecks of humanity, scanning the apartment for targets as they set about their work.
One of the innies was still alive, a young woman, pale faced and red haired, screaming over the body of a child, his still features somewhat emulative of the one who held him so fiercely. The home had been a staging ground for the latest series of assaults on local UNSC installations. It had taken weeks to gather the Intel for the op, and now they could finally reap the rewards.
The spartan glanced to her as she kept screaming, the sound endless and exhaustive as she cradled the dead child in her arms. The other operatives ignored her, unarmed and not a threat, they instead combed through the terminals and paper records scattered about the apartment.
Leaving them to their work, Six watched as the woman continued with no sign of stopping. It was a visceral noise, the bare declaration of a heart that had been utterly destroyed. It rose and fell in pitch, but did not stop, a keening wail that dug into his mind with its eternal horror.
It needed to stop.
The harsh rattle of an assault rifle filled the air, and then finally there was quiet.
The spartan, despite every instinct, against every hardcoded desire, looked back.
Her plea unanswered, the gang of thugs had descended upon her like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy. She fought and struggled, her hands flailing, claws bared to cut anything within reach, but it was little use against so many. They had her pinned against the ground, their strength more than the match for a single young girl.
The leader, a vicious smirk of dark hunger on his muzzle, straddled her waist, grabbed at her chest, and pulled. Her shirt, made of cheap cloth, tore easily, and the ravening gleam in the gangers eyes brightened as her breasts were exposed.
His intent was clear, and her screams rose in volume before they stuffed her mouth with the tattered remnants of her clothes. They had silenced her screams.
And something inside the spartan snapped.
He descended upon them with a rage bordering on the cusp of madness. There were six targets between him and his objective.
It did not take more than twelve seconds to eradicate them.
The spartan charged into the fray, the blackened hulk of his armor little more than a shadow as he grabbed the first feline and crushed him between the adamant solidity of his titanium breastplate and the unforgiving masonry of the nearby wall.
Six's visor splashed with red fluid, and he felt the body in his grip crumble. Letting the broken remains fall as he stepped away from the cracked mortar and brick, he turned and launched his fist in the same motion, his curled gauntlet knocking a kat's head clean from his shoulders.
The spartan stepped through the fountaining geyser of blood, grabbing the feline nearest to him. His hand clamped tight, crushing the ribs in his grasp as he raised the alien up into the air with one hand and smashed him into the concrete with enough force that he burst upon impact.
There was no time for any of them to react, and he snatched the next before they had even been able to process what was happening. He crushed the skull that wandered into his reach, pinkish ooze and shards of bone seeping from between his fingers as he stepped forwards and lanced his boot into the chest of the next. Organs exploded out from the kat's torso as his greave displaced the feline's vitals.
Viscera leaking down the narrow contours of his armor, he stepped over the piling bodies, falling upon the last of his foes with all of the hate and rage that had been festering inside him after recalling a decade of half-forgotten truths. His fists rose and fell with rapid strikes as he savaged the target of his ire, yet it was only seconds before his gauntlets met concrete and not flesh, and it was a moment longer before he realized this and rose from his hunched posture, taking an uncertain step back as his higher function returned to him with a tepid slowness.
All he saw was red, but that was easily fixed as he wiped an armored hand across his faceplate. A glance at his appendage, and a further examination of his armor, revealed that he had drenched not only his visor in the spilled vitae of his enemies, but the entirety of his Mjolnir as well.
A more intensive look at his surroundings revealed to him the full extent of the consequences found in his loss of control. There was only one other person here that was not torn apart, and it was the shell-shocked female huddled against the nearby wall, the black pitch of her fur sodden with shed blood and bits of flesh, and she stared at him with wild eyes. The alley around them was a horrid hellscape, as if he had fed the bodies through an industrial wood chipper.
Noble Six remained motionless amidst the wreckage pf his destruction, his mind struggling to reconnect strings of thought that had been abruptly severed. Amid the tattered tangles was a realization.
The spartan had lost control again.
It'd been a while since that last happened.
But that was not the worst of it.
This was more than a mistake. This was an utter lapse of discipline that he could not have afforded. Something like this…. he mused as he glanced about at the carnage, would not be overlooked. There would be an investigation, and if the woman went to the police, they would know who did this, and that if nothing else would be detrimental to his survival.
The choice was again obvious, kill her and there would be no witness. But that would defeat the point of his excursion, and would only worsen what was already a poorly handled situation. He should not have killed them. It would not have been difficult to subdue six lightly armed individuals.
But what he had seen, the senseless depravity… and the trigger of his memories.
Something had to give, and it was unfortunate that it had to be his reason.
This would not end well.
"Thank… t-thank you." A timid voice incurred upon his thought as he tried to figure out where to go from here. The female kat, while he stood there debating, had regained her senses and approached him.
The spartan glanced down to her, the feline hugging her chest to cover her nakedness as she looked up to him with a frightened, but hopeful expectancy. Her torn clothing was stained in blood and the crimson fluid was spattered all over her, but that did not seem to stop her from wanting to acknowledge her savior.
Six did not answer her immediately. He doubted she would appreciate it if he told her he did not want her thanks, that saving her life was a mistake, nothing but a worrying lapse in judgment. More than that he did not know what he would even say.
What did one say to an alien after murdering six of its species in a fit of blind rage?
Impressively, the young female took his silence in stride, spending that time tending to her appearance and gathering what little of her belongings that were still recoverable, that is to say not thoroughly soaked in blood or other things more gruesome.
After she had finished, and he still had yet to speak, she seemed to mull something over, and he watched in subdued fascination as she turned to him again.
"Would you…" She began hesitantly, her voice still hoarse from screaming as she paused to recollect herself. Taking a moment to visibly rearrange her thoughts, she spoke again shortly, this time with a sliver of conviction. "I… I don't live that far away. Could you maybe…"
The spartan, lost on what he had left, what he could recover after he had fucked up so monumentally, only nodded in silence. Whatever it was she wanted, all he really had left was find a way to make what he had done meaningful.
The idea of killing her now was… distasteful.
AN: So I think this chapter really earned the M rating for this fic, and the topic of the latter portion was definitely a step outside of my comfort zone, but it was needed to advance a concept for the plot. And in so I believe the title of this chapter is fairly reflective of its content, outlining Six's internal struggle with the nature of duty and the desire for what's right. His past is haunted by his strict adherence to his role as a soldier, and the regrets he carries with him because of that. And it is these memories and regrets that interfere with his obligations. The concept for this story will be largely based around Six's struggle to decide for himself what is right when there is no longer someone to feed him their own beliefs. Noble Six in this story is a somewhat different spartan then he is in LOTP, a slightly different past with a slightly different drive.
He wants to return home, and his greatest trial is to find a way to do that, that does not compromise his integrity. Meanwhile various parties with interests seek to interfere, whether on purpose or through happenstance. Hopefully this story will prove as interesting to you readers as it is to me.
In other news I hope the length of this chapter is satisfactory, the last few have been a little shorter than I would have liked. Progress on LOTP continues, however slowly, and Faded light is also on its way to another chapter release, though I'll try and get Legacy out first since it has not been updated in quite some time.
Thanks again as always and I hope you have enjoyed my idle interest.
Keep the faith!
Drake
