(I'm going to try some PoV changes in this one! There's a lot more flashback than present day, but I just needed this short bit out of the way before I could continue on the big one. Also, sorry for the late-ness, I was away from any computer for a whole week and then I got smacked down with consecutive headaches, that was fun. But enough whining, I hope you enjoy!(Made a quick edit because I forgot Maine existed, whups. I may also re-write a bit of this because I'm not too happy with it)
I do not own Red versus Blue, Halo, or any other material that was not created for this story.)
Present Day, Grif
The moment Beck had walked out of earshot, presumably to talk to the Red team mechanic, Tex stopped describing the plan to them
"So do we all agree Beck's not going in"
"Wait, why?"Simmons asked "She's the one who knows what's going on, what if we need her help?"
"Right now, she has zero training in her head and I'd rather she not get ripped apart by bullets."
"But you'd rather we did?" pointed out Tucker
"You catch on quick."
"I won't stand for this,"Grif wasn't surprised when his CO went on to argue against the clearly logical point while somehow bypassing the fact the Freelancer didn't care if they were brutally slaughtered. "anyone under my command is skilled beyond belief. And she's held on this long right? Gotten away from that O'malley fella all by herself"
"Have you seen her fight? Right now most of her strategy is throwing shit or kicking people until she can run away."
"But when we first met her she managed to take me and Grif out, that counts for something" 'I'm not sure that's too much of an achievement'
"That's probably because she still had the AI in her head, and you guys are idiots. Which brings me to my next point. I don't know what she did to him to get Sigma out of her helmet, but I still wouldn't put it past him to try and pull something. Beck was terrified of him, and there's a fucking good reason for it too" Grif spoke up
"Yeah, we've already heard the horror story, his guy went nuts"
"Exactly, so the sooner we deal with O'malley, the sooner we can deal with Sigma. I know some guys who can take them off our hands." They turned back to the matter at hand and called Beck over.
"So are we moving out?" He was saved from speaking up when his teammate explained their silence instead.
"Well, we were thinking you'd sit this one out" Now that was wearing her helmet, it was harder to tell her emotions, but he was pretty fucking sure she disagreed with their decision.
"What? No way!"
"You've already got one AI locked away in there, I don't want to give him any ideas." Beck started moving her hands around in small motions, like she did when she was debating two options, he'd seen her do it before when they were trying to think up the worst possible superpower. She sighed,
"I'll stay, but if anything goes wrong-"
"Hey, we'll be fine" 'Probably just fucking doomed myself with that'
"You do know you've probably doomed yourself by saying that"
"The thought crossed my mind." They moved out, Caboose picking up the bomb because holy fuck that thing was heavy.
They were split into three teams, one to distract the gunner, one to take him out, the other to get the bomb inside. Guess which team his benevolent leader volunteered him for.
"Hurry up and shoot him already, what's taking so long?" He was yelling this while crouching behind a rock with Donut, occasionally returning fire. The shooting stopped. The teal soldier pulled his sword out of the minion's body.
"Ha! So much for leaving me behind, huh Tex"
"Dude, she's not even over here"
"Shut up, it was rhetorical" That's when the second team showed up
"Haha suck it minio- Hey, you stole my kill"
"Your fault for taking too long,"
"That's because Sarge though if we waited long enough, Grif would've been shot" An unhappy grumbling met this
"I knew we should've waited longer. Do you think if I shot him now, Beck would notice?" He was about to say how he was pretty sure one of the three other people standing would point it out to her when the other blue idiot came running over.
"I did not find an x. But I found Church! Quick, help me get him out of the computer" 'This'll be interesting, better than being shot anyways'
Years ago, York
Training had been hard that day, so the agent was relieved when lunch finally rolled around. He had grabbed a tray and saw North and Wash sitting next to the girl Carolina had told him about. All he knew was her name was Beck, and there was something up with her. He sat down at the table with them.
"Oh, um have you met Beck yet?"
"No, but I've heard she made quite the entrance." She shrugged and gave a small smile,
"Yeah, I'm still trying to work that out, York." She sure seemed a little off, she was saying things oddly, choosing her words carefully. A few moments passed and when the other three didn't pick up their conversation again, the two he did know made some lame excuse to leave.
York began glancing down at the girl who kept nervously looking at him, then when she didn't initiate any conversation, he went back to eating. She slid closer to him and held something out. He looked and it was an earbud. Those hadn't been used for quite a while, there were better ways of listening to your music, and he hadn't really seen a pair in such good condition.
"You, uh, wanna listen to some music?" She was holding an old music device in her other hand, 'Well someone's a collector'
"Sure, it's not like the conversation was really moving after half the guys left"
"Yeah, sorry, but I had something to tell you"
"Well then tell me" Beck rolled her eyes but he could see a hint of a smile, 'she warmed up to me quite quickly'
"Just listen to the damn music, it'll help break the ice. This is going to be a strange conversation" He finally put the earbud in, it felt odd, not like the earpieces on the headsets.
The young girl messed with the device and music came out. It was nice enough, he guessed. The drum bit at the beginning reminded him of the old style of music that was coming back in style as what "rebellious" kids listened to in some of the colonies, the guitar that picked up helped that thought. Then the lyrics started.
"Bitch in black, hard as stone. Need no friends, works alone." It continued on, following the old age rebellious theme going on. Nothing struck him as odd until it reached what was presumably the chorus.
"You can screw Neveda, mess with Maine, leave Hawaii in a puddle of pain. You can beat Virginia 'til she's down on the floor but if you Fuck with Tex, you'll be on your knees for sure. Motherfucker." The agent turned his head over to look at her, state names being used as people's names was a little too familiar. She was pointedly looking the other way, tapping her fingers on the table to the beat, the other earbud in her own ear. York listened a little more intently to the next lines, 'Texas, that name's reserved isn't it?'
"Advantage Texas; got that right, bet you boys sleep well tonight. Lick those wounds, nurse those sores, name's reserved and that's who for" 'Son of a bitch' "You got nine lives, she's got ten, after that she'll ride again. Bit of a badass anyone can tell, that crazy bitch is hell's angel" The next part was fast rapping, he barely caught what was being said, but what he understood was it was naming state's bad fates. The song finished up with the chorus and he took out the earbud and cautiously handed it to the girl who was obviously trying to judge his reaction,
"Well," she started, keeping her voice low "You've got a bit of a heads up, at least. I spent hours last night trying to find the best way to tell you guys. I'm not from this timeframe" 'Makes the tech make sense then,' "But I'm also not from this universe."
"Then just where are you from?" He could see her starting to stress over it,
"Um, sorry, this is the hard part. In my universe, you, and Freelancer too, are the backstory of a webseries I watched."
"So you know our future?"
"Yeah, if you want to put it like that, I guess I do."
"Are you going to tell me my fortune?"
"Uh, how about, if you're ever using paint guns in the training room, and your friends start using live ammo, take them out with your own paint gun. Don't go warn the person they're shooting at, she knows." 'That was a little too specific'
"Why, what happened?"
"It turns out they had a grenade and the only reason you made it out of there was because you were shot up with paint to harden the armor" 'She wouldn't warn me if that was all'
"So what went wrong"
"Left side of your face wasn't covered, your eye couldn't be saved. It's the damn left side that gets you shot later on." She flinched after saying that last part, probably hadn't meant to tell him he died.
"Well I'll be sure to use the gun then." He paused for a moment "Do the others know yet?" Beck let out a sigh
"The Director, The Councilor, Wash, and North already know. I still need to tell five more people who are here now, and then Tex when she shows up."
"Who're the five people"
"I'm about to go tell South, I need to tell Carolina and Maine, and then Wyoming and Connie"
"Well good luck with that, you'll probably need it." The conversation trailed off when Beck didn't respond, he attempted to reignite it, but Beck was clearly distracted by her own thoughts. "It was nice meeting you, Beck, guess I'll be seeing you around?"
"Huh?" She met his gaze "Yeah, you should, see ya 'round" He left her sitting there, seeing Wash moving back on over now he'd finished talking with her.
'Probably one of the strangest encounters yet, and we're fighting aliens' York did take her words to heart however. Particularly the part about his loosing an eye. So when they started asking him to volunteer for initial combat testing with a new arrival the next day, he refused their offer.
Earlier that day, Beck
Once she'd waken up from a pleasant dream, leisurely climbing a mountain and picnicking under the vast canopy of stars as the sun set, a soldier left the room and came back in with a few medical personnel. They took her blood, a few laughing when she held out her arm for it, instead using a pen-like object to take it from her neck, and checked the scars from the bullets. All but gone. They ran her over with a scanner to check for any differences since their first when she was unconscious. Then the doctors gave her a small tray of food for breakfast and sent her to wait for someone to pick her up. She was thoroughly surprised when it was Wash, of all people, that showed up.
"Oh, it's you" She quickly finished her meal.
"Is there a problem?"
"No! not at all, I was just expecting someone more... Official, I guess"
"They were going to, but they noticed you reacted better to me and North than you did the higher ups" Beck felt herself go red, 'Ah yes, a rather good social move on their part. Realizing you're an anxiety riddled kid when they're around'
"Yeah," She fiddled with the hem of the tee. "So you going to give me the grand tour?"
"Something like that, you've got a bit of paperwork you're going to need to do." She made an over dramatic sigh. He picked up a notepad next to the bed Beck was sitting on.
"Okay, first things first, full name," Beck crinkled her nose
"Are you sure "Beck" isn't good enough?" He looked at her for a moment. She threw her hands up "Fine, Don't laugh. Rebekah Maria Beckendorf. I prefer just Beck above all else." She paused a moment while he typed it in. "Couldn't they have just looked at my stuff? I know my full name's on at least one of my notebooks."
"That just brings up a bunch of legal problems, easier to ask you for it, than go digging and get into some major trouble" 'Well they do get into some major legal trouble later, but it's for a bit more than rummaged through stuff.' The rest of the form was filled out with ease, most of the questions she was utterly unable to answer, or perplexed by.
"Have any relatives moved into a moon colony, if so, which moon?"
"You realize in my time, people hadn't even landed on Mars yet, much less set up any sort of colonies"
"I'll guess the same goes for out of solar system colonies too"
Once they were done he took her to what looked like a normal workout room except for the large viewing platform that seemed to be everywhere.
"Y'know, I'm almost disappointed at the lack of future-ness this room has."
"It's on a spaceship, what more do you want"
"Good point" In the room a bunch of sciencey medicaly looking guys came over to her. They started attaching sensors to her forehead and various parts of her body while Wash explained it.
"So what they're going to do is measure your vitals and they're supposed to keep track of your muscle growth and all that while you're on here." They lead her to a treadmill and Beck began at a fairly leisurely pace.
"A bit more science experiment than futuristic, but I'll let it slide"
"Well" He glanced back down at the notepad "If you're looking for futuristic, after this it says to take you down to get armor. Tomorrow you'll go through initial combat testing"
"Really? That's a bit faster than I thought it would take" 'A lot faster actually, though I don't really see why they'd put it off, it still raises suspicion'
"It's a pretty efficient system. And you are a special case, it makes sense to try and get you out onto the field as quickly as we can." She accepted that answer and stopped responding as the officials cranked up the speed. In a way she was glad things we moving so quickly with the training. She couldn't wait to shake this organization up.