Stray Dogs

"So how does it feel to be a war hero again, Marcus?"

Dominic Santiago grinned at his friend, Delta Squad had just received their commendations for 'saving the world' with the Lightmass Bomb offensive.

"Same as when I was a convict." Marcus Fenix growled, cranky as ever. He was at the stage when a medal really didn't make up for all the lives lost in the fight, especially when the four years he'd spent in Jacinto's maximum security was still fresh in his mind.

A moment later and the Sergeant felt a punch on the back of his shoulder and Augustus Cole almost jumped on his back with his usual enthusiasm.

"Lighten up, baby!" the huge black man bellowed, "The Cole Train sees some easy cruisin' ahead!"

"We did just save the world," Came the cynical voice of Damon Baird as he appeared next to Dom, "They should give us a big fat leave."

"Sorry to disappoint you all, but Command already has a new assignment for you." The men turned to face the speaker; Anya Stroud coming towards them down the corridor. Marcus' expression mellowed when he saw her - minutely.

"Hey Anya."

"Marcus." She beamed, then her expression sobered. "I'm sorry to have to cut your leave short before it's even started," she tried to soften the blow by smiling slightly as she said; "You're Command's new golden boys."

"Great," Baird muttered, "I think I'd have preferred the vacation…" Dom elbowed him in the ribs to shut him up. Marcus scowled at him, then turned to Anya again.

"What do they want us to do?"

Anya glanced down at the data-slate in her hands, tapping the screen with a stylus. "There's reports of something interfering with the Tac Com in this area of the Vidandear metropolis." She showed them the slate displaying the relevant information.

"Is it a Seeder?" Marcus grunted.

"No, it's not like that. The signals aren't being blocked, it's more like they're being crossed. Squads and King Ravens passing the area have experienced transmissions that haven't come from us or any of our people. Command are worried if it's Locust, and we can hear their chatter, they can hear ours. They want you to go and check it out."

"Course," Marcus nodded, "We'll get on it." He heard Baird groan quietly from behind, but pointedly ignored him. Anya meanwhile, nodded and left them.

"I don't believe this…" Baird muttered mutinously once she was out of sight, "We just saved the freakin' world and they're sending us out before we've even had a chance to sleep…"

"Yeah, it sucks man," Dom agreed, but in a much better mood then the blonde, "But that's what we get. When're we shipping out Marcus?"

"Right now." Came the gruff reply.

And not long after, the four members of Delta Squad had boarded a King Raven and were flying straight towards the once thriving metropolis of Vidandear. Cole, who had never done well with motion sickness, sat with his head between his knees feeling sick, while beside him Baird edged as far away as the seat allowed.

"Awww man, I feel like I'm gonna barf…" the black Gear moaned.

"If you're gonna blow chunks Cole, at least turn the other way." Marcus muttered across from the ex-Thrashball player. Keeping his head between his knees, Cole waved a hand vaguely.

"Don't worry, baby, the Cole Train always makes it through."

"Just keep breathin', man." Dom said, attempting to be helpful.

"Yeah, yeah…" the chopper bounced with some particularly nasty turbulence and Cole went faintly green.

"Oh God, please don't hurl." Baird moaned. To Delta's Locust and tech expert, the flight to Vidandear couldn't end soon enough.

Mercifully though, the helicopter reached Delta's destination before Cole had a chance to empty his stomach and once his feet were again on solid ground, his sickness evaporated and he became his usual over-enthusiastic self.

"Just show me the Locust, baby!" he yelled.

"Actually," Baird put in, his tone verging on superciliousness, "Vidandear is one of the quieter places where Locust activity is concerned. The orbital weapons used after E-Day makes it hard from them to come up here." Cole looked downcast as his chances of getting to blow away some of the ugly-ass mutants were severely reduced. "Sorry, man."

"Keep your eyes peeled," Marcus growled as the group set off through the half-ruined and dilapidated streets, "With our luck, today's the day the Locust decide to come up…"

The Raven had dropped them just outside the area where the most interference activity had been reported, but it became instantly obvious when Delta entered the hot zone as immediately the squad Tac Com buzzed with white noise and then a voice filtered through.

Base, this is delta omega gamma, six, three, and eight, we have Gears on the approach, please advise.

The voice was a young male, and though the transmission sounded almost military, the speaker was obviously a civilian, a Stranded.

"Keep moving." Marcus warned in a low, gravelly voice, "Don't give them any sign we know they're there."

This is Alpha Leader, I got you Dogs, what direction are they coming in?

The answering voice was female and had a subtle tone of authority, obviously she was in charge of whatever militia these Stranded had cobbled together.

Heading towards the north gate, what should we do?

Trail them, keep an eye on them, but don't open fire. Repeat do not open fire, we don't need that sort of attention.

Copy that Alpha Leader. Stray Dog Six over and out.

Abruptly the communiqué cut off, and the members of Delta glanced at each other, still moving at the same pace they had been before they had intercepted the transmissions between these 'Stray Dogs'.

"Well they're not Locust, at least." Dom murmured. "I didn't know there were any Stranded out here…" It was obvious that his mind was on Maria and if these Stranded had seen her.

"Hrm." Marcus grunted non-committally.

"Whadda we do, baby?" Cole asked, miraculously keeping his voice low enough that the watching Dogs didn't hear him. Marcus was silent for a while, then.

"We keep going, find out what we can about these Stranded." No one argued with him, and the four Gears kept moving.

After a while they reached what was obviously a fortified gate to a rather small Stranded camp. Unlike the previous Stranded they'd come across where the gatekeepers were sat above the door in clear view, the guards of this gate were behind a couple of sandbag barricades. One had a Lancer, the other a Longshot, both obviously scavenged, and both pointing at the approaching Gears.

Standing infront of the solid wall of metal that formed the gate, obviously waiting for them, was a rather short figure obscured by some kind of black, hooded poncho. He or she was armed with a Locust Hammerburst, and didn't look friendly. The figure spoke as soon as the Gears were near enough;

"Your kind aren't welcome here."

The voice was blunt, female, and young; only mid to late twenties, and a sense of familiarity nagged at both Dom and Marcus at the sound of it other then the fact she had been the voice of 'Alpha Leader'. Ignoring the sensation Marcus stepped closer, hefting his Lancer in a way that wasn't threatening, but made it clear he could be at a moment's notice. The young woman's gloved hands tightened on the Hammerburst; she had recognised the subtle signal.

"We're not here to pick fights." Marcus told her, "We just wanted to know what was crossing with our Tac Com."

"Well now you can go back and tell the COG it was just some Stranded." The young woman replied with bitter shortness.

"Hey, enough with the attitude." Marcus growled. He was so sick and tired of getting absolutely no respect without having to work his ass off for it, and he wasn't about to let some brat talk to him like this. The young woman was silent for a moment, and then she was right up close to him and they would have been nose to nose if she hadn't only just come up to his chest in height.

"Wrong, Gear." She snarled softly at him, "This is my turf, and I don't have to do a damn thing for you. So get the hell out." With which the young woman spun on her heel and made to re-enter the Stranded camp. However before she could take more then one step, Dom was unable to ignore the nagging sense of familiarity any longer and stepped past Marcus, closer to the hooded girl.

"Do I know you?" the Latino asked the young woman quietly, his dark eyebrows drawn together over brown eyes. Though he couldn't actually see the young woman's eyes, he sensed her gaze on him when she paused and the hooded face glanced over her shoulder. There was a silence.

"Why would a Gear know a Stranded."

"Take off the hood."

Another pause, and then, instead of blatantly refusing as Marcus and the others had expected, the girl mutely did as she was asked; tugging down the thick black hood to reveal a pale face shaded beneath a camo coloured cap. The young woman had long dark hair in a thick rope plait, and eyes the colour of green and blue ice.

The face was different, but Dom instantly recognised those eyes.

"Muse?" He said the name as though hardly daring to believe it. "Is that really you?" The young woman's expression however, betrayed nothing one way or the other; not recognition of the Gear before her, nor confusion as to why a stranger knew her name. Dom however, had a huge grin on his face. "Muse, it's me, Dom."

There was a silence, and then in a quiet voice she murmured;

"I know who you are…"

Before Dom even had a chance to be confused by her odd tone, Muse had suddenly turned back to the Gear, and the barrel of a Snub pistol was pressed to his forehead.

"I should blow you brains out, Dominic Santiago." She growled, her eyes burning with a complicated mixture of emotions that didn't seem to be sure of themselves; hate, fear, anger, misery, hopelessness, betrayal… The rest of Delta Squad had their guns instantly trained on the Stranded girl, but neither she nor Dom noticed that as all their attention was focussed on the other.

"I tried to find you at Jacinto." Dom said calmly - astonishingly calmly for one that had a gun to his head.

"Jacinto?" Muse snorted, then her voice dropped to a furious whisper. "I didn't even make it to Jacinto, none of the refugees you left me with made it. The convoy was attacked by the Locust," Her voice trembled with emotion, caught between rage and upset, "And they killed… they killed everyone, all except a bunch of kids not even in their teens, and half of them weren't even in double digits!"

She was breathing hard now, the emotions she'd obviously kept locked up all this time were welling up and breaking free; unpredictably rising in a fury, only to come crashing down again in guilt-ridden misery… and all because of Dominic Santiago…

Around them, the other members of Delta Squad slowly lowered their Lancers. Somehow, they knew that this Muse wouldn't pull the trigger no matter how distressed she became. Her fury seemed to ebb and flow with her grief; rising up like a tidal wave, only to just as quickly become a trickle. She could have been bi-polar just shy of schizophrenic, but there seemed something…broken…in her… something that couldn't just murder a person after she'd seen so much pointless savagery and carnage.

By now Muse's voice had become strained and cracked as she tried to hold it together while the memories of what she had experienced washed through her, inexorably as the tide…

"And then the government scorched the entire planet and we were caught in the middle… A group of terrified children… Do you have any idea what that's like? Do you? To see your death coming at you with no way to defend yourself… To see the utter terror on the faces of those you swore to protect, and yet not be able to do a damn thing about it… To think you've failed in your responsibilities and it's all your fault… Do you have any idea what that can do to a child?"

The words were tumbling out of her; words that she must have held in for over fourteen years while they grew bitterer and bitterer inside her. Now the rage was dwindling and the grief and the bitterness drenched her every word with poison.

"But we survived, by some miracle we survived, and we came back here… and four of us died on the way… Because the COG couldn't be bothered to even look, four kids died, and one of them wasn't even a year old… But we still came back, and we waited, because we were so sure that the COG would rescue us, that they couldn't possibly leave us out here to fend for ourselves… but they did… they left us… they abandoned almost a score of kids under thirteen… So excuse me if I'm not thrilled to see you…"

The pistol against Dom's brow was shaking slightly by now, but Muse's grip on it was firm. The Latino Gear still didn't flinch nor bat an eyelid, just watched her face through her outpour of anguished, guilty, rage… She wouldn't do it, he knew that much. She could hate him and want to see him dead, but she wouldn't be able to shoot him; she felt guilty enough for the blood of those four children that she saw staining her hands, and she hadn't even been able to do anything to prevent their deaths. She couldn't murder someone in cold blood…

"Muse…" he said quietly, calmly, "I'm sorry… I'm sorry you had to go through that… no-one should have to suffer what you have, especially not a child… If squeezing that trigger will make you feel any better, then do it…"

Dom felt the gun against his skin shake even more erratically, but then it was abruptly removed as Muse dropped her arm to hang loosely by her side. The emotional turmoil was gone, or at least well-hidden once more, and for a moment the Gear and Stranded just stared unblinkingly at each other. Then Muse turned.

"Open the gate!"

The huge, heavy metal gate ground open on runners embedded into the stone floor, and she slipped through the gap. She faced the COG soldiers again as the massive gate began to slide closed, and her next words were delivered as coldly as her icy eyes.

"We won't stop you from leaving, and if you know what's good for you, you'll leave us alone and not come back."

The metal door clanged shut.

At first Dom didn't move, his eyes riveted on the gunmetal grey of the solid gate, but then he felt Marcus' hand on his shoulder, and turned to look at his friend. The other Gear had a strange expression on his face as he remembered that little girl now; who had argued with him on the King Raven, who had clung to Dom like a limpet when she'd awoken from her nightmare…

And she had grown into that bitter young woman that had just left them. The thought of how she had actually gotten that way was sickening, and it showed on Marcus' face.

"C'mon Dom…" he growled in a low, gravelly voice, "Come away… we can't help those that don't want it…"

After a moment Dom mutely nodded, and the two Gears turned away to head back the way they'd come. Behind them Cole and Baird shared a glance of surprise and confusion before following…

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Author's Note

This chapter was especially hard for me to write. Trying to get Muse's emotions across in a plausible manner was much more difficult then I would have imagined, I re-wrote her rant almost five times and I'm still not entirely sure it cuts it…

Anyway, that wasn't what this A/N was for, and this is the important bit. Muse Burrows is actually an original character from an original universe and story, and this fanfiction was just a way for me to explore her character (I've actually put in some of the aspects that'll be in her original story in here as well) before writing her original story.

So what I need you to tell me is what you think of her as I could really do with some constructive critique so I can improve her as a character as we get into the meat of the story. Is she a Mary-Sue? Is she not? Is she likable? Is she irritating? Is she actually bi-polar, or just really emotional? Any feedback would be great at this point.