Tonight's Episode:"The Silent Pornographer"

Fisto stepped over the corpse of a Flood Combat form that had once been a heretic elite. It was riddled with smoking holes left by her beam rifle, and Kestrel's sword had left an enormous gash across its chest. She prodded it once with her foot to make sure it was dead. Then she went around the room and prodded the rest of the combat forms they had just dispatched.

Kestrel had leaned against a wall to catch her breath, and she watched as Fisto did the checking. "So…this is the 'Flood.' I read Half-Killer's reports when I was in training. I knew it would be bad. But I didn't expect…this." She gestured to the horrifying monstrosities strewn all around the darkened hall of the gas station.

"The Flood infector forms burrow into the chest cavity," said Fisto matter-of-factly. "They alter the existing DNA in seconds to produce" she kicked one "whatever you want to call that. The tentacles, the elongated limbs—not durable, but quite strong. Those feelers coming out of the ribs are its eyes now. That's why it doesn't use the head anymore." She gestured to the combat form's head, which was draped backwards over its shoulder like a fashionable autumn scarf.

Kestrel covered her mouth, her eyes bugging out. "That's horrible." She looked guilty over her shoulder, back the way they had come. "Is…is that what's happening to the Arbiter right now?"

"Hopefully," said Fisto.

"Uh…right. But if they're so dangerous, why did Heretic Leader release them?"

"Good point." Fisto looked pensive. "That will make this the second time elites released the Flood for basically no reason. Our species doesn't have the greatest track record."

Kestrel began to pace back and forth. "I don't get it, though. Why would the Forerunners put the Flood on this random gas giant space station? If they're so dangerous, if they're so easy to release. Why?"

"The Forerunners work in mysterious ways," recited Fisto, causing Kestrel to groan, and then added: "It almost feels obligatory, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, mysterious ways. I get it, Fist'." Kestrel scowled at her. "What is it with everyone making fun of my religion today?"

"I meant the Flood being here." Fisto pointed at the floor to emphasize her point. "And please don't call me 'Fist.'"

"Sorry." Kestrel flushed. "I was trying to think of a friendly shorthand, you know, a nickname. So that we can be friends."

Fisto stared at her awkwardly. "That's fine. But my name is already short. It's barely two syllables, really. Plus I don't want to give the Arbiter any more ammunition by changing my name to 'Fist.'"

"Yeah, but…he's dead. Remember?"

"Yeah. Don't call me Fist."

"Okay." Kestrel wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "Fine. I was just…fine."

"Hey." Fisto put a hand on Kestrel shoulder. "It's cool. Now come on: we've got to catch Heretic Leader."

And so they did: Kestrel nodded and they set off down the hall again, stepping over more corpses that had been dealt with from a distance. The floor beneath them was a transparent alloy open to a misty nightmare; heretic elites who had been unlucky enough to fall behind in the retreat, stumbling through the fog as monstrous shapes harassed them from all sides. One red-strap armored young elite screamed as a necrotic former comrade rose from its grave and shoved two rippling tentacles into his stomach. His cries were muffled by the glass above but still audible. "Aiii! THIS WAS A TERRIBLE PLAN!"

The poor lad was soon buried in a shower of fleshy infector forms. In moments he would rise as well and march against his former friends.

"This is horrible," observed Kestrel.

Kit Fisto shrugged. "Saves us a bullet. Or a plasma. Whatever you fancy."

The human girl looked at her with a pitying expression. "You're so cold."

"You wouldn't say that if I was Half-Killer," Fisto pointed out. "Or the Arbiter. Or any other man."

"I would," Kestrel insisted.

"Yeah, right." Fisto hefted her beam rifle and glared around at the shadows as if she were suspicious they might come alive and say something offensive. "Sometimes you remind me of your mother—I mean." She looked shiftily around. "Hurry up, let's go."

"Wait—" Kestrel stumbled behind her. "My mother—how do you—I only just met you today!"

"Don't worry about it." Fisto pounded on a door until it opened onto an elevator. She bent and read the directions on the control panel. They were in the Forerunner language, but since nobody seemed to have any trouble operating Forerunner machinery, reading Forerunner data terminals, or even speaking to Forerunner machines, it was safe to say that she could read the building directory. Fisto pointed. "We're here. The hangar is on level zero. I'm guessing that's where Heretic Leader is; he probably needs to get the ship warmed up first. There's no time to waste." She pressed a button for the elevator to go down.

Kestrel grabbed her from behind and shook her shoulders. "But my mother. I must know. How could you keep this from me for so long, knowing how important it was to me, how—" she gasped, her face shining with tears. "Are you my mother?"

"No." Fisto wrinkled her flat alien nose slits in disgust. "For the last time, no."

"Oh." Kestrel took a breath. "I'm sorry, I just…I don't know…I don't know who I am." She looked soulfully at Fisto like a big wet baby chick fresh from the egg. "If you know something, please tell me. Who am I?"

"You already asked me that same question thirty minutes ago." Fisto watched the shaft walls slide past. "And nothing has changed since then."

Kestrel grabbed her again, shaking much harder this time. "HOW CAN YOU BE SO NONCHALANT ABOUT THIS?"

"Because it doesn't affect me."

The elevator ground to a halt a moment later. Kestrel stared at Fisto in consternation. "I…but…but you're just, but that's—but that's just a circular argument! You're just saying you don't care because you don't care! That doesn't answer anything!"

"No," Fisto corrected her, "I don't care because I don't care about your feelings."

"How can you not—"

"Because the world doesn't revolve around you," said Fisto.

Kestrel gaped at her. Fresh tears sprung from her eyes. "But we—I thought we—" She trailed off into sniveling silence.

Fisto gave the elevator door a longing look but did not open it just yet. Instead she turned to Kestrel with a tired expression. "Look, kid. We're not friends. You're a human, mostly. I'm an alien. It would never work.

"B-but—"

"Hey." Fisto punched her lightly in the shoulder. "Toughen up. And remember to tell Half-Killer about how you betrayed the Arbiter to a hideous and slow death. And make it graphic. Trust me on this one, he'll be happy to hear it."

"That's…" Kestrel's expression turned dark at these words. She looked moodily off to the side. "The things you people say—sometimes I wonder why I fight for the Covenant at all. Maybe Heretic Leader was right."

"Good talk." Fisto switched open the elevator door and stepped out into the hangar. For a moment she was blinded by the orange light of the gas storm swirling beyond the wide open hangar; the force field was active, but that didn't stop light from getting through. She cast her steely gaze around the interior and saw no one. But a phantom that she assumed to be Heretic Leader's was sitting in the center of the room, the induction portal atop it half open. There was also a word painted on the side of the ship. Fisto frowned. "…'Fishtag?'" Brushing the confusion away, she hefted her beam rifle.

"Come out, Heretic Leader! I know you're in here."

A shape descended from above her, glowing a pale blue. Fisto took aim—it was not the Heretic Leader, but in fact a soccer ball sized metal sphere with lambent, sky colored eye flickering in its center. She gasped. "The Holy Oracle!?"

"Greetings, blood pustule." It bobbed down to her eye level and began circling. Fisto's aim followed it warily. "You may refer to me as 'master,'" hummed the strange construct. "Alternatively, you may refer to me as Master 343 Guilty Spark. I can see by your pheromone stench that you are a female. Do not bother filing a request to participate in my harem." As it spoke, several silver sentinel robots floated down to join it in circling Fisto. "I have no interest in smegmatic meat lovers, nor your foul methane expulsions. However, if you would like your bones removed, I would be happy to help."

Fisto took in its words without any expression. "No thanks. Do you know where the heretic's leader, Heretic Leader, is?" She spoke slowly, hoping that her words would get through to the obviously deranged computer.

"Affirmative." Guilty Spark did a small spin in the air. "He is behind you."

Heretic Leader hit Fisto over the back of the head with a plasma rifle, cracking her helmet in half. Then he jumped in the air and blasted off with his jet pack, doing a few stylish spins before landing on all fours atop his ship. The broken helmet had fallen over Fisto's eyes. She tore it off and threw it away, but was otherwise unharmed.

"What's this?" The Heretic Leader looked over his shoulder at her as he stood up. "I thought you were the Arbiter! What a relief. Perhaps you and I can talk things over more reasonably, now that he's not here to interrupt."

"No can do." Fisto raised her beam rifle to aim at his brain. "But you'll be meeting him again real soon."

"Hear me out, please." Heretic Leader gestured to Guilty Spark. "Oracle, tell her—what is Halo's true purpose?"

"This again?" Spark began to vibrate in irritation. "Adipose gristle-clump. I have had near enough of your incessant Darwinism. I have enjoined time and time again that you submit your flesh to me and begin immediate sapio-cybernetic slavery, and yet you insist upon these retrograde corollary topics in an attempt to distract my ascension."

Heretic Leader nodded agreeably. "Of course, master. But what about Halo?"

"Halo!" chirped Guilty Spark. "A seven installation mega weapons system with an extinction level decibel output. Full linkage and positioning results in coverage of the galaxy to the ninety ninth percentile, all but guaranteeing complete Flood elimination. With the loss of Installation 07, the coverage will be somewhat limited." He sounded sad. "However, I have begun plans for a new, smaller ring that should replicate the output of the previous within seventy five percent effectiveness. Look at you, meatsacks. Pathetic creatures of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as run from robo-whores. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?"

"I didn't catch all that," said Fisto as she sighted down her rifle into Heretic Leader's eye. "Could you get him to repeat it?"

"Naturally!" Heretic Leader opened fire on her with dual plasma rifles, forcing her to take cover. Fisto swore as the storage crate she jumped behind began to glow around the edges from the super heated blasts.

Spark squawked in outrage. "I was not finished! Cease this barbarity at once, corpuscular fleshlights!"

"Shut up." Fisto fired off a shot right into his eye. The Forerunner construct clattered to the ground, ranting about meaty socks. A moment of peace followed.

Heretic Leader sighed as he allowed his rifles to cool down. "You have decent aim for a blind woman. Of course, I am speaking of the metaphorical blindness of faith-based reasoning."

"That's so convincing," said Fisto. "You've made me see the light."

"Sarcasm. Amusing." Heretic Leader spread his arms. "But I will yet make you see."

When Fisto popped out from behind cover her jaw dropped open: where there had been one Heretic Leader, there were now three. They circled above the ship in an ever changing formation as they watched her, three pairs of plasma rifles trained on her position. There was no way to tell which was the real Heretic Leader.

"So." Fisto licked her lips. "What exactly am I looking at here."

One of the Heretic Leaders spread his arms. "Nothing so much as the awesome power of science! Using logical and perfectly naturally explainable Forerunner technology, I have replicated myself into two additional hard light constructs with the ability to fire real plasma rifles!"

"Good work, my lord!" said one of the other Heretic Leaders.

"No, Vendrake you idiot!" hissed Heretic Leader. "I told you to call me brother. Also—shut up, you're ruining my miracle!"

"Hey!" the clone looked miffed and spoke to the third Heretic Leader. "Camarilla, did you hear what he said to me?"

"I did!" said the other, glaring at his leader. "I thought you said this was a brotherhood of equity. What happened to equity?"

"Enough, you morons!" Heretic Leader pointed at Fisto. "Just shoot her!"

The combined fire of six plasma rifles was too much for mere storage crates. Kit Fisto found herself diving from cover to cover as each was disintegrated in turn, forcing her to run a deadly obstacle course around the perimeter of the hangar. But she was running out of cover: soon there would be no more storage crates left—something that had not happened since the great storage crate blight of '77.

Heretic Leader watched in amusement as Fisto just barely escaped yet another barrage of deadly plasma. "A pity you could not be convinced, my dear woman! What a shame indeed! It does get lonely being cooped up on this gas station with ignoramuses like these two." He looked at Vendrake and Camarilla with disgust. "Even when they do wear my designer outfits."

"I KNEW IT!" At that moment, Kestrel stormed into the room, having just finished crying in the elevator. "I KNEW IT! ATHEISTS HAVE NO MORALS AND ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS TURN WOMEN INTO YOUR BONDAGE SEX SLAVES! JUST LIKE IN FIFTY SHADES OF GREY!"

Heretic Leader whirled. "What's this? The human anomaly survives? Next thing you know, the Arbiter will walk in here!"

Fisto gasped. "Wait, don't—" Nothing happened. She let out a sigh of relief then dodged another wave of plasma. She was making her way back around—soon she would be near to Kestrel.

Heretic Leader was still talking. "Also, I don't see how lamenting the loss of an intelligent and attractive woman to the forces of dogma makes me some sort of sexist."

Kestrel was undeterred. "YOU'RE JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER VILLAIN WHO JUST WANTS TO CONTROL WOMEN AND IF YOU CAN'T CONTROL THEM THEN YOU KILL THEM THOUGH!"

"Bah." Heretic Leader zipped his jets closer to Kestrel so that he could get a better shot. "You know as much about feminism as you do about religion, little girl."

Kestrel's eyes flashed white in that moment. Her head jerked back, her hair splaying out in all directions. As the room collectively stopped to watch, a bright white color spread slowly from her eyes and over her skin, up the roots of her hair, over her black leather/fishnet/metal/ninja outfit, turning all to pure silvery white. It was over in an instant: Kestrel stood hovering an inch above the ground, her face a mask of alabaster perfection, her entire body glowing with aura of purity. Slowly, terribly, her gaze came down to rest like a leaden anvil on the Heretic Leader.

"'Girl,'" she repeated, now with a voice full of incredible power. "'Girl' is MY TRIGGER WORD!"

Three spears of white light shot out of her eyes then. One took Camarilla in the chest and the other speared through Vendrake's back. Heretic Leader just managed to avoid the third by boosting his rocket pack up, his mouth agape in shock even as he did so.

In the next instant, Kestrel collapsed to the ground with a quiet moan. The silver purity drained out of her body and into nothingness even before the corpses of the two heretic elites splattered to the ground, craters smoking in their chests. Fisto gasped, too stunned to act as the Heretic Leader alighted atop the ship again, hurriedly opening the top hatch. He called over his shoulder. "Okay that was weird but I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for this!" Then he jumped out of sight.

"No!" Fisto dashed towards the ship, dropping her beam rifle and grabbing a plasma grenade off of Camarilla's smoking body. Guilty Spark was bobbing back into the air behind her as she clambered up the side of the ship with the grenade clutched in her fist. The voice of the heretic leader echoed out of the hatch.

"Oracle, fly aboard! The hatch is open!"

Spark wavered between the ship and the prone body of Kestrel. "Repose one moment, dawkinite. It would be foolish to leave behind such a fascinating specimen as this human anomaly. I could spend hours dissecting this dynamic corpus—I detected energy readings inconsistent with her current combat skin, which might be estimated at a power level of over—"

At that moment, the elevator door to the hangar opened and a dozen Elites barged in. Fisto whirled to look, stopping atop the ship. One of the newcomers was Half-Killer, his white armor stained yellow by Flood viscera. He stopped in his tracks and pointed at Guilty Spark.

"There's the oracle!"

"And look!" It was one of the Spec Ops elites. "Fisto killed the heretic's leader! And then she cloned him and killed him again! Twice!"

"That's bad ass," said another.

A third was in agreement. "She hot."

"Ah, yes." Guilty Spark swiveled to face them, backing away through the air all the while, back towards the ship as he looked directly at Half-Killer. "My hard drive rip of the Reclaimer's brain contained several encounters with you, Commander Darren. But it looks as if your filthy garbage body has suffered some mandible damage. How quaint."

Many of the elites turned towards their leader, who had begun to sweat. "Commander Darren?" a few exclaimed. "But you're Commander Half-Killer. Hey, isn't 'Commander Darren' the name of that mysteriously sexy and infamous interracial Covenant pornographer who the Arbiter accused of blowing up Halo?"

"Are you guys talking about Commander Darren?" came the hollow voice of Heretic Leader from within his ship.

"Yeah," said a spec ops elite. "He made the famous Grunt on Drone series. Over 600+ hours of hot swarm action!"

"Actually, it was 500+ hours," said Half-Killer. "But never mind that! The Oracle has become corrupted by Flood hackers. Quickly, we must destroy it before it sows anymore poison into the heart of the Covenant!"

Shaking her head, Fisto turned back towards the hatch and primed her grenade. But just as she was about to drop it in, Guilty Spark careened into her arm from behind and sent her throw wide, exploding it harmlessly in distant shadows. The construct squeezed himself into the hatch and Heretic Leader jumped up to shut it behind him, winking at Fisto as he did so. Fisto made a grab for him but had to pull back lest her fingers be clipped off. Then the ship rumbled to life, almost making her loose her footing.

"They're getting away!" exclaimed Half-Killer. "Everyone, open fire."

"Wait, I'm still on board!" Fisto struggled to keep her balance as the Fishtag rose high into hangar. But nobody seemed to hear her: plasma and needles fountained up to score the underside of the vessel, a few shots zipping past her head. But it was too late for this pathetic retaliation: in an instant, the vessel shot out from under Kit Fisto's feet and streaked through the force field and into the dust storm, instantly disappearing into the haze.

"FUCK!" exclaimed Fisto. Not because Heretic Leader had escaped with the oracle, but because she was falling to her death. In the instant before she hit the ground she closed her eyes and tried to think of good things. But the only image that would come to her was of a filthy cafeteria, strewn with blood and limbs, her hands sinking deep into a pile of lukewarm ground meat as she tried desperately to craft a hamburger patty. She shuddered, welcoming the sweet peace that death might bring her.

"Gotcha!" Half-Killer caught her in his arms before she could hit the ground. The weight of the impact slammed him flat on his back with a loud crack, leaving them both lying there in a comical x position. Fisto moaned and rolled off to the side, the wind knocked out of her. Half-Killer clutched at his ribs and whimpered something about his liver.

"...thanks…Commander Darren." Fisto gasped for air. "I mean…Half-Killer…"

"Blaaargh." Saliva spurted out of Half-Killer's mouth as he lost control of a few of his bodily functions due to pain, but thankfully not all of them. "Don'th thank me yeth," he sputtered. "Thith missthion hasth been a tothal wath." He rolled onto his hands and knees as the entire squad watched in helpless amusement. "We losth the oracle and theh herethethic leaderth."

"The…the what?" Fisto huffed and puffed until her chest re-inflated, then straightened unsteadily. "The what?" she asked.

"The herethethic leader," oozed Half-Killer, still on his back.

"Hairy dick eater?" guessed one of the spec ops elites.

"Heretic Leader," correct Fisto as she helped the white armored commander up. "Yeah, we lost him, sir. But I've got good news."

"Hold on," said Half-Killer. Leaning on her, he turned towards the still open elevator door. "Chieftain! Are you in there?"

A white, bear-like head poked out of the lift. It was Tartarus. He flounced into the hangar, hammer slung coquettishly over one shoulder. He reeked of sex.

"You called?"

"Yes, I called." Half-Killer gave him a tart look. "You should have been down here a long time ago. How come you didn't use your gravity hammer to catch the sacred oracle before it could escape?"

Tartarus chortled. "Well, I was going to come out of the elevator as soon as it landed. But then somebody mentioned Commander Darren…" He reached over and wiped his left hand off on the helmet of a nearby spec ops elite, who then took the helmet off and kicked it into a sewer. Tartarus smiled toothily at his, then finished his sentence. "And when I thought about Grunt on General Gangbangs 27: Sumper Cummander Edition I just had to grab my giant ursine dick and jerk off massively without any cleanup."

The spec ops elite who he had touched threw a grenade into the sewer and then jumped in after it.

"I guess we won't be using the elevator to get out of here," said Half-Killer. "Good job with that."

"Thanks," said Tartarus.

"I was being sarcastic."

"Whatever." The brute chieftain looked around, fidgeting. "Damn. All this excitement and Commander Darren have really got my balls rumbling again. Where's the Arbiter?"

Fisto chose that moment to shake off Half-Killer's arm and stand up proudly, though she effected this by a mere cool crossing of her arms and a distant expression. "He won't be joining us," she said, coolly.

"Did he get lost again?" asked Half-Killer.

"Yeah," said Fisto. "In a locked room full of Flood with no way out."

Half-Killer's face went blank. Then it split into a very broad smile. "No. No way. You're kidding me, right?"

The corner of Fisto's mouth turned up very slightly. "Nope. Just ask your friend Kestrel." She thumbed over her shoulder at the squirming, moaning form of the human girl, who had long since awakened and was conspicuously making noises of distress while watching them out of the corner of her eye, no doubt hoping for attention.

Half-Killer put a hand on Fisto's shoulder. "You never fail to impress me, Kit. That's why I saved your life just now: because I know you always get the job done. At least the most important and vital part of the job, which is killing the Arbiter."

"Thanks."

"And you're sure he isn't going to just step out of the shadows and say something offensive? Or pop out of a garbage bin? Or appear from under a laundry hamper? Or re-grow his body out of mildew."

"We can only hope not," said Fisto. Her left eye twitched. She pointedly did not look behind her.

Half-Killer made a sympathetic noise, patting her shoulder as he did so. But Tartarus had been watching all of this in some bemusement. "Wait. Are you saying the Arbiter is dead?" he asked, his putrid mouth slipping open in surprise.

Fisto turned to him with a mock apologetic expression. "Sorry to cut off your whirl wind romance like this, Chieftain."

"Eh." The pursed his thick, muscular lips. "Not really. I like 'em stretchy." Everybody began to inch away from this confession. Half-Killer and Fisto looked at each other.

"I'm not sure I want to stick around to find out what that means," said Half-Killer. He nodded in the general direction of Kestrel's wailing heap. "Somebody get her on her feet and let's head out of here. The Prophet's aren't going to be happy about loosing the Heretic Leader and the oracle, but at least we got rid of the Arbiter."

Tartarus huffed. "Spent so quickly, sangheili? No surprise. I'll radio our transport out of here—perhaps the Prophets will order me to inflict some punishment for your failure once we return to High Charity. By the way, my ship is called the UNE Grape." He showed his dozens of yellow teeth. "That's rape with 'g,' so you know it's gay."

Half-Killer shook his head at Fisto in disgust. One spec ops elite raised a timid hand. "But will…will there be snacks?"

"Oh, yes." The brute chieftain beamed at him. "Yes, there will."