Chapter 12 - A Champion to steer by

The Master Chief sat in the cafeteria, eating his lunch of eggs and a meat sandwich. The room was mostly empty, which was more than fine by the Chief.

Ever since the day he had stopped the Noxians and the Demacians from fighting and had punched Tryndamere, rumors spread about him. At first he had tried his time honoured technique of isolating himself until everyone forgot about it, but a day later he was called out for a league match. Despite him resolving to not draw attention to himself during the match, he got a pentakill and won the game by himself, and the rumors started again.

So the Chief decided to just take the rumors head on, assuming they would be over as soon as people saw him act the way he usually did.

Doing nothing at all.

The Chief had to admit to himself, though, that it was rather boring doing this. Without a galactic war to fight, The Chief had no idea how to pass the time. It was all very unsettling.

"Mind if I sit here?" asked a soft female voice. Chief recognized it immediately. He glanced to the right to see Riven standing there, holding a plate of noodles. She was wearing her usual outfit of robe, corset and mismatched armour, unlike the Chief who was wearing his unusual outfit of civilian clothing.

He shrugged, and Riven sat across form him. She was holding a pair of… sticks and was twirling noodles and shoving them into her mouth.

"So," she said, slurping the noodles, "I heard you smashed Tryndamere's face in."

The Chief sighed internally. Rumors were like wildfire.

"I didn't hit him that hard," he said. Riven snickered.

"Don't worry," she said. "I would have done it too, he's a total dick. The first time I joined the league, and he saw my sword, he tried to hit on me. And he was married."

The Chief raised his eyebrow, which was, aside from the laugh in the restaurant, the most emotion he had shown to Riven.

Riven just shrugged and continued twirling noodles around the sticks. Chief grabbed his sandwich and finished it with two quick bites, and started on his eggs. He reasoned that if he ate faster he could leave quicker.

"You eat a lot, you know that?" Riven said through a mouthful of noodles.

Chief did know that, in fact. He wondered how much he wanted to tell her. He decided it was safe to let a little bit of information out. "Genetically enhanced body," he said finally. It not like that information was very secret, either. Even the half-human Heimerdinger had guessed. "Need lots of food."

He paused for a moment, then added, "And this is a lot better than military rations."

Riven laughed out loud. "Bad where you came from, too, huh? Back in Noxian army, it literally tasted like manure."

The Chief thought that Riven's laugh sounded pleasant.

He dismissed the thought.

Then he remembered he was still wearing his supply belt, which included his half-full ration pack. He hadn't eaten very much during the siege of earth and the events that had followed. He took out one of the ration bars, and held it out to Riven.

Riven eyed the condensed nutrient bar warily, like it was a snake ready to strike. "Is that what you ate?"

The Chief nodded, and she grimaced but took it. "It looks utterly tasteless and textureless," she complained, but took a bite anyways. Immediately her grimaced turned into a full on gagging motion.

The Chief allowed himself to smile.

"Oh… that tastes TERRIBLE. Is that thing supposed to be lemon flavoured or something? Because whoever thought of that should be killed."

The Chief gave a snort, and Riven smiled.

"How did you guys survive living off of that?" she asked, holding the bar for a moment longer before throwing it away.

"Only half of us died," Chief said. It took Riven a few moments to realize he was joking and laugh.

They both turned back to their food.

"I'm glad you decided to wear some clothes for once," She said, gesturing towards Chief with her sticks. "Much more comfortable than armour."

Chief shrugged. "I'm still wearing my under suit."

She snorted and went back to eating.

The Chief decided that he could try eating a little bit slower.


The Chief spent the rest of the day with Riven. Most of the time was spent in the training room, with Riven teaching him techniques for his new gladius. Shockingly for the Chief, he wasn't the least but disturbed that there were other people in the training room watching him.

He put it down to being eager to learn new combat styles, but he wasn't sure that was the whole reason.

The rest of the time, the pair of them had just walked around the halls of the Institute while Riven bombarded him with questions about the UNSC and the human-covenant war. He answered all her questions, except for the classified bits, and it ended up making him feel a little bit homesick. His thoughts had turned to Johnson, and Hood, and Miranda, and Cortana, and even the Arbiter.

It had been enough to spoil his relative good mood, and he left Riven alone in the hallway earlier than he would have liked.

He returned to his room, but was stopped just outside by a man who was covered in metal from head to toe. The Chief tensed up slightly, half excepting a fight, half excepting a trap.

"Ah, Spartan-117," the man said. "The Master Chief. I'm glad to have finally met you."

The Master Chief knew he shouldn't have been surprised at the greeting, but he was anyways. Content with the knowledge that this man was not yet trying to kill him, he relaxed his pose to a more casual position. "Who are you?" he asked, not bothering to ask how the man knew him. If it wasn't from the fact that he was the new guy, or from the rumors spreading around, it was from the plaque on the door.

"I am Viktor, The Machine Herald." The man – Viktor – stood a little bit straighter at that, if it were possible. His posture was even more ramrod straight than the Spartans. "I have come to gain your assistance for my Glorious Evolution."

The Chief blinked and said no right of the bat. The last thing he was interested in was aiding random political parties for even more random sounding plots.

"Master Chief. You are the perfect person, the perfect blend of the weak and the strong, the flesh and the machine. You are the key. Together, we could propel Valoran forward into an age of technological prosperity, free from the constraints of flesh and blood."

The man completed his proclamation with a wide sweep of his arms to the sky/ceiling.

The Chief frowned. To him, that sounded like a terrible idea – but, again, he wasn't here to get caught up in political problems.

"No," he said again. "Now please leave."

Viktor tilted his head, an oddly human gesture for one so obviously machine. Though the Chief could not see the man's eyes, he could tell that, had they not been in the League, Viktor would have done something exceedingly foolish.

"I shall take my leave, but I beg of you to reconsider."

The Chief watched the man leave, and then waited a few more minutes to make sure he was really gone. He then retreated back into his room. He scanned the room thoroughly, making sure Viktor had not bugged it.

And then he just sat there, clutching his dog tags.

He had briefly considered going to the High Councillors office to see if they had made any progress on getting him back home, but he was sure that with the recent assassination and the rising tensions between Demacia and Noxus they would have their hands full.

What would Cortana want him to do in this situation?

She had always told him in the past to 'go out there' and 'make friends,' but would she say so even when stuck in another dimension? When humanity was possibly fighting for their lives on the other side?

Could he afford to be lax?

He sighed, turning her chip over and over in his hands.

He knew what she would say. Something along the lines of 'stop being an anti-social Neanderthal and get out there. You can't be expected to hold everyone's hand.'

The Master Chief lay back on his bed, trying to decide what he wanted to do.

He stayed awake the entire night.


Elsewhere

Marin walked along the cold metal corridor, descending deeper into the complex. The walls were inscribed with runes which Marin couldn't read, proving the age of this place.

He found it faintly interesting that such an ancient place hadn't been discovered before, but considering the city it was locating under, it wasn't much of a surprise. He wasn't even sure if the people in power even knew half the things that went on beneath their precious realm.

He passed by engineers and scientists but he ignored them and they ignored him, which suited Marin just fine. Anything that wasn't part of his current job was an impediment.

He eventually reached a metal door, almost twice his height. He looked to the left, as his employer had instructed, and found the panel. Despite its out-of-this-world appearance, and his instinctive apprehension of it, he placed his hand on it, and it lit a bright blue colour. The door clicked and slid open a moment after.

He walked into the large room, taking in his surroundings. There was a metal walkway high above the room. The room itself was filled with large tracts with a new spec of automaton on it. There were mechanical arms of some sort working on each one, screwing in bolts and sealing metal carapaces together with beams of pure magic. Power crystals were stored in large containers in the back, and they gave off synchronized hums and pulses of energy every few moments.

The arms gave Marin a strange feeling. Their purple sheen gave them an out-of-this-world look, and it disturbed him greatly.

"Sir," a female voice said from behind Marin.

He turned around, suppressing the urge to lash out at the person who snuck up on him. The Scientist was blonde, eager, and looked all too young to be here.

He used his arm to gesture to the Automatons. "Is this it?"

The Scientist nodded. "These are just prototypes," she said. "If they work out, we'll mass-produce more of them."

Marin nodded, but wondered how they were going to mass-produce anything in this room. It wasn't close to being big enough for that purpose. Not to mention the fact that they looked already mass-produced, but that was less important.

The Scientist licked her lips. "The Doctor said you would be able to help us test the automatons."

Marin turned his head sharply.

This is new, he thought.

"Did he give you any… guidelines… regarding the testing?"

The Scientist looked a little bit confused. "No," she said, putting her hands together. "He said to trust your judgment."

Marin nodded his head and turned back to the machines. "Then I have the perfect target in mind."