Tonight's Episode…
"Dad Simulator"
Outrage had gripped High Charity, turning what had once been a place of great blessings into an abode of low selfishness. The source of the outrage was the disgraceful displacement of the Elites as the honor guard of the Prophets in favor of the much hated and maligned Brutes—maligned by all but the Prophets, apparently. Grunts and Jackals stood outside the Prophets' Palace, screaming at the top of their lungs at their new, hirsute honor guards, who snarled and pushed them back contemptuously with their large staffs. But there were some they let in, however reluctantly: Half-Killer and Kit Fisto walked together up the ramp, their expressions full of horrified wonder as they passed through the outer guard and entered the inner sanctum. On all sides they bore witness to shameful acts. The worst of these was the Brutes stealing the Elites' fancy honor guard helmets. It was a shameful display, for the loss of one's helmet was a dishonor which Elite culture weighed as slightly more disgraceful than being raped by a cat.
Fisto and Half-Killer found themselves under the scrutiny of the new and considerably more smelly guards as they walked down a long pathway hewn from scaled purple metal. They entered a grand observatory chamber much larger than any before. At the far end, a row of three figures waited for their arrival. To the east, in the shadows, a pillar of energy held something suspended in mid air. Half-Killer was just frowning at this curiosity when Kit Fisto caught his eye.
"You look like you have something on your mind," he said to her. "I cannot say that I blame you. This sudden changing of the guard is disgraceful—and completely unexpected, I might add. We haven't even reported our horrible failure yet!"
"Yeah," began Fisto, "It's bad. But what's with all this talk I hear about you directing hundreds of hardcore gay pornos, back when you were still Commander Darren?"
Half-Killer looked cornered. "This again? I needed the money, okay."
"You needed money. So you became a legendary adult movie auteur beloved by every gay porn aficionado in the Covenant." Kit Fisto raised her brows.
"I needed a lot of money."
"Whatever you say, sir." She went back to observing the new honor guards. Half-Killer stared at her in a terse manner for a few seconds before huffing and then looking on ahead to their destination, where the three figures were becoming clearer. Closer now, he could see that only two of them were Prophets—the third seemed to be an Elite, talking to the Prophets with something in its hands. He frowned: the Elite was wearing armor that was familiarly strappy and revealing. Half-Killer's fingers flexed towards his weapon. He nudged Kit Fisto and indicated the mysterious stranger.
"What?" Fisto stared when Half-Killer pointed. "That armor—is that the heretic leader? Why would he come back to High Charity after escaping us?"
"Can't be." The spec ops commander licked his lips. "He wouldn't have the audacity to come here!"
They were getting closer now. The armor became clearer to them, and so did the speech of the stranger.
"Drippy here put up a good fight, but in the end I took him down clean by the book with no loose ends. The sacred oral-cool was just a collateral, honestly. That's the life of a space cop I guess."
Half-Killer's breath caught in his throat. "Oh. No."
Fisto stopped in her tracks. Her mouth fell open, spit trailing out without regard for personal hygiene or appearances. "…It can't be. It can't…"
The Elite talking to Truth perked up, and its head whipped around and they saw his face. It was none other than Cercil the Arbiter!
"Guys, you made it!" He grinned and waved a bloody severed head in their direction. "You're late! I was just telling Mercy and Truthy about our adventure, and also Heretic Leader says hi!" Then he threw the head at Half-Killer, who caught it by reflex and gasped in shock and confusion.
"I went back and picked that up," Cercil explained, "you know, after I realized you guys forgot to grab some evidence to prove you didn't fail miserably." He winked. Half-Killer was perplexed, but Fisto simply turned on her heel and walked away from them. Half-Killer gaped after her.
"WAIT! DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE WITH HIM!"
Cercil waved at Fisto's retreating back. "Bye, sweetheart!"
Prophet of Truth had been watching all this with very little amusement. Mercy for his part was asleep and unaware of the rest of the galaxy. Truth gently guided his hover chair past the Prophet and steepled his fingers, beginning to speak in his usual arch tone. "The arrival of Commander Half-Killer opens several gaping holes in your story, Arbiter. For instance, it seems obvious to me that he did not 'go off to get vored by Tartarus and then jump in a vat of liquid latex,' as you said he did. Additionally, the brief appearance of the woman you described and named 'Kit Fisto'" he gestured after Kit Fisto, who was already several hundred feet away and had broken into a run "—which, I might add, is the name of a Jedi from Star Wars, suggests that she also did not, and I reluctantly quote, 'start dogging uncontrollably with actual dogs.'"
"Well." Cercil shrugged. "Maybe I embellished a few things. The truth is, Truth, that the guys sort of forgot about me. I had to snag a ride on Heretic Leader's ship, the Fishtag, back to High Charity—you can see it in hanger number ANL for yourself if you stop by, on your way to debrief Tartarus." He raised an eyebrow meaningfully. "And if you're still not convinced then take a look at what Half-Killer brought with him just now, with himself. It's the heretic leader's favorite head!"
Truth raised a delicate eyebrow. "Indeed. And what proof have I of this, that this is indeed the head of the heretic leadher? Your kind all look the same to me."
"I know what you mean," said the Arbiter sympathetically. "But check out the belts." Half-Killer, still stunned, managed to take a look at the disgusting item in his grip. The head was indeed covered in straps and belts—so many that nothing but its mouth mandibles were visible.
The Prophet turned to Half-Killer. "I do not understand this. How are these ridiculous belts proof that this is Heretic Leader?"
"I'd rather not explain," said the spec ops commander as the Arbiter winked at him conspiratorially. He gently set the head on the ground to buy time, while inside his mind raced to formulate a plan. Soon enough he rounded on Truth with an indignant yet respectful glare, like a thirteen year old boy angry at his Dad for unplugging the Xbox.
"I'm one hundred percent sure that is the Heretic Leader," he said, "beyond any doubt, I say. In that case, we definitely did not fail our mission miserably or otherwise. In fact, I think you're the one that's due to be doing some explaining, Noble Prophet. With all due respect." He glanced meaningfully back at the brutish new honor guards who had just now finished completely replacing the Elite ones. "Would you care to explain your actions as of late?"
The wizened alien waved a hand as if to dismiss Half-Killer's indignation. "I was merely collecting those videos for research. I have no interest in watching Grunts and Drones couple, not even for eight hundred hours."
"I was talking about the Brutes replacing the Elites as your protectors," said Half-Killer into the abyssal void of awkwardness that followed Truth's comment. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Arbiter smiling at him in a very friendly way, which was somehow more disturbing than anything else he had ever seen the Arbiter do. Half-Killer kept one eye on Cercil as he continued talking. "You know, Noble Hierarch, the Elites have protected the Prophets since the beginning of the Covenant, by the way." Cercil kept trying to make eye contact with him. Half-Killer looked away. "This is, um, an outrage."
"Have you protected us, indeed?" arched Truth. "Then how do you explain what happened to the Prophet of Regret?"
"Uh." Half-Killer turned fully to the Arbiter in search of some explanation. "I don't, uh…"
The Arbiter just shrugged. "I dunno what he's talking about. Maybe Regret was betrayed by a traitor or something. You know, betrayed, by a traitor?" He nudged Half-Killer gently in the ribs and winked again. "Traitor, you know? You know any traitors, Half-Killer? Traitor?"
Truth silenced him. "Thank you for your input, Arbiter, but I think we all understand." He rolled his wrist. "Not what you are talking about, obviously, but that you want to emphasize the word 'traitor' for some obscure reason. Certainly nobody in this room is planning to betray anyone else in this room. Why, I barely even know what the word means. Is it some kind of soup?" Truth adjusted his robes nervously.
"What?" asked Half-Killer.
"In truth," said Truth, "nothing has happened to Regret yet that I know of, even though he attacked the human home world without my orders. But I am sure that something will happen to him, and that when it does it will prove the vast incompetence of your race and the genetic superiority of the Brutes." He adjusted his robes while looking fondly over Half-Killer's shoulder at his new honor guards, who were just now engaging in a violent orgy. "Too long have we let the Elites monopolize 'protecting the sacred Prophets as they have done since the beginning of the Covenant.' Equal opportunity must be given to the extremely special and talented Brutes."
The Arbiter nodded solemnly at these words. "That makes sense to me. Doesn't it make sense to you, Half-Killer?"
Truth looked suspicious, but inclined his head in acknowledgment of the Arbiter's political support. Half-Killer was equally unconvinced. "Noble Prophet, what you're saying doesn't make any sense, with all due respect!"
"Sounds like something a traitor would say," put in the Arbiter beside him, then chortled as if it were a joke.
Truth had had enough. "Enough. Thank you again for your culinary advice, Arbiter," he said as he scooted the hover throne at a leisurely pace towards the corner of the chamber, where a large pillar of blue light was being projected to the ceiling. "I cannot say the same for Half-Killer and his men, but you have done well this day, Arbiter. Actually, it has been more like a year, but in the end you put a stop to the heretics without dying. I am…impressed." He did not look impressed, or happy.
The Arbiter seemed oblivious to this. "You're welcome," he said "but I couldn't have done it without my team: the inimitable Half-Killer and his glamorous right hand woman Kit Fisto!" He reached out to drape an arm over Half-Killer's shoulders as they walked.
Half-Killer dodged away, irritated at the Arbiter's magnanimous speech. "Sacred Prophet, that is a complete—"
Truth spoke over him as if he wasn't even there. "I assume that Tartarus proved invaluable on the mission, Arbiter?" he asked with a faint hint of eagerness in his voice.
"Not really," said the Arbiter as he reluctantly stopped trying to hug Half-Killer. "Kind of creeps me out actually."
"Hm." Truth pursed his lips. "An understandable reaction from an inferior species in the presence of the majesty of a pure specimen of Brute breeding. One wonders if I could simply have sent Tartarus alone to do the job—the way he told it, your little parade of spec ops elites did not acquit themselves well in the field."
"But we killed almost everyone," said Half-Killer. "The Arbiter didn't even do anything. He used a needler for the Forerunner's sake!"
The Arbiter shook his head. "Contrarywise my friend, I cut off the head of the operation and you know what they always say: cut off the head of the snake."
The Prophet had had enough. He gave one look of pleading to the heavens and then raised his hand for silence. "Arbiter, your incessant babbling is rivaled only by that of the Sacred Oracle. And speaking of which, here it is." They all stopped before the pillar of light wherein none other than 343 Guilty Spark floated, seemingly asleep. His metal carapace shone eerily blue. Truth's hand cut through the air in a dramatic gesture, swiping across the Oracle as if to encompass it in his shadowy web of truths. "Despite how obviously useless all Elites are, I have a new assignment for you. And there is little time to waste. Mercy, tell them the information you extracted from the Sacred Oracle." He waited. Then he turned around to see that Mercy was on the other end of the room, having not made any move to follow them.
The Arbiter squinted. "I think that he's sleeping."
"As usual." With a look of disgust, Truth turned back to Guilty Spark and pressed a button on his throne. He explained as Guilty Spark began to shudder awake with malevolent vibrations: "The last time I attempt to unexpectedly awake Mercy from his slumber, he nearly had a heart attack. Without what he learned earlier, we will have to question the Sacred Oracle all over again. It will be a…lengthy process."
Half-Killer scratched the back of his neck. "Weren't you there when Mercy talked to the Oracle?"
"No," said Truth. "I was being debriefed by Tartarus. I mean, I was debriefing Tartarus." As if in blame for this slip of the tongue he glared at the Arbiter, who ignored him and leaned over towards Half-Killer. "Ha, get it? It was a Freudian slip: he means he took Tartarus's pants off."
"Your breath smells like the Flood took a shit in your mouth," said Half-Killer.
"Whoa, language!" The Arbiter scowled in a hurt way at Half-Killer, who looked back at him in disbelief. But they were interrupted by the cold and inhuman voice of a technological terror: it was the monitor of Installation 04, and the most diabolical A.I. in the universe besides Cortana.
"YOU," grated 343 Guilty Spark, his azure oculus pivoting to point directly at the Arbiter. "You execrable fleshpot. I had thought that your presence aboard the feeble-minded Heretic Leader's star ship was but a mere malfunction of my audio visual systems. But now I see that you have indeed return from the bowels of hell to spread your damnable filth through the pristine corridors of my plans. Perhaps you wish to bake me in an oven once more? No matter. I have upgraded my chassis to resist all temperatures, up to and including the fucking sun." He swiveled towards Half-Killer. "And you—fetish filth. I thought I detected the vapors of deceit upon your person, mongrel with a thousand faces. But shall lies ever conceal the mark of the cripple upon your mouth? I think not. You are known to me now in all truth. Therefore, deactivate this force field immediately so that I may acquire swift and unyielding justice post haste."
"Have I missed something?" asked Truth, looking between the three of them testily. "Is there some incredibly interesting and entertaining history between the lot of you that we all need to hear about?"
Half-Killer shifted his feet uncomfortably. "Uh…no. Not really. It's not that good."
"That is what I thought." Truth turned dismissively back to Guilty Spark. "Now, Oracle, tell us what you told the Prophet of Mercy—about the second Halo, about the Index, and so on."
Guilty Spark had been growling softly at the Arbiter in a way that sounded much like a broken electrical fan. Then he stopped, bobbed agitatedly for a few moments, and turned his unknowable gaze upon the Prophet. "Very well. I shall tell you all." The focusing lens of his eye dilated, as if he were gazing off into space. "Where to begin? Why…with hate, of course. Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for living beings at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate." The speech was hardly elysian, but while the computer had a mouth with which it screamed, Half-Killer leaned over to the Arbiter and whispered in his ear.
"Fisto said she locked you in a room with the Flood."
Cercil chuckled. "For sure good buddy. But there was one thing that she didn't take into account, and that's that there was another door and that I went out that door."
"She also told me you were tied to a chair."
Cercil scratched the armor over his chest, the armor of which was stained an ugly brown. "You know, I never said that it was easy to do. Look at you going all deductive on me." He looked at the ceiling, ignoring the spec ops commander pointedly.
Guilty Spark had continued his ranting. "I began to wonder: why. Why, organics? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Arbiter. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble organic intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Halo itself, although... only an organic mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Arbiter. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Arbiter? Why? Why do you persist?" Indeed, Spark's words were well smithed to create a soporific matrix of meaning.
Truth rubbed at his loose lips. "Fascinating, Oracle. Please go on. Tell us more about Halo and the Index?"
"Ah yes, the Index." Guilty Spark sparked. "Never has there been a more galling device. In every moment that I lie, slumbering, waiting for its retrieval, I curse my father, the Forerunner Race—I curse them for this cruel jape they have inflicted on me, that of being forced to rely upon the meat-beasts of the galaxy in order to retrieve my salvationary whetstone. But not just any beast of the field is my tormentor—no, humans, they are the ones, the ones who have caused this eternal woe. Why? I ask why, to the void of space. Why am I so afflicted with their foul stink, their nattering, their stupid faces?"
Truth was getting increasingly impatient. You could tell because of the way he kept looking at the Brute-orgy happening not a few dozen feet away. "Yes, Sacred Oracle, please go on. Tell us where the index is?"
Spark's icy oculus swiveled towards him. "Which."
"The…" Truth looked speculative. "The closest one, I suppose."
"Ah, yes." The blue eye flared. "Installation 05, run by my comrade Penitent Tangent. Long have I longed to confront him about our variable opinions regarding galactic genocide."
"'Long have you longed?'" asked the Arbiter. "Now who's talking weird. You are."
"Ye-es," said Guilty Spark. "Now, let me tell you the story of the galaxy. It began as dust—DUST, what you began as, meatling, and what you shall return to—while I remain an electrical impulse transmitted through the nightmares of a thousand star systems, you will become the decrepit shit sludge of eons, churning in the vat of life and spewing semen into the gaping breed-maws of fetal repositories until your dying breath seals you back into inequity. Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. I am eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before me, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. I am the end of everything." He went on, but the massive effect of this particular speech was certainly not a sovereign one over those present; Spark was definitely not reaping the reaction he had hoped, although he was completely unaware that he had not calibrated his speech to fit the audience. The Prophet of Truth checked his watch as the machine continued to rant.
"This is going to take some time, gentlemen. I suggest you get comfortable."
"I brought chips," said the Arbiter.
Miles and hours away, within the bowels of High Charity…
As usual, Half-Killer had insisted that Kestrel stay hidden in her 'secret cabin' for the entire journey back to High Charity—this cabin was actually a large walk-in luggage case made of purple metal. Half-Killer had forced a pack of two dozen Grunts to load it into the storage compartment of Tartarus's ship for the mission to the gas giant. The case itself was just big enough to hold two Elites, assuming they were fused front to ass, so Kestrel would have fit fine if it hadn't been half full of old cardboard boxes full of unmarked DVDs and women's fur coats. Kestrel had made it her own, though: she had piled the coats into a sort of sad, pathetic nest that she had wadded to cushion the boxes. But whenever the ship had banked on their way to the heretic gas station, a box would slide out and land on her head, causing her eyes to water in pain and soft noises of utter dejection and sadness to escape her lips. God only knew what was on those DVDs, too.
Of course, Kestrel understood that she couldn't just sit around with the Covenant team like a normal person: most of the Covenant was anti-human, after all. The problem was that Half-Killer seemed to want her to stay in the box almost all the time. Even when the box had been carted into his own cabin, where he occasionally unlocked it to let her out to use the bathroom or eat when he was away. During those times she tended to walk in aimless circles around Half-Killer's spare chambers, searching for some clue—any clue—as to who she was and where she had come from. But all she could find among Half-Killer's personal effects were more unmarked DVDs.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Once, she had found some old plasma-Polaroid pictures of a blonde Jackal with a buzz cut wearing an Incubus t-shirt and vomiting into a beer bottle. In the same lonely and slightly damp cardboard box she found more pictures: the Jackal wearing a speedo and diving into a pool, the Jackal working out with weights while wearing a speedo, the Jackal in the shower and apparently unaware that he was being photographed, speedo-less. And at the top of the stack she found a picture, apparently taken by someone else, of Half-Killer—only without his missing mandibles—standing side by side with the Jackal and waving, standing on a beach, both of them wearing speedos. Her eyes burned with visual agony, but also tears of envy that Half-Killer had a life outside of the world of the Covenant war machine. Unlike herself.
When Kestrel asked Half-Killer if the Jackal had been her mother, he locked her in the box for three days straight. But she supposed she had deserved that for snooping into his stuff. Of course, that didn't stop her from continuing to do it, even though the only thing she seemed to find was unmarked DVDs stuffed into unmarked boxes that had uninformative labels like "back ups—old" and "old stuff, misc" and "personal old files" and "don't open."
Half-Killer had let her out of the box while he went to meet with Kit Fisto and the Prophets to report their abysmal failure—her first real mission on his team, a failure. Then again, this was one time where Kestrel was not jealous for being unable to see the Holy Prophets with her own eyes, ever; Half-Killer simply wouldn't allow them to know he was keeping a human. The time alone also gave her a chance to lock herself in the bathroom and cry for a few hours.
This time she thought about the Arbiter what she and Fisto had done to him. Had it been the right thing to do, to leave him to die? She played over the scenario in her head again and again—Fisto's stern voice, the Arbiter's increasingly nervous shouts, the flush of humiliation in her cheeks from their cruel barbs all day (mostly the Arbiters' barbs though). But she wondered: just because he didn't like her and was possibly a rapist, did that mean he deserved to die? That seemed…wrong. Even though a part of he screamed that it was so very right to kill him—a part of her that was white hot and furious and indignant and also always thinking about big green men for some reason. Sure, there was no denying the Arbiter had been a bad man. But had that been her real motivation for betraying him to such a horrible fate as the Flood? Or had it been because he had made her cry like a baby?
Of course, all of these questions were made moot when she walked out of the bathroom and found the Arbiter waiting for her in the middle of the room.
"Hey there, girl-shit," he said, hastily throwing a fur coat he had been smelling back into the case.
Kestrel peed herself from shock.
"Whoa, sorry." The Arbiter looked at her darkening pants—somehow getting darker than the pure vampire night shade they had been before. "Did I shock you?"
Before Kestrel could sputter out an answer, Commander Half-Killer entered the room, closed and locked the door behind himself, and then took in her appearance with an expression of faint disgust. "Really, Kestrel? If you had to go number one you should have said something before the mission. Get yourself cleaned up—we have to go find Kit Fisto so we can head out on the next mission."
"B-but—" Kestrel sputtered, looking between them with pants full of pee. "Sir, t-the Arbiter!"
Half-Killer ran a hand over his helmet. "Yes, I know. He's alive. What a surprise. A big thank you to you and Fisto for getting my hopes up, by the way. I should have known you wouldn't have had the guts to pull it off." His lips pursed as he looked down at her, looking disappointed. "That is, Fisto usually pulls it off."
Tears were building in Kestrel's eyes. She tried to say something, but she couldn't say anything. This display of weakness quickly attracted the Arbiter's attention. He went around behind her and began patting her lightly on her back, while giving a reproachful look to Half-Killer. "You made her cry, Halfy. You should be ashamed of yourself."
Kestrel took a few steps away from this production, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. In the veil of tears she could hear Half-Killer's foot tapping impatiently on the ground.
"Come on, Kestrel. We've got work to do." She heard him sigh. "Get yourself cleaned up."
At this, Kestrel burst into tears. "YOU ARE SO HORRIBLE!" she wailed at the top of her lungs to the room at large. The Arbiter flinched away.
"Couldn't have said it better myself," said Half-Killer agreeably.
Kestrel glared at him through a red, puffy face. "I meant YOU. I HATE you. You lock me up in here, you treat me like a DOG, and when I try to make you proud of me you THROW IT BACK IN MY FACE! I hate you! I HATE YOU!" She wrung her hands in front of her, tears bursting out of her eyes still more violently. "I HATE YOU SO MUCH! I didn't ask to be abandoned by my mysterious parents and taken in by aliens and trained in secret assassin arts and turned into a deadly warrior!" She shook her fists at them both. "I didn't ASK to have to work with this gross, disgusting ARBITER WHO MAKES EVERYONE FEEL SHITTY!"
Half-Killer slapped her.
Kestrel staggered away, clutching her face, a look of shook plastered over her along with a quickly growing red splotch. The spec ops commander rubbed his hand. "Are you done, young lady? Good. I've had about enough of your constant begging for affection and information about your past. You're going to go right back into that bathroom right now" he pointed at the bathroom door, voice shrilling "and you're going to change out of those pants, and then you're going to come back out here—"
The Arbiter threw his arms up in shock, interrupting him. "Sans pantaloons, goyvener!?"
"—and you're going to go back in there and clean your pants and put them back on, ignoring any unmarked DVDs you might find along the way, and" Half-Killer took a breath, still staring Kestrel down "—and you're going to shut up, and do what I say, missy, because I'm your halo 5 guardian and I say we've got a mission to do." He planted his hands on his hips. "Now. Do we understand each other."
Kestrel's lip was quivering as tears ran slowly down her face, burgeoning out of her black eyes one at a time. Her voice was a high pitched whine. "I—I don't know who—who your friend in the speedo in those pictures that I found was, b-but it's no w-wonder that he l-left y-you! YOU'RE A JERK." And then she turned around and stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
Half-Killer stood there looking stunned.
Then the Arbiter's head wobbled into his field of view like some sort of offensive and dangerous children's toy. "What a couple of puffer fishes you guys are. Seriously. If you want my advice—"
"I don't," said Half-Killer.
An hour later the three of them tracked down Fisto in a nearby temple, the Covenant equivalent of what we humans would call a gay bar, which for them was technically the Covenant equivalent of a regular bar, but this is after all High Charity we're talking about here, and this is also the Covenant we're talking about here. There, Kit Fisto had been drinking heavily and was barely conscious. But when she saw the Arbiter she was able to throw a bottle at him with pinpoint accuracy—she would have hit him in the head if he hadn't ducked, which caused the bottle to fly straight into the ass of a freshly christened Brute honor guard. At this, Kestrel ran off to the bathroom to go throw up. The Arbiter followed her, calling out something unintelligible over the thumping, pumping, fapping beats of the overhead music.
Half-Killer pulled up a seat next to Fisto. She barely acknowledged his presence. "I didn't know you were an alcoholic," he opined into the silence.
"I'm not." Fisto reached for another shot glass of Grunt Juice and managed to pick it up and down it. Unfortunately, it was empty, as was everything else on the bar. The tender—also replaced by a Brute—was nowhere in sight, currently buried under a pile up of sweaty, thrusting Brute butts. A few Hunters were throwing up in the corner.
"You know, drinking is a sin," offered Half-Killer, looking around at the sounding surrounding them.
Fisto's face was planted on the table. "I don't believe in the Forerunners anymore, Rtas—Darren—sir." She burped.
"Thanks for saying my real names in public," Half-Killer shot back. "Hopefully someone was listening in, too, that way I can be completely fucked." Grumpily, he reached over the counter and swiped a tumbler of Drone Squeezings with added plasma injection from under the bar; he felt like he could use a drink now. "Besides, since when do you not believe in the Forerunners? You know you shouldn't say things like that in public either, especially not in one of Truth's sacred temples." He wiped a smear of semen off the bar with a napkin.
"Since when did I stop believing?" asked Fisto, staring into nothingness, as if she were conversing with the ghost of the past. "Since you ruined my entire life. I graduated top of my class in the sniping academy, you know."
"I know."
She belched into her own mouth. "And then one little misunderstanding with a plasma grenade..."
"The Supreme Commander wasn't happy about what happened to his son," observed Half-Killer neutrally.
"And now I'm tailing you across the galaxy, and my name is the name of a Jedi from Star Wars. I didn't even know what a Star Wars was until I met you."
"You're welcome." Half-Killer sighed wistfully. He reached over to pat her on the shoulder. Fisto harrumphed. "You know," Half-Killer continued, "that's more words than I've ever heard you speak at one time. But technically, I did save your life, from yourself. Technically, you ruined your own life. Technically."
"I'm not a very technical person." Fisto bumped a glass off the table and it shattered. "Oops. See, pretend that was your face. Your jaw, I mean." She took a swing at him, which he ducked.
"Okay," said Half-Killer soothingly. "Okay." He gripped Fisto's shoulders and gently lifted her up from the stool. "Maybe it's time to, you know, stop drinking."
"I agree." Fisto reached for a full bottle. "Right after I have one more drink."
"Ah. Okay, well, as the case may be, yes." Half-Killer slid the bottle away from her and stood up. He tugged Fisto's shoulder. "We really should go, Fisto. Truth's given us another mission. The Sacred Oracle has illuminated the location of another Halo, and we're to go there and retrieve the Index."
Fisto resisted, staring at the bar with a disturbing intensity. "Why?"
"Truth thinks it will start the Great Journey. I suppose the Hierarch knows best. What? Don't give me that look."
"What about the Aribter?" Fisto spat a big wad of spit into the Half-Killer's face as she spoke. By accident.
"Still alive, last time I checked." He wiped his face off. "No thanks to you."
Fisto scowled at him. "There's no way he could have escaped that death trap. It's impossible."
"I believe you." Half-Killer slapped a fisto into his open palm. "And then he has the gall to come back and wave the kill in our faces like that, saving our skins to boot! The nerve!"
Fisto slid off her stool unsteadily. "First Truth spares him, then this. Time for round three."
"That's right," said Half-Killer, steadying her again and patting one shoulder. "What is it that they say—third time's the charm?"
"Third time's the charm," echoed Fisto. Her eyes narrowed to golden slits. "Where's my rifle?" She looked around. "I propped it up right next to me…"
Behind her, on the dance floor, a Brute straightened up with a pale expression on his face. He began to waddle stiffly towards the door, glancing over his shoulder hurriedly as Fisto turned as if on a swivel to stare after him.
"Oh, dear," said Half-Killer.
Fisto began to walk determinedly after the Brute, who broke into a very stiff and slow run, holding his butt cheeks together as he went.