Hoooo boy, this took some time to finally get done. What is it with the Quarantine making me lose all motivation to work through my writing blocks, eh?
Writing blocks aside this Chapter took some time for numerous reasons; the weather is finally warming up which means the dog now demands we be outside all the time, helping my grandparents move, and beginning to move myself, again. Yes, we got a proper house and not a crappy rental with hardly any space for our stuff, so that's been happening.
hope everyone's staying safe out there, what with everything happening at the moment, #blacklivesmatter, and happy pride month, usual disclamer, everything but the story here belongs to 343 and Roosterteeth, hope you enjoy.
Anger still seemed to flow off of Ruby as the two Spartans entered the airlock, "Arbiter is a good person, Ruby," Cortana spoke over the comms, "He and the other Sangheili were raised with the teachings of the Covenant ingrained into them, just like your Spartan training, he does realize what he did was wrong."
There was no response from Ruby as the airlock finished depressurizing, and the door opened,
"Let's just get this over with," Chief told the both of them, as they moved forward.
Meanwhile Arbiter, Blake and Yang were walking down a corridor with the monitor humming along, excited that the infestation could finally be irradicated.
"Was that true?" Blake asked, the nervousness in her voice, as clear as day, "what you said back there?"
"I'm afraid so, Faunus," Arbiter replied, his voice filled with sorrow and regret, "I was taught the lies of the Covenant since I was a youngling, and strived to serve the Prophets the best I could," he looked to the floor, "It was all I ever knew, and so, I destroyed those planets without mercy. I understand if you fear me, I would too, if I had to be in your situation, but what is done, is done, and although I regret my actions, I must carry the weight of my sins."
"What do you plan to do?" Yang asked, hanging beside Blake to reassure themselves, "When you get back, I mean."
"A little history remains of the time of my people before the Prophets came to us," he explained, "The strongest faction of my people were known as the Swords of Sanghelios, founded by a brotherhood of Kaidon, leaders of state, to overthrow a tyrannical Arbiter of old. Perhaps I can bring back that name, to end the Covenant's grasp on my brothers and sisters."
"We'll it would be poetic." Yang tried, to ease the awkwardness that was beginning to fill the corridor.
"That it would, human, that it would be."
Blake looked around for a moment, hugging her arm, before speaking up again after a moment.
"Would you say someone who has killed could redeem themselves?" She asked, making the Elite stop and turn round to face her.
"Why would you ask that?"
"You know how we talked about the Faunus activists, the White Fang?" He nodded. "When it was less extreme, I was a member," Blake began, "I had a friend there, and I slowly watched him turn from a caring person into someone who seems to not care about the casualties he causes. I want to know if there's still hope he could become the person I used to know."
There was a brief period of silence before he answered, "I haven't experienced your exact situation myself before," he admitted, "But becoming Arbiter lead me to have to involve myself with the leader of the predominant Brute clan within the Covenant. He went by the name of Tartarus, and relished in serving the Prophets, to the point where they ordered him to execute me during the change of Guard. After surviving his execution attempt and learning the truth about the Great Journey, I tried to tell him the truth, in the hopes that we could put an end to it, but he would blindly follow them into the grave, and did; being the one who attempted to fire the second ring we came across. We had to kill him to allow us to stop the countdown."
Blake looked down at that, mumbling something that sounded like a dejected, "oh."
"I am not saying it is not worth trying to save your friend," Arbiter quickly assured, "I am merely warning you that he may not be the person you knew anymore, and that he could be beyond saving. Should that be the case, and you cannot get him to realize what he has become, you should be prepared for the consequences."
"I see…" she replied, "Thank you." She knew that she would have to think about it more, but now wouldn't be the time, as she heard the sounds of the Lekgolo up ahead. "Get ready, I can hear them up ahead."
As Ruby and Chief advanced, they could hear the sounds of the mass of worms eating. They continued in silence as they closed in on the hivemind, weapons raised.
The mass' chirps and growls could be heard through their boots as the worms swarmed over the Forerunner tech, like a sea of oversized ants from a cheesy horror film. It seemed to have not spotted the two Spartans yet, so they drew closer, getting into favourable positions to do decent damage.
Retrieving a Plasma grenade from her storage, Ruby took a look at Chief, who nodded, before throwing it into the mass and preparing to fire.
The grenade exploded as the sea of Lekgolo roared in animalistic pain, Plasma burning its way through a small hole, as both super soldiers began to fire upon it before it had a chance to assess the situation. They targeted specific patches with precision, forcing it to try and shrink itself to minimize casualties within the colony, but it was futile as the rain of plasma and bullets, coming in controlled bursts as to not overheat, and conserve ammo, tore through the worms.
It howled in agony, trying to dodge the assault from both Spartans, but only marginally succeeding.
Ruby decided to use another grenade, but as she retrieved it, the colony shifted. They both stared at it, with Spartan time slowing down their perception enough to analyze it, before it shot towards Ruby, as a pillar of worms, all chirping and snarling, mandibles snapping at her as they came towards her.
She barely had enough time to dodge the swarm as it blew past her, smashing into a wall and splashing out before gathering for another attack. She threw the grenade before they got the chance, and watched as they swarmed the ball of plasma just before they were blown apart again.
"They must be after the energy surge you get from pulling stuff out of your pocket dimension," Cortana explained as Ruby nodded, using her plasma rifle to melt the small groups trying to reform, it took some time, but with the combined efforts of both Spartans, they got the last of them.
"Scanning…" Cortana said as both Spartans checked the area, keeping their guard up, "That's the last of them, we can rejoin the others." At that, Ruby made her way towards the airlock, moving at an uncomfortably quick pace, for walking, even for a Spartan, her distrust for the Sangheili, while clear she was trying to make a case in her head, it was also clear to the Spartan-II and his AI companion, that she wanted to get there as soon as possible.
The trio fighting the other part, wasn't having nearly as much luck, with a greater number having stuck to this colony, Hunter forms were being dropped on them as they tried to make up for the lack of effectiveness their weapons were providing them, and because of such, we're running low on Ammo. Arbiter had already switched to his Energy Sword, as to conserve combine ammo, while Yang and Blake, having fallen behind, were on the last few clips for their secondaries, and were going to be forced to change to their old weapons if this kept up. The Monitor, who had yet to introduce itself, was chipping in with its sentinal beam, every now and again, but wasn't making much progress, by itself.
"Running low here!" Yang called out as she loaded her final magazine into the assault Rifle, shooting controlled burst, as Ruby had taught her, towards the worms trying to make their way to her. They were backing her hand her teammate into the hallway they had come from. When the colony began to make a slow humming noise, Arbiter's eyes widened as he inhaled slightly, before running towards the huntresses, "Get down!" He yelled at them, diving in front of Yang as the colony shot out to them, the spear-like the thrust of the colony, knocking his shields and sending him flying into the far wall.
The Spartans had turned the corner, sprinting towards their chamber, just in time to see this happening, Cheif rushed to The Arbiter's side, while Ruby tossed the other two more rounds of ammo, and firing on the mass to repel it from Arbiter's position, the plasma ripping through the wall of worms, causing them to shriek in pain, and retreat back into a singular mass.
It took a long time, but with the now combined help of the two Spartans, they managed to turn the tide and beat back the Lekgolo hoard, taking out any parts that tried to split off and flee the carnage. Eventually, the group effort lead to the last of the worms being crushed under the foot of the Arbiter, looking down at it as it let out a last painful trill and writhed around once more before falling limp.
With the danger now gone, they could see that the lance attack had done more damage than they realized, putting a significant dent into his Cuirass, but the proud Sangheili didn't seem to let such a mark get to him, whether it absorbed the blow, or he was injured it was impossible to tell, with his masked calmness over the situation.
"You didn't have to take that for me," Yang told him, there was no doubt as to what she was referring to, "My Aura would have been able to take it."
"I suppose it might have," he replied, looking at the young huntress, "In the heat of the battle, I merely reacted in instinct, your Aura was a forgotten factor."
"Well," Ruby spoke up, "You have my thanks," she nodded to him, surprising the others, though Chief remained stoic, his visor not yielding his emotions. The Elite nodded in acceptance, as they began to make their way back to the Cartographer.
"Not one of those infernal things left on the sensors!" The Monitor exclaimed gleefully, "You don't know how much of a bother they have been Reclaimers, to have them finally dealt with is simply euphoric!"
It was whizzing around the Cartographer's chamber, flying around without a care in the world, while Cortana was taking a proper inventory on the artifacts that had survived. Which was not much, given 30,000 years of free reign throughout the facility, even with the exterminations, the Lekgolo colony had devoured just about everything useful, what was left was trivial things that they had no use for, toys, presumably, little demonstrations of tech that they had already seen, and they're the one the most intact, with chunks missing enough to make them more or less useless for their original purpose. Even the stuff within the airlock couldn't be used as intended, but the Monitor insisted that there was enough in order to keep the vacuum state present.
"Hang on…" Cortana muttered, "There is one thing."
"What is it?" Chief asked his AI, looking at the screen she had on display, despite it being all in Forerunner glyphs.
"It's not in perfect condition, but there's another slipspace drive, apart from the one causing all of the time jumps." She explained, pulling up a large pod, looking suspiciously like a cryo-pod, "It's acting as a form of time-lock, place something in that pod, and you can make whatever's in there have its relative time slow down to... well functionally nothing, 1 second could take billions of years, or the reverse, billions of years span in the space of 1 second outside the pod."
"Ah yes," the Monitor began, "The Forerunners would use them as a sort of Cryptum, for the lesser rates, or the execution of condemned criminals, make them live out their life sentence in the span of a few seconds, until nothing but dust remained." Yang shivered at the thought,
"Yes that makes sense," Cortana replied, "Do you think it would be possible to reconfigure it for space travel?"
The Monitor spluttered again, taking a moment to recompose itself.
"Possibly, but why would you need that?"
"We still need a way home," Cortana replied, "Ozpin seems confident that this, 'General Ironwood' in Atlas will be able to build us a new ship, but without a Slipspace drive, we'd be dead in the water."
"So why not use one from a race who has enough mastery to transport planet-sized rings, and have localized pocket dimensions with slipspace," Ruby surmised,
"Exactly." Cortana smiled at the Spartan III, "So could you?"
"I can see what I can do." It flew off to a maintenance shaft to head towards the pod.