Darkened Tides

B170 was willing to admit, reluctantly, that the situation was perhaps, maybe, looking somewhat dour. This admittance was finally considered and addressed after the ruination of his newly acquired sword, the continuous abuse it underwent finally culminating in its complete loss as he tried to retrieve it from the skull of the eighth bear-like shadow beast to emerge from inside the darkened hollows of this alien forest, instead to watch helplessly as it snapped in half.

And in that moment, his situation devolved from somewhat exasperating, to genuinely perilous. With the weapon visibly destroyed, their wild aggression turned ravenous. Halfway reaching for one of the rifles on his back, B170 was dragged to the ground by three of the wolven bipeds. The first impact caught him under his armpit, pinning his right arm over his shoulder as he fell to the dirt. The following duo of rapid clashes kept him restrained in his prostrated position, and he felt his breathing constrict as a fur laden paw seized his throat, its hairy digits grasping for some way to rip his helmet from his scalp.

The spartan's composure shattered.

B170 slammed his right elbow down with all his strength he could muster, compressing the spine of the monster against his side till he felt the hardness in its body fracture. With his left arm, he sent a fist into the side of the skull of the one atop him, and its head bent at an impossible angle. The last perished swiftly, a double overhand hammer blow imploding its body as he flung himself into a rearwards roll. He came out of the dive on the offensive, with two rifles in either hand, unloading into the horde as he rapidly pumped his steps back in retreat.

Distance was created as the creatures fell over one another in a disorderly mass of flaming flesh, though the separation between him and them was less than he would have liked and soon the ammunition in the magazines was depleted. More bodies rushed in to fill the space provided, and the spartan tossed the spent weapons, grabbing the last insurrectionist rifle to lay down a final, withering assault of gunfire that left a trail of smoking shell casings in his wake.

Yet they were relentless, and not moments after his gun spent its last bullet, they were upon him again.

The spartan ducked low, avoiding the swing of an overly muscled arm as he flipped the stock and grasped the barrel of the rifle in two hands. Forced under such conditions, he sent the backend sailing into the vulnerable throat of his closest adversary. Metal bent under immense stress, and the beast stumbled away, retching though its crushed windpipe.

He was able to drag five more swipes from the battered frame of his makeshift club before it finally gave way over the head of one of the armored bears that charged through the throng. The creature's ivory pate cracked under the blow and it fell to its side, the interiors of its head reduced to sodden mush. Victorious, but in the same moment, defeated, the spartan flung the useless weapon away from him, imbedding the broken rifle into the forehead of the nearest biped, as he drew his combat knife from its sheath and turned once more to attempt escape.

He focused entirely on keeping his legs pumping, pushing himself to limits he had not reached since his days in basic training, giving anything and everything to escape from an ignoble death under the impossible wildlife of this alien world. The environment became a blur of pastel images that whipped past his vision as he sprinted through the forest with the devastating dynamism of a guided missile, more than a thousand pounds of armored spartan accelerating close to 98 kilometers an hour, annihilating anything that might have attempted to slow him down.

B170's teeth barred in discomfort as he strained muscles and tendons that were never supposed to exceed limitation beyond even that of his chemically augmented humanity, and he did his best to ignore the very unpleasant sensation of his bones trying to run out of his own body.

Several 2D monitoring charts popped into stark visibility in his HUD, unwelcomed and annoying in their distraction, and the spartan hissed through clenched canines as he was forced to look past the rapid fluttering of the EKG display and detailed holographic showing him in 25th century clarity, that his heart was pumping itself apart.

The sensation, while uncomfortable, was preferable to having his armor torn open like a tin can, and his insides devoured by shadowy aberrations. He ignored it. Pain was an intimate friend of his, and he had long ago learned how best to disregard bodily distractions. However, it was significantly harder to overlook his heart's best attempts at entering self-imposed cardiac arrest.

Every breath became a battle of attrition as he forced himself to further push past his endurance, soaring to new heights of ability he had never attained before. Desperation was a previously unexperienced sentiment for the spartan of Beta Company. Nevertheless it proved itself, as it had since the earliest days of mankind, to be the key emotion necessary to push someone beyond the possible. His HUD's speedometer, continuously ticking upwards, arrived in the realm of triple digits at the very same moment he felt something tear in his ankle. And in that one instant, everything that could go wrong, did.

B170 stumbled, lost coordination for a fraction of a millisecond, and struck a tree at speeds excess of a hundred kilometers. The tree, forty inches of solid oak, burst like a timber balloon as he exploded through its core, sending darts of wooden shrapnel flying in all directions. Something shifted in his shoulder at the blow, and the spartan growled as a notification window jumped across his vision alerting him to the emergency of having just contracted two moderate-to-severe injuries. Ignoring his cracked collarbone and most certainly torn Achilles tendon, he turned his uncontrolled dive into a semi-coordinated stumble as he came through his partial collapse in a haggard limp.

His chest screaming its fury, the spartan grabbed his MA37 from its home across his back, and looked into the dark underbrush he had sprung out of. His motion tracker was in utter disarray. A horde of angry red dots swarmed across the display, converging in one swollen mass of crimson that zeroed in on him with a vengeance. The meters ticked down rapidly, and he had perhaps a minute before they overran his positon.

The spartan snarled, and bright flashes of light and sound illuminated the night sky as he sent controlled bursts of ammunition downrange, dropping target after target in a futile attempt to reduce their numbers. Number he knew would not relent. 300 meters… 250... 200… 175… the shadows began to coalesce into visible forms as they drew nearer, and B170 slotted in his last magazine with the heavy weight of inevitability draping itself over his shoulders.

To think, after everything he had survived, Arcadia, Banon IV, Reach… this was where he finally clocked out, eaten alive by fantastical shadow creatures on some backasswards colony in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.

It was certainly not what he had expected.

And he had hoped for better.

His rifle's receiver snapped shut with a percussive finality, its last bullet scything through the air and into the eye of a charging monster straight out of fairytale. He stowed the weapon and limped a step back into the open field behind him, his knife drawn and ready to shed blood. Although he was to die, he would in no way make it easy.

The first to close with him was one of those wolf-like things, bounding on all fours and jaws dripping with saliva as it pounced, clearing a full twelve feet in the air as it flew right at him. The spartan reversed his grasp on his knife and ducked low, intending to disembowel the monster as it soared overhead.

Instead, and contrary to his morbid fatalism, it was flung away from its aimed flight towards his throat as a high caliber round slammed into its chest. B170 whipped his head towards the source of the shot, and was surprised to see towering stone ramparts reminiscent of a settlement belonging somewhere in the medieval age, sequestered off in the distance. The walled village was a good kilometer and a half from his position, nestled into the recess of a small mountain. He might have wondered at how he could have not seen it earlier, if not for the fact he was far too preoccupied in his current state of consciousness, although now its presence was clear and undeniable.

Several more shots lanced out from the town's parapets, and a voice shouted at him with the aid of a loudspeaker system.

"What are you waiting for you dumb son of a bitch, RUN!"

B170, briefly considering his options in respect to the continued permanence of his own existence, decided it prudent to listen to the voice, and began a hurried limp towards the perceived safety of the fortified township. Even in a staggered run and laden with injuries, he was faster than most physically fit people, and crossed the distance in relatively quick time, meanwhile the ceaseless barrage of marksmen rifles thundered over his head and into the mass of creatures that still tried to reach him under the withering fusillade of hot lead.

With prey so close, they had no intent on letting it escape.

Despite their persistence, he would not become their evening meal, and the spartan maneuvered past the line of wooden stakes surrounding the perimeter of the town, hobbled around the pits of pitch and tar, on to the weathered roadway, and into the gatehouse under the veiled compartments hiding boiling oil, reaching the imposing iron portcullis safeguarding the hamlet's gate just as the bulk of the pack thrust themselves upon the pointed tips of the first defensive line. The metal entryway, motorized by electrical power, opened swiftly as he ducked inside and the great gate slammed down shut behind him.

The next barrier, an equally impressive door of unblemished steel, swung open to reveal the stone inlaid courtyard of a city that would have fit well in the boulevards of ancient Rome, if not for the street lights, metal benches, and modern store fronts that projected yellow light onto white cobble from their glass display windows. The imagery was a paradoxical hybrid of cultures that piqued his notice, regardless of his current happenstance.

He had not seen its like on any colony world previous.

Such curiosity however, could wait.

The spartan wasted little time and delved deeper into the township, tracing a discerning eye across the staged weapon emplacements and the assorted group of unusual men and women that had formed at the entrance to meet him. The plaza about him was deathly silent, the stillness broken only by the constant chatter of guns on the bulwarks up above.

B170 was nonplussed.

The people in front of him were of a motley assortment, most dressed in patchwork armor and bearing firearms quite similar to those he once possessed, but had been lost in his withdrawal. B170 resisted the urge to reach for his closest weapon, mostly in the understanding that it lacked ammunition. However, the knife he held had no such qualms, and he readied to bring it into a guarded position, wherein he noticed another strange quirk of this endlessly peculiar world that made him forget any ideas of blood and death.

Of those not dressed like militia regulars disconcertingly evocative of what he would have expected of the insurrection, were perhaps a handful of the most inexplicably outfitted and outrageously ostentatious individuals he had ever seen. Long sleeved dress coats, sheer skirts, capes… cloaks… he had no words. If not for the even stranger weapons they carried he might have thought them Shakespearean era rejects, or the castoff detritus of an unsuccessful dramatized reproduction

Their weaponry… that was what forced him to seriously consider them as a threat, if perhaps the most peculiar danger he would face. Blades, spears, a battle axe… nothing that any unaugmented human with the right mind would ever consider taking onto a modern battlefield.

B170 turned his helmet to the man that moved to approach him, the massive double headed axe rested casually on his shoulder giving the spartan a valid reason to take him seriously. Slowly, and with noteworthy reluctance, he sheathed his combat knife and forced his hands to rest at his sides. Burdened by his injuries and bereft of any considerable arsenal, he decided for the moment to pursue the most judicious course of action.

Retaliation could be planned and effected later

He instead examined the man that stepped close to him, now a handful of feet away. Bright, wildly purple eyes, shockingly blue hair, short but stocky build, and soft features, B170 had seen some unusual gene variation in his life, usually manifesting in slight increases to height or unusual pigmentation, but this one man embodied the all of the strangest possibilities available to the human genome.

"So…" The man, or rather young adult given his posture and voice, trailed on in a bemused tone, glancing up and down the hulking contours of his Mjolnir with a brow that continued to rise the longer he stared. Eyes initially drawn to his considerable height were now more so intrigued by his presumably foreign paraphernalia. "You from Atlas then?"

Atlas, the same group that had produced the MRE's, assumable to be insurrectionist forces, tone and inflection indicate no prior allegiance, curious and… surprised by his armor? Not from Atlas then… perhaps not insurrectionist?

B170 tilted his helmet in a way to deny his affiliation and relaxed his clenched fists, allowing himself the smallest moderation. However he was not at ease. Everything about this world, about these people, was wrong. There was no sign of UNSC architecture or technology, and while spartans rarely interacted with the civilian populous, depictions of Mjolnir was commonplace in mainstream media, and their existence was a revelation made during the decline of the war to boost faltering morale. Everyone knew about the presence of spartans, from the oldest elder to the youngest child.

Their contributions to the war effort were blown out of proportions even past the incredulous nature of reality. That he would not know what a spartan was, nor recognize the emblem of the UNSC on B170's right pectoral, was nigh inconceivable.

"You got a name then big guy?" The young man asked, breaking B170 from his bewildered contemplation. It was clear, if not already, that this was not a situation that could be resolved discreetly, regardless of the fact he had brought these creatures to their door. He was a stranger, and for whatever reason, an unrecognized one. And that, made his position considerably more dangerous than it already seemed.

B170 had an unpleasant feeling that the insurrection had just become the least of his increasingly dubious problems.

The spartan shifted his helmet down, appraised the expectant expression of the armed adolescent that looked half his age when standing beside the towering UNSC supersoldier, recognized the preparedness of his cohorts and what seemed to be the local militia, and weighed his options in a long drawn solipsism.

"Lucan." He offered cautiously, dredging the heft of his past through the bitter recollection of his unkind memories. The vocalization of his name came out in a contracted growl indicative of a cough, as he forced long unused and damaged chords into motion.

Spoken word was, to B170, an irritant, a personal sentiment that had grown in candor throughout his career serving his superiors in the office. The more leadership began to wax and prose about the righteousness of their cause, and necessity of their operations and black ops sanctions, from the safety of their hideouts far from the battlefield when better men bled and died, the more he began to despise the capabilities of the human larynx.

And it they would not consider silence, he could at least do himself the favor.

"Well Lucan," the boy sighed heavily, a wry smirk crossing his lips as he glanced up the significant height of the man in front of him. "We have quite a few questions for you, if you'd be so kind as to follow us." He gestured past him, towards the awaiting street, and the small evening crowd that B170 had finally noticed accumulating during their brief discourse.

Resisting the urge to draw his weapon, knowing its rounds were spent, and that he had limited ammo for his shotgun, the spartan instead nodded, and reluctantly complied.

Perhaps he would finally have the answers to the questions he himself possessed.

"Sir…."

General James Ironwood, knee-deep in the not entirely proverbial mountain of paperwork left in the fallout of this most recent political disaster, lifted his weary eyes from the increasingly blurred pages and set aside his pen, ignoring the deep cramp in his wrist and hand as he addressed the woman who had come to knock on the open door of his office.

"Yes, specialist?" He inquired, a tired brow raised crossly in mild inquiry at the interruption.

It was well known among those serving aboard his personal ship that he was not to be disturbed when handling affairs in his stateroom, not even by the select few he appeared to favor. As it was now, with his time consumed writing never-ending reports regarding the largest governmental turmoil since the faunus rebellion, it was especially dangerous to interrupt him. The command staff far away in their ivory citadel in Atlas was rapacious in their desires to stick substantial, possibly career inhibiting reprimands on his record for his most recent misallocation of altesian resources.

And so, currently, not even the influence of a Schnee would be safe from his displeasure.

Thankfully for Winter, her next words were a saving grace, if bearing ill portent.

"The Valiant has returned from its tasking."

The beginnings of his irritation extinguished, the general, calm and poised, offered a single perfunctory nod. "Ah… I see." A moment spent shuffling papers and organizing pens occurred, before he finally rose from his leather seat, a sternness once more overtaking his expression as he directed Winter out of his office.

A nod was returned, this one in understanding, as she retreated into the corridor outside. Once departed from his room, she moved to walk by his side, ever composed and poised, a true exemplar of all that was to be admired in the Atlas military. Ironwood, in that moment as always, found new appreciation for the disparity between Winter Schnee and her father, Jacques. There were not, in all of Remnant, two people more unalike. And James often wondered how a studious, loyal soldier could be conceived from the endless voracity of the Schnee lineage.

"Have you spoken with Captain Bronze?" He looked to his subordinate, awaiting her reply.

"Only once, when he reestablished contact." She answered succinctly.

And he watched, as her eyes flickered for the briefest moment, inhabited by an emotion he had not seen in her since she had first been assigned to his command. Unease was a rare thing to see on a Schnee, and Ironwood could not help but be intrigued at the unusual display.

"The captain appeared… disturbed." She continued after a pause of notable silence. "He insisted most adamantly that you meet him aboard his ship. From what I gathered in the exchange, there was something he wished to show you."

Ironwood catalogued and digested her words, his mind tackling the potential issue with all the alacrity that had seen him rise from the ranks. Bronze was one of his staunchest captains and steadfast supporter. An aging survivor of the Faunus wars. His experience had turned him into a reserved, but dedicated officer, long after he should have retired. James considered him somewhat of a grandfatherly figure, and Bronze had been his mentor for many years before he inherited his position.

Bronze was widely regarded as an eccentric by Atlas leadership and his open stance on Faunus rights had in the past denied him several opportunities for career advancement by those in power who still harbored resentment.

Even with the considerable blacklisting around his name, there was no other captain in his fleet he trusted more. So to hear that upon return he appeared 'disturbed', was enough to give Ironwood considerable pause. For as long as he had known Bronze, nothing had ever been able to shake his will.

Foreseeing a dark future, James decided to take prudence over protocol.

"Then we must leave immediately."

If surprised by his announcement, Winter schooled her thoughts well, and remained a quiet companion along the journey to the ship's hanger. Upon arrival and approach of the nearest pilot, the man was suitably alarmed to see the general appear in person without warning. The crisp salute he had begun to transition into, was largely ignored as Ironwood strode past him and up the bullhead's gangplate

The man, nearly stumbling over himself in surprised confusion, hurried after the general. "W-What do you need, Sir?" He uttered out in a slight stutter, his helmet half jammed back onto his head as he rushed to the cockpit.

"Take me to The Valiant, soldier." Ironwood ordered, already buckling himself into a harness as the pilot staggered up the steps to the front of the transport. There was a feeling in his gut, one he had come to recognize as a premonition of dark things to come. And his instincts had never been wrong before.

"Make it quick."

His office was quiet but for the ubiquitous click clack of gears churning above his desk. Yet he had long grown used to the presence of the machines providing a unique décor for his space, and paid them no heed as he focused instead on the unpleasant work piled high in front of him, an imposing tower of papers ridden with various resource requests from staff, weekly expenditure reports and droll finances. The life of the headmaster of Vale's greatest huntsman institution was not as interesting as the title may have seemed, and he often wondered at his life decisions. Had he known when he had first taken the position, that it would require gratuitous application of prosaic paperwork, he might have thought to reconsider.

Ozpin stared at the first page of the fifteen page and unnecessarily tedious budgetary document that had been forwarded to him by Oobleck. The man, while a godsend for taking over the economic responsibilities usually reserved for the headmaster, somehow, in an admittedly impressive, if horrifying accomplishment, managed to influence an already mind-numbing document with his nearly incomprehensible habit of carrying endlessly upon a topic.

The headmaster of Beacon, a man of considerable renown and respect, sighed heavily as he skimmed the twelfth page of inconsequential data Oobleck had decided to collect and attach to the expense report, for 'comprehensiveness' as he liked to phrase this utterly boring written diatribe of incomplete thoughts and run-on sentences.

In the end, Ozpin signed the bottom of the last page and slid it across his stained and very expensive desk, to the tragically small pile of complete forms that had not seen much progress since his work began earlier that morning. It looked positively pitiful sitting next to the monolithic pile still awaiting his approval under the pale moonlight streaming through the windows in his office.

Nursing a throbbing hand, he leaned back into his seat with an uncharacteristically petty grunt. James didn't have to suffer like he did. No sore hands or tired eyes for James Ironwood. No belligerent students always landing in trouble, no dark secrets that might result in the extinction of mankind. Ozpin would not put it past his old friend to have a legion of support staff to tack care of his school's records and maintain order. Certainly the rank of general in the Atlas military was not without its perks.

Looking to the stack of work awaiting him, and noticing that it somehow seemed to have gotten bigger, Ozpin sighed once more and, with a quick, furtive glance around his office for the golden haired mistress of his school, shuffled it off the edge and into a bin beside his desk, right where it belonged.

He smirked.

Out of sight, out of mind.

His smirk quickly became a smile as he grabbed his mug of hot coco and sipped, releasing another increasingly prolonged sigh. He savored the taste of sweetened chocolate and the faintest hint of cinnamon, and turned his attention inwards.

However before he could correlate his thoughts, there was a light tap on his balcony door. The shadow of excitement danced inside him as he turned to look towards the terrace just as it opened, admitting the familiarly ragged appearance of a tired old crow.

Ozpin chuckled.

In the moment the descriptor was more euphemism than fact.

He remained silent, watching as the disheveled man entered his office and lethargically made his way towards the closest seat. Qrow Branwen collapsed heavily into the chair and threw his feet up onto the desk.

Ozpin's brows narrowed ever so slightly as he watched a dusting of dirt tumble from the heel of the man's boot and speckle the far side of his workspace.

"So…" He inquired after several moments passed and he discerned that he would not receive his answer unless he pressed the issue. It was a familiar song and dance, one associated with the entire Branwen lineage as far as he was aware. Although the question as to why they collectively seemed to be so antagonistic was one he had yet to answer, even though he had his theories.

Qrow matched Ozpin's curious stare with sunken, bloodshot eyes, and withheld his response until well after he scrounged a battered flask from inside his dirtied coat and took a heavy draft of its alcoholic contents.

Ozpin waited patiently as Qrow drained the entire canteen and roughly shuffled it back into his clothing. His wait continued for a further three minutes as the man opposite him seemed to mull over his thoughts, until finally he spoke.

"Sorry Oz man." He snorted irritably. "Whoever it is you're looking for, they weren't in the neighborhood by the time I showed up, quite a long trip that was you known, far away from the usual routes." He muttered offhandedly, his tone clearly upset and his expression rather suggestive.

Ozpin schooled his irritation underneath a calm demeanor, a trick he was well-practiced in, particularly in regards to the Branwen family, although it had become quite useful when dealing with his latest batch of miscreant students. They could speak of adequate compensation later, the immediate topic was of more importance, and the information he received was less than welcomed. "That is… unfortunate. Did you perhaps see anything that might indicate where they might have gone?"

The dark haired man shrugged brushing a calloused hand across his cheek to scratch at his days old stubble. "Can't say for sure. Whatever happened out there really did a number on the local vegetation, mostly looked like the usual hallmarks of a Grimm attack, textbook destruction, no bodies though. So whoever it was managed to give more than they were getting, and judging from what I saw, they were getting a lot."

Ozpin mulled on Qrow's words, taking another draft from his mug as he contemplated what scant information he had gathered. Whatever, or whomever, tripped the sensors last night was an objective of immense curiosity for the Beacon headmaster. The footage that had been retrieved was corrupted, damaged along with the equipment during the scuffle, but what was legible, was easily sufficient to make this individual's discovery of substantial interest to him.

While blurred, the camera had been able to capture solid figures at least, and the recording was clear to the point where individual movement could be discerned if studied hard enough. And what Ozpin had seen, was a person capable of great strength, considerable speed, and lithe coordination. Such ability was not uncommon, especially for trained huntsman. However, for one person to display such effortless synergy between all three qualities simultaneously as had been displayed, was simply… unprecedented.

It was, essentially, impossible for a huntsman of any caliber to have such a degree of proficiency in multiple forms of combat discipline. It was taught in the academies - including the very one he supervised - that to entertain the notion of excellence in all three categories was imprudent and an unrealistic goal. It simply could not be done. And that included factoring the capabilities of individual students. Much like their semblances, each student and even fully registered huntsman, were limited by their physical ability. It would be impossible for Ruby Rose to physically overpower Cardin Winchester, just as it would be impossible for Winchester to match her speed.

And yet this individual, whoever they were, did not seem to abide by natural law. Who were they? Where did they come from? What gave them this inhuman ability? And perhaps most importantly, where did they stand in this war? Ozpin very much desired the answer to these questions. And yet it seemed to him, that there was only one person on remnant who could provide them.

This planet was… abnormal.

B170 had thought himself inured to the idiosyncrasies of this world after having spent such a considerable amount of time surviving it. He had tentatively considered, and foolishly believed, that there was nothing left here that could possibly confuse him further than his current, and constant, flux of misapprehension. He had engaged hostile humans that he no longer was content to assume possessed insurrectionist connections; he encountered impossible creatures that denied all aspects of reality.

And now there was… this.

"You must be Lucan, huh?"

The spartan nodded, his intense gaze invisible to the short woman that had greeted him the moment he had been led into the building. His initial scrutiny had noted its primitive ornamentation suited to an age that lacked significant technology, although its comparatively primitive embellishment clashed starkly with the electrical lighting and indoor plumbing. But that, while unusual, was not what bewildered him so.

No, his confounded bemusement, and dogged attention, was ensorcelled by pert, furred ears atop this woman's head, and the long, flashy tail that flicked to and fro above, or rather attached, to her tailbone.

The woman endured his observation in unknowing silence, his helmet obscuring his mystified eyes from her awareness as she drew a slow smirk. "Not much of a talker, are ya?" She ventured, her question alight with amusement as he nodded once more in reply.

"Right then," She continued on without missing a beat, gesturing behind her to a table relatively close to the back of the archaic establishment. "Maybe we can take this one-sided conversation away from the entrance to this fine building. You seem to be quite a better door than the one you came in from,, I'm afraid." She chuckled as B170 cast a glance back to see the young adults that had brought him here were prevented from entering by his sizeable mass. And he gave more attention to the fact that he had been hunching nearly two feet lower to stand in the doorway.

He, after a moment of reflection, moved to comply. B170 was deeply aware of his unusual dimensions, a feat that was even more peculiar given its difference from the already extensive enhancements imparted by his spartan augmentations. It had taken considerable adaptation after the procedure to accustom himself to the radical alteration that not even the scientists had expected. He had been of relatively normal stature as a child and throughout most of his young adulthood. However the amplifications of the exaltation process had activated recessive genes in his DNA, and the hereditary perpetuation of a rare strain of gigantism. Had it not been for the augments, he might have gone his entire life without ever knowing. As events played out, he had instead spent a considerable overture bedridden in the onsite hospital as a result.

He recalled the whole experience to be overwhelmingly… unpleasant.

The best and brightest of the UNSC's medical industry had saved him from horrible disfigurement, and the scars of their efforts still lingered. Nevertheless, he had survived, and developed into a spartan that was the largest of his peers, dwarfing even the few gen II's he had met in his service. Standing roughly nine feet in Mjolnir, eight without, he had been the heavy weapons, and CQC operator in his squad, and had, on one occasion in his official record, successfully defeated a magelekgolo in melee combat, despite severe injuries in the exchange preventing him from active service for three days.

Consequently, his disorder, and time sensitive injuries, had been what saved him from the massacre that was Operation: TORPEDO. Handpicked from his class to take assignments under ONI, he had been half a galaxy away when he heard the news regarding the fallout.

Although in his current frame of mind such thoughts were a fleeting distraction, passing through the spartan's consideration in the time it took for him to clear the doorway and follow the… unusual woman to the table she had elected. She was quick to sit, and he watched perplexedly as the gaggle of youths piled in after her, like a herd of rampaging buffalo.

B170 refrained from joining for several reasons. Knowing no wooden chair could ever endure his weight, and unwilling to put himself in a vulnerable position, he instead opted to take a knee, as unusual as it may have appeared. The action was more to ensure any conversation would be conducted at a more reasonable elevation, as he had no particular desire to rest. B170 masked the jab of pain in his foot as he shifted into place, hoping that somehow he might find the freedom to tend to his injuries depending how this all played out. The woman, a wolf-like ear flicking in some incomprehensible emotion, seemed to understand the basis of his decision as she calculated the largeness of his physique.

He in turn, inspected her animal features and tried to discern some form of scientific reasoning behind their existence, anything that might fit in his largely incomprehensive understanding of biology. A mutation perhaps? He mused inwardly. B170 did not possess much in the terms of personal knowledge in the sciences, at least no more than how to proficiently eliminate all forms of organic threat or what was most advantageous in regards to tactical and strategic operations.

"Now then…" The strange woman began, casting a brief look towards himself and the adolescents that had delivered him here, who now sat in respectful, if rambunctious silence. It was clear to them that the adults were talking, even if he might not have been much their elder

"My name is Viridia Volkova, and I will be handling this little impromptu investigation. So, if I might be so bold as to ask, Mister Lucan, where exactly do you come from?" She reached into her shirt as she talked, a shortly cropped top that revealed an unusual amount of bosom, and retrieved a medallion of some sort that she preceded to show to him. The motion, although uncouth, seemed to imitate some form of familiarity, and the symbol etched into the pendant provoked images of authority, leading the spartan to carefully assume its, and therefor her significance. That the children led him to her, and that they seemed to uphold some as of yet quantified role as protectors of this town, gave the spartan cause to think her a leading figure of some renown. But the reason was unclear. Did individuals bearing her unique… genetics, have some role as arbitrators in their society? Was she the town mayor, or leading military figurehead?

Too many unknowns, and not enough information.

B170 felt it sensible in this scenario to be careful with his words, unawares as to the true extent of his displacement. Further ignorance to his existence and inability to recognize UNSC iconography fostered deeper feelings of reservation in his mind and he no longer was confident in his ability to survive uncontested. Even the animals of this world were dangerous to a spartan, and there were possibly even more dangers he had yet to discover. The human supersoldier was even less sure of his standing then he had been the first day he stumbled out of the forerunner archeology.

This world was definitely not Nochtis Prime, and he had the sinking suspicion that it was even further away from the UNSC than the Arcana System. But that was simply the root of an increasingly expansive problem. He knew nothing about this world or its inhabitants, and did not trust any story he might try to concoct. He could think of no subtle means of diverting the issue, and instead decided to attempt a more familiar direction.

"Classified." He grunted his reply, a rejoinder that had suited him well when other military personnel had attempted to communicate with him. Unfortunately, the attempt to hopefully soften his response to alleviate any animosity that might arise due to the brevity of his answer, was ultimately wasted, as verse once again failed him. His reluctance to speak over the years had made speech an infrequent, and brazenly coarse affair for the spartan III. His answering word erupted from his throat in a granular snarl, his larynx far more used to producing wordless growls and low pitched roars.

The woman gave no real surprised reaction, at least none that a normal human might. Her ears however, gave her away.

B170 watched them fold flat against her hair, and recognized the primal fear response. And while her reaction was subtle, the youths were not. They had recoiled, as if lashed by the sheer curtness of his vocalization. The spartan exhaled heavily, the sound unheard by his audio receptors as he realized just how out of place he was with all this. He could count on one hand the number of times he had interacted with civilians or non UNSC aligned entities, and more than half of that had been the Covenant.

"Apologies." He rumbled softly, this time somewhat more successful at controlling the volume and pitch of his voice. While far away from welcoming, it was a marked improvement.

"I… do not speak often." There was a mild irritation he felt as he spoke, like an irksome itch at the back of his throat, one that grew in discomfort the more protracted his speech became, just another ever-present reminder that he had not escaped entirely from the results of his procedure.

The spartan did not know what to expect, from this meeting or from this world in general. And he most certainly did not anticipate her response.

"Does it hurt?" She inquired softly, her eyes, dark viridian in color, seemed to take in the featureless display of titanium carbide, tungsten alloy, and layered graphene composing his faceplate, before lowering towards the metallic fibers of his suit, visible between his head and breastplate.

Unawares as to how to react, he settled for the truth.

"Sometimes."

Then, she smiled at him, her expression warm and kind as she appeared to shift her interrogative. "Well, then perhaps I will keep this brief." She returned her necklace to its place and clasped her hands together on the tabletop. "While I do not possess the authority to inquire about governmental operations, I will at least require an explanation for why you arrived at our gates with a legion of Grimm hot on your heels."

The spartan was quick to jump on what little information he had been given, anything that might help him familiarize himself with this world. Those creatures had a name. They were the Grimm, and he would not forget that. As to how he might explain himself… well the truth seemed most appropriate.

"I was… lost."

"Lost…" She repeated skeptically, a brow raised and a singular ear perked.

"Correct."

He could see the disbelief etched onto her pale visage, and even the teenagers that had joined her at the table did not quite believe that. This did not surprise him, he had not expected belief. What was important was that she had no evidence to dismiss his claim. His was not a lie, but rather an omission of certain verities.

"In that case, Lucan." She exhaled delicately, clearly unhappy with his answer but deciding not to press forward with her disgruntlement. "If you were lost, perhaps I can tell you where you were found." Volkova looked up from the table, gesturing widely about the humble dimensions of the tavern. "This building, and the town around it, belongs to the rather large and industrious complex known as Brittle Peak, perhaps you may have heard of it?"

Although he was in danger of appearing even more suspect, he did admit his absence of knowledge with a slight shake of his head. The information he possessed about this world could be displayed on a single kilobyte of storage, and so at the risk of suspicion he could afford to press for additional data.

The woman's lips twitched, the trace of a frown starting to manifest, before it was quickly subsumed by a curtain of calm congeniality. "Brittle Peak is the largest industrial settlement in Vale outside of the capital city, and one of two colonial outposts in all of the four kingdoms. It's… kind of a big deal." She finished hesitantly, her eyes searching and probing for something he could not possibly provide.

The spartan did not pay her reaction much mind, instead focused on assimilating this new information as it was given to him. Vale, not just a country, but a kingdom and there were three others. This alone was enough for him to consider for some time to come. No one used kingdoms for governance anymore, not even the oddest outlier colonies at the fringe of human space. And of considerably more concern, she did not speak in a way that assumed familiarity with the galaxy at large. Yet once more he had not heard mention of the UNSC, or the Covenant, or anything pertaining to his own knowledge.

He remained silent, and as he hoped, she began to fill the void with words.

"Brittle Peak is the leading supplier of dust in the kingdom, and one of the few places not adherent to SDC regulations. Its size and significance allows it to maintain several full time huntsman and Beacon Academy routinely sends third year students on rotational assignment. This," she gestured to the motley range of young adults, "is Team DARK."

B170 turned to acknowledge those prompted, though his attention was cursory at best, and their varied greetings washed over him as he integrated her words into his increasing store of information. While the terms were utterly foreign to him, and only cemented the idea that he was far away from the UNSC, from this he could begin to build understanding. He identified and highlighted key facts in his mind, SDC, Dust, Beacon, Teams, these definitions were nonsensical to him, but he knew the value of their importance.

"I… believe I am beginning to remember." He interjected, gauging the woman's reaction as he continued to formulate his thoughts.

He searched her eyes for any trace of doubt or misgiving, and though he could detect some uncertainty, she did appear to be mostly relieved. It would seem that knowledge of this town was fairly widespread, and B170 avowed to do his best to never again have to expose himself to learn more. Whatever it might take, he would find alternative means of learning about this unusual world, starting with the information he had just been handed.

It was a start, not the best, and not even a good one, but it was at least something.

"Good." Viridia continued, oblivious to his musing. "That should make things easier. And perhaps with that we could drop this whole interrogation thing and just get talking." She gestured dismissively with her hand, and looked over her shoulder to call for who he could only assume was the owner of this establishment.

B170 watched the man exit from a door by the bar across the room, and hastily make his way towards their table. In that moment the spartan began to connect details. The man that approached seemed hesitant, and as he noted before, the building was empty of patrons, leaving them to speak in peace. From what little understanding he had of the civilian sector, this place should have seen business, even so late at night.

The spartan looked back to the woman, and glanced at her chest as she spoke with the barman, as if somehow able to see through her shirt to the pendant she bore. Whatever the symbol was, clearly it offered her some kind of executive power over this place, and perhaps the city at large. While he had yet to uncover what her true role was here, he could at least assume it to be of some sort of leadership.

The conversation between the woman and the man was brief, and he was quick to bow and hurry out the room, B170 followed his departure, and did not lift his guard until minutes after he left. Now somewhat confident that she had not signaled for an ambush, and that he had passed investigation with marginal success, he returned his attention to the table, noticing that the kids were now talking amongst themselves at the dispersal of the serious aura surrounding their conversation, and as his head turned back, Volkova took that as her que to open her mouth once more.

"I took the liberty of ordering a meal for all of us, although I hope I am not too presuming to do so. But I thought the chance to fill your belly might be a nice step in the right direction after your brush with death." She smiled as he nodded, the spartan unwilling to do or say anything else that might further weigh suspicion upon him.

He would admit, to some degree, that he might have liked the idea of a meal. It had been days since he last had something to eat. Stretching his supplies had been prudent for the situation, though he was intrinsically aware that starvation could kill a spartan just as easy as any other man. They were still flesh and blood, as hard as that seemed to be understood by the unaugmented.

B170, his thoughts drifting back to the information he had just obtained, was drawn from his pondering as her tongue began to ramble once more. "The damned Grimm are relentless bastards, I'll give them that much. Every day they seem to take more and more from us, and I am just not sure how much left there is to take. Where were you when they attacked? If you don't mind me asking?" She looked to him inquisitively, and the spartan reflected on how to approach this.

"I was… at camp, in the wilderness. Inventorying my supplies, I was approached… by a wolf on two legs."

"Whoa… you camped out there?" A voice interrupted their conversation, and the spartan glanced to the side to see one of the two females in… Team… DARK was it? She was unusually young to wield a weapon, at least for normal humans, perhaps no older than fifteen or sixteen. She seemed… physically disinclined for combat, lanky with the hallmarks of unfinished puberty. Platinum blonde tresses and bright, too soft, pink eyes, made him question the logic of her role. Unmindful of his concerns, her expression was one of awe, and from the mirroring looks of her friends, he realized that what he had done might be considered unusual here.

Given the monsters that had almost eaten him alive, he could believe why.

Viridia shook her head in bemusement, eyeing him with what was either respect, or pity. "There are few people alive that would risk camping outside the cities, Lucan. Though I am surprised a beowulf was the first to find you. Boarbatusk are the predominate species in the area." She hummed thoughtfully to herself, and retrieved an unusual device at her side, some form of unfamiliar technology with a translucent screen, that she slowly began to type on with an idle thumb. "That might mean a shift in Grimm movement. I'll have to contact the mayor later to let him know. Thanks for the Intel, Lucan." She smiled happily up at him.

Bewildered, he simply nodded, before he the children began to probe. Now with something interesting to speak of, and suspicion shrugged off him for the moment, they descended upon the spartan like a pack of wolves with an insatiable appetite for answers.

He was unprepared.

"How many were there?" A boy with fiery red hair and bright blue eyes shouted at him, his frame absolutely shuddering with excitement. His physique more closely fit what B170 expected, broad shoulders, thick muscles, opposite of the girl, he was in a prime that some marines had not attained.

"Many."

"How many did you kill?" The other boy interjected, B170 identifying him as the one that had conversed with him at the gate.

"Not enough."

"Were you scared?" The last girl in the group of four asked timidly, an overall timorous looking adolescent with slack pink hair and demur red eyes.

"No." He almost snapped, insulted at the very accusation. B170 did not feel fear. Nothing scared him, not the Covenant, not humans, not even those monsters that had tried so desperately to eat him alive. His lack of fear was logical in his eyes. One could hardly be afraid if they were undaunted by death.

But in this moment he was willing to admit his trepidation.

The spartan could see a thousand-and-one questions burning at their lips, their eyes alight with childlike curiosity as they prepared to give him the dressing down of his career, thankfully he was gifted reprieve as the adult in the party intervened, preventing, much to his relief, the impending calamity.

"Children, please do not accost our guest." She admonished with a tittering chuckle that showed more amusement then anger. "I am sure that after such a harrowing experience, that Mister Lucan here desires some peace and quiet."

"Yes Miss Volkova." They all droned together in a reply that implied mentored familiarity with the woman, perhaps as students? Was she tied to this Beacon Academy he had heard of?

As his situation had concluded thus far, he remained in the dark, his questions unanswered. However the gracious nod he slipped her way was genuine regardless.

There was reason in his lack of, and aversion towards, civilian contact. Distance was conducive to maintaining a positive image of the UNSC, and offered him peace of mind. The less they knew about spartans the benefited all parties involved.

It was better this way.

The strange locals continued to chatter, their topics varied and predisposed by the nature of their youth. The woman however, remained quiet, watching the children as they talked excitedly in their instinctive huddle, a smile hugging the corner of her lips by the faintest of margins.

B170 observed, his eyes, while aware of his environment, habitually returning to the animalian appendages of the eldest in this peculiar party, pondering tediously as to where it is he had found himself.

AN: I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to review the last chapter, as well as those who simply gave it a read. I am glad some of you are so excited for this to be continued, and in thanks I worked a little harder to get this chapter out as soon as I did. And as for those who left constructive reviews, I am particularity grateful, and hopefully you will see your concerns addressed in this chapter.

Now on to sleep, I have a very long day tomorrow.