-Contact-
Two days in and stalking the General was proving to be only a marginally fruitful endeavor. Xal learned some access codes to a few doors, got a tour of the facility, and even learned a little about this "Atlas", but not much else. No one was talking, patrols were increased, everyone was understandably on edge. Realizing that he wouldn't learn anything by eavesdropping on nonexistent conversations, Xal decided on a more aggressive approach. He was tailing multiple squads and pairs of troopers, waiting until they reached a point where their patrols didn't overlap with another group. He spent three days memorizing patrol routes and it was only a matter of time until they walked into his ambush. Xal leapt at at a pair of soldiers just as they turned the corner, punching one and elbowing the other, both fell to the ground without so much as a sound. They were going to be hurting when next they awoke, but he wouldn't be there when they did. Xal began looking through their belongings and equipment until he found what he was looking for, a small handheld device he had seen them use, most likely a form of data pad. When he opened it he was surprised to find that the screen was glass rather than hard light as he originally suspected, but the housing was much too small to completely enclose the screen and yet, by some technology beyond his understanding, they accomplished the improbable task.
He would view the contents of the device later, for now, he moved on to the weapons. Xal picked up one of the unknown assault rifles, it was heavier than most human made weapons he had used in the past, seemingly made out steel rather than the titanium alloy that was a major selling point with most manufacturers, but otherwise, it was well balanced and well made, and given the look of the helmets that the soldiers wore, it was more than likely HUD compatible, so he immediately tested his theory and linked his helmet to the weapon; he was soon presented with information, like the number of rounds in the magazine and a simple crosshair reticle. He returned the gun to its unconscious owner and grabbed one the less obvious contraptions the soldiers carried. It was smallish rectangular device, Xal tapped a button and was surprised to find that it was a sword and, like the data pad device, it was collapsible in a way that was physically impossible; it was a well meaning design, of that he was sure, but the handle that popped out of the other end appeared much too small to be able to fit comfortably in even a human hand, just more oddities with this strange military group. Xal had learned all he could without the proper time and facilities to study this technology, so he went off in search of a hiding place to pour over the contents of the device he had captured, anxious to learn its secrets.
Xal made his way between two of the less frequented structures at this facility's perimeter walls, they would provide some limited shelter from the blizzard and reduce the likely hood of him being caught while reading. When he opened the device once more he was met with a spear on a circle, likely the insignia of this planet's governing body or military. Xal was just about to start reading over the first files when the base's alarms went off once more, he immediately got to his feet and moved to a better vantage. The bases turrets began shooting at something beyond the walls. He waited and observed as the humans scrambled to their stations. They were yelling about "manticores" and a "goliath", could they be vehicles? Or weapons of some kind?
Xal thought he would received an answer when a fireball destroyed one the defense turrets, but his hypotheses were disproven when a massive, winged beast swooped down and took a couple of the soldiers in its claws. This kind of violence was very strange behavior for wildlife, most healthy animals would avoid such conflict, running away at the first sign of mortal danger, but here? Here they were attacking with a deliberate viciousness. Xal's observations only gained credence as another, smaller, species of winged creature began wreaking havoc with their numbers and their own fairly large size. Many were being shot down now that the humans managed to launch their aircraft, aircraft which Xal now had the opportunity to use in all of this confusion, which was much cleaner than his other plan, which consisted of disabling the base's defenses and communication systems and using the humans' aircraft to leave, but now those steps were unnecessary. Xal had everything he needed from here and there would be no benefit to letting this opportunity escape him.
Xal broke out into a run towards the area were their aircraft were kept, in all of this confusion it wouldn't surprise him if there was at least one these vehicles without a pilot at the moment. He looked back as he heard a loud crashing sound and saw that a huge black and white elephant had just broken through the wall, it was heavily wounded and died soon after accomplishing its task, but its death allowed strange wolf like animals to bound in through the breach, but it wasn't long before they were engaged in battle with this facility's combat drones. Xal noticed that the aggressors' numbers were starting to thin, he would need to escape quickly before the humans could recover from this battle and prevent him from leaving. Xal sped into a full on sprint when he saw an unoccupied VTOL, he was still well inside of his window for an easy escape.
Xal barely slowed his run as he turned onto the ramp, he thumped himself into the seat and began flipping the proper switches and levers for a take off, he had spent a short time studying the craft in the days he was here, so it was all pretty straight forward. He manipulated the the steering stick and was soon in the air, making it far away from this place in all the confusion, he would fly in this direction until he ran out of fuel, he'd rather they not find his trail for while yet. This was for the best, the only way for him to have gained anything else from that facility was to eliminate the entire base's compliment to allow himself the time and focus to study in-depth, but Xal had a basic code of ethics to preserve what little sense of honor he had left, an important part of that was refusing to kill to fulfill his own desires, he was was better than that, he needed to be better than that.
(Line Break)
Daisy groaned as she saw sunlight through her eyelids, she couldn't remember the last time she was allowed to sleep for that long, but she felt like shit and no one decided to get her out bed yet. Normally, Daisy wouldn't complain this much about her rest being disturbed, and she'd definitely felt worse before, but she felt pretty sure she wasn't on a mission and that meant she can make whatever noise she wanted to, bonus if those noises pissed off John or any nearby ONI personnel. But alas, her long rest wasn't meant to be, Daisy blinked the sleep from her eyes and once again found herself waking up to unfamiliar surroundings, only this time she was in a loose gown with an IV drip in her arm. She contemplated ripping it out before fully remembering the events of last night: the shattered moon, the desert, those highly aggressive black animals, and most of all, passing out from blood loss.
Daisy looked around the room, trying to assess her situation. Had she been captured? Not likely, whoever put her in this room left her weapons on the nightstand next to the bed and the only restraint was the IV, and it was really only a restraint if she wanted to do some mental gymnastics. Was she being drugged? Yes and no, she felt completely fine other than a headache caused by dehydration and blood loss, and the only other sensations were in line with morphine or a similar painkiller, it had also been awhile since she'd eaten, so her stomach was up in arms too. That could only mean that was in the company of an actual Good Samaritan, cool. Or it could also mean her "saviors" were just playing the long game, which was also kind of cool, it made her feel special. Daisy was just climbing out of bed, briefly aggravating her stitched up wound, when the door to her room opened and the most beautiful woman she had ever seen walked in with a tray of food, the smell of it made Daisy's mouth water.
She was an older woman with black, neck length hair and golden eyes, but what really caught Daisy's attention were the ears. The pretty woman had a pair of black, feline looking ears with gold piercings, she vaguely reminded Daisy of some Ancient Egyptian art she'd seen in some of Deja's lessons. Her thoughts went no further when she heard the woman speak. "Oh, sweetie, no." The woman rushed over and placed the tray on the nightstand next to Daisy's guns. "You need rest, you lost a lot of blood last night." She coaxed Daisy back onto the bed by gently pushing her shoulders down. When Daisy was all tucked in, the woman retrieved the tray and placed it over Daisy's lap.
Daisy could have chosen to be concerned over her complete lack of resistance to the woman's gentle pushing, but was instead overwhelmed by hunger and proceeded to dig into the delicious smelling food before her. She ravenously shoveled the curry like dish into her mouth, the woman smiling benevolently all the while. Daisy had a brief moment of realization that she couldn't keep referring to her host as "the woman", but was too busy eating to solve that problem. Now that Daisy was finished, however... "Sorry-"
"That's alright dear, I knew you would be hungry after last night." The woman waved off her apology as unnecessary.
"Right, thanks." Daisy gulped, she had never been good at talking to anyone other than her fellow Spartans, and even then she would have been loath to call most of those conversations "pleasant". "Who are you?" Daisy mentally backhanded her self for her social ineptitude, "'Thanks for saving my life, now who the fuck are you?!' Yeah, good one Daisy!" She berated herself. "I mean-um... sorry."
The lady only giggled at her plight. "That's alright sweetie, you can call me Kali." Daisy couldn't quite pin down the way Kali's tone of voice made her feel, knowing only that she felt warm. It was a vaguely familiar feeling, something she felt a long time ago, once thought to be lost. Daisy wasn't sure whether or not she liked it.
"Thanks, m-Kali." Daisy croaked out, she hadn't realized how dry her throat was, something that Kali took immediate notice of, she looked like she was about to call out to someone when the biggest man Daisy had ever seen opened the door, carrying a tray that held a tea set.
"There's my loving husband with the tea." Kali said fondly before walking over to the giant of a man and taking the tray. The size difference was staggering, Kali couldn't be much taller than 5'8", but her husband was as big as Jorge or Samuel, in MJOLNIR. It was almost funny, really, but Daisy would never voice any of those opinions, that would be rude, which normally wouldn't be a problem for her, Daisy wasn't very nice to strangers most days, but Kali was nothing but cool to her and the woman practically radiated trustworthiness. Or Daisy was high, who knew what this painkiller dripping into her could be doing?
The giant man poured a Daisy a cup of tea and brought over a stool for himself. "Do you know who I am?"
"No"
The man simply raised his eyebrow at Daisy's blunt answer. "I'm Ghira Belladonna, Chieftain of Menagerie, I only want to ask you few questions." Menagerie? Was that a planet, a continent, or a country? And questions? Was she going to be interrogated? Was she wrong about not being captured? If these people were trying to confuse her, it was working.
"Let her rest for a while, Ghira, she's still pail from last night." Kali almost scalded, her ears twitching in what Daisy guesses is annoyance. She would have to ask about those, too. Fully functional cat ears don't just grow on humans.
"Don't worry honey, these won't be difficult questions, I just want to get to know our guest." The massive man said, trying to assuage his wife's concerns.
"At least wait till after breakfast, dear." Daisy was used to people talking about her like she wasn't there, and Kali's voice made her feel safe for some reason, but that didn't mean she had to like it.
"It's fine."Daisy interjects, sitting up straighter in her bed. "I'd rather get this over with now." It went unsaid that Daisy would decide her next move depending on the nature of the questions asked. "But I have questions, too."
"Alright, but like I said, these questions won't be difficult." Ghira shifted in his seat to get more comfortable. "How did you find yourself out in the jungle, fighting an Ursa Major?"
"That's what you call 'em?" Daisy asked relaxing at the non-prying question with the non-classified answer. "Well, I just kinda woke up in the middle of a desert and walked here, getting attacked by a bunch of weird animals every step of the way." Daisy was reminded of her embarrassing wound at the claws of that exploding bear. "Not a thought I could of predicted ever crossing my mind." She mentally chuckled at the ridiculousness of that situation. "So, what can you tell me about Menagerie, Chief? Is that the Planet? The town?"
"Planet?" Ghira looked really confused now. "Do you really not know where you are?" Ghira and Kali looked more concerned than confused now, Daisy was getting a little worried.
"I thought that was obvious." Daisy was stressing out over all this shit again, but the answer to her next question was going to decide everything she did from here on out. "You're all human, aren't you?" Her voice was all but a whisper, it was probably a really stupid question, she hoped it would turn out that way, at least.
It was Kali who answered. "Of course not, we're Faunus, sweetie." Kali wiggled her ears for emphasis.
Daisy's hand moved before she had time to really process what was said, she was grabbing hold of her pistol's grip before she stopped herself. She looked over to Ghira and Kali for... something. Direction, maybe? Ghira was shielding his wife with his arm and Kali just had her hands over mouth in concern. Daisy let go of the pistol and grabbed her teddy bear instead.
The food and tea wound up spilled all over the place. Daisy was clutching the bear to her chest, doing her best to avoid the eyes of the couple she had just tried to threaten. This was all still okay, this situation was still salvageable. They weren't Covenant, if they were she would either be dead or they would have handed her off to an Elite or Brute for interrogation, and she hadn't shot at them, so no harm, no foul. Sure, these Faunus spoke English somehow, Daisy wasn't sure on that really meant, but the language barrier was already taken care of, at least.
"I think she needs some time, Ghira." Kali said after everything calmed down and Ghira took Daisy's guns, an action that the young Spartan made no effort to stop. Kali was right, some time to think would be great, Daisy just was not prepared for a first contact scenario. She would apologize for going for her gun and start making a good impression on these people.
(Line Break)
Super late! I've got a lot of good excuses though. Power in my town went out for like a week after a snow storm wrecked the power lines, then after that I got distracted by Metro Exodus. So yeah, here ya go. All feedback is appreciated.