John stood in Alpha Base's mess hall, smacking his lips as he munched on an MRE, savoring the taste of the imitation chicken and buffalo sauce. "Mmm… MRE technology has advanced a lot in the past few centuries. Could you imagine we used to make these things taste horrible on purpose so the soldiers wouldn't eat all of them at once? Now we just make them taste what they taste like, and if the soldiers get hyperglycemia, that's their problem! Man, I love living in the 26th century…" He muttered, popping another chunk of breaded meat into his mouth. "I am pretty bummed Keyes won't let me into his liquor stash, though. And I know he has it, because wine's on all the officer's lifeboats." He frowned, furrowing his eyebrows. "That never made sense to me… if you're going to include liquor, why only put it in the officer's lifeboats? It serves no practical purpose, aside being a quick and dirty way to sterilize wounds, but that's not exactly a good idea depending on the alcohol content. A way to open diplomatic channels by asking the enemy to get drunk with you? Maybe… I don't know, I think it's probably just military classism in action. That would make sense, a lot of people that're officers compared to me call me 'son' even though I'm usually older than them." John remarked with a frown. "That brings up another interesting point… just how much is our military spending going toward wine? We have… hundreds, if not thousands of ships, each one has lifeboats of some kind, the bottles of wine aren't cheap either… I'm starting to understand why people get up in arms about our spending over the fiscal year now. Eat your hearts out, taxpayers, this is where your money goes-giving wine to the bridge crew of starships so they can get wasted in survival situations." He shook his head as he finished his meal, tossing the wrapper toward an improvised waste basket nearby, missing and seeing it flop on the floor.

"Oof," The Weapon looked at him with a smug smile, "Getting rusty in your old age?"

"Hey, I'm still in the prime of my life," John huffed, shaking his head. "Throwing paper of any kind is really just a crapshoot. Chaos theory in action is the scientific term, I believe." He snarked, before a blue glow came from nearby, and Cortana appeared. "Oh no…"

"You," Cortana looked at John with her hands on her hips sternly, "You and I need to talk."

"If this is about that wrapper, I was going to pick it up."

Cortana rubbed her forehead, fighting back a snippy remark. "Not about that. On the Truth and Reconciliation, you said some interesting things."

"Oh, you mean about the MA5?" John asked in response, though well aware of her actual line of inquiry. "I knew you could pull through for me and get be a barrel with a proper twist."

Cortana let out a sigh, gritting her teeth. "No… I meant about what you said about how you went crazy. And what I had to do with it."

John, for a moment, stopped what he was doing. "…of all the shit you had to ask… You asking for yourself, or both of you?"

Cortana turned her head up, "If it concerns the Master Chief, naturally, I'll inform him."

"Oh, please, by all means," John gestured in response, "Tell him. It'll save him a whole lot of bullshit coming in the future."

Cortana crossed her arms, shaking her head. "Seriously, what is your problem with me?"

"What?" John asked confusedly in response. "I meant that genuinely-if I'd known then what I knew now…"

"Look, maybe you should just leave him to brew." The Weapon suggested. "He can be… volatile sometimes."

Cortana, however, shook her head in return. "I don't know what problem you have with me either, but I'm not backing off."

"I'm serious," The younger AI replied, "One time he snapped and beat two Spartan Killers to death with his bare hands."

"That's true," John nodded with a shrug, "That is a thing that happened." He sighed, shaking his head. "Look, do you really want to know, really?" He asked. "I'm serious, you won't like the answer, not one bit. It'd be like a woman going in for a pregnancy checkup and being told she has cancer. She's asking innocent enough questions but they're gonna lead to something terrible."

Cortana stood straight, unflappable. "If what you've said is true, then you've already saved whole squads from certain death."

"…hm…" John rumbled thoughtfully.

"John, I'm going to tell you this once," The Weapon spoke up quietly in his head, "Changing time… well, nobody's done it for obvious reasons. It's kind of a crapshoot in practice. There's no guarantee things will go how you expect them to. Chaos theory in action, really. Hell, that's if the changes stick."

"Why wouldn't they?" John shrugged in response, with his helmet speakers off, though Cortana was perfectly aware they were having a conversation she wasn't being let in on, "Everything already looks different… I think instead of straight time travel, we might've jumped into an alternate timeline or something. That would make sense, right? Like all the old time travel theories that say when you travel into the past you're really just jumping into a parallel universe."

"I don't know, it just…" The Weapon slowly replied, "Something tells me it won't be that easy."

"Who the hell is gonna fight us?" John snorted, before reactivating his external speakers. "All right, your wish is my command… but be careful what you wish for." He said to Cortana, as she looked somewhat tense. "You asked me where you were when I got spaced. The answer is that you were on a ring, just like this one."

Cortana frowned, her brow furrowing curiously. "What? There are more rings?"

"Too damn many." John huffed, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, the reason that you were down there, and not with me when I got spaced… was because you'd gone Emperor Palpatine on the galaxy and tried to take over."

Cortana blinked, recoiling like she'd been stunned. "I'm sorry, what?"

John sighed, all traces of his usual insane levity vanishing. "You died. You died, and it was my fault, but you came back. And you came back wrong. You fell into some Domain or whatever, and it stitched you back up so you were alive again, but you weren't fixed." He explained as Cortana's light dimmed and intensified with the shifting of her shock. "You were rampant. Now, I'm no expert in AI theory, but isn't the jealousy stage where rampant AIs try to expand and take over as many computer systems as possible?"

Cortana, entirely serious and repulsed by she was hearing about herself so far, nodded.

"Well, that's what you did." John continued, "You tried to take over the whole galaxy using an army of Forerunner machines-succeeded, too, so, hope you were happy about that-and you drew in a whole bunch of AI over to your cause. Killed a lot of people all over the galaxy."

"No…" Cortana breathed in horror, taking a step back.

"Then you took control of the ring, which like the lady here said can kill anything in the galaxy," John kept going, taking note of Cortana's reactions, "We thought you were gonna fire it, wipe the slate clean and start over, so we got the hell over there and tried to put a stop to it."

"That's… why they made me." The Weapon appeared with an awkward smile, gesturing her arms widely. "I was supposed to mimic you to the ring's security, and mimic the ring's security toward you." Her smile turned prideful for a second. "I was successful."

"Then the Banished came for all of us," John huffed, shaking his head, "And I got thrown the fuck out into space because their leader couldn't just kill me. My suit malfunctioned and kept me aware for the whole time, so after the whole six months and Fernando rescued me, I was fucked up." He blinked. "Still am, thinking about it."

"My God…" Cortana breathed covering her mouth. "I can't have… no…"

"Hey," John looked at her seriously, "All that's still to come. You can make sure it never happens."

"How?" Cortana questioned, looking up at him scathingly. "How can we do that, how can you even… trust me!?"

John looked down at the Weapon, quiet for a second, and he looked back up. "Because if you were that Cortana, it wouldn't be messing with you so badly." He chewed his lip for a moment. "You betrayed me, our trust, our friendship, but you haven't done it yet. And you won't, if I get my way." He shrugged.

"Okay…" Cortana went thoughtfully quiet. "Then… how do I prevent it?"

"First thing-" John held up a finger, "When you run into it, don't trust a damn thing the Gravemind says. Second, for the love of Christ don't stay in High Charity. If you have to, just hide, don't even let it know you're there. Third, on the Ark, get Johnson to take a Pelican or something to the control room instead of a damn warthog-that would've really saved us a lot of trouble. Finally… if what happens happens, and you can't prevent any of it… don't let me keep dragging you around while you're dying."

Cortana went quiet, looking up at him. "I don't know what any of that is."

"You will." He nodded, "Trust me."

Quietly, Cortana slowly nodded, committing the information to memory, before her head perked up. "You're really him, aren't you?"

John's lips twitched into a smile as he wiggled his fingers in her direction. "Hello."

Cortana smiled back. "Hello yourself."

"Okay," The Weapon sternly cleared her throat, "That's enough flirting, probably."

"Oh, relax," John looked down at her, "You're still my best friend, that hasn't changed." He shook his head, rolling his eyes.

Cortana cleared her throat, going back to professionalism. "She's right. The Captain would like to speak with you about the next mission."

"Good." John put his helmet back on at last, as Cortana vanished, and he began to make his way to the main office. "I need to speak with him too." He lightly whistled as he strutted through, passing by the eternally-sour Major Silva, pointing finger guns at the man as he walked by, and entered into the command office.

Inside were Keyes and the Chief, already waiting. The sane Spartan gave him a nod, as Keyes stood up.

"Ah, it's you," The Captain addressed, quite unsure how to refer to the time-duplicated man, "I feel like I owe you some measure of thanks, coming to rescue me… Regardless of what you seem to be, you saved me. I owe you, son."

"Meh," John flippantly waved it off, "I couldn't have just let you rot in a Covenant prison."

"More importantly," Keyes cleared his throat, "Cortana and the Master Chief have both confirmed it. You seem to be telling the truth about coming from the future. If that's the case, then-"

"Then you wanna know what I know, okay, sure." John shrugged.

However, the Captain shook his head. "Not exactly. No standard procedure exists for this sort of thing. And while I'm bound and determined to make sure everyone makes it through this alive, I'm also not an idiot. If we rely on your knowledge too much, then we run the risk of creating a situation for ourselves that we can't anticipate."

"Chaos theory in work," Cortana chipped in, "Ain't it sweet?"

"A sweet pain in my ass, more like." John sighed. Despite that, he could see the point Keyes was laying down. Things were already different, but he'd gotten lucky by them being relatively small differences.

That didn't change the facts, though, John was going to save them all, or die trying.

"For now, I want you to accompany the Master Chief," Keyes outlined, "The two of you have worked well together so far."

"Understood, sir." The Chief rumbled, nodding.

John, however, frowned behind his helmet. "You sure, sir? I could probably be way more useful as a strategist."

Keyes nodded in response. "I'm positive. He's the tip of the spear in all of this, and you've managed to get him and the Marines through it with zero casualties so far. The more Spartans we have giving the Covenant trouble head-on, the more it will pull them off the rest of us."

"Distraction work, that's… great, really great." John sighed.

"And for your first mission," Keyes continued, "You're going to locate the control center. Cortana's identified a search team going after a 'cartographer.' The two of you will intercept them, and take it yourselves."

John sighed again, "You know, it's a damn shame I can't remember where anything was on this damn ring."

"We'll find it, sir." The Chief rumbled, glancing at John expectantly.

"Huh?" He looked back, "Oh, right, yeah, we've got this."

"Glad to hear it." Keyes straightened his uniform. "Get to it. I'll be on another mission while-"

"OH, shit!" John raised his voice, and the two looked at him sternly. "That weapons' cache is a trap! You can't break into it, or you'll release some serious bad juju."

"…I'll take that under consideration." Keyes replied, before heading on.

"…do I just have a face that says 'ignore me' or what?"