So after taking a hiatus of more than a month, rummaging around Spacebattles until I had improved my writing, I'm finally back. With a chapter that basically everybody has been looking forward to since the man himself first appeared.

Rest of AN at the end of the chapter.

~0~


Mil System

Chalkhos

Athame hospital

"We cannot afford such a deal!"

"That is…unfortunate, to say the least. If you're not willing…"

"We are! We are willing! But I've got twenty-two patients who need their medication and we're barely getting around as it is! We're understaffed, undersupplied and-"

The turian silenced her with that annoying human posturing gesture. The one that the mothers often did with their young to reassure and silence them. "Zut…the Captain would hate to hear that. You know who won't hate to hear it? The Lonely Angels. They've got about everything except for medical supplies. So you better think long and hard before you give me your reply. Where is the rest of the money?"

Mirere Vani cast the turian mercenary a pleading look. "I beg of you, this is all we have!" She said, struggling to keep her voice from breaking. "There are wounded here, some of them even children! You can't do this!"

The turian reached out and caressed her cheek. His touch was soft, but his voice was menacingas he told her that he would discuss this with the Captain he kept referencing to.

And then, without even bothering to wait for her to reply, the bastard turned around and left.

Mirere's posture broke the second he was out of sight, and the tears she had been biting back throughout the entire conversation rolled over her flushed cheeks.

That merciless fucking -Goddess, she had to get out of here. Get her things, gather her stuff and leave.

Fuck this world, fuck these gangs. She had a life she wanted to live and she wasn't going to get killed by a bunch of sociopathic monsters whose ego was only matched by their greed.

The Maiden stopped in the hallway, right next to the doorway that led to Abigail's room. The girl was sleeping on her ragged bed, still wearing her clothes. Dark rings surrounded her eyes and her auburn hair was a mess.

Mirere imagined that, had she had fur on the top of her hair like that, it would have been a mess too. They were all regularly clocking in around sixteen hours per day. The last night she had grabbed more than seven hours of sleep had been…what, a week or two back? More?

She thought about waking the human and breaking the news to her. That the Blue Suns had just bent them over and fucked them, because they were breaking the deal. And that meant they would all be dead by the end of the week.

That, or she could just sneak away. Grab the aircar, get to the Yards and sneak aboard the first freighter off-planet. It wasn't like she hadn't done her part; she practically ran this place.

But that was just it. And be it because of her pride or some annoying, suicidal sense of justice, she didn't want to just throw this place to the varren.

That, and her people deserved the chance to escape with her. After all, she had taken them in to offer them protection. Payment had ran out long ago, but here, they still had a roof over their heads and food that wouldn't leave them emptying their bowels every few minutes.

"Ab…hey, ab."

Years of living on the street had turned the human into a very light sleeper, and she woke almost immediately.

"Miri? What's wrong?"

"I'm visiting Jorg after this…the guy from the Blue Suns just left."

At that, Abigail sat up straighter. "And?"

Mirere opened her mouth to speak, but she immediately felt the tears stinging in her eyes again. "We uhm…they're stopping."

"Stopping?"

"Quiet!" Hissed the Maiden. "Patients are sleeping, remember?" Focusing on the people who needed their sleep made it easier for her to keep a straight face, oddly enough. "Yes, stopping. They're pulling their protection."

"Christ, Miri, we need to steady Brehem for moving! A-And Hannah, she needs a new brace. Can your human already walk?"

"Abigail," Mirere slowly said. "I don't think we can move all twenty-two patients."

The girl swung her legs out of bed and shot her a puzzled look. "So what, we stay here? We…we…" comprehension dawned on her face, and that puzzled look turned into something very ugly. "We're not leaving."

"Ab…"

"No! There are more than twenty people in this hospital depending on us! We are not going to abandon them!"

"What else do you want to do!" Mirere sharply said . "They're going to give our location to the Angels, Abigail! You of all people should know what that means!"

The human turned as pale as the Thessian moon when she heard that, but her brave front did not break. "That's…that's precisely why! All of your work, all the things you've done to get them here, it would be flushed down the fucking toilet! And you'd be right back where you started."

Yeah, after that stab at Abigail's past, Mirere supposed she had set herself up for comment like that. "You're right. Fine, you're right damnit. I'll get Jorg up to speed. First thing in the morning, we're fortifying this place. And you're helping too!"

"I'm pretty sure Warla is willing to help, too. His arm is almost healed…"

Mirere sighed and left the human alone with her thoughts. Playing hero, that was sure to help. Leave the Eclipse, make amends on some ass-end of a planet, that was the way to go!

This wasn't how he had planned on spending her Maidenhood. Why was it so completely impossible for a girl like her to find something besides either dying or killing people? Had her mother pissed on a statue of the Goddess or something?

The broody batarian was working in the little attic, as always. At this point, she would be surprised if she found him somewhere else than that impromptu workshop of his.

Spare parts were scattered around the room. Weapon parts, pieces of steel, replacement equipment for the aircar, just about everything that had once been scattered around the hospital could now be found in his workshop.

"Evening," she said, greeting the batarian worker.

Jorg glanced over his shoulder, recognized her and then silently went back to his work. It looked like he had some sort of gun lying on his workbench, with pieces sticking out of it. A shotgun, if the boxy frame was anything to go by.

"We've got trouble."

He nodded once, signaling that he was listening to her. His skin had a darker complexion than most of his kind, perhaps because he had spent so many years working under the sun. Still, it was because of him that this place actually worked.

And that she had a working gun.

"I just finished talking to the Blue Suns. They're not going to protect us anymore."

Jorg stopped tinkering with the shotgun.

"Even worse, they'll be relaying our location to that Lonely Angel gang I told you about. Between you, me and Abigail, we've got about zero chances at stopping them."

The batarian didn't move a muscle. He was still listening.

Mirere sighed and looked away, glancing at a piece of metal lying at the ground. "So nobody is going to blame you if you leave. You want to pack your stuff and go, I won't stop you."

Jorg looked over his shoulder again, his four dark, black eyes locking with hers. After a few moments of what was hopefully more than a quick staring contest, he went back to tinkering with his shotgun.

Silently, Mirere left his office again. She felt conflicted. She assumed that meant he would be staying.

At least they had a chance. Jorg didn't talk a lot, but she knew enough about his background to understand that he had spent a very long time fighting. Who he had been fighting and why didn't matter; he could hold a gun and use it better than anyone here, and he had his own reasons for wanting the Blue Suns dead.

Although, Mirere wished she knew a little bit more about those reasons.

Still, it looked like everybody was dead set on staying in this hole and making it work. And if the human and the batarian were going to stay, how could an asari not?

Yeah right, as if that was the way it worked.

~0~


36 hours later

The sun was already starting to set by the time Abigail Norman had finished her rounds. She had distributed the medication, assisted the more-crippled patients of Athame hospital in their daily exercise and taken stock of their remaining, if dwindling supplies.

And then it had been time for lunch, which had existed out of a cup of water and a protein bar. After that, she had helped sweet Jorg with boarding up the windows and gathering the pieces of tech that she, as a nurse, would not be laying her hands on

Well…she wasn't technically a nurse. She had been privately studying to be one, before…before things had changed.

Her parents, dead. Her house, burned to the ground. The loss of her entire future had been the least painful thing to happen to her that day.

And now they were going to come again. The same people who had taken everything from her when she had been a child.

But she wasn't going to be afraid. Not again. This time, she would face what would be coming. In the best case scenario, she would be staying here for the rest of her life. In the worst case scenario, she would be joining her family again.

Although the words "best" and "worst" were arbitrary at best. Right now, both were equally as likely to happen and neither of them seemed like fun ways to end up.

What would end up happening didn't matter in the long run, and it would only be distracting her from what she needed to be doing. After all, a nurse needed to think of the patients first. Everything else would come later.

Abigail checked the board again. It was time to check up on mister Temple, and see if his recovery would continue to baffle normal science.

His name wasn't actually mister Temple, of course. But they had found him near the Prothean Temple and…well, she was nineteen, not creative. Mirere had asked her to give the man a name and Temple seemed like as good a name as any.

Even though the man didn't really respond to the name. Apparently, he didn't respond to anything. He ate his rations and drank his water, but other than that he might as well have been mute.

Abigail entered his room and started her daily schedule. She withered under his hard gaze, gently asked him how he felt and tried not to feel disappointed when he ignored her. She checked his wounds, gave him his plate of rations, replenished his water and -

A gunshot rang out right outside, quickly followed by another. And another.

Abigail froze, her fingers tightly clutching the glass of water. By the time she had gotten to the doorway and looked outside, peering down the dark hallway, another four had rang out.

She spotted people at the other end of the hallway. Turians and asari. They were armored and had guns!

The glass of water shattered on the ground. She felt the gunshots more than she heard them. Dull, rapid impacts slammed against her chest, Her vision blurred and she groped to feel the wound. Her hands came away sticky with blood.

Vaguely, she realized she had been shot full in her chest. She slid down against the wall and sank to the ground. It didn't hurt, not as much as it should have. But she felt disoriented, confused.

The asari walked up to her. She was clad in dark-gray robes, with a sickly-pale skin. "Next room," she told the turian.

The turian raised his pistol and calmly strode towards mister Temple's room, where the man lay helpless in his bed. He had been doing so well…healing so fast…

The asari didn't bother finishing her off. "So here you were hiding all the medicine," she spoke in accent that Abigail hadn't heard before. "Rest assured, we will make good use out of them."

Only then did she aim her pistol at Abigail's head. But she didn't fire.

Gunshots rang out, none of them were aimed at her.

"Stay low…"

Through her narrowed vision, the girl saw that the turian was staggering backwards out of the room. He jerked and pulled as someone unloaded shot after shot into his chest, neck and head, until he collapsed into a pool of his own blood.

"…like I said so."

Abigail heard the asari shout and the gun discharge again. Her vision blurred and a strange buzzing sound echoed through her mind, slowly drowning out all other noises. Her vision flickered for a few moments.

When she next saw again, the asari was struggling to get back to her feet. She saw the man gesture at the asari with all the authority of a asari then burst into flames, and started screaming.

"Catch a light" the man barked.

Then the blurriness in her eyes turned worse, and everything went black.

~0~


There were very few things that could have worsened the mood of Avery Junior Johnson as he waited to finally fall into the sweet embrace of death, but the little doctor-playing girl trying to chat him up each time she came by had to count as one.

She said something to him something as she walked around the room, doing her thing.

Avery couldn't muster the energy to sigh, and instead closed his eyes again. He wanted nothing more than to simply drift off and pour over the long, battle-filled life he had lived and he'd be damned if some skinny little girl would stop him from doing that. This place had stopped being funny the second he'd realized that this wasn't some sort of dying dream.

For the sake of his sanity, Johnson let his mind drift to what had been his last few moments in life. The Portal, the Ark, the Spark.

And Miranda.

Moments before activating the Halo Array, Truth had already destroyed Avery's world. Watching the Chief destroy that bastard's world in return hadn't helped one bit. Miranda was dead and he had lived.

Being alive right now felt more like insult to injury. Like kicking him while he was down.

But who had plucked him away from that platform? That question had been bothering him every moment of the past few days. It must have been some sort of teleport. Hell, he was stuck on some ass-end of a planet with new alien bastards around him.

Alien bastards that were easy on the eye, but alien bastards nonetheless.

The girl placed a plate with food on his improvised table.

Avery grunted. He wasn't hungry.

The girl watched him for a few more seconds, then went about her business again, going for the glass of water next.

Something was different this time. Normally, they only gave him a spoon to eat with. This time, they had given him a knife.

Before the gal could see it, Avery snatched the blade from his plate and stuffed it into his pants. They had removed portions of his Marine BDU, but not all of it. Everything covering his lower body was still a hundred percent green.

The girl finished pouring him his glass of water.

Then, something outside banged. A really loud bang, not sounding unlike someone firing a gun.

She gasped and ran outside.

Trouble.

The wounded Sergeant Major slowly reached for his knife and grabbed it tightly. More of those strange-ass gunshots rang out, soon followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Damn.

Then, another alien bastard entered his room. His room. It was roughly man-shaped, but had a strange, angular face with mandibles covering its mouth.

Not a whole lot of pretty and definitely a bad guy.

Avery watched the bastard approach him through squinted eyes. No need showing off how awake he was yet. Better to preserve the element of surprise.

The alien grabbed one of the pillows lying on the spare bed -a ragged, torn one- and then pushed it against Avery's face.

Johnson didn't take kindly to that. He roughly shoved the knife into the alien's cake-hole and pulled the dirty pillow off with his free hand. Before the bastard could even recover from the blade lodged into its face, Johnson grabbed its gun, snatched the weapon out of its hand with such force that he broke the alien's fingers and took aim.

He instinctively squeezed the trigger and noticed the distinct lack of bang. More gently, he rubbed his finger across the strange trigger until the weapon finally went off.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Which company designed their guns so that they had to be pleased like a woman in order to function?!

The alien staggered backwards with each shot that impacted on his body, but he didn't die. There wasn't even any blood. Some shimmering barrier absorbed the shots.

Shields. Well, he knew exactly how to deal with that.

Johnson fired the gun until the shield popped and the alien died. By that time, the thing was standing with his back against the hallway opposite of the room, clutching one of his many wounds.

"Stay low like I said so," Johnson barked, already raising the gun at his next target. He had seen the girl lying on the ground and the alien standing next to her, armed with a different sort of gun.

Pretty-faced alien bastard or not, humans had been shot and aliens were present. That was all a Sergeant Major needed to start kicking ass.

He was faster on the trigger than the alien was. He shot the gun in her hands three times before his own gun suddenly decided that it was tired of working properly. It shrieked with some sort of alarm and hot air hissed out from several openings.

A puzzled Johnson looked at the worthless piece of ordnance. It had overheated?

The alien chuckled smugly and thrust her hand at him, glowing with blue light.

"Piece of crap-"

Avery suddenly found himself flung backwards into the room, roughly colliding with the bed. His chest screamed in protest, as did his masculinity, as did his common sense.

The female had telekinetically flung him through the air. Magic. Goddamn magic.

But Avery didn't need fancy-schmancy blue to be magic as well. He quickly searched the room for anything he could use as a weapon, saw the purple-skinned alien babe enter the room and rapidly backed away.

The alien spoke to him, but he didn't understand a single word. A faint, blue glow enveloped her again and Johnson, knowing that he was about to be smacked around with more magic, started throwing things at her face. An empty can, a plate, a canister filled with some sort of liquid.

It didn't matter; her body armor shrugged them off like he was flinging wet tissue paper and the woman grinned as she came closer, raising a threatening fist that glowed like a blue Christmas tree.

Avery felt strangely calm as he lifted another glass canister and shot a quick glance at its contents. A clear liquid again, but the flavor text printed on the side was written in letters.

His letters. The words didn't make a lot of sense, but the letters looked very similar to English.

The image was pretty clear, too. A drawing of someone with noodles sticking out of their hair, engulfed with fire.

Johnson shrugged and let her fly. The glass projectile sailed straight and true and smashed into the alien's pretty face, drenching her with the strange substance and covering her face with pieces of glass.

Her smug smile turned into an expression not much unlike his grandmother when she was about to give him a grandma-beatdown. She threw herself at him -

Only for Avery to lash out with his legs and kick her away. She slammed into the bedframe as well and struggled to get back to her feet.

No shields to protect her this time.

Johnson, fully dedicated to showing the alien how a proper beatdown worked, was on in her a heartbeat. He grabbed her by the back of those strange head-tentacles, which felt remarkably sturdy underneath his grip.

All the better. He dragged her away from the bed, punching her with his free hand as he did. His blows were mostly absorbed by her body armor, but they did wind her, which was all he needed. Even as she cried out and enveloped her body with more magic light, Johnson slammed his fist against her exposed throat.

The woman coughed and wheezed and the aura seemed to die out somewhat.

"You don't muck with this Farine," spat Johnson. He then threw the alien out of his room. His damn room.

She woman landed about right on top of her ugly-faced companion. She struggled to get back to her feet however, glaring at Avery with an expression that he had come to associate with Brutes catching the smell of raw meat.

Avery searched through his pockets, found a lone cigar and stuffed it into the corner of his mouth. "Just a moment," he grunted, quickly searching his other pockets for the one piece of gear no Marine could do without.

His fingers dug into the sturdy frame of his lighter and he snatched it from his pocket. He just needed to test it.

The alien babe, still drenched in that medicine he had chucked at her, screamed something at him. The Sergeant Major didn't particularly care for that as he flicked the lighter on and lobbed it at her, cigar-lighting-flame first.

The alien lit up like she was made out of cigar. She screamed, she thrashed, she burned.

It brought a goddamn tear to his eye.

"Catch a light," Johnson told her. He kicked her against her head and she fell to the ground again, still screaming. He knelt down next to her writhing form and held his cigar up, carefully lighting it above her roasting body. "Never mind…I'll do it myself."

Content that the alien bad guys were sufficiently dead and roasted by his signature one-liners, the Marine rose to his feet and looked at the human girl.

She had been shot, several times in the chest. She was still alive, but barely so. She was bleeding out fast.

Avery quickly went back into the room and searched for medical supplies that he hadn't repurposed as improvised projectiles. He found some bandages, a stick and viscous gel.

He grunted with disapproval at the jelly and hurried to apply the bandages to the girl's chest. It wasn't much, but it would keep her from bleeding to death.

Alright, so his life wasn't completely over now. There were still humans in danger and alien bastards to shoot. Apparently, the call knew where he lived.

Johnson searched his fallen opponents for weapons, found a wicked-looking knife on the ugly one and something that looked like a grenade on the roasted one.

Form and function. Even when he had been warped from the Ark to what was starting to look like some sort of weird space-time wedgie, weapons still stayed the same. Thankfully, the Lord didn't always work in mysterious ways.

Avery hauled the wounded girl over his shoulders, gently so. He recalled having been helped by the same such alien as the one he had toasted. But she had had a different face. So he was being nursed in a hospital that saw aliens and humans working together? Hot aliens like these hadn't been working with the Covenant, unless the Covvies had deliberately kept them from the front lines for relaxing purposes.

His head was still somewhat fuzzy. Thinking too much on the why's and where's would get him killed. No, his objective was simple. Get help for the girl, then get out. The UNSC probably needed him.

Easier said than done. The hospital was crawling with bad guys, and he was mostly out of gun. He avoided a group of the strange feminine-looking aliens and ducked into a room with the wounded human.

The room liked like the sort you would find at an abandoned hospital of a glassed world. That someone had kept it functional was nothing short of a miracle.

Some bastard had walked into the room and taken a gun to the patients. Humans, aliens, it didn't matter. They each had a pillow stuffed against their face, with a single entrance hole in its midst. Classic cleansing tactic, often employed by Insurrectionists whenever they struck with the element of surprise.

Avery shook his head and gently placed the girl down on the floor. They wouldn't bother checking a room they had already swept.

Whatever sort of hospital this was, it wasn't the type that had professional medication. No Biofoam, no morphine, nothing of that sort.

Damnit.

The Sergeant Major had no choice but to push on. He had one problem though; alien bastards were heading his way.

Good. He needed a better gun.

He brandished the knife he had taken from his earlier encounter and waited at the corner of the door, right next to the opening. There were two of them, both those weird tentacle-heads. They had their rifles raised and were slowly edging through the hallway, making their way towards him.

Avery would have liked to keep this quiet, but he didn't know if he would be able to manage. They seemed alert enough to know that something was up.

He pulled the wrong muscle and sent twinges of pain shooting down his chest. He grunted and reached for his wound. It still hurt. Damn lightbulb.

It took the two bastards a few moments to reach the room. They peaked inside, failed to spot the Marine hiding away right underneath their noses and moved on.

At least, one of them did. The second they turned their backs, Johnson shot from the shadows and wrapped his hand around the mouth of the first alien, preventing her from crying out as he plunged the large knife into her throat. He pushed her head forwards just the slightest bit, assumed that her arteries would then bundle up just like their human equivalent would do and carved through them in one swift movement.

It was like cutting turkey.

The alien tensed up and squirmed, but her struggles quickly stopped.

Warm blood dripped from Avery's hand as he dropped her body to the ground.

The other alien stopped and asked something in a language that Johnson didn't recognize. Her dead comrade didn't answer her, and when she turned around to look, she was only met with a high-velocity Johnson boot.

He dumped their bodies into the little room and took their guns. Rifles, sighted. Different ergonomics than normal rifles, without an apparent magazine.

Those things sure as hell didn't fire plasma. What kind of guns did these aliens use? Were they part of the Covenant?

Whatever they fired, it proved to be a lot more powerful than their pistols. Johnson rounded the corner, saw a pair of the strange, ugly-faced aliens and gave them a proper UNSC welcome.

The welcome splattered blood and bits of brain across the wall, but Johnson was good to go.

But the girl he was trying to get out of this place wasn't, and it only would take only one stray bullet to end her. Trying to get her medical attention took too long. There had to be a better way…

As the Sergeant Major tore his way through the hospital, killing every alien combatant he encountered, he could hear the distinct noise of firefights somewhere else in the building. And it wasn't that big a hospital, either.

Someone else was giving these bastards a hell of a fight. A man - or woman - to his heart, no doubt.

Maybe they would have some good medicine.

With that in his mind, Johnson followed the sounds of gunfire. He was led to a wing in the upper corner of the hospital, into a long hallway with boarded-up windows. Several of them had been smashed, several were covered in blood.

Three bodies lay in the ground. One of the pretty-faces, one of the ugly-faces and a third one he didn't recognize. Big eyes, strange horns-like things on the top of the head. Almost like a toad.

But he hadn't wasted them, so whoever had, was probably still around.

The end of the hallway led to two rooms, one to the left and one to the right. As Johnson poked his head around the corner, someone immediately opened fire on him. He swore as he pulled his head back and took cover.

Shouts came from the room to his left. Someone had barricaded themselves inside, and Avery had a hunch that it was the same someone who had tried to barricade the windows on this floor. If he was a particularly-lucky Marine, it might even be a friendly.

With his ass glued to the wall as cover, Johnson called, "You one of the patients?"

No response.

"Chill out, I'm not here to fight."

Still no response. Did they even speak his language?

Johnson risked peeking his head out of his cover again, and was pleasantly surprised when they didn't try to shoot it off. He still pulled back before they changed their minds, and waited a few moments.

He held his gun out of cover, before quickly pulling it back.

No gunfire.

At least someone wasn't keen on blowing him away today.

Very carefully, Avery stepped out of his cover. He took in the situation in a heartbeat; four people sitting in a room that they had tried to block off with the beds. One four-eyed alien kept a gun trained at him, while three other aliens lay in the back of the room. Avery could see them through the holes in the makeshift barricade.

Two humans, one of the female aliens. All of them wounded.

The four-eyed alien lowered his gun when he saw Johnson approach, but he didn't keep his fingers off the trigger. Smart man.

"Look, I got wounded. She needs medical attention ASAP. Got any supplies in here?"

The alien didn't reply. He pulled away one of the beds to allow the Marine to get inside of their little room, but never took his two sets of dark eyes off of him.

The wounded alien lying on the ground glanced at the girl on the Sergeant's shoulders. She muttered a word that he didn't understand, then winced with the effort.

Johnson took a whiff of his cigar and scowled. She didn't look too good. "Medical attention," he repeated, frustrated with the lack of response. "Medicine, help, whatever."

The alien nodded, then gestured at the cabinet standing in the corner. It too was riddled with bullet holes.

It had to do. Avery gently placed the human girl down on the ground and started rummaging around the cabinet, holding his rifle in one hand.

He found alien things, more alien things and then a surprise in the form of an alien thing.

How the hell was he supposed to read that crap?

Johnson grabbed one of the things and held it out to the woman on the floor. She looked a lot like the doctor that had been visiting him all the time, before the human girl had taken over. The hag had plucked him from death's doorstep, right when he had been content to go out with his bang.

But he was here now, and she needed help.

"What do I use?" He asked.

She replied in alien tongue.

The Sergeant shook his head. "Can't understand you."

She closed her eyes and sighed. It looked like she had been nailed hard; there were several holes in her coat, surrounded by blotches of purple blood.

The four-eyed alien held out his rifle towards Johnson, who looked at it with suspicion. He raised his own gun. "I got my own," he told the alien, not sure how much of his language they were able to understand.

How were they able to understand any of his language at all?

The alien glanced at his gun, then made a sharp gesture with his head towards the entrance of the room. He then stomped over towards the wounded girl.

Avery watched him for a few moments to make sure nothing bad would come out of that, then stepped towards their barricade. It was sloppy and weak; no way that would withstand any gunfire.

The Sergeant chewed on his cigar as he thought about his next options. He wanted to get out of this place and rendezvous with the UNSC. They had probably given the Master Chief a big welcome-back party and now that his chances at dying peacefully had been blown out the window, he wanted in on that. There had to be enough demand for soldiers and those hula-hoop-shaped son-of-a-bitch machines were still around.

Well, first he had to survive these people trying to kill him. For several long moments, he stayed in position, keeping the hallway clear while the alien behind him tried to fix the girl up.

One of the uglies rounded the corner, weapon raised, but Johnson was much faster on the draw. He downed the SOB with a burst of fire aimed at its chest.

How the hell would he know when his gun would throw another hissyfit? He had dumped the pistol and taken two of the rifles, but he didn't like to swap guns in the middle of a firefight.

He heard shouts coming from the hallway, and knew that things were about to get hot. "Bad guys incoming!" He told the group whose asses he was trying to keep safe.

As if eager to prove his point, several aliens whirled around the corner and opened fire. Enough bullets slammed into the door-frame for these aliens to spell their names, but the Sergeant Major forced himself to calmly line up his own shots.

He fingered the trigger and caught one of the aliens in the face with a sustained burst of fire. It went down, Avery's score went up and the fire lessened.

The four-eyed alien had immediately dragged the girl to safety when the fun started, and by the time Johnson had racked up his second kill, it too joined him at the doorframe.

"You got a way out of this place?" Johnson shouted above the thundering of their guns.

The alien shook its head.

The alien at the end of the hallway ran into a problem after a few more shots, as he suddenly shot a look at his gun and reached for his ass.

"Ain't that just lovely…" Johnson wanted to make good use of the brief lull in the firefight and nailed the bastard in the mouth, but then he discovered that his gun told him he could go screw himself. The damn thing didn't work anymore!

"Sonofabitch!" Cried the Sergeant Major. "Charge!"

He jumped from his cover and raced down the hallway, straight towards the ugly-faced alien as it raised its gun again.

Its eyes widened in surprise as a hundred percent grade-A Marine slammed into him. They crashed to the ground and Johnson had about enough time to stick his knife in the bastard's face before he looked up and saw that his stunt had taken him straight around the corner, where three more aliens were waiting for him.

"Excuse me while I whip this out," barked the Sergeant. He grabbed the little grenade-thing in his pocket, wished upon Super-MAC that it was actually a grenade-thing and squeezed the only button that could be squeezed.

The thing lit up like his cigar and he quickly tossed it between the aliens. "Here, catch!"

They scrambled for cover, but apparently they hadn't expected a human half clad in Marine gear and half clad in a hospital gown to crash their party like that, because they didn't even bother shooting him.

Johnson quickly scurried back around the corner and the grenade went off not with a bang, but with a loud pop and a sizzle.

Still, the screams of pain were music to his ears. He heard several dull thuds as the bodies went everywhere, followed by a serene silence only broken by the occasional groans and cries of pain.

He grabbed the rifle he had slung around his back after his encounter with the two space babes and hosed the survivors with gunfire until they didn't get back up again.

"School's over," he called. "Dismissed."

He double-checked to make sure the bastards hadn't made it into the other room, then kept watch for more. The bodies glowed with a faint blue aura, somewhat like the magic those aliens had used.

Avery was hesitant about calling it magic. Space physics, maybe. Heck, it might even be some fancy new weapon system.

If so, it wasn't very effective. Shooting seemed a hell of a lot more effective to him.

The four-eyed alien rapidly approached him. It occurred to the Sergeant Major that he hadn't seen its kind among the attackers. Was he getting himself into some sort of nasty species thing?

The alien rounded the corner and glared at the bodies, before shooting a look at Johnson.

"Yes, I know I'm pretty," Johnson told him. "But we gotta keep moving. This place ain't gonna last long!"

The alien woman who had been tending to him during the first few days slowly limped towards them, clutching her stomach as she did. She talked to the four-eyes, who shrugged.

Then she faced him. Again, she talked to him, but she might as well have been talking to a Jackal for all the good it did.

"Ma'am, I can't understand a damn word you're saying," said the Sergeant Major.

The woman frowned.

Johnson took the cue to take another whiff of his cigar, savoring the sweet taste. After days of eating hospital grub, it was a very welcome change of pace. "But maybe you can explain the day I'm having. Gimme a little nod if you can understand me."

Much to his frustration, the alien slowly nodded.

Alright. Aliens who understood him. Either they were part of a really secret species exchange program, or there was some nasty business going on. He didn't bother trying to come up with an explanation. If he could run around in the snow on a massive outer-galaxy construct that pooped out Halos like a chicken laying eggs, he could buy aliens speaking his tongue. For now.

"Good. This Sergeant Major is gonna grab his gun, run around the hospital and kill any inhuman son-of-a-bitch dumb enough to get between him and the exit. You wanna live, you come with me."

He chewed on his cigar as the woman whispered a few words to four-eyes, who took a step backwards.

Hah. Already basking in the glory of Sergeant Major Avery Johnson.

~0~

"He's insane," Mirere weakly muttered. "Completely crazy."

Jorg 's expression didn't change one bit as he wisely took a step backwards.

~0~

Johnson peeked down the hallway again, saw that the bits and pieces hadn't gone anywhere and confirmed that they could still babble in privacy. "Now buckle up miss, 'cause you're all coming with me. Get the wounded."

She glanced over her shoulder at the three wounded humans. Then, she shook her head.

Johnson jabbed at her with his cigar, but made sure he didn't get any ash on her uniform. "Listen here lady. You had to drag my ass here, now I'm gonna drag yours with me as well. These ugly sonsofbitches killed all your patients and messed up your hospital. Consider me their party-crasher. Is there any way we can leave here that doesn't involve marching through thousands of bullets?"

It took the alien lady a few moments to regain her composure, after which she gestured to a place underneath their feet.

"Terrific. We're gonna dig a mighty big hole? Where'd you get your medical license?"

She rolled with her eyes and pointed to the floor again. She gestured down the hallway, made a little walking movement with her fingers and pointed again.

Walking down the hallway and climbing down. Good enough for him.

One problem: making their way down to the lower sections of the hospital was a problem, even for him. He and four-eyes both had to carry one of the unconscious humans, while the lady supported the girl. It made for slow progress.

Lucky for them, four-eyes had shown Avery how to reload the smaller handguns. It involved jamming some red battery into the backside.

A hell of a lot easier to do than reloading a normal gun. The problem was that these guns seemed to lack the punch of the good old fashioned UNSC ordnance, and that made performing his kills difficult.

"Bip, bap, bam!" Shouted Johnson. He cheated by adding a second bam and the ugly bastard standing guard at the bottom of the stairs slumped to the ground.

Awkward, but not impossible.

Whatever these guns fired, it still made them loud. So by the time they had advanced down the stairs, ugly's little buddies came running.

Avery placed his own patient down against a nearby wall, unslung his rifle and hosed the aliens with bullets. "Dance, sucker!"

At that point, one of the space babes made herself glow like a chemstick again and slapped him in the face with a projectile that he had been sluggish to dodge. It knocked him straight on his can, roughly six meters away from his takeoff point.

Avery grunted loudly as the impact knocked all the air from his lungs. Luckily, air was for baby Marines who didn't know how to deal with blunt force trauma. He rapidly pulled the handgun out of his pants and opened fire.

The alien girl was forced to take cover.

Johnson took a deep breath and crawled back to his feet. "Come out where I can see you!"

She didn't as much as peek from her cover as four-eyes opened up on her position as well. She was pinned down, but for how long?

The Sergeant Major wasn't willing to put it to the test. He spotted an alternative route and got moving. He didn't know why the alien was so willing to wait it out, but he guessed it was so her buddies could reach them and catch them in an unholy crossfire.

Seeing as he had left more than a dozen of them lying in a pool of their own blood, they were probably motivated enough.

Johnson climbed over a piece of rubble, briefly took the time to wonder what sort of hospital had a basement like this, and popped up near the alien woman's flank.

"How you doin'?" He asked, before blowing her away.

That looked like their last unit for now. The basement was clear, and Johnson scanned his surroundings with his rifle. Nothing was moving. "We're clear."

Four-eyes helped carry the wounded into the center of the room, while the lady hobbled towards something that looked like a blue brick with fins. She fumbled with her right wrist, which suddenly erupted into a strange, orange glow.

Avery frowned while the doctor typed on the orange light like it was a display. Some sort of holographic tool? Did she have a robot arm or something?

The doctor looked over her shoulder, caught him staring and then gestured at the wounded, before nodding at the blue brick.

A door sprang open at the brick. Which was now some sort of car.

Fancy ride.

Avery took his last whiff of the cigar, then put the stump back into his pocket. He'd savor that baby later.

As he helped haul the wounded people inside of the cab, four-eyes checked the bodies with an efficiency and technique that didn't belong with a civvie.

More like a soldier. Or possibly a grave-robber.

Johnson gently scooped the girl from the floor. She had woken up in the meantime, probably thanks to the medicine, and looked at him.

She asked him something, and he could've sworn that he heard English somewhere in there.

"'Scuse me?" He said. The girl flinched at his harsh tone, and he realized that he had been shouting profanities at the aliens for too long. He toned down his Johnson-voice somewhat and repeated himself. "Excuse me?"

"You speak our language?" She whispered. It sounded like English, but with the most weird-ass accent he had ever heard. She pronounced "language" all weird.

"That, or you speak mine." He placed her down in the brick-car, which looked like it had barely enough space. "You with the UNSC?"

She pulled a face. "I…what?"

"UEG?"

"N-no."

Shellshock. She couldn't remember the details. No problem; one situation at a time. "Just take it easy. I got your back."

The girl grimaced and looked away. But when the Sergeant Major turned his attention to four-eyes, who was now beckoning him, he heard her mutter, "Thank you…"

He clenched his fists. One life didn't really mean a lot at this point. "No problem."

He retrieved the stub of his cigar and stuffed it back where he belonged. He longed for its soothing taste, its calming weight on his lips.

That was the stuff.

The wounded lady took the wheel and Johnson made sure he was the last to get in. Not plenty of room; he was squished awkwardly against four-eyes, who firmly stared ahead.

He briefly wondered how many dead bodies they were leaving behind, and how long these people had been working here.

Then he shrugged off those thoughts. He needed to focus on keeping these civvies alive. There was some crazy shit going on around here.

The doors closed, the lady played with the controls and a set of doors opened to the outside.

Then, the car started levitating.

Avery peered out the window to the ground below and shook his head. Really fancy ride.

Behind them, more of the alien bastards rushed down the stairs towards their position, but they were too late. The car picked up speed and hauled ass out of that place. Bullets pinged off of its exterior, but they didn't penetrate.

And then they were out. The car raced through the air and slowly, the hospital melted away in the distance.

Johnson eased back into his seat and sighed. That was one crisis dealt with.

The human girl was pale and looked shaken, but when she spoke, her voice was resolute. "Who are you?"

Avery chewed on his cigar for a few moments, torn between his duty to the UNSC and the lack of damn's he gave about it all. As far as he knew, the Covenant was finished. Their Prophets were dead, the Elites were good guys and their stupid-ass religion wouldn't kill any more humans.

But these people were aliens too. Only, they knew what he said. He didn't understand a damn word they said, but they understood him.

That made this difficult. "My name is Sergeant Major Johnson. And you boys and girls, are in big trouble." He pulled the cigar from his mouth, looked at it, and stuffed it back into his pocket. "That's my last cigar. Now this Sergeant Major is pissed. Anyone wanna tell me why those sissies back there wanted you dead so bad?"

~0~


AN: shorter chapter than we're used to, I know. But making this one any longer than what it is now, would have just been detrimental to the story.