A/N: What's up ladies and germs! My apologies for missing a chapter yesterday, restaurant week just started and I've been working like crazy. How's everyone doin?

Playing Halo: Reach firefight at the moment, an all silver version of my previous Spartan, now codenamed Robot. It's good times. But I sort of realized something as I was playing. If I had to choose my favorite weapon? I mean, one that I could practically choose as a primary or secondary weapon in a custom load out, which I do. It's definitely the Needler (and the Needle Rifle, god that gun is everything). It's just something about it.

You literally cannot experience that weapon in any other game. Rifles, pistols, explosive launchers, flame throwers, shotguns, sniper rifles. Every game has those. Even Gears of War (which I also love to death) has an iconic weapon, but it's just basically a rifle with an unblockable melee device attached to it. A variant of this would be Call of Duty, say a Famas with a masterkey underattachment.

The needler is something special. I remember why I decided to have Mar use it as a primary weapon. It's just too fun, mechanically. Always seven needles. You don't have to go ham with it either. The jackals usually freak out and dive if you try to burst em. Actually, Grunts do too. Only a rookie wields the needler so recklessly. Let me give you the sauce, dear reader. The key to the needler, is to fire it two at a time. You just take down whole lances like it's nothing. That's how you get the jackals and elites because their shields plus them diving will just waste your ammo to do it any other way.

Grunts and Brutes (and Drones, yuck) are unshielded and those you can just burst. They are helpless and you can laugh as they explode from needler shards all around you. Now there are plenty of sci fi guns that make the grade. My particular favorite of all time is a weapon called the Auger from the game Resistance: Fall of Man.

This weapon ammunition phases through obstructions and virtually eliminates the enemy's ability to take cover, thus forcing them into either fleeing from the immediate area to restrategize or charge the wielder to end the encounter as quickly as possible. Ironically, it has an alternative firing mode that shoots out an energy shield about half a meter away from the user. You of course can fire through this shield, but the enemy cannot.

OK, geek time over. Onto the show.

No sooner than Sarge had suggested it, I looked up and saw four purple Covenant recon fliers racing through the sky to the docking platform. The thrumming ghostly whir and luminescent vapor trails that the sleek aircrafts left in their wake, for which they received their namesake, was enough to make me wince.

Banshees.

There hasn't been a single time I've seen one in combat that hasn't claimed at least one other life. Good thing they were on our side.

Suddenly, a giant blue blob arced up and smacked the rearmost vessel out of the sky. The Scarab rocked and shook as it repositioned to face the source of the shot. A pair of Wraiths, Covenant tanks armed with plasma mortars and boost capacity, were at the furthest edge of the valley.

When Sarge opened up with that crazy Scarab cannon, I almost pissed myself. Thing was like the wrath of God given to man. Or alien, I should say. A wide green laser screamed straight across the valley and blanketed one of the Wraiths. The curvy blue tank vanished completely beneath the death beam.

Sarge shouted over the intercom in triumph, "Ha! How do you like it?"

The surviving Banshees zoomed forward and docked on the platform and the red Elite Majors piloting them all disembarked. Three of the Elites on the docking platform occupied these vehicles and took the skies. Moments later, a Phantom troop carrier appeared above the complex and deployed its gravity lift, which brought the rest of the Elites and Hunters who stepped into it up to the inside the ship.

The Phantom then flew towards us and hovered overhead. It redeployed its gravity lift onto the top deck.

A regal voice with the air of authority said, "Humans hold fire. Dropping extra forces to aid in defending the Walker."

"You heard him," Johnson said to me and Wildcat over the PA system. "We're all friends now, whether you like it or not, so cool your jets."