A/N: And we're back again. Last we left off, Reach was happily preparing to put some bullets through the idiots stupid enough to assault his base. Those scouts will be fine and realize they should run for their lives, right?

*Chapter 81*

Four scouts in service of Locus's elite task group within the Federal Army run into an irritated walking death machine armed to the teeth in the middle of a jungle. It should have been the setup to a great joke that had all of them in stitches and spilling alcohol over themselvesTu, maybe with a punchline about how said death machine was pissed off about one of them banging his wife or something.

Watching your friends get slaughtered like animals wasn't funny.

Private Tammy Wilson was the first to go down. Before any of them could react, a reddish blur shot out of the trees and sank through her throat. The momentum carried the blade all the way through until the hilt was kissing skin, the force impaling her into a tree. Her body was currently still stuck in the bark like some kind of gruesome trophy. Poor girl was on her first mission too.

"WE'RE BEING ENGA-" The loud scream of warning from Private Jo-nes Free was drowned out by the roar of a shotgun going off. 8-gauge shells made a mess of him before he even knew what happened and he toppled in a heap, his intestines falling out. PFC Eric Chapman didn't even get a chance to draw his rifle before a bullet sank between his eyes.

Lance Corporal Bryan Calder looked around and saw his team had been massacred, leaving him alone with the angry murder monster in the middle of a jungle. He did the only thing he could. His rifle and handgun fell to the jungle floor, and he ran for his life. It was the smart thing to do; his friends were all dead anyway from whatever monster this jungle hid.

A knife sank into his back before he could even get started. He toppled to the ground with a cry of pain, instinctively reaching for the knife lodged in his spine. He tried to tug it out to no avail and his blood froze when he heard footsteps crunch across the jungle floor. The terror that ran through him forced him to try and crawl away from whoever the fuck that was, only knowing that Locus may have fucked up here by challenging whatever monster called this shitty jungle canyon their home. 'Only Freelancers my ass.'

An armored boot kicked him over and Bryan found himself staring up at a golden visor. Black and red armor, grenades lining a bandolier across his chest, and with a M6D handgun clasped in unwavering hands. He closed his eyes and felt his head rock back before the darkness took him.

Locus frowned as he tried to call the scouts he had brought along for this mission, only for the comms to appear to be completely offline. He had been trying to call them for the last thirty minutes and the only thing that greeted him was static. Had they been discovered? Surely four Federal soldiers should have been fine on their own, even if they ran across one of the Freelancers. As good as the Director's agents were, they were still human. Enough bullets would stop them.

"No response?" Felix asked, walking over to him.

"No." Locus shook his head and let his hand fall away from his helmet's comms. "Radio contact with the team has been completely cut off."

"Think they might have pissed off someone?"

"Most likely. Have the Freelancer agents been accounted for within the last thirty minutes?"

"Yeah. Why...?"

"Because I have a feeling they may have picked the wrong fight."

Locus's words drove the smug smirk right off of his partner's face. Felix growled under his breath and glared thunderously down at the canyon below, hand itching towards his DMR. "You think it's B-312?"

"I have my suspicions." Locus looked down at the bunker hidden neatly in the large rock formation in the center of the canyon. Recent intelligence suggested that B-312 was protecting something or someone of extreme importance inside it. Normally, if it were anyone else, Control would send in an infiltration unit to take whatever it was they were hiding. But this was the best of the Spartan IIIs, a man who knew more ways to kill someone than should be feasibly possible. Any team they sent down to assault that bunker directly was going to be torn to shreds with their heads put on spikes as a decoration.

'Even with an ex-Freelancer assisting us, this is still an uneven fight. All he needs to do is connect one hit.' Control was right about one thing. Spartan or not, he was just one man. But all it ever took was the right man in the right place to make all hell break loose. 'We can't win this. This is a suicide mission that we're somehow expected to survive.'

Why was he out here again instead of enjoying retirement on some backwater colony sipping martinis with pleasurable company? Oh yeah, because Chairman Hargrove was a fucking asshole. Locus never claimed to be a good person, but he was smart enough to know Control's whole mission was a bust thanks to them bringing down the wrong ship with the wrong person onboard. Only problem was the fact that his partner and employer were both driven by greed, so much so that Control believed they could take on anything with their new technology. Charon Industries may have had the latest in experimental military equipment, but was it good enough to handle the Grim Reaper? Locus didn't think so.

"Make radio contact with Sharkface and his partner," he eventually said with a sigh. "Find the scouts. If they're dead, strip them for equipment. Anything left behind might be of use."

Sharkface grumbled in annoyance and looked over at his own partner for this mission of Chairman Hargrove's. She was an ex-Freelancer, one who wasn't directly responsible for killing all of his friends, but still someone he would've loved to strangle to death. He just didn't think he could get away with it, in part because Felix or Locus would have his head and string him up by his intestines and in part because the woman moved like a killer.

Her helmet lay on the ground next to her as she loaded a quartet of 14.5 rounds into a small magazine, her rifle propped up against a nearby tree. Shadowed eyes, messy brown hair that fell roughly to her shoulders, narrow cheeks, and a stance that said she was ready to jump into a fight if the situation called for it. Prison time hadn't been the kindest to her, as evident by the way her skin seemed to sag in certain places. Hargrove had ordered Sharkface that she was to be kept in his sight at all times, being an agent who destroyed quite a bit of his property during her time in Project Freelancer. The Chairman didn't trust her motives for getting involved in this operation, and Sharkface wasn't about to doubt the man who kindly busted him out of a UNSC prison.

She wasn't one for much conversation, so that did earn her some small redemption points.

Still a complete bitch.

"You going to say something, or just stare menacingly?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and noticing him staring.

"Tch." Sharkface rolled his eyes. "There's not much I'd want to say to you." Not after her group dropped a fucking skyscraper on him and murdered his friends while he was in extensive care.

"Ooh, going for the mysterious and brooding thing?" Her lips curved up in a smirk. "Let me guess; some sort of dark past and a burning desire for revenge?"

She was closer than Sharkface liked to admit. He looked away with a growl. "We're not friends."

"Aw, the big bad shark is all flustered now. Is it feeding frenzy time?"

His hand balled into a fist and he briefly wondered if she'd shut up if her neck was snapped.

Briefly.

Orders were orders, though. Hargrove wanted her alive for some reason, and it was far above his paygrade.

A flashing light appeared in the corner of his HUD, alerting him to Felix trying to get into radio contact with him. Finally someone less obnoxious to talk to. He answered the call and turned his back on the smirking woman. "Sharkface here."

"We have a problem. Four of our scouts just went dark during a reconnaissance mission. Locus suspects foul play, but we can't move our position until we're ready. I'm sending you their last known location; find the scouts and if they're dead, take whatever arms and armor you can. Report back what you find."

"Understood. Is this a solo mission?"

"Just you and that chick the boss partnered you up with."

Sharkface bit back a groan. 'Fuck my life.' "Understood sir."

The call ended and he glared over at his partner. "Get up. We have a job to do."

"About fuckin' time." The woman stood up and fixed her helmet on, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. "Since we're stuck together, might as well have something to call each other by. You got a preferred callsign?"

"Ter-" He closed his mouth, stopping himself from revealing his actual name. As far as he was concerned, Terrence Ephemera was dead, burned and mutilated after being hit in the face with a gravity hammer and having a building dropped on him. Only Sharkface remained. "Sharkface."

"So you do have a real name." The woman chuckled. She didn't miss it at all. "You may refer to me as... well, what I am."

"And what are you?"

"Didn't the Chairman tell you?"

Sharkface shook his head.

"Huh. I assumed he would. You may refer to me as Massa."

"Dexter Grif!"

Grif groaned as he woke up to the sound of Donut calling his name, sounding so fucking happy that Grif wished he could stab him. He rolled out of bed and fell to the floor with a pained yell; his ribs were still sore even after Doc had 'mended' him with his purple device. He couldn't feel his toes, but apparently that was normal. The prescription for his numbness?

A glass of orange juice.

Grif wasn't by any means a doctor or someone knowledgeable in the medical field, but he was pretty sure that wasn't how it worked.

Rubbing his sore side, he glared balefully at the chirpy, pink-colored idiot standing over him. "Donut. It is..." He checked the time. "Six in the fucking morning. What do you want?"

"There's a stack of dishes in the sink; sand is all over the ground floor, and the garden doesn't even have any flowers in it!" Donut whined. "It's just vegetables! This base is filthy!"

"No shit." Grif rolled his eyes and groaned. "We've been shipwrecked in a fucking jungle. Is there anything else you'd like to announce?"

As usual, the sarcasm was completely missed.

"Yep!" Donut said cheerily, ignorant of Grif's increasing irritation. "Sarge wants to take you and Doc up to the shipwreck you guys crashed."

"Woah, what the hell do you mean that's our fault!?"

"Well it couldn't have been the fault of all those highly trained pilots, duh."

"Yeah, but they sure as shit didn't survive it." Grif laughed awkwardly. Donut remained silent until his laughter tapered off.

"Wow..."

"Yeah, I know..." Grif sighed, looking down in shame. Too soon.

"Are you proud of yourself?"

"No, not really." At least that hadn't changed since they crashed.

Grif left his room behind and met Sarge on the ground floor with Doc. The medic stuck out his hand with a bored yawn and Grif slapped his palm against it, equally bored out of his skull. Doc looked like he was ten seconds away from saying, 'fuck it' and grabbing Sarge's shotgun to cease living.

"Now that the useless idiot is here, we can go over the plan," Sarge said, ignoring the middle finger Grif offered. "Those bastard Blues have one of our boys hostage, and they have a giant killer robot on their team. The real crime isn't so much kidnapping as it is having a killer robot before we did. We're Red Team! Having murderous autonomous life is our job, not those Blues!"

"The fuck is he on about?" Doc whispered to Grif.

"No idea." Grif shrugged back. When it came to Sarge's rants about the Blues, everyone on the Red Team had long since given up trying to make heads or tails of whatever he was spouting. For a man supposedly in charge of a military unit, he didn't exactly have the best communication skills. Must have been all the crayons he'd eaten as a member of the ODSTs.

Yeah, finding out their crazy, murder-happy sergeant used to be a Helljumper before being honorably discharged and sent to Blood Gulch was a hell of a shock at the time. Now, it made way more sense than Grif wanted it to. He'd be lying if he said he wanted to go back to the desert canyon in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere, but after now finally being a survivor of a shipwreck, he'd have killed for something other than hot heavy rain every night. He was tired of getting washed into the corner every time he went to bed.

'I miss the good old days. Just me and Simmons drunkenly yelling insults at the Blues and them doing the same back to us.' Simpler times. Good times.

Now he was stuck in an eerie jungle with a fruitcake, a failed doctor, a senile old man, and half of a Spanish-speaking robot. Not exactly great or intelligent company.

'I bet Simmons isn't dealing with anything this annoying...'

Tucker sighed and glanced to his right where Wash sat. He was staring off into the jungle with a thunderous expression, so no changes there. Wash needed to let some of that stress out, preferably before he started making mass genocide look like a trip to Wal-Mart. Maine was still down, unconscious from what Wash had described as a puma attack. In other words, South rode the poor bastard until his pelvis turned to dust. "Welcome to rock-fucking-bottom, Wash. This is about as bad as it gets."

To Tucker's left, Simmons sniffled and looked down at the floor. "I want to go home..."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Okay, maybe the two of us don't have it as bad. Dude, the fuck are you still here for?"

Freckles stomped by and stopped in front of the two - Simmons was kidnapped so he wasn't an official member - members of Blue Team, cannons leveled at them. "Waiting for orders, Agent Washington. No enemy threats detected."

Blue Team will get its own robot, Caboose said. It'll be fun, he insisted.

Tucker watched as the gatling gun on one of Freckles' arms suddenly pivoted and didn't so much as rip a bird to shreds as it did kick its bullet-ridden corpse about fifty feet away.

Riiiiiight. Fun.

Was it too late to say, 'Fuck it' and go wander off into the sunset?

"Wash, are you receiving?" Reach's voice crackled over the transceiver and Wash picked it up with a sigh.

"Read you loud and clear. What's the situation?"

"We aren't alone in this jungle. Four contacts of an unknown allegiance tried to sneak up on me. They failed. I'm having Eta download what data he can from them so we can see who is after us. I'll forward the information to you; in the meantime, start prepping Blue Base for a potential assault. Whoever sent those scouts will notice they haven't returned and they'll send a larger force."

Tucker winced. He'd been on the opposite end of Reach holding back and could safely say it wasn't a pleasant experience. He didn't want to imagine what the man did to four people stupid enough to try and sneak up on not just him, but his heavily pregnant wife.

"Understood. I'll begin preparations ASAP. Wash out." The Freelancer looked over at Tucker. "You get all of that?"

"Yeah. This is gonna suck..."

"Not as much as it's going to suck for whoever is dumb enough to piss Reach off. Simmons, I want a mark of all potential sniper positions on this side of the canyon. Tucker, you and I are going to start putting barricades in position." Washington stood up and suddenly he looked a good ten years younger. His eyes flashed with deadly intensity and his posture was straight; Agent Washington was back. "Freckles, keep on patrol. Let me know if anyone who isn't a part of Red or Blue Team comes along. Try not to kill them."

"Why?"

"So I can use my enhanced interrogation methods on them to get information."

Tucker shivered. "Dude, you're a scary motherfucker when you want to be, you know that?"

"Duly noted, private. Now get going." Washington pumped a shotgun.

Sharkface wasn't a stranger to seeing corpses strewn across a battlefield. It was something that came with being a member of Chairman Hargrove's private security force, but even he was grimacing when he and Massa found Locus's missing scouts. Four bodies, each of them killed in a variety of ways and all of them messy. Blood, guts, and spent shells littered the jungle floor and Massa whistled. "Damn. Looks like they picked the wrong fight."

"This wasn't a fight. It was an ambush," the scarred man grunted.

"They suffered for it," Massa noted with a blatant lack of empathy, gesturing to the body of a woman slumped against a blood-covered tree. "Look at the entry and exit wound. Someone with great force managed to break clean through power armor with a bladed weapon. Width of the wound indicates a sword." Massa's gaze flickered up to the ruined bark a few feet above the woman's head and winced. "Even went through the bark. Whoever did this left her stuck in the tree with a sword lodged in her throat to keep her in place while they wiped out the rest."

Sharkface picked up a spent shotgun shell, holding it up so he could see what kind of ammo the killer used. "8-gauge. Quadruple-ought shot." He glanced down at the body spilling organs out onto the ground. "Only used it once. Other bullet wounds indicate a M6G handgun. Interesting choice for a sidearm." Just three 12.7x40mm rounds would drop an Elite. In the hands of an expert, it had an effective range of 50 meters and could turn the tide of a close or mid-range engagement. Against a softer target, the handgun would tear it to pieces and cause massive tissue damage along with system shock.

Who the hell was wandering around a fucking jungle armed to the teeth with enough weapons to assault a Covenant ship?

Sharkface didn't know, but he did know one thing.

He was staying the fuck away from whoever it was.

"Boss is not going to like this..."

Doc stared around with eyes bigger than saucers as he followed Grif and Sarge up into the shipwreck, whistling. "This wreck is enormous!"

"You should see the other half," Grif said with a snort.

"Why? What happened to it?"

"We don't know. The other half crashed somewhere else." Grif didn't know and he wasn't paid enough to really care what happened to the other half of their shipwreck. It wasn't here, so it was someone else's problem. They had enough issues without worrying about the other half of a giant starship.

Doc ran over to a nearby terminal that was still functional. He scrolled through the data and hummed. "Huh. Looks like this ship was carrying a lot of standard weapons and armor, but it was also carrying a load of experimental technology."

Now Grif was interested. "That's code for, 'Really Fucking Dangerous'. Where's that stuff?"

"Hmm..." Doc looked down. "Looks like most of it was on the other side of the ship."

"Lame."

"They did keep one prototype here though. Let's see... ahah!"

The panel next to the terminal suddenly gave way, sliding up into the walls of the ship to reveal a bunch of strange orange and black cubes.

"The fuck are those?"

"Dunno. Some kind of grenade maybe?"

Grif grabbed one, pulled the pin, and threw it at a pair of crates lying nearby. Doc choked on air and screamed in panic. The grenade detonated with a flash of orange light and the crates disappeared entirely. "T-the fuck!? Grif! You can't just go-"

Grif threw a second grenade, and the crates reappeared.

"GRIF!" Doc wailed.

"Holy shit! These are like teleportation grenades! I could fit an entire buffet in the palm of my hand." Grif drooled at the thought. "They're perfect!" He grabbed another set of grenades, Sarge calling for Doc further up ahead in the wreckage.

Grif smirked. He had an idea for these...

Sarge and Doc were already waiting for Grif in the main hangar, the medic desperately trying to get the old man's attention. Poor innocent bastard. Doc didn't know Sarge all that well. "Sarge, you'll never believe what Grif and I found!"

"Son, you could've found a laser-guided napalm shark, and I still wouldn't care," Sarge said flatly. Doc choked and while his body attempted a quick restart, Sarge elaborated on why he didn't care. "You know that feeling you get when you meet a pretty girl on the first day of school? You're not sure what to do, so you smile and wave, and she smiles back. Suddenly the world is a brand-new place, and your stomach does all them twists and twirls?"

"Uh... yeah?"

"Well boys, I got that feeling right now." He sniffled and both Grif and Doc turned to see whatever had Sarge all worked up. It was unusual how they missed it upon entry, for it was absolutely massive. The machine was twice as tall as the Mantis on the Blue Team, and twice as heavily armored. It looked like a giant mech seen out of really bad anime.

Grif only had two words to describe what he was feeling upon seeing the armored behemoth. "Holy shit..."

"Except imagine that girl at school is armor-plated with a titanium poly-alloy and outfitted with 50mm cannons and ammo for days."

"She sounds pretty high maintenance," Doc said softly.

"Sounds like I need a safe word to date her," Grif added.

"Oh yeah." It wasn't hard too imagine Sarge grinning like a loon under his helmet.

Several silent seconds passed by before Doc pointed out the painfully obvious. "So, how the hell are we supposed to get this off the ship?"

"Teleportation cubes, anyone?" Grif raised one up.

"No!" Sarge scolded. "A girl this fine has got to be treated right, oiled up and whatnot. We'll take her apart and move her ourselves. Limb by limb, packed away in carrying cases if necessary."

Grif and Doc both backed away from the man. "Yeaaaaah I think your dating metaphor kind of took a turn into serial killer territory there, Sarge."

"Anyway, get to work men. Dismember this beautiful lady, pack her up, and take her back to our lair." Sarge paused. "I mean base."

"Can you please stop referring to the robot as a woman?" Grif begged. "It's fucking weirding me out."

"Not as weird as the throbbing erection she's giving me."

"Jesus Christ..."

A/N: Oh dear. The Reds with another robot. This is sure to end well for them, right? Given their history with artificial intelligences, probably not. But hey, fuck around and find out, right? All in the name of science, of course. Wouldn't want anyone to get hurt by a rampaging murder-bot after all.