-1The veteran awoke with pain. He slowly groaned as he stood up, and noticed everybody was gone. The Elite noticed a large reflective piece of a grenade crate and decided to look at himself on it. He looked terrible, there were scratches and cuts on his skin, cracks and scorch marks on his armor, and the two left mandibles of his face were gone. "By the rings" the veteran muttered.
The Elite grabbed the still-functional Needler and headed out of the room. The heretic base was awfully quiet, not to mention dark and slimy. He became a bit uncomfortable when he saw many plasma scorches and blood yet no corpses anywhere. A foot step other than his caught his and he turned around, seeing a silhouette of an Elite in the shadows. "You there!" the veteran shouted holding his Needler to the other Elite "are you friend or foe?" The silhouette just stood there, not making any sound. The red-armored Elite shouted again "show yourself!" The other Elite came forward, and the veteran wished the Elite went back into darkness.
The Elite was unnaturally horrifying. It's skin was yellowish green like the heretics' armor, but more rotten looking. The Elite looked like it was mangled, with the head bent 180 degrees. Tentacles sprouted from the arms and neck, and a large strange lump was in the center of the torso. The Elite screeched loudly, and charged towards the veteran. He moved back and fired at the monster. The Elite monster screeched again, but the glowing needles exploded ending the monster's miserable existence. "I hope there isn't any more of them" the veteran muttered to himself. He turned around and cursed.
Two Grunts, bloated and mutated like the one Elite, slowly moved towards the veteran. He decided it wasn't worth it and ran away from them. He ran through a couple of rooms, and entered a large room with two mutant Elites down one floor. They noticed the normal Elite and the one armed with a plasma rifle fired at him. He shot at the armed mutant until the needles exploded and killed it, but then the other monster jumped to the second floor and punched the Elite with a tentacle-filled arm. The energy shield still worked and the veteran Elite didn't suffer any damage, but the punch was pretty strong and almost depleted the shield's energy. The veteran pistol whipped the monster with the top and pointy part of his Needler, and knocked the monster's head off! And thing was, IT WAS STILL ALIVE!
The veteran hit the monster again and it fell back to the bottom floor. He ran again before it could jump back up. He pasted through an automatic door, and disabled it as the door shut so the monster couldn't get through. The veteran soon heard banging on the other side, thankful that the mutants couldn't punch through metal. He saw the exit out of the base and left the terrible place. After taking three steps on the surface of Dogma, they came. A pack of bloated yellowish green tentacle-armed bugs skittered right after the red-armored Elite. He fired needles at them, but they were ineffective. Soon they were leaping at him, tentacles first. Two touched him and exploded in spores from the energy shields, but also damaged the shield.
More of the parasites leapt at their prey and exploded. Soon the energy shield was depleted and another one finally got on his chest and impaled the tentacles through his chest. He screamed in pain and dropped his Needler to pull out the bug with both his hands. The veteran got the parasite out and squeezed it until it burst, and then started stomping on the last ones. But just as the energy shield was recharging another wave came, three times bigger than the first. He braced himself for a hard battle, but then a miracle came. A non-heretic Banshee came and fired it's fuel rod cannons on the parasites. In a matter of seconds the swarm was vaporized. The Banshee landed near the veteran and out came the pilot, the golden Elite field master!
"By the Prophets" the golden Elite exclaimed "I can't believe there's another survivor!" The red-armored veteran was curious what was going on and asked "what has happened here, noble field master? What are those…….things?" The field master looked to the ground and shook his head "our brothers have discovered something precious to the heretics and destroyed it. Soon after, those small disgusting vermin came. They were weak at first, but then came in larger numbers. Then, they got them, the Covenant, the heretics, anyone they could get they got! And then, they changed their victims into……..monsters! Our weapons were practically useless against them! Everyone is gone! Everybody either died by the parasite or their tormented brethren! How can such creatures be born like that?"
The veteran was silent. Elites were pure warriors, and learned to have no fear. But yet these creatures managed to frighten one of the Covenant's best like an infant Grunt. With nothing else on his mind, the lower ranked Elite asked "have they gotten the High Prophets?" The golden-armored one looked at his comrade in surprise. "The P-Prophets?" the field master stuttered "I completely forgot! The High Prophets are back in 'Flames of Glory!' The Engineers have successfully fixed the cruiser before the vermin appeared. We must go there before the parasite infest the place!" The field master gave the veteran his spare plasma rifle and four plasma grenades and went back in the Banshee. The veteran Elite uncomfortably sat on the top of Banshee and the aircraft soon took off towards the 'Flames of Glory.'
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To be continued.