A/N: Hello and welcome to chapter 78. Nice to see people betting that Locus is going to lose what is left of his sanity and eventually take it out on Felix. You're...not wrong. He is getting fed up and for good reason.
Felix is such a fucking asshole.
*Chapter 78*
After Felix finally stopped ranting and raving about being hung up on by an idiot, Locus went back to his usual of ignoring his partner before he could lose what precious little sanity he had left. The Reds and Blues weren't doing anything, apart from their target. And that did worry him, even if he refused to show it. Felix could try and be a cocky son of a bitch all he liked, but their target was more than just dangerous. He was possibly the most sought-after commodity after he retired from the UNSC and still more than capable of killing them both with a pencil.
A fucking pencil. Locus almost wished he didn't see that archive footage.
'Come help me wipe out a planet's population, Control said. It'll be the biggest payday of your mercenary career, Control insisted. Why the fuck did I listen to him again?'
Oh, right, because Locus was desperate enough to do anything if it meant he finally got out of this life. He was a soldier, a good soldier if anyone asked him, but he never was able to reintegrate with normal society. His unit was stationed in New Alexandria when the city fell to the Covenant during the war, and it was one of the most gruesome battles on the planet Reach. Millions died in minutes, their numbers slowly diminishing by the hour as horde after horde of seemingly endless alien monsters punished even the slightest mistake with certain death. He lost a lot of good people in those days.
Felix and Locus were the unlucky bastards who not only survived but thrived in it. For them, there was no such thing as adjusting back when the war concluded. They had seen too much, done too much, and it changed the both of them for the worst. Locus established himself as a skilled sharpshooter and wandered the outskirts of UNSC space as a gun for hire. Made a pretty fair few credits that way, too. The money was good, the drinks were good, and the women were good, but something had been lost along the way and it was far too late to try and get it back. He was in far too deep into the shit.
'What am I fighting for?'
'What am I even living for?'
Locus didn't know the answer. For years he had just been going through the motions of living, not caring about how much blood stained his hands.
'It's a bit late to be getting cold feet now. I've made my bed. Now I have to sleep in it.' Fuck, the Covenant War was so much easier to deal with. Not human, shoot at it until it's riddled with holes and shoot it some more for good measure. Human, get them the hell out of the way if they weren't a fellow soldier.
"You're awfully quiet," Felix remarked, interrupting his internal dialogue. "What's up?"
"I'm thinking," Locus snarled. "Maybe you should give it a try once or twice."
"Testy, testy," Felix mocked. "I think the girls back at base have something for that, if it's your time of the month."
Locus zoned out and thought of himself in a happier place. He briefly wondered if it would be considered a problem to Control's plans if he kicked Felix into the jungle, told the Reds and Blues that his foul-mouthed partner was a spy, and they should blow him up while Locus went to take a shit. He then asked himself if he cared if it was a problem or not.
"Anyway, I managed to get a call through to that idiot who was going on about his wine and cheese. Convinced them their friends were in danger and they should help them." Felix smirked. "They arrive, the Reds and Blues celebrate, we take out their ship, and do what we do best. Make life difficult for them."
Locus blinked and stared at his partner.
"Oh don't give me that look," Felix moaned. "It was a good plan and better than trying to sneak down and convince a fucking Spartan that we're not suspicious as fuck. He's going to be on guard and begging for someone to cause him trouble. You've seen the bastard's service record, and I don't fancy on speaking out of a new hole in my throat."
Touché, Felix. Touché indeed.
Locus was too wet, cold, tired, and old to really argue with him again. He was already at his wits' end. "...fine. When can we expect their arrival? Soon?"
"About two weeks or so."
Two weeks?
Locus's eye twitched. His hair greyed. Rain fell on his helmet.
He felt himself age in real time.
"You mean to tell me," Locus said slowly, "that we are to be stuck out here for two weeks while we wait for an idiot who may or may not find this planet? While a hyper-lethal vector is getting more and more fed up by the day and just looking for someone to give him any sort of trouble? That's your plan?"
"Well...when you put it like that it just sounds dumb."
"Because it fucking is!"
Locus wished he had a spare rifle he could launch into the canyon, preferably along with Felix and Control's entire military operation. Sadly, that was something that would only happen in his dreams.
He was this close to saying, 'Fuck it,' killing Felix, walking off into the jungle, and dying a lonely but very happy old woodsman. He sighed and imagined how honest and hard that kind of life could be. 'Anywhere where Felix isn't around to be an annoying asshole.'
Fuck Chorus.
Fuck Control.
And especially fuck Felix.
BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!
An armored figure in black jolted up in his seat, gasping in surprise as the proximity alarm for inside the control room went off. He looked behind him, saw that he was alone, and frowned. "Huh...that's weird." He turned around and stretched his legs out, placing his feet on top of the control panel. He let out a loud yawn and was close to nodding off when the alarm sounded off again.
Agitated, he turned around and again, saw no one behind him. He rolled his eyes and smacked off the alarm. "Stupid thing is on the fritz again. Man, this shit wouldn't fly if Locus were here."
The intercom crackled static and a gruff voice came from it. "We heard an alarm. Report."
"Oh, it was nothing. Proximity alarm keeps going off in here for some reason," the soldier answered. "Must be malfunctioning or something."
"Yeah, maybe just a glitch. Or maybe it's that highly trained special forces agent standing behind you and cracking her knuckles."
"Yeah." He laughed, before realizing the second bit. "Wait, what-"
The soldier crumpled from a fist smashing into his chin, knocking him cleanly out of his chair and sending him tumbling to the floor. He was unconscious and a rather smug white hologram appeared on the control panel. "That one."
Church smirked and looked at Carolina as she disabled the security cameras for the outpost. "Triggering the vicinity alarm? Talk about sloppy. You're getting slow in your old age."
Carolina huffed and glared at him. "Someone was supposed to disable it?"
"Well, I needed to be put directly into their system."
"Which I wasn't getting into without triggering the alarm."
"Well...you did. With my help, of course. Let's get this show on the road. Get me in."
Carolina took the seat the guard so graciously offered to her and pulled out her AI chip, slamming it into the terminal and letting Church download all the data from the facility. "How long should it take?"
"Forty-five seconds," Church replied. "Plenty of time to deal with those assholes on the other side of the door."
"...what door?"
"There's only one door. Oh, by the way, they just set a detonation charge on it."
"Church!" Carolina hissed.
"I'd get into cover if I were you."
The door to the security room detonated, flying inwards, and Church let out a sigh as he looked at the download process. "If you think forty-five seconds is a long time for you, imagine what that's like for me." For a 'smart' AI like himself, even a second was a massive amount of time. He could process and analyze the situation far faster than any human could, and he floated over to the three black-armored figures that stood ready to gun down Carolina, who now stood behind a giant table with her sidearm drawn.
"Shit, you three guys are well-armed," he remarked, peering at the submachineguns that all of them held. "All this for one girl, huh?" A quick scan of the weapon revealed its details and he snorted, tossing his holographic sniper rifle away. "Really? Charon Model 44s?" He looked at their lines of sight, made visible thanks to bullshit abilities of an AI, and sighed. Three clean lines, all three kill shots. "Let's see, you boys won't have to worry about jamming like the Model 42. But you do use computer-assisted aim. Bunch of pussies."
He overloaded the processors of the firearms, reducing their accuracy by a good forty-five percent. Accounting for their projectories, he could see the soldiers' accuracy was much worse than when he started. But it wasn't enough.
He tilted his head to the side and saw the angles of the way the door would impact the floor, ceiling, then floor again. Physics would play out the rest and provide Carolina with sufficient cover as to not get her head completely taken off. "Now for a bioscan of these losers."
The one on the far left got his attention and Church smirked. "Oh dear, it appears as though you recently had knee surgery. Gee, that's terrible." He rolled his eyes and primed the bolts on the maintenance hatch to detonate, giving the soldier a rude hand gesture in the process. "It would really suck if the floor just happened to give out underneath you, wouldn't it? Darn it."
Church looked over the room and the first shot by the enemy's side was fired. He did a quick run of Carolina's health and winced. She hadn't been taking as good of care of herself as she liked to think and she was tired. Tired meant mistakes. Still, the odds were still in their favor. 94% chance of success and a 63 % chance of doing it without getting injured. But hey, injured meant alive, and alive meant being able to complain about it later.
"Alright. It's just you and me now, sis. Transferring analysis to your HUD...and done."
Back in Carolina's head, he barked out a warning. "Roll right!"
The maintenance hatch fell out from underneath one soldier and she screamed in agony as a recent injured was made ten times worse. Carolina leapt over the blast door used as a shield, firing three shots from her handgun. The first two struck the soldier in the middle, one in the head and the second in the throat. The third impacted on the right one's shoulder, sending him spinning. A stray bullet bounced off her helmet and she hissed.
Grabbing the door, she swung it and slammed the poor bastard into the wall with it, crushing bones and stalking over to the wounded one holding their ruined leg. "You bitch-"
Carolina's fist slammed into her head, snapping her neck and permanently shutting her up. "Church? Are you there?"
"I'm fine. Lost a few things I wasn't using anyway. Thanks for freeing up some space." He was alive. "Get the data and get out of here; there's twenty more on the way."
"Roger that." Carolina grabbed the data and sped out before reinforcements could show up.
Once Carolina had gotten them several miles away from the facility they raided, she allowed herself to take a breather and sat down on a rocky outcrop in the wilderness. Church and her were going over the files they downloaded from the base and she sighed. "Looks like our boys in black are into more than just armor enhancements. Their funding is massive."
"Oh Carolina, I think you'll be interested in this." Church brought up a call he had hacked into and grinned. "We got ourselves another message from Control. Let's see what it says."
"Play it."
Church 'Play' on the recording and she fell silent to listen to it.
"What was lost, Locus?"
"A healing unit and several files," a man in green/black armor replied gruffly. "The one responsible for leaving the facility unguarded has been dealt with accordingly. I saw to the matter myself."
"Looks like the raid pissed someone off," Carolina quipped.
"I'm not paying you to put bullets in the heads of space pirates," Control said calmly. "I'm paying you to recover my rightful property before it ends up in the hands of the UNSC. Now, how goes the situation at Crash Site Bravo?"
"The simulation troopers are unaware of our presence. We stand ready to move once all of them are here. What are your orders for them?"
"The sim troopers aren't the concern. The concern is the special agents of the late Project Freelancer. Capture them, recover their equipment, and if they make any attempt to contact the outside, kill them."
"Yes, sir."
The call ended and Carolina swore. They had gotten themselves involved in something far bigger than a bunch of assholes playing around with equipment way above their paygrade. "What the hell is going on with this planet?"
"No idea. But we need to get back to the boys. And hope to God Reach doesn't kill us for leaving them stranded."
"I know. Recovering armor and weapons can wait." Carolina stood up and took off her damaged helmet. Bastards hadn't done anything permanent, but her HUD was screwed for the time being and she needed an upgrade.
"We might want to make a bit of a side trip, first. Your suit is damaged and we're a long way away from the guys. This facility isn't too far from here and has something that might prove useful."
"...is that a teleportation grenade?"
"Yes. Yes it is."
"You son of a bitch, I'm in."
"You asshole! I thought you were fucking masturbating!"
"Dude, I literally said I was going to fucking work on the tower! How does that equate to masturbation!?"
"I live with Grif!"
"...fair point."
Wash sighed and wondered how the hell he ended up in this situation. He had come down from Blue Base to check up on the radio tower, only to find Tucker and Simmons yelling at each other at the tower's base. 'And I thought Caboose would be the biggest headache of the day. Fuck my life.' Actually, his life didn't suck all that bad. Fuck everyone else's life. It'd be better for his sanity if they didn't have any lives.
'...Oh my god, I'm turning into Reach.'
Was this how the retired Spartan felt every day for the past year or so? Wash had a newfound appreciation for Reach's ungodly patience.
Shaking his head and wishing he could throw both of them into the jungle, he strode over to the bickering duo to break it up. "Alright, I'll bite. What are you two idiots doing and why are you yelling at the top of your lungs?"
Tucker and Simmons didn't hear or acknowledge his presence. They were too busy arguing, both of them getting progressively louder until finally, Wash couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed both of them by the back of the helmets and slammed their heads into each other, watching in satisfaction as they stumbled around in pain. "Have I got your attention now?"
"Dude, what the fuck!?"
"I swear to God Wash, I'm going to kill you one day in your sleep!"
"Oh I'm sorry, it's my fault for trying to get your attention while you're both yelling at each other?" Washington drawled. "Any louder and whoever runs this shitty little planet would have to come to tell you to shut the fuck up." Yep, he definitely preferred his talk with Caboose over this. At least all he had to do to console the poor distraught man was tell him that Church was definitely thinking of them, and he was sorry how Church and Carolina left them. Still, at least it made him happier to imagine Church having a good time.
Especially since Wash knew damn well that the AI was probably returning to sanity now that he was off doing fuck all with Carolina.
The last thing Church said to Caboose was, "For the love of God, shut the fuck up."
Right now, Wash felt the same way. Just shut up for five fucking minutes.
He was starting to understand why Church and Carolina fucked off the second they could.
Caboose appeared behind him and smiled broadly. "Hello!"
"Caboose!" Wash jumped, hand flicking towards his sidearm. He relaxed and sighed, looking at the dumb and now cheerful Blue. "What's going on? You seem...happy?" Strange, since a few moments ago Caboose was standing in the corner moaning about how much he missed his super-best friend and he didn't know what to do.
"Oh, it's fine! I made a new friend! Say hi to Freckles!"
"...Freckles?"
Caboose let out a whistle and shouted out into the canyon. "Freckles! Come, boy!" The ground shook with its thundering arrival and suddenly, it wasn't so safe out in the canyon anymore.
Wash stared.
Tucker sighed.
Simmons let out a whimper and decided the best thing to do was immediately point himself in the direction of his base and run for his life like a smart person.
Of course Caboose couldn't have found a normal friend to make.
It was at least twenty feet tall, armored, and bristling with weapons. Wash didn't even come up to its knees. He stood, stared up at the hulking armored behemoth armed with missile pods and machineguns, and the entire left side of his face twitched. Tucker put his thoughts into words.
"HOW THE FUCK IS THIS YOUR FRIEND!?"
It was going to be a long day...
Reach came outside to perform some maintenance work on the tower, saw the Blues standing next to it with a freaking death robot looming over them menacingly, and shook his head before promptly turning on his heel and going back the way he came. "Nope."
Not. Today. Someone else could deal with that. He had an angry wife currently rampaging through his kitchen demanding pancakes and they were low on syrup. Still, he'd take suffocating between her thunder thighs over being blown up by a fucking mech any day. He had seen enough anime to know where that was going. With any luck, Wash would snap and launch the thing into the nearest volcano, preferably along with Sarge too.
"Not going to see how their work is coming along?"
'Shut up, Eta.'
Maine liked to think he was patient and understanding, despite being over seven feet tall and made of solid muscle. Diplomacy wasn't his strong suit, considering he couldn't freaking talk, but still. He thought of himself as someone who was more caring despite the appearances.
Today proved that ideal to be completely and utterly false.
Upon seeing the giant Mantis assault droid that Caboose managed to befriend, Maine's patience went soaring out the nearest window, along with several empty beer bottles. He put his foot down. Literally. And as a reward for his patience with the Blues finally snapping, part of the wall inside the base fell over. So, now he had that to clean up with on top of dealing with the new 'addition' to Blue Team.
Thank fuck South was much better at negotiations than him.
"The fuck were you thinking!? That is not a pet! It's a fucking assault droid! What kind of pet has a missile launcher!?"
Or maybe not. Still, not his problem at the moment.
South hated one thing more than the Director for putting them all through so much bullshit, and that was being cockblocked because of someone else's idiocy. Or lack of self-preservation. Seriously, who the fuck sees a Mantis-class assault droid and thinks to themselves, 'Oh sure, just give it a cutesy collar on it and it'll be a family pet'? It has missiles! And guns! And energy shielding that can withstand anything short of it being shot by a freaking frigate.
She sighed and wondered if Red Team had a kettle stashed away in their base, and if taking it would be deemed as an act of war by Sarge.
She then briefly wondered if she cared all that much.
"Wash..." She stared at their current team leader, who looked just about as lost as she did. Nothing in Project Freelancer suggested they would end up in this kind of scenario. "Go get a drink. Something strong."
Wash opened his mouth to protest, took one look at the Mantis currently aiming ten rockets at him, and wisely considered the option South offered him. "Good idea." That was definitely the smarter choice. Tucker wasn't much help and she immediately set him out to go to the shipwreck and grab some spare ammunition. Or armor paint. God knows they all needed to spruce things up a bit.
Once Wash had left to go regain the sanity he had lost, South turned back to Caboose and pointedly ignored the Mantis now aiming at her with various weapons. "Caboose, where did you find..."
The Mantis's main machinegun fixed on her head.
"Freckles," she finished with a sigh.
"Well," Caboose started, looking around the base. "I was sad, and I missed Church, so after I talked with Wash, I went on a walk. I heard a voice from some wreckage and there he was! Hiding amongst the garbage."
Why did South expect some well-thought-out explanation again? This was Blue Team. Making sense wasn't in their routine.
"Um..." No, South was not sweating nervously as Freckles' missile pods appeared to heat up. "A pet is a big responsibility..."
"That's why I will feed and water him twice a day!" Caboose beamed.
South's head hit the palm of her hands and she groaned. Feed the Mantis? The fuck did it even run on? "What does he even eat? Other robots?"
"It runs on the power of friendship and our love!"
This was so fucked up. Even more so than Kaikaina giving birth to an alien.
"You know what? I can't be bothered to ask for a deeper explanation, so fuck it. Why not? He'll be a great addition to the team." She rolled her eyes. She wasn't patient, but she was good at being sarcastic.
"Thank you! I'll be sure to clean up any messes he makes."
A very big fan of sarcasm.
Deciding that her remaining braincells needed to be far away, she turned around and marched away, running into Maine along the way. The big man was...knitting. Where he got a sewing kit from, she had no idea, but the image of Maine of all people knitting like a crazy old European grandmother made a lot more sense than Caboose befriending a killer robot, so she didn't question it.
Maine looked up with a curious growl, his large hands somehow defying logic and knitting with incredible grace and skill.
"I don't want to talk about it..." South groaned and flopped next to him. "Did we murder someone important in a past life or something?"
Maine pondered silently for a moment before he let out a rattling hiss.
"Yeah, probably. Um...are you busy tonight or...?"
Another hiss.
"I'll be sure to tell Wash that if he sees a sock on the door, do not come in."
A low and slightly curious growl rumbled in his throat.
"The fuck do you mean, we don't have any socks? GRIF! YOU SON OF A BITCH!"
Still. Could be worse.
A/N: We get closer to the bullshit of Chorus. Some Carolina, Freckles, and everyone just so done with it all.