A/N: Here we go. Seeing as canon Season 11 wouldn't work for this, I'm changing it and pretty much doing away with most of the later stages of it and early Season 12. New players have entered this story, so the changes had to be made.

*Chapter 79*

Sarge didn't think of himself as a complicated man. He liked to think his experience fighting alongside several Freelancer agents had sharpened his skills and made him the man he was now. He liked beer about as much as it didn't like him, he led Red Team to glory and fortune, and was also completely terrified of their old CO's wife.

To be fair, only the incredibly stupid or masochistic weren't afraid of the wrath Tex could inflict on a person.

But he was having very complicated feelings for the giant death robot now patrolling outside of Blue Base. No, he wasn't going to say it like that, or Simmons would come to the wrong conclusion so fast he'd find himself having a romantic candlelit dinner with the damn thing before the week was up.

Simmons was a problem right now, refusing to acknowledge his experience and leadership. It was close to treasonous behavior Sarge normally expected out of Grif. What the hell happened to the man? Simmons used to be so cooperative. Now it was as if he had been poisoned by Grif's treacherous influence. Sarge growled under his breath. He should have known that fat orange-armored son of a bitch was the real problem. Why hadn't they killed him yet?

Oh, yeah, saving him for food for when the apocalypse happens and cannibalism is accepted as a part of normal society.

"MEN!" Sarge barked. "We have a situation! Get your asses moving! On the double!"

Two exasperated groans came from Red Base, and Sarge really wished he had the damn tank to intimidate them into getting outside. No one argued with a tank. This was no time for petty grudges. They were at war.

Grif, Simmons, and the lower half of Lopez Dos.0 came outside, the first two grumbling and complaining about being dragged out of bed. The last one was really unnecessary, but Sarge's heart swelled with pride. It was the effort that mattered most. No doubt Lopez Dos.0 would turn out to be a model soldier. One Grif and Simmons would aspire to become.

Did that make him a threat to Sarge's leadership? Maybe. But that was far in the future when he became old and infirm. A time Sarge was confident in being far, far, away.

"What is it now?" Grif asked, puffing on a cigarette.

"Those dirty bastards have betrayed us!" Sarge roared. His men were silent, and he pointed to the murder robot stomping on the remains of a Warthog on the opposite of the canyon. "The Blues have a giant killer robot on their side! And we didn't get one first! How far back did they plan this?"

"For a second, I actually thought something important was happening." Simmons sighed. "Can I go back to bed, Sarge?"

"No!" Sarge barked. "Simmons, you and Grif need to go over to Blue Base and spy on that robot. See if it's gathering information for the Blues." Why couldn't they understand it from his view? Poor dumb bastards.

"Oh my fucking God, we're not even at war!" Grif complained. "Do we really have to do this!?"

Both Grif and Simmons were sent flying by a pair of robotic feet kicking them in the general direction of Blue Base. They screamed out horrible obscenities at him as they soared through the jungle canyon, crashing through branches. They'd be fine. Maybe. Sarge smiled at the legs. "Good work, Lopez Dos.0"

One foot raised up in a salute. Sarge's eyes watered.

Malcolm Hargrove's black shoes clicked as he stormed down the prison wing of the Staff of Charon, his face set in a thunderous scowl. Men and women in black armor stiffened as he thudded past, whispering to each other about what could have him set in such a mood. None of them could know the truth; their morale would be shattered and his operation would fail. 'Beta-312 on Chorus. How? Why!? Did ONI fake his retirement!? Are they investigating!?'

'No! I did not come this far to be stopped by ONI's little games! The Freelancers need to be dealt with. Nosey little indigents always poking their nose where it doesn't belong.' The same Freelancer agents responsible for taking down Director Leonard Church were now on the surface of Chorus. If they found out...

He shook his head. He had a solution to deal with the remaining agents of Project Freelancer once and for all. Hargrove didn't like it, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The agents who managed to escape incarceration were of no use to him; none of them had the skillset required to kill the agents on Chorus. Hargrove knew of only one remaining, and he ground his teeth together. 'Why did it have to be her?' Of course the only Freelancer formerly used for high-value assassinations had to be the one who was the biggest pain in his ass.

He stopped in front of a cell at the far end of the hall. Two guards stood next to it, each of them armed with his newest experimental weapons. Both saluted and he typed in the code for the cell door, providing a retinal scanner and voice sample to confirm it was the chairman and not an imposter. "Leave us."

The cell door hissed open and Hargrove strode in, sneering at the prisoner within. Chains bound her bare wrists and ankles to the ceiling and wall, keeping her suspended. "You've caused me a great many problems. Agent Missouri, Agent Alaska, Agent New Jersey, the loss of the Zeta AI and of course the destruction of one of my manufacturing plants. Not to mention several Freelancer outposts containing valuable data going up in smoke from your operations."

The prisoner laughed bitterly. "You're not telling me anything I don't already blame myself for. Is it time already for my fifth beating of the day? My, how the time passes by."

"I don't have time for this nonsense of yours," Hargrove snapped. "You can choose to stay dead to the galaxy and spend eternity rotting away in only knowing this cell. Or you can work for me on the Chorus Operation."

The prisoner hesitated. A reaction there. A pair of defiant green eyes bored into his and she huffed. "Seeing as I have nowhere to be, I'm all ears."

Hargrove's lips twisted into a smirk. "Good. I'm sure you know plenty about my project?"

"You think I get up to date news in here?" The prisoner rolled her eyes. "No. Simplify it."

"Chorus is ripe with alien technology. After the Covenant War ended, the UNSC abandoned it. No one ventures beyond the Outer Colonies much. All that technology is still down there, but the inhabitants are a problem. We have orchestrated a civil war to wipe out the inhabitants, claim the technology for ourselves, and usher in a new age in humanity's advancement. Imagine how far we could spread our dominance. You would be rich, wealthy beyond your dreams and even able to start a new life. Wouldn't it be nice to feel the wind on your face once more? To have a family?"

The prisoner was quiet, staring down at the floor. Minutes could have ticked by, or it could have been mere seconds, but after a moment of silence that lasted for too long, she gave her answer. "What do you need me to do?"

"Kill any Freelancer personnel who interfere."

Hargrove's answer had her shaking with mirth. "It always comes down to us, doesn't it? Man, we were all so fucked from the start. I wonder how much better off I'd be if I didn't let my bleeding heart get in the way of what was right." She laughed at the ceiling, shaking their head. Matted brown hair that long since lost its luster fell in front of her face and she stared at Hargrove. "Something tells me it's not just any normal Freelancers causing problems for you. You wouldn't need me to take them out if it were. Give me names."

"Washington, South Dakota, Maine, Texas, and though her presence is unknown to us at this point, Carolina has been deemed a security threat. Will your prior loyalties be a problem, or are you still interested?"

"If it means I get to be free of this cell, I'll take it." Desperation and the will to survive always won out in the end. Humanity was so damned predictable.

"Excellent choice." Hargrove unclasped the chains holding her still and the prisoner groaned in relief, rubbing sore wrists. "You will be escorted by an armed force at all times. Make no mistake; I would love to fire you out of a cannon and into an exploding supernova for the amount of money you have cost me. But I find myself lacking other candidates with your skillset. You are an asset. Get cleaned up and report to the armory. You might find we make something for every kind of customer."

He turned on his heel and left the prisoner to the two guards waiting outside. Using that bitch in this operation was a risky gamble. He knew it. If she turned traitor once out of misplaced affections, she could do it again. But marksmen like her didn't grow on trees, and whether he liked it or not he needed her skillset. 'Better to keep her under control and actively working as opposed to letting her rot. Such talent shouldn't be wasted.'

But he needed someone who could keep an eye on her. Someone who hated her enough to never once let her out of their sight. There was only one man who hated Freelancers that much.

Hargrove just wished he had a better name.

'Who in the blazes willingly changes their name to Sharkface?'

Grif and Simmons flew above the jungle, both of them screaming in terror as they hit peak height and started their descent. Thick gnarled limbs and lush canopies of oh so helpful trees slowed them down, the simulation troopers complaining every time a limb gave them a particularly good whack. "Ow!"

"Fuck!"

"The fuck!? These trees weren't here two weeks ago! OW!"

A fat orange missile smashed through the trunk of one final tree with a whimper, power armor keeping his head on and body in one piece. He rolled in an undignified ball before coming to a halt in the mud, ears ringing. Through the thick haze of pain he was able to make out Simmons, who wasn't as fortunate to have trees cushion his landing. Gravity took one look at him, nodded once, and decided, 'Fuck it, down is fine.'

A maroon blob smashed into the ground next to him, and Grif snickered as it became three maroon blobs, all of them hazy. Three Simmons? Sarge would have a fit.

The three Simmons looked at him. "Grif? There's three of you? Sarge is going to lose his shit."

Huh? There was? Cool. Three Grifs meant two more people who liked the same things as him.

Shit. Simmons probably was thinking the same thing.

The ringing in Grif's ears died down, and the two extra Simmons merged back together until there was only one remaining. His teammate had lost his helmet on impact and his glassy eyes stared blankly ahead. He looked concussed.

Grif accessed his own damage, noticing it hurt like a bitch when he tried to breathe in. "I think I broke a rib." He tried to sit up and his body screamed in agony, making him flop back down. "Maybe ten."

He looked over at his partner and grinned. "You look like shit."

Simmons offered him the middle finger for his expert diagnosis.

'Red Team doesn't have a killer robot, my ass.'

Grif was in no condition to move, and from the looks of it neither was Simmons. They were alive though, and alive meant being able to complain about the pain later. Fuck this stupid spy mission. Why haven't either of them poisoned Sarge yet to make sure he suffers a slow agonizing death? Grif didn't have the answer. Sarge could fuck right off if he thought Grif was going to be doing anything even remotely close to work for the next four or five hours.

'If Sarge wanted someone to spy on the Blues, then shouldn't he have picked someone who is actually good for this type of work? Like Reach?'

Grif lifted his pounding head to briefly look in the direction of 'Fort Fuck Off' where their most dangerous 'friend' currently was doing fuck knows what. Yeah, no. Grif wasn't stupid enough to wake that sleeping bear. Reach would probably help them under normal circumstances, but their crash landing was anything but normal. Plus, he had a pregnant wife to take care of. That took priority.

'I spent half my life chasing skirts, only to suddenly be surrounded by domineering women more than capable of bending my body into a pretzel.' He blamed his dad's advice and let his head lay back down into the dirt. 'All you need is confidence. Well now I'm stuck between two Freelancers, one claimed and married, the other bitchy as hell. Thanks for the confidence talk, Dad. Really appreciate it.'

Who the hell was he going to ask for help on that? Wash? No. Wash's stress had built up to the point where the half-blind man was no longer a member of humanity. He had become stress and didn't need to be found with a shotgun to his head after being asked for help around angry women.

Simmons? No... he wouldn't know anything about girls.

Sarge?

No. Just... just no.

Reach?

Maybe. He somehow picked up fucking Tex of all people. Though the guy was about as far from normal as it was possible to be. Could anyone who spent their life fighting a shadow war be considered normal? Grif didn't think so. Reach knew he was messed up; he just didn't care. And that was frightening. No wonder he got married to Tex.

Tucker? Ugh. The one person who fucked a somewhat normal woman. If Grif ignored the biggest problem of said woman being his own sister. And then gave birth to a baby alien.

This past year or so was really so fucked up. If someone told Grif that he'd go through the shit he did when he first got drafted, he'd have politely asked for them to check themselves into a mental asylum. Who the fuck would believe they'd see their sister give birth to an alien, or that Spartans were as badass as advertised, or he'd spend his entire military career surrounded by bossy and dominate women who'd sooner beat the shit out of him than kiss him? Don't even get started on finding out his entire career was nothing more than a simulation for a top-secret military project.

Or finding out the most terrifying woman of all time was artificially manufactured in a series of highly illegal and unethical cloning experiments. One man's inability to move on caused this entire mess, and even though he was dead, Grif still gave the middle finger to the sky. 'Fuck you, Director.'

And fuck whoever made them crash here in the first place.

"No, Felix."

"Come on, don't be a big baby."

"No means fucking no. I am not going down there." Locus growled angrily. "Not while that thing is outside."

"What's the big deal?" Felix complained. "We have ten of them on the boss's ship. They're nothing special."

Nothing special?

Really?

So the missile pods, gatling gun, hydraulic stomp and energy shields were nothing special. Riiiiiight.

Locus didn't think it was weird to value his life a lot more than his paycheck. Especially when faced with a fucking Mantis. He knew how dangerous just one of the assault mechs could be, having seen one tear through a Chorus Rebel outpost in mere minutes as a controlled test. Tanks, sniper fire, rockets; they couldn't do a thing. It plowed its way through the camp and slaughtered every single rebel. Control marked it as a successful experiment and began to produce more of them.

One of them being in the hands of the Reds and Blues (though from the looks of it, mainly Blue Team) was an unpleasant surprise. Even more unpleasant was Felix trying to get him to face off against it alone. He wasn't going within fifty feet of it unless he had a fucking mass driver cannon at his disposal. Facing one alone was just suicide.

"Alright, alright. We'll go down when we have some backup. The boss said he's sending someone to assist us. Someone who has a history with the Freelancers." Reinforcements? Locus could kiss the sun.

'Probably someone from his own private army,' Locus mused. 'They had their fair share of run-ins with the Freelancer agents.'

"Oh yeah, the boss gave us a warning about her. Apparently she's an ex-Freelancer, one of their assassins and someone who's cost our boss a lot of money. A real pain in his ass, but she's good. She's to handle the Freelancers while we focus on the war."

"Kind of impossible to do since there is a Spartan looking for someone stupid enough to give him trouble down there." Locus grumbled. He was good, but Spartan good? No sir. One punch from a Spartan would take his head off. Charon Industries' latest prototype armor wasn't designed to handle impacts of that nature.

And of course, it had to be the one Spartan Locus would prefer being two planets away from at all times.

Beta-312, ONI's 'Grim Reaper'. A man who could kill him in ten different ways before Locus even got a shot off on him. Locus enjoyed a good payday, but Control had to be insane thinking the two of them would be enough to take out one of only two Spartans to ever reach the status of 'hyper-lethal'. Did Control forget what the fuck those words meant? It meant he was one of the few humans the Covenant truly feared, and for good fucking reason.

Elite Field Marshall? Executed in the middle of the night without a sound.

Terrorist organization? Blown up sky high without anyone seeing him leave or enter.

Rebellion leader? Never heard from again. Vanished as though they never existed.

Felix being a fucking cocky idiot was going to get them killed. 'I did not sign up for this. Tangling with Beta-312 is not in my job description.'

'We're fucked. This operation was screwed the moment we realized he was on the surface of Chorus.'

South was not a happy woman. For once it didn't have to deal with Tucker being a pervert; the source of her stress this time was their new... addition, for lack of a better term. She'd have settled with, 'murder-robot' but Caboose. Oh Caboose.

She'd have assumed that common sense and self-preservation instincts would have screamed at Caboose to chuck the murder-robot into an erupting volcano, but no. He had to go and declare it his super new best friend.

Right, because best friends totally came with energy shields, missiles, and a fucking gatling gun. Totally, sure.

South mourned the lack of good coffee. Or the ability to shoot whoever made them crash in the first place. Assholes.

She yawned and checked over the list of supplies Tucker brought down, stopping a shipment highlighted in red marker. "Sticky Detonators? Delta what are we looking at here?"

A green hologram flashed to life in front of her. "The M363 Remote Projectile Detonator is a prototype adhesive explosive weapon, designed by Chalybs Defense Solutions to take out light vehicles and infantry. It's a single shot weapon that can be remotely detonated from a distance or instantly, depending on need. The replacement for the M319 Individual Grenade Launcher, it has passed all of the latest UNSC tests and models will be fielded out in the near future. Private Tucker has brought down one crate of the weapon to the armory."

Well, South certainly wasn't someone to pass up having a new explosive toy to play with.

"So you're telling me I should definitely go make sure they actually work. In the name of science, of course." Wasn't scientific method really just, 'fuck around and find out'?

Delta looked like he wanted to say something, thought better of it, and sighed before winking out of existence.

South went down to the armory, now full of spare weapons and power armor paint. Twenty BR85s, fifteen DMRs, ten MA5D assault rifles and M6H magnums, and even a single rocket launcher lined the weapons racks. A few spare tubes for the launcher lie next to the weapon and South made a mental note to lock that up somewhere Caboose could never find it. The armory looked paltry, but they had only sorted through the first ten crates. There were still thirty of them lining the back wall containing an assortment of UNSC weapons, and it didn't take long for South to find the one she was looking for.

She pulled it from the stack, yanked the cover off, and picked the first M363RPD her hand touched. It was small; barely bigger than the M6H sidearm they all carried. Despite it being bigger, it was lighter than the handgun and she smiled at the small screen that flipped open on the left side of the weapon. "Motion tracker. Nice."

South fastened it to her left leg, put the crate back where she found it, and took her ass outside in the grand terribleness that they currently called their living space. She wasn't stupid enough to test a fucking explosive inside, despite Delta's helpful reminder of the time she accidentally blew up a forklift with a grenade in the MOI's hangar. So what; she wasn't forklift certified.

Maine was. That's all that mattered. Her man could drive forklifts.

"You say the explosives stick to any surface?" she asked.

"Correct. Though I would advise you don't fire it within a thirty-foot radius of yourself. The M363 may be small, but it can destroy a Warthog in a single shot," Delta warned.

Definitely keeping them away from Caboose.

South aimed at a tree some thirty yards away, fired, and watched the explosive sail through the air before sticking onto a branch. The blinking red light told her where it was, and another pull of the trigger detonated the bomb.

The entire tree fell over.

South thought it was strange how the ground kept shaking even twenty seconds later. Then the helpful part of brain reminded her of what else could cause such a racket. The gears slowly clicked into place and she turned around to see the looming figure of a Mantis standing ten feet from her. The kind of terror one feels when being faced with a giant death robot was hard to explain. Self-preservation instincts told South to calmly accept whatever the fuck it decided to do. If it wanted to blow her up, it would blow her up.

The cute pink collar around the neck did nothing to make Freckles' grisly appearance less terrifying.

What the fuck, Caboose?

"Enemy threats detected. Lethal force authorized." The missile pods began to heat up and South closed her eyes, waiting to be blown to smithereens. Dropped in volcano dead. "Firing main cannon."

Six missiles fwooshed overhead and exploded...over the rim of the canyon? What?

South opened her eyes, saw she wasn't dead, and watched as a small passenger spacecraft smashed into the ground. She winced at the sounds of panicked screams and cries of pain as the nose of the craft bit deep into the dirt and came to a halt, nose down and rear end sticking up at a forty-five-degree angle. There was probably some weird fetish for this.

Freckles stomping over to stand behind it reinforced the image of, 'Oh no step-Mantis, I'm stuck in the dirt.'

'I need coffee.'

South holstered the empty M363 and swapped it for her handgun, walking over to the wreckage before Freckles decided to further lay down the exterminatus. The missile pods were empty, but its main machinegun was leveled directly at the ship's side door. "Freckles." She cleared her throat.

The machinegun swiveled to her head.

"Let me handle this. Keep an eye out for more."

The spacecraft smoldered.

Birds chirped.

South felt herself age another ten years.

"Affirmative." Freckles turned around and stomped back out on patrol, presumably looking for more spacecraft to blow up. Better them than her.

South wished she was in a happier place. With coffee. Sometimes, sex wasn't the best thing in the world. A good cup of coffee was.

She kept her grip on her gun tense as she approached what was left of the door. She could hear banging inside, along with various complaints of injuries and panicked screams about the pilot being dead. Just average Tuesday things. Or was it Wednesday? It was hard to keep track this far away from civilization.

What the hell was another ship doing here anyway?

The door hissed open and South jumped back, leveling her pistol out at two familiar idiots. "Donut? Doc? The fuck are you doing here!?"

"We came to rescue you!" Donut groaned and cradled a broken wine glass. "Why did you shoot us out of the sky!? Do you have any idea how expensive these sets of wine glasses are!?"

"Rescue...?" South paled.

"Yeah," Doc said with a remarkable lack of any fucks to give. "Um, we're the rescue team?"

South's eye twitched and she discovered something new about herself. She found out her voice could in fact be heard ten miles away and make two closing-in armies stop, reconsider their life choices, and run the fuck away.

"CABOOOOOOOOOOSE!"

A/N: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Thanks for reading.