All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

5. 0-5: Combat Evolved

A/N: Few things before we get to it.

First: I am complete garbage and a hack.

Second: What Mai does in this chapter is not me taking a stand that some of the MExHalo fics here do. As in I'm not signaling superiority of the UNSC or the Spartans over the Alliance or Shepard or any aspect of the Mass Effect universe. If you think I'm doing that you're wrong, and you can take that superiority complex back to any other human curbstompy fics. What happens in this chapter here is a lot of set up, and a lot of parallels. You're gonna be seeing a lot of parallels in this story.

Three: The Halo Lore I draw upon from are the books and expanded lore. I am not a Bungie purist, so I gladly accept what Halo 4, 5, and 343 has done to the franchise. And yes, even though The Rookie and Six were taken out during the Battle of Reach, you'll find that I've been able to incorporate the larger Halo lore (and its future from Reach) into this story. "Ambrose" as Mai refers to, is, as some of you know, Kurt-051.

And just to clarify, even though Six was a Spartan-III, she was judged by Ambrose to be worthy of merit comparable to the Spartan-IIs. Halsey also shared this opinion. So if you feel like how I'm writing paints her as more capable than what you'd believe from her, it's because she is actually capable. The Spartans are capable of far more than what can be displayed in the games, and that, in itself, is a horror story waiting to be written. She is not human. She is death made into a woman and an aspect of killing made real.

---

Mai had heard rumors of this kind of system for the later Spartan-III Companies. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality come together in physical training methods which pitted Spartans against Spartans in combat that bordered actuality: War Games. She never had the privilege, or the need, to be thrown into such training measures. Her teeth had been cut by her birth, her early life, and eventually into the throes of clandestine combat that she alone had been the progenitor of.

The program that followed in her wake had been called the Headhunters Program, and as she was doing now, she was very much headhunting in that simulated space. She was the very first Headhunter: where other teams required two Spartans, she accomplished missions all by her lonesome. Lone Wolf was right.

She had let the bolt of her MA5 fly forward after a hefty slap. For what tech the Alliance had, their ability to replicate objects in the simulation was 1:1. It felt like a real Assault Rifle, and she had known all her life how her body responded to that recoil.

Firearms as she and JD knew it had been long obsolete, gun powder and cartridges gone the way of mechanical keyboards and physical money. Instead they had been replaced with, essentially, mini mass drivers that handled and shot like firearms albeit with a near bottomless ammo capacity. It reminded her of the Covenant weapons in a way.

Her armor however, it hadn't felt quite the same. As in she had none but what she had fashioned out of a tool belt and a fanny pack, slings made out of duct tape and her faith in her knots. She had been refused access to her armor, and for that she would show them what she could do with nothing but her tech suit and a chip on her shoulder. That and several mags of ammo that she had, in that moment, known as real.

The Alliance weren't interested in seeing her operate with what they had, but rather, what she knew.

Stuck in that mockup of a three-story building, with around a platoon Alliance Marines breaching in through windows, doors, floors, and any hole they could blow, she was prepared. Prepared enough as she had kicked over the table in a concrete room and dug her hands into it as the concussive blast of a breaching charge kicked in the door she had just closed behind her.

Her head was ducked down behind that cover, and she felt in her feet around three Marines go into the room: a textbook breach as they spread out and aimed their guns toward her tabled cover. They hadn't expected her to lift that hefty table with one hand and slam all three of them back into the wall, concrete crumbling and metal armor denting was heard as the pained groans of Marines came, only to turn into screams as she let the table go, and fall upon the Marines, their heads exposed: Assault Rifles aimed at their heads as she let the ammunition pop off.

Before more men could enter the room by kicking down the table she had seen the wooden wall to her right that beyond led to the hallway leading to that door. She ran at it in a charge, breaking it down in a crash of supports and wood furnishing. She broke through into a Marine that had been unlucky enough to stack up on the other side, splinters exploding into him as he fell and slammed into the concrete wall on the other end.

Around the corner the men couldn't react fast enough as their sides were lit up by kinetic slugs in their sides, she rounding the bend and getting the jump. The rounds in her mag had been enough to take out all but one: the ammo indicator on the assault rifle flashing zeroes and red.

Above that building in a spectator's nest a congregation of admirals and observers had seen Mai burst out of a window from the second story, using the lone survivor of that breach as padding for her landing as, even when the man landed on his back out of breath and clearly defeated by a measure of pain he had never felt before, she delivered a punch to the side of his helmet.

She ran back into the building before any of the spectators could process what had just happened, gunfire and screams, albeit non-lethal, filling that training scenario chamber.

The information provided on the digitized windows of the spectator's balcony had read the remaining Marines who were combat capable in the scenario, and that number fell almost uniformly with how many seconds went by. Among other information had been her vitals, her gear, tracking her movements through cameras placed throughout. It was if they were watching a videogame or some blood sport, but to the Admiralty of the Systems Alliance, it was anything but a game.

This was how many of them, veterans of the First Contact War and the Skyllian Blitz, came to be introduced to Spartan Mai-B312. Of all the updates provided to the Admiralty in those last forty-eight hours, from Altis and the Covenant, it had been her that piqued their interests the most. That interest turned into morbid curiosity as Mai burned through the very first test that put her through her paces for the sake of observation.

"I've never seen anything like it." Admiral Mikhailovich of the Fifth Fleet had spoken like a man enthralled. At least he could say words. The Admiralty present had been mostly silent as they had seen a woman pull perfection out of her ability and made the best trained Marine fireteams of the Alliance to crumble beneath her.

Admiral Hackett had taken in a cold breath as he held his own hands behind his back, fingers tightening around each other till he was white knuckled. He had left Altis with the diplomats in charge of talks with the Covenant and the "Prophet of Destiny", only to link up with the training vessel and see what exactly humanity had smuggled away.

At least a dozen of the Alliance's highest rank Admirals had been there, and they stood initially unsure of what they had supposed to make of Mai. Surely the stories about her had been exaggerated.

Three Marines, so desperately trying to avoid getting eliminated by her, fear in their hearts, had barricaded themselves in a stairway of the building as their comrades were taken out around them. She came from the top down however, her foot breaking through a barricaded steel door's remains after it was blown apart by captured charges. With one hand she held that door in her hand as she threw it over the railing, flattening the Marine on the bottom of the stairs as the other two pushed up to meet her. She had jumped over the railing to meet the one on the midway of the stairs, her feet slamming into his chest and standing over him as she drew her M6 pistol, putting rounds into the front man's back as he tumbled over and fell down the stairs. The man she stood on had tried to crunch up and seize her, but in a snap her left leg came up and down in a merciless crunch: the man's armor dented through to his chest.

"This is how she handles non-lethal?" Admiral Mikhailovich had exasperated. Those were some of his men down there.

"She knows we'll lock her away forever if she does kill them." Hackett responded. The vitals on those Marines she had "eliminated" were all still stable at least, so he had brilliant self-control of herself. "Still, for her hate of the Covenant, why is she this good at combatting humans?"

There were a million items that could be observed as Mai ran through her first trial of the day. She wasn't even well rested, with nothing but a few meek pizza slices in her belly and annoyance firing her heart. The way she handled her weapons that were, to the Alliance and Council Space, so out of date and touch, it seemed to single her out as primitive. Yet primal seemed to be a good descriptor to how she fought, essentially naked in her form fitting under suit, jury rigged mag pouches and pockets on her.

"This isn't even with her armor." Commander Ryder had been there also, a vested interest in Mai having manifested in a compulsion to test her like this: to see if she was worth his time.

As it turned out she was worth the time of the whole Alliance at this rate.

JD on the other hand, Anderson had taken the time during their transit to take some time to observe him while the Admiralty was obsessed over Mai.

The SSV Montenegro was a re-purposed Dreadnought of the Systems Alliance fleet. Just as the Japanese had tried to get around the Washington Naval Treaty after the First World War, the Alliance had the Treaty of Farixen to contend with. Reassigning and stripping the hull of the Montenegro into a training vessel, not a war vessel, had kept it on hand while still abiding by treaty regulations of limiting dreadnoughts.

It served its purpose well as a mobile training station, hosting Interplanetary Combatives Training classes with ample opportunity for refining their skills. Anderson and Ryder had remembered the vessel fondly when they had been obliged to mentor classes here, however the sinister nature of why they were onboard today was felt by both of them.

Unlike Mai, JD had been allowed his armor. There had been nothing anomalous about it unlike Mai's MJOLNIR. Anyone could wear it, that much the HAZMAT techs had found out when they catalogued it and pulled it so as to get the video footage from his helmet.

What that meant for him however was that he now wore his armor again, and, for the first time, he'd been shooting humans in it.

His entire life as a Marine, he'd been trained to shoot at silhouettes that hadn't been human shaped, so everything about the scenario he had been thrown in felt unnatural. He never had been deployed against the Insurrectionists, and although he had known how to kill, taken many lives for many reasons, none had ever been human.

They loaded him into a wheat field that had been deceptively real.

The Marines and N-level candidates had been told that this were simply more training exercises and the two guests had been there to tests them. The trials had gone both ways however.

It was true: Mai and JD had known what war was, been to war, had more hours on the ground in combat than any in the Alliance. What that meant was beyond words, but it had to be proven. Mai had no problem killing humans, but some would say that she hadn't been human.

For JD, it was a different matter, one that had him aim at the back of an N-trainee's head through his M7 and not pull the trigger.

Thirteen trainees, both Marine and N-candidate, had been in that virtual space, wheat taller than all of them made, no cover but the damning brush. A game of hide and seek. Last man standing won, and it had been all thirteen versus JD.

He could tell these people were rookies. JD knew the sort. Somewhere along the way he had become a veteran ODST, just shy of one hundred drops. Whether it was by pure luck or (he wouldn't admit) his own skill, he had survived a long time in a profession where men died young. His gait was quieter than most, his nerves used to the high intensity of adrenaline and combat, breath controlled and mind focused on the number one rule of combat: survive. A professional by any other pretense, albeit one who had a shot but didn't take it.

Anderson had seen JD, at the beginning of the simulation as the two groups started on opposite ends of the football field sized virtual space, correctly assume the dispersion of the trainees as they approached.

That alone had caught the attention of Anderson.

JD had lain flat and squirmed through the virtual wheat and the virtual dirt, his black armor barely helping as the 5-meter spread gave him the gap he needed for overzealous trainees to blow through: eyes forward, but not up or down. Maybe fighting Grunts had given him a different perspective on how to fight and scan, but it was combat that formed his mannerisms: something that these trainees did not account for.

"Check! We clear?!" The trainee leader had yelled aloud.

A procession of 12 other clears came up and through as they all laxed.

"Hey is Anderson pulling our leg?" One of them asked jokingly. "Or that guy just up and quit?"

JD had sat up as he followed their voices, in a crouch with his M7 up and out.

That was when he found his target: the first of many.

He wanted to correct them verbally, to yell out and to check his six. He could not allow that however, not as the trainee did and halfway turned. The breath in his lung hitched and he did what he had to do. Life moved at moments at a time when gunfire started flying, and so he saw poetry in motion as slugs flew and hit the man squarely in his neck and peppering his side.

If the fire had been real, he would've been not dead, but bleeding out on the ground from five different holes.

The ODST had moved to a different angle as the trainee writhed in pain automatically. Soon enough, as JD had guessed, two of his squad mates had moved to check on him and cover, just like they had been trained to. The reality of war however didn't allow for such formalities and humanities. The Covenant had never given him breath to recover wounded comrades from harm's way.

Now he decided, for now, if Anderson had wanted it, he wouldn't either.

He depressed the trigger again as he saw the two trainees twitch and contort painfully as the slugs impacted their bodies, sending them to the ground as he kept moving over to the left: knowing that's where those two trainees came from. It meant that that side of the spread wouldn't be as covered.

The Trainee he had encountered first had his vision directed at the source of their pained groans, barely able to see JD in the peripheral as he had come up on his side and shoved him to the ground, M7 putting two in his chest.

When the trainee further down the line had moved down to assist the original two she had run into JD with her rifle down. It meant that she could barely stop her rushing momentum before four more shots rang out like paper getting punched through, sending her breathless to the ground, several bruises on her skin more. He had pushed forward now, now essentially behind them all as the training squad thought the shots came from their behind.

He pushed forward, holstering his M7S and taking out his pistol, his shooting arm held across his left forearm, almost as a base.

Pushing wheat asides to push daisies, he had come to the center of the line and to the back of a trainee who had heard the man running to him too late. His free arm reached out and around the trainee, barring across his neck and throwing him down as the pistol came down and shot the man in the neck.

JD heard rustling to his left: the barrel of a rifle poking through grain as he immediately joined the man on the ground on his own accord, SMG brought out during the fall as he fell to his side and aimed perpendicular.

He saw two sets of legs pushing toward him through his red dot.

He had slid and pushed himself laterally on his shoulder as he fired his M7S sideways, taking out the feet of two trainees as they fell into the wheat and he disappeared into it again, their bodies falling to the simulated dirt with a thud.

Dirt had been scooped up into his shoulder pauldron, but he paid no mind to it as he let the magazine in his SMG fly after he stood back up with a flick of his wrist, another mag for it in his hand from his mag carrier ready. Only the whizz of bullets around him had stopped his reloading, he immediately hitting the deck again and scrambling away horizontally to the incoming fire.

The impulses of gunfire kept his bearing toward the enemy as his pistol came out again, the two trainees unaware of where the ODST had gone as he disappeared into the grass.

By sound alone JD had stayed his feet, held his breath, and aimed with his eyes at the sound as he let a few rounds loose toward the gunfire.

"Agh!"

The pained screams of a trainee getting hit had signaled he had made a good guess and rushed toward the remaining trainee before he knew what was happening. To know that you had been the last man standing was a feeling that came in waves, and before the first had even come over the man JD had bent around the field of vision the last man had and gave him mercy.

The Marine felt the suppressor end of JD's M6S and knew its cold feel for it to be a gun barrel. The Marine knew his game was done, nodding and dropping his weapon as he, slowly, turned around to Six, the wheat fields around him disappearing into the digital nothingness.

"Appreciate it." The Marine said honestly. The M6S in his hand hadn't been real, but it felt it to JD as it also dissipated. He shook his head up and down subtly, looking around him, seeing the pained bodies of the twelve Marines he had downed, all creakily raising up.

He didn't know he had it in him to fight against fellow man like this; didn't knew he could do it. Yet he earned his applause as he heard a sparse few claps from Captain Anderson above him, watching in the balcony before he issued orders. "Return to the prep room, Private Durante. This is only test one of the day, and it's going to be some time before we get to Earth."

The weapons in his hands disintegrated into the digital dust as well, and so he had walked off with the rest of them, unable to look at them in the eye.

---

"Mai."

"JD."

They found each other alone, in between trials for rest and refit. There was a locker room they were allowed in and, as far as they could tell, they were given the privacy to use it alone. Not as if they had anything to lock up. His weapons had dissolved and it left him empty, the halls to this place empty, but always watching them.

They were separated, yet again, shortly after arriving on the ship and told of what would be happening for the next day as they made transit to Earth.

"How're they testing you?" She sat alone on a bench, furthest corner of the room, further locker from the door.

"Combat." He answered simply, unclasping his helmet form his head as he had meekly opened up a locker next to her for any contents. Only towels and a water bottle. He took the water bottle for a sip.

"Do well?" Her gear was alongside her: some jury-rigged chest rig held together by tape, boot lace, and a dream. Before he could answer a woman had appeared before them around the corner of the locker aisles. Her lab coat had blended into the room almost harshly, silver paneling and metallic sheens around. Nothing like the greys of a UNSC warship.

A darker skinned woman, data pad in her hand and a hazmat bag in the other.

"Hi! Hello." She said awkwardly. "I've been instructed to collect something from you, Miss Gul."

She pronounced her name wrong. It was Gul, almost like ghoul. It was understandable however. She was an anomaly in more ways than one among the Spartans. She remembered, held within herself, the knowledge of her last name. Her tenacity to kill was tied in no small part to her stubbornness. When asked, she would give it, even in the face of superior officers who had tried to take that from her.

"What do you need?" There was always a bite of hostility in her voice, hidden by professionalism.

"Your undersuit. The observers and admiralty believe that it is enhancing your abilities as well."

There were five layers that counted as her techsuit: the black outer layer which had been seen, and then beneath that a pressure sealed sandwich of polymerized lithium niobocene and hydrostatic gel which kept her insulated and pressurized. Mai would be lying to say that it didn't enhance her abilities. One would be quick to assume that the titanium armor and its combination of external plating was accountable for the Spartans trademark abilities and strength, however it was the undersuit which held those secrets. The liquid metal crystal piezoelectric layer had been the artificial muscle which amplified all physically exerted actions of a Spartan, right down to reaction time.

"Is it Alliance policy for them to rid its troopers of its necessary tools?"

The scientists squirmed like an intern under Mai's unkind, world wary gaze and question. "Uh- uhm. I've just been told to collect it from you, so if you could please…" The scientist shrunk as Mai looked straight at her, gaze dead, as if daring her to move to complete her orders.

She was a trained soldier either way, and it showed on her skin. She'd never killed a man without the help of MJOLNIR, but she was trained without it.

Mai bared her teeth for a moment, a nostril flared as she had decided to not fight and simply to feel for the mechanical latch on her wrist that kept the techsuit air tight on her form. When the sound of hissing came and went the suit had puffed up, only to be easily taken off almost like a pair of overalls. Naked as the day she was born, with nothing but a string necklace and a wooden wheel held onto it left on her form.

The researcher, she had been taken off guard by Mai's willingness to disrobe and the speed of which she did so. JD couldn't necessarily think anything of the display, locking eyes with Mai before casually looking away and attending to himself. She was surprised that he did, as if ashamed.

"I- I'll get you some fatigues as soon as possible." The woman stammered as she had slunk away with her techsuit, leaving Mai and JD alone, the woman somewhat huffing annoyed as she had sat facing the opposite direction next to JD.

The ODST had more class than anyone could reasonably give to a Marine, not even considering a look for purposes of the male regard. Mai, likewise, hadn't even thought of it. It wasn't quite known if the Spartan-III Augmentations had the same hormone suppressing effects to the extent of the IIs. At least for Mai, the tendencies toward the flesh, of lust and love, were suppressed. Ambrose had corroborated this on a condition however: It wasn't necessarily the augmentations or the drugs, he had surmised: it was the situation and the war. Love was taken by them not by Halsey, but by conflict, and Mai liked to think that was the case in those sparse moments where she had seen Marines steal moments during the war in downtime and final seconds. To think of love, what she thought of as love, brought her back to a place she could only in her dreams and nightmares go back to.

"You alright?" She finally said after a few moments of silence, JD tightening the laces on his boot keeping occupied.

He could reasonably guess what she was referring to. He turned over his head from boot to her, squarely on her face as far as best he could. Didn't see anything, at least, outside of the accidental peripheral.

She didn't say it teasingly, she didn't say it erotically or as such. It was just a question. She didn't know how it could be taken otherwise why he had looked away from her at that instance. In military life privacy and modesty were never in good supply, and they all lived without it. She was the epitome of a military life.

"Have a girlfriend. Is all." He said simply once, turning his head more, eventually swinging his feet over so he could face the same direction as her. "I mean- I do. Sorta."

"And?"

He couldn't help but look at her in the eye again and tilt his head. He didn't know what to say. "It's ah- complicated. If I get back to her I don't want to say I've seen someone like-"

He drifted off. If he got back to her. To be honest to himself, and being honest was something he had been being to himself very much lately in light of their situation, their relationship wasn't much more than a simple conduit for exertion of relief and stress built up by the war. His parents wouldn't certainly approve of him having that kind of relationship with a dock worker over the colony of Cascade, but, in what shore leave he did have he could think of worse ways of spending them.

With how the war was going, every day could've been their last.

That's what made the sex better after all.

"You've seen women naked before, right?" Mai pressed on him, a little annoyed, not getting his point.

He didn't take embarrassment from it however. He gleamed a detail.

"You… don't get why people would be uncomfortable?"

"Because I'm a Spartan?" That was the easy answer, but not the correct one. It was an excuse that Mai had used all her life when other servicemembers had been in her presence and had their jaws dropped or their eyes in awe. She never enjoyed the admiration.

He took one cursory glance down, just so he could make the point to her and himself and to just get that over with. He took more information away from it then he had anticipated.

"It's because you're a woman, and I'm seeing someone." He tried to say casually.

Scars. That's all he could notice. Scars, bruises, twisted flesh on skin that fought to be brown, but ended up a sickly pale. Muscles and wounds long since faded, telling the story of a war gone on too long, creating the only type of person that could fight this. JD felt no eroticism from this. He couldn't, not on first glance and saw memories of battlefields on her breasts.

War and combat had overridden social sensibilities, social understandings: how to live in the name of how to fight. She had felt nothing wrong with it, seen nothing wrong with it as she let out a breath and simply waited.

"You never answered me on how your first test went."

He gathered his helmet onto his lap, thumb running along its rim. "Nothing I haven't dealt before... situation wise. Apparently in special forces training they don't teach their recruits down or up and to check and hold their sectors properly."

She ran a hand to the back of her head below her bun of hair, scratching it in consideration of what she was about to say. "Admiral Hackett. Captain Anderson. Ryder… they all said something about how humanity's never been to a war like ours. Might be because they don't have enough real-world veterans to trickle down."

The ODST Sergeant that trained JD had survived over 270 drops. After that he had earned his reward: to instead just stay within the inner colonies and trainer more Helljumpers. For Mai, her trainer had been those imbued with the creation of the Spartan-IIs themselves, including a Spartan-II himself.

The knowledge imbued in both of them had been the culmination of lifetimes: almost evolutionary steps in their warfare and special tactics that kept humanity's head above water in the war. Here, in that reality, humanity had just hardly begun to wade in shallow waters.

"Have you thought about it, Mai?" JD quietly said, finger to his chin, feeling faded scars from the past.

"What?"

"Serving them?" He clarified. She seemed taken aback. In the last two days her life had been thrown upside down and casts asides, her purpose rendered null. To think that forward it was, it felt, treasonous. Yet who would hold them accountable. She blinked once, taking in a breath and considering, hardly minding the cold of the room as JD finally remembered where they were and gathered a towel from a locker, throwing it at her. "Cover up. Please."

She did, standing looking to the door which the researcher left to. "Advisors. Maybe."

"Not out there?" In the field he meant.

She shook her head. The choice to fight or not was not given to the UEG and the UNSC. Survival was the reward, and that was far more valuable than any political or economic goal which anyone could possibly think of. Given a choice to fight a war, she would have to believe in it.

"We're desperate measures. So not if things are desperate."

JD could agree in a simple nod, however she lingered on the thought: desperation. It hung over every battle every action and every offensive maneuver that she personally had been sent on. She wasn't good at hiding the emotion on her face, and JD knew she was lost in thoughts she would never otherwise allow herself to think:

The war was not going well. Not if they found Reach. If they had found Reach then Earth would've been next. The only hope they could've possibly had was if ONI had some sort of plan in the running that could've stopped that war in the coming weeks. A deus ex machina to a lifetime lost.

A thought lingered in both of them. A dangerous thought. One that spoke to extinction.

Flung into another reality on the eve of their destruction, perhaps, just maybe, they would be the sole survivors of a human race.

"Do you think we would've won?"

The question hit JD like a drop, sucking the air from his lungs and the warmth from his heart. The answer that his logical mind gave him had been damning. He could only suck in the cold air in turn and refuse to answer, putting on his helmet as he awaited whatever came next.

"I don't like it." Mai had barely heard it as he sat back down on the metal bench. Barely, but she did. Her elbow had tapped at his arm to clarify, a helpful nudge to push him to elaborate. "Fighting people."

She sympathized. She really did. Every time. She mourned the loss of every human dead, even by her hand. Every dead human was one less to stand against the Covenant.

Once, long ago, man had been at war with man.

That was initial reason why the Spartans had been created in the first place. He did not know this, but it pained Mai to know.

If, perhaps, humanity was the only enemy itself had, she wondered if her own mother would still be alive today. She wondered if she herself would still be alive. Poor, hungry, and sick. Alive, at least.

"You get used to it."

JD had looked at her through his helmet, his visor still polarized. She could feel the expression however: feel the angst and the worry. "Did you?"

She could give no answer.

---

Exercise after exercise, scenario after scenario. Some alone, some together. The day it would take to Earth was still ongoing onboard the Montenegro, and that meant that the two VIPs had plenty of time to prove their aptitude. This time a sniping mission had kept them occupied in the simulator space, the trick of hardlight and augmented reality as afforded to the training ship turning a rather small room into an endless vista of a jungle and a target several thousand meters away.

"They work well together." Rear Admiral Mikhailovich of the Fifth Fleet had been one of Hackett's forward flotillas. A staunch man, befit of breaching into enemy lines. The Normandy was originally to be assigned to him in order to press his flotilla's tactics of pushing first into enemy lines, as per the Normandy's unique qualities, however Captain Anderson had taken that privilege instead to his detriment. "I've never personally never seen soldiers of their caliber perform like that. Even the N7s."

The Admiral meekly looked over to a present Ryder and Anderson. Surprisingly both had agreed with nods and a tired look in their eyes.

"You have to understand that a war beyond our understanding had them become that qualified." Ryder growled, not happy with the situation. "I trained some of the men here, Admiral, there's no way that she would be that good unless she's done it before."

"That's the interesting thing." Anderson shifted in his chair. Some stood, some sat over that viewing deck over the training area. "Mai seems supremely qualified in fighting against humans, while Private Durante isn't quite comfortable."

They were all very uncomfortable with that admission. Their combined knowledge of the Insurrection had been lacking, to say the least. For Mai it had been out of silence, but for JD, it was out of not knowing. The Insurrection was never a problem he had to contend with as a Marine.

"Shooter by eye. 3-Sector, two o'clock, 15 mil. Go to glass ident footmobile."

"U-shaped vine hanging low to ground, three trunks one discolored the other marked up by claw marks. Contact. Target: Male, grey body armor, rifle held idle."

Their tactical chatter had filled the room, their voices picked up by their comm sets. First operation with standard Alliance issue weaponry and they had taken it in stride. As long as it had a trigger they would adjust. They'd handle far more alien weapons before.

Six had been on the sniper, JD: Her spotter. A pair of binoculars had been his eyes as his helmet was off and the tool shoved into his face.

"2,000 meters." The ODST said on his belly, the two covered by foliage as they had waited a good half an hour for the target to blink into view. Six had held her breath. She'd made longer shots on smaller targets. "Clear to engage."

Up in observation Ryder didn't look as the loud gunshot of a sniper rifle punched through sound, air, and eventually virtual flesh. He knew she would hit.

"Target down." JD reported.

They rotated JD and Mai through the same exercises. The only thing that removing her body suit from her proved that she could take the pain that came with it. She still fought like she had armor on and if that wasn't a testament to her hardiness, nothing else that they would throw at her here would be.

JD was fighting at a level only recorded by an N7, while she had been off the charts in every single aspect.

Stamina, strength, fortitude and mental endurance: it all spoke to the simple fact that they had seen, and survived, worse.

"They would revolutionize or warfare techniques if we're able to analyze any tactical data they might have. They've been to a conventional and guerilla war against a larger alien foe across multiple environments. Any knowledge they give us would help us accommodate a war if it would come in the future." Mikhailovich pressed on.

Ryder had been dismissive of Mikhailovich. "Then why have we kept the simulation targets purely human?" No Turians, no Krogan, no Batarians. Just human targets.

"Well we can't justify their inherent xenophobia." Anderson noted rightfully.

The Admiralty of the Systems Alliance had been there: the most veteran officers of the Navy brought forth and given a demonstration of what they had pulled out of Altis. War Hawks, Diplomats, and everything in between. The dozen or so Admirals had been responsible for dictating military policy and maneuvers throughout the Galaxy where humanity was concerned, and this was one of the few time since the Skyllian Blitz had they all been gathered.

"Well even if we can't draw anything from their experiences, their gear is more than enough to look into: her armor especially. We've never seen anything like it." One of the more ground deployment-oriented Admirals had watered over it. "But the damn woman won't say anything about it."

"How can something like that operate without any Mass Effect field generator? It's almost a ton?"

"Semi-powered, perhaps. Readings we're getting from it denote that there is some sort of power generation scheme within it."

With the exercise done they had waited in idle as they awaited Anderson to direct them, he speaking into his omnitool as he sat and looked on. "Very good. Next test will be in thirty minutes sharp. Take a break."

The two had nodded up at the observation deck, quietly making their way back to the locker room as the world around them digitized to its default blankness.

"The other trainees, both Marines and the N-candidates, their training leaders have been asking for us to reprimand them, you know." Ryder snarled, letting the Admiralty know. "Saying how Mai acted with a recourse as if this was actual combat. Not training."

Anderson grit his teeth. "I don't like seeing our own men get beat to a pulp, but still we're so far behind them in warfighting."

"What? Do you want to start a war just so our troops can get some good experience?" Another admiral in the Admiralty spoke ghastly. "I'll hop over the border into Batarian space right now if that's the case."

"No. That isn't necessary." Hackett had cut into him. "I think what's important to understand from all of them here is that, what they're capable of, we are too."

In the end, they were all only human there, and it scared them all.

---

"What're your operation specialties, by the way?" Mai asked JD as he chaffed in his ODST BDU. Laying on his chest for a long period of time wasn't the most comfortable of things as he adjusted in that locker room.

"Every Marine, a Rifleman." He echoed the old adage before tiredly looking at her, patting at his hip at the empty pistol holster. "Certified in CQB. Good marks with pistol aptitude. Better than my rifle shooting to be honest. Otherwise standard shock trooper training. Soon to be certified as a combat medic." He motioned his hand at her as if it was her turn.

She shrugged. "Everything."

He could only believe her. She discarded her jury rigged gear, her Alliance fatigues delivered to her a short while ago. With it on her she didn't look too different from a regular service member in the Alliance, if not bigger than the usual female variety.

"I'm gonna see if there's a gym, a weight room, or- I don't know. Something."

He wanted to voice his objections, that it'd be unwise to go wandering on a ship they hadn't been familiar with, but, then again, she was a Spartan. There was a good enough space on the bench anyway for him to get some shut eye. He waved at her, she returning it kindly with a nod as she went off and away.

---

What they could give the Alliance, humanity, was a topic that had been alight on all the minds of the admirals. More important than even the Covenant. The three hundred year distance between the humanity of the UEG and the humanity of the Alliance had been felt alone by the effectiveness of a soldier.

Humanity had been alone, left unchallenged for a long period of time before the Covenant appeared, and that had meant time to grow and develop what could not be developed there.

The talk of technology especially had given the Admiralty pause

"The Savannah's Slipspace drive is missing, but, given recordings from JD, it places it within the Covenant ship still on Altis."

The Ardent Prayer had gone down intact, but it was descended down upon by the Covenant shuttles and transporters before anything could be done. It was point of notice however that it had been resumed flight capabilities relatively quickly.

In fact the Ardent Prayer had transported the delegation of the Covenant to the 5th Fleet and the Council diplomats, back by a flotilla of combat fighters smaller ships.

"Arrangements are being made with the Covenant as we speak." Hackett had nodded. "They have no usage for a slipspace drive of human make, hopefully."

The Admirals there had already gone over the possibilities of "Slipspace", even as basically as Mai and Durante had said of it. Long range FTL without the Relays. Militarily, exploration wise, scientifically, if humanity had felt free now among the stars, the ability to use slipspace would be pure ascension.

They were not foolish however, science that might've been tested and reasonable to the ODST and Spartan, hadn't been so with the Alliance. It was the same reason they were still being tested now.

It was still enticing however, the thought of using everything that had been offered to them.

The Admiralty all sat in chairs or stood by the railing of the observation deck, looking past the glass when they were in, on their toes about what Durante and Mai could do. Seeing was believing that day, and they all believed.

Now was the matter of what was to happen to them.

Anderson had quieted any discussion before it started. "As I said. The Prime Minister has given me orders to keep them under command of the Normandy for the time being. The Normandy will be hidden enough, and it'll let them see the galaxy at large to see what they're working with. If we give them that service, that mission, they'll come around.

"And you would have them accompany you on the Spectre evaluation mission?" An admiral had aired his doubts aloud. It was dangerous, needlessly complicated.

"They're used to being cogs in the machine, and if we can adjust them to ours, they would no doubt be there for humanity when we need them the most." Anderson responded back, carefully.

"The ODST we can carefully track. His psychological and physical profile as its shaping up to be is something we understand," the Admiral stressed. "However that Spartan is something we cannot. She did not tell us a damn thing about her training except what she is capable of. If she was born by the UNSC for war, we might have an issue. She's more Krogan and Turian than human at this point."

"And yet from what they've told us and shown, they have deep humanist interests: They know what it was like to fight for our race's survival. I want to see what they're capable of in its prospering."

Anderson was interrupted.

"Sir. Call from Ambassador Udina." It was Joker, routing a message.

"To my location."

There had been a holographic projector there that had been meant for quantum communications. Soon enough on a small little circular pad a full-sized man had come from an orange glow: older, shrewd, hair greying and thinning, but exactly what he looked like.

Ambassador Udina had been mankind's current delegate to the Citadel, a man who had earned his political stripes after many a battle over Turian defense agreements and Salarian technological treaties. Not likable, but hearts and minds wasn't his job. His job was to elevate humanity to the Council.

"Do you have any idea how much extra work has come my way Captain Anderson?!" His first words had been strained and aggravated. "We have just been introduced to nearly a dozen new species capable of space flight flying underneath one flag, and you saw it fit to conceal humans that came with them?! If the Council learns that we extradited humans that were caught up in this our Spectre and Council Seat preparations will be sent back months!"

Right to it then. "I'm sorry Ambassador, but you know that if these two were left to be analyzed by the Council, more questions would be sent our way."

Hackett had made note of the discussion. "It was my call Ambassador. It was best to deal with Durante and Gul internally."

Udina sniffled. "You might be right, but the timing of this isn't at all going to help. I've been asked to propose to the Council by Prime Minister Shastri that the Covenant are an internal affairs matter seeing as they were in Alliance Space. If… reports of the Covenant's power are to be believed, our negotiations with them might enable to Alliance to stand higher in the galactic circle."

For as much as they all spoke of Mai and JD, the question of the Covenant had been around the corner and what they could offer. That is if they cooperated.

"Let's worry about what we can do on our own first." Hackett had been wise to remind them all. "Are Spectre preparations still underway Ambassador?"

"Yes, Admiral." Udina responded promptly. "However the Prime Minister also reported that these two are planned to be on the Normandy's complement during the Spectre evaluations! Think Anderson, is that really wise?!"

The conversation was retread, but the orders which Anderson drafted up and Shastri approved had also been sent through the Admirals. By a slim margin it had passed by the majority.

"I am not intractable. They are humans, after all." Udina continued. "But to set them off in only two weeks? My training for galactic affairs took years."

"I've got a feeling that they can handle it." Hackett had remarked, tiredly. Heroes had often been regular people thrown int the thick of it, after all, and it wouldn't be as if they were going in unsupported.

"Maybe we can have them, after a certain time, have these two become Spectres. They certainly would be capable." It was a shrewd and over-enthusiastic thought, but it got traction among some of the Admirals as they spoke among themselves.

Ryder was less receptive. He had originally been a pick for humanity's first Spectre, however Anderson was chosen in favor of him two decades ago. Even then that mission had gone sour and blocked humanity out of the chance until now. "That's a dangerous thought, ambassador."

Udina had thumbed his nose at Ryder. That had been coming from the man who had been forced into a retirement for pursuing AI research. Still Anderson had actually agreed.

"We have to be careful who represents humanity. It was the same for you, remember that." Anderson pointed at the hologram, and it stayed his tongue. Anderson was right.

"Well, what about Shepard?" Udina asked, as if in summary, for one last run through. "Earthborn… both her parents are noted officers in the Navy."

"Didn't matter, at least growing up. She ran away from home early on and raised herself on the streets of Los Angeles. Learned to look out for herself before enlisting."

Hackett remembered how Shepard became known throughout the Alliance. "She proved herself during the Blitz, held off enemy reinforcements and then continued on to counter attack until no resistance was left… I suppose being the only survivor of Akuze tends to shape a Marine."

"She's the only reason Elysium is still standing, and when we attacked Torfan she knew what had to be done." Anderson affirmed.

"Well we certainly can't question her courage." Udina admitted.

"Humanity needs a hero," Anderson looked back to the statistics thrown up on the window of Mai. "Shepard might be the best we've got. But I think it would go a long way if she has the support of the best that came from another humanity."

Udina's hologram flickered, hand to his chin, but eventually sighing and nodding. He understood. "I'll make the call."

Mikhailovich snarled, a warning in his words. "If they get loose. If that Spartan gets loose. We could be dealing with a political disaster that would rival the start of the Krogan Rebellions."

An alarm rang on all of their omni-tools. "All admirals to the gym observation room. We have a situation regarding the Spartan Mai."

Udina had sucked in his breath as he looked to Anderson and Hackett, only nodding and flickering out. The projector hadn't even went cold by the time the room had cleared and they had all been running out the door.

---

The gym, much like the other training areas, had been attached to an observation deck for the upper officers to look down upon who they were mentoring. Mai had taken in this detail along with the entire lay of the room before she taken her first breath in it. Tactical awareness had been baked into her senses and it helped her scan the room as she saw the pickings of a rather well outfitted gym. Physical fitness was the same, regardless of the humanity. Still, regardless, there wouldn't be anything there worthwhile for her.

She could bench her own weight, armor included, and that far exceeded any sane gym weight that hadn't been designed for either a trained gorilla (unlikely) or a Spartan.

Scanning the room revealed this as well: it was in use. Before that however she saw to her left and right guards, posted there generally.

"Hm? I don't recall seeing you during boarding or the exercises today?" A guard called out to her the moment she made eye contact. She was hard to miss, her darker complexion, despite the paleness that came with a lack of sun, compounding with her height and tone.

She didn't answer, scanning the room more. Several more trainees, some faces she recognized during her testing.

"Hey, I'm talking to ya'!"

The guard had spoken at her loudly.

When she did look over her piercing blue eyes had silenced his hurried tone. The Marines and SOF here training, they all spoke of comfort and familiarity. The Corps in any branch was a family, dysfunctional, but a family. Anyone who stepped on those bounds had been dealt with or outcasted.

It was evident throughout the training vessel that those onboard had been too comfortable with each other.

"None of your business." She stated once, walking into the gym fully toward the weight racks.

The gaurds naturally followed.

"It is my duty," He said, Mai more concerned with the fact two rifles were now following her.

Eavesdropping wasn't something she was officially trained it, but it was a useful skill. As was why she had begun to understand that "N" was a ranking system of SOF, and the higher they were the more they bellyached about being shut down by someone who hadn't had a number.

"SOF on guard duty?" Mai grunted.

"Ah, even as an N5, I'm expected to, when I'm on this vessel, attend to duties that would be beneath me." Guard duty was one of them, an assault rifle in her hand. The fact that two guards were following her had drawn attention: the main group in that gym all around an Asian man, hair longer than usual, but probably allowed with SOF privileges. N5? She thought. Must be a scale.

"Who's this?" He asked as he made his way over with his posse. Mai had quickly sorted out the weights. Even the heaviest was light for her. Still it had to do as the floor based dispenser spat out five in a row, ten total as she had hooked and clamped the weights to it. "Someone who's gonna bite off more than you can chew obviously. What are you a biotic? This tricks been done before."

She refused to speak to the man, or anyone, as she had rounded herself a circle for lifting space on a mat, at least the length of the bar in circumference.

When she had used one hand to lift up one five hundred pounds with one hand, not a grunt heard from her as she tried to make it hard.

'Never show off, three-twelve.' Ambrose spoke to her once.

She couldn't help it if they refused to look away and saw her breathlessly, effortlessly, lifted a weight with one arm which took the biggest of them two and a lot of prep work.

"Not bad at all." If Mai was able to get the hint she would've known that one comment was directed less at her lifting form and rather how well her form was lifted. Less eloquently put-

"You have a nice butt."

She ignored this as she continued to lift, to drown out the chatter. She had a nice butt for a reason. Dares for her to put on more weight, what she ate, what augments she had if any, all questioned asked of her as she went through a routine that no one would bother her for. She ignored them all.

Conversation drifted, naturally, to the events of today and yet to come. The training exercises that most of them were all battered in.

"Yeah man, I ain't never seen anything like that today."

"You- you think that was humanity's first Spectre that we saw today? I heard chatter from the Citadel about how they're nominating one person soon."

They all spoke and whined of being beat. Naturally to these higher tier Marines and SOF, being beat wasn't something they were familiar with.

"But how could she?" Was the general question.

She had an answer. "You lack actual combat experience. Counter-terrorism and COIN ops differ."

"As if you would know any better." One of them rebutted.

"I would, as is why I beat you all."

The realization came over all of them fast and hard. "Hey, you're that VIP bitch. Taking advantage of all my buds, right? This is just a training exercise for fuck's sake."

She had continued lifting, obviously not bothered by the weight or the man. "Train how you fight. Fight how you train."

"Yeah? How the hell did you train huh? No N7 I've ever seen fight like you before."

"Classified." She said simply.

Naturally lifting as much as she had she drew a crowd, lifting with one arm what normally people max at bench. That was the one thing that was good about being a Spartan in the gym: no one bothered her. So they had surrounded her as she tried to blankly stare forward, trying to find a way to make being there worth it for her nerves and fitness. The crowd that had been a part of the conversation wasn't helping.

"Oh what are you? Too good for us lowly Ns?"

They spoke like ODSTs.

Maybe that's why she had… liked? Liked JD for what little time they had been together. He was quiet, thoughtful. Different.

"Not up to me."

"Might explain why Admiral Hackett and the Admiralty are here." One Marine theorized.

Upon the revelation that she had been the VIP that especially was beating the snot out of them, the crowd had gotten rowdy, hunger in their eyes to get even. Training exercises were supposed to be mutually beneficial, not a complete murder. Perhaps it had wounded the pride of the SOF that someone indeed was better than them, or perhaps that they truly were just mad at her liberal use of pain that was, fairly, unwarranted.

Mai knew not what mercy was however. Mercy meant to hesitate, and the moments counted in battle.

"Looks like they ain't here now though, huh?" An N-trainee hinted up above at the empty observation deck. "Way you talk, seems like you're due to be knocked down a size."

She froze midway through a rep, eyes looking directly through the man that said that, sizing him up. "You gonna be the one to do it?" He backed down.

Some would dare. "Come on, fist to fist. None of that bullshit asymmetrical training exercises. Just pure fighting."

"You don't want to do that." She said gutturally, keeping her fingers busy on the texture of the steel plate instead of drifting to the man's neck.

"Maybe it was all a trick of the training simulation! She's got an unfair advantage because she needs it!"

"Oh, what's wrong, going to go home and cry to your mama?"

He got in her face, his rough hands seizing her cheeks, the weights in her hands dropped to the floor in a loud clang.

Blink and miss, and anyone who was looking had not been able to see a man, near 250 pounds of muscle and meanness be thrown down to steel in a punch.

JD had heard the stories: of a young Spartan, twenty-five years ago. The entire reason there had been a grudge between ODSTs and the Spartans. Passed down from one ODST generation to the next. It was as if he was reliving history as Mai stood there in that training arena like the Earth boxers of old, and faced a trifecta of special forces soldiers come to test her for the sake of testing her.

She, sometime, somewhere, must've heard the same story as she looked up at the viewing deck and hoped someone was looking. An ODST was.

The Admiralty and the observers arrived, Ryder having taken JD as well. They looked down on her as the fun began, and she had looked up and given JD eyes filled with regret. Just, somehow, someway, he had heard that same story too of the Spartan that came to kill ODSTs.

The story went like this: five ODSTs confronted a Spartan-II in a gym of a UNSC carrier. The Spartans were freshly minted, new to the world and the battlefield. They'd been barely teenagers yet had the bodies of Olympic athletes. They were fickle, edgy creatures at that point, unsure of how too process their augmented bodies and recently dealing with their first operational losses among their flock. And yet the ODSTs, in a sense of bravado that was self-admitted after so many retellings, dared to take on that Spartan in the ring in unarmed combat.

There was fear derived from history in JD's eye as the admiralty looked and saw the Ns step forward, surrounding Mai slowly as she stood like statue, her fists curled.

Two ODSTs, two of the UNSC's top troopers at the time, had died that day when they faced off against that Spartan. Two dead after five tried to take them on. The Spartan had punched through them around like sacks of meat, those who survived disabled for the rest of their life from injuries that were akin to, according to the official biopsy, was like they were thrown through a meat grinder.

At the end of the day the lone Spartan had reigned victorious over them all.

She started to take in a long, lone breath, eyes closed.

She didn't finish it before she snapped.

She felt the barrel of an Avenger touch the back of her head for a second, her arm cracking sound as it reached backed and grabbed it, pulling it and the man that held it over her and in front of her in a toss that betrayed her size: sending one man into another and onto the ground as she continued to hold onto the gun. The N6 to her side had made a move to grapple her, but the gun's stock came first as she swung it like a bat: impossibly fast, bone breaking, skull cracking.

The Admiralty board winced as JD looked on.

The man who had taken the butt of the Avenger stumbled as he held his hands to his face, screaming in pain. The darker woman who had now been to Mai's back tried to jump onto it: but she wouldn't have it. Not as the bent gun dropped to the floor and her two fists curled. Her movement, her strength, they all betrayed the dexterity of her: how fast she could move and how quick she could strike. She twirled around, putting the momentum in her back hand as the N5 woman, mid jump, took her knuckles into her throat thrown to the ground as a small snarl appeared on Mai's lips.

She had stood over her as a bird of prey looks down on a rabbit, and just like that instinctual possession of all predators to throw themselves upon prey, she did not give any quarter, any time for breath, to that woman who had her throat punched into.

This wasn't a sparring match, the Admiralty realized too late. Mai wasn't a test dummy, and she was not to be tested. This was not a show of capability, this was an execution.

Mai's leg came into the left ribs of the woman on the ground, sending her away and to the ground on top of the man who had his face broken in as the two other men who had been thrown before stood, hands up, fists curled, ready to fight.

And all at once the gym had been flooded with Marines and N-level candidates, many of them having already been beaten by Mai. They made a circle around them, like a ring, hollering and cheering filling the air as they were all witness to a fight and, more importantly, an opportunity to see this unknown VIP brought down to size.

Those who had been broke and bleeding had been dragged out, blood streaking in their paths.

She sized up the two men left: a darker man and the Asian. He was Japanese perhaps, anger on his lips as it quivered.

"Come on Kai Leng! Beat the shit out of her!" She heard a Marine jeer.

Kai Leng had only snarled. "Get out of the ring, sergeant." He referred to the other man, who looked surprised, but disappointed. After a moment of consideration, the man had reluctantly abided, stepping into the crowd. "Throw me a bar!" he yelled out.

One from the weight racks had been thrown, empty of weights, but still with considerable metal and swinging potential. She could only imagine him as an Elite, sword ready, as he assumed a stance he'd seen before from Zealots. Her body had reacted accordingly as she recoiled back, forcing the ring of people to abide.

Fights, one to one, were not thirty minute affairs or even ten or five. They were fought and won in a flash, the victor decided far faster than any training would elaborate..

His swings with the weight bar had cut through the air like a sword with such control and grace Mai had mistaken him for an Elite, she backpedaling until she felt the hands of other men push herb ack and toward the man in the middle of a swing. She raised both her arms in front of her face as she faced the swing, pushing through as metal rang against bone and the entire crowd recoiled in disgust as they thought they heard someone's arms being snapped.

No such thing happened however as the cold, burning hot pain flowed through Mai's arms, only to reveal that the strike had recoiled the bar and Kai Leng's swing.

The strike would've broken lesser men.

She was by no means lesser there.

Using the pain, she balled her fists as she dropped her arms and swung out with her right toward Kai Leng, the man shuffling back as the first barely missed his head. She kept up the swing however, going into a spin as the other fist caught his chin.

The force of the punch stammered him as he spit onto the ground, hunching over only to get a boot in the side of his face in a forceful kick.

Stumbling back again he found purchase to prepare for another swing as he felt his face swell, the taste of iron in his mouth.

It wasn't his best swing, not when she caught it with her bare hands and ripped it out of his hands, ripping the flesh of his pads as she used her elbow to punt into his chest.

He stumbled back before dropping the bar, going with his fists as he swung at her straight like a boxer. She could only deflect the punch away with a strike of her forearms, bring his bearing down and his face into her knee as she grabbed his long locks, tossing him behind her into the wall on onlookers, dropping to the floor unkindly as her approach waved anyone away who would dare help.

With one stomp on the bar, it flew up, into her hands and held like a staff and approached.

Kai Leng had seen her approach, laughing through the hazy pain, obviously having found a match.

"I see you know how to fi-FUA-!" The tip of the bar came up and across his face again, dragging against his teeth as they shattered. Hot fire in his nerves as his mouth bled red and made a mess of the floor, splattering those in the path of the spray as he spit up and screamed.

She never hesitated in the take down. She wouldn't know. Wouldn't let them say any words. She had killed me far faster than this.

Ryder had disappeared from the observation post almost immediately before anyone could stop him. His destination obvious.

Mai had stunned the crowned into silence and horror. They were expecting a good-hearted hand to be reached out to him, to help him up. They were both obviously Marines, right? This was all fun and games, of ego and hubris being tested and backed up by steel and strength.

This however, this was… brutal. Without mercy.

She didn't care for any of them.

"Get her!"

"What gives that bitch the right?!"

Kai Leng was swallowed back into the crowd on his back as they all began to change their cheers into yells of rage. The mob had come for her and she was ready as she held the bar in her hand again, spinning around, holding it against them all ready to strike back.

Her boots had been dipped in human blood and she painted her path on the steel.

She was ready. If these Marines and trainees thought they could beat her into submission, they would learn the mistake made of hundred worlds and a hundred thousand Covenant.

Hyper-lethal vector was right, and just before that human wave threw themselves upon her, a voice barked out.

"Enough!" Ryder had reappeared, and all those that could still stand had twisted around to him as he walked through them all. "What we have here is a combat veteran who has seen more time on the ground fighting than some of you have been alive. She is, bar none, the deadliest human to have ever existed. If you fight her she will not remember you save as a mote of wasted breath as she kills you with her bare hand."

The Admiralty had not heard that praise from Ryder yet, and to hear it now, said plainly to her as he himself entered the ring, it was concerning. Almost immediately they all knew what he was going to do: prove her case.

"What is that damn fool doing." Admiral Mikhailovich scorned.

"Let them fight." And with Hackett's words that was that.

"She has been here today so that she may be brought back to our standards, and all of you. All. Of. You. Will not ever be able to meet her mettle." He had yelled at every single Marine there as blood from Kai Leng's mouth dripped from the tip of the bar, his shattered teeth shards on the floor like broken glass. "She has survived things that you will only see in your nightmares, and so help me God, if you want to fight her, she will be in yours too."

An officer who had been on the ship for his own combat training spoke out. "She's been beating the shit out of all of us commander! Where are the MPs!"

Ryder had huffed. "I suppose this is part of the testing, lieutenant."

"Then let us at her!"

"If you fight her, she will kill you."

Perhaps that was why Ryder stepped into the ring himself.

The N7 stepped into the ring. Ryder. Mai noted the name, knew human history well. Better than some of her compatriots who had barely a grasp of Earth and the civilization that all of humanity had come from. There were similarities to the name of the astronauts that had paved the way into the cosmos. Silent as always she had dropped the bar, metal clanging against metal unkindly as she raised her fists, her head tilting, asking him if he really wanted to do this.

He nodded, ten paces away.

He was testing her. She was to prove herself to him.

She understood, sizing the man up, taking in a breath as she walked forward her arms not even up.

"Fight me."

That was when he pressed his own attack.

He went for her collar bone, grabbing her by her shirt as his other hand rode a punch into her gut, then her chest, and then over her face. She gave no sound as the sound of bone on flesh was heard, her head twisting only to right itself, looking dead on at Ryder, eye to eye, height to height. He let go of her collar to use both his hands, but she had caught his fists.

Every hit that he had delivered to her had risen a cheer from the crowd, but it did nothing to her. Not as she had taken his fists mid swing and held them, outstretching them away from his chest all so she could roll her head back and slam it into his. Her skull was that of steel, and he felt it as more blood had been spilled on the floor. She let go of his hands, only to slam a fist to the back of his head and walk away to her side of the ring, letting Ryder in his probable concussion stammer a bit before standing back up, lips and beard red and dripping.

In the time afforded to her she had cast her gaze out into the crowd, locking eyes with as many as possible. It was no coincidence some of the crowd had begun to leave, not wanting to see one of the first N7s be beaten into a pulp.

Ryder had come at her again, a series of punches pulled into her head, her sides, legs and wherever his fists could land. The sound of winds being broken filled the air was flesh was battered. All that Mai had responded with was to stand simply still and take it, barely giving way until Ryder had forced a punch hard enough for her to waver in step. She had fallen into that waver however, spinning around, right hand balled into a fist as she jumped into it, again slamming the top of Ryder's head with a punch before kicking him away.

She was silent still, eyes wide, her pupils black holes bearing through the N7.

Go into battle a be reborn. That was the way most N7s were made. Conflict changes people, the blood of someone revealed at the cusp of being killed or killing, all based on who they were facing. Once or twice the N7s in charge of new training regimen had wondered what would happen if every N7 had to go on a suicide mission for them to earn the stripe.

They wondered what would happen if they put the devil on the other side of the ring, and told the warfighters to go in.

The devil showed up, and she had been demeaned by people who would never understand her.

Ryder discarded his pain, let it course through him and all the damage it brought as he ran at her again, running a punch and a charge as Mai did nothing but stand there. His fist flew, knuckles first, right into the bottom of her face, dead center. Enough to bust her lips open, to bare her mouth, his knuckles cut open as he cut himself on the edge of her teeth.

Only one heel had moved as she took the punch, quickly to take that punching hand in her own grasp and to use it to throw Ryder on a ground, a foot on his back, his arm outstretched painfully.

It was as if she was bleeding from her mouth from the split lip, the socket which she lost a tooth from agitated and making it so she tasted blood in her mouth. This was nothing compared to Ryder however as his skull rocked against the floor when he was thrown down.

"Go." JD finally spoke to anyone and everyone, Anderson and Hackett nodding to the guards around them to call in and run toward the gym from the observation deck.

"You hate the Covenant, we know," Ryder spit up blood on the floor, laughing as Mai looked down at him, her face hidden behind a blank gaze. People had been emptying the room, fear befalling all of them, none dare intervene "But what about humanity? The way you fight us. What in your life brought you to this?"

What was to live for? What was to die for? The answer was the same. "Love."

---

The period to her answer was the sound of Ryder's arm breaking in five places.

When the MPs arrived with the Admiralty finally, Ryder had said nothing but this:

"She's fine."

For all the N trainees and Marines there, it was a learning experience that there was always someone far deadlier than them.

Anderson had looked immediately displeased when he found her again, arms raised above her head, the specks of blood on her face, her boots ruined by red. "What is the meaning of this!?"

She sucked in through her nose as she answered. "I was discriminated against and they said they would harm me. I believed them." She looked down at the swipes of blood all across that metal floor, like rays of violence left behind. "I'm sorry."

There was no apology there. Just formality. She didn't regret a damn thing.

Hackett hadn't run that fast ever since his last away mission, and that had been years ago, but he had to puff air through his nose as he looked at Anderson with a warning to him. If she had been under his command, she would have to be reeled in by him.

"We'll deal with this later." Hackett barked at any and all. "Everyone clear out!"

Those that remained had only ran as the medics arrived and took away anyone who couldn't on their own two feet. Kai Leng had been still screaming within himself, writhing with every movement of his to go and stand and keep fighting. His body would not let it happen though, not even as Ryder himself was carted away.

"Is this what I should suspect from a Spartan? Lieutenant Gul?" Hackett had growled. She said nothing but to clamp her jaw shut. She would've said yes otherwise. Looking her up and down once specks of blood had now covered her, her boots ruined. She didn't seem to mind.

JD had appeared in the shadow of the Admiralty, looking at the floor to see shards of teeth and splotches of blood. It was his judgement alone that Mai worried for, but he thought of himself unfit to judge. Not when he had her trust.

They locked eyes, and that was that.

"We still have testing to do. Come. We need to see what you can-" Hackett stopped to consider his words. "What you can really do."

As was a common occurrence she was led at guard and gun point down the halls of that training ship along with JD, past the locker room to prepare this time. Instead, however, to the self-proclaimed armory of the ship. JD, curiously, had already been in his black ODST armor.

When the door to the armory opened to a procession of computers, not rifles, all hooked up to a glass case holding her own armor, she understood. The armory was darkened and meek, seemingly, all light drawn on that glass case and armor she called her own. In a way seeing it had made her adrenaline and nerves settle.

"You didn't describe anything about this armor, Lieutenant Gul during your debriefs." Hackett had said, arms promptly behind his back as the techs all backed up, almost into the shadows as she stepped forward into the light of the armory: standing on its own, held up by a steel dummy meant for storing armor ten times less heavy. It strained in its holding of her armor: the outer pieces alone completing the deal when combined with the techsuit she had definitely worn ever since she had arrived on Reach till now.

Her black visor stared back at her, and only now she realized she had never the opportunity to see the armor, herself, like this.

Seven years. Seven years this armor had been hers, if not her. As in, this was who she was to UNSC: a suit of armor without a hint of the woman beneath its black and grey plates. She was a Spartan, and what that meant, it felt different than being human. That's what she knew, that's what she felt as she reached out and touched the chest piece, worn down and beaten by bullet and plasma fire. Once, long ago, where here fingers touched upon now over its heart, was where white lettering had denoted her designation: B312.

Pieces had been upgraded and replaced, her preferences as a Spartan that matured over the war made known as the armor changed with her. Gauntlets, boots, pads and plates had all been changed out over time based on the mission and her need until they had settled into roughly how it had been now. Even the helmet hadn't been original. The only item on there that had been sans her techsuit, was the chest piece.

Thick titanium alloy had kept its shape, saved her life time and time again, saved the trinket that she kept beneath her suit safe, let alone her.

The sparse times she had been able to look at her file, she had been amused at how exact the ONI observers had denoted her armor:

"Spartan Mai-B312 has, in the current iteration of permutations pertinent to the Mark V MJOLNIR, has opted to strip down on accessories that are afforded to the MJOLNIR-equipped Spartans. Barring firmware updates from the Mark IV to the Mark V, her armor remains a B-class Mark V suit in configuration as of 2551. She has opted for no specialized shoulder pieces, instead going with MJOLNIR's bare frame (the same is true for her chest piece, thigh plates, and boots). Analysis of post-action reports and footage of B312 during Headhunter operations suggest high degree of mobility and agility preferred by her, which factors into suit options. Most modifications of her armor, therefore, rolls onto unofficial permutations otherwise known as "field" modifications, systematic of other Spartans in the field whom adjust their loadout to their liking."

Of course, the knife was out of its holster, she mused, her hand going to the hardened sheath that had ridden her left hip. Her blade was kept there, almost as if it had been a sword. This was one of those field modifications that the rest of the report had went on about.

On her left hand had been a hardened case and bracer that acted as easy access to her data pad, the information within it probably worth the galaxy and more. Her own notes, maps, tactical data and a once constantly updated encyclopedia for what she herself hadn't already crammed in her head. Research data? The one-stop be-all for those researchers around her to unveil the secrets of the UNSC's science? Probably not.

Like a pair of suspenders two straps had rounded from her back and over her shoulders down to the belt: a harness left over from her time as a test pilot for the Sabre Project. Curiously, she'd been a natural pilot, compared to the rest of the Spartans. By what measure this had come about was probably a fluke, but because of this one of the calmest periods of her career had been the short four-month period where she acted as a test pilot on Reach for the Sabres.

Her assignment with Noble hadn't been her first time on Reach, far from it. It was probably to be her last however, at least how she knew it.

The harness was of sturdy, battle grade fabric, not easily broken. It was originally part of a flight suit, but she had instead used it to rig and play host to any number of packs or battle belts she needed, pouches and mag retention devices as she saw fit. It was similar to her own jury rigging now of her gear during the exercise, and it had come from experience. Many of the Spartan-IIs had been described as bolting or strapping gear on top of their armor, and she followed suit: fabric and polyester on metal creating an oddly utilitarian look to her MJOLNIR.

She rounded the back, looking to the rear of her helmet. She was used as test bed for many things as a Spartan that never existed, and one of them had been the neural lace at the back of the helmet, lining up with the back of her skull. The slot for an AI chip had been there, never used by her before, albeit tested all the same.

Without further ado she had reached out for it entirely, the helmet taken asides and put on a table.

"Feet first up to the waist, chest, then arms, then your helmet. Just a general rule of thumb Three-Twelve." A voice from her memory, from a Spartan-II.

It took an entire team to remove and put on MJOLNIR usually, though Six had known how to do it herself with nothing but her bare hands. So she donned her armor and became who she had been made into: a Spartan. The techs and engineers had been diligently been taking notes on every action of hers as the titanium shells were placed and locked into place around her body, compressing of air and latches locking filling the room as piece by piece, for nearly ten minutes, she put on her armor. This was a ritual to her, and in the end she was renewed as her helmet went on and JD had recognized who she was.

In her helmet the motion tracker had registered only one man as green: JD. The chip in his head had made his IFF signature green while the rest of those in the room appeared yellow.

She cut an imposing figure to all but the ODST, who only stood, arms at his hips, looking up at her. She looked back down, visor to visor. He depolarized his, and, surprisingly, she did the same. For the first time they saw each other behind those panes of glass.

Her eyes were blue. Blue like the hottest of fires, sharp, painful. His eyes were dull tired browned over like dirt itself.

"I could probably use your helmet and it'll link up… and vice versa." She said, elsewhere a scientist was furiously noting it silently. She unclasped her helmet again briefly, holding it out to him as he did the same. It was something worth doing, they both imagined. Perhaps they'd be out on an op together and one of their helmets were seriously damaged, necessitating sharing.

Surely, they wouldn't split them apart.

The Mark V helmet JD held was heavier than the ODST helmet, turning it over in his hand as Mai unceremoniously clad his black helmet onto her head. She smelled him as it was slid on, the HUD aligning to her eyes shortly. The man smelt of sweat and salt, earthy and dirt. Her nose had been overly sensitive, the ODST helmet lacking the inherent filtration systems that hers had. Still, it was a smell she could deal with as she looked around, flipping through the more, ironically, Spartan VISR modes as he only began to slide hers on.

It was pitch black before he had let the software within adjust to a new user, her dark visor going both ways until it recognized that it was being worn, clearing up and his vision going awash with real color and then the Spartan before him.

It was odd, to both of them, to see someone else don their respective helmets.

The HUDs were the same however, standardization easing them both into, in a way, each other's heads.

JD's thumb had went to the manual flashlight control won the helmet, finding it, flashing it. Mai had done the same before taking off his helmet, exchanging again. "Some Spartans talk like that, you know." he tilted his head at her comment. "Non-verbal communique."

He tilted his head at her as he put on his helmet again.

"Could teach you." She said quietly.

With a few short nods, building up to one definite, concrete one, he had decided he liked the sound of that.

"We still have a few more scenarios to run." Anderson promptly reminded them.

Mai nodded. "I need a weapon."

Anderson nodded with a smirk. "Right this way."

Somehow, and JD was one of the few that had done this, he had stopped her, his hands touching her armor and feeling the wear and tear of the Covenant and the Insurgency almost burn his fingers. It held her shoulder, keeping her still as she looked at him without the shade of her VISR.

"You know, Mai," Her name was odd to hear on people's tongues, so used to codenames and callsigns. "My Dad taught me not to speak, but to listen."

His hands had left her, but in reality, she had still been held by him.

"Why?" She tilted her helmet clad head. He crossed his arms, looking at Anderson as he walked away and expected them to follow.

"Everyone you will ever meet will know something you don't." In Anderson's footsteps, JD became like a shadow. "Maybe it goes for something like fighting too."

What they learned from Mai using the MJOLNIR armor would keep any who had been witness to her awake for months, years, warfare redefined because of her. Spartans, ODSTs, MJOLNIR, Misriah Armories, ONI Materials Group, names that were not yet understood fully but gave the Alliance an idea of what combat evolved look like.

---

Ryder defended her as he was led into medbay. Begrudgingly, but he did, and all Anderson and Hackett could do was take his word for it. JD was at her side before she could even imagine where she would be able to go without raising hell. Marines didn't take kindly to when some of their own were brutalized. If he were a good ODST he'd be shooting daggers at her. In all of their existence now, he had been the only ODST in the entire universe.

He decided his own rules now, just as the Alliance tried to find rules to hold Mai to.

They had been technically civilians, and yet technically military at the same time, and so what rule book they could be thrown down at if they had an infraction was a conundrum. They did not exist as people, no history afforded to them. After the exercises were through, every single test given and recorded, after their armor was shed again and left alone on the ship to wait arrival to Earth, the Admiralty had reconvened to decide their ultimate fate.

As if she was looking for trouble Mai had appeared at the med-bay, looking through the window to see what had become of the men and women she had made pay for their indiscretions. She never was afforded time to look at what she had done. There was often no need to during a mission.

Morbid curiosity that manifested in her appearing as a ghost to one of the men in the beds, hopped up on pain meds and screaming that she had been there to finish him off as the nurses and medics tried to settle him.

She made to leave without otherwise being noticed, her bad for getting such a response.

When she turned around she almost thought it had been a trainee about to send a sucker punch her way, but she was mistaken as she tensed and relaxed in the span of Spartan Time. JD was given the same fatigues she was, his UNSC Marine layers gone.

He had dug a chain out of his shirt. UNSC tags. They let him keep that at least.

He flashed a thumb up at her, and she nodded in response, motioning her hands for him to lead the way. He nodded thoughtfully. He had found a place to bide their time at.

"Came to say sorry?" He drew her away from the window.

She shook her head. "Just making sure I didn't do anything permenant and, uh-" she tongued the empty socket in her mouth. "I wanted to see if they could get me a new tooth."

"Mind if I…?" He asked quietly. She rose an eyebrow at him, but relented, nodding. Slowly, as if approaching a hurt animal, JD had reached out with a hand to hold her chin, opening her mouth as he had moved closer to her, looking into her maw. "Lateral incisor." She struggled to say as he held her mouth open and he looked up to see the socket.

He was looking to see if it had required any treatment, having been this long without getting it looked at properly. For all the medics and techs had looked at them for, their own well-being wasn't exactly in their purview.

Fingers had left her chin and back to his side. "Biofoam doesn't taste that bad you know. For injuries in the mouth I was told to just put a dollop in water and then swish and spit." The only biofoam left in that universe was either in her own suit reserves or in JD's bag. "Medigel" was the Alliance's standard all purpose medical applicant. A little more useful, perhaps, given the benefits of it being a gel and not foam, but the usage was the same. "Did they do that to you or…?"

"The Elite." The Crimson one they were carted away with. She wondered if he was dead now in all honesty. Then again it was normal for her to think constantly about dead Covenant, even if she did fight humans. Disdainfully, she looked back at the window, seeing only an obtuse angle as they got out of the field of view, the white lights of the bay illuminating the otherwise darker corridors. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth fighting for humanity sometimes." JD would doubt if he would've heard this from another Spartan, however she would know best humanity. She had fought them more than anyone in the UNSC. She was the original vision of the Spartan-IIs, fulfilled.

He'd heard the same before, heard it from men on the end of their rope of young ODSTs after their first drop: faced with the rest of their lives of endless war against a superior foe. He wasn't a bonafide field medic, nor was he a people person, a psychologist who knew what made people tick, but he was, undoubtedly, human. He wondered if she would feel…

With one index finger, and Mai had barely caught it, he had made a circle in the air. Tactical hand signaling: follow me. She nodded.

In Alliance uniforms, the only detail particularly out of place had been Mai's stature. Taller than most females, something JD himself was not used to. Still passing by men and women they had been none the wiser. They blended in well, but the guards posted in the corridors on duty had undoubtedly be briefed on them, as was why they all looked them and made known that they were being watched.

It was fine, however, they got their privacy.

"All crews, final approach through the Charon Relay imminent. Docking stations in ten minutes."

The intercom had sounded off, and all the crew had seemed to pick up, busy, going to their duty stations as Mai felt in her feet the abrupt shift of FTL to normal flight.

Walking through a door labeled "viewing deck", they saw the stars that had been too familiar.

The constellations were correct, the arrangement of stellar bodies, they all clued into where they were now.

The fact that Pluto had said hello and goodbye in that giant windowed room, facing outward and offering an unbeatable view of the cosmos, also held no lies.

Sol.

A system, remarkable, she had never been to as the gravity of their arrival finally took hold of her, walking right up to the railing of the deck. It was like a airport concourse, the giant window floor to ceiling putting them at the mercy of the view.

Planets, to some colonists, heard only in folk tails had blazed by like a montage. Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars…

No sign of the UNSC orbital installations or the shipyards that helped sustain the war effort, only nailing even more and more evidence to a theory JD and Mai had only taken as truth. Whatever their thoughts, it was stayed when the third planet to the sun had been approached as if nothing at all.

He'd never stepped on foot on the planet.

Born, in the galactic view of scale, a step away from the homeworld, seeing it everyday as a child, he had never gone onto it.

Earth.

Seven Continents. Seven Seas. The birthplace of humanity, shared cross the stars. As a young child, JD had seen weary servicemen who had never seen Earth before come to Luna for one reason or another and, when the planet rose into view, seen their breath taken away. Earth: a place worth fighting for. All that was right in the heavens made real as humanity's first home stared right back at them. It rejuvenated those tired soldiers then, and it rejuvenated JD now for a war he had been lost to. Green and blue, a jewel only imitated in far off systems. The viewing deck's window had been large and wide, and they were alone now, the entirety of Earth now in its frame, the colors of the world painting them all in brilliant bright light that soothed. They stood side by side as the planet rose in front of them into view, silence was all they needed as JD realized something else:

He looked to Mai, and for the first time in her life she stood in awe. Her deep blue eyes were swallowed by the sight, her face illuminated heavenly by a home that every human shared: Total awe in the presence of heaven.

For one moment JD allowed himself to look upon her fondly. The light of Earth had fit her lovingly, white swirling clouds in the atmosphere beautifully swept like a painting.

"I'd only seen pictures. Vidtapes. I didn't think-" She trailed off, consideration on her lips, the world in her eye. "Is this what I've been fighting for my whole life?"

All the ODST could do was only nod. Earth. Humanity. The life of every man, woman, and child. All of it was summed up, as a historical scientist said once, in a pale blue dot.

Humanity had taken something from her, as much as the Covenant had. She never knew how she exactly reconciled her situation with how she was today, and, in all honesty, she had come around to think that she never did find peace in herself. Only when war distracted her did she feel okay.

There was no war here.

Only an ODST that got caught up with her.

"In the grand scheme of things: yeah."

Earth was grand as it stared back at them with the blue light.

The light of Earth, her presence, it was a place of healing for many a weary Marine. Even if this Earth was different, it welcomed them all the same as their children.

"Do you have a home, Mai?" JD asked, the moon off to the corner of the view. Luna was always as steadfast as a rock as ever.

New Jerusalem, once, a long time ago. Then Onyx. Not really homes but places she had been birthed. "No." she answered. "But I suppose this is my home now…." Her words trailed, looking at JD in the light of Earth. "Why'd you bring me here?"

I just wanted to see the look on your face.

That's what he wanted for some selfish reason: To know that she was human, despite being a Spartan. He didn't say that though. He shrugged.

"How often did you see… this?" She posed another question.

JD had to count in his head, and that by itself had depressed him far more than he would've let on. Even now, this wasn't their Earth, their Luna.

"Last time was seven years ago, when I had to return and bury Mom."

His first tour had been as a UNSC Marine, deployed immediately to the front to a dense, jungle planet of Persei. Less than a month posted there, the Covenant had come, and he had been left behind by the evacuation efforts as his unit was left behind enemy lines before the planet was glassed. There a trend had been started: he was sole survivor of his unit as the planet was burned around him, he hunkering in a mineral mine, and then walking the wastes for three months until he had linked up with other surviving colonists.

No one to talk to. Nothing to do but to survive and sleep until he could've lifted Cole Protocol and radio in for an evac for the rest of the survivors. If it hadn't been for the fact there was a group he might've just been left there.

In those three months he had been unceremoniously listed as MIA, and as he was reintegrated he was given one of the only news that would've gotten any UNSC servicemember off the front:

His mother had died.

Hearing her son had been MIA on a glassed planet, it was nothing less than lethal to her. Her heart couldn't bear the thought of either her son being dead, burned or buried alive by glass, or left to die by the UNSC.

His father had been dead a year before JD had joined, and his mother had lived a full life: reconciliations that JD tried to bring to himself as he brought her to her grave on Luna, a wreck of a man. That was the last time he had seen Earth before he left it behind to go fight a losing war.

He was now the last of his family, lone survivor of his company on Persei, and wherever the Marine, then ODST, went, he would be the Ishmael.

Now he found himself with a Lone Wolf who now knew what Earth looked like.

"I never thought I'd see it again."

His eyes traced the surface, looking for space elevators where there were none: London, New York, Mumbai, Cairo, Seoul, New Mombasa… When Earth was the only thing in the sky as a child, he memorized it well.

Those space elevators had been for cargo, and for people, leaving Earth to go out to the stars. To them: billions of people had left Earth, entire worldly populations gone to the frontier and colonies to seek a home beyond Earth. As they learned however here the Alliance simply hadn't yet been capable of that. Spiritually to the ODST and Spartan, Earth was humanity. If Earth had fallen to the Covenant, then so to would humanity in due time if the two were not already hand in hand. To the Alliance however, Earth was humanity, the entirety of human population still held on the pale blue dot in the sea of stars.

It meant that the Alliance held Earth so much dearer than the displaced soldiers could, and yet, in that moment, they understood that privately. The Alliance was a humanity not of their own, but a humanity still.

"Do we still fight for Earth?" Mai asked aloud.

She was a hyper-lethal vector. A tool. She needed to be ordered and pointed toward a goal.

JD could not answer that question. It was too big for him to answer to her: she a monster made of man. He knew the answer he had however.

So they stood in each others company, letting the cold air over them, pretending that it was the cosmic winds came from Earth, basking in a warmth that was not felt on skin, nerves, or even the heart. It was that of human nature.

The only thing that could bring them out of their silence was the sound of a door opening, and upon seeing who it was, snapping to attention.

"Lieutenant Gul, be aware you are on very thin ice. If it wasn't for Commander Ryder's word you would be written up and court martialed for attempted murder." It was Anderson, the man storming, but reserved as he approached. Behind him had been Admiral Hackett, his face blank and reserved, stiff. "We will press charges if you pull a stunt like that again, whether instigated or not. You put several N-program members out of action permanently today and, if it wasn't for the fact we are going to do what we're about to do, you'd be facing Leavenworth." They both raised their eyebrows at the commander, and he nodded as he understood the confusion.

He took a breath, calming himself. The talks he had come from had been brief, inconclusive, but emotional, so unbefitting of the Admiralty.

"Sir?" Mai awaited.

"I'm sorry we've been pushing you so hard, with the tests and exercises." They hadn't, both admitted to themselves. They'd been to war for nearly an entire decade and survived, and that was nothing like the simulations presented. Still it was what they wanted, and they fought and danced as the Alliance wanted. "Though you've made clear that you're both qualified, beyond qualified, for the Alliance's top grades."

They were being commended, so they continued to stand straight.

"You operate like only someone who knows what it's like to be in a prolonged war, and, given your circumstances, we expect nothing less."

Hackett straightened his mouth, nodding. He cocked his head one way for a second toward Earth. In one dip of his chin he acknowledged the two, and they slackened their forms. Anderson continued, "I cannot speak for your UNSC, your Earth Gov, your… Earth, but I hope I can speak for your humanity."

That statement seized their attention truly, as if they were being called back with an echo.

The Admiral saw them slacken, just a little more, finally speaking. "We came here to reassure you that, despite everything you've been through, humanity owes you both a debt that we cannot repay, and we cannot understand."

JD stirred. "Permission to speak freely, Admiral?"

"Permission granted."

"You owe us no debt." He stressed. "No one owes me anything."

For all that had been done to Mai, she agreed, nodding in agreement.

"You fought in a war that, if we were faced with, I don't think we would've survived for as long as you have. Your actions, both of you, are worth of praise and recognition on behalf of any humanity." Hackett explained, truly. He wasn't appealing to them, wasn't trying to win them over, but at the end of the day whether or not they would be abused because of their circumstances or let free Mai and JD were both this:

Soldiers of humanity.

"We fought for survival, and if humanity is ever in need we would be honored again to serve." JD knew the words he chose.

The ODST spoke with such dedication it was admirable. It was honor to all those who had fallen besides him, leaving him to remember who they were and what they had sacrificed all in the name of giving humanity another day to fight.

"You are human, Admiral." Mai finally spoke in a rasp. "That is all the reason we need." Her face softened, showing the dents and scars that had marked her face from a war she fought voluntarily on a level that no one should've. Yet despite this, she would've continued her duty until the day she died.

The nature of how now, with the Alliance, it hung over them all like the air before a storm.

Anderson looked at them with a hint of sadness: "You have no history. No family. No home or belongings. You never existed to us until 48 hours ago. You have to understand that what we are going to propose to you now, might not be what you expect…"

"…Are we being drafted sir?" JD had been almost scared to ask.

Anderson steeled his face. "Your existence has been declared by the Admiralty and the Prime Minister as classified. You are now humanity's deepest secret and because of that… for now, we have to keep you close."

"You'll be assigned to Captain Anderson until further notice, and we create identities for you that will help integrate you into this society-"

"We can't go back." Mai said to herself aloud. No more war. No more Covenant. No more ONI or UNSC or Insurrection. Their lives gone. It felt wrong when so many back on Reach, in the galaxy, were still dying beneath the Covenant onslaught. "Will you not try to help us go back?"

She knew the impossibilities of that statement, knew the statistical likelihood compounded with all the new factors that came from a world that did not use Slipspace.

She just wanted to hear them say it.

Hackett and Anderson uneasily looked to each other before Anderson spoke. "We would do everything we can to help you, but given the details or your arrival here, it was a one-way street."

So that was that.

"As I was saying," Hackett continued. "You've seen enough fighting to warrant a discharge, benefits, a quiet place to get settled. It would be irresponsible of us however to just let you go. Not without preparing you. Not without having all of our bases covered."

Anderson squinted his eyes, the light of Earth silhouetting the pair, and, briefly, he saw the tiredness that betrayed both of their resoluteness. He could hardly himself imagine it: to be at war their entire lives and, just when they got away, accidentally no less with the want to go back and finish the fight, they were told instead to maybe fight a different war.

It exhausted him just thinking about it.

"We are not at war." He blurt out.

Peace.

Everything they were taught, as an ODST and as a Spartan, spoken to them like gospel from the likes of Admiral Cole, Chief Mendez, Doctor Halsey, Colonel Ackerson, or Lieutenant Commander Ambrose, they were never taught to live in peace.

That realization scared them to their bones.

"Anderson will take care of you on his vessel, getting you oriented while familiarizing yourself in an environment you might recognize: the military. It will be quiet, discrete, and while you will be expected to attend to duty stations and regulations, you will unlikely be in a position where you have to fight."

Anderson nodded in agreement. "For ease of integration, you'll both be signed on as MCPOs with the Navy." For JD, it was certainly a kick up in rank, so he was shocked as he physically hung on his heels and face writ with surprise. "Don't look so surprised, Durante. You've been in active service long enough, and have enough experience, to take it."

Mai responded similarly, her mouth twisting into a odd line of discomfort. MCPO, she thought unbelieving. She was a Lieutenant in the UNSC Army, to be fair. She could handle the rank. What had made her uncomfortable was the fact she was to be given the rank that was held by one man in particular. She was now a Master Chief.

Master Chief Petty Officer Durante and Master Chief Petty Officer Gul.

"Will you take our lead on this?" Hackett asked as kindly as he could.

JD sucked in air to his chest, steeling himself as he had dealt again with a decision he had made at 17 (With his parents' permission). What choice did he have anyway, he reasoned, and he would rather do it on his own terms.

"I am who I am sir. By the grace of God."

"And what is that?"

"A Marine." He held out his hand which Anderson shook strongly. "I'd be honored to enlist."

"And you? Lieutenant?"

She seemed overwhelmed, not only by the proposal, but by how fast JD had taken it. Helljumpers had hardly paused when they fell, and she could know that was true by the quiet man besides her.

"I'd hate to do this alone." He spoke to her, quietly, turning toward her with eyes that glistened with stars. He was a kind man. She knew this just by his voice. He never shouted in his life if his life didn't depend on it. Perhaps, she theorized, it was because of his own upbringings on the moon that seemed so close, yet so far away: seeing men and women who were broken themselves be locked up from society.

He had empathy for her. He wanted to know her name, after all, and that alone meant something.

His words were all chosen and important and they were now asking her to come along for the ride.

Anderson had nodded as JD tried to convince her. "Given both of your… situations, we'd have to keep you together, of course."

She was a Lone Wolf, and yet…

Wolves were not meant to hunt alone.

Against her better instinct, her training, her clearance and sound reasoning-

She offered a hand to JD and the ODST feared that she was saying goodbye. Her bare palm, oddly, was soft, welcoming, warm. The techsuit spared her damage to her hands and he felt it as they shook once before his hand became clammed between both her hands, a thumb running over his reassuringly.

The hand was pulled away and then offered to Anderson, and, almost too quickly, she had shaken his hand once before she stood rimrod straight, hands behind her back. JD emulated by training alone.

"I'll submit my application. I will serve. Give me my mission."

That was when the Human-Covenant War ended for them. Thirty years of pain ended inconclusively by a mistake. Taken away, and nothing they could do: the war they fought had been finished and now they were afforded something that none of them had experienced before. It was spoken in memory, fought for by the blood of millions. Only distantly, like a fantasy or dream that predated everything, peace was now given to them.

---

If taken out of context, a woman lugging a dead, dusty brown bear about four times her size into town would've been cause for concern, especially since she herself was bloodied and carrying a rifle.

This was Alaska however, so it happened every so often as a sky ski that belonged to one of the snowed-in town's residents pulled up alongside her, the road into the town kept for aesthetics' sake as opposed to utility. It didn't help a layer of fresh snow had been on it. It was one of those towns left behind during the rapid modernization of Earth come the 2100s, however the future had made its way there by government municipalities and services such as the police force.

She lugged the bear by a sled, dragging it with all her might and stubbornness.

"Uhhh hi there." The man had said, a flash of his holographic badge stating he was the sheriff.

"Huff, huff- huh hi!" The woman responded cheerfully as she let down her hood and face mask, tired from the trek. "My name's Jane! Jane Shepard!" She bit her gloved hand to take it off, offering it to the sheriff as he dismounted. The elderly sheriff took it as he looked for the tag on the bear that denoted she did… whatever she did, legally.

There were a few stab marks, bullet holes, and ripping and tearing, but there was a tag.

"You alright there miss?" He asked out of concern.

Shepard could only smile and shake her head. "Nah. This big guy got the jump on me, but it's okay. Barely a scratch." It was a bold faced lie based the bandages and tourniquet that had been applied over her white camo suit, but she was chipper enough. "Could you point me toward the taxidermist?"

The sheriff could only look at her awkwardly and nodded. "I'll do you one better. Hook up your sled and I'll take you there."

For her new posting on the SSV Normandy, she was more than happy to have a rug made out of a bear for the crew quarters, so she was all smiles as she thanked the sheriff and took off: the proof of her skill and tenacity proved in the body of a beast.

She had made a habit of killing monsters. Batarians, Thresher Maws, whatever the galaxy could throw at her. If she could survive Akuze, she could've survived anything, she thought. It was more appropriate however after Elysium and then Torfan, that instead she could kill anything.

Potato potato, she reasoned.

Whatever it meant however, she was alive today, and she more than happy with that.