A/N: I should be doing a Mai-centric chapter after this from her POV, so keep watch. Anyway not much to say today. Standard chapter.
Review responses:
Monarch Actual said: "I also completely forgot Mai wore a balaclava under her helmet and when I saw it, I just- I wanted to steal it, but I couldn't do that. Speaking of Mai, though, and JD as well, I'm pleased to finally have a concrete image to put to them for faces, I've always assumed Mai wears Mark V(B), just with a black visor. "
Yeah Mai is pretty much a barebones Mark V Bravo, with jury rigged tactical rig on top of that. In the books it was described the Spartans treat the armor more like skin and would bolt on pouches and equipment on top of that, so that's reflected. Her black visor and balaclava is just my take, which is obligatory with the hundreds of other Noble 6 OCs around. I like to think Mai is a deconstruction of sorts of the other Noble Six's that skew more toward cold badassery, viewed to see how actually inhumane they are to themselves. She is a Spartan incarnate, and all that means.
unyieldinghierophant said: "So just wanted to say that so far i have really enjoyed the story so far and look forward to what comes next. Only minor issues i have is how you portrayed the alternative halo ce events and how many troops would be transported by the cso super carrier. But other wise keep up the amazing work."
Admittedly I know that how the Halo universe is heading would be very controversial, but, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and its effects are long-lasting and I refuse to simply ignore it. As for the CSO capacity, that, admittedly, was on a lack of information and the need to not worry about Covenant scarcity. Thanks for reading though!
ksgrip said: "I adore this fic. The subtleties of Mai asking of JD to not share the sign la guage because it's theirs. I guess that that is just as much of a confession as you can get out of her. So sickeningly sweet.
I would recommend you to skip those missions that are secondary. Doing all the loyalty missions may be far too much work. At the end of the day everyone wants to see the story develop and not so much as having every nook and cranny written."
There is a certain amount of domestic cuteness that is inserted into those moments, because admittedly JD is very gentle with her, but there is I hope, more of a sense of innocence and lack of social cues there then the implication of affection. It's possessive what Mai was asking, and rythik78 actually makes a point about it: It's very indicative of the Spartans. I've yet to explore JD's usage of Spartan Signs yet, but I'll get around to it.
As for hitting side missions, or missions in general, I'll be using the missions in Mass Effect as background to points I want to hit, unless it's major, like Virmire or series defining points like Rannoch in ME3. I'll be careful about it.
Leonard Church814 said: "I'm finding Kaal Roth to be one of my favorite sub-plots. Something about following a Kig-yar is just so interesting."
Okay I'm not beating bushes this time around but I'm using Kaal as a vehicle to set something up. So do keep an eye on him this chapter, next chapter, and then he next pops up.
reality deviant said: "Interesting chapter. The Citadel Council is NOT prepared to face rivals on the level of Covenant, even i its just that small group- Sangheili and battle trained, and the Sanshuu-whatstheirnames are natural politicians and schemers to a level above what Asari are used to deal with, from aliens. not made better by the complacency the citadel fell into."
That is the biggest point of this all: The Covenant exists separately from the Council, and has done so for centuries. The Citadel has never had a rival, and for the Covenant to present themselves as the alternative, it'll be interesting. I mean the Quarians have chosen them already.
1-12
Dreams are for Other People
To describe what it felt like to drop in a pod was the same to describe what it was like to be in a head-on car accident. The jarring difference is that a pod drop had left no time for recovery. The way how his body so naturally wanted to crumple into itself when the pod had hit dirt, it made him want to vomit:
Though then the blast caps on his lid went off, and he was freed, released into the wilds of a battlefield as he ripped the M7S out from its rack in the pod and immediately ducked his head down.
What was the mission briefing again?
His body moved on its own as he realized he was on a beach: and he had to make the beachhead as he slammed into another pod, several other ODSTs taking cover behind it as plasma bolts flew overhead and the roar of Wraiths resounded.
His weapon hung by its sling as he held his own head, slamming into cover as he felt the hands of other men drag him into cover properly, all of them stacked on one another.
"Who the fuck dragged us in we missed the bunkers by a fucking mile!" Corporal Taylors had been one of his new squaddies. He was the new guy, having given JD the blessing of not being the greenhorn on the ODST division on the ship. Distantly, they could hear the MAC guns going off in distant space, the resounding drums of explosions in atmosphere
His answer came from glass and plasma, a Wraith's cannon shot having landed close enough to rock them all out of cover and rain sand on them.
JD had silently sworn beneath his helmet as he ended up on his stomach, getting his SMG out and looking at the impossible one hundred feet or so that separated them from the Covenant bunker positions.
He might've already had a concussion from the pod drop, so anything more was negatable as he saw the distinctive purple trace lines of the Covenant structures, defending, further inward, a Covenant relay station that they needed to hit. The floating Covenant turret positions were impressive sure, but even his SMG could make a dent from its floatation as he unloaded onto one he could see, practically digging his SMG into the sand as he dumped the mag into it. The Grunts on it had wavered as the platform shook.
"Durante! Durante!" Sergeant Valery, the spit heard on her lips as she yelled at him. "Get back into cover you're a sitting duck!"
Plasma bolts had made that abundantly clear as they landed by him.
All around him the beachhead had been covered with ODSTs like him: whoever had been leading them in having botched the drop and made this insertion a beach landing. The blue skies above were dotted with contrails between the UNSC Air Force and Covenant bogies duking it out. A battle for that planet underway.
"Use our pods as cover!" Corporal Seyton had yelled out as he saw the amount of other ODSTs left out in the sandy open, the Covenant laying waste to them. The grace of Covenant weapons betrayed what they did to Humans: It killed them. And yet, for the most part save the Needler based weaponry, they did not make them bleed when they were hit. Cooked, from the inside out with a lethal blow, that was what happened to many as they joined the glassed sand, their bodies at unkind angles as they fell.
JD would've stayed there, unloading into the Covenant towers, but he felt the hands of an ODST grab his kit: seizing him up to move.
It was Sergeant Valery, having left her cover to grab him to safety behind the pod again. Each time a Wraith's cannon had hit, it made a crater.
"Should we-?!" Corporal Taylors had almost dashed for one, seemingly far better as cover than the man sized pods.
Again Valery had grabbed at one of her ODSTs as JD took a knee again, reloading his SMG. "No! You go in there and-!"
Several other ODSTs had demonstrated in their panic to find a hole to hide in, diving in, only to be met with the searing burn of superheated glass melting through their armor as their screams rose the explosions.
Sniper fire rang out from their side: A pod had been tilted over, providing a mount for the team's marksman. "Cavendish!" Valery yelled out for her man. Too concentrated on otherwise aiming at the gun emplacements up the beach that were all cutting them down.
"I need ammo!" He yelled back, his SR-99 piercing through air and flesh as the cry of Grunts manning positions broke through to some relief.
"Durante!" Valery had yelled down at the ODST, about to order him to do so.
"Fuck that, I'll do it, Sarge!" Taylors had looked down at JD, the winds still knocked out of him. If they told him to run he would've been as good as dead. And yet Taylor had gone himself, seeing the supplies from the ammo pods having hit ground and strewn themselves across the beach messily. The man had left his Battle Rifle as he ran out into the open sand, giving other ODSTs time to get their own guns up and return fire. JD had never seen a man like Taylors run like that, with such abandon for the sake of ammo, but he had in the run slung his pack to his front and started through sniper rifle mags into it even as plasma bolts danced around him.
Another Wraith shot had impacted next to them, sending superheated glass raining down as JD felt the pricks on his uncovered trigger fingers. The very concussive impacts of the Wraiths had knocked more than wind from his throat as he stumbled out of cover again.
"Fuck this! I'm moving up."
"Seyton I swear to God-!" Corporal Seyton had pushed forward out of cover, wanting to die closer to the enemy apparently as his movement gave reprieve to Taylors, the shots that missed landing way too close to the pod they had been taking cover behind.
The ODST had disappeared behind a hail of fire that made Valery and JD duck back behind, unable to return any fire as they dropped their mags, giving time for them to look at Taylors finally make his way toward Cavendish a football field away.
JD's suppressor had run out, smoking hot red as the tell-tale sign of more superheated ammo came at them.
"Brutes are out!" Valery had advised, looking at the spikes of ammo come at them. Spike rifles. "Taylors move it!"
JD should've popped out to provide even more covering fire, but none could be had as Taylors looked back as Valery said his name, a spike the size of his head piercing right through his ankle.
"Shit-!"
JD had jerked as if to move and try and get him, but he felt a hand tug him back on his collar. "Don't-!"
Taylors scream on the radio as he tumbled to the sand had been guttural, panting as he swore and grinded against the grit. ODSTs throughout the beach had looked to him, hopeless to do anything as the Covenant saw a sitting duck.
"You just stay there mate I'll make it to you!" Cavendish had yelled at Taylors, having almost made it to him.
Taylors didn't respond as he crawled, his hit foot askew from his body as he left a red line in the sand.
JD had finally popped out of cover to aim at the distant silhouettes of gunners that could hit him far better than he could hit them, trying to do anything to draw their attention away from Taylors. Nothing could be done however.
With one last roar, Taylor had thrown his pack of ammo at Cavendish. The pack was still in midair, cleanly, when a Carbine bolt had went through his head as his entire body jerked before laying itself on the ground. He was dead, his stump of a leg still pumping out blood as JD looked on.
He played guitar, on the ship. Self-taught by sound alone. He didn't have time, as he liked to boast in the mess, to learn how to read music.
One might've mistaken Cavendish as using his sniper as an autorifle, in the rage he used it afterward, silencing fire coming at them from up the beach. That much fire from a single man and that effective? Valery had seen it, time and time before. On the ground, Covenant ground technique wasn't that different in theory as she looked over the crest of the beach and saw the balls of fire from the damned Wraiths converge toward one target.
"Cavendish! They've got you zeroed! Move!"
He did, dropping his rifle entirely as he darted from the pod. Taylor's body had been right there though, and they had been squadmates. He couldn't just leave them there. Cavendish didn't' see the bolt go through the man's head, sliding over to his body despite himself and holding him up as if to ask if he was alive.
"Get out of there!"
Valery's words had come too late as the Wraith fire landed, engulfing the sniper and Taylor's body as ODSTs who had watched at all flinched.
Cavendish told JD once, being a sniper was an act of cowardice on his part. The further enough away from the fight, maybe he'd end up living longer.
She was watching her squad get picked off. It hadn't been the first time, but each time, it didn't get any easier as she grinded her teeth. A metal impact hit right next to JD as he broke off holding his angle, glancing at what it was: His sergeant working through her anger in a punch to the pod, her rage as she saw her men die before clicking her radio.
"All Bravo Company elements! Move up the beach! We need to clear the way for the engineers to knock out those relays!" All around them her squad had linked up with her, waiting on her go. When enough men were finally assembled, she had pat JD's shoulder for him to follow. Dozens of ODSTs had ran as fire picked up again, some without weapons: lost in the drop.
Plasma bolts had landed far too close for anyone's comfort, impacting men and women around him. His gut reaction had been to turn, to reach out and drag them, even if screaming, the rest of the way to the natural cover of the hills over the beach. He didn't though: to do so would be to die himself.
What had happened to Seyton was revealed as they passed his body: He had gotten far enough up the beach before a line of plasma destroyed his torso, his body smoking. With any luck they had avoided his fate as they slammed into the rocks at the bottom of the hill, all of them either crouching or laying on their stomach in the cover that the hill's crest provided for a brief moment. Any second a Covenant could peek above and lay into them.
Seyton was drafted, JD remembered. Unhappily, almost every day. He wanted to leave, so he had found his exit in death.
All of their motion trackers going red as hostiles were close.
Valery hugged her Battle Rifle close as she pointed out the sphere like Covenant bunkers.
"Durante." She addressed him and several of her men. "Take three of us to clear these bunkers, the rest of us will push ahead and give you space. You do this quick as you can, you read?"
His only response was a nod.
He had pointed at three men and women and Valery had taken the rest, going over the top and meeting a wall of Covenant fire.
McCauly, Odell, Pratt.
"Grenades!" Valery had yelled up and down the line of ODSTs at the bottom of the hill, most of them, priming their explosives as the intention was clear: over the hill. Valery had stood up as she had one in her hand, the other making a fist, pushing at the hill. Men and women had cocked their arms back as Valery counted down with her hands. When she hit zero, the pineapple like grenades flew by a volley, an explosion rivaling even a Wraith's going off over their heads as pieces of Grunts and Jackals flew above them. "Push!"
McCauly, Odell, and Pratt had rolled over to JD as the rest of the ODSTs scattered up the hill, disappearing above as the collective roar of gunfire and plasma coalesced into warfare.
"Let's go JD!" McCauly had been a younger ODST, younger than JD even. He'd never seen his face but no one would as his helmet was blown forward in glass and steel, bits and pieces of matter, organic and otherwise plastering JD as the three remaining ODSTs snapped to the plasma trail left by a Beam Rifle: A Jackal had peered out of the window of one of the overlooking bunkers, it ducking back down as three different ODSTs laid into it before McCauly's body collapsed onto the ground still.
JD had pointed at Odell and Pratt, only after Pratt had aimed his MA5's grenade launcher at the slit of the purple bunker's firing port, putting one off and seeing the inside explode. Pointing again at that bunker, orders had been clear: You two, go finish it.
JD had been left with one directly forward of them, and he had rushed up as fast as he could.
Cresting over the hill he had seen the coopted coastal fortifications that the Covenant had stolen when they first came to the planet, dead bodies in it both human and Covenant. The backs of his other ODSTs blitzing forward hoping to catch the Covenant off-guard. He had barely caught Valery with three other of her men climb onto an unprepared Wraith and unload into its pilot hatch, his attention otherwise grabbed by an Elite popping out of the bunker behind them.
It raised its Plasma Rifle, not noticing JD until the burn of an entire magazine of SMG fire hit its side. It tried to duck back into the bunker before its shields broke, but to no avail, its left arm eviscerated as it fell.
JD dropped into the trench leading into the bunker, his own grenade ready as he flicked away the pin with one hand, tossing it into the door at an angle as he heard it bounce off the back of the fallen Elite. The splatter that followed was unkind to hear, and yet the sweetest sound JD heard all day as he aimed his gun up and sweeped in front of the door, slicing the pie as he saw wounded Grunts and Jackals bleeding from shrapnel and broken limbs. The Elite had its head blown off completely as JD primed another nade, but the roar of a beast had cut off.
He had never been that close to a Brute on Persei, he thanked his stars, but now and there, one had been chest to chest with him as its grey hair smoked and was bloody of three different types of fluid. Its jaw was opened impossibly wide as JD found it close enough see the spit hit his visor, every instinct telling him to drop the primed grenade and put both hands on his gun.
He did, leaving them both with a situation as JD rushed forward and put the burning muzzle of his SMG to the Brute's chest. Two times his height, five times his weight, and yet still, somehow, he was able to push back the Brute as he drilled a hole through its midsection in gunfire, the smell of burning flesh and fur apparent as the Brute stumbled back with JD's assault.
The pop of the grenade going off had put shrapnel into JD's bag and leg armor as the explosion threw the two into the bunker, the Brute on its back with an ODST laying on them:
The SMG had been thrown asides as desperately JD tried to regain focus. The Brute found it first as in one swipe he had been thrown off and to the side, his back slamming into the bunker walls only to collapse on top of a Jackal.
Each step of the Brute approaching him had him flail on the ground until he found a way to push himself up to his two feet, again chest to chest with the Brute as he saw only two blades attached to its weapons swing down at him. He jerked his head just in time: offering his shoulder instead as the armored pauldron wedged the Spiker's bayonets in it, he again collapsing to the floor. This time his hand had found his pistol's holster before the beast had opted to raise its leg up to crush his head:
There was nothing more to it than JD awkwardly angling his pistol up, into the genitalia of the Brute, the pain throwing it off balance as more of its blood exploded onto him. He didn't aim, he only pulled the trigger until nothing more came out of his SOCOM, the sound of a body hitting the floor shaking even his bones, his eyes closed as everything went still, laying on his side with a Spiker in his armor's shoulder.
If he opened his eyes he thought, he might've seen himself dead.
He stayed like that for a long time, frozen as if a corpse himself, afraid to open his eyes until he vaguely heard a voice over his comms.
"Durante where the fuck are you?!"
JD had been panting inside of his helmet as the body of the Brute stopped twitching, bleeding onto his armor.
"DURANTE!"
He had shoved whatever weight was on him as his back found the wall, his limbs shaking as the Brute weapon was thrown to the floor and, in the same stroke, his helmet taken off of himself. Teeth chattering, heart beating, hands unceasing as the war took him over in one sine wave in his ears that was unceasing. He didn't know when he collapsed, back against the wall, bringing his hands to his face, but he could not live otherwise. Not as death stared at him in the face and, just that day, it blinked first.
This was his first drop. All those years ago. Right after Persei. His very arrival into the ODSTs had been with some mystique: He had been one of the few to ever survive a Glassing as a Marine, and for that, it meant something. And yet here, now, on what had been his second deployment, fresh off of burying his mother and relegating his life to making sure Humanity had at least one more day…
The Brute had made him realize what that all meant: Even if he survived, he would spend the rest of his life on the battlefield.
And he did.
Dust and grit touched his face as his hands rubbed into his eyes. He wanted to tear his own teeth out as he tried his best to remove himself from that battle, to find a happy place in the middle of a bunker with the dead by his hand strewn about, blood still dripping from the ceiling.
Fear. He was afraid for his life, in every aspect as he finally controlled his breathing before he passed himself out. Realizing that he had been called for, realizing what that meant:
His helmet had been slid on as he basically ran, and ran, toward the battle that he had wanted to be gone from, toward his squad. And yet…
Going on drops had become a blur to him, that many years into it and without a proper promotion in his rank. It was an oddity, truly, but to him he didn't much mind remaining a private. Less responsibilities, less liability to have men die because of him. He was not careless, or a man unable to lead. Though what had been done to him for years, it all began, if not at Persei, then here, on that particular drop.
A memory, a dream, JD had become two as he remembered what he found as the battle faded away and found only a grassy field of dead. Covenant, ODSTs alike. His nightmares were not the worst-case scenario, the horror of some fear within him that could be articulated only in the surreal. His nightmares were of his mistakes, lived again and again without change.
He could've done nothing for this squad now as he had years ago.
Valery and her men had died, overwhelmed by a suicidal Covenant. When JD and reinforcements from the beach came, they didn't find much left, and JD had become one of the few survivors of the alpha drop. The relay was destroyed in the end, at the cost of eighty men and women, but the planet was lost eventually, after a month of fighting.
That field before him, as he felt the guilt took him again, moved on and on into a foggy flatness, dead and dead and dead before him that he alone was a survivor of. Marines, civilians, everything in between. Bodies and bodies on the floor, some whole, some not. Some young, some old. Men and women, dead from a life that no one deserved, killed by an evil from the stars.
Walking before graves, JD found himself in endless rows he had walked amongst until he found a reflection: Another ODST like him, looking down at what had been done. He walked up to them, tried to speak, to ask them the why of everything, but no sound came out of JD's mouth as he clawed at his helmet. No matter what he did it would not come off.
"You were too late." The nameless ODST spoke, motioning back to the graves, the graves and graves that went onto into the infinite. Each plot had been unceremonious, marked only by a rifle, stuck in the dirt, going on into eternity.
Each one a name he knew. A person that had lived. Someone that should've been in his place.
A grave appeared before JD that made him stop trying to tear his helmet off, like a ghost, floated over and forcing him to bear witness, as he had all his life, to the memory of who this was. A helmet had been on the butt of the rifle, sticking up, a crack in its black sheen. And yet, a reflection:
He knew whose helmet this was as an image animated on its cracked surface. Impossible, and yet, he snapped around. He was no longer before the dead, but before the about to be killed: a dusty planet it seemed. He looked to the mountains in the distance, split in two. No. What? He'd seen these skies before, that mountain top. This was Reach. In the distance: Covenant ships glassing.
Wherever he was now, he was back at Reach. In the distance he saw the skeletons of shipyards. What was this place called again? He had been deployed nearby early on to secure an FOB for UNSC air power to rearm and refit. He remembered as the scene fully manifested, broken and dilapidated buildings around them speaking to an industrial focus on ships: He was near the Aszod ship breaking yards. Maybe this was what he imagined would've happened if Operation Uppercut failed: the Fall of Reach.
Much closer had been the sound of fighting. His hand immediately went to his pistol holster, but found nothing there as he found himself lightheaded, light bodied, as if he had just stood up too fast and permanently stuck in that daze. Covenant plasma fire had been nearby as he gravitated toward it. A lot of it, answered back by only-
One individual. One individual as he looked around and saw Phantoms: an entire Covenant division.
He tried to focus as he saw an Elite get shotgunned against a wall after being pinned. He recognized that figure that did the deed. He knew her very well.
Spartans never die, he was told once. They're missing in action.
A group of Brutes had appeared behind him, passing by him without regard as they all roared at the Spartan. It had been Mai, she throwing the shotgun to the ground as she grabbed the SPNKr rocket launcher on her back, aiming it at the group as she let a rocket fly. A Brute Chieftain had been leading the back, its gravity hammer slamming down as the rocket almost made contact, sending it off and away into the sky as Mai aimed it again at their feet, charging, finding the half-way.
The explosion went off before the Brute Chieftain could reswing, outright killing the lesser, but leaving him standing as explosive shrapnel blinded it. It never saw Mai charge it, a yell in her throat as one of her knives found its midsection, tearing across and gutting it.
How long had she been fighting like this? JD had looked around and saw piles and piles of bodies, killed in everyway he could think, done with extreme prejudice. Pieces and pieces of bodies whole left on the dusty ground.
Before the Chieftain had died however, it went to its belt, finding the stick grenades preferred by its kind. It didn't prime it, but it did swing, hitting her square in the helmet.
JD had flinched, the sound of glass shattering apparent even above her shield running out, she turning away in pain only into more plasma fire. Off it came as she ran at a dropped assault rifle, a silver Elite charging at her as she held it at her hip and unloaded into the monster. The bullets had broken into its body as plasma bolts, unstopped, hit her own armor, burning pieces of it off in molten pieces as those that hit the suit beneath it did just that: burn.
She didn't care though, not as the Elite hit the floor. She saw the shadow of another Elite behind her, its sword gleaming as she instinctively threw her shoulder to break its neck.
JD, so much, had wanted to yell, to help, to do something, and yet he was frozen as Mai broke the Elite's shields and sent it to the ground. Her pistol had appeared out of its holster, only to unceremoniously put a bullet between the eyes of that Elite.
Her entire body jerked as another plasma bolt hit her hip, causing her to cradle her rifle in the direction of more and more encroaching Elites. Shields breaking, flesh being hit, bodies dropping to dirty ground had been meager trades as her armor, her very body, was being eaten away at by pain and plasma. She had stopped moving from her place. This was her last stand. If she willed her feet to move, then what?
An Elite had come at her, chest to chest, her guns clicking empty as she dropped them, trying to go for her knives, but the Elite's arm had swiped across her face sending her to the floor.
A puddle of blood had pooled where she stood, her armor seemingly leaking her humanity.
The Elite had popped an energy dagger, pouncing on her.
He wanted to scream, to even bite his own tongue off, but he could do nothing as Mai tried to stave off her final moments: her legs had come up to the Elite's midsection pushing it away for a fleeting second. Another had appeared at her side, kicking her over, only to receive a punch for its efforts.
There it was: Something JD had never heard before. He had no idea how this sound came into his head. Though there it had been in all of its desperation, its pity and realization that death came for even her. She was crying, panting, in fear and fighting them not as a Spartan, but someone trying desperately to survive horror as her body did its best to fight for her, twisting as the kicked Elite came back, only to stab the ground as she contorted her body to avoid.
There was no stopping the punched Elite from activating the dagger in his gauntlet however as Mai fended off the other, only to open her stomach to him, and, in one thrust, stab her midsection. A burst of blood erupted through the surface of her balaclava on her mouth, and, in one last moment, she locked eyes with the ODST that could not help her. That fear in her eyes, of emotion written on her face, it was a vision seen in nightmares, foreboding reality.
A crack echoed through the well deck of the Normandy that had been followed a gasp, emanating from, usually, behind the Mako. The Mako hadn't been there, bearing a man who had just woken up as men of action always do: By instinct as his legs snapped and kicked up as if jumping from a pod, his right arm slamming into the wall on his right as if grasping for a weapon.
JD's nightmares were not of the impossible: they were of his life.
For everything they had to hide from Shepard, there had been this: They had been veterans of a war. Not a battle, or a campaign, but a war for their very survival.
"JD." How soft his named sounded when said from her lips, compared to every other word that was uttered from her. Yet it was the loudest sound he had heard as those remaining in the bay had turned to the sitting shock trooper against the wall and saw him dazed and confused by his own reckoning.
As his vision darted around, it finally settled in a sight he wanted to make sure was true:
He had never seen Mai raise an eyebrow, but today, she had at him:
As did half the dozen or so Seamen and Marines in the bay.
He had raised his hands defensively, coughing, urging some of them along as he wiped his face down of sweat that wasn't there. His right hand remained balled, not recognizing an M7S had not been in it as he forced it open.
A shadow came over him: It was Mai. Thank God.
"Condition green?" She spoke to him in the only way she knew how confidently. He didn't answer, staring up at her, her unarmored state betraying them both as he struggled to remember the one thing he had set as a rule to remember about her: She was human. Without an answer, she kneeled down, and he had sucked in his breath.
"A dream." He finally answered, now eye to eye. They knew of each other's nightmares, of their dreams, of the war that would always remain in their head. Sleeping in shifts during their time in New Buffalo had made them aware of each other's tics while sleeping, but for JD, his reactions had never been that bad. It was almost mutant like, but for Mai, she was relatively still: her jaw would grind, her eyes beneath her lids constantly moving like snaps. Though it had been her veins: Even in her sleep her body responded to combat stimuli like he had never seen.
JD had signed a particular sign to her, when they came back from Therum and she struggled within herself to take off her armor: He had pointed at her, then the same hand had gave her a thumbs up as it rotated a bit. He had his helmet off, so she read his lips as he mouthed the words.
She replicated now.
ARE YOU OKAY?
He looked at her hands, but then her face, locking eyes with her as he calmed down from a high he hadn't even known he came down from. He decided he was, here and then, nodding to her and standing up himself and, for a moment, being able to see the top of Mai's head before she reclaimed her height advantage.
"Did you die?" She looked away as she asked, drawing away the last of the stares as she found them. JD had gone cold again for a moment, shaking his head. Only then, looking at Mai's real face, did he realize that she looked most human when dying.
An odd question, but not for who they were. "Not me." He answered, not going any further as he was immediately aware of the Mako not being there. "Where'd…?"
"Shepard took Hitman and Wrex on a mission."
And he had slept through the Mako, of all things, being deployed? He had been half impressed with himself.
Oddly enough, it was only in his dreams that his old life still remained. In his waking moments he had remembered where he was: Tali had been panting again in her suit as Garrus matched crunches with her rather painlessly. Even he had armored down, revealing more of his natural form, into his race's equivalent of sweats.
Unapologetically the Spartan and ODST both stared. To see aliens without their armor, it had been, for them, when they were dead. The leathery bodies of Elites, the squat, short forms of the Grunts, and everything in between had nullified them to the odd shape of Garrus's body. Angular, scaled, bony almost, reaching out into the territory of raptors and avians.
Did Turians sweat? JD had wondered. Quarians did as Tali's visor, despite its robust cooling, had been misty and giving way to actual droplets.
She had really been taking their advice to heart: any cloth on her suit had been folded and stowed leaving her with only the synthetic body form. Perhaps killing Geth had put a pep in her step, whenever she had down time from her new duties in engineering.
What they had her doing in the bay, it hadn't been much to the trained soldier that Garrus had once been, but he had done it with her regardless.
Consciously, JD felt lazy having slept instead. Though it was how he had been for as long as he remembered.
Earlier that day he had spent it going over the alphabet with Mai, silently of course. Repetition made perfect, and for all the perfection that she had as a Spartan and her craft, it was an oddity that there was something that JD had done better than her.
Cross-legged: that's how she sat he noticed, as they went through bursts of five letters at a time. L-M-N-O-P was always fun. He chuckled however to himself, barely, but Mai had caught it as she held N in her hand. The way she often asked questions of him had been with a tilt of her head left. Usually there was context enough for him to elaborate on a sign she didn't understand, but here, it was different. "Did I do something wrong?"
She didn't wear shoes, technically, out of her armor. Her techsuit had some armored padding itself, not unlike Garrus's plates on his thighs and shoulders, so she had tucked herself in comfortably like a-
"Criss-cross Applesauce." Mrs. Lionel would often advise kindergarteners at the start of each day on the sit-down rug to sit like that in her sing-song voice. JD had repeated it now, two decades, and yet two lifetimes later. Mai's head had only dipped deeper, her eyebrows furrowing. "It's how you're sitting right now."
To hear her repeat those words on her own soft-spoken hush, he found reflectiveness as she remembered something.
"I went to school, for… Three years." She tried to remember a long time ago for her. The upbringings of a girl she had, somehow, once been. "There was a charity organization which taught children like me for a while."
JD spoke of his childhood to her in quiet moments, describing some signs, how he attached some memories to them and why he had learned them in the first place. For some, it had been out of curiosity. For others, it was accompanying his mother to the park, and pointing out objects or reading picture books with her as a child.
"Is attaching such… feelings useful to remembering some things?" Mai had asked, outright. It had sounded so obvious to her, and yet, in her entire library of knowledge that encompassed almost all of the UNSC's collective military technical and tactical knowledge, she required no such niceties to recall them. Pain perhaps, hurt from Chief Mendez in training, but nothing she could call emotion of such personal measure. If she had, they were buried, long ago, by the necessity of her creation.
He nodded, going back, thinking of what she said prior. A hint, like the wheel of Dharam she wore as a necklace, beneath her techsuit. She had been something before a Spartan: She had been a vagrant living in the underside of New Jerusalem's colony. He remembered that colony. No planet was named after Earth's holiest city without due process. Proclaimed by Jewish settlers first, the very fact that they had called it that spurred Muslim and Christian colonists to flood it before they could use a planet, beautiful as it was, for themselves only. Violence followed: a dangerous class system arising that had swallowed people like Mai whole.
How lucky he was: A father, a mother, a place to sleep, food to eat, and a childhood to live in.
Perhaps if not a Spartan, Mai would've been fighting all of her life anyway with where she had been, before she was kidnapped.
"Did you like school?"
She nodded urgently, once, and it surprised her. Being with kids her age and in the same relative situation? It was a reprieve. It was-
"I wasn't lonely." When she said it her teeth snapped as if to take it back.
She would get like that, sometimes, when JD spoke of his past. The realization that she had really been in a bad place, only to be taken to someplace, arguably, worse. He had done well to move them along as any pretense of them still learning sign language dropped.
"When I was growing up, in elementary, all the boys tried their best to be the funniest. Because when they made girls laugh they thought that it was cute."
"Laughing or girls?"
"Yeah." JD did have some dry humor within him, still surviving, perhaps only kept to deal with his more outward ODST squadmates (and there had been a lot). Mai hadn't gotten the verbal joke however. "I mean. Girls, girls are cute when they laugh."
"Only?"
"It's a broad statement, Mai."
"Are you funny?"
JD paused as he reached for a canteen to take a sip, thinking about it. If this was how Mai was trying to find out more about him, it wasn't organically, but it was… something.
"I mean, uh, I could try to say something funny."
"…Sure?"
Of all the things JD had been, a funnyman hadn't been one of them as he reached back into his head for the memory of ODSTs who had been funny:
Donatello Marx. Sergeant. ODST Squad Lead. He had rubberbanded a Joker card to his shoulder piece.
"Do you want to hear a joke?"
Hadn't he just asked that? "Okay."
"The Army." She was still waiting for the joke as a shadow of a smile was both in JD's eyes and mouth, fading away once it was clear the shot he had taken had missed by the scale of miles: over her head. He had moved his hands up, palms up, slightly rotating them as he tried his best to get the gears rolling in her head. "That's- that's the joke."
"What?"
"The Army. The Army's a-" He tried to remember the briefing to Operation Uppercut, Noble Team had been a detachment from the UNSC Army, right? His words wavered off as he sucked in his lips. "You know what, never mind."
"How was that a joke?"
"Because-" JD saw a barrier he in a million years thought he wouldn't be able to climb. Had he heard Mai laugh before? What did she find funny? Questions of her personality flew by his mind. What actually did he know about her? What was her favorite taste? Her preference for music? What she saw in her peaceful dreams, both waking and asleep? Her opinion on policy? Who she was? Then, a thought: Did she have them at all?
Apparently, he had thought of it longer than he known, pausing for a second, hung out with sputtering words that were put silent when he heard a-
A push of air out of her nose, one of her hands brought to her lips, a finger hooked in front of it as if holding something back. Her eyes were dead and yet, there was a certain spark to them that followed by her straightening her head.
Seeing him struggle was amusing to her.
Her hand had fallen back to idle soon enough, and he had been liable to miss it all, but yet…
"I'll uh, explain later."
With a nod, they had gotten back to sign language before JD took the time to nap and fall back into the nightmare of his first drop.
How easy omni-tools were allowed to them. Or, at least, to him. Yielding such tools on his wrist was natural as a Kig-Yar. "Curious. From what I recall your species are very mercantile. Similar to the Volus of our galaxy." If everyone had a price, then words must've been cheap for the Professor Mordin Solus as he mentioned to Kaal Roth.
The Jackal had been feeling over the omni-tool on his left arm, matching rather well with his energy shield. Omni-tools, in general, had been slowly being distributed amongst the Covenant. They were a dime a dozen and a galactic standard. That much the Council races had over the Covenant: for the lowliest Grunt to be given such an information terminal with access to a system as wide as the extranet? Madness.
Perhaps that was why the hierarchy of the Covenant maintained that, after the Prophets, the Elites and Brutes were to receive theirs first. After that then, it would trickle down. Kaal Roth couldn't wait however, after reading a message, and an offer, left to him.
"Thank you again for answering questions on your race. Not many open to communication due to Covenant structure." Mordin went on again as he slid his rolling chair over in the prefab research tent, Kaal sliding off the table which the good doctor had spent much time sticking needles into him on.
Kaal motioned the omni-tool up. "It was a pleasure doing business."
That would've been that then, that night as Kaal had rushed back from the bar, neglecting to tell the good doctor he had a few drinks in him. If Mordin had decided that his race naturally produced alcohol in its blood, then so be it, there would be others no doubt, and he could hide his drink when there was opportunity afoot.
He went to leave, but the door to the exit had opened first: revealing a Turian, large and imposing to Kaal. He'd dealt with his fair share of Elites who sought harsh treatment on him. It was funny though, he had usually survived longer than them. This Turian had seemed to radiate that energy of the Sangheili. Though for a Turian to do that, it meant that they were special, to a degree:
"God dammit Solus, why do I have to find out through the Council you're STG-" The Turian had come in yelling, unable to catch the Jackal that was shorter than him as he almost tripped. Stopping before Kaal he had mentally righted himself. "Oh sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Don't worry about it." Kaal had shuffled away and out. Later with his new omni tool, taking steps to learn it and eventually use it, he had done a cursory search on galactic events: on Saren and the Geth especially. Though, of all things he didn't expect to read, the Turian that almost stepped on him leaving Mordin Solus's office was none other than Saren Arterius's protégé: Avitus Rix.
Mordin had been shocked to see Avitus at all at that late hour, his happy tone kept though as he went back to the data he had compiled from Kaal. "Avitus, what seems to be the issue?"
The two had known each other via sparse meetings and alerts passed down and up: Mordin had been much too comfortable, if not prodding of the new species that, on three ends: Council, Covenant, and Alliance had asked the reigning official on hand to do something about it. That official had been a Spectre deployed to Altis to keep a pulse on the situation. A Spectre whose mentor had been the most wanted individual in the galaxy bar two others: an information broker and a rather elusive man. A Spectre who, just very recently, he had poured his heart out in defense of until Saren's own words damned him. Avitus had been shamed publicly and the Council saw it wise to keep him lowkey on Altis.
The planet had been, evidently, too big. It was big enough for the Covenant and the Alliance supposedly, but not big enough for a scientist Salarian and a Spectre.
"What're you doing here, Doctor Solus?" Avitus locked the door behind him he thought, only for Solus to sigh and just wave his omni-tool to re-open it.
"Would hope you understand my goals here, purely, scientific." He looked up at Avitus, standing, arms crossed. "If you know I am STG, then you would know just recently retired." He smiled at the end of it, hoping it was enough.
Avitus knew better. Technically he knew worse as he glowered at him.
"You worked on a new Genophage, Doctor."
Surprise had written on Mordin's face. "How did you-"
"Saren was my mentor, Doctor." Avitus ground in his voice. It was a weight, a sin, and a blessing. "He told me a lot of what STG has done to the galaxy, when the Spectres weren't supposed to be watching."
Mordin had glared at the Spectre. "Not new, the same, just modification within parameters."
"Renewed then." He made a point of. "And I don't care about that. We make calls in our line of work and follow our orders. What I do care about is that a man of your magnitude is present here."
"Am retired, Avitus." Mordin said again. "If not, would not be running a simple research clinic next door to your operations base." Avitus sneered, he never trusted a Salarian who had made it Mordin's age. Let alone one that had been a part of STG: the Salarian Special Task Group, the model for the Spectres. "If not here to judge, then..." Mordin's face was then that of intrigue. "What do you want, Avitus?"
Even people as perceptive as him were to be surprised from time to time as Avitus sighed. "To keep me informed."
"You or the Council?"
The Humans, the Covenant, they were hiding something. But what exactly, and why, they did not know. He had seen the Brutes and Elites threaten death amongst their Grunts for their silence. Technology? That wasn't the case, the Covenant via Destiny had been more than willing to elaborate on Slipspace and their own forms of space age tech. Perhaps, granted, there were more secrets technologically, but they were entitled to them for now. It was a game that was being played between the Covenant and the Alliance mutually it felt like to Avitus, but for what ends he just could not place.
He was told by the Council to find out what.
"Does it matter, Doctor Solus?"
Two men, history changed before them, stood in that clinic, on the verge of their greater journeys.
Captain Shaw had ran over the recent reports: Same as always from Altis, the stationary fleet he had now commanded still doing its rounds around the system and the planet with a token command picket from the 5th Fleet and Hackett. Fifth Fleet had been very much nearby given the change in diplomatic relations. The command staff of the ships that had been present over Altis when the debris field from the Solace appeared had been unique among the Alliance: they were in on the secret that only the Admiralty knew. The fact that the Covenant had been a genocidal civilization hellbent on the end of their humanity had tensed all and given weight of existential nature to them. It kept him up more at night, thinking of what would it would've been like for him to be a UNSC captain instead of an Alliance.
Thankfully the token Council taskforce had kept themselves busy with menial Council diplomatic tasks such as cataloging the Covenant species and their subtypes, however things had changed the second a Quarian envoy ship had arrived in system and offered the Covenant nothing less than the galaxy. The Alliance Admiralty had begrudgingly allowed it on the pragmatic fact that the more Covenant responsibility fell upon the Quarians, the less they had to deal with.
What they hadn't anticipated was what the Quarians would do come the bombshell revelation that Rannoch had been the Elite's Sanghelios.
Probes and scout ships had been sent to investigate the locations of the other Covenant homeworlds and important centers, none had arrived yet to much of their anticipation. Covertly however, several scouts routed through shell corporations acting on behalf of the Alliance Admiralty had sought out other planets: Those revealed by the Spartan Mai.
Shaw had access to one drone which had arrived at its location: "She called this one Onyx."
It had been very far flung, traditional FTL from an already out of the way Relay the only way to get there. Of those planets Mai had listed, she had spoken of this one as the most in her first and only batch of offerings. It wasn't there however. "No dice." His first officer spoke, looking at the same report on the bridge of the Perugia. "You think she's pulling a fast one?"
"She doesn't need to." Shaw had heard of Mai. "I don't think someone like her lies to make her point."
Like a boogeyman, the ghost of human supremacist groups had arisen in Mai's steed. Had her existence been discovered by them, and the war that she had come from, it would justify nothing more than the righteousness of race. The echoes of one such group, Cerberus, had come forth to the now as Shepard stood before the Council:
Shepard had gunned down scientists, civilians, that only upon retrospect were outright discovered to be Cerberus. It was for that tenacity that Cerberus had gone into hiding as far as intelligence services were concerned. The rage of Shepard for what they had done to her and her men was perhaps one of the reasons she was Spectre now.
One had been on planet, and Shaw had been instructed to stay clear, though his doubts about truly having one present as a need had been proven wrong today as the bridge of the Perugia buzzed to live: Inbound from the nearby Mass Relay.
Several Quarian ships identifying themselves as part of the Migrant Fleet, or otherwise occupied by Quarians on their Pilgrimage, had arrived over Altis shortly after the Covenant's arrival. Despite all warnings otherwise, they had stayed, processing the Covenant through themselves as the galaxy, for the first time, heeded the Quarians. Any chance that they were to be shoo'd off gone as Shaw yelled out his orders to battlestations.
Perhaps the Geth had come for Altis.
The shot heard around the Alliance however, hadn't been gunfire. It had been a communication as Shaw's first officer went to her console and saw-
"It's a wideband communication throughout the Extranet in Quarian."
"What does it say?" Shaw asked as he settled into his chair on the bridge.
The translator had flipped through words to describe: Fatwa, Jihad, Crusade, Holy War, Great Journey. Another crewman had shouted out from the CIC: A decision of the Council.
"The Treaty of the State of Quarians and the Provocation of the Geth has been amended." He announced. "In light of recent events arising the hostility of the Geth to Council-affiliated member species, and the need for added pre-emptive defensive solutions, the Quarian fleet known as the Flotilla is hereby directed with reasonable aid to, at their own discretion, begin combat operations in and past the Perseus Veil."
History had been busy recently. The Council had outright okayed a war on the other side of the galaxy. In the face of the Geth, with the rise of Shepard and Saren, the arrival of the Covenant, the galaxy was set down a path.
Suddenly, alarms and alerts from the CIC, all shut off and addressed as in one summary, this:
"We've got inbound."
"Is it-?"
The day had come. The Alliance and its intelligence services had been tracking them for weeks, trying to guess which relay they would use, and if they would do it. The communications from the Citadel between Destiny and the Council, the envoys of the Quarians and the recent uptick in Human/Quarian communications throughout the galaxy. It was inevitable.
The First Officer of the Perugia had nodded, brevity in her voice as they all looked at the display screens of the Mass Effect relay into system, buzzing with activity uncommon in that galaxy.
"IFF matches known reports. The Migrant Fleet is here."
The survivors of the Morning War, of an entire species: the last of the Quarians.
If the Solace, appearing suddenly in orbit, had floored Shaw and his crew, then the arrival of the largest fleet in the galaxy had only matched that as the stars themselves were blocked off ships, older than the Geth themselves.
"Incoming hail." Shaw's first officer rattled off. He nodded at her to let it play. And play it did. From the omni-tool of the Jackal Kaal Roth, to the highest chambers of the galaxy in the Citadel, to the secluded headquarters of an Illusive Man:
"This is a message to all concerned: On behalf of the Conclave and the Admiralty at command of the Flotilla, we have arrived to build an army. Keelah Se'lai."
Prefab storage facilities like these were a dime a dozen in the galaxy. Shepard had forgotten how often she found these types in their exact layout amongst pirates. Perhaps that was why Hitman had so naturally, after lacing the doorways with explosives and breaching, knew exactly where to look and aim their rifles as they stormed Tonn Actus's facility on that glassy planet of Tuntau. Oddly enough it had been on the otherside of the system, shared with Pinnacle Station (and her apartment, no less). How the joint force at Pinnacle hadn't picked them up she wouldn't know, but then again, she knew how pirates operated:
Under the noses of those who would fight them.
Emerson had, before the loud bang of breaching the doors to that building, pointed at his secondary section of Hitman, signaling with his hands for them to back away from the building and secure the perimeter. Kaiden had agreed for once as he patted the Marine sergeant's shoulder.
"Williams. On point." Kaidan had directed down the ramp into the subterranean section of the prefabs, the light of the stars above letting light below down.
Ashley had abided well enough, rifle up as she and the rest of Hitman followed behind her, weapons up and sectors covered as Shepard was on tail.
"Alenko with me, Emerson, maintain security."
"Aye ma'am." Emerson responded, taking a knee by the door as the rest of the ground team had pushed out and formed a perimeter around the facility, the Mako ready and buzzing to take down any of Actus's patrols that might've come back.
Wrex had seemed amused by Shepard as she ordered her men around, his weapon not even drawn as he walked down the same ramp behind the humans, in line with Shepard. "You military types are so meticulous. Any warrior worth a damn should just know what to do without being told."
Shepard had lowered her rifle as she let the point team proceed further without them. "You never served?"
"You think the Krogan have a military?" Wrex gruffed. "We're much more organic than you realize, Shepard."
Williams had held a first up as the lightsource from the night sky behind them faded, she tapping on her helmet's night vision as the rest behind her followed suit.
"Tactics are good." Shepard allowed herself small talk as she thumbed her own night vision, observing her men move forward until they finally reached the main cargo floor entrance. Immediately, her riflemen had taken corners, silently scanning sectors.
"Clear."
"Clear." Affirmatives rang out in hushed silence.
"Commander," It was Kaiden, Shepard putting a little more pep in her step moving down. "You should see this."
Even Wrex seemed worried as he rose an eyebrow behind his airtight helmet. The planet had no breathable atmosphere, to speak of, and even a Krogan needed air.
Shepard had hit the safety on her rifle as she proceeded down, rallying with her men as they all held angles on a blown open door leading into the main cargo compartment of the facility. It was still smoldering. Someone had gotten here first.
"Rivals?" Shepard asked of Wrex as he unhook his shotgun from his belt.
"Dead meat." He answered.
"I see bodies. Armed. There was a fight." One of the riflemen in Hitman had seen into the compartment bay of the prefab, gunshots, puddles of blood, shattered debris from conflict.
Just a cursory glance and even Shepard knew that whatever had happened, it was still happening.
"Come out with your hands up! We are Systems Alliance Marines and you are in violation of-!" Kaiden's diplomatic message, yelled out, was cut short by the sound of a shotgun going off with a very wet splash at the distant end of the prefab.
"Go!" Shepard had made the decision as Ashley stacked against the door frame, the man behind her tapping her shoulder as she signaled to go in. Like a human wave the dozen or so Marines piled in with their weapons up, spreading along the walls and finding cover behind crates and crates of cargo, stolen from ships based on their lack of uniformity.
What was revealed by their breach had been bodies fresh, some still twitching, some still alive, but not for much longer.
Williams had broken formation as she approached a Turian, keeled over, hand at his stomach that he was trying to hold in. The two locked gazes and Williams had seen the pain and suffering. The Turian in his battered armor, a gunshot in his gut, had tried to motion toward the upper levels of the bay, but he had lost balance, only to tumble to the ground as the shock left him to fade from life.
"Commander." Williams looked back to Shepard, the furrow of her brow noted even behind her helmet. Shepard had looked at her as she pointed two fingers toward the back.
"On me, Wrex. Alenko, get me a BDA. Williams on me."
As Kaiden had taken several men and cleared the floor, tending to the dead, Shepard had attended to whoever did this personally. Wrex had already assumed, but he just wanted to see the body as they climbed the stairs to the quarters of the prefab. A bloody trail left behind by someone who probably had the same idea as Wrex. Shepard stepped in front of Williams as they arrived to that door into the office and quarters. If anyone was guns up on this, it was going to be her.
Not that Wrex agreed as the door was kicked open by him as he held the shotgun at his hip, ready to take on any-
The visual stimuli of bursting into a room, seeing a Turian with no head blasted on his own desk, repainting that half of the room, only for the Krogan who breached to get thrown onto his side by a grey flash had been a lot.
Ashley had raised her rifle about ready to kick off a shot at who had thrown Wrex at the ground, but Shepard had kicked her aim off and away as she pushed herself and Ashley out of the room. A guttural sound erupted from Ashley in the form of a question, but Shepard had a feeling that this fight wasn't theirs.
A similar sound belched out of Wrex's mouth as he tried to bring his shotgun up, but it was kicked away as a boot fit for a Krogan stamped down on his arm.
Looking up at the blinding light of the still active office, Wrex knew it very much was a Krogan as it spoke down to him.
"Just doing you a favor, Wrex." All Krogan through their translators had deep, grungy voices, befit their statue and size. Even then Shepard could pick up hints that this one was even older than Wrex. Let alone the grey wilted skin, armor barely having any of its yellow paint on its dents, instead decorated by teeth from (her blood turned cold) Thresher Maws. Wrex still struggled despite recognizing the voice: a Krogan on its back not a kind thing to see as Shepard and Ashley warily entered the room. "See, the Humans have the right idea."
"Identify yourself." Shepard had asked, just short of gun point as the Krogan stepped off of Wrex. Their green, almost mossy like eyes had been that of a lizards: a black slit down the center as he looked at the two humans. He didn't answer as Wrex again tried to get up, his hands flaring as Shepard felt the biotics kick in.
There was shotgun in the Krogan's hand. "I can shoot you a lot faster than you can use your space magic, kid." There were spikes on his chin that bobbed as he talked, confidence on his tongue that came from experience.
"Kid?" Ashley had humored the Krogan to Wrex's chagrin as he gave up, letting his arms fall back.
"At my age, Human, everyone is." He holstered his shotgun, stepping off Wrex, only to reach a hand down, offered. Wrex had come here to kill, and instead he had only gotten embarrassed.
"Commander, everything good?" Kaiden asked over the radio, Shepard had only answered in the affirmative as she looked at the body on the desk. It was reasonable to believe it was Tonn Actus based on the trophies of Krogan antiquity that had been on the shelves around the affair. "You know Urdnot Wrex?"
The two Krogan, upon standing chest to chest, had given each other a once over. A Krogan greeting, to be sure. "Sorry."
"Hmph."
Wrex flared his nostrils in his glare. The prefab had some oxygen system going enough for this Krogan to not wear a helmet, and it was right that Wrex only take off his as-
Like ancient stone colliding the two Krogan had butt heads that made Shepard's own teeth feel like they were going to break. Yet, neither had budged as they both stepped back from each other.
"Fair is fair." Wrex admitted in that silent conversation between the two Krogan, finally looking to Shepard. "Nakmor Drack."
Shepard had been surprised she recognized that name. "Aren't you…?"
"I'm over 1500 years old, so I've been a lot of things, kid."
Shepard had tilted her head, she thought- "You two the same age?"
"Hah! You still exaggerating your years, Wrex?" Nakmor Drack had been a particular type of Krogan. One that numbered in the dozens. One that even Wrex had to begrudgingly respect as they walked to the headless body of a dead Turian, the two humans behind them at a safe distance.
"As if they would know the difference. Why are you here, Drack?"
"You first."
"Getting my stuff back."
Drack had given Wrex a look. "Your stuff, or the shit that you inherited?"
To Drack, the artifacts around him hadn't been artifacts. Or, at the very least, were the same as him. They came from a different time. A better time for the Krogan people.
Shepard had remembered Drack from an educational report during her time in training: He had been quoted, after a sufficient amount of pay, about Krogan battle tactics back when the Krogan had an organized military hierarchy. It was educational reading that she didn't exactly remember, but she remembered the name.
Of all the artifacts that the Turian pirate had collected, one had been still as operational as it had been nearly a millennium ago.
"The Krogan were smart enough to make a coffee maker?" Ashley had elbowed into Kaidan as Hitman had combed through the dead for identification and, as one of them had less than tastefully called, loot. Of the things that Drack had come for, an original Krogan coffee maker had been one of them. About the size of a rocket launcher by Human accounts, but to Wrex and Drack, it was a simple appliance as it spilled the Krogan equivalent of coffee in its sludge like consistency into both of their canteens.
"Heard that." Drack had said, making Ashley duck into the crowd of Marines as Shepard sat on the crate they set up the coffee maker at. Apparently galactic standards hadn't changed in a thousand years and thus the outlets and plugs still worked. "Want some, Human?" Drack offered the Commander. She shook her head, helmet off, the atmosphere in that prefab habitable.
"You could, Shepard." Wrex looked into his canteen. "You'll impress me if you do get this past your stomach."
Drack's pack had been at their feet, spilling with ingredients. "You know, most of what Tuchanka had in order to make this was shipped offworld by Salarians and Turians, if not easily substituted, but the machine itself? I got a tip about Tonn Actus few months back."
It was the same tip that let Wrex know of his armor, it also brought out, wheeled out. Its plates like stone. Its age written not in wear and tear, but in the scars of a rebellion only a handful of individuals remembered.
"Ain't worth a damn." Wrex commented, looking at it in its case, Shepard only making an internal notice that it looked so much like Mai's. Grey and splintered, its helmet barely held together by time, Drack agreed.
"This the only thing you're here for?" The older Krogan asked, gesturing as the rest of Hitman, on Shepard's orders, tagged and cataloged crates for him at the promise of a finder's fee.
Wrex shrugged in his armor, slamming back the coffee. "More for principle's sake. That and killing the Turian bastard."
"Fair enough."
There was something grating at the younger Krogan that Drack had saw through as he finished his cup.
"It was my mark." Wrex had missed it by literal minutes.
Drack had let out an amused breath. "You gonna tell that to every Krogan who gets their first? What're you gonna do kid? Make it up by taking it out on me?"
Did every Krogan talk as if they were going to murder someone?
Shepard swung her feet in idle pleasure as she felt for the pistol on her hip. She thought she got off easy today: not storming a pirate's facility and wasting time and ammo on stomping out vermin. Still it was important to Wrex that he had been there so she appeased. Everything after that, especially with who had gotten here first, she didn't want to intercede.
Wrex and Drack wouldn't have left her as Wrex pivoted himself to answer that, though Drack had crossed that distance first in front of Shepard, taking the younger Krogan's chin in his armored hand.
"When was the last time we met, Wrex? Eight years ago? On that bar in Omega, right?"
Wrex chaffed in Drack's grip as his arm came over to grab his, metal buckling, but none wavering. "Yeah. T'Loak was breathing down our neck the entire time."
Drack remembered the same. "To be fair, we were drinking up her entire stock of booze." The two Krogan shared a grunt of pride before Drack's eyes narrowed, his voice dipping. "Do you remember what you told me, that night? What you wanted for our people?"
Shepard had been interested more now. Wrex had seemed nothing more than a mercenary, ambition beyond that, it was curious to her. Out of the corner of her eye some of her Marines were on edge, but she had palmed them down. Ryder taught her to observe even if the storm was at her footstep. It was how people were able to define the closest details.
Wrex had growled, and that was word enough for the two.
"I made it through the Krogan Rebellions, Wrex." One of his claws laid on the nook of Wrex's armor, holding it as he let go of his flesh. "I have watched our people disintegrate over a thousand years. The original Genophage still lies within me. In all those centuries since, you don't think that you were the first to try?"
The first to try? Wrex had seen Shepard's gears in her head start spinning, start going, if he had to hear anything of this back on the ship they would need Mai to stop him.
"You think a good Krogan is supposed to just be wandering the galaxy like you have, after all this time?" Wrex said back. "Wouldn't you know, more than anyone, what we could be?"
"Hah!" Drack had let go of him. "Maybe I'm a bad Krogan. I mean, I haven't died yet, and apparently that's all our species is good for."
Wrex seemed wounded, but it was a wounding he would live through as he rubbed his neck where Drack had held, he pouring another cup of coffee as he pulled the lever on the dispenser, the device buzzing its slop out. "You never answered me on why you were here."
"Well you lied to me, first time around. So I ain't saying. Just getting your shit back? Come on Wrex, I wasn't born yesterday."
"I was told we were just here to grab the armor, Drack." Shepard had finally chimed in. "I have the ship."
"You have the ship and the authority," Drack raised his cup at her. "Congrats on being Spectre by the way. I remember when the Turians got their first Spectres. You seem to be of the type."
"Uh, thanks."
"No problem, but your Krogan is lying to you."
"Ain't lying if I'm not saying."
"Wrex?"
Being with Wrex in the short period she had known him, she had learned some of his tics. Admittance for him that had been truthful came when he wiggled his nose once, sucking in some air as if preparing his lungs. "A leader does right by his predecessors. Reclaiming their mantle is a natural sort of authority for Krogan who would seek leadership amongst the clans."
Nakmor, Urdnot, Weyrloc; names amongst names of the Krogan that signified blood and clan. "You seek to lead Urdnot?" Shepard tilted her head at Wrex, an eyebrow raised, inquisitive as she was.
For Wrex to admit that, it would to admit something far larger than himself. Why he had even thought of such an idea had been beyond him, it had just happened one day, during the hunt for some lowlife gangster with a bounty on his head. "Do you not feel it, Shepard?"
"Feel what?"
"You brought me out here, all just because of a simple exchange. It was natural to you to help."
Shepard pursed her lips as her eyebrows furrowed, she didn't quite agree. "Pirates were operating within system and I saw fit that, if it coincided with your own requests, we deal with them."
"This is under you, Shepard. Dealing with rabble." Wrex stared into his empty canteen. "Yet you came anyway."
"What do you mean-?"
"Why did you come out here to help me, Shepard?"
"It was the right thing to do." Was it? She asked that of herself almost immediately after. In the grand scheme of things, it was a good, perhaps.
"Why?"
"Because it helped you."
"And why do you care?"
"Because I can."
"Why?"
Really? Of all the verbal game to play Wrex was going to use a five year old's one.
"Because it's the right thing to do?"
"Why do you want to do the right thing?"
"Because it's the-" In a circle, into the infinite, unbroken. To admit outright she was a good person would've been vain. To say she wanted to be a good person was perhaps demeaning of her and all the progress she had made getting to where she was now. "What are you getting at Wrex?"
"Do you do the things you do because it simply is something you have to do?"
Something that drew within her very character. No explanation, nothing but a want that culminated so deep within her it sat right next to breathing. To not do it would to fail herself. Was it will? The draw? The race for a challenge in her life to fulfill that intersected at humility and the want for a good life, not for herself, but for others? She could not explain in the same way Wrex could not explain the ghost of the idea he had about his people.
She shrugged, snapping around and seeing her people. Silently motioning with her hands she had told them to proceed back up and out after they were done tagging cargo. Wrex had held onto his armored case tightly. That was for him to hold alone.
"He gave you an answer, Drack, why are you here?
Fair was fair, and he did answer. "I'm just here because I wanted a cup of coffee, and there are a bunch of other Krogan paying to get their own heirlooms back. Not all of us want to go through the trouble of blasting the head off of a rat to get them… Thanks for that, by the way. I'll send you a percentage for your troubles."
That was more than fine for her. Working an expense account was new to her, but paying down the credit she had made to in order to buy her crew better gear had been oddly satisfying. That and whatever she had drained from the pirates, because apparently, she had that authority to seize credits and material. It made her feel dirty, but there were worse things to do in her job than pillage.
"What're you doing then? After this?" She posed to Drack, his appearance today throwing her off just a little bit.
He had knocked the coffee machine unceremoniously into his bag. If it survived this long it could take a few more dings as he shouldered the fabric sack. "Taking some of the credits I make today and bringing them to my granddaughter. She's running some sort of business back on Tuchanka, and what kind of grandfather would I be to my ru'shan if I didn't help out?"
That seemed to wound Wrex more. The Krogan before him had a child, and then his child had a child unto themselves. Those lucky few Krogan who could say they had born children. Strangely enough it hit Shepard's material instinct in some measure as well.
Drack was just about done there, putting his helmet back on, but he had his words as he passed by Wrex and his own reward for coming there today. Drack glanced down on it, remembering how his model of that particular model had been destroyed and how many Turians it took to do so. A hand reached out to touch Wrex's armored shoulder.
"Take your armor, Wrex. Honor your family. Not your people. That is the only way you can survive this galaxy."
Wrex had dragged the metal case all the way up, Shepard dropping a beacon to Alliance command for body disposal at this site. Alliance SOP was to tag bodies. The Navy liked to keep a running count on kills per ship as far as pirates were concerned, as morbid as it was. The Krogan whose stuff Actus had stolen would hopefully get there first, but it wasn't her issue.
The scratch marks would hopefully lead those who came to that place in as the case rolled on the crystalline surface of the planet.
Emerson had been waiting. "Find what you need ma'am? There was a Krogan who came up and, uh-"
"Yeah, yeah. We're all fine. That Krogan was fine too." She answered. "Kaiden. Rally everyone into the Mako. We're leaving."
"Aye ma'am."
To everyone else there were better things to do, but for Wrex, he had waited for a few months to tag Actus. He had been blue balled, unfulfilled, but yet he came and got what he wanted. He was still, looking up at the stars, deep in a reverie pulled out by the only person who could.
It was Shepard, speaking to him. He asked her to repeat what she just said. "I said, I would've been okay with that too if you told me why you wanted your armor. Of all the ambitions in this galaxy, I say yours seems worth it."
"Okay with it?"
Shepard caught her words. "Okay, maybe not okay with it. I'm not qualified on making those decisions on a galactic scale… But, I'm not to judge someone who would return to their home to make it better."
"Really? According to the galaxy you are to judge."
She looked up into the starry sky and tried to find it: Sol. To find the Pale Blue Dot that orbited it, as all Humans knew how to in their heart. "I don't know you yet, Wrex. To me you're just an interesting Mercenary who wants to just tag along with a ride. You have zilch for security clearances and you've probably killed more people than I'm comfortable know, but… the only that matters to me is the purity of your mission."
He sniffed at her words, behind his helmet, looking down at the crate of armor and all that it meant. "Let's go, Shepard." He stepped away, leaving Shepard alone in the middle of her men, looking to the stars again.
"Hitman Actual to Normandy Actual. We're clear for pickup in my grid."
Omake:
n.
A special video feature that accompanies an anime, such as a collection of deleted scenes or outtakes.
Example: "In this omake, the characters are breaking the fourth wall to talk to the audience."
Omake Two:
"I'm a complete hack but if I wrote it like this this story would be drastically lesser in quality and intent/this is a slow-fucking-burn for a reason."
Or…
"In the Arms (of Someone Else)"
This time the Mako was there, and JD was given his privacy as he awoke from her death:
ARE YOU OKAY? She signed, close to him due to Shepard's parking job this time being a little tighter than they were used to.
He looked at her hands, but then her face, locking eyes with her as he calmed down from a high he hadn't even known he came down from. He decided he couldn't be sure, even when she was that close. Mai looked at his hands as they moved up, anticipating him to sign back, but instead, they moved to her, disappearing behind her head as, in her kneel, he had the advantage of her unbalance as JD felt her tense. He felt her tense as his hands wrapped around behind her only rest below her shoulder blades.
She trusted him, and it had only been disparaging for her in the seconds it took her to recognize, as her body folded flat onto him, what this was: A hug.
He hadn't known why he had done it, but he could guess: Some inherent curiosity to confirm that she was, wholly, human in warmth and touch. Holding her like that, it was an awkward angle as she was braced against the tire of the Mako, she tense, but yet at the same time fluid in his grip.
How many years had it been, and who had been the last to do this?
The answer paused Mai as she simply let it happen again, her own chest touching his and, eventually, he adjusting her to roll instead to be held at his side, her left arm laying limply across his breast, only to, for some instinctual reason, have her hand ball at the fabric of his shirt.
Her head had lain over his heart as he held her still, and only, after a lifetime measured in heartbeats, had he let go as his full coherence came back to him and he had let go. Mai had let go similarly, scooting over, her back against the Mako as in the shadow of the vehicle her blue eyes almost glowed.
Her mouth was open, her breath passing by her teeth unkindly as a stray bang passed in front of her face. JD recomposed himself, sitting upright, looking away as his mouth moved but made no sound save sputtering.
"What was-…?"
He had to lie. It hurt him, it wasn't right, he didn't know why he did, but-
"I thought you were someone else. Sorry."
Mai felt warmth on the side of her face, distinct from the other warmth taking the rest of it: the side of her face over his heart had felt a warmth she had never known. A warmth she didn't know could be generated by humans. Her own hand pressed over her own heart, but felt not skin, but the surface of her techsuit. She wanted to say it was okay, to forgive him, or even perhaps to chastise him and yet… There was nothing else to say if he had thought her someone else. What was the name of the woman he had a picture of? Dawn?
Though that was the foley of justification: JD knew this most of all. Mai was unmistakable to him. That's why that lie had been the worst he ever told. Brush it off, move on. It was a mistake on JD's part, and for Mai, something she would otherwise not care for.
Standing up himself, for a moment he able to see the top of Mai's head before she reclaimed her height advantage.
How easy and how simple would it be if this was how it played out. Though if something like this happened in story, it would cheapen it.
Again, I make no guarantee they do fall in love. Of all the stars in the universe, remember that most, if not all of them, cross paths once, only to drift away forever. Though I admit, it's very calming, very reassuring, to imagine people like this. If you read this chapter, you know a line that I hope got across was this:
To die is one of the most human things to do.
I will not forget that, perhaps greater than that, is to love.
Though admittedly that's corny as shit: JD, a battered and rugged ODST, teaching an inhuman woman-shaped monster how to love. Come on, you should expect better of me. I am a hack though, and what's happening between Jon and Mai isn't anything unfamiliar to Halo:
Omake Three:
"The Rider was Lost"
They stole everything from him, to birth him, and at the end of it all the only gave him back his name. His full name.
A desk. An office. A view over those that would, eventually, replace him when his body built for war rusted over in a life he wasn't supposed to live. He had his duties, and yet, they were never supposed to be his to begin with.
She wanted to reach out and manipulate the nameplate on his desk, from her projector also attached to its surface, but could not.
"It fits you, you know." She spoke to his back as he stood straight at the window, looking down at the fourth iteration of his kind. Volunteers, immersing themselves in the legend made of his service, and all those still Missing in Action. He turned his head to her partly, the pale skin unkindly paired with natural sunlight. "Your name."
"It's not who I am." He spoke in his deep voice, his massive form still standing like a statue in a suit that she didn't know how was made for him. She out of everyone knew his exact measurements; she had been inside of his head of all things, and yet he did not look, feel, or seem natural standing in the light of that planet. Distantly Covenant ships, co-opted and taken over by the UNSC, had been used to start de-glassing operations.
Reach had been the last planet glassed. It would be the first reclaimed, next being Harvest. Though there wasn't an urgent need. When the Halo fired it left a part of the galaxy ready to be reclaimed by the Reclaimers. Weeks had passed since the military tribunals and the Elite Thel Vadam, finally, had started to cede his authority to the UNSC and their wishes, leading a flotilla of former Covenant species back to their homeworlds before, at last, being imprisoned for the rest of his life on Sanghelios.
It was funny, to him, that he did not go. Nearly three quarters of all surviving Spartan-IIs had accompanied the fleet to guard Sanghelios and its prisoners. Those that remained would now be here, at Reach, to start the cycle anew.
He knew who he was: He was John-117.
Spartan-II. Commander of the newly formed Spartan Branch. Charged with training the Spartan-IVs: his replacements.
He didn't even sit in his office, Cortana had long noticed. His chair unused as he preferred to be ready on his feet, always, with the Covenant ships in the background. He knew that they were of no threat, he knew that nothing would come from them but revitalization, and yet he was wired. He was told nothing more his entire life than those curved and purple apparitions of ghosts made into war-waging ships had been a threat to all life.
And now the same people who had told him that had now said the exact opposite.
"Chief, your heart rate, it's raising."
He didn't notice his nails making cuts in his palms, he white knuckled every time he looked at those distant Covenant ships, but he had let go at her insistence. More than once she had more control of his body than he did.
"You're not fighting, anymore, Chief. It's okay." She tried to calm him, reaching out a hand he would be able to feel.
"Is it?"
A silence between him as he turned, the features of his face only now facing nature and reality as it should've: It had been pale, sunken eyes and a piercing gaze in shrewd idle form. He never had to hide his emotions before, behind the helmet, and yet now because of it there was disgust read. The remnants of freckles he had as a kid were covered by the scrunch on the bridge of his nose as he looked to his AI "assistant", as was her official term now.
She had tried to put on that same sassy face as always, but she was never good at lying. Especially not to him. She never made a promise to people she could never stand failing, and yet, he had asked her one day, in his once-in-a-lifetime moments of weakness, to stay with him. Stay with him meaning more than just the actual act. It meant for her to be as she was to him during their short time together from Reach to the first Halo. Being inside of his head revealed to her depth that she had been horrified to see, promising herself to treat him better, the best she could. He was thankful for that beyond words.
Looking at her, his face softened for a reprieve, the two dropping their guards as they only could around each other. And yet these were exceptions to their lives now: brief flashes of normalcy in a dead galaxy.
"Commander Hartsend?"
The name his mother gave him. The one he was born with. John Hartsend. The last of his family. To hear it uttered by other people was as if people were referring to someone else. In the back of his mind, beneath the conditioning, the years and years of warfare, he made the connection: it was his name. Spoken to him by a voice he heard only at the most feather edges of his consciousness. How important it was, and yet he found nothing for it.
It meant nothing to him, and yet people used it; today a staffer delivering reports to him asked for his attention.
Cortana had sent the staffer away, a sigh on lips that were not real as John fell back into the conflict of himself, turning back to the windows, seeing his Spartans train. It was different now:
Mendez had been told to avoid punishment for his part in his training to train more, which had been far, far away preferable to what had happened to Halsey. If he knew anything between right and wrong, he finally looked to the UNSC to judge, and found it in the absolute wrong how they treated her for saving Humanity.
"Chief, can you hear me?"
That was the name he knew, from a person he trusted. Of all the mercies of their new reality, she was still there with him.
She had a point, in the way she spoke so much more by just saying that. He had his duty, and he was still a soldier. That was all he ever hoped to be.